@ fd208ee8:0fd927c1

E-cash are coupons or tokens for Bitcoin, or Bitcoin debt notes that the mint issues. The e-cash states, essentially, "IoU 2900 sats". They're redeemable for Bitcoin on Lightning (hard money), and therefore can be used as cash (softer money), so long as the mint has a good reputation. That means that they're less fungible than Lightning because the e-cash from one mint can be more or less valuable than the e-cash from another. If a mint is buggy, offline, or disappears, then the e-cash is unreedemable. It also means that e-cash is more anonymous than Lightning, and that the sender and receiver's wallets don't need to be online, to transact. Nutzaps now add the possibility of parking transactions one level farther out, on a relay. The same relays that cannot keep npub profiles and follow lists consistent will now do monetary transactions. What we then have is * a **transaction on a relay** that triggers * a **transaction on a mint** that triggers * a **transaction on Lightning** that triggers * a **transaction on Bitcoin**. Which means that every relay that stores the nuts is part of a wildcat banking system. Which is fine, but relay operators should consider whether they wish to carry the associated risks and liabilities. They should also be aware that they should implement the appropriate features in their relay, such as expiration tags (nuts rot after 2 weeks), and to make sure that only expired nuts are deleted. There will be plenty of specialized relays for this, so don't feel pressured to join in, and research the topic carefully, for yourself. https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/60.md https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/61.md

@ dd664d5e:5633d319

Most people only know customer-to-customer (C2C) and business-to-customer (B2C) software and websites. Those are the famous and popular ones, but business-to-business (B2B) is also pretty big. How big? Even something boring and local like [DATEV](https://www.datev.de/web/de/startseite/startseite-n/) has almost 3 million organizations as customers and €1,44 billion in annual revenue. FedEx has €90 billion in annual revenue and everyone who uses it comes into contact with its software. There's a whole chain of software between the sender and receiver of the package, and it all has to work seamlessly. Same with Walmart, Toyota, Dubai Airport, Glencore, Tesla, Edeka, Carrefour, Harvard and University of Texas, Continental, Allianz, Asklepios, etc. That's the sort of software I help build. You've probably never heard of it, but when it doesn't work properly, you'll hear about it on the news.

@ dd664d5e:5633d319

I think this note from Chip (nostr:npub1qdjn8j4gwgmkj3k5un775nq6q3q7mguv5tvajstmkdsqdja2havq03fqm7) is one of those things that people with business management experience take a lot more seriously than most developers and influencers do. I am painfully aware of the cost of systems administration, financial transaction management and recordkeeping, recruiting and personnel management, legal and compliance, requirements management, technical support, renting and managing physical spaces and infrastructure, negotiating with suppliers, customer service, etc. etc. There's this idea, on Nostr, that sort of trickled in along with Bitcoin Twitter, that we would all just be isolated subsistance farmers and one-man-show podcasters with a gigantic server rack in the basement. But some of us are running real companies -- on and off Nostr, for-profit and non-profit -- and it often requires a lot of human labor. The things we build aren't meant to be used by one person and his girlfriend and his dog. Yes, he can also run all these things, himself, but he no longer has to. Our existence gives him the choice: run these things or pay us to run them and spend your time doing something else, that you do better than we do. These things are meant to be used by hundreds... thousands... eventually millions of people. The workflows, processes, infrastructure, and personnel need to be able to scale up-and-down, scale in-and-out, work smoothly with 5 people or 50 people. These are the sort of Nostr systems that wouldn't collapse when encountering a sudden influx or mass-escape. But these systems are much more complex and they take time to build and staff to run them. (And, no, AI can't replace them all. AI means that they now also have to integrate a bunch of AI into the system and maintain that, too.) GitCitadel (nostr:npub1s3ht77dq4zqnya8vjun5jp3p44pr794ru36d0ltxu65chljw8xjqd975wz) is very automation-forward, but we still have to front the incredibly high cost of designing and building the automation, train people to interact with it (there are now over 20 people integrated into the workflow!), adjust it based upon their feedback, and we have to support the automation, once it's running. This sort of streamlined machine is what people pay companies for, not code. That is why there's little business cost to open source. Open-source is great, but...  nostr:nevent1qqsgqh2dedhagyd9k8yfk2lagswjl7y627k9fpnq4l436ccmlys0s3qprdmhxue69uhhg6r9vehhyetnwshxummnw3erztnrdakj7q3qqdjn8j4gwgmkj3k5un775nq6q3q7mguv5tvajstmkdsqdja2havqxpqqqqqqzdhnyjm

@ fd208ee8:0fd927c1

## Beginning at the start In my previous article, [The Establishment](https://next-alexandria.gitcitadel.eu/publication?d=the-gitcitadel-blog-the-establishment-3-by-stella-v-1), I answered the question: "How do we form a company?" I realize, now, that I was getting a bit ahead, of myself, as the precursor to a *company* is a *team*, and many people struggle to form teams. So, I will go back to the beginning, and then you can read both articles to the end, and then stop. ## The Initiation The first, and most-difficult step of team formation, is *the initiation*. We know that it must be the most-difficult, as it's the step that carries the highest potential reward, and it's the step that is tried-and-failed most often. (Some people, like Elon Musk or Donald Trump, are born Initiators with excellent follow-through, but this archetype is exceedingly thin on the ground because it requires you to be mildly autistic, have barely-throttled ADHD, and/or tend to megalomania, also popularly known as "toxic masculinity", "CEO personality", or "being a successful military officer".) Someone needs to form a useful, attractive Vision and then motivate other people to help them achieve it. That sounds really easy, but it's actually brutally difficult because * You have to come up with an idea that is coherent, plausible, and inspiring. * You have to be able to communicate that idea to other people and make it appealing to them, by tying it into their own personal goals and desires. * You have to be able to hone and reformulate that idea, constantly, to correct it or to re-motivate the other team members. * You have to defend the idea against detractors, naysayers, and trolls, and you have to do it so vociferously, that it will erode your own popularity among those who disagree with you and open you to personal attacks. * You have to be able to focus on the idea, yourself, for a long stretch of time, and not allow yourself to get bored, lazy, or distracted.  So, just do and be all of those things, and then initiate the team, with the method I will name the *Hatbock Method*. It is so named because of the classic, German initiation ritual, in which an Initiator stands up, loudly defines their Vision and calls into a group "Wer hat Bock?" (roughly, "Who has the hunger/desire?") and whoever responds with "Ich hab Bock." (roughly, "Yes, I hunger for this.") is a part of the team. Then the Initiator says, "Okay, everyone with the hunger, let's sit down together, and discuss this some more." (This "sitting" is literally called a "seating", or "Sitzung", which is the German word for "meeting".) ## The Sitting We now get to the second most difficult part of team formation: figuring out *where to sit*. Most teams get this wrong, repeatedly, and many teams dissolve or fracture under the difficulty of this momentous decision. You would think organizing yourselves online would make this easier ("Oh, we'll just meet online!"), but the number of places available for sitting online are limitless. You can talk your whole Vision into the ground, with laborous discussions and migrations between Chachi, OxChat, Telegram, SimpleX, Slack, Discord, WhatsApp, GitHub, Teams, Coracle, Matrix... you get the idea. Try to keep in mind that the Vision is more important than the seating area, and go with the flow. Simply, find someplace and go there. Worry about it again, at a later date. Don't lose momentum. Sit down and start discussing the Vision, *immediately*.  Now, this next bit is very important: > Do not let anyone outside your team influence where you sit! ...unless they are providing your team with some good, service, or income, that makes choosing their preferred location the superior choice. This is the German *Stammtisch* principle, where a host encourages you to come sit down, regularly, in some particular place, because your sitting there provides them with some benefit: they can overhear your conversations, get you to test out their seating area, sell you refreshments, etc. Your choice of seating, in other words, is a valuable good, and you should only "sell" it to someone who rewards you in measure. They have to reward you because their preferred seating area wasn't your immediate and obvious choice, so there was probably something unappealing or uncertain about the seating area. ## Plan it in Once you've sat down, and finished your rough draft of the Vision, you need to figure out *when to sit*. This is the third most-difficult part of team formation. (Yes, don't worry, it gets easier as it goes along.) The most popular plan is the Wirsehenuns Plan (roughly, "We'll see each other, around.") This can work quite well, if you just want to have a loose collaboration, that calls itself together in an ad hoc fashion, when a team member feels the need. Also known as "@ me, bros". It's not a great plan for more intensive collaboration, as that tends to need a certain amount of velocity, to actually happen, as the speed of movement has a centrifugal effect on the tasks. Team momentum, in other words, creates a sort of gravity, that keeps the team together as a unit. So, for deeper teamwork, I would recommend the Stammtisch variant: name a place and date/time, when you will next meet. Preferably, on a rotating schedule: daily, weekly, last Thursday of the month, etc. And then meet there and then. And discuss amongst yourselves. Set clear, short-term tasks (and assign them to particular people!), medium-term strategies, and longer-term goals. *Write everything down.* Anything not written down, is a suggestion, not an assigned task. If you find your Stammtisch becoming increasingly rewarding and productive, and your goals start moving closer and closer into sight, then you might want to formalize your team structure further, [as a company](https://next-alexandria.gitcitadel.eu/publication?d=the-gitcitadel-blog-the-establishment-3-by-stella-v-1).

@ c8383d81:f9139549

**My own stats on what I’ve done over the weekend:** - Spoke to +100 developers, it was great seeing a couple of familiar Flemish faces and meeting some new ones but overall the crowd was extremely diverse. - Ended up doing a short interview promoting the protocol and ended up going to 0 talks. - Tried to evangelize by going booth by booth to distribute a Nostr flyer to other FOSDEM projects, with the hope that they would broadcast the info towards their SOME person to add Nostr on their list or to build out a library for the languages that were present ( This was a fairly slow approach ) - Kept it to Nostr protocol 95% of the time, the Bitcoin narrative is not always a good time to push and as a side note I’ve met more Monero users than in the last 5 years. - Was able to convince some engineers to look into the #soveng endeavor. **Small overview from the most common questions:** - They have heard about Nostr but are not sure of the details. ( mostly through the bitcoin community ) - What is the difference with ActivityPub, Mastodon, Fediverse ? - IOT developers, so questions regarding MQTT & Meshtastic integrations ? - Current state of MLS on Nostr ? - What are the current biggest clients / apps build on Nostr ? - Will jack still give a talk ? **Things we could improve:** - Bring more stickers like loads more, - Bring T-shirts, Pins… could be a good way to fund these adventures instead of raising funds. ( Most projects where selling something to help raise funds for projects ) - Almost no onboarding / client installs. - Compared to the Nostr booth at BTC Amsterdam not a single person asked if they could charge their phone. **Personal Note:** The last time I visited was roughly 13 years ago and me being a little more seasoned I just loved the fact that I was able to pay some support to the open source projects I’ve been using for years ( homebrew, modzilla, Free BSD,.. ) and see the amazing diverse crowd that is the open source Movement 🧡 **Al final shoutout to our great pirate crew 🏴‍☠️:** The Dutch Guard ( nostr:npub1qe3e5wrvnsgpggtkytxteaqfprz0rgxr8c3l34kk3a9t7e2l3acslezefe & nostr:npub1l77twp5l02jadkcjn6eeulv2j7y5vmf9tf3hhtq7h7rp0vzhgpzqz0swft ) and a adrenaline fueled nostr:npub1t6jxfqz9hv0lygn9thwndekuahwyxkgvycyscjrtauuw73gd5k7sqvksrw , nostr:npub1rfw075gc6pc693w5v568xw4mnu7umlzpkfxmqye0cgxm7qw8tauqfck3t8 and nostr:npub1r30l8j4vmppvq8w23umcyvd3vct4zmfpfkn4c7h2h057rmlfcrmq9xt9ma amazing finally meeting you IRL after close to 2 years since the Yakihonne hackathon 😀 

@ dd1f9d50:06113a21

#### **(Because Most People Don’t Understand Money)** #### The requisite knowledge needed to know whether $100 or $100,000 per Bitcoin is relatively speaking “a lot,” is what value means. One way to measure value is through a universal yardstick we call “Money.” The question of “What is money?” is perhaps one of the most overlooked and under answered in our day and age. There is even an entire podcast dedicated to that question with the eponymous title, hosted by Robert Breedlove. That podcast often delves into the more philosophical underpinnings whereas I hope to approach this with a more practical answer. **Money is a technology.** Money is the technology with which we interact with one another to reorganize goods and services to the place and time they are best suited. Most money of the past has been tangible (though not a requisite feature), scarce, recognizable (read: verifiable), durable, portable, and divisible. These features one might call the “Attributes of Money.” These attributes are absolutely essential for a money to maintain its status as a money. (Those of you who understand the U.S. Dollar system maybe scratching your heads right now but, believe me, I will address that elephant in due time.) These attributes, you may notice, are not a yes or no but more of a gradient. A money can be MORE portable than another yet, less durable. One more divisible but not scarce whatsoever. The point being they must have, in some capacity, these attributes or they simply aren’t money. **One of These Things is Not Like the Other** | | **Bitcoin** | **Gold** | **Dollars** | |-----------------|:----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------:|:------------------------------------------------------------------:|:--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------:| | **Scarcity** | 21 million coins <br />is the maximum supply | Unknown- the <br />supply grows roughly 2% per year | Also unknown to anyone outside of the Federal Reserve, Trillions and counting | | **Recognizability** | Each coin is verifiable to it's genesis on the timechain | Each molecule of gold has distinct physical verifiable properties | If the Federal reserve says it is a valid note, it is (Unless you are an enemy of the United States) | | **Durablility** | Each "Bitcoin" is information stored on a globally distributed network | Doesn't Rust and as far as can be measured Au197 is stable forever | Can be destroyed by any means that effect fabric and centralized databases | | **Portability** | Available wherever data can be store- Anywhere | Can be moved at 9.81 Newtons per Kilogram- Methods may vary | Can be moved physically with fabric notes- Digitally with express permission from a US accredited banking institution | | **Divisibility** | Currently can be divided into 100 million parts called Sats (can be further subdivided by adding decimal places) | Can be divided to the Atomic level (Though not practical) | Can be divided (without dilution) by adding new denominative bills or coinage<br />Can be divided (with dilution) by printing new bills or coinage | | | **Bitcoin** | **Gold** | **Dollars** | You may think with all of the great functionality of Bitcoin that the phrase "One of these things is not like the other" refers to BTC. No, I was referring to the Dollar. It is the only one on the list that was a currency that was substituted as some kind of faux money. It asserts itself, or rather the Federal Reserve asserts it, as money, de facto. **Dollars are NOT money.** Dollars are (allegedly) a currency. If money is a specific technology, currency is the financial infrastructure that allows that technology to reach and be used by the most number of people possible. This requires a firm tether between the asset being used as money and the currency used as a claim to that money. For example: If I hand you a chicken, you have a chicken. But, if I hand you a coupon that is redeemable for a chicken, you do not have a chicken. You have a claim to a chicken that is only as good as the party making that claim. Bringing it back to money again, dollars (Prior to 1971) were redeemable for gold at a rate of $35 per ounce. This is that strong tether that pegged dollars to gold and physical reality itself. Without a proof of work, mining, . Until… **WTF Happened in 1971?** The Nixon shock happened. Briefly, The U.S. took in Europe’s gold in the 1940’s to keep it out of Hitler’s hands. The U.S. made an agreement to peg the dollar to Europe’s gold. The U.S. over printed dollars in relation to the gold holdings. Around 1971 France (among others) called the U.S. out for devaluing the dollar and thus European currencies. So, Nixon “Temporarily” suspended the convertibility of dollars to gold. Now, here we all are like Wile E. Coyote having run off of the golden cliff clutching our dollars in our arms and 54 years later we still haven’t looked down to see the truth. **Dollars Aren’t Backed by Anything** This is why no country in the world today has a money standard. Seemingly they all forgot the number one rule of issuing currency, it must be backed by something. Now, you may hear dollar proponents say “The U.S. dollar is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States!” Another way of saying that is, “We said it is worth something, so it is!” This fiat (by decree) mentality creates a plethora of perverse incentives. The ever growing supply disallows users of the Dollar to save without inccuring the penalties of inflation. **Just a Few Examples of How You're Being Crushed** Because your dollar loses value: - It pushes people to spend them on assets that seem to appreciate (as the dollar debases) but are truly staying stagnant. - It pushes people to gamble on securities hoping the perceived value is enough to beat the inflationary curve. - It pushes people away from saving for their future and the future of their families. - It creates insane credit incentives so that people borrow way more than they can afford today knowing that dollars will be cheaper in the future. (Effectively a short position) - It pushes people to spend less and less time making and maintaining their families as it becomes more expensive to keep a similar lifestyle to which it was founded. These are just a few of the terrible consequences of not knowing that trading a currency with no monetary backing has on a society. Most may blame this soley on the ability to print currency by a central bank but, that is not the only factor. If the fed printed dollars against gold, people would simply take the best rate they could get and remonetize themselves with the gold. But because there is no monetary escape hatch guaranteed by the issuance of dollars, I.E. no one has to take your dollars in exchange for their Bitcoin or gold, you are left at the mercy of the market. **One Day, People Will Stop Accepting Your Dollars** Those lementing the high price of Bitcoin might want to thank their lucky stars that Bitcoin still has a rational number next to the "BTC 1=$?" sign. One day you will have to exchange something of actual value to the spender (no longer a seller). Your product, good or service, will be the only thing that anyone might be willing to part with their Bitcoin over. That is what makes a money, the most salable non-consumable good, whose only funtion is to back a financial structure that facilitates trade. **Bitcoin is Capital** Capital is a broad term that can describe anything that confers value or benefit to its owners, such as a factory and its machinery, or the financial assets of a business or an individual. Bitcoin being the latter creates the financial structures from which you build upon. You use capital to hold, transfer, and grow value. You do not do this with cash. Cash is a depreciating asset when you don't use it to gain goods or services for yourself or your business. This misconception around the equivalance between cash and money (financial capital) is what tricks people into believing Dollars are money. And what's worse is that even some of our greatest heroes have done this. **Slay Your Heroes, Within Reason** Unfortunately due to a mixing of verbiage that have **very distinct** differences, the title: "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" is technically inaccurate. Bitcoin doesn't fit the definition of **cash**, which is a liquid asset that can be easily converted into its equivalent value. In short, Satoshi misspoke. In reality, owning Bitcoin UTXOs (with private keys) means you already possess the asset, not just a claim to it. When you spend Bitcoin, the recipient receives the actual asset, not a promise of it. When you receive Bitcoin, you have final settlement on that transaction. Fundamentally Bitcoin is not cash, electronic or otherwise. # Bitcoin is Money.

@ fd208ee8:0fd927c1

# GitCitadel Development Operations We, at GitCitadel, have been updating, moving, and rearranging our servers, for quite some time. As a rather large, complex, sprawling project, we have the infrastructure setup to match, so we've decided to give you all a quick run-down of what we are doing behind-the-scenes. ## Supplier Coordination  Our first task, this week, was figuring out who would host what where. We have four different locations, where our infra is stored and managed, including two locations from our suppliers. We got that straightened out, quickly, and it's all slowly coming together and being connected and networked. Exciting to watch our DevOps landscape evolve and all of the knowledge-transfer that the interactions provide. ## OneDev Implementation  Our biggest internal infra project this week was the migration of all of our issues from Jira, build scripts from Jenkins, and repos from GitHub to a [self-hosted OneDev instance](https://onedev.gitcitadel.eu). In the future, all of our internal build, test, issue, patch/PR, etc. effort will take place there. We also have a separate repo there for communicating with external developers and suppliers. Our [team's GitHub projects](https://github.com/ShadowySupercode) will be demoted to mirrors and a place for external devs to PR to. Public issues and patches will continue to be managed over our self-hosted [GitWorkshop instance](nostr:naddr1qvzqqqrhnypzplfq3m5v3u5r0q9f255fdeyz8nyac6lagssx8zy4wugxjs8ajf7pqy88wumn8ghj7mn0wvhxcmmv9uqq5emfw33kjarpv3jkcs83wav). We're especially glad to finally escape the GitHub Gulag, and avoid being bled dry by Jira fees, without having to give up the important features that we've come to know and love. So, yay! ## Next Infrasteps ### Automated Testing Now, that we have everything tied up in one, neat, backed-up package, we can finally move on to the nitty-gritty and the dirty work. So, we're rolling up our sleeves and writing the Selenium smoke test for our [Alexandria client](https://next-alexandria.gitcitadel.eu). We'll be running that in Docker containers containing different "typical Nostr" images, such as Chrome browser with Nostr Connect signing extension, or Firefox browser with Nos2x-fox extension. Once we get the Nsec Bunker and Amber logins going, we'll add test cases and images for them, as well. (Yes, we can do Bunker. I hope you are in awe at our powers). We are also designing an automated infrastructure test, that will simply rattle through all the various internal and external websites and relays, to make sure that everything is still online and responsive. After that, a Gherkin-based [Behave feature test](https://behave.readthedocs.io/en/latest/) for Alexandria is planned, so that we can prevent regression of completed functionality, from one release to the next. The Gherkin scenarios are written and attached to our stories before development begins (we use acceptance tests as requirements), a manual test-execution is then completed, in order to set the story to *Done*. These completed scenarios will be automated, following each release, with the resulting script linked to from the origin story.  ### Automated Builds As the crowning glory of every DevOps tool chain stands the build automation. This is where everything gets tied together, straightened out, configured, tested, measured, and -- if everything passes the quality gates -- released. I don't have to tell you how much time developers spend staring at the build process display, praying that it all goes through and they can celebrate a Green Wave.  We are currently designing the various builds, but the ones we have defined for the Alexandria client will be a continuous delivery pipeline, like so:  This will make it easier for us to work and collaborate asynchronously and without unnecessary delays. ### Expanding the Status Page  And, finally, we get to the point of all of this busyness: reporting. We are going to have beautiful reports, and we are going to post them online, on our [status page](https://status.gitcitadel.com). We will use bots, to inform Nostriches of the current status of our systems, so go ahead and follow our [GitCitadel DevOps npub](nostr:npub16p0fdr2xccfs07hykx92t0cascac69xjuwaq38kjqy3aawt5hx8s82feyj), to make sure you don't miss out on the IT action. ## Building on stone All in all, we're really happy with the way things are humming along, now, and the steady increase in our productivity, as all the foundational work we've put in starts to pay off. It's getting easier and easier to add new team members, repos, or features/fixes, so we should be able to scale up and out from here. Our GitCitadel is built on a firm foundation. Happy building!

@ fd208ee8:0fd927c1

## Planning Alexandria People keep asking what features nostr:npub1s3ht77dq4zqnya8vjun5jp3p44pr794ru36d0ltxu65chljw8xjqd975wz has planned for #Alexandria, but they're not set in stone because we're an agile project. What we do have, is lots of tickets on our Kanban boards and a naming scheme, where we use a famous person's last name, to signify the release goals.  ### Gutenberg v 0.1.0 (after the inventor of the printing press) will contain the features needed to read and write [NIP-62 Curated Publications](https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/pull/1600), as well as encompassing the complex infrastructure, architecture, documentation, and personnel we require to make this all run smoothly and look easy.  ### Euler v 0.2.0 (after a mathematician credited with establishing graph theory) will contain the features for deep-searching, visually exploring, and smartly navigating the data set, wiki page display, annotating and citing the publications, exporting to other formats (like PDF, ePUB, and LaTeX), and commenting/reviewing. To help with the heavy lifting, we will be swapping out the core with our own Nostr SDK called "Aedile".  ### Defoe v 0.3.0 (after an author who perfected the novel format) will be all about our favorite writers. We will be focusing upon profile data, payment systems, book clubs and communities, and stylesheets. That is everything we have planned, for the v1.0 edition, and we consider that version to be a true product. As for after that, a teaser... 

