Support stablecoins would be a strong word for where I'm at, but I'm okay with tolerating their being supported in bitcoin tools. If only because if someone's otherswise stuck in a hyperinflationary currency that is prone to being rugged anyway, and they're living hand to mouth, it may be their trojan horse (or stepping stone) that gets them eventually onto bitcoin.

That said, why anyone who could access a dollar based bank account would use them is entirely beyond my understanding.

I saw Alex Jones posted his on twitter. Always knew he was a Fed...

I assume anyone balking at needing to be cryptography literate will be remembered in history much like people who balked at the idea for average people to need to be literate at all after most of human history only requiring literacy of a small minority class of scribes.

What, no trojan horse? Or bunny rabbit?

Hah, sure thing. It does explain why most can zap you just fine though, especially as I get the impression that between Damus, Primal, and Amethyst most people's primary client isn't browser based. Glad to have uncovered where the issue lay in any case; hope it doesn't give you too many headaches.

Oh, and the mike@mikehardcastle.com is referring to your NIP-05, if that wasn't clear.

Might be nostrudel greying it out due to that, which I would actually say is probably preferred behavior. Though THAT is exactly what I'm talking about with NIP-05 failures needing to be more front and center if so.

The one thing that looks weird and like it could be an issue is that I see this on your profile page in Nostrudel:

mike@mikehardcastle.com

Unable to check DNS identity due to CORS error Test

Where "Test" is a link to https://cors-test.codehappy.dev/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmikehardcastle.com%2F.well-known%2Fnostr.json%3Fname%3Dmike&method=get

Where I see Results: "This URL will not work correctly with CORS"

URL in question is https://mikehardcastle.com/.well-known/nostr.json?name=mike

Oh, so is lightning -- for whatever reason speed.app's extension on this computer wants to just loop endlessly when I go to sign in. Guess I'm zapping from my phone.

One of these days I'll be spinning up a lightning node myself.

Looks like it's actually on all of your notes.

Now, why on earth is my zap button greyed out on this post?

Someone really should let him know that if it's the clients generating the key he's worried about, that can absolutely be done locally, even on an airgapped system if you really want to go full blown paranoid about it. https://github.com/jeffthibault/python-nostr has the library and a use case for generating the keys. Clients just generate keys as a convenience, much like how signers will generate bitcoin keys for you -- you can always generate them yourself.

On the first matter, leaning to the first option, but as you point out, neither extreme is truly possible in a real world. There is always power, and it will always have some impact on people. Government going away, rather, can be thought of more in lines with a decentralization of that power, but there will always be hot spots, because no grouping of humans is ever going to be perfectly distributed with regard to their means or will to exert influence over each other. What may emerge as the best approximation of no government is a free choice of government, possibly untied from geographic location in some way (though I'm not holding my breath). When people know you're protected by a particular organization, they think twice about infringing upon your protected rights, and likewise, you would generally avoid trying to win one over on someone in defiance of their protective organization.

Part of where bitcoin, or more abstractly, sound money, comes in, is creating a level playing field in the market that allows those power concentrations to be based more around what people find utility in, and perhaps more importantly, punishing economic wastefulness such as unjust wars through the stripping of wealth, and thereby, power.

On the second matter, again, I lean toward the first option, but there are at this point scaling concerns that make it unlikely that bitcoin in its current form could serve as global money for everyone, if only because with current blockspace and transaction size, there's roughly enough space for every one of the 8 billion people on earth to make 2-3 on chain transactions per lifetime. I don't worry that governments can shut it down, as between tor, geographic limitations, and unbreakable cryptography, it's just out of reach. The best they can do is control the fiat offramps (ie, exchanges), which would make it harder for those not in bitcoin yet from getting in, but nothing prevents bitcoiners from exchanging goods and services with each other for the bitcoin they have. As for government taxes, the government can simply do what they've always been able to do in the event of bitcoin maximalism: beat you with a $5 wrench (okay, with inflation, these wrenches now cost around $20...) and throw you in a cell until you give them what they want. The same holds if you're holding your money as fiat paper in a secret location. Most people value their lives more than they value their money, especially when their money becomes unspendable when they've lost their liberty. That said, I do think the way taxes are levied would likely change, as income and capital gains taxes become a bit trickier to track, particularly with people using various privacy practices to obfuscate the currency they've received. There may be taxes on state provided goods and services (think toll roads), taxes on things like vehicle registrations or houses, taxes on imports (tariffs), taxes for special privileges (regulated businesses, health code, etc), or even flat taxes imposed on every citizen governed by a given state. None of this would be outside of what has been seen historically -- if anything, it is modern income taxes that are the relative aberration which did not exist prior to the advent of fiat currency in the first place.

