I'm not a fan of running or all of us being in a central place. That seems like an easy target.

The whole passage is an eye-opener to be honest!

A downward spiral in which the people surrendered their assets and their liberties in order to be kept alive. I wonder if Joseph overstepped his remit here, in that he was appointed to prepare a nation to face famine, but then started wheeling and dealing with his surplus stock in order to enslave... the very people he was appointed to help. The next book, Exodus, begins with a telling phrase "there arose a new Pharoah to whom 'Joseph' meant nothing"... and guess what, the tables turned and this Pharoah moved to enslave the Hebrews instead. Uno Reverse. Yes there's a whole redemption drama that follows, but I hadn't appreciated that Joseph's over-reach was the root of the problem, not just a mean ol' Pharoah loving to whip the slaves.

Here's the passage, Genesis 47:13-26.

"There was no food, however, in the whole region because the famine was severe; both Egypt and Canaan wasted away because of the famine. Joseph collected all the money that was to be found in Egypt and Canaan in payment for the grain they were buying, and he brought it to Pharaoh’s palace. When the money of the people of Egypt and Canaan was gone, all Egypt came to Joseph and said, “Give us food. Why should we die before your eyes? Our money is all gone.”

“Then bring your livestock,” said Joseph. “I will *sell you food in exchange for your livestock*, since your money is gone.” So they brought their livestock to Joseph, and he gave them food in exchange for their horses, their sheep and goats, their cattle and donkeys. And he brought them through that year with food in exchange for all their livestock.

When that year was over, they came to him the following year and said, “We cannot hide from our lord the fact that since our money is gone and our livestock belongs to you, there is nothing left for our lord except our bodies and our land. Why should we perish before your eyes—we and our land as well? Buy us and our land in exchange for food, and we with our land will be in bondage to Pharaoh. Give us seed so that we may live and not die, and that the land may not become desolate.”

So Joseph bought all the land in Egypt for Pharaoh. The Egyptians, one and all, sold their fields, because the famine was too severe for them. The land became Pharaoh’s, and *Joseph reduced the people to servitude, from one end of Egypt to the other*. However, he did not buy the land of the priests, because they received a regular allotment from Pharaoh and had food enough from the allotment Pharaoh gave them. That is why they did not sell their land.

Joseph said to the people, “Now that I have *bought you and your land* today for Pharaoh, here is seed for you so you can plant the ground. But when the crop comes in, give a fifth of it to Pharaoh. The other four-fifths you may keep as seed for the fields and as food for yourselves and your households and your children.”

“You have saved our lives,” they said. “May we find favor in the eyes of our lord; we will be in bondage to Pharaoh.”

So Joseph established it as a law concerning land in Egypt—still in force today—that *a fifth of the produce belongs to Pharaoh*. It was only the land of the priests that did not become Pharaoh’s.

True. But something has to exist to enforce return of stolen crypto

Shill me your best articles, papers, and chapters on #Bitcoin 🥺🥺🥺 I need more! #education #learning #lightning #finance

I’ve been to one in my entire life - nostrasia. It was great but I don’t need any others. Happy to meet the friends I made on other occasions if it so happens.

We shouldn't be letting governments off the hook here. Their most essential function is to protect private property from mob confiscation (by violence, essentially). If they can't do that, they can't claim any moral basis for existence. America was the first country to protect the individual from the state with the bill of rights. How about another amendment to the consitution:

'Congress shall make no law that infringes on an individual’s right to own, use, and trade Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, nor shall any state deprive any person of their cryptocurrencies without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws governing cryptocurrencies.'

Privacy is normal and good.

There has been an effort among authorities to make “money laundering” and “financial privacy” the same thing. That is, the mere act of moving money privately itself becomes a crime. That’s not okay.

Money laundering is when money that is obtained through crime is concealed by obfuscating it with clean money. The actual crime is the initial non-financial crime (say, mob stuff), and historically money laundering involves manual activity to work with the criminals.

Now that open source tech can make certain transactions private, authorities increasingly equate all private money transfer with money laundering, even if the developer of the open source tech had no direct involvement with criminals. Authorities target them regardless, and sanction the technology itself. Financial privacy becomes synonymous with crime in their minds, and in the minds of the public.

CK’s razor: in Bitcoin don’t attribute to stupidity what can be adequately explained by malice.

Aka don’t assume they are dumb. Assume they are smart and up to no good.

It’s a good thing Bitcoin is for enemies. nostr:note1temptex8hzzl4q6xuqctymk4ydasd3g4ye66z425erxqu6awy8cq38ww36

THE GASLIGHTING NETWORK:

- "Don't believe your own memories of using LN non-custodially on a daily basis for countless times in the last few years, but believe fraudulent marketing claims by shitcoin scammers about you never actually doing what you actually did and do"

- "Don't compare LN to existent, realistic and sustainable alternatives, including its own future iterations and evolutions, but to imaginary born-perfect, silver-bullet, turn-key solutions like gigameg-blocks, miraculously brought to you by the Second Coming of Bitcoin Jesus, resurrected to bring you with him in the Hard Fork Heavens"

- "Don't think about real-world economic/monetary dynamics, pushing most actual users for much of the foreseeable future to prioritize their concern over inflation and confiscation of their long-term savings, over coffee-paying costs or risks, but make up imaginary millions of people with no fiat but somehow lots of sats to spend in billions of fast/cheap transactions starting tomorrow"

- "Don't engage in nuanced and honest discussions about the actual security-model spectrum for different use-cases, but pretend that those millions of imaginary sat-spenders somehow always need, for their imaginary fast/cheap transactions, the very same trustlessness models than slow/huge ones."