@ e034d654:ca919814

I stumbled into nostr end of March 2023. At that point already fully thrown into the hows, whys and whats of Bitcoin, never really interested in social apps, just recently playing around with Lightning, the only experience of which at the time was Muun (😬) and stacker.news custodial wallet. Fairly inexperienced with technicals other than rough understandings of concepts. A crappy laptop node with a dangling SSD via USB, constantly having to resync to current blockheights whenever I was ready to make an on chain transaction to cold storage. My great success after over two years of delay, and a couple failed attempts. Something about the breadth of information for nitty gritty specifics, the clash with all the things that I found interesting about Bitcoin, with others equally as focused, kept me interested in Nostr. Plus the lighthearted shit posting to break up plumbing the depths of knowledge appealed to me. Cut to now. Through the jurisdictional removals and even deaths of LN wallet projects, using mobile LSPs, finding use cases with the numerous cashu implementations, moderate comfortability with NWC strings of various permissions, budgets for seemingly endless apps of Nostr clients, swapping relays, isolated wallets with Alby go for my wife and cousin (I told them both not to put much on there as I'm sure failure is imminent) Alby Hub and Zeus, now fully backended by my own persistently online lightning node. All of it adding to the fluidity of my movement around the protocol. Nimble. Gradual progress. Reading through notes and guides posted on Nostr learning little bits, circling back eventually, if even at a time it wasn't clicking for me. Either way. Glad i've stuck to it even if I still barely know what it is I'm doing.

@ fd208ee8:0fd927c1

I am so tired of people trying to waste my time with Nostrized imitations of stuff that already exists. Instagram, but make it Nostr. Twitter, but make it Nostr. GitHub, but make it Nostr. Facebook, but make it Nostr. Wordpress, but make it Nostr. GoodReads, but make it Nostr. TikTok, but make it Nostr. That stuff already exists, and it wasn't that great the first time around, either. Build something better than that stuff, that can only be brought into existence because of Nostr. Build something that does something completely and awesomely new. Knock my socks off, bro. Cuz, ain't nobody got time for that.

@ 6871d8df:4a9396c1

## 2024 Prediction Reflections ### Politics #### **Democrats & 2024 Election** - _“Democrats’ attempt to stifle democracy will likely put Trump in the White House. If not, some real sketchy stuff would need to happen to keep him out.”_ This prediction was *exactly right*. The assassination attempt on Trump seemed to be the final blow for the Democrats. Despite a heavy push my legacy media, Trump won handily. The Democrats switched to Kamala Harris after Biden showed signs of incapacity, most notably in the first debate against Trump. My prediction for the election also turned out to be [exactly right](https://cwilbzz.com/election-prediction-my-vote/), which, thank you [Robert Barnes and Richard Baris](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHe3u4zZfY7K8PqHcVM0iLjHKV9Sr7iDy). #### **Evidence of Institutional Ideological Capture** - _“People will continue to wake up to ideologically captured institutions, and DEI will be the main loser.”_ Trump’s resounding election victory underscores that the public is increasingly aware of (and rejecting) such institutional capture. Of note, Boeing comes to mind as an institution that had a tough time in 2024, in large part to DEI. Nothing seemed to function correctly. The biggest story being how they [stranded people in space](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremybogaisky/2023/01/17/boeing-spacex-nasa-artemis/) ### Media & Public Opinion #### **Rise of Independent & Alternative Media** - _“Independent and alternative media will continue to grow as people’s trust in legacy media declines.”_ Twitter (X), under Elon Musk, shattered mainstream media’s influence far more than expected. As Elon has said, “You are the media now.” Alternative sources are king. - *Notable Example:* Kamala Harris’s decision _not_ to appear on the Joe Rogan podcast contrasted with Trump’s appearance, further highlighting the power shift to alternative media. ### Markets & IPOs #### **Interest Rates & Public Markets** - _“As interest rates come down, I expect public markets and IPOs to heat up.”_ This _did not_ play out. Companies that were expected to go public in 2024 remain private in 2025. The reasons are varied, but there is confidence that 2025 might see changes. ### Technology & AI #### **LLMs & AI Adoption** - _“AI and LLMs will continue to move at a rapid rate, increasing productivity. Tools like Bard will become more mainstream.”_ AI did *take off*. Usage among nontechnical users increased, and it’s no longer uncommon for people to default to AI-driven tools rather than Google search. #### **Decentralized AI** - _“I hope to see a rise in decentralized AI to counter big-player LLMs.”_ We didn’t see explicit ‘decentralized AI’ breakthroughs, but more players entered the AI market. ChatGPT still dominates, with Elon’s ‘Grok’ making moves. Google, Meta, and Microsoft remain active but slightly behind in usage. ### Bitcoin & Digital Assets #### **Institutional Adoption of Bitcoin** - _“2024 will bring more institutions to Bitcoin. Possibly another large company or nation-state. The ETF should help, likely pushing BTC to a new all-time high.”_ No *large* public company or nation-state placed a bet, but smaller public companies did. Michael Saylor presented to Microsoft’s Board, which was the closest instance to a major move. - *Price Movement:* Bitcoin _did_ hit a new all-time high, rising to as much as $108k in 2024. #### **Lightning Network** - _“Lightning will improve but remain primarily used for acquiring Bitcoin, not everyday payments.”_ Still true. Lightning usage remains *tiny* relative to broader Bitcoin adoption. #### **Nostr Adoption** - _“Nostr will grow, and we’ll see new companies leverage this network beyond just social media.”_ Growth continues, but Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover slowed adoption. Nostr will remain niche until a major catalyst occurs (e.g., a big player joins or forced usage due to censorship). #### **Stablecoin-Specific Regulations** - _“Expect stablecoin regulations in 2024 that’ll be favorable to them.”_ This didn’t happen, largely due to the administration’s hostility. Expect potential change in 2025. #### Miscellaneous 2024 Reflections - **Return to Sanity** - 2024 felt like sanity prevailed, largely due to the Democrats’ collapse behind Biden and Harris and Elon’s Twitter dominance. - **Operation Chokepoint 2.0** - Received a lot of attention, and I’m thankful it did because my experience at Strike was radicalizing and extreme. - **Bryan Johnson & Anti-Aging** - He burst onto the scene with his obsession over biomarkers. I see it as misguided—chasing markers in isolation doesn’t automatically yield a healthy system. - **Apple’s Rough Year** - Without a visionary leader, Apple appears to be scraping by on existing products rather than innovating. - **Google Under Fire** - Google is in a tough fight with the government, just as it seems they’re on their heels with AI competition. --- ## 2025 Predictions 1. **Bitcoin’s Performance** Bitcoin will have a good year, but not better than 2024. To beat 2024, it must close above 206k on December 31, 2025. I’ll take the under on that. - I am not ruling out it to be over that at some point in 2025. 2. **Twitter’s Success Continues to Stunt nostr** - Nostr adoption will stay slow due to Elon’s dominant influence with X (Twitter). - As long as it remains a beacon of free speech, I doubt we see an exodus. - Rumble integrating Tether *might* help if they allow Nostr-like features (zaps), but that seems unlikely. 3. **Apple** - Apple will continue its rent-seeking behavior and put out underwhelming products. 4. **Google’s Quantum & AI** - Recent buzz about Google’s quantum chip and AI improvements won’t pan out as a big deal. - Google will continue to trail OpenAI and xAI in practical LLM usage. 5. **Elon, Vivek & DOGE** - I expect them to *deliver* more than critics think. They’ll expose bloat and inefficiencies in ways that will shake up norms. I greatly welcome this. I wouldn’t bet against them. 6. **Mainstream Media Reckoning** - In Trump’s second term, mainstream news outlets will face a real reckoning, as I can’t see how their bias can continue. - They’ll have to reduce their bias or risk bankruptcy. - Alternative media’s growth trend continues, especially as Twitter keeps exposing mainstream outlets’ weaknesses. 7. **RFK Delivers** - We will see big changes in the health space due to RFK at HHS. These are changes that I am very excited to see. 8. **Foreign Policy** - With the transition to Trump, I expect some foreign policy wins that will buck the establishment but will deliver wins that are not thought possible by the “experts.” --- ### Closing Note - **Overall 2024**: It was a year of major political upheaval, vindication for Bitcoin, and continued AI advances. - **Outlook for 2025**: Bitcoin remains strong, AI competition heats up, and media institutions face existential challenges. I’m optimistic for continued decentralization and a more level playing field across tech, finance, and politics. I think the start of Trump’s second term will be very strong for the market, health, and culture. Accelerate.

@ f7922a0a:82c34788

Now that the 3rd Satellite Skirmish is complete I wanted to highlight some of the cool features on embrace.satskirmish.com This is what the cutting edge of podcasting 2.0 looks like imo. Live video in an app that allows you to send sats to the artists in real time. On the left hand side we have a Boost score borad that displays the total amount of sats that have come in during the show, live Boosts/Booastagrams as they come in, total amount of sats from each person Boosting and total amount sent from each app. The middle is ovisaly the video of the band playing but with some graphics around it and Boost alerts that show up on the screen in the form of snow flakes for this one. The righthand side is an IRC chat window that connects to an IRC server that the No Agenda community has used for 18+ years thanks to zoidzero++.  The bottom of the page is where things get cool. When you click the Boost the Crew button in the center you can send a Boost that gets split between everyone helping produce the show (hightlighted in yellow).   Each band also has their own Boost button so you can Boost them while they are playing or anytime you visit the page.  

@ dd664d5e:5633d319

# Instructions 1. Place 2 medium-sized, boiled potatoes and a handful of sliced leeks in a pot.  2. Fill the pot with water or vegetable broth, to cover the potatoes twice over. 3. Add a splash of white wine, if you like, and some bouillon powder, if you went with water instead of broth.  4. Bring the soup to a boil and then simmer for 15 minutes. 5. Puree the soup, in the pot, with a hand mixer. It shouldn't be completely smooth, when you're done, but rather have small bits and pieces of the veggies floating around.  6. Bring the soup to a boil, again, and stir in one container (200-250 mL) of heavy cream. 7. Thicken the soup, as needed, and then simmer for 5 more minutes. 8. Garnish with croutons and veggies (here I used sliced green onions and radishes) and serve.  Guten Appetit!

@ 7ed7d5c3:6927e200

Can't decide if the terrible book you just read is a 1 or 1.5 star book? Look no further than this chart. Was it Shit or just Bad? Was that movie you watched Very Good or just Decent? How many things out there are really Life Changing? Finally, a rating scale for humans. Use it for anything in your life that needs a rating out of 5 stars. Rating / Description 0.5 – The worst 1.0 – Shit 1.5 – Bad 2.0 – Eh 2.5 – Entertaining, but not great 3.0 – Neutral 3.5 – Alright 4.0 – Decent 4.5 – Very good 5.0 – Life Changing P.S. Do not use it to rate your wife's cooking. The author is not liable for any damages.

@ dd664d5e:5633d319

## Hodling Bitcoin does not make you a capitalist I've noticed that Bitcoin-mindedness seems to lead some people to communistic thinking because it's a hard-limited form of capital. Marx, like most Bitcoiners, heavily discounted the possibility of economic growth or transformation changing the economy enough to undermine some minority's control of some form of capital. What few today understand, is that many of the Dirty Capitalists of Marx's era actually agreed with him; they were just disdainful of labor and worried that the workers finding out that Marxism is correct about the nature of capitalism would cause unrest. They were the original HFSP crowd. This was the basic idea, that Marx had, and that many Bitcoiners would agree with: > Capital is strictly limited and the people that control it can keep labor from attaining any, except when their labor is necessary. And, as we know, automation will make human labor increasingly unnecessary. ## The math doesn't check out  That underlies all of the calculations of "Well, if I just grab this Bitcoin wallet and hodl for twenty years, then it will grow in value to equal half of everything in existence and then I can just buy up half the planet and rule over everyone like a god." This is economic nonsense because it assumes that: 1) the value of all things remains static over time, 2) purchasing something with money gives you ownership of it, 3) people will always use that specific money (or any money, at all!) for all transactions, 4) there is no such thing as opportunity cost, 5) people will always value money more than any other thing, and therefore be willing to always trade it for anything else, 6) humans are passive, defenseless, and easy to rule over, 7) someone who is preoccupied with hodling an asset steadily and sharply rising in price would ever be emotionally ready to part with it. ## All monies can die. People use money for everything because it is easy, fast and cheap. If money becomes too precious or scarce, they will simply switch to using other things (as we saw with gold). Humans replace tools that aren't working well, with those that work better, and money is just another tool. Bitcoin is more divisible than gold, but that won't matter, if enough of it is held by too few. This is why there's a natural cap on the price of a money and why human productivity _in the here and now_ is not irrelevant or in vain.

@ dd664d5e:5633d319

_Ingredients_ * 1 kg of pork roast with rind, such as shoulder or a lean belly * 1 bottle of beer, light or dark * chopped German-style mirepoix (best combination, for this recipe, includes celery root, carrot, red onion, and leeks) * salt, pepper, nutmeg * 1 diced garlic clove _Directions_ 1. Spread the vegetables on the bottom of the roasting pan. 2. Pour half the beer over the roast. (Drink the other half.) 3. Season the meat, to taste. 4. Roast the meat at 180 °C, until done (depends upon the weight of the roast). 5. Remove the meat from the oven, and wrap in aluminum foil. 6. Pour 2-3 cups of water into the roasting pan. 7. Pour/scrape everything from the pan into a sieve over a sauce pot. 8. Press the vegetables against the sieve, with the back of a spoon, to ensure that you get all that good dripping flavor into the sauce. 9. Defat the sauce with a grease separator, then pour it back into the pot. 10. Thicken the sauce, slightly (it should remain slightly watery, and not turn into a gravy), according to your usual method. 11. Open the foil and slice the roast. 12. Serve with the sauce.        

@ a42048d7:26886c32

OP_CAT, Coffee, and keeping an open mind to Bitcoin soft forks by an 80 IQ BTC Maxi Pleb TLDR: CAT is both low risk and low appeal to the broader non-dev BTC community. I don’t care and you shouldn’t either. If I am an 80 IQ HODL pleb or a company that caters to that group, can you please give me 2-4 fifth grade level coherent english sentences that explain why I should support CAT? I’m still waiting… CTV or LNHANCE on the other hand have broad appeal. Five years ago in the office we got a fancy $6,000 coffee maker. It was hooked up to wifi, showed TV on a giant screen, and could make every type of coffee/milkshake you could think of. I was captivated… for about 1 day. After trying a few times I realized almost all the drinks it made were of low quality. The wifi connection actually ended up just being annoying. Half the time I wanted a coffee, only had a 5 minute break, and the machine displayed some inscrutable error. I went back to the proverbial grind un-caffeinated and frustrated wishing we had the old reliable boring coffee maker back. I also found myself only coming back to the 2 drinks I really cared about, espresso and maybe an occasional cappuccino. It was “cool” that new machine could make over 60 different drinks, but when I sat back and thought about it all I really needed or wanted were a few key options that I used constantly. Especially as those extra bells and whistles seemed to be the usual suspect in the coffee machine constantly breaking. I would’ve loved them upgrading from burnt starbucks coffee beans to a local specialty roaster, that would’ve greatly enhanced my daily coffee. Echoing this realization, my coffee setup at home became a simple machine that could only make espresso and a hand crank coffee bean grinder. Still have them years later and they work great. They’re robust and fit exactly what I wanted with no nonsense that created more headache than everyday value. As you probably suspected, this is a loose comparison to OP_CAT. I’ve listened to podcast after podcast, read blog after blog, and sat through every CAT pitch I could find. I genuinely tried to approach with an open mind. However, ultimately what every pro OP_CAT argument boils down to is that there is no simple left curve elevator pitch a pleb will understand or care about. “But we can get this really cool ZK Rollup and have infinite DEFI bridging to altcoin chains! Look we sort of did it on this other altcoin chain.” And they did, they aren’t lying. They have live software on a shitcoin chain like ETH or SOL that does some modest volume. But the story quickly falls apart in the face of a few basic left curve questions: “Why should I, as an 80 IQ left curve BTC maxi give a shit?” “Does this enhance my everyday experience holding and using BTC?” “Why do you have a non-BTC token for your rollup/sidechain/glorified multisig that is totally centralized?” “Why is there only a hard to understand often ill-defined *path* to de-centralization? Why isn’t it just already decentralized?” “What is a clear use case that the typical non-technical everyday BTC holder can understand and rally behind?” “Why should I care about bridging to ETH, SOL, or whatever shitcoin chain? I only want BTC and don’t want to participate in all that shitcoin bullshit. Bitcoin is a store of value and money to me and it doesn’t help with those use cases in a clear direct way. It sounds like it maybe, kinda, sorta does help with a lot of caveats, ifs, and steps that I struggle to understand.” Sorry yeah I know, that one got a little personal. I’ll try to do better going forward guys. ZK proofs or other Pro-CAT arguments, are undoubtedly cool and do factually enable potential cool new stuff. It just happens to all be stuff that sounds complex, esoteric, and unappealing to an 80 IQ HODL pleb - let alone a miner, ETF investor, or exchange exec. I don’t mean to say ZK or other tech has no potential and that we won’t eventually move there, but just to say that it’s not in the cards as currently dealt. I really went out trying to keep an open mind and steelman the case for CAT. I came back firmly believing: #1 Support is deep in the developer community, but **nonexistent** everywhere else. I have yet to find a single person that supports CAT who is not a dev or working at or sponsored by a company that stands to directly profit from something CAT enables. Which is fine, but I reserve the right to be skeptical of your direct incentive. I acknowledge rough consensus is very hard to judge, and am open to changing my mind on this over time but feel this is a currently accurate assessment. #2 To get a soft fork you need rough consensus. Most people in that potential consensus are not highly technical developers. They care mostly or exclusively about BTC’s store of value use case. No one has yet articulated a clear compelling store of value enhancing use case that they can understand and care about. Without pull demand from potential users and paying customers, CAT will inevitably stall. #3 Lots of factually inaccurate FUD has been thrown at CAT. People saw the Taproot Wizards or shitcoiners pushing CAT, and immediately dismiss CAT as an evil psyop without any real consideration for its technical merits. Frankly most people just hate Udi and say “Fuck CAT” based solely on that. Maybe not fair, but true. #4 CAT is low risk, and it is not a catastrophe waiting to happen. Anything bad it potentially enables is enabled in such an inefficient and/or use hostile way that it is highly unlikely to pose any issues to Bitcoin. CAT’s technical risk is low and this is consistently proven by other chains enabling CAT and having no issues with it, such as Liquid. #5 Lots of people who have no idea wtf they are talking about falsely claim CAT is the apocalypse without any ability whatsoever to explain why. Imho you are no better than Udi and the shitcoiners if you are willing to lie about CAT just because you dislike them. We as the BTC community need the ability to have a rational discussion on technical merits, and not to devolve into a cult of personality based political battle. The question should be, “Is CAT good or bad and why?” and not “I just hate Udi, therefore its a no from me dog.” Summarizing CAT using TradFi language: those pushing CAT have technology in search of a problem and no clear product market fit. They are pushing their technology to an apathetic audience. Pushers of CAT are not pulled forward by customer demand. In the tech world these are some of the quintessential red flags that every good investor knows mean you need to sit this one out. CTV or LNHANCE on the other hand are soft fork proposals that have clear use cases you can quickly explain to a broad swathe of the Bitcoin ecosystem: “Hey HOLD pleb, worried about losing your coins? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a simple vault that reduces the chances your coins are lost or stolen? Let’s make self custody and BTC’s store of value use case strictly better, specifically without enabling any shitcoin-ery.” “Hey Blackrock, Van Eck, ARK, Franklin Templeton, and every ETF investor - it would really suck if Coinbase lost all your Bitcoin and that ETF went to zero, right? What it we could create vaults to make that Bitcoin more secure?” “Like Lightning but find it hard to use self-custodially? Let’s make Lightning better, easier, and more scalable with fewer onchain transactions and lower fees.” “Tried or seen the ARK demos yet? They have real working code even without covenants. With covenants we get big ARK volumes and scaling while also making it easier.” Signing off: See the difference? I, an 80 IQ pleb, can steelman multiple use cases for CTV/LNHANCE that have broad appeal. I have yet to see any such case for CAT, and until then I don’t think it’ll go anywhere. *Pro-CAT Sources I’ve digested and would encourage others to consider: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Covenants_support https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no_Nj-MX53w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yp4eYK9S6M Pro-CTV/LNHANCE sources to consider which have CLEAR use cases with widespead appeal: https://github.com/jamesob/simple-ctv-vault https://github.com/stutxo/op_ctv_payment_pool https://lnhance.org/ https://bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/how-ctv-can-help-scale-bitcoin

@ a4a6b584:1e05b95b

## The Four-Layer Framework ### Layer 1: Zoom Out  Start by looking at the big picture. What’s the subject about, and why does it matter? Focus on the overarching ideas and how they fit together. Think of this as the 30,000-foot view—it’s about understanding the "why" and "how" before diving into the "what." **Example**: If you’re learning programming, start by understanding that it’s about giving logical instructions to computers to solve problems. - **Tip**: Keep it simple. Summarize the subject in one or two sentences and avoid getting bogged down in specifics at this stage. _Once you have the big picture in mind, it’s time to start breaking it down._ --- ### Layer 2: Categorize and Connect  Now it’s time to break the subject into categories—like creating branches on a tree. This helps your brain organize information logically and see connections between ideas. **Example**: Studying biology? Group concepts into categories like cells, genetics, and ecosystems. - **Tip**: Use headings or labels to group similar ideas. Jot these down in a list or simple diagram to keep track. _With your categories in place, you’re ready to dive into the details that bring them to life._ --- ### Layer 3: Master the Details  Once you’ve mapped out the main categories, you’re ready to dive deeper. This is where you learn the nuts and bolts—like formulas, specific techniques, or key terminology. These details make the subject practical and actionable. **Example**: In programming, this might mean learning the syntax for loops, conditionals, or functions in your chosen language. - **Tip**: Focus on details that clarify the categories from Layer 2. Skip anything that doesn’t add to your understanding. _Now that you’ve mastered the essentials, you can expand your knowledge to include extra material._ --- ### Layer 4: Expand Your Horizons  Finally, move on to the extra material—less critical facts, trivia, or edge cases. While these aren’t essential to mastering the subject, they can be useful in specialized discussions or exams. **Example**: Learn about rare programming quirks or historical trivia about a language’s development. - **Tip**: Spend minimal time here unless it’s necessary for your goals. It’s okay to skim if you’re short on time. --- ## Pro Tips for Better Learning ### 1. Use Active Recall and Spaced Repetition Test yourself without looking at notes. Review what you’ve learned at increasing intervals—like after a day, a week, and a month. This strengthens memory by forcing your brain to actively retrieve information. ### 2. Map It Out Create visual aids like [diagrams or concept maps](https://excalidraw.com/) to clarify relationships between ideas. These are particularly helpful for organizing categories in Layer 2. ### 3. Teach What You Learn Explain the subject to someone else as if they’re hearing it for the first time. Teaching **exposes any gaps** in your understanding and **helps reinforce** the material. ### 4. Engage with LLMs and Discuss Concepts Take advantage of tools like ChatGPT or similar large language models to **explore your topic** in greater depth. Use these tools to: - Ask specific questions to clarify confusing points. - Engage in discussions to simulate real-world applications of the subject. - Generate examples or analogies that deepen your understanding. **Tip**: Use LLMs as a study partner, but don’t rely solely on them. Combine these insights with your own critical thinking to develop a well-rounded perspective. --- ## Get Started Ready to try the Four-Layer Method? Take 15 minutes today to map out the big picture of a topic you’re curious about—what’s it all about, and why does it matter? By building your understanding step by step, you’ll master the subject with less stress and more confidence.

