Profile: dfa94a58...
Targeted killings "to exterminate amalek". According to Netanhyu. You should be concerned if a) you're Amalek or b) you are not Amalek
Which one are you , punk ?
The US govt is now going after all bitcoin users as being "money transmitters" which they say is only the domain of banks. They are terrified of bitcoin and if they were not going after bitcoin it would be seen as ineffective money. They wont make bitcoin Legal Tender ie. State approved money , because theyre terrified of it, but they will try and treat it as money to get rid of it. How ironic.
Let's all join handa and sing kumbaya !
The good engineers dont ask "how many ways can this bridge stay up?" They ask "how many ways can this bridge fall down!"
Keep calm and HODL #Bitcoin.
Everyone seems to be overreacting to the Samourai arrests, the FBI PSA, and Phoenix leaving the US. Here's my attempt to break it down.
Samourai
You have to unpack all of the different elements. Could this be a state attack on self-custody and privacy? Maybe. Probably not.
There are a few components here that need to be evaluated on their own.
1⃣ Samourai was a self-custodial wallet
2⃣ Samourai was a mixer
3⃣ Samourai was providing normal people with privacy
4⃣ Samourai were knowingly marketing the service to criminals and flaunting that fact
Reading the charges, it seems like #4 is pretty cut and dry for this case. Their getting arrested for #4, doesn't automatically mean #1, #2, #3 are under siege as well. If Samourai was a taco stand laundering money and bragging about it, I'm sure they would be taken down too.
They may be accused of running a money transmitter now, but that may or may not stick. We'll find out in the trial.
All that said, we should always be vigilant to attempts to erode privacy and the ability to self-custody. It just does not seem that this fight is *that* fight.
FBI PSA
Seems pretty normal that the FBI would advise people to use compliant services, and the entire announcement seems to revolve around potential disruptions due to Samourai being taken down, and potentially others in the future. Given they took action, they have to post some bulletin about it.
Remember that when people lose funds or have funds stolen from them, they do go to the FBI for help. From their point of view, the best thing for people to do is use compliant services where they can potentially help.
The announcement concludes saying that services that purposely break the law will be investigated - so again we go back to #4 above. This is nothing new, and self-custody is not being criminalized.
Phoenix Leaving
As nostr:npub1sg6plzptd64u62a878hep2kev88swjh3tw00gjsfl8f237lmu63q0uf63m said, it's feels completely unnecessary. Phoenix obviously is not a MSB and they are not doing anything illegal. In my view, their exit from the US app stores is a complete overreaction.
Keep Calm
Could "they" come after wallets, developers, mixers, nodes, LSPs, sidechains, eCash, VPNs, encryption, etc? It's totally possible. But if you're not breaking the law, you have nothing to worry about.
To my knowledge, there is still rule of law in the US, property rights are still protected, and privacy is enshrined in the Bill of Rights (nostr:npub1trr5r2nrpsk6xkjk5a7p6pfcryyt6yzsflwjmz6r7uj7lfkjxxtq78hdpu).
It would be very difficult to change the law or stretch it to incriminate these things because it's all just information and software, which is speech. Some will try. But as they are trying, #Bitcoin is becoming more and more mainstream and integral to the world's financial system.
#Bitcoin is freedom technology and it will continue on.
Go outside this weekend and think about why you're here.
Phoenix and the others leaving the USA is completely understandable. The US passing legislation to steal Russia's forex sends a signal that the USA is now a rogue state where no assets are safe. Nobody sane will invest under such conditions. The dollar will go to hell. Europe is going the same way. We are witnessing state suicide. Get out !
Threatening people to give money is called an extortion racket. Give voluntarily.
It is called The Great Taking
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1GHXe0PbNG4
Tokenization - you'll own nothing.
Here is the detailed explantion of the mechanics of this, even for paid off property. How the collateralization laws have been changed , who the new benfactors are(central and investment banks) , what will trigger this (a $quadrillion derivatives crash, that coming as sure as the sun rises). He does give a nod to the tradeability of these tokens as having some virtue *while the going is good*, but that's just a caveat, probably to stay on youtube lol !
The most interesting part of this is that nobody seems to care. This guy should have millions of viewers, he hasnt even got 1 thousand.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nQhGSchqlvE&pp=ygUfdG9rZW5pemF0aW9uIHlvdSdsbCBvd24gbm90aGluZw%3D%3D
The problem is not bitcoin, the problem is that the non custodial lightning network becomes too expensive for everyone, especially for the unbanked . Certainly the wallets that use submarine swaps
When does this "you'll own nothing" event happen ? When the $quadrillions derivatives markets collapse. Either under their own weight or they get pulled. Probably the latter. They are still getting their ducks in a row, building their blockchains(SQL databases) , tokenizing(centralizing) all assets and changing the collateral laws so that the banks are first in line(and you're not in the line) to get the collateral. People's heads will spin when they realise what happened.
Not your keys , not your bitcoins.