- "Don't acknowledge the fact that Bitcoin's usability for normies has been brought from nonexistent to mediocre over 15 years of hard work, but pretend its layer1 was born perfect, without inherent issues like chain-anal/coin-selection/fee-estimation issues"

🎯

*The Rare Sat Lie*

Let's start with some facts.

You cannot own a satoshi (sat). You can only own a utxo, who's value is measured in sats. Just like you cannot own a "kilogram" but you can own something which weights a kilogram.

The idea that a sat can be rare is a lie, since sats don't exist.

A utxo also cannot be sold, because as soon as it is spent, a completely new utxo is created, and the creation of this new utxo makes the previous utxo (which you wanted to sell) spent. To act of spending "an unspent transaction output" (UTXO) transforms it into something fundamentally different, a "spent transaction output" (STXO) and creates a new UTXO.

The idea that a utxo can be sold is a lie, since even utxos cannot be sold.

The idea that a rare sat from a "special" utxo can be bought is thus a double lie.

*Rare Sat Sophistry*

The conmen, the useful idiots and the otherwise honest but contrarian pundits will rationalize the spreading of the "Rare Sat Lie" with sophistry and appeals to libertarian morality such as "it's a free market, people can believe whatever they want and waste their money however they wish".

Of course, this line of reasoning is meant to create strawmen arguments so that every person that is righteously indignated at the spreading of these lies can be painted as being opposed to the concept of individual freedon itself, which immediately places the TruthSeeker's outrage outside of the Overton Window (and subject to ridicule).

Let us dispell the strawman argument.

The "market" (a small niche of degenerate gamblers) can want whatever it wants, yes. But it till cannot change the reality that individual satoshis (sats) do not exist as "things" or virtual objects. This reality is not subjective.

The sophists will also rationalize that "it cannot be stopped" and thus all you can do is "cry harder" (ironic eh?) and that any and all attempts to combat the lies are futile (at best) or stupid.

It may be true all the truthseeker can do is cry and shout, but it is also true that to combat the spreading of such lies is a virtuous and noble pursuit. And it is also true that the direct result of the shouting can be to save a victim from otherwise being conned. Which is, we would all agree I hope, a moral good, if not a moral imperative.

People are free to spread the lie that such things ("rare" "sats") are real, and fraudulently sell utxos of low value presented as "rare" "sats" for utxos of higher value, but to do so by exploiting the ignorance of people and confusion around the complex technology of Bitcoin is evil according to nearly almost moral code that ancient and modern civilizations have produced.

I am the last person that would deny someone the right to be evil. But I believe if you see a fraud and you don't call out the fraud then you too are a fraud.

So, the strawman is really just straw.

*The Rare Sat Con*

Beyond it being morally bad to spread lies generally, the spreading of the lie also occurs within the context of textbook confidence trick.

Confidence tricks involve :

- the mark: the victims whose money is to be acquired fraudulently

- the roper: reels in the mark via exposure and marketing, peaking the curiosity of the mark (i.e. a conference or media organization)

- the inside man: provides a venue for the con to take place, or supplies goods and services used in the context of the scam (a mining pool or a marketplace)

- the conman: gains the confidence of the mark extracts the money (the seller of a rare sat)

- the convincer: an acolyte of the conman which gives a taste of the profits to the mark either by investing in the mark, or showing off his profits to the mark (a fellow rare sat trader)

The conman and the convincer can interchange roles. For example, conmen and convincers can publicly con each other repeatedly and alternatively, with gains and losses which compensate, with the tacit understanding that the goal is really to gain the confidence of a mark from which both convincer and conman can extract money from.

Everyone except benefits in this zero sum game, except obviously the mark.

In the end, the mark was never forced to give up his money. He willingly parted ways with his funds, deceived by the confidence trick.

Selling "rare sats" for utxos of higher sat value is without doubt a confidence trick.

I will let it up to your imagination who you think plays which role in the rare sat con.

Interesting article, but no mention of bitcoin and the joined at the hip-ness with 'murica tho... Two black swans playing out simultaneously (for which the canuck political class and society has not seriously reckoned with yet)

This is next-level 🤡 🌍 .

Today was the last day, I had to close my business...

Apart from looking for a job, what could I do❓

Ideas, tips...

#nostr #plebchain #asknostr

can we fork off to a chain where consensus is that only Sv2 is allowed?:)

You could base it on the last digits of each new block header , zap to get a random card or make your own

If you could get lightning Bingo on Nostr, cross my heart, I could onboard half of Ireland, not even joking.

#GetBingoOnNostrPlease

If a block reward gets cut in half and no one is around to see it does it make a sound?