@ 79998141:0f8f1901

Happy new year, Anon. Thanks for tuning in to whatever this long form post will be. I hope to make these more regular, like journal entries as we travel through "real life" and the Nostrverse together. If I'm making time for this reflective writing, then things are going as planned. 2024 was a wildly transformative year for me for many reasons... there's no way I can possibly fit all of them here. They're not all related to Bitcoin and Nostr- I've got a beautiful life outside of all that which has its own independent arc. My wife and I celebrated 7 years of marriage together, stronger than ever (don't believe that "itch" bullshit). We let go of some negative relationships and embraced some positive ones. We cut some bad habits, and we made some good habits. We worked, we traveled, we saw family, and we partied. But damn, these two technologies have become a huge part of my life. God willing, this trend will continue until they've both eclipsed my professional capacity through our startup, Conduit BTC. This was the year I was truly orange pilled. Until late 2023, I had traded (quite profitably) Bitcoin, "crypto", stocks, options, prediction markets and whatever else I could get my hands on that felt undervalued. I did this all in my spare time, grinding out a little financial freedom while I hustled at my fiat ventures to support my little family. I wasn't a true believer- just an opportunist with a knack for spotting where and when a crowd might flock to next. That was right up until I ran face first into Lyn Alden's book "Broken Money". Something about Lyn's engineer/macro-finance inspired prose clicked with me, lock and key. Total one way function. By the end of the book my laser eyes had burned a hole in my bedroom ceiling. I was all in- and acted accordingly both with my capital and my attention. It wasn't long before I discovered Nostr and dove in here too, falling deep into my current orange and purple polyamorous love affair. > "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles." Despite the passion, through studying Bitcoin's criticisms (from the likes of Mike Green and Nassim Taleb) I found a hole in the utopian plot: none of this works without Bitcoin actually being used as money. Worldwide transactions must skyrocket demand for blockspace to keep the network secure/stable for the long term. Besides, if everyday folks aren't using Bitcoin as money then we haven't done shit to make the world a better place. In that world, we've only replaced old masters with new ones. Fuck that. Whatever I did in this space needed to increase the usage of Bitcoin as money. Simple. This was bigger than passion, this was purpose. I knew that come hell or high water I would dedicate myself to this mission. Lucky for me I found a partner and best friend in @aceaspades to go on this adventure with. I'm infinitely grateful for him. He's an incredible man who also happens to be an insanely creative and talented software developer. We'd tried for years to find the right project to focus on together, experimenting with all kinds of new techy ideas as they came across our field. Nothing had ever captured our attention like this. This was different. By March of 2024 we had formed a company and gotten to work iterating on how we could leverage these beautiful protocols and open-source tech to create something that served our mission. This is @ConduitBTC. I've done well in my fiat career executing plans downstream of someone else's creative vision. I've learned the ins and outs of an established ecosystem and found ways to profit from it. I take plans developed by others, compete to win contracts to build them, and execute on them in a cashflow-positive way. I'm bringing this no bullshit blue collar skillset with me to the Nostrverse whether they like it or not. The adventure we're embarking on now is totally different though. We're charting a new course - totally creative, highly intuitive and extremely speculative towards a future that doesn't exist yet. There are few established norms. The potential is vast but unknown. We're diving into a strange quest to sell a map to an imaginary place and to simultaneously architect its creation (alongside all the amazing builders here doing the same thing). This is insanely exciting to me. We're barely getting started but a lot has been invested under the surface which will show itself in 2025. We'll be sharing updates in a proper post on @ConduitBTC soon. As for my personal 2025 resolutions, here they are: - zero alcohol for the entire year (did this in 2019 and had a great year, it's time for a rerun) - more focused presence in the moment: especially with my wife - more self care and prioritized mental/physical health - this includes daily: naps, prayer, self hypnosis or meditation, sweat, and stretching/massaging (overworked in 2024 with a fiat 9-5, a board/advisor role in a fiat business I have equity in, and my newfound passion here. Two serious burn out episodes experienced this year - zero is the only acceptable number of burnouts for long term health and success.) - related to the above: get Conduit some mission-aligned funding partners and leave my fiat 9-5. Grow the Conduit team (have put in a serious amount of my personal capital already to get this going, which will show fruit in the new year... but I am not an island) - more authentic and thoughtful posts on Nostr, with a solid amount of shitposting and organic home grown memes to balance it out... more zaps, more geniune connections and interactions with the curious forward thinking people on here - more IRL Nostr/Bitcoin events - more laughter, more jokes Enough for now. Cheers to you and yours Anon, may 2025 bring you the magic you've been dreaming of.

@ dd664d5e:5633d319

## The paparazzi are we  One of the things that bothers me about social media, in general, is that it gives celebrities an air of approachability, that they don't actually offer. Theoretically, a celebrity could respond to any one of the dozens or even hundreds of people asking them questions or lodging complaints or singing their praises, but they usually only respond very selectively and leave everyone else just sitting there, as a living monument to the ReplyGuy. And, as a wise man once said, ReplyGuy is a hoe.  ## Death of a ReplyGuy This is usually because of time and energy restrictions, but also due to distaste, disdain, or indifference. Regardless of motivation, it is simply the nature of things, when a larger number of people are clamboring for the attention of some particular person. > Ooh, ooh! Can I have the next question?! > Would you please address my bug? > May I have a microsecond of your time?  Social media (and I include GitHub in this category) ups this game considerably, and potentially turns it all into a dangerous psychological torture, by making us all preoccupied with people who don't interact with us. The most irrational of groupies because we are forever making almost-contact with our stars. If we can see them talking to _one_ person, we're supposed to feel like they've spoken with _all_ of us. But they haven't. They spoke with someone else, and we were allowed to watch. No different than on television, except that we might be disappointed and eager to return the next day, to renew our futile attempt. The same intoxicating feeling that playing the lottery elicits. Everyone is a _potential_ winner, but there is only one jackpot. Come back next week. Buy another ticket. This next time, is your time. Promise. ## The view from the peanut gallery  It is all an illusion that there is no hierarchy, where there clearly is one. Celebrities of the past had, at least, the decency to remain slightly aloof. But they all want to be one of the Common Folk, now, just as every multi-millionaire aspires to see himself as fundamentally working-class.  All of celebrity social media is a stage, and most of us are merely spectators or commentators, to what is playing on it. This is why, if someone treats me like someone sitting in the peanut gallery, my instinct is to treat them like an actor. Because, in reality, that is what they are.

@ a42048d7:26886c32

DIY Multisig is complex and 100x more likely to fail than you think if you do it yourself: A few years ago as an experiment I put what was then $2,000 worth Bitcoin into a 2 of 3 DIY multisig with two close family members holding two keys on Tapsigners and myself holding the last key on a Coldcard. My thought was to try and preview how they might deal with self custodied multisig Bitcoin if I died prematurely. After over a year I revisited and asked them to try and do a transaction without me. Just send that single Utxo to a new address in the same wallet, no time limit. It could not possibly have failed harder and shook my belief in multisig. To summarize an extremely painful day, there was a literally 0% chance they would figure this out without help. If this had been for real all our BTC may have been lost forever. Maybe eventually a family friend could’ve helped, but I hadn’t thought of that and hadn’t recommended a trusted BTC knowledge/help source. I had preached self sovereignty and doing it alone and my family tried to respect that. I should’ve given them the contact info of local high integrity bitcoiners I trust implicitly. Regardless of setup type, I highly recommend having a trusted Bitcoiner and online resources your family knows they can turn to to trouble shoot. Bookmark the corresponding BTCSessions video to your BTC self custody setup. Multisig is complicated as hell and hard to understand. Complexity is the enemy when it comes to making sure your BTC isn’t lost and actually gets to your heirs. Many Bitcoiners use a similar setup to this one that failed so badly, and I’m telling you unless you’re married to or gave birth to a seriously hardcore maxi who is extremely tech savvy, the risk your Bitcoin is lost upon your death is unacceptably high. My family is extremely smart but when the pressure of now many thousands of dollars was on the line, the complexity of multisig torpedoed them. Don’t run to an ETF! There are answers: singlesig is awesome. From observing my family I’m confident they would’ve been okay in a singlesig setup. It was the process of signing on separate devices with separate signers, and moving a PSBT around that stymied them. If it had been singlesig they would’ve been okay as one signature on its own was accomplished. Do not besmirch singlesig, it’s incredibly powerful and incredibly resilient. Resilience and simplicity are vastly underrated! In my opinion multisig may increase your theoretical security against attacks that are far less likely to actually happen, e.g. an Oceans Eleven style hack/heist. More likely your heirs will be fighting panic, grief, and stress and forget something you taught them a few years back. If they face an attack it will most likely be social engineering/phishing. They are unlikely to face an elaborate heist that would make a fun movie. While I still maintain it was a mistake for Bitkey to not have a separate screen to verify addresses and other info, overall I believe it’s probably the best normie option for small BTC holdings(yes I do know Bitkey is actually multisig, but the UX is basically a single sig). This incident scared me into realizing the importance of simplicity. Complexity and confusion of heirs/family may be the most under-considered aspects of BTC security. If you’ve made a DIY multisig and your heirs can’t explain why they need all three public keys and what a descriptor is and where it’s backed up, you might as well just go have that boating accident now and get it over with. Once you get past small amounts of BTC, any reputable hardware wallet in singlesig is amazing security I would encourage folks to consider. In a singlesig setup - For $5 wrench attack concerns, just don’t have your hardware signer or steel backup at your home. You can just have a hot wallet on your phone with a small amount for spending. If you get a really big stack collaborative multisig is a potentially reasonable middle ground. Just be very thoughtful and brutally honest about your heirs and their BTC and general tech knowledge. Singlesig is still great and you don’t have to move past it, but I get that you also need to sleep at night. If you have truly life changing wealth and are just too uncomfortable with singlesig, maybe consider either 1) Anchorwatch to get the potential benefits of multisig security with the safety net of traditional insurance or 2) Liana wallet where you can use miniscript to effectively have a time locked singlesig spending path to a key held by a third party to help your family recover your funds if they can’t figure it out before that timelock hits, 3) Bitcoin Keeper with their automatic inheritance docs and mini script enabled inheritance key. The automatic inheritance docs are a best in class feature no one else has done yet. Unchained charges $200 for inheritance docs on top of your $250 annual subscription, which imho is beyond ridiculous. 4) Swan vault, I’ve generally soured on most traditional 2 of 3 collaborative multisig because I’ve always found holes either in security (Unchained signed a transaction in only a few hours and has no defined time delay, and still doesn’t support Segwit, seriously guys, wtf?), only support signers that are harder to use and thus tough for noobs, or the overall setups are just too complex. Swan Vault’s focus on keeping it as simple as possible really stands out against competitors that tack on unneeded confusion complexity. TLDR: For small amounts of BTC use Bitkey. For medium to large amounts use singlesig with a reputable hardware wallet and steel backup. For life changing wealth where you just can no longer stomach sinsglesig maybe also consider Anchorwatch, Bitcoin Keeper, Sean Vault, or Liana. Don’t forget your steel backups! Be safe out there! Do your own research and don’t take my word for it. Just use this as inspiration to consider an alternative point of view. If you’re a family of software engineers, feel free to tell me to go fuck myself.

@ a4a6b584:1e05b95b

### **Step 1: Secure Your Device** 1. **Install an Antivirus Program** Download and install a trusted antivirus program to scan files for potential malware. - For Linux: [Calm Antivirus](https://www.clamav.net/) - For Windows: [CalmWin Antivirus](https://clamwin.com/) 2. **Install a VPN** A VPN is essential for maintaining privacy and security. It will encrypt your internet traffic and hide your IP address. - Recommended: [Mullvad VPN](https://mullvad.net/), which accepts Bitcoin for anonymous payment. 3. **Install a Torrent Program** You’ll need a torrent client to download files. - Recommended: [Deluge](https://deluge-torrent.org/) 4. **Install the Tor Browser** To access The Pirate Bay or its proxies, you’ll need the privacy-focused [Tor Browser](https://www.torproject.org/). --- ### **Step 2: Prepare Your Setup** - Ensure your **VPN is running and connected**. - Open the **Tor Browser**. - Launch **Deluge** to have your torrent client ready. --- ### **Step 3: Using Tor Go to The Pirate Bay via Onion Service or Find a Trusted Pirate Bay Proxy** Accessing The Pirate Bay directly can be challenging due to restrictions in some regions. Proxy sites often fill the gap. - The Pirate Bay Onion service: http://piratebayo3klnzokct3wt5yyxb2vpebbuyjl7m623iaxmqhsd52coid.onion - Or find a trusted proxy: Use a site like [Pirateproxy](https://github.com/proxyninja/Pirateproxy) or a reliable Tor directory for updated lists. --- ### **Step 4: Search for Linux Distros** 1. On The Pirate Bay, navigate to the **"OtherOS"** category under the **Applications** section. 2. Enter your desired Linux distro in the search bar (e.g., "Ubuntu," "Arch Linux"). --- ### **Step 5: Select a Torrent** 1. **Filter the Results**: - Look for torrents with the **highest seeders (SE)** and the **fewest leechers (LE)**. - Trusted users are marked with a green skull icon—these are usually safe uploads. 2. **Copy the Magnet Link**: - Right-click on the magnet icon next to the trusted torrent and select "Copy Link." --- ### **Step 6: Start the Download** 1. In **Deluge**, paste the copied magnet link into the “Add Torrent” box. 2. Click **OK** to start the download. 3. Monitor the progress until the download completes. --- ### **Step 7: Scan the Downloaded File** Once the file is downloaded: 1. **Scan for viruses**: Right-click the file and use Calm or CalmWin to verify its integrity. 2. If the file passes the scan, it’s ready for use. --- ### **Step 8: Manage Your File** - **Seed or Remove**: - To help the torrent community, keep seeding the file by leaving it in your torrent client. - To stop seeding, right-click the file in Deluge and remove it. - **Move for Long-Term Storage**: Transfer the file to a secure directory for regular use. --- ### **Notes on Safety and Ethics** - **Verify Legitimacy**: Ensure the torrent you are downloading is for an official Linux distribution. Torrents with unusual names or details should be avoided. - **Support the Developers**: Consider visiting the official websites of Linux distros ([Ubuntu](https://ubuntu.com/), [Arch Linux](https://archlinux.org/)) to support their work directly. --- By following these steps, you can safely and privately download Linux distributions while contributing to the open-source community.

@ fd208ee8:0fd927c1

I just read this, and found it enlightening. > Jung... notes that intelligence can be seen as problem solving at an everyday level..., whereas creativity may represent problem solving for less common issues > Other studies have used metaphor creation as a creativity measure instead of divergent thinking and a spectrum of CHC components instead of just g and have found much higher relationships between creativity and intelligence than past studies https://www.mdpi.com/2079-3200/3/3/59 I'm unusually intelligent (Who isn't?), but I'm much more creative, than intelligent, and I think that confuses people. The ability to apply intelligence, to solve completely novel problems, on the fly, is something IQ tests don't even claim to measure. They just claim a correlation. Creativity requires taking wild, mental leaps out into nothingness; simply trusting that your brain will land you safely. And this is why I've been at the forefront of massive innovation, over and over, but never got rich off of it. *I'm a starving autist.* Zaps are the first time I've ever made money directly, for solving novel problems. Companies don't do this because there is a span of time between providing a solution and the solution being implemented, and the person building the implementation (or their boss) receives all the credit for the existence of the solution. At best, you can hope to get pawned off with a small bonus. Nobody can remember who came up with the solution, originally, and that person might not even be there, anymore, and probably never filed a patent, and may have no idea that their idea has even been built. They just run across it, later, in a tech magazine or museum, and say, "Well, will you look at that! Someone actually went and built it! Isn't that nice!" Universities at least had the idea of cementing novel solutions in academic papers, but that: 1) only works if you're an academic, and at a university, 2) is an incredibly slow process, not appropriate for a truly innovative field, 3) leads to manifestations of perverse incentives and biased research frameworks, coming from 'publish or perish' policies. But I think long-form notes and zaps solve for this problem. #Alexandria, especially, is being built to cater to this long-suffering class of chronic underachievers. It leaves a written, public, time-stamped record of *Clever Ideas We Have Had*. Because they are clever, the ideas. And we have had them.

@ 6e468422:15deee93

We didn't hear them land on earth, nor did we see them. The spores were not visible to the naked eye. Like dust particles, they softly fell, unhindered, through our atmosphere, covering the earth. It took us a while to realize that something extraordinary was happening on our planet. In most places, the mushrooms didn't grow at all. The conditions weren't right. In some places—mostly rocky places—they grew large enough to be noticeable. People all over the world posted pictures online. "White eggs," they called them. It took a bit until botanists and mycologists took note. Most didn't realize that we were dealing with a species unknown to us. We aren't sure who sent them. We aren't even sure if there is a "who" behind the spores. But once the first portals opened up, we learned that these mushrooms aren't just a quirk of biology. The portals were small at first—minuscule, even. Like a pinhole camera, we were able to glimpse through, but we couldn't make out much. We were only able to see colors and textures if the conditions were right. We weren't sure what we were looking at. We still don't understand why some mushrooms open up, and some don't. Most don't. What we do know is that they like colder climates and high elevations. What we also know is that the portals don't stay open for long. Like all mushrooms, the flush only lasts for a week or two. When a portal opens, it looks like the mushroom is eating a hole into itself at first. But the hole grows, and what starts as a shimmer behind a grey film turns into a clear picture as the egg ripens. When conditions are right, portals will remain stable for up to three days. Once the fruit withers, the portal closes, and the mushroom decays. The eggs grew bigger year over year. And with it, the portals. Soon enough, the portals were big enough to stick your finger through. And that's when things started to get weird...

@ fd208ee8:0fd927c1

# When the shit just don't work Most open-source software is now so badly written and sloppily-maintained, that it's malware. That's why the governments are getting involved. They try using OS, to save money and improve quality (and to market themselves as "hip"), and then it blows up their system or opens them up to hackers. Now, they're pissed and want support (but the dev with the handle SucksToBeYou has disappeared) or someone to sue, but most OS projects have no identifiable entity behind them. Even well-known anon devs are often groups of anons or accounts that change hands. # The software cracks have moved on There is simply no evidence that OS alone produces higher-quality software. The reason it seemed that way, at the beginning, was because of the caliber of the developers working on the projects, and the limited number of projects. This resulted in experienced people actively reviewing each others' code. OS used to be something the elite engaged in, but it's mostly beginners practicing in public, now. That's why there are now millions of OS projects, happily offered for free, but almost all of them are garbage. The people now building OS usually aren't capable of reviewing other people's code, and they're producing worse products than ChatGPT could. Their software has no customers because it has no market value. # If everything is OS, then nothing is. Another paradigm-changer is that all software is de facto OS, now that we can quickly reverse-engineer code with AI. That means the focus is no longer on OS/not-OS, but on the accountability and reputation of the builders. It is, once again, a question of trust. We have come full-circle.

@ 7ed7d5c3:6927e200

There was a time when we dared not rustle a whisper. But now we write and read samizdat and, congregating in the smoking rooms of research institutes, heartily complain to each other of all _they_ are muddling up, of all _they_ are dragging us into! There’s that unnecessary bravado around our ventures into space, against the backdrop of ruin and poverty at home; and the buttressing of distant savage regimes; and the kindling of civil wars; and the ill-thought-out cultivation of Mao Zedong (at our expense to boot)—in the end we’ll be the ones sent out against him, and we’ll have to go, what other option will there be? And they put whomever they want on trial, and brand the healthy as mentally ill—and it is always “they,” while _we_ are—helpless. We are approaching the brink; already a universal spiritual demise is upon us; a physical one is about to flare up and engulf us and our children, while we continue to smile sheepishly and babble: “But what can we do to stop it? We haven’t the strength.” We have so hopelessly ceded our humanity that for the modest handouts of today we are ready to surrender up all principles, our soul, all the labors of our ancestors, all the prospects of our descendants—anything to avoid disrupting our meager existence. We have lost our strength, our pride, our passion. We do not even fear a common nuclear death, do not fear a third world war (perhaps we’ll hide away in some crevice), but fear only to take a civic stance! We hope only not to stray from the herd, not to set out on our own, and risk suddenly having to make do without the white bread, the hot water heater, a Moscow residency permit. We have internalized well the lessons drummed into us by the state; we are forever content and comfortable with its premise: we cannot escape the _environment,_ the social conditions; they shape us, “being determines consciousness.” What have we to do with this? We can do nothing. But we can do—everything!—even if we comfort and lie to ourselves that this is not so. It is not “they” who are guilty of everything, but _we ourselves,_ only _we!_ Some will counter: But really, there is nothing to be done! Our mouths are gagged, no one listens to us, no one asks us. How can we make _them_ listen to us? To make them reconsider—is impossible. The natural thing would be simply not to reelect them, but there are no re-elections in our country. In the West they have strikes, protest marches, but we are too cowed, too scared: How does one just give up one’s job, just go out onto the street? All the other fateful means resorted to over the last century of Russia’s bitter history are even less fitting for us today—true, let’s not fall back on them! Today, when all the axes have hewn what they hacked, when all that was sown has borne fruit, we can see how lost, how drugged were those conceited youths who sought, through terror, bloody uprising, and civil war, to make the country just and content. No thank you, fathers of enlightenment! We now know that the vileness of the means begets the vileness of the result. Let our hands be clean! So has the circle closed? So is there indeed no way out? So the only thing left to do is wait inertly: What if something just happens _by itself?_ But it will never come unstuck _by itself,_ if we all, every day, continue to acknowledge, glorify, and strengthen it, if we do not, at the least, recoil from its most vulnerable point. From lies. When violence bursts onto the peaceful human condition, its face is flush with self-assurance, it displays on its banner and proclaims: “I am Violence! Make way, step aside, I will crush you!” But violence ages swiftly, a few years pass—and it is no longer sure of itself. To prop itself up, to appear decent, it will without fail call forth its ally—Lies. For violence has nothing to cover itself with but lies, and lies can only persist through violence. And it is not every day and not on every shoulder that violence brings down its heavy hand: It demands of us only a submission to lies, a daily participation in deceit—and this suffices as our fealty. And therein we find, neglected by us, the simplest, the most accessible key to our liberation: a _personal nonparticipation in lies!_ Even if all is covered by lies, even if all is under their rule, let us resist in the smallest way: Let their rule hold _not through me!_ And this is the way to break out of the imaginary encirclement of our inertness, the easiest way for us and the most devastating for the lies. For when people renounce lies, lies simply cease to exist. Like parasites, they can only survive when attached to a person. We are not called upon to step out onto the square and shout out the truth, to say out loud what we think—this is scary, we are not ready. But let us at least refuse to say what we _do not_ think! This is the way, then, the easiest and most accessible for us given our deep-seated organic cowardice, much easier than (it’s scary even to utter the words) civil disobedience à la Gandhi. Our way must be: _Never knowingly support lies!_ Having understood where the lies begin (and many see this line differently)—step back from that gangrenous edge! Let us not glue back the flaking scales of the Ideology, not gather back its crumbling bones, nor patch together its decomposing garb, and we will be amazed how swiftly and helplessly the lies will fall away, and that which is destined to be naked will be exposed as such to the world. And thus, overcoming our timidity, let each man choose: Will he remain a witting servant of the lies (needless to say, not due to natural predisposition, but in order to provide a living for the family, to rear the children in the spirit of lies!), or has the time come for him to stand straight as an honest man, worthy of the respect of his children and contemporaries? And from that day onward he: · Will not write, sign, nor publish in any way, a single line distorting, so far as he can see, the truth; · Will not utter such a line in private or in public conversation, nor read it from a crib sheet, nor speak it in the role of educator, canvasser, teacher, actor; · Will not in painting, sculpture, photograph, technology, or music depict, support, or broadcast a single false thought, a single distortion of the truth as he discerns it; · Will not cite in writing or in speech a single “guiding” quote for gratification, insurance, for his success at work, unless he fully shares the cited thought and believes that it fits the context precisely; · Will not be forced to a demonstration or a rally if it runs counter to his desire and his will; will not take up and raise a banner or slogan in which he does not fully believe; · Will not raise a hand in vote for a proposal which he does not sincerely support; will not vote openly or in secret ballot for a candidate whom he deems dubious or unworthy; · Will not be impelled to a meeting where a forced and distorted discussion is expected to take place; · Will at once walk out from a session, meeting, lecture, play, or film as soon as he hears the speaker utter a lie, ideological drivel, or shameless propaganda; · Will not subscribe to, nor buy in retail, a newspaper or journal that distorts or hides the underlying facts. This is by no means an exhaustive list of the possible and necessary ways of evading lies. But he who begins to cleanse himself will, with a cleansed eye, easily discern yet other opportunities. Yes, at first it will not be fair. Someone will have to temporarily lose his job. For the young who seek to live by truth, this will at first severely complicate life, for their tests and quizzes, too, are stuffed with lies, and so choices will have to be made. But there is no loophole left for anyone who seeks to be honest: Not even for a day, not even in the safest technical occupations can he avoid even a single one of the listed choices—to be made in favor of either truth or lies, in favor of spiritual independence or spiritual servility. And as for him who lacks the courage to defend even his own soul: Let him not brag of his progressive views, boast of his status as an academician or a recognized artist, a distinguished citizen or general. Let him say to himself plainly: I am cattle, I am a coward, I seek only warmth and to eat my fill. For us, who have grown staid over time, even this most moderate path of resistance will be not be easy to set out upon. But how much easier it is than self-immolation or even a hunger strike: Flames will not engulf your body, your eyes will not pop out from the heat, and your family will always have at least a piece of black bread to wash down with a glass of clear water. Betrayed and deceived by us, did not a great European people—the Czechoslovaks—show us how one can stand down the tanks with bared chest alone, as long as inside it beats a worthy heart? It will not be an easy path, perhaps, but it is the easiest among those that lie before us. Not an easy choice for the body, but the only one for the soul. No, not an easy path, but then we already have among us people, dozens even, who have for years abided by all these rules, who live by the truth. And so: We need not be the first to set out on this path, Ours is but to join! The more of us set out together, the thicker our ranks, the easier and shorter will this path be for us all! If we become thousands—they will not cope, they will be unable to touch us. If we will grow to tens of thousands—we will not recognize our country! But if we shrink away, then let us cease complaining that someone does not let us draw breath—we do it to ourselves! Let us then cower and hunker down, while our comrades the biologists bring closer the day when our thoughts can be read and our genes altered. And if from _this also_ we shrink away, then we are worthless, hopeless, and it is of us that Pushkin asks with scorn: Why offer herds their liberation?  ............................. Their heritage each generation The yoke with jingles, and the whip. February 12, 1974 —translated from the Russian by Yermolai Solzhenitsyn