While I do tend to prefer smaller "leave me alone" governance, and Bitcoin removes some of the means government has historically ballooned in size, nothing quite guarantees that you'd have a light handed touch. Just like tyrannical governments existed on the gold standard as well. They just end up having to play by the rules of the market, which likely would have less time for their fiat bullshit and debt expansion (much like the Medicis had no interest in extending credit to sovereigns, until they did, and subsequently saw their banking empire collapse).

When I finally learned that when people say "no more than three relays" refers specifically to three WRITE relays, my experience got much better.

100%, this would be a massive Quality of Life improvement. Especially as it's different on almost every client you go to.

NIP-05 could be implemented better at the client level to make it obvious what's going on at the NIP-05 level. Like, what domain someone is verified through, and perhaps more importantly, if it has changed. For someone like myself, it's whatever, but for a more public personality, where you have your website people know you through, it'd be a pretty solid warrant canary style assurance that you are still in control of your nsec. If you're not, delete the file on your webserver, and bam, it should be obvious in clients that your npub is no longer you. Now, getting your followers back could be a pain at that point, but surely you can get creative with clarification back on your website for which new npub people can point to for your content.

Multisig could help too, but is probably honestly overkill in most cases. Long term thinking though, it's worth having built out and tested, and iirc, there are a few projects seeking to do just this, including Frostr.

Honestly surprised this snowflake used the word "mankind." Seems a bit patriarchal for that crowd.

NIP-05 is the solution to this but the way it is commonly used is less than stellar. If I leak my nsec and then burn my NIP-05, that should be the "warrant canary" that tells people my npub is no longer me.

I think client design to draw better attention to this could help the matter. As could nsec multisig to make it just less likely to leak your nsec in the first place.

It's a simple thing to deploy, and is just an Electrum server. Basically just indexes the chain for faster access to the data your node is validating and storing. There's just a variety of Electrum server options these days, and some are bigger (for say, large nodes intended for large public use -- think Ledger or Trezor), some, like ElectrumX, also work with shitcoins (ew), and others stand out in their own way. EPS sounds great if it's JUST one person as it is a little faster and lighter, but Electrs hit the sweet spot for me.

You gotta get on that MUD\WTR train.Or rather, just look at their recipe and make it yourself for 1/5 the cost (they donate to MAPS which is cool, but spending 200 sats a day is better than spending 1000 sats a day on my morning brew, and I can give MAPS money myself if I want to).

I trust a man such as yourself can appreciate the power of a whole bunch of mushrooms mixed up in a cup, flavored with cacao, and mixed in with a bit of spiced tea.

Not to hate on coffee too much; it served me well enough through some epic times working 70 hour weeks. But I'm quite pleased to not need it at all anymore. Frankly weird how quickly I was able to phase off it.

I got really worried seeing Bitcoin 2 trending on Twitter. Figured maybe too many of us left and were over here exclusively, and people were going to get swindled heavily.

Then I saw it's trending almost exclusively with people ridiculing Fred Krueger and his absurd idea to make a Bitcoin 2 on Solana. Maybe the kids are all right after all.

You found Peter Schiff's car.

And no. Maybe he did, but if so, he likely sold some to buy that car.

Looks like Miami, so shitcoins are much more likely.