Who stores your physical gold when you hold the block chain token ? Just asking....lol ! Larry "ratfink" Fink wants to tokenize ALL physical assets, including your house. "Must be a good deal!" Its coming and You Will Own Nothing(TM). People are asleep
Austrian School missed the bitcoin bus , badly. The incorrect "Regression Theorum" bamboozled them into thinking bitcoin could not be money because it didnt have "intrinsic value" or value as a commodity before it became money. What a shame. Some of them have been waiting since the 1970s for gold to go to the moon.
Instead , as it stands, the private bankers issue money(debt) to oppress
Holywood is a big part of the problem. Wall to wall mind fuck. Woke crap from start to finish. Cant watch more than 5 mins.
Patience. The USD is going to zero, it is already inflating away savings at a greater rate than the official cpi. Tether is the USD and related treasuries proxy.
Its a bit worrying that a so called bitcoin OG(lol!) has not got the first clue about the cause, effects and history of geopolitics. Is he also confused about the defn of money ? Sometimes techies can just tech.
Sometimes developers might be genius at tech but dont have a cooking clue about money, history, philosophy and economics iow money. In fact , I think thats a rule. Techies like everyone , need to remain humble.
Bitcoin is sound money. It is not some app. No other software is sound money. Sound money doesnt change
Listened to Michael Saylor on the nostr:npub1r8l06leee9kjlam0slmky7h8j9zme9ca32erypgqtyu6t2gnhshs3jx5dk podcast. It's 3 months old, but sheds some light on the ARK funding story.
TL;DW: Saylor strongly believes in *OSSIFICATION NOW*. From that POV, protocol development is a liability.
Some quotes (and thoughts)👇
"You only get to play God once. And Satoshi played God. And you can say 'well Satoshi got to do it, why can't I?' Well the answer is Satoshi did it, the reason we're talking about Satoshi is 'cause the other 100,000 would-be Satoshis failed. If you read the history of the world, work your way through 10,000 pages of Western history, there will be thousands and thousands and thousands of episodes of 'alpha male thinks he was put on this earth, you know, to change everything', full of hubris [...] he's gotta do more, change more, etcetera.'" (53:34) "Bitcoin Core developers, or protocol developers, they want to fix something, or they want to make a contribution, because it's in their DNA, but developers are just the lawyers of cyberspace. When a lawyer shows up at the capital, they gotta make a law to save you from yourself, and the more laws they make, the more they cripple the economy, until eventually there's so many laws that the entire civilization collapses under its own weight." (58:06) "The world is full of people that need something to do. I would say, the real key to wisdom, channel your energy constructively. If you're gonna do something, improve Lightning, build an application, persuade someone to adopt Bitcoin as a reserve asset, educate someone… these are all constructive things. Destructive, dilutive, distractive things are: fight with random people 'cause they want to fight with you, attack the core network and make it confusing and introduce anxiety, and confusion and fear, uncertainty and doubt into the base layer. Right? And then attempt to imprint your ego, you know, on the base protocol, you know? Like, 'I gotta introduce this so my name will go down in history forever'." (2:38:55) My view: it's understandable to want Bitcoin to behave like the granite under Manhattan (his analogy); a solid bedrock that never changes. Especially if you truly believe Bitcoin will take over the world as SoV-only and "there is no second best". But IMO this is wishful thinking. While I agree it's near-impossible for an alt to overtake Bitcoin, I do think adoption could stall.
Luckily, Bitcoin isn't really a natural element. It's spontaneous order, more like language. Hard to change and no one can dictate changes, but if market wants it to change, it can.
Furthermore, despite Stephan asking a few questions in that direction, Saylor mostly failed to distinguish between protocol upgrades and general software maintenance.
Arguing against any hard/soft forks is one thing, but Bitcoin Core 26.0 can obviously not last for centuries...
Having said that, Saylor is of course free to not upgrade anymore and stick to Bitcoin Core 26.0 for as long as he lives.
Are Aristotles properties of sound money cast in stone ? I suggest that they are. Its like a math definition, its ossified. The only changes I would support are to make bitcoin conform more to sound money than it might not already be. The rest can go into the layers.
Credit notes will always spontaneously arise and will be traded as currency
Always !!! Why ? Because in the supply chain, for example, manufacturers may not get paid until their goods are completed and in the meantime they need to pay wholesalers and wages. They will raise notes and this will be used as currency until their finished goods are settled for bitcoin. This has been known since before Adam Smith. These notes were called Real Bills and were settled for gold.
I dont think many appreciate this. Centralised price discovery is the goal of Wall St, for everything. Thats why Larry Fink said "we want to tokenise everything". When you tokenise everything, you de-materialise everything and centralise everything and then it can be diluted or pledged as collateral in a fungible blob by the usury sharks. The gold price quoted on every media outlet is the nearest derivative(paper) price. Even gold bullion dealers use this price. If bitcoin loses its decentralised price discovery(some say its already lost) then we are on the road to bitcoin becoming irrelevant.