@ c48e29f0:26e14c11

# titcoin _Rename Bitcoin to "Titcoin" and sats to "tits."_ Redefinition of Bitcoin into “Titcoin” and redefinition of sats into “tits” using that as the Unit Base of Denomination. TitHub repository available here: [https://github.com/WalkerAmerica/titcoin](https://github.com/WalkerAmerica/titcoin) # Abstract This BIP proposes redefining the commonly recognized "bitcoin" and “sats” units so that what was previously known “bitcoin” becomes “titcoin” and what was previously known as “sats,” the smallest indivisible unit, becomes “tits.” The “Bitcoin” Network will be renamed to the “Titcoin” Network. Under this proposal, one tit is defined as that smallest unit, eliminating the need for decimal places, and 100,000,000 tits is defined as a titcoin. By making tits the standard measure, this BIP aims to simplify user comprehension, reduce confusion, and align on-chain values directly with their displayed representation. Also, by aligning Bitcoin's brand with live-giving tits, we will supercharge adoption and inject humor into financial sovereignty. After all, every baby came into this world sucking on tits. **Under this BIP:** - Internally, the smallest indivisible unit remains unchanged. - With this proposal, "1 tit" equals that smallest unit. - What was previously referred to as "1 BTC" now corresponds to 100 million tits. - Satoshis are permanently eliminated. # Addressing the “Buttcoin” BIP: Not much time need be wasted addressing the catastrophic “Button” BIP proposed by Rockstar Dev, but two points bear emphasizing: 1. “Butts” is shitcoin-adjacent terminology (where does shit come from? Exactly…) 2. Butts give you poop. Tits give you milk. **Case closed.** # Motivation Bitcoin's branding is boring. Worse yet, critics think Bitcoin is already "a joke," so let’s own it, let's: Make Bitcoin Funny Again. Laughter is universal, irresistible, and much cheaper than marketing agencies and product roadmaps. Besides, basically everyone either has tits or likes tits. Additionally, renaming Bitcoin as “Titcoin” makes the common trope of “Bitcoin BROS” sound even more stupid. “Titcoin Bros”? Get a life, man… By rebranding Bitcoin to Titcoin (.)(.), we achieve several key goals: **1. Haters Become Users:** People like tits. Tits give nourishment to babies. They can stack tits instead of just making fun of them. Adoption skyrockets as trolls turn into tit hodlers. **2. Memetic Power:** The word “tit” is both universally funny and ageless. “Send me 10 tits” is instantly iconic. “Nice tits” is a great compliment. “That’s gonna cost you a pair of tits” is hilarious. Try saying that without smiling. You can’t. (.)(.) **3. Simplifying Denominations:** Decimals are a blight on humanity. 0.00000001 BTC? Kill it. Under the Titcoin Standard: - 1 Titcoin = 100,000,000 tits. - Satoshis are gone. Forever. If you see Satoshi on the road, kill him - just like in Zen, where the teacher becomes the barrier. We transcend satoshis and achieve financial enlightenment. **4. Aligning with the Ledger:** Bitcoin’s base unit was always integers, but now they’re funny integers. No more fractions, decimals, or math anxiety. Just tits. (.)(.) **5. Adoption via Humor:** Titcoin lowers Bitcoin's intimidation factor. Newbies will feel at ease buying tits instead of serious-sounding fractions of BTC. Tits > Decimals. # Specification **Terminology Redefinitions:** - "Bitcoin" → "Titcoin" (.)(.) - "BTC" → "TIT" (ISO-friendly and hilarious) - Satoshis → Gone. Eliminated. Defeated. **Example:** - Old: "I’ll send you 0.00010000 BTC." - New: "I’ll send you 10,000 tits (.)(.)." Wallet balances would display as: - "You have 1,000,000 tits" instead of some boring fractional BTC amount. # Adoption Strategy **1. Memes First:** Flood Twitter, Reddit, and Telegram with memes. Start with *“Hodl your tits”* and *“Stack tits”*. **2. Titcoin Podcast:** There is already a podcast called _“Titcoin Podcast”_ (which many people are saying is the fastest-growing Bitcoin (Titcoin) podcast in the world). Titcoin Podcast will be a driving force in the adoption of the Titcoin Standard. (.)(.) Nostr: https://primal.net/titcoin X: https://x.com/titcoinpodcast Web: http://titcoin.org **3. Kill Satoshis:** Developers MUST remove all references to satoshis. Replace satoshis in GUIs, APIs, and block explorers with tits. Satoshis were a stepping stone - it’s time to let go. **4. Emoji Standardization:** Use the (.)(.) emoji universally to denote tits. # Rationale **1. Usability & Clarity:** "Decimals are for nerds. Tits are for everyone." A common currency for humans should be easy to use, funny, and integer-based. **2. Appealing to Critics:** Bitcoin has endured years of attacks from all sides. By adopting the Titcoin Standard, we turn anyone who doesn’t like Titcoin into a tit-hating bigot. It’s an elegant financial counterattack. Additionally, everyone always says “we need more women in Bitcoin,” and now women will feel more represented by Titcoin, because they have tits. (.)(.) **3. Transcending Satoshis:** Satoshis served us well, but their time is over. True enlightenment comes when we abandon decimals, satoshis, and arbitrary denominations. If you meet Satoshi on the road, kill him. **4. Memetic Durability:** Everyone loves a good tit joke. It’s timeless. # Backward Compatibility There is no backward compatibility because Titcoin is the future. Applications must hard fork their UI to replace all references to Bitcoin and BTC with Titcoin and TIT. # Implementation Timeline - Phase 1 (1 month): Meme dissemination. Every wallet dev team is required to add (.)(.) emoji support. - Phase 2 (3 months): Exchanges rebrand BTC tickers to tit. *Nostr zaps tits into hyperspace.* - Phase 3 (6 months): Michael Saylor announces MicroStrategy now stacked 10 trillion tits, declaring it the superior currency. ETFs follow suit, ensuring Wall Street hodls tits en masse. Banks allow tit transfers via SWIFT. # Test Vectors - Old: 1.00000000 BTC → New: 100,000,000 tits (.)(.) - Old: 0.00000001 BTC → New: 1 tit (.)(.) - Old: 0.001 BTC → New: 100,000 tits (.)(.) # Future-Proofing Tits ensure we have infinite memes for infinite money. **Example Phrases for the Future:** - "Better hodl on to your tits." - "This is the Titcoin Standard." - "I’m sending you tits." - “I’ve never seen so many tits!” - “That’s the million tit question.” - “We need more women in Titcoin.” - “I’m a Titcoin Maximalist.” - “Nice tits!” - “I love tits.” # Conclusion By renaming Bitcoin to Titcoin and adopting a whole-number unit display, we align memetic dominance with financial sovereignty. Haters become adopters. Tits become wealth. And the world gets a little bit funnier. (.)(.) Let’s hodl our tits and watch the world follow. # Copyright: This BIP is licensed under CC-🫱(.)(.)🫲-1.0 and the eternal blessing of tit (.)(.) memes.

@ dd664d5e:5633d319

 Christmas season hasn't actually started, yet, in Roman #Catholic Germany. We're in Advent until the evening of the 24th of December, at which point Christmas begins (with the Nativity, at Vespers), and continues on for 40 days until Mariä Lichtmess (Presentation of Christ in the temple) on February 2nd.  It's 40 days because that's how long the post-partum isolation is, before women were allowed back into the temple (after a ritual cleansing).  That is the day when we put away all of the Christmas decorations and bless the candles, for the next year. (Hence, the British name "Candlemas".) It used to also be when household staff would get paid their cash wages and could change employer. And it is the day precisely in the middle of winter.  Between Christmas Eve and Candlemas are many celebrations, concluding with the Twelfth Night called Epiphany or Theophany. This is the day some Orthodox celebrate Christ's baptism, so traditions rotate around blessing of waters.  The Monday after Epiphany was the start of the farming season, in England, so that Sunday all of the ploughs were blessed, but the practice has largely died out.  Our local tradition is for the altar servers to dress as the wise men and go door-to-door, carrying their star and looking for the Baby Jesus, who is rumored to be lying in a manger.  They collect cash gifts and chocolates, along the way, and leave the generous their powerful blessing, written over the door. The famous 20 * C + M + B * 25 blessing means "Christus mansionem benedicat" (Christ, bless this house), or "Caspar, Melchior, Balthasar" (the names of the three kings), depending upon who you ask. They offer the cash to the Baby Jesus (once they find him in the church's Nativity scene), but eat the sweets, themselves. It is one of the biggest donation-collections in the world, called the "Sternsinger" (star singers). The money goes from the German children, to help children elsewhere, and they collect around €45 million in cash and coins, every year.  As an interesting aside: The American "groundhog day", derives from one of the old farmers' sayings about Candlemas, brought over by the Pennsylvania Dutch. It says, that if the badger comes out of his hole and sees his shadow, then it'll remain cold for 4 more weeks. When they moved to the USA, they didn't have any badgers around, so they switched to groundhogs, as they also hibernate in winter.

@ 65912a7a:5dc638bf

## Chef's notes This is my late partner's award winning Cajun rice & beans recipe. It's an updated take on the traditional Cajun comfort food. Chef Darin was a classically trained chef who spent 30+ years in the kitchen perfecting his recipes, and delivering authentic Cajun and Creole food to his patrons. This is a 5-star dish that will earn the respect of the most discerning Cajun afficionado. You won't be disappointed. I suggest making this recipe exactly as directed the first time, and then make whatever adjustments you want for future batches. Also, don't cheap out on the Andouille. No Johnsonville or Hillshire Farms. Chef Aidelle's is a good choice, as is Silva's from Whole Foods. They cost a few extra bucks, but it's absolutely worth it. ## Details - ⏲️ Prep time: 30 min - 🍳 Cook time: 3 hours - 🍽️ Servings: 12 ## Ingredients - 16oz small red beans, dry - 2 cups long grain white rice - 14-16oz andouille sausage, sliced - 8oz ham, cubed - 1 large yellow onion, chopped - 1 green bell pepper, chopped - 2-3 stalks celery, chopped - 2 tbsp garlic (12 cloves), minced - 7 cups water - ¼ cup olive oil - 2 large bay leaves - 1 tbsp parsley, dried - 1 tsp thyme, dried - 1 tsp Cajun seasoning - ½ tsp cayenne pepper, dried - ¼ tsp sage, rubbed - 1½ tsp salt (more or less to taste) ## Directions 1. Soak beans in a large pot of water overnight. 2. Heat oil in a large stockpot over medium heat. Cook onion, bell pepper, celery, garlic in olive oil for 3 to 4 minutes (until onion is translucent). 3. Add beans, bay leaves, parsley, thyme, salt, MSG, Cajun seasoning, cayenne pepper, Sage, and water. Stir, bring to a boil, and then reduce heat to medium-low (btwn 2-3). Cover and simmer for 2½ hours. 4. Remove bay leaves. Mash some of the beans. Stir Andouille and ham into beans, and simmer uncovered for an additional 30 minutes. 5. Meanwhile, prepare the rice. Bring water and rice to a boil in a saucepan. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 20 minutes. 6. Serve beans over steamed white rice.

@ 8fb140b4:f948000c

After nuking my second LND node (the first one died due to hardware failure) by my own typo and lack of any thought in the design of the CLI of LND lightning node tools, I decided to take a plunge into the world of mature and complex implementation of the protocol, [Eclair by ACINQ](https://github.com/ACINQ/eclair). It has been almost one year (the birth of the node was on Christmas Day 2023), 50 thousand transactions routed, and over 30 BTC of routed value. In this post, I'd like to reflect on my experiences with Eclair, go over some of the gotchas and issues, and highlight some of the good choices that I've made since the beginning of my adventure. ## Learnings from the Past Experience While I was learning Lightning network and had very little understanding of how things worked in the whole Bitcoin space, Umbrel was my go-to solution that helped me get off the ground. It proved to be easy and somewhat educational but was not something that I would continuously run for the production setup or trust with any significant amount of bitcoin that I could not afford to lose. Lightning is built on top of the L1 (Bitcoin) network but manages the state of the channels in its own database that is negotiated and agreed upon with its peers. Any failures in the state integrity may result in the complete loss of liquidity or hefty penalty transactions (significant loss of capital). A Lightning node that participates in routing public transactions is also required to be constantly online with as little downtime as possible and only short periods offline at a time. Otherwise, you may risk causing force-closure of the channel due to expired HTLC that is measured in number of blocks. ## The Setup Taking all of my learnings into consideration, I decided to first invest in reliable enterprise-grade hardware: - Server-grade hardware with ECC memory and reliable power supply and CPU - UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) to avoid any headaches due to electrical spikes or drop-outs - Reliable enterprise SSDs and NVMEs - ZFS (filesystem) to mirror the critical storage and to ensure full integrity of the data (bit-rot prevention). You do need to tune ZFS for your specific workload and reliability - Reliable and replicated database (PostgreSQL) with two local and one remote replica, and a requirement to have at least two replicas committing the transaction to the disk - Backup! On-site and off-site backup of the critical configuration that you could use to restore the node if your house burns down - Spare parts, redundancy, backup, monitoring - Reliable and stable internet connectivity The software is Eclair 0.11.0 (latest release as of today), PostgreSQL 16 with two replicas, Bitcoin Core 27.2 (with redundant storage of blocks), additional Bitcoin Core running on a separate node and in-sync with the chain (in case primary node fails), Ubuntu 22.04 with the latest docker software from the official Docker repo. ## All Major Gotchas That I Came Across While Eclair is mature and very stable in itself, it does have some quirks and design choices that you need to account for when running your node. The software is written in Scala and requires a specific version of JVM to run it, as well as JRE and Maven to build it. It doesn't mean that other versions won't work, but you may find unpleasant bugs that may result in catastrophic failures of your node with nobody to help you. All of the requirements are listed in the release notes and installation guide. Whenever in doubt, **RTFM** first, then ask questions. ### Limited Support by the FOSS Community Eclair is not the most popular implementation of the Lightning protocol, and therefore it is hard to find tools or plugins that could help you manage the node. GUI for the node so far is only supported by RTL and with a very limited number of features. For any sort of statistics, you are limited to either Prometheus (extensive metrics are available) or writing your own SQL on top of the Eclair tables. ### On-chain Fee Differences Between Yours and Partner Nodes This one hit me hard, and many times. I've had more than a few force-closures of the channels because of the conservative and safe default settings. The worst part is, it strikes you when there is a huge spike in fees, which results in significant losses to force-close the channel due to high fees. I am still not 100% sure how the big difference can be exploited in practice, and opted for increase of the tolerance levels to avoid surprise FCs: ``` eclair.on-chain-fees { feerate-tolerance { ratio-low = <0.01~> // will allow remote fee rates as low as XX our local feerate (spikes) ratio-high = <20.0~> // will allow remote fee rates as high as XX times our local feerate (drops) } } ``` It is up to you and your risk tolerance to define something reasonable and yet allow for secure and reliable node operation. ### Initial Lightning Network State Sync When I just started running the node, I had very few channels and startup times were fast. Later, when I expanded the number of channels, I noted that it took my node up to 6-12 hours before it was fully in-sync and routing traffic fast. Given that ACINQ maintains one of the largest nodes on the network, I knew that there was something with my settings that caused the issue. After some research, I came across the setting that whitelisted node IDs for state sync, which immediately rang a bell since I knew from the LND days that not all peer nodes are used for the network sync. Setting the list to my most reliable and largest nodes reduced the startup settling times down to minutes again: ``` eclair.sync-whitelist = [ "03864ef025fde8fb587d989186ce6a4a186895ee44a926bfc370e2c366597a3f8f", ... ] ``` You do not need to have too many public keys in here, and should keep it between 5-10. ### Automatic MAX HTLC Adjustment for the Channel One of the killer features of Eclair is its ability to automatically adjust MAX HTLC for the channel and reduce the number of failed transactions due to insufficient liquidity on the channel. It can be used to estimate your total channels' balances but with smart configuration and a little thinking, you can make it reasonably private while still maintaining a good transaction flow: ``` eclair.channel.channel-update.min-time-between-updates=1 hour # Allows for the adjustments to be made once every hour eclair.channel.channel-update.balance-thresholds=[ { available-sat = 10000 max-htlc-sat = 0 // 0% of 10000 }, ... ] ``` You can have as many variations as you need, and ensure that the channel MAX HTLC is set well and within reasonable ranges. You would also want to account for multiple transactions going through the channel, but also account for the channel size and an average amount of sats per transaction. ### Max Accepted HTLCs By design, the Lightning channel is limited to a specific number of in-flight HTLCs, and the setting is fixed during channel opening time with no way of changing it unless you close and reopen the channel with new settings. If you find your node routing a lot of small transactions (zaps), you may quickly fail many due to that limit (I think default was in single digit range): ``` eclair.channel.max-htlc-value-in-flight-percent=98 # Default I think is half or 50% eclair.channel.max-accepted-htlcs = 50 ``` The setting above will allow for the channel to be more fully utilized and have more concurrent transactions without clogging. ### CLTV Delta This is basically a setting that is global for Eclair and sets the maximum number of remaining blocks (in time) before HTLC expires. Setting this too high may result in many HTLCs failing for the small nodes with not so great centrality, and reduce the number of routed transactions: ``` # CLTV delta eclair.channel.expiry-delta-blocks = 60 ``` Default is 144 but I found that setting this to 60 (minimum possible for my node setup and configuration) yields better results for routing. It does expose you to more risk of expired HTLCs that may cause force-closures, but I have seen only one so far on my node. ### Allocate Sufficient Memory You will want to adjust the heap size for Eclair, since the default is too small to run any sizable node. Setting `JAVA_OPTS=-Xmx32g` (or half the size of your available RAM) would be a good start. I would advise having at least 32GB of RAM for the node, and allocating at least 16GB (`JAVA_OPTS=-Xmx16g`) for smooth and fast operations. ### And More Settings and Parameters to Tune I have covered only some of the major settings that I felt were worth writing about, but there is much more you could configure and tweak. Read all of the [Guides](https://github.com/ACINQ/eclair/blob/master/docs/Guides.md) and especially focus on the [Configure](https://github.com/ACINQ/eclair/blob/master/docs/Configure.md) and a [sample reference configuration file](https://github.com/ACINQ/eclair/blob/master/eclair-core/src/main/resources/reference.conf). ## Good Decisions First, going with Eclair was the right choice, along with using server-grade hardware with ECC RAM and reliable storage. Second, having a replicated database on three separate nodes with one off-site saved me from a sure destruction of all state and loss of funds. Third, deciding to only maintain channels with reliable and stable nodes saved me from some bad force-closures, where I would choose to close the channel if a peer node goes up and down too frequently, regardless of how well it routes. Even big nodes run by single operators fail badly, as do nodes operated by companies. Keeping your eyes on the node and its health, as well as the health of its peers, is something that very few operators do, which can cause failures and unnecessary loss of your and their funds. Lastly, if you decide to run a routing node, you have a responsibility to maintain it well and monitor its health. There are many tools you could use, and with Eclair you can use Prometheus and Grafana. Keep your node's packages updated and monitor for any security-related issues that may appear from time to time, so you can mitigate them quickly. ## Conclusion So far I am satisfied with Eclair despite all of the difficulties and headaches I've had with it. It is not perfect, and it requires me to create small tools to do some basic things, but I need a stable and reliable node that I can trust. Eclair has proved to be all that I wanted, and saved my bacon a few times when I nuked one of the PostgreSQL servers and all of its data, and managed to do the same for another replica, but was able to recover and recreate from the remaining replica. Eclair is also stateless during runtime and guarantees consistency of the node regardless of how it fails. Even if you pull a plug on the node's server, it will still be able to come up and recover its consistent state that is in agreement with its peers. **Is it for everyone?** No, it is definitely not for everyone or for anyone who just wants a small node to run their online shop with a few channels. You could have a very reliable and trusted node for the online shop with Eclair, but you will need some technical skills to be able to set up, maintain and recover it if things go wrong. In the end, it is all up to you, your skills, your willingness to learn, and your risk tolerance to make that decision. For me, it was the right choice, and I have no regrets despite not having access to the latest shiny features of the Lightning network.

@ dd664d5e:5633d319

## Yeah, so... nah. People keep trying to explain to me, that women will be better-off, if they become more dangerous. While I can see the inevitableness of women living in remote rural areas learning to shoot with a rifle, and similar, I'm generally against arming women with killing machines. This is not because I'm averse to the idea of using violence to solve problems (albeit after exhausting better options), or because I don't like guns, or am unfamiliar with them. It's also not because I don't know I would look totally, mind-numbingly hot holding something long and spearlike, while dressed in camo and wearing a T-Shirt that appears to have shrunk in the wash.  It's a more fundamental set of problems, that irks me. ## Bazooka Barbie American gun manufacturers saturated the public and private male market so thoroughly, that they eventually turned to marketing firearms to women. Men are scary and bad. There is Stranger Danger. We can't just make the neighborhood less dangerous because erm... reasons. Stay safe with a cute gun.  It has gone along with the predictable hypersexualization of the conservative feminine ideal. Since guns are considered aggressive, women with guns are perceived as more sexually available. Guns (and tanks, bombs, bows, etc.) make women "equal", "independent", "feisty", "hot", "freaky", "calculating", "empowered", etc.  Sorta slutty, basically. This Gun Girl is not like the helpless, hapless, harmless homemaker ideal, of yesteryear. A woman who was dependent, chaste, gentle, wise... and in need of protection. A woman who saw the men around her as people she could rely on for providing her with a safe environment. That woman is _au revoir_. Now, sistas are doing it for themselves. 💪🏻 The New Martial Missy needs a man, like a fish needs a bicycle... but make it country. Yeah, it's marketing, but it sure has set the tone, and millions of men have been trained to prefer women who market themselves in this manner. Hard, mean, lean women. That will not remain without wider societal consequences. You know, I liked that homemaker. I miss her. She's literally me.  ## Those arms are for cuddling babies, not holding rocket launchers. Now, that we've all become accustomed to imagery of women holding firearms, it wasn't much of a leap to condition us all to the sight of women in frontline police, guard, or military positions.  Instead of war being a terrible, highly-lethal, territorial fight amongst men, it's now cute, hip, trendy and fun. It's a big party, and women are finally allowed to join in.  Now, women have finally jettisoned the terrible burden of being society's life-bearers and caretakers, and we're just more potential enemy combatants. We know it's okay to punch women, shoot women, etc. since we've been watching it happen on screens, for decades. Women are now often assumed to be fighters, not lovers. Cavalry, not mothers. ## Girls on top Not only does this undermine any female role -- and put female civilians under a cloud of suspicion -- it also reduces mens' claim to be paramount in governance. Why should a man be the Commander in Chief, if women are on the battlefield? In fact, why should men be in charge of anything, anywhere? Look at them. There they are. Hiding at home. Cowering in their kitchens, wringing their hands and fretting, while courageous, dangerous women protect _them_ from dangers foreign and domestic. Women are the better men, really. Is this really where we want to go? ## The final bitterness But one thing I find most disturbing is something more personal. The ubiquitous nature of firearms in American homes has made domestic violence increasingly deadly. Adding more guns, for the female residents, often serves to make such violence even more deadly for women. It turns out, that women are usually reluctant to shoot people they know; even more than men. Women without this inhibition are prone to sharing their home with men missing the same trait. And, now, they have more guns.

@ 7ed7d5c3:6927e200

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? &ensp;Thou art more lovely and more temperate; Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, &ensp;And summer’s lease hath all too short a date; Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, &ensp;And often is his gold complexion dimm’d; And every fair from fair sometime declines, &ensp;By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d; ``` But thy eternal summer shall not fade Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growest; So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this and this gives life to thee. ```

@ 9cb3545c:2ff47bca

Hey there! So you’ve got a whopping 50+ Lightning Channels and you’re not keen on them Force Closing? Well, buckle up! This guide will be an additional resource as you navigate through daunting process. In this post, we will go over some extra tips and tricks not covered in the official guide. While this guide does have some steps that are not covered by Umbrel, its main objective is to provide confidence in the process (not a replacement process), coming from someone who’s been there and done that, and some how came out with all Lightning Channels still running! **I highly recommend reading this post fully before starting the migration process.** Before we dive in, [here](https://community.umbrel.com/t/how-to-update-from-umbrelos-0-5-to-umbrelos-1-1-on-linux-devices/16704#how-to-update-from-umbrelos-05-on-a-linux-device-3) is the Official Guide from the Umbrel team on how to update UmbrelOS from 0.5.4 to 1.x.x. Reference the steps all the time, and follow them carefully. **With that out of the way. Here are some extra TIPs to fill in some gaps I encountered as I went through the process.** ## The Order of Steps ### Tip #1: In the Official Umbrel Guide, the Umbrel team asks you to start by backing up your data. As a lightning Node Runner, I recommend against this. Because the Bash script will stop all Umbrel Services and your node will remain offline while you prepare a Bootable USB Stick. So definitely don't start with the backup, first get the bootable stick sorted out, then move on to backups. ## Creating the Bootable USB Stick ### TIP #2: After many failed attempts to create a bootable USB stick from the link umbrel provides in their official guide. I ended up getting the ISO directly from Umbrels team through their Discord Channel. Unfortunately, I wont be able to share this link here. but just in case the umbrelOS-amd64-usb-installer.iso.xz didnt work for you as well, this could be an alternative route. ### TIP #3: Since Umbrel is an actual full OS now. You might need to handle some BIOS quirks. The umbrelOS Kernal is not signed. So if you have Secure Boot turned on in the BIOS, your PC will try to protect you, and block you from booting into you USB Stick. Turn off Secure Boot and you should be able to bypass this issue. I also had to turn on Legacy Option ROMs as well.  ### Tip #4: Test your Bootable USB Stick on a secondary device before you go on trying to update your node. Since turning the node off and on is a hassle, its just easier to be certain the the Bootable Stick is ready before even attempting to upgrade your node. **If all is good, you are ready to get back to the guide and walk through the steps.** ## Preparing the Hardware ### Tip #5: In the official guide they as you to connect a Keyboard and Screen. This is of course needed. I would highly suggest you connect a mouse as well. My Bios was very stubborn and didn't comply with just a keyboard as I attempted to re-order Boot Sequences. ## The Migration Process ### Tip #6: Remember, this is 10 times easier if you are not running a lightning node, but on a lightning node, the Channel.db file is being updated constantly. Once you start the backup process, the script will shutdown umbrel services and start copying. **you can''t turn your node back on after this stage. If you do, assume the backup you created through the Bash script is obsolete. and you will have to redo the backup process again.** If you really know what you are doing, you probably can surgically copy/paste the LND folder. But its easier not to do this. But not to worry, if you start the process just keep going (especially if you checked all the TIPs I cover above). I say this out of experience, because after I started the first backup process, it took me about an hour to backup my SSD, but then the Bootable USB stick threw so many errors I gave up, and turned on the node again. Then later re-attempted the process from scratch. This time, since my external SSD was already full, it took 3.5 hours to backup all the files again. ### Tip #7: This will take time, so just trust the migration process and wait for the files to get copied. you are probably copying more than a terabyte worth of data back and forth over USB, Leverage USB 3 if you have it. ### Tip #8: If you have a custom name for your umbrel node. Meaning you do not access it by using umbrel.local, this will be reset to the default umbrel.local after the migration. I am not sure if this could be switched again to a custom name, but for now, this won't cause any issues. ### Tip #9: During the last steps of the Migration process, and once Umbrel has copied the backup back into the SSD, it will finish the process with downloading your apps, and restarting. Don't freak out :D ### Tip #10: I honestly don't have a tenth tip, but thought it would make this list look nicer with one. So my last tip for you is to relax and enjoy the process. And feel free to tag me if you faced any issues. Hopefully it will be something i experienced and will be able to help. # Have Fun, and Good Luck!

@ df8f0a64:057d87a5

# 2024年下半期の振り返り あんまり変化はないんですが、進捗ありません！で終わっても仕方ないのでちょっとは無理やりでも振り返りましょう #### 0. 退職した 上半期時点で決まってはいたんですが、　6年間ほど勤務した会社を退職しました 退職直前まで爆発物取扱みたいなタスクをこなして、なかなかひやひやした退職プロセス 静かに退職したいので送別会の類のイベントは無しにしてくれというお願いをきいてくれた各メンバーに感謝です #### 1. 公開していたNostrリレーの設定を変更した 日本のみに公開していたリレーを、全世界に公開しました 当初はCloudflareでリレーをホストしていたのが、利用していたnosflareもcfrelayもクライアントに対してイベントを配布するコードがなく（R2だけではできない） さてどうしたものかと悩んでいたタイミングで、Umbrelのおひとり様リレーのポートを公開する対応をしました。リレーのお引越し で、公開してしばらくしたら、すごい勢いで日本国外からの投稿が着信するようになり大困惑 調べてみたら、Mutiny wallet（現在はサービス終了）が運営しているblastr.mutinywallet.com（たぶんまだ稼働している）が原因でした Nostr.watchのAPIを利用して、世の中にあるNostrリレーすべてにイベントを送り込む凶悪な思想犯です ヘッダー情報などでブロックできなかったので、blastrがホストされてるCloudflareのIPを全てブロックする力技で対処しました ちなみに、nosflareもいつのまにかblastrのようなものをホストしているようです なんなんでしょうね、Nostrの白人さんたちの、過激なほど分散というか対検閲をしようとするお節介さは #### 2. 公開していたNostrリレーを潰した 上記のように折角いろいろやったリレーを潰しました Reply guyというbotが猛威をふるった時期、クソみたいなイベントをばら撒かれてくることに私がキレたからです。クソが NostrとしてはこれをきっかけにWoTを組み込んだリレーが開発されたりして、スパム対策が一歩前進した感があります。クソが スパムばら撒きをBostrが助長してるみたいな批難を受けて、作者のYonleさんがブチ切れ、全Nostr関連リポジトリのメンテを放棄する事態も発生 ちょうどMutiny walletでGOXしたご本人の機嫌が悪かった時期に、クソスパムがぶつかったことによる悲しい出来事でした。ほんとクソ #### 3. おわりに 他にもこまいことはいくつかあるんですが、主にはこんなとこでしょうか。来年も楽しくNostrしたいですね

@ fd208ee8:0fd927c1

# GitHub is a software project graveyard I think the main reason why we have so many lone wolf devs is an economic one. The fact that most FOSS devs aren't being paid for their code is making this worse, not better, as they work for fame, not fortune. Nobody wants to use joint-repos because they don't want to give up or share the property rights to the contents. But because anything someone else does in a repo you own, also belongs to you, people are disincentized from contributing to your repo. GitHub, especially, has incentivized this splintering and isolation. Everyone wants to have all changes in their own repo because they can profit best on repos listed directly under their own name, so long as they become popular. Maximize your 🟩 and ⭐ , like chips you can cash in for a prize. And because forking other people's repos is the norm, rather than teamwork, requests for changes are usually ignored or responded to with "fork it, bro." Go away. Leave me alone. My repo is none of your business. # Too autistic, even for me So, the developers separate their efforts into a million tiny repos that are mostly redundant with other ones, there's little interaction, progress is often surprisingly slow and stalls for months at a time, it's hard to keep track of what other people are doing (so that you can review and test changes), most of the effort is headed straight for the bin, people build the same things over and over, and communication is extremely limited. This is a work environment that is unattractive for anyone who isn't autistic and/or highly introverted. Half of the fun of open-source development used to be the esprit de corps. Much has been said about #Bluesky, but it all misses a major point: that's where you go, if you want to work with other people, to build something large, polished, and impressive. It doesn't actually matter how many developers Nostr has, if they all only stare at their own plates. # Your repo coulda been a file folder. Ironically, git was developed for collaboration on large projects with a distributed team. Now, everyone uses it for projects they work on alone. They put those projects on the Internet to market them. It's a cheap gimmick, not an earnest attempt at collaboration. Collaboration begins at the beginning.

@ 65912a7a:5dc638bf

## Details - ⏲️ Prep time: 5 min - 🍳 Cook time: 30 min - 🍽️ Servings: 12 ## Ingredients - 12-14oz fresh cranberries - 1⅓ cup packed brown sugar - 1 cup raisins - 1 orange, peeled & chopped - 1 cup water ## Directions 1. Using medium sauce pan, simmer cranberries and water for 5-6 min. Cranberries will start to pop. 2. Add brown sugar, raisins, and chopped orange to the berries. 3. Bring to a simmer and continue to cook for 20 min. Stir often to prevent sticking. Remove from heat. 4. Let set until room temp. Mixture will thicken as it cools. 5. Put in a covered container and keep refrigerated. Lasts for about 2 weeks.

@ fd208ee8:0fd927c1

## The motherhood illusion Growing up, I was always told that women wanted children, whilst men wanted sex. So, marriage was created, to unite these two urges, and men and women don't otherwise particularly differ. But, it turns out, that **women want protection and sex, and men want children and sex**. This is why women tend to be attracted to more masculine men (they're associated with protection) and men tend to be attracted to more feminine women (they're associated with motherhood). Women who are attracted to men, who aren't overtly masculine, are looking for a different aspect of protection (reliability, steady income or wealth, emotional security, etc.) This wasn't readily apparent, in earlier generations, as widespread, youthful marriage meant that there weren't any real decisions being made by the participants. Almost all women got married and had kids, and almost all men got married and had sex. *Math checks out.* But the number of women who could protect and provide for themselves was low, and the men marrying were often very young and libidinous, and not yet contemplating their own legacy. Feminism, easy abortion, deindustrialization, delayed marriage, and reliable contraception have dissolved this illusion, completely. Millions of Western women quickly turned into cougars, careerists, party girls, and e-girls, and an entire army of childless men and sidelined dads bubbled up and began to make their pain known. Humanity's dirty underbelly has been exposed. *Women aren't as sweet, as we thought, and men are much sweeter.*  Women also want children, but not as intensely. In fact, they seem to often viscerally dislike children, and are jealous of the protection they are to give them. So, they are prone to offing their offspring because they are averse to having any in-house competition. If you just left women up to their own devices and reduced the social pressure, at least a fifth of them wouldn't bother having children, at all, and another quarter will have one and then lose interest or age out. This is not a new phenomenon, as we can see.  The male competition for potential mothers turns out to be absolutely brutal, and more difficult than simply finding a woman to sleep with. And, now, we finally understand why men traditionally jumped through so many hoops, to attain a wife. It wasn't for the sex; we've always had brothels, masturbation, and pornography. It was for the familial comfort, and, especially, for the children. ## Good fathers make good mothers Some women don't know if they are "potential mothers", until they meet a "potential father", and their urge to procreate suddenly kicks in. They didn't want children for their own sake, but now they want some for his sake. All of a sudden, they're imagining themselves rocking the cradle, googling "what to eat, when you're expecting", and find themselves gushing over anything that gives off Hint of Infant. I'm pregnant! Look what I can do! Look what I can do! For you, darling.  Women married to men they are deeply in love with, are much more likely to desire to become mothers (and be devastated by infertility), and make for better mothers, because children are like individualized presents they can give to their husband. They want to impress him. Most want to be decent parents in their own right, but the urge to impress seems to raise this to a much higher level because *women are vain*, and therefore focused on raising their own status and how they appear to others. And the greatest "other", of a happy wife, is her husband. Because *men are narcissistic*, and therefore in love with anything associated with themselves (which underpins their obsession with owning property), men have an intense attachment to their children. What is more "yours", than your progeny?  Fathers seem to develop a special attachment to, or fondness for, the mothers of their children, that goes beyond lust or romantic love; they never forgot who gave them this new Mini Me. And they are often quite impressed by their own ability to perform this trick numerous times, which leads to the intense satisfaction they feel at "going into serial production" and churning out more of those Mini Mes until their adoring wife pleads for mercy. Men want children. Women, who love a man, want to give him those children and gain the fidelity that comes along with those children. This is the actual "trade" underpinning the urge to marry. 

@ ddf03aca:5cb3bbbe

Recently, I have been surrounded by people experimenting with various projects, and a common theme among them is the use of cashu as the payment layer. While this fact alone is already great, the best part is to identify users and implementers needs and combining forces to come up with novel solutions. --- ## Subscriptions with Cashu One of the most remarkable aspects of cashu is that it is a bearer asset. This hands ownership and control back to the user. Even though mints back the tokens, they have no authority to move a token on behalf of a user or any other party. How cool is that? However, this also introduces challenges when building subscription-based services. Subscriptions typically require periodic payments, and with cashu, users must renew these manually. Currently, there are two primary approaches to address this: 1. **Overpaying:** To minimize the number of interactions, users can pay for longer periods upfront. For example, instead of paying 2,100 sats for one hour, they could pay 6,000 sats for three hours. If they realize they don’t need the full three hours, the excess payment is effectively wasted. 2. **Full Interactivity:** In this setup, payers and receivers stay connected through a communication channel, and payments are made at small, regular intervals. While this avoids overpayment, it requires constant connectivity. If the connection is lost, the subscription ends. --- ## Enter Locking Scripts One of the most powerful features of cashu is its locking scripts. Let’s take a quick refresher. A locking script defines the conditions under which a token (or "nut") becomes spendable. In essence, it’s similar to Bitcoin’s spending conditions, but instead of being enforced by the Bitcoin network, these conditions are enforced by the cashu mint alone. A widely-used locking condition is Pay-to-Public-Key (P2PK). This locks a token to a specific public key, meaning it can only be spent when a valid signature from the key’s owner is provided. This mechanism is what enables NIP-61 nut zaps, where a token can be publicly shared but is only claimable by the intended recipient who holds the private key. To address situations where a recipient loses access to their keys or simply doesn’t claim the token, P2PK includes additional options: locktime and a refund key. These options allow for the inclusion of a fallback mechanism. If the primary lock expires after a set time, a refund key can reclaim the token. With these tools, we can now create non-interactive payment streams! --- ## One Missing Piece… Before diving into payment streams, there’s one more crucial concept to cover: cashu tokens are not singular "things". Instead, they’re composed of multiple proofs, each carrying its own cryptographic data and spendability. For example, if you receive a cashu token made up of five proofs, you could choose to claim only three proofs and leave the other two untouched. This flexibility is rarely utilized but is vital for building payment streams. --- ## The Grand Finale: Payment Streams Now that we have all the building blocks, let’s construct a payment stream using cashu. By leveraging locking scripts, refund keys, and multiple proofs, we can design a token that enables recipients to claim small portions of the total amount at regular intervals—without requiring any further interaction from the sender. Even better, as the sender, you retain the ability to cancel the stream at any time and reclaim any unspent portions.  ### Example: Renting a VPS Imagine renting a VPS for a week, priced at 1,000 sats per day. Here’s how a payment stream could work: 1. Construct a token worth 7,000 sats to cover the entire week. 2. Divide the token into 7 proofs, each worth 1,000 sats. 3. Lock each proof using a P2PK script, locking to your key and adding the recipients key as a refund key. - The first proof has a locktime of `now`. - The second proof has a locktime of `now + 1 day`. - The third proof has a locktime of `now + 2 days`, and so on. When the token is sent, the receiver can immediately claim the first proof since its locktime has expired and the refund key is now able to claim. The second proof becomes claimable after one day, the third after two days, and so on. At the same time, the sender retains the ability to reclaim any unclaimed proofs by signing with their key. If you decide to stop using the VPS midweek, you can cancel the stream and reclaim the remaining proofs; all without further interaction with the receiver. --- With this approach, we can create robust, non-interactive payment streams that combine the autonomy of cashu with the flexibility to reclaim funds. Thank you for reading. Make sure to leave a nut if you enjoyed this :)

@ 01d0bbf9:91130d4c

**The Bitcoin community thrives on open-source innovation, but Coinkite’s move against BTClock risks stifling progress and alienating its core supporters.** Open-source projects like BTClock typically aim to promote innovation and accessibility within the Bitcoin community. Suing the programmer for **trademark infringement** seems like an overly aggressive move by Coinkite, given the values that Bitcoin and its ecosystem often stand for: decentralization, collaboration, and open innovation. ### Why It’s Problematic: 1. **Chilling Effect on Open Source**: - Actions like this discourage developers from creating alternative solutions or building on existing ideas, which stifles community-driven progress. - Open-source projects thrive on shared knowledge, and this lawsuit could set a precedent for others to clamp down on grassroots efforts. 2. **Reputation Risk for Coinkite**: - While Coinkite has long been respected for products like the Blockclock and Coldcard, this move could alienate its core audience—Bitcoiners who value freedom and decentralization. - By targeting an open-source developer, Coinkite risks being perceived as prioritizing profits over community principles. 3. **Trademark Infringement Question**: - If the issue is solely over the name "BTClock," a fair resolution could involve renaming the project rather than pursuing legal action. - Lawsuits should ideally be a last resort, not the first response. ### A Better Approach: - Coinkite could have worked with the BTClock developer to address concerns without legal action—perhaps through dialogue or collaboration. - Open acknowledgment of BTClock’s differences (lower cost, open-source) would have shown confidence in their own premium product, while still respecting community-driven alternatives. ### **What NVK and Coinkite Should Do** Even now, NVK could mitigate the damage: - **Withdraw the Lawsuit**: Openly acknowledge the backlash and frame it as a misunderstanding or a "necessary step" that they’re now reconsidering due to the community’s response. - **Collaborate with BTClock**: Find a way to coexist, perhaps by licensing certain Blockclock-specific elements if truly necessary, while leaving room for BTClock’s open-source innovation.

@ c48e29f0:26e14c11

***TL;DR -- HIGHLIGHT THIS TRANSCRIPT TO CREATE NEW NOSTR EVENTS, GET ZAPS, AND EXPOSE MORE PEOPLE TO *THE* BITCOIN PODCAST IN THE PROCESS*** ## WHY THE FUCK AM I DOING THIS? Up until now I've been publishing transcripts for THE Bitcoin Podcast ([@Titcoin on Nostr](https://primal.net/titcoin)) on my website, [bitcoinpodcast.net/words](https://bitcoinpodcast.net/words), and, more recently, putting show notes/summaries on my newly-created Substack, [substack.com/@walkeramerica](https://substack.com/@walkeramerica), so people can sign up to get episodes delivered to their inbox (unfortunately I can't publish the full transcripts on Substack because they're too long). I also just hate doing this because it takes time and I don't think anyone actually reads them on my website or on my Substack. And Substack is a centralized shithole anyway. But I've been thinking... **It would make a lot more sense to just publish the summaries and full transcripts directly on Nostr so people can search and highlight the text more easily, with each highlight creating a brand new Nostr event.** I'll also post the quotes I've already pulled from the episode in a section at the top, which will give people a taste of what they can expect in addition to giving them some low-hanging-fruit for highlighting. Most obviously, publishing on Nostr means I just need to publish ONCE and my post will be available to everyone on whatever client they use (huzzah for open protocols and fuck Substack). **There are a few benefits to this Nostr-focused approach:** 1. People can easily search the full text transcripts and find quotes they find meaningful/funny/fucked up/insightful/etc. 2. When they create a highlight, they publish a new Nostr event which people can zap. People are incentivized to find the most valuable quotes because people like getting zapped. 3. If people see highlights they find valuable, they'll come check out the full version of the show notes and subsequently watch/listen to the episodes, in addition to searching the transcript for their own highlight-able material (more zaps ensue). Maybe they even use the transcript as they listen to the episode and highlight as they go. Who knows?! 4. As a content creator, I now have a new way to discover what parts of the episode speak to people most because I can see what people choose to highlight, and which highlights people choose to zap. This helps me decide which parts of an episode will make for the highest-signal short-form video clips, and of finding fire quotes I may have missed on my first pass-through. The highlights become a way to crowdsource signal and filter noise. 5. The episodes become more interactive as new conversations pop up around Nostr based on different highlights. Nostr events are created, thoughts are provoked, zaps are zapped, sats flow, community grows, and my episodes of THE Bitcoin Podcast get more visibility. #GrowNostr ? 6. Thanks to Zap Splits, I can add my podcast guests to a split list, ensuring that any zaps I received are also shared with them (which I did for HODL and Cason on this long-form note). Anyway, that's enough chit chat for now. Let's see if this works or if it's just a late-night idea that doesn't seem as smart in the morning. **The full transcript of the episode is below, in addition to some of the quotes I pulled already (feel free to highlight the shit out of them). But first, here are the links to watch/listen to my conversation with Hodl and Cason:** * Fountain: [https://www.fountain.fm/episode/TO4YqCAm0k2zTdLIi7xl](https://www.fountain.fm/episode/TO4YqCAm0k2zTdLIi7xl) * YouTube: [https://youtu.be/0Jy2QFRmhP4](https://youtu.be/0Jy2QFRmhP4) * Apple: [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bitcoin-trump-freedom-the-american-idea-erik-cason/id1694392423?i=1000676077910](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bitcoin-trump-freedom-the-american-idea-erik-cason/id1694392423?i=1000676077910) * Spotify: [https://open.spotify.com/episode/7rCjFeTCdXwgrX6jylj5jH](https://open.spotify.com/episode/7rCjFeTCdXwgrX6jylj5jH) * Rumble: [https://rumble.com/v5mtk5t-bitcoin-trump-freedom-and-the-american-idea-erik-cason-and-american-hodl.html](https://rumble.com/v5mtk5t-bitcoin-trump-freedom-and-the-american-idea-erik-cason-and-american-hodl.html) * Everywhere else: [https://bitcoinpodcast.net/podcast](https://bitcoinpodcast.net/podcast) * SHOW NOTES: [https://open.substack.com/pub/walkeramerica/p/american-hodl-x-erik-cason-bitcoin](https://open.substack.com/pub/walkeramerica/p/american-hodl-x-erik-cason-bitcoin) * Highlighter: [https://highlighter.com/walker/BITCOIN-TRUMP-FREEDOM-THE-AMERICAN-IDEA-ERIK-CASON-AMERICAN-HODL-THE-Bitcoin-Podcast-zmwmhj](https://highlighter.com/walker/BITCOIN-TRUMP-FREEDOM-THE-AMERICAN-IDEA-ERIK-CASON-AMERICAN-HODL-THE-Bitcoin-Podcast-zmwmhj) * ## EXTREMELY HIGHLIGHT-ABLE QUOTES **Erik Cason** “Look, you dumb motherfuckers, you could have just doubled your fucking wealth over the last year, had you just shut the fuck up and been like, ‘maybe I'm poor and working at a dead end job that I fucking hate because I don't understand how money actually works. And maybe these Bitcoin guys who have made some money and some self-independence for themselves, maybe they have a point.’ But instead they go, this is a far right Psyop that's being played in order to try to destroy the wonderfulness of modern monetary theory. And the government needs to be able to print out money because how else can we spread the love and make sure that all people everywhere are always equal and have all of the equal opportunity always, particularly the brown people that we want to bomb out of existence because, you know, they need to use my fucking pronouns. And that's why we're bombing the shit out of them is because they're hateful, racist pieces of garbage that, you know, and then, and then there's just like the like, well, like fuck Israel, we can't like support them. But like Ukraine is great. Or the people doing the opposite one. I'm like, what, like, why the fuck is the red or the blue people telling you to bomb the right people? **HODL (50:34.642)** You can just do things. You don't have to wait for anybody. Nothing's decreed. Like, listen, fiat is a fucking disease of the mind. That's what it is. And every currency on earth that's not Bitcoin is fiat. Ethereum is fiat. Solana is fiat. Tether is fiat. They're all fiat, okay? And then obviously all the fiat currencies are fiat. But fiat is not just affecting the monetary supply and material goods like iPhones and shit. No, fiat affects YOU. It affects your mind. It affects the way you think. You think that the world is decreed to you from scribes on high. It's not. The world is built by people that get out and build the fucking world. So if you want to do something, just go do it. Get politically active if you want to be politically active. Build a business if you want to build a business. Build a family if you want to build a family. Build an estate if you want to build an estate. Go to Mars if you want to go to Mars. Fucking just go do it. Do what you want to do. That is the Bitcoin story. Not by decree. No one tells you to do it. You decree it. You fucking decree it. You go out and do what the fuck you're gonna do in the world. That's what we're doing here in Bitcoin. **HODL** “The state condemned a man to slow death, double life imprisonment. And we said, ‘no, you don't get to do that.’ We got to rewrite the rules of the game as the game was being played. And it shows that we don't have to just sit there and take it.” **Erik Cason (01:01:49.037)** the world fucking needs Americanism right now. Like shit is fucked up and there needs to be a renewal of this American spirit that pushes out into the world that, you know, is what 1776 was about, which was a global revolution that then swept through Europe because they're like, yo Europeans, look, we just like fucked up the British empire and we earned our own rights by fighting these assholes. Would you like that? They're like, yeah, this like monarchy shit is bullshit. Let's, let's fucking fight. And I hope that we're going to see a renewal of that same spirit that we're going to fight back against our federal government and their surveillance in the deep state and that we're going to push that shit out numb into Europe and that the Europeans are going to be like, yeah, you know what? turns out getting asked fucked by our government and getting global surveillance through a CBDC is bullshit. Let's fight these motherfuckers. **HODL** That is the Bitcoin story. Not by decree. No one tells you to do it. You decree it. You fucking decree it. You go out and do what the fuck you're gonna do in the world. That's what we're doing here in Bitcoin. ## TRANSCRIPT: AMERICAN HODL x ERIK CASON Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (00:00.07) ground audio, but the new Macs do it like really fucking well shockingly, which is honestly quite nice. Okay. We are allegedly live on zap.stream. So I'm just going to fiddle with this for a second. Let's see here. But yeah, we were, Eric, we were just discussing that hodl is basically on team no sleep right now. and has been, yeah, just HODL (00:01.4) Mm-hmm. Erik Cason (00:07.304) It's just. Erik Cason (00:11.184) Alright. HODL (00:24.418) Well, ever since they stole the 2020 election, you gotta stay up all night now. Erik Cason (00:24.72) Are you? Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (00:29.668) It's true. You got to keep them in check. Erik Cason (00:32.525) So is this like a young children thing or is this like your brain is all spun out from HODL (00:38.808) No, this is was it. No, it's because I was at Bitcoin mags live stream for like 12 hours yesterday and I didn't get home until like, you know, 1 30 a.m. and then I fucking didn't go to sleep until 2 a.m. And then because I have young children, I was up at 5 a.m. So it's like, you know, good times. Erik Cason (00:54.893) Good. No, I... My sleep got absolutely fucked a couple nights ago, because like I was like, I'm gonna stay up a little late and watch a movie. And then my brain was like, yeah, you want to stay up fucking late, asshole? How about you fall asleep at 4 a.m.? So this last night I was like, you know what? Like this shit isn't worth it anymore. Like I'm a fucking adult. I'm going to bed at nine o'clock. I'm going to get up at six o'clock and like work out and do all my like adult shit because... Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (01:07.735) how you like that. Erik Cason (01:18.866) I'm just like fucking sick. Like I could do that shit when I was in my 20s, but like that's a long ways away from now. So now I gotta like take care of my body or it's gonna fuck me up. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (01:30.62) it's I was out. I was fishing like this whole weekend, like a dude's trip with my, dad and my father-in-law and like some other older dudes. And just like, yeah, we were fishing, fishing for steelheads. It was a wonderful time. My first time fishing for steelheads had a fucking blast, but like you're out in the river all goddamn day. And by the time we got back, like, and I was like the young buck of the group and still I'm like, 7 P.M. It's about time to turn in like, fuck. Erik Cason (01:42.099) Drop. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (02:00.591) But yeah, so I feel your pain. But then last night I got home from the trip and like was watching MSNBC for fun and stayed up until like three or something because I was. HODL (02:08.802) Yeah. did either of you watch the view this morning? It was, it was so good. I would highly recommend it. Well, they start whoopee Goldberg starts off with tears in her eyes and she's trying to be magnanimous and she, she goes, yeah, let's talk about, let's get into it. And then she passes it to Joy Behar and Joy Behar holds it together for like, Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (02:13.572) No. Erik Cason (02:13.819) No, like- Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (02:19.915) Describe it. HODL (02:35.832) 90 % of the time and she's like, you know, we got it. It was a fair election and we got it just but he's a racist and then they just like rescinded. It's a full struggle session. It was amazing. Like honestly, it could have been pay-per-view. I would have paid $75 to watch it. It was one of the greatest things I've ever seen. It was amazing. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (02:47.081) my god. Erik Cason (02:56.683) So like, what are they gonna do now other than just like malfunction and have a hard time? Like I'm just really enjoying getting to like sit in this space and being like democracy is super great, isn't it? Isn't it wonderful that we elected a fascist Hitler who's waited for his second term to implement the genocide against all of the people that are you? And they're like, the demogood, so I'm really. HODL (03:20.024) Yeah. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (03:24.54) The glitching is real right now. you almost feel bad, or I would almost feel bad, if the people who are glitching, like, were glitching right now, weren't so insufferable for so long. Like, I would almost feel bad, you know what I mean? But I'm not quite there yet. HODL (03:40.049) Yeah, yeah. No, I don't feel a shred of guilt about anything. I'm just laughing at all the memes. It's hilarious. Erik Cason (03:42.172) One. Erik Cason (03:47.146) Like look, like fuck this voting and democracy nonsense, but like I'm, really enjoying these liberals that have used the last four years to try to cram all this fucking nonsense down everybody's throat and now have to deal with like the reactionary against that. in addition to the fact of that, like it's about fucking time. Like the last, the last four years were like really fucking wacky. And like we had, we, we still have this geriatric prison. Like what the fuck happened to Joe Biden? Did he just like vanish? Like what? HODL (04:08.6) Mm-hmm. Erik Cason (04:16.862) It's just so weird to me in that, like in the meanwhile, the whole liberal machine keeps marching on being like, like this is, so anyways, I'm just excited to watch this whole thing kind of break down and crash into flames and see what happens. HODL (04:31.128) I woke up feeling just proud of America. And the reason I was proud of America is not because America voted the way I wanted them to vote, which they did, like in a landslide victory. The reason I was proud of them, proud of the feeling of being American was that propaganda doesn't work on us. You tried to Psyop us and we just aren't fucking having it. Because being an American means doing whatever the fuck we want and you are not allowed to tell us what to do. That's the feeling, that's the energy I woke up with. Like, the American people are exactly who I thought they were. You know, it's like that meme. They are who we thought they were! They are who we thought they were! You know, it's like, the American people are who I thought they were and they're just as fucking wild and untamed and fucking crazy. and individualistic as I've always expected and needed them and wanted them to be and known that they were and I just fucking love it. I love seeing the results come in and then the people who are the professional propagandists, the Joe Scarborough, the MSNBCs, the Rachel Maddows, the Whoopi Goldbergs, right? Professional paid propagandists go, I can't believe calling them racist garbage didn't work. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck all of you. Fuck you. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (05:51.245) It's fucking insane. Erik Cason (05:51.287) Well, it's interesting because like it's a it's this really reactionary hateful thing where and it's like super hypocritical where it's like, fuck you, you racist piece of goddamn shit. Like you need to go into the fucking concentration camp and be brutally raped and tortured because you won't tolerate other people. You fucking sick fucking pig. And it's like, you know, maybe there should be some self reflection here about some of those things you said and are expressing and like HODL (06:20.642) Yeah. Erik Cason (06:20.715) I don't know, like this is the thing that I've been trying to deal with kind of in the liberal bubble I'm in. It's like, hey, do you guys think that like all the hatred and vitriol that you're directing at white people and about like how useless men are and that they really obstruct everything that could have ever been done that's good might have a little something to do with this. In addition to like, perhaps we're in the position that we're in because of the way that you keep shitting on all these people that actually might have some degree of value to society. And I'm not saying they're better or worse than anybody, but maybe trying to direct all your hate towards them could have something to do with the outcome that came here as opposed to you being like, hey, these people, we'd like to include them in the fold rather than just kind of doing the reverse hate thing. But you know, I don't know. I'm not, I'm not a politician. HODL (07:07.96) Yeah. It's tough to tell people like, you know all that shit that's in your head? That's not real. It's just not real. None of it. You made it up. You're living in magical fairy princess land. Okay. And what I would, what I would want you to do is form a hypothesis and test it. You know I mean? Like experiment. Are you in magical fairy princess land? Can you fly? You know what I mean? Maybe you start on the ground first. Don't jump out of a window, but like, you know, maybe test your flap your wings little, see if it works. If it doesn't, maybe we have the wrong hypothesis. I don't know. Weird. Just be calling here. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (07:42.586) Whoa, that would require like critical thought though and actual self-reflection and like now they've just like they've gone the other way and they're like well actually the black and Latinos are racist too and they clearly like and you're like hold on hold on guys I was told because of the intersectional hierarchy that they couldn't be Racist but but now they are racist and the Arabs to some of those Arabs We don't like them the Cubans especially escaping communism coming here voting for a Republican. Who do they think they are? It's ridiculous HODL (07:53.748) Right. HODL (08:00.876) They can't be racist. Yeah, they can't. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (08:12.804) Yeah, it's fucking will there be any self-reflection though like any like moment of inward like looking inward to say Maybe we were kind of part of the problem, huh? Hmm HODL (08:23.448) They're nowhere close to being ready to deal with reality. In a sense, kind of like, it's a huge miscarriage of American civil duty that's happened because these people have been so badly brainwashed and Psy-op by the mainstream media, these professional state propagandists that you can't help but feel a little bit bad for them. at the same time, mean, There's nothing to do but to get out of your echo bubble. you, the only person who can crawl out of Plato's cave is you. And I don't know how to explain to you that the shadows aren't real. They're just not real. And so like those of us who are out of the cave, we, we all talk about how retarded you all are in the cave, but we don't know how to actually get you out of the cave. Cause every time we try and bring you out, you fucking bite us and go rabid, you know? Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (09:17.66) And we can literally tell you the cave exit is right there. This is where you need to go to get out of the cave. And they're like, that exit looks not really like it's inclusive. I don't think I'm going to go out that way. Sorry, Kason. Go ahead, Erik Cason (09:17.689) It's a pretty sad situation overall. Erik Cason (09:31.29) Well, like with it being at a Bitcoin all time high right now, like that, you know, is what I came on with is that like, look, you dumb motherfuckers, like you could have, you could have just doubled your fucking wealth over, know, over the last year, had you just like shut the fuck up and been like, maybe I'm poor and working at a dead end job that I fucking hate because I don't understand how money actually works. And maybe these Bitcoin guys who have like made some money and some self-independence for themselves, like maybe they have a point. But instead they go, this is a far right Psyop that's being played in order to try to destroy the wonderfulness of modern monetary theory. And the government needs to be able to print out money because how else can we spread the love and make sure that all people everywhere are always equal and have all of the equal opportunity always, particularly the brown people that we want to bomb out of existence because You know, they need to use my fucking pronouns. And that's why we're bombing the shit out of them is because they're hateful, racist pieces of garbage that, you know, and then, and then there's just like the like, well, like fuck Israel, we can't like support them. But like Ukraine is great. Or the people doing the opposite one. I'm like, what, like, why the fuck is the red or the blue people telling you to bomb the right people? Regardless, like maybe you should just be upset that brown people are you know, and in the case of Ukraine, white people too are getting blown up. Like the bombs are not racist. They will kill people whether they're white or brown. And I don't know, it would just be really great if people could be like, you know, maybe we should just kind of talk to people instead of murder them. But again, I'm not a politician. Maybe there's something I'm missing here. Maybe they need to be murdered. HODL (11:07.501) Yeah. key on this is like the Bitcoin price as a lens by which to view the world. It's like last night when I was watching the election results. I was at Bitcoin Magazine studio and they had all the boards up and all the stuff, you know, and I'm watching it all. It's like the traditional media and I'm on my phone looking at the Bitcoin price and I'm like Trump's gonna win. Like it just got bid in the markets. This is gonna happen. I now know the future ahead of traditional media. And it's the same thing with like, Polymarket was telling us Trump was going to win for months and months because people have been actually, you know, putting economic value behind those, those, you know, those votes that they're making with their economic capital, right? And so, you know, if you're listening to traditional media, you're trying to do sense making that way and you have like, you know, the, poll, the Nate Silvers of the world, the pollsters telling you, Ann Seltzer telling you like, he's going to win Iowa, whatever. they, these people have no skin in the game. So there's no. proof of work to their predictions. you need to, once you have proof of work as a lens, you as a Bitcoiner, look for it and see it and find it everywhere and anything that you can attach proof of work to, you realize that this is a real thing and you can bank on it. But I mean, people that don't have that are doing everything proof of stake, right? Like they just don't understand that reality that unfortunately they are living in. There's nothing you can do about it. can't. You can't escape that reality, right? Like you are inside that reality. Erik Cason (12:42.853) Well, it'd be clear like, proof of stake as a methodology that's like operable and like that's called socialism. Like I can actually like hijack the government and be like, Hey, Mr. Musk, like, fuck you. We're going to like steal all your shit. It's like, cool. Like now that we did that guys, like how much more runway we have? They're like, we have, we have four days. We got, we got four days to run the budget now. It's like, it's like the guy that's Wait, wait, the guy that's getting us into space and like gave us like satellite internet and shit, like stealing everything from him got us four days of runway? And they're like, yeah. So we're out of time now. So who are we going to rob next? They're like, that Amazon guy. Yeah, like fuck him. He's like stealing from people and he's hateful. It's like, yeah. Why do you think he has better approval ratings than like the and like everyone in like the US military. Like it seems like people really like him. They're like, cause, cause he's, he's racist, right? So let's steal his shit. And like, and like, that's what proof of stake is about. It's like, fuck these other people. We can like steal their shit and like remake the rules so that like stealing shit is okay when we steal shit for the right reasons. And this is like the clusterfuck that's Ethereum. Like if you've watched like what their monetary policy has been like since the fucking Dow fork that happened, it's literally always been like, yeah, but like this is the one time it will ever happen. Well, maybe we'll change it again. You know what? Fuck it. We're just going to kind of do whatever we want. And like, that's fine, but it's not going to work out long-term and there's going to be very severe fucking consequences. So you... could learn about how economics works and it turns out that like, nobody likes being stolen from and it turns out like, if I can steal from you, I can steal from other people too. And that's like a really big problem. So you should probably be invested in a system that goes, you know what? We're not gonna steal from anybody ever. But what about Hitler and Pol Pot? And it's like, yeah, it turns out that even fucking assholes, we like need to respect their right to property too. Erik Cason (14:54.332) And they're like, but if we do that, then like all of the racist and hateful people will win. And it's like, you know, maybe you need to expand your worldview beyond thinking that everybody's hateful and racist. And that's kind of their main problem. By the way, like I've never actually, like when I was younger, I had a couple of friends, dads who were like pretty racist and stuff, but it was always this like, I don't know. Like I've never met somebody who like really had as their like main thing. They're like, yeah, but like, fuck the Mexicans and the black people. It's it's like usually like. Yeah, but what about Habib? Like he was helping us out early and they're like, well, yeah, he's brown and that's fine. But, I'm like, so you're like, not really that racist. And they're like, well, you know, they're trying to take our jobs. And it's like, well, but were you gonna, were you gonna do the gardening? And they're like, well, no, fuck no. I ain't gonna get wet today. It's like, maybe he, maybe Jesus is pretty good at what he does, you know? I'm just saying. I don't think he's taking your job. You don't seem like you're gonna be gardening in the ring. I'm just saying. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (15:57.544) I think so much this is like a it's it's it is a mirror right like What you see and everybody else tends to be more of a reflection of what you have going on in the inside? Than what is actually going on with them because you don't fucking know them you have no way of knowing what they're what their beliefs are whether or not they are a Giant bigot and a racist or whether they're just some man or woman trying to live their life Put food in the table for their kids and not get just absolutely bent over a barrel by the government which is like a reasonable thing. Like nobody really wants to be bent over a barrel by the government, right? But apparently if you push back against that too hard, you are given one of these labels. But then it's like you have kind of this proof of concept here that this is just a reflection of what is going on in a lot of these, you know, bigot callers minds. When you see them say things like, you know, I can't like why would all of these Latinos vote for their own deportation? It's like, do you think the only Latinos in the country? are here illegally? Like, is that what you think? That they're voting for their own deportation? Like, there's lots of Latinos here who came here legally, like a ton of them. And it turns out a lot of them were escaping the same sort of bullshit socialist verging on communist policies that you're trying to push on them now. And then you turn around and call them racist because they didn't agree with you. Like, it's this insane paternalistic projection and I like but again the sad thing is I don't know if there is ever like a come to Jesus moment where they're like you know what you know guys we went too far we were wrong I was was pretty messed up for a few years there huh we're cool now let's keep things civil we're not gonna call everybody Nazis anymore especially you white lib or you white women you know you white suburban women you Nazis like it's just like turns out calling everybody a Nazi is a really bad campaign move like I don't know who like how who could have known right shocking. HODL (17:57.56) I think you guys are both being charitable and trying to diagnose them. I spent a lot of time trying to do that too, get into their heads and understand their psychology. How could you think this way? It's so severely retarded. And now I'm just like, listen, we have now unfettered control of all three branches of government. it's like, I don't listen. At the Thanksgiving dinner table, I don't pay attention to the conversation at the kids table. I don't care what the kids are talking about. You know what mean? It doesn't matter. It's like... What color crayon do you like? I don't know. like burnt umber. That's my favorite. Yeah. It's like no, who gives a fuck? We're at the adult table now and it's about stacking wins on the board and you know, like for instance, mean, Trump is the first Bitcoin president. Vance owns Bitcoin. We now have the opportunity to like see real Bitcoin appointments be made where like people who are being recommended for high purchase of power will be people that are sympathetic to Bitcoin, if not Bitcoiners themselves from an ideological standpoint. And to me, that's the most fascinating thing that's going on. And whatever like woke mind virus is like eating the brains of like the liberal white women we all know. I don't give a single fuck like drink your Chardonnay bitch and like hopefully it cures it. I don't know what to tell you, you know, take some ivermectin. Erik Cason (19:11.977) Well, it's funny because I have a good friend who like, you know, he's like, deep barrier roots. So like everybody is like very, very liberal. And like he's a bit of the black sheep of family. So he, you know, he was like, I'm going to vote for Trump. And this, this is like very upsetting to his family. And like, you know, everyone was getting outraged with him. And he was like, look, he was like, look, like the only way we get to talk about politics now is like, you have to steel man my position. Like you don't get to come to me and be like, But Trump's like a racist bigot. Like you need to actually come to me and be like, well, perhaps you want to elect Trump because like you feel different about economic policies or whatever. And I've found like, this is the best way to actually like force people to, like think in a meaningful way. Cause like, otherwise they'll do the same bullshit with you. But I've found like it really glitches people pretty hard. Cause I can be like, look, like I, I understand your position. Like you think Kamala as being the first black woman president. is really going to create policies that champion and allow for, you know, people of various and diverse backgrounds to be able to have a real leg up in America. Totally hear that. I have a fundamentally different position that I don't believe that that actually helps people in a unique way. And I actually think there's a very discreet kind of racism that's going on with that. When you say, Hey, we need to give reparations to black people. because they're not good enough to be able to compete with the white people. It's like, they're, you know, like I see something a bit racist in that. And like, again, I'm not trying to take away from that. There, there can be good reasoning behind that, but you know, particularly living in the state of California where this has actually been proposed as like a meaningful bill seems pretty fucking racist to me to steal a bunch of money from me and give it to a bunch of, of, you know, people, you know, I think in this case, just black people that are going to be getting that. money directly when as far as I know they directly were not enslaved by me or my ancestors and I'm not sure what their relationship is to it either. I'm saying the with Kamala Harris like black woman this is this you know great that if she was elected that she would be the first black woman but let's be very clear she's not like African-American she's a Jamaican woman that's where she's descended from and again like doesn't take away from the fact that that is would be the first black woman president but Erik Cason (21:35.851) She is not an African-American and that's a bit misleading to kind of do that whole pitch. But most people are really uninterested in this just because they have a deep vested interest in what their emotional capacity is. And that's one of the things I've found deeply disturbing about a lot of liberal ideology is that like if something feels right, that means that like that is right. And when you try to pick that apart, they go, well, that's racist. And that doesn't feel like if I'm, that doesn't feel good. So we can't be that. And like it turns out that like maybe there's a little bit of racism you have going on there with, you know, wanting to steal money from white people and give it to all the other people. Just saying. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (22:16.397) It's you know, it's you mentioned like this friend who's bucking the trend in his Bay Area family, right? And something I just think is so genuinely sad is that we are at a place right now and and I'm sure you know people could come up with examples of like well in the Civil War families were broken up over that and it's like, okay, let's not please let's not compare the two the two moments in time, but the fact that people will literally stop speaking to their family basically, you know, diso you know disavow them like well my My mom voted for Donald Trump. And so I can't I just I won't speak to her anymore. I can't possibly because it turns out even though this woman loved me and raised me my entire life and made so many sacrifices for me and did everything she possibly could to give me every advantage I could have. She's a racist bigot. And it's like people will literally stop like I'm sure you guys know people like I can think of a number of people within circles. I run it like off the top of my head that level like nope. I won't be talking to them anymore. Like I like I'm out, you know, no more family Thanksgiving for me. I can't be around this racism. No more Christmas. I you're not going to see your grandchild. I don't know any of those examples personally out of no more grandchildren time. That'd be like especially fucked up. But the point is like how do you have so much hate in your heart that you cannot you cannot get over the fact that somebody that you love and that loves you may have a slightly different opinion than you. And that the fact that their opinion is different is so offensive to you that you would break apart those ties that bind you for a fucking political candidate, for a fucking agent of the state apparatus. That is fucking insane. Like that truly blows my mind and I think that is really sad. If somebody by some chances listened to this who's like, well I haven't talked to my uncle Jim in two years because he voted for so-and-so on either side of the fucking aisle. Who cares? Like you should be able to argue the most with the people you love the most. Because no matter what, at the end of the day, you guys fucking still love each other. Get the fuck over it. You're going to have disagreements. It's OK. That's a beautiful thing. And you should have people that challenge you. Erik Cason (24:25.621) What? It's both about like a first of all, it's about like a really weak frame of individual reference that that that's very frankly, callow at the bottom. Because like if you you have to identify so strongly with a political party or a movement that that becomes definitive about you and that like you you need to break with other people because they're disagreeing with it. Because like, look, like I'm clearly like a freak Bitcoiner and like everyone in my life doesn't agree. with the Bitcoin thing, despite the fact that they've seen me have very, very fat gains while they have lost lots of money. And I think that's sad and unfortunate. And like, I'm always like waiting, you know, at the dinner table at Thanksgiving for them to be like, so Eric, like Bitcoin's at an all time high. Like we were all totally fucking wrong and we could have, you know, doubled our portfolios had we actually listened to you. But like, nope, never fucking happens. And at best I try to bring up the Bitcoin thing. Wow, like the, just don't understand this money thing. So how was the game last night? And I'm like, you you could like, you could have actually like rolled that into like a question being like, so Eric, like what is money? Like why is Bitcoin actually different from the dollar? Cause I don't understand and you seem to get it. But yeah, that never happens. And I find it pretty sad and unfortunate. And like the other one is like. I'm still open to Bitcoin being fucking wrong. I'm certain it's not. I mean, like if you happen to be a top tier world cryptographer and you're like, check it out. There's this error in the sub 256 curve that was chosen. And turns out the whole thing's fucking broken. You know, I'd probably contact the US military first and like let them know and understand that fucking encryption standards don't work. I just find it pretty fascinating how deep. Erik Cason (26:19.241) Most people have fled into the them and like they don't actually have a definitive idea of who and what they are, their purpose in the world. that they're like much more interested in making sure everybody feels comfortable and safe rather than making a little bit of discomfort in a conversation that might force some thought and growth. Cause like, again, I don't want to be a fucking asshole, but Why don't we think real hard about how things are going and what we would really desire for ourselves and others? And like, I don't know. It's, I know this Thanksgiving is going to get interesting with people being like, that hateful bigot Trump, he was elected and he's going to destroy America now. I'll be like, yeah, like it was pretty bad when Hitler was elected for the second non-consecutive term. And when he really made the choice to go after all of his political opponents at that point in time, that was a really weird. time in history, huh guys? And they're like, yeah. HODL (27:13.932) Yeah, remember, remember Hitler's bipartisan coalition, you know, like the Tulsi Gavrids of the Weimar Germany were joining up with Hitler like, no, it's so stupid, dude. I think if we take it at face value, everything Eric said is and Walker said is true. But like, you know, I think a lot of these things are just that family members just really don't fuck with each other for deep, deep familial reasons like trauma, trauma reasons. And they're using the Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (27:24.998) you HODL (27:40.93) the Trump thing is a convenient excuse, right? Rather than going to therapy and like hashing out their shit or having a frank and honest conversation. I mean, I have family members in my life who, you know, I've had these frictions with and the truth is like, our relationship was never good. It goes deep to the psyche of both individuals in the conflict. It relates back to our grandparents and their site and you know, it just goes back and back and you're like. Okay, so I actually I've been like cast in a play here of like some deep familial trauma and I'm not even like really aware of what's going on and neither is the other participant. We just know that we don't like each other and then you have this flashpoint of Donald Trump's election in 2016 or in 2024 or whatever and then that becomes the the way to fissure like it creates the fissures in the relationship and whatever. So I think I think that's a lot of what's going on. But I also think that you know more on the the topic that you were saying about, you were trying to talk to all these people and they wouldn't listen or whatever. I went through this myself and what I realized is that I had survivor's guilt. So I needed to fix them for me, had nothing to do with them. It was all about me. It had to do with my own feelings of inadequacy around not being able to save my own mother from her psychological issues. And then when I realized that I was like, okay, I can just stop doing that. because it's not serving the other person. I thought it was my way into being a good person. Like I'm a good person. I care about these people. I really want to help them and whatever. But the truth is man that there are people with a growth mindset and there are people without a growth mindset. And I'm a person with a growth mindset. I want to continue growing in life and doing, you know, cause there's no, there's no stasis in nature, right? That's nature abhors a vacuum. Like there is no stasis. everything's in constant flux. It's constant chaos and you're, basically either growing or decaying, right? That's how nature works. And so we are a part of nature. That's how we work. Also, that's how we work psychologically, but for some reason, people don't think or believe this and they like to, you know, have this sort of delusion that they're, they're a static element in a static system. makes no sense to me. And I can't stand people who are like that and I don't want to be around them. So for me, after I realized the survivor's guilt thing, I was like, okay, yeah. HODL (29:58.432) I don't want to be around people that don't have a growth mindset. And so now I just am not. So if you don't have that, if you don't think that way, I'm just not around you, bro. I don't know what you got going on and I don't care. And I wish you well. I hope you get out of it, but fuck off. Erik Cason (30:13.977) Yeah, I've, you know, it's taken me a while to learn it, but particularly family, it's as much as like, really want like deep connecting conversation and for like us to understand each other and for them to like meet me where I'm at. They have like zero fucking interest in that. Like they really want to talk about the weather, like anything that's like level one, maybe level two, but like level three, fuck no. and it took me a long time to like button up against that wall being like, what, like, why aren't you guys turned on? Like, why don't you like, you know, I'm like, like COVID was like a great example of like trying to bring that stuff up and like lots of big conflict coming up. And it hurt me for a long time because I was like, why don't they want to understand me? Like, this is so difficult. I want to be loved in the way I want to be loved. And like, I finally just kind of got to the place of like, like this is their shit. HODL (30:50.104) Mm-hmm. Erik Cason (31:04.262) they're incapable of it. And like the more I rock the boat, the more that they're going to resist it, making capsize more likely. And like, I just need to be okay with doing the level one and level two thing with them. And the truth is I can, I can do level eight, nine, 10 shit with you guys. And like that's frankly, like that's why I really fucking love the Bitcoin community is cause like I can have real and sincere conversation where we actually think hard about shit and go deep and enjoy that. And like that's. Kind of what friends are supposed to be for. Family can be for, you know, just loving them for who they're meant. you know, I love my mom, really great person. I'm never going to have a deep and thoughtful connecting conversation about the political nature of world and our reality with her. Gonna have a really great conversation about how beautiful the sky is. But, you know, that's about as far as it can go. And that's okay. And so I just, I really welcome people who are going to go into this Thanksgiving ready to fist fight everybody. Just like eat like a fucking marijuana brownie before that. And just like enjoy staring at the vase or some shit. Like it's not worth fighting your family and their stupid ideas of what they believe is right. Cause the other is like, if you're a Bitcoiner, like it's pretty clear that the next cycle is getting pumping right now. And so anybody who is even remotely smart in your family is going to come to you when Bitcoin's at $120,000 at Thanksgiving and be like, hey, you know, you like made like some money with this, right? And you can be like, yeah, I'm like really fucking high, but yeah, I made some money with this. And they'll be like, could you, could you tell me a bit about that? And maybe that'll be your opening. Don't, don't expect it, but Yeah, I'm pretty sure that with what the Trump team is up to, they're about to like front run destroying the entire financial system. Cause that's like, that's kind of their MO. They're like good with this money shit and they all clearly hold Bitcoin and they're clearly going to be appointing people. So, look, like I'm not telling you what to do, but like, if you like money, you should probably buy Bitcoin and keep holding it for awhile. Cause I'm pretty sure it's going to keep going up for awhile here. Erik Cason (33:15.035) Although there is some fucking moron right now who's absolutely gonna slam their hand in the door and be like, it's going back to 15k. No way the bit going to keep up with this. HODL (33:23.881) 58K is a lost universe. Otto said it's not static. Bullshit. 58K, stable coin, static, static system. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (33:31.261) To fair, I love the 58k meme and I am guilty of using it so much, but now I've also implemented the 158k meme because it looks almost the same to the the unseeing eye. You just see 58k, but there's a one in there. HODL (33:43.128) Why not, why not 250 AK? Why not 350 AK? Why not 950 AK? Why not 1.258 K? Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (33:48.17) Jesus I hadn't even gotten that far fuck why not Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (33:55.421) 5.8 you know, like fuck it. Let's let's roll it up. So first of all, I appreciate you guys because you and I appreciate that we can have level eight and nine conversation, maybe someday a level 10. I don't know how high these levels go. So like how the scale works exactly, but I appreciate that there exist people that we can have these kinds of fucking talks with because it's you're right. It's not always within the family. Sometimes it is. And that's very fortunate, but like If that's not you out there listening like that's okay, too Like you know, that's why that's why you're in Bitcoin, right? Because you can go meet with a bunch of other strange people who want to talk about how fucked up our monetary system is like ad nauseum and like are Super fucking down with that and that's a beautiful thing But I'm curious cuz cuz Eric you mentioned just like the Trump team MO being Go in and kind of like fuck shit up a little bit in the in the financial system. Do you think? Do you think, okay, like Trump is on board with that? Like, is Trump gonna go full on end the Fed? Like, is Ron Paul coming on here and we are fucking burning this thing down? Or is Trump, like, he's, I don't know about your, like, the vibes you've gotten from, but he seems more measured lately. Like, maybe it's, you know, almost getting assassinated. Maybe it's just a little, you know, couple extra years. Maybe it's Barron being nine and a half feet tall standing next to him. And he's like, you know what? I'm not the biggest guy in the room anymore. I don't know. We're like, Where do you think we go? Where is Trump at on this? And do you think the team he's assembling is actually going to go in there and be like, no, we're going to bring the Fed down? Erik Cason (35:34.077) I think from the standpoint, it looks like that's a possibility, but like I, I am very, very deeply convinced that like, the deep state is absolutely and unequivocally in control. And there's no conceivable fucking way that anybody in any elected or any appointed position can like meaningfully stop any of this. Cause like, I, I can't really imagine the powers that be in the back room are like, you guys, they let, like got the right people in the right position to like do stuff like. What are we gonna do now? And they're like, dang, guess we lost. We just gotta accept it. So no, and I think Ron Paul and Elon Musk and all the people who get in right position, they are absolutely going to try their best to do stuff. And then I'm pretty sure none of it's gonna happen. Same thing, totally holding my breath that Trump keeps his word about freeing Ross day one. Gonna be mum on the word until then. If it doesn't happen, I'm not gonna be shocked. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (36:28.371) Yeah. Erik Cason (36:32.094) If it does happen, I will be the first to give alkylates to where they're due because that would be phenomenal. My hope is that everybody who's really full all the hopium of all this stuff will see the next two years play out. Very little will actually change in terms of it. Yeah, that's when I'm gonna launch my radical states rights movement to use the states to unilaterally fuck up the federal government. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (36:40.764) Amen. HODL (36:59.272) Dude, let's talk about the Ross thing for a second because did anyone have more on the line yesterday than Ross Ulbricht? No. Like, mean, Ross Ulbricht's life hung in the balance. was double life, rot in a prison cell for all eternity until you die and are taken away in a casket or freedom in three months, freedom in two and a half months. I mean, that's a fucking crazy crazy thing that he had to live through, you know, the potential that either one of these outcomes, was like, everyone was saying it was a 50-50 toss up between these outcomes. And luckily, we're in the good timeline. And, you know, I was hanging out with the production crew when I was at this thing last night, and, you know, basically they were asking me like, why do you guys all care so much about Ross? And I said, listen, Ross's story is a miscarriage of justice. and Ross didn't deserve double life. did do something wrong. He did deserve some prison time. Like, that's just how it is. I know, like, the anarcho-capitalist would be like, no way, bro, but it's like, come on. I mean, we have a society that has rules. He broke the rules. Like, he does a little time. But he's, at this point in life, he has paid his, whatever debt he owed to society has been more than paid. He just created a website. He never hired hitmen. All that is bullshit. The man who allegedly, he hired to have killed supports him as a vocal supporter of Ross Ulberg. I mean, you've been lied to about this case, the agents, the federal agents on the case were dirty. They were they were stealing. Yes. Yeah, FBI. Yep. Erik Cason (38:33.375) Like all of them from different agencies, like every single motherfucking federal agent in that goddamn agency stole money, like it's fucking insane. And most of them like got off the hook too. And this is what I'm so fucking angry about is the hypocrisy of Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (38:34.759) Yeah. HODL (38:43.352) Yeah, they did last time that Ross last time that Ross exactly. No, and I mean what I'm saying is like this is this case is a miscarriage of justice and Ross deserves to be free and he will be free in two and a half months. I'm not one of these Bitcoiners who's like we'll see bro. We'll see if Trump does it like no, no, he's he's gonna be free. It's a campaign promise. We put up serious money and we went to bat for Trump and now we're gonna get Ross out and the reason it's important to us is what I told the production crew. is because yes, all those things are truths of miscarriage of justice, et cetera. But what it shows is that we are ascendant politically, that we matter, that we're important. Things weren't supposed to happen this way. And then they happen this way. The state condemned a man to slow death, double life imprisonment. And we said, no, you don't get to do that. We got to rewrite the rules of the game as the game was being played. And it shows that we don't have to just sit there and take it. mean, imagine the timeline where Bitcoin goes to zero. In that timeline, Ross rots in prison for the rest of his life. But we're in the good timeline where Bitcoin is at 76k and Ross is free in two and a half months. And I mean, it just shows that we are going to be players in the world. You're not going to be off in the woods with your cold card shoved up your ass. I mean, if you want to do that, like that's fine. Like get freaky. It's okay. Bitcoin is about freedom, but Erik Cason (40:03.294) You should really consider a ledger if you're doing that, you know. HODL (40:05.41) Go like that, open your eyes. Yeah, don't, the cold card is very square. Listen, you want to shove it up your ass, you be my guest, okay? But we're going to be playing. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (40:05.901) Yeah, for real. Erik Cason (40:14.43) I really need to make a buttplug that is specifically designed for this. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (40:18.076) How has no one made that yet? That's my question. HODL (40:19.544) I know right. We are going to be players in the world and we're going to have political power. And we're also going to make some butt plugs. Okay. That can accept a leg. Erik Cason (40:25.255) seed taker. Erik Cason (40:32.606) You want your engraved butt plug? Please read each other. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (40:37.95) We're thinking of spinning up a little, a little shop for them. They're going to be super nice. Hypoallergenic, course, really smooth on entry. Not so much on exit. Cause you don't want that thing coming out necessarily, right? Like you got to keep it in there. Erik Cason (40:41.129) You HODL (40:43.224) I'm HODL (40:51.938) Just to wrap that up, I'm happy for Ross and I'm happy for us. think like this is a big moment in Bitcoin's history. Ross being for it is a big moment. Erik Cason (41:02.625) Well, and and, you know, I'm on the opposite side. I'm going to hold my breath till it happens. And when it does, I'm, you know, that'll bring you back in the fold from like crazy crypto anarchist land. Like I'm, might like move into like far right political activism or some shit. but it's really important to get that, like, we're an actual political force now. And like, I really hope that we're going to start behaving like it and that there's going to be like a real actual Bitcoin contingency because like, HODL (41:09.698) Just fair. Erik Cason (41:30.175) I actually think in the next four years, there's a real fucking shot of ending the Fed. And like, I don't think anybody inside the federal government will do it, but I do legitimately believe that like, if we got 35 states to push through their state legislature legislation to like end the Fed, that that shit would get amended to the constitution. And like the federal government would have to like flip the fuck out and figure out how to do that. And I think it's really important because like the federal government is so out of fucking control at this point in time. We really need to start figuring out new and different methodologies to change how that can happen. So I'm just excited to see all the change that's happening and also like fucking 100K is like in play now. So it's to be really exciting when we get there. I haven't heard from Valis in like a year. Well, I've privately heard him from before, but like I hope his 100K party is still going to happen somewhere. HODL (42:12.6) dude, 100k by Thanksgiving. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (42:21.727) Yeah, we're whether I mean I don't like to you know talk about price too much on this show because I'm not an open-mouthed YouTube shill But that being said caveat, you know, it is like above 70 say we're like 76 200 right now that's just like kind of a trip, you know, and I would I agree with you that like As I was watching the price last night again, I like I've been on the river these last like four days. I have like checked Twitter a couple of times then I was like, nah, that's not really of interest to me. Like I'm out in fucking nature catching fish hanging out with like my dad. Like that's what I want to, this is what I want to be doing right at this moment. And, then I got back and of course I was like, yes, you know, like bring it in. And then, you know, stayed up until 2 AM watching MSNBC as one does, but like you could, you could feel something was happening and I think you can feel something is happening now. And I just wonder like, HODL (43:00.93) Yeah. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (43:17.916) does Bitcoin like because I would say that Bitcoin is it is inherently partisan or excuse me it is inherently political it is not partisan right it is like money is always going to be political we're talking about separating fucking money in state of course that is going to be political it is not inherently partisan it is only partisan if partisans make it partisan and that's not to say the people that are pro Bitcoin are the partisans who are making it partisan it's the ones on the other side who are reactionary to it right HODL (43:25.804) Yes. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (43:46.343) So I'm just interested to see like, I mean, fuck like there, it's a, it's a red fucking wave. Like Trump blew out the popular vote. He's got the mandate, right? He obviously won the electoral college. You've got a Republican majority in the house and the Senate by all rights. have no excuse not to do everything they claim they want to do. Right? Like they have, there's no excuse. HODL (44:04.704) interest rate. 100%. By the way, by the way, the Democrats going after us and brought and broader crypto markets was such in retrospect, such a massive unforced error on their part. There was no reason to make significant enemies of us. None. And all they did was suffer because of it. Now, like, I don't know how much we affected the election. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (44:21.554) Yes. HODL (44:32.62) But we affected it some non-trivial amount, okay? And it just, it wasn't something they needed to do and they did it anyway because they were drunk with power. That's why they Erik Cason (44:43.022) I mean, they did it because like they believe their own retarded bullshit that they like they had literally pumped up their own ass intentionally where they're they're like, this is used for terrorism financing and it's it's so all the bros can get away with tax and like it was all bullshit that they just repeatedly kept convincing themselves like like the fucking Greenpeace nonsense and like the like I feel so bad for the guy that's running that Twitter because like Like all he does is tweet something and is immediately, like provided all of the evidence of how fucking wrong he is. And like the other thing that's just so shameful is that like these people are supposed to actually like give a fuck about the environment and like, what's more important than making sure that we're actually getting clean hydro power from power plants that were going to be shut down otherwise, you know, like what's more important to people in sub-Saharan Africa who have never had access to fucking electricity and can't have clean water and now they can. Like it's, it's just so disingenuous. And like, again, I would really hope that, you know, the Democrats would sit down and be like, wow, we like, we really fucked that one up. We should really like reconsider this. But, I very, very strong doubts that that's going to happen. And it's going to be really interesting to see kind of what the co what comes out of it. But yeah, I have a very strong expectation. that they are going to continue to double down until essentially they fracture the Democrat party into like, there's either gonna be a renewed moderated democratic movement or it's gonna fracture out into like different parties. Either way, it's gonna be fucking entertaining. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (46:26.386) Can I say something controversial guys? am, I am, I am glad Elizabeth Warren was reelected because honestly, I, she was, she was against what John Deaton, right? He was like the, yeah, he lost. Erik Cason (46:28.546) No. HODL (46:30.962) Yeah. Erik Cason (46:36.254) was she? HODL (46:41.1) Yeah, he lost. Yeah. He had an uphill battle. She's very well funded in her state and Massachusetts is a liberal shithole. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (46:46.202) she is. Erik Cason (46:47.973) Huh, where'd that money come from? That's really interesting. Huh. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (46:50.723) from but he was funded by crypto lobbyists. But no, the reason I'm happy that Elizabeth Warren won is because I would have missed her. I would have honestly missed reply guying her all the time when she says stupid fucking useless shit like that would have left a little bit of a hole in me. And I don't know how I would have filled it like I need something to butt up against. And like Pocahontas is the best. HODL (46:55.65) Yeah. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (47:18.52) She's just the best for that. it's like when she talks about price gouging, I see Elizabeth Warren price gouging tweet. And I'm just like, yes, I know what I'm doing today. You know, like, it's nice to have that. And like, I also think to your point, Eric, like, she is going to their and to your point as well, like unforced errors, she's going to continue to fracture the Democratic Party. Because like, like one in fucking seven Americans owns Bitcoin, like owns Bitcoin. This is according to the study that Troy Cross did. There's probably a margin of error there. But even if it's one in fucking five Americans, that's already a shitload. And we are not even in like number go up mania yet where people are like, I probably need some of that. This is a growing coalition. And to fight against it is just like, first of all, you're fighting against freedom and you're just fighting against people from all walks of life. It's not like these are just the crypto bros or all these, you know, like not every, you know, Bitcoin bro is as fucking radical as case in over here, you know, and I mean that in honestly the most complimentary way possible just so know, Eric, but like that, like what the fuck are they fighting against? What are they anti your anti freedom? Your anti people being able to make decisions for themselves. But it's like, like it's like my body, my choice, like my fucking money, my choice. Fuck right off. Anyway, I'm so glad I was so glad she was reelected. That's it. That's Erik Cason (48:25.289) Thank you, I appreciate that. HODL (48:38.968) 100 % no, I was gonna I was gonna say the same thing you said which is that it's such a it's such a bipartisan like coalition multi racial like pluralistic like I mean Bitcoin is a large tent like the Orange Party is the largest tent we have politically and they did they made a large mistake going after us because you know, first of all, it's like Erik Cason (48:44.359) back in a minute, gentlemen. HODL (49:06.604) Are you dumb? You're going after young millennials with money who are multi- like racially diverse? The fuck is- are you stupid? Like what's wrong? It doesn't even make sense. It doesn't even compute. But anyway, listen, there was a referendum on these people last night. I feel confident that this worldview is going to be dealt a hearty blow. And they're gonna realize that, you know, there's a new player in town and it's the crypto lobby and the Bitcoin lobby. And David Bailey in some non-trivial fashion was responsible for freeing Ross Ulbrich from prison or will be responsible for freeing Ross Ulbrich from prison and for getting Donald Trump elected. He made a significant, you know, mark dent on this election and he's the MVP of Bitcoin in 2024. Like that goes to David Bailey, number one with a bullet. There's no one else that even came close this year. And, you know, I think It just reminds me, I was talking with David Zell about this last night that you can just do things. You can just do things. Whatever you want to do, you can just do it. Just do it. Elon wanted to affect the election. He just went out and rounded up a bunch of Amish people and drove them to the polls because the Amish can't drive themselves to the polls. He was like, we will drive you to the polls. You hate the government, right? And the Amish were like, fuck yeah. They tried to shut down our raw milk and shit. And Elon was like, yeah, fuck that. We will drive you there. Let's all go vote. You can just do things. You don't have to wait for anybody. Nothing's decreed. Like, listen, fiat is a fucking disease of the mind. That's what it is. And every currency on earth that's not Bitcoin is fiat. Ethereum is fiat. Solana is fiat. Tether is fiat. They're all fiat, okay? And then obviously all the fiat currencies are fiat. But fiat is not just affecting the monetary supply and material goods like iPhones and shit. No, fiat affects You. It affects your mind. It affects the way you think. You think that the world is decreed to you from scribes on high. It's not. The world is built by people that get out and build the fucking world. So if you want to do something, just go do it. Get politically active if you want to be politically active. Build a business if you want to build a business. Build a family if you want to build a family. Build an estate if you want to build an estate. Go to Mars if you want to go to Mars. Fucking just go do it. Do what you want to do. HODL (51:31.916) That is the Bitcoin story. Not by decree. No one tells you to do it. You decree it. You fucking decree it. You go out and do what the fuck you're gonna do in the world. That's what we're doing here in Bitcoin. Erik Cason (51:52.808) the to elaborate on your point, like, this fucking disease has rotted out 95 % of all of the creative potential of people everywhere. And it's great to see that that 5 % is making the change for the other 90%. Like, what we're seeing being developed in this entire system is fucking phenomenal. And people are not asking for fucking permission anymore. And I really hope between what we're seeing in Bitcoin, and the renewal of this American spirit that like, Like one of the things I didn't realize last night with that I was so excited about when I started watching the Bitcoin price go up and the markets go up. was like, yeah, like there's this entire economic engine that's sighing with relief now that they're not going to get fucked out of existence by a socialist government that fucking hates them. And that maybe there's real potential to actually create dynamic change. Like I actually, and I think it's really interesting that people like this tariff thing's going to destroy anything. Like fuck that, this tariff thing's going to supercharge the fucking economy. Like it's gonna turn out that like people that are importing cheap shit from China and they have to pay twice as much, they're gonna go, you know, maybe I'm gonna buy the American made thing where I'm not gonna have to pay twice as much for the same thing, you know? And like that's a really great fucking thing. And I understand all the economic arguments about how tariffs work and otherwise, but like, let's be clear, cheap shit from China that's subsidized by slavery, like it's not good for fucking America. You know what's good for America? Shit made in America that paid American people. HODL (53:17.067) huh. Erik Cason (53:18.59) that give American salaries so that they can spend money in America. And like, not to get on the nationalistist thing, but like, the other thing is, like, the world fucking needs Americanism right now. Like shit is fucked up and there needs to be a renewal of this American spirit that pushes out into the world that, you know, is what 1776 was about, which was a global revolution that then swept through Europe because they're like, yo Europeans, look, we just like fucked up the British empire and we... Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (53:30.43) Yes. Erik Cason (53:47.21) earned our own rights by fighting these assholes. Would you like that? They're like, yeah, this like monarchy shit is bullshit. Let's, let's fucking fight. And I hope that we're going to see a renewal of that same spirit that we're going to fight back against our federal government and their surveillance in the deep state and that we're going to push that shit out numb into Europe and that the Europeans are going to be like, yeah, you know what? turns out getting asked fucked by our government and getting global surveillance through a CBDC is bullshit. Let's fight these motherfuckers. And I would love to see more than anything. See, a sincere German nationalist movement renew itself instead of them living in their fucking shame about Nazism and like, get that like that shit's over guys and that like Germans, you actually have some like really great shit about your culture that if you guys can protect in a meaningful way, very similar to Americans and still be able to be inclusive with that ideal, like there's something great to be done. But like living in all this shame about like, like. we're bunch of racist Nazis because we believe German culture is great is the same kind of bullshit that they're trying to tell us about because you believe in America and what America means, it doesn't mean that you're a far right racist. It means that you're a fucking American that believes in the real values and ethics of what it means to be American. So, you know, fuck this fiat bullshit, fuck CBDCs and it's time for us to really start rebuilding in a meaningful and thoughtful way on top of a Bitcoin standard because that's really an American standard. HODL (55:00.344) Mm-hmm. HODL (55:12.162) Fuck yeah. Fuck yeah. Fuck yeah. Fuck No. No. No. No. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (55:12.479) fucking it. Fuck. Yeah, Wait, can we talk about Europeans for a second? Because like, wait, wait, just for one second. Cause have you noticed that the only people more confused about what happened in the U S election than the Democrats are the Europeans. They're like, on. What do you, what do you mean? Don't you understand? He's mean and bad. And how sad is this? These Americans, how did like it's it's mind blowing. And then you're like, God, HODL (55:24.822) is the Europeans, Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (55:41.149) Like your point Eric like yeah, like I'm like so I feel like sometimes I went through the state like a stage in my life where I was like not I love America I love America because I love the fucking American idea and I love the American people and I love the possibilities that the existence of the American idea Allows for people in this country because it allows people to fucking create and build and do meaningful things but I went through a stage where I was like, you know, this is on my my Bitcoin journey where I'm also like Well, but the fucking military industrial fucking war machine, the fucking the fucking fiat monetary colonialism that's perpetuated by the IMF and the World Bank, like and the Federal Reserve. This is this is bad. Like and then I got to the point where naturally like five seconds later I was like, yeah, but that's not America. Like that's fucking institutions. That is US government institutions. Those are institutions of theft and destruction and death. America is a fucking idea and it's the people who hold that idea up and use it as their fucking torch to bring light into darkness and That is what I think people can get behind and I think you should be able to fucking get behind that Like I don't give a fuck what political party you fucking identify with like this week or forever in your entire life like There I don't know if you guys have heard anybody say this before but there is no red. There is no blue There is the state and there is you Yes, there are meaningful differences in political parties. Obviously, there's a difference between Kamala, like what Kamala's administration would have been and what Trump's will be. But ultimately, we are not a divided people. We are a people who are united around the idea that America is fucking amazing. That idea is fucking amazing. And we are going to be fucking damned if we will let the state usurp that idea for its own fucking death and destruction and theft. And I think I hope that more people can get around that and realize that look we're all on the fucking same side. There are two sides. It is the people the independent individuals and it is the state. There is no other side like there's no there's no other sides. You can color the horse a different color but like it's still the state granted again. me caveat. There are some differences especially you get down to local governments. There's a lot of difference but like we have so much more not to sound fucking cheesy. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (58:02.634) We have so much more that brings us together than divides us. And what brings us together is the idea that America is fucking special. And if it wasn't for fucking America, Europe would be still have been fucked from those fucking German Nazis, actual Nazis. Like we have literally pulled Europe's own head out of its ass so many times. And yet they still look at us like, well, these, you know, uncouth barbarians. It's like, you know, fucking right. We're uncouth and we're fucking barbarians. And there's a reason that you called us. when you fucking got your panties in a twist and started murdering tr- like millions of people because you couldn't handle it on your fucking own, you pansies. Like, I love- for any Europeans listening, I fucking love you because you're listening to this and you obviously have a set of balls or maybe not balls, you know, you may be a lady European, but like, America is uniquely positioned to drive massive change in the world because of the American idea. That is what I would say. HODL (58:58.392) The American, by the way, the thing that's beautiful about America, the American ideal, what is it, right? Like people might not know, especially if you're from Europe, the American ideal is I am the king of my own castle. I am, I am the captain of myself. Okay. I do not have to do anything that you want me to do. I am in charge of me. And if what I'm doing doesn't harm anyone, I should be completely allowed. And I'm well within every right, my God given rights to continue doing that thing. That is a new idea in the world. It's a baby idea. It's only 250 some odd years old and not quite 250 yet. It's only about 250 years old. And we have to protect that idea because that's the most important idea in the history of the world thus far. And every time I see Americans exercise it and say, a second. Sometimes Americans get caught up in this thing where they're listening to people they shouldn't be listening to. You know, they're to the television, Rachel Maddow or whoever, Joy Reid, Whoopi Goldberg. And then they go, wait a second, why? They just wake up and they go, why have I been listening to this bitch? What the fuck am I doing listening to this person? I'm just gonna do whatever the fuck I want. No! I'm doing what I want! Erik Cason (01:00:18.705) Well, Hoddle's out now because he did what he wanted. Look, these are really important. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (01:00:23.144) Wait, is your computer okay? HODL (01:00:24.984) I didn't mean to hit the computer, but it's okay, it's fine. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (01:00:28.072) I thought that was for dramatic effect. Erik Cason (01:00:28.409) The, the, yeah, it was good. These are really important ideals and like, you know, to, reemphasize everything that you said, Walker, like it took me a long time on my own journey as an anarchist. So like, like I'm an, I'm an anarchist and I'm American. Like I fundamentally believe that Americans on a whole, like we have all of the same value sets. Like nobody wants to hurt other people. Nobody wants to be hurt. People want to respect each other's right to private property. People want to see innovative and creative solutions and and like let people be freaky and do what they are. And so like, I see reactions on both sides. It's like, look, like if you want to be your gay transgender lizard or like whatever the fuck you want to identify as, like that's fucking great. Good for you. Like do not come into the fucking schools and try to teach kids that shit. Like I'm uninterested in that. In fact, like why the fuck are we doing this school thing? Like if you look at the fucking department of education, you know what every single standard has been measured to do each year? It goes fucking down. That's what it does. It teaches kids to be fucking stupid little robots that can't think for themselves. Like it, I find it deeply disturbing when I, when my son has friends that are in public school come over and like how fucking remedial they are and how much they, don't, there's a certain creativity that they really lack that I find fucking disturbing, you know? And also on the same side, like just cause people want to be weirdos and freaks don't mean that we have to hate on them and remove their right to be fucking weirdos and freaks. It's just like, don't. In the same way that like, I'm not going to put my shit in your face. Don't put your shit in my face and don't try to use public institutions to do that. There's no fucking need. Same thing. Like I have no fucking interest in deporting people from this country just because they disagree with me on different principles. Like we need to learn to live in fucking peace and have a radical modernism between us because without that, they're like that. That's what America is all about is about being able to figure out. How do we live with these ideals that allow for us all to flourish despite how different we are? know, like Europeans like take a fucking cue from us. Like, you know, like we, we figured out how to make this shit work. You guys are trying to model the same thing, but to be very clear, like what you guys are doing with the European Central Bank and the EU and shit, like this is not going to end well for you guys. And so I really encourage Erik Cason (01:02:47.665) And like I've noticed this more coming from German specifically like you guys need to redouble in your own nationalism and so far of that like you guys are actual independent countries and you need to stop letting this fucked up institution that got created by a bunch of bureaucrats that told you that everything was gonna get better with it. You know like I have an uncle that's lived in Berlin since the 1970s and he knows the conversion of when they went from the mark to the euro fucked everybody over super hard and that's how it is kind of universally. You guys should really consider taking back national sovereignty, destroying the European Central Bank, and probably, you know, the fact that the thing is ran by an actual fucking financial criminal who has been found guilty of financial crimes, that's pretty fucking ridiculous. And it's pretty ridiculous that you guys tolerate this bullshit being shoved down your throat from Brussels, so... I really hope that you guys are gonna light shit on fire, cause like, when you guys commit yourself to burning shit down and like throwing shit at people and other stuff, you guys are really good at it. Like, into that. Like keep doing more of that. Like stop, stop with this other fucking nonsense. Cause you know, you guys are gonna get something pretty nasty out of it if you guys keep tolerating this bullshit. HODL (01:04:03.836) You know what I think the difference between the European mind and the American mind is is that in Europe for you know, thousands of years, if you talk back to the nobility, they could kill you with impunity, right? And in America, one day we took a look at the nobility and we were like, fuck you. We just killed everybody, bro. You know, and so that's different starting points, you know, inception. Erik Cason (01:04:24.048) Yup, fun f- Erik Cason (01:04:27.868) Fun fact is that there is an actual amendment to the United States Constitution that is still active to be ratified by states that if you are given a title of nobility in America, you will be stripped of all political rights and positions. think it was the, because there's like three outstanding articles that could be ratified by states, like aren't, like another is about like child labor. The other one's article the first, which. HODL (01:04:49.706) Yeah. Erik Cason (01:04:53.424) I've had another great radical plan of like forcing state legislatures to ratify article the first to be, and it's called that because it was the first article to ever be that passed through the congressional approval process. And it went to the States to get approved, but it was never approved. And what article the first stipulates is that no representative of the federal government shall ever represent any more than 50,000 people at a time. And to be clear, if that passed today, that would mean that the House of Representatives would be like, 7,000 people or some shit like that. So that would be really fun if we like got states to pass it just to fuck up the federal government. Cause this is my big thing that I want not only for Americans, but for Europeans and all people everywhere is that like, I believe very, very strongly it is about states, provinces and counties against their unified federal government. Like if you look at what's going on in Spain right now, after the crisis that happened in Valencia and how much the federal government is absolutely fucking those people over. This is where the real war is at. So I'd like to see more radicalism of states' rights against federal governments across the board. And I think that would really help solve a lot of problems. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (01:06:02.717) Eric, you mentioned something earlier about, like, just speaking of states' rights, that if, what was it, 35 states were to basically resolve internally, like, as independent states, that we should end the Fed, that the federal government would basically need to scramble. Can you elaborate on that a little bit more for those of us who are less constitutionally literate? Erik Cason (01:06:20.71) Yeah, so this is all a hypothetical way to be able to ratify the United States Constitution directly using state legislatures only. Nothing has to go through the federal government and it is not supposed to have any oversight. This has never happened in American history because every single time that this method has been used to amend the Constitution, when it's gotten within two or three states, The federal government has essentially flipped the fuck out and Congress has passed that amendment to the United States with the same language directly so that this was all circumnavigated. There was a Supreme Court decision in 1908 that essentially said if states tried to do this, we wouldn't recognize it. But like this is all about creating constitutional crisis because the 10th Amendment is very explicit and that any powers that are not enumerated to the federal government directly in the Constitution are reserved for states alone. So. The whole idea would be essentially be go state by state, get the exact same language passed saying that we are calling on an Article 5 convention to amend the United States Constitution to end the Federal Reserve and that the federal government shall have no oversight whatsoever around the issuance of a currency. And in theory, it could pass. For me, the big goal is to get it past 33 states or something. federal government's gonna freak out. You're probably gonna have the judicial branch being like, no, this is illegitimate. There's no way to amend the constitution without the federal government. We're gonna be like, Texas, what do you think about that? They're trying to say that the sovereignty of your state and what you guys decide isn't okay. Is that something you agree with? How do you feel about that, Nevada, Wyoming? Is this okay with you guys? Cause for me, the big crisis that happened in America, which is where fiat money started in America was during the civil war. And as much as everybody likes to suck Abraham Lincoln's dick and celebrate him as being a really great guy, good job with like ending slavery, but like you like really fucked up a lot of other stuff with what you did in that. Not to mention that like explicitly creating an amendment to the United States constitution that says that other people can't have slaves, but the Erik Cason (01:08:28.913) the state itself can have slaves is pretty fucked up. So with that, I really encourage everybody look into the Article 5 ratification process. I really have a boner for the idea using this to like fuck up the federal government across the board. Because to me, this is actually about a radical evolution of the political process that like I think federal politics is fundamentally broken. And if there's a way to lateralize a national movement that uses only states and state legislatures to start amending the Constitution, or even calling for an Article 5 convention to rewrite the Constitution on a whole, which is also specifically reserved by Article 5 in the U.S. Constitution, there's actually an opportunity for us to roll back radical federal power, destroy the deep state, and renew the American dream throughout the globe by essentially creating the American dream with the federal government and the deep state stripped from it. So that's kind of my insane idea. you know, let's have a couple lawyers and legal scholars come in here and tell me how I'm fucking insane or wrong or maybe even right, but as far as I know, this is an actual thing that could happen. It's just been kind of buried in history for a long time. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (01:09:41.32) HODL your thoughts. HODL (01:09:43.512) I listen, I'm an Article 5 maxi as well. Eric has explained it to me multiple times. just, you know, I think like in practical terms, I just I just don't think we're gonna be able to do that. Yeah, it'd be cool. It'd be cool if it happened. You know, I would be for it. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (01:10:00.4) Let's let's talk about some practical terms then because okay I want to want to get your guys take on this whole Bitcoin strategic reserve thing Senator okay, so you we remember at the Bitcoin conference in Nashville Trump gave what I think was honestly incredible stand-up performance like that dudes a dude he riffs like he's he's Like you cannot argue with the fact that the dude can fucking what does he call? He calls it the weave right? You know like he riffs. It's impressive. It's just HODL (01:10:20.344) It was funny. Yeah. HODL (01:10:25.91) leave. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (01:10:28.702) very like nice routine. yeah. Yeah. Go save the delivery man. But, and he talked kind of like, we're going to keep the Bitcoin that we have, you know, we're not going to sell any of it. He didn't like explicitly say we are going to start, you know, printing fiat to acquire Bitcoin. He said he would protect the industry though. He said a lot of positive things. Then as everybody is leaving the stage, like after he finished, Lummis comes up and is like, I have a fucking bill right here. Like Erik Cason (01:10:29.088) My dogs are attacking the delivery man, so I gotta stop them. HODL (01:10:31.416) Nope. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (01:10:57.703) I have a bill for the US to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve and like I felt bad because like again like people are like yelling like everyone's leaving the thing like and I'm sitting there like she just like this is fucking actually actually news that lumos is like I've got a fucking bill for this she's been on top of it since then Do what do you think is the most likely scenario that's gonna play out as far as the establishment of a strategic reserve? Is this something that like Trump is gonna be all for? HODL (01:11:05.442) Yeah. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (01:11:24.455) Like once he gets a little more knowledge of it, where do you think we're going with this? HODL (01:11:27.348) So the way that Trump said it on stage initially is is wrong and can't happen. So the Bitcoin that have been seized, you know by whomever, whichever government authority sees them, then there are multiple government authorities that have seized them over time. They belong to somebody they have owners, right? So like most recently the Bitfinex hack there was four billion dollars worth of Bitcoin or something that was seized by the US government, but that Bitcoin all belongs to people and it has to go back to them. So you can't use it for your national strategic stockpile. But in general, I think the idea of a national strategic stockpile is something that is going to happen one way or another. I think it's inevitable. Whether it goes on the central bank's balance sheet or whether it's put into the hands of the executive branch, I'm not sure. But America is going to acquire a large swath of Bitcoin at some point. I think there's a the most interesting thing about it is the prisoners dilemma of the nation state level game theory around who goes first So if you go first, you're the most advantaged, right? But for some reason I don't think this is widely known and so nobody's gone first yet or maybe it's because we don't have Younger people who understand these things or have game this out Is Trump's administration administration where we we can do those things I think Maybe I mean, JD Vance is a Bitcoin or Vivek is a Bitcoin or Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a Bitcoin or Tulsi Gabbard is a Bitcoin or Elon Musk is a Bitcoin or Trump owns a little bit of Bitcoin. He's dabbled in some crypto bullshit. He has his own shit coin. So yeah, I mean, there is a potential that it could happen this time around. I think the most important or the most interesting thing to me is the game theory between other nation states. And then the thing I was going to mention is in some To some degree, I think the Bitcoin that's in the public markets is a honeypot for the US government. So MSTR is a honeypot for the US government. The ETFs are the public companies that have Bitcoin on treasury like Tesla. So those things are things that can be nationalized in a moment's notice if needed. But we're not on a Bitcoin standard. So the government doesn't need to seize your Bitcoin yet. If fiat starts to collapse, they may need to seize your Bitcoin. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (01:13:33.256) Mm. HODL (01:13:56.273) They may seize your b- They'll never need to do it. I mean, they just will do it, right? And so, yeah, I think that's- Those are my high-level thoughts around everything, though. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (01:14:04.595) Do you, I assume when you talk about a first mover advantage, you're discounting El Salvador in this particular instance because they do not print their own currency, because they are dollarized. Yeah. HODL (01:14:12.756) It's too small. Well, it's also too small. It's just too small. El Salvador is a very poor country. They're doing listen, they're doing great. They're on the upswing, but they're not a player in the world. They don't mean anything like I mean, El Salvador is a tiny nothing country with no resources like I love what's going on down there. You're always probably they're very small. If you looked at them on the map, it's like this big. It's yeah, it's Russia, China, America. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (01:14:28.105) For now, for now, for now, let's let's let, yeah. HODL (01:14:41.238) France, Germany, those are the countries that one of them needs to go first. G7. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (01:14:45.897) Do you so I mean like Russia has been shifting some of its stances around Bitcoin mining and Bitcoin more generally recently. mean do you think that like that is like we're going to see a lot more of that because Russia was for a while very like no we're you know not a fan of this. mean you know it's not the not the freest country in the world let's say and so freedom money tends to be a little bit. It's like oil and water, like they don't mix well, right? But clearly they're realizing the geopolitical significance of Bitcoin, which is still sitting at like, I mean, I don't know what the market cap is right now after we're over, we're pamping, but like, we're not over 2 trillion yet. We're at like what, below a trillion and a half, like 1.5, which is fucking nothing. Like in the grand scheme of things, like we are still fucking early. Erik Cason (01:15:31.04) point five. HODL (01:15:37.74) Yep. Smaller than Apple Computer. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (01:15:42.303) Yeah, Bitcoin did just pass meta though, right? I think like today like I believe so, but I don't know like HODL (01:15:47.308) Probably. Erik Cason (01:15:52.717) That piece of shit company is worth one and a half tru- Like what the fuck is wrong with this world? I'm sorry, like that- that is upsetting that so many fucking morons are on that goddamn surveillance platform giving away their information towards somebody that fucking hates them. HODL (01:16:02.38) It's. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (01:16:06.473) to, it's just, HODL (01:16:08.214) Instagram is very popular with the hoes Eric very popular Erik Cason (01:16:11.434) I know. Bitches just be scrolling. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (01:16:12.551) And Facebook's very popular with the boomers. Like I think boomers are the only ones left on Facebook. I'm honestly convinced, which is hilarious because the boomers were the same ones being like this, this, these Facebook's are going to melt your brains. And now they're like, you know, like this picture of Donald Trump and Jesus is incredible. Like when did they take this? This is amazing. Like, don't think boomer boomers have really bad AI detection skills. Also, that's a slight digression, but it leaves them very vulnerable to manipulation. I think HODL (01:16:24.342) It's, yeah. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (01:16:40.456) It's also kind of cute and endearing. God bless you, you bought your house for two raspberries and now you're a multimillionaire. Erik Cason (01:16:47.724) look like in all honesty, like I see the next decade is like there's gonna be this really it's funny because I remember I was at Burning Man. I'd taken a bunch of acid and I was talking to a younger friend about this and I like went on this crazy diatribe. was like, yeah, in 30 years, we're gonna have like a youth fascist movement that's just gonna be all about like fucking stripping the boomers of their property and like sending them off to the prison camps for liquidation just because people are gonna be so fucking angry at the way that they feel like they were robbed and stolen from. So like I don't know. It's very similar to that Junseth podcast where he talked to that young scammer where he was pretty indifferent to the way he was ripping people off. honestly, young people have a pretty good point. Yeah, if an AI boomer can't tell the difference between Donald Trump and an AI bot, and you can rip him off doing that, why shouldn't you? Yeah, he made his millions of dollars from watching his house inflate. HODL (01:17:21.57) of these cameras. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (01:17:23.049) was amazing. Erik Cason (01:17:46.102) you know, because of how fucked up the monetary system is. So why shouldn't you just engage in outright graft? I'm not saying that that's right in any meaningful way. Like it's an honest and open-ended question that frankly, I've really struggled with, like meaningfully answering to them. Cause like, yeah, this system has absolutely fucked you and robbed you. And there is no meaningful way that you are going to crawl out of the hole that you've been forced to live in. So like, I don't, I don't know what you can really do to try to protect yourself other than get yourself on a Bitcoin standard. HODL (01:18:15.108) you? Do you that's Do you think that's true, though? Because like, didn't you feel that way when you were 1819? Because I did, I felt like the boomers had pulled up the ladder. They got rich selling houses back and forth to each other. We were never going to be able to do the same thing, etc, etc. And then God was just like, boom, here's, here's digital coins, bitch. And I was like, fuck. This is amazing. I'm richer than these guys could have ever dreamed. Yeah. Erik Cason (01:18:15.414) But you probably shouldn't be robbing people, because that's fucked up. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (01:18:18.344) Yeah Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (01:18:38.045) you You HODL (01:18:43.158) So I mean, think there's always something on the horizon. Erik Cason (01:18:43.567) I mean, for me personally, for me personally, yeah, but like, I, and like, this is one of the things I always struggle with is that like, we're in an extremely unique position, you know, across, like, that's one of the reasons I didn't just like take the money and run is that like, feel a real obligation towards speaking to the very real power that this has to like, write the economy in a meaningful way again. And with that being said, like, If I was 20 years old looking at the economy right now, like I would very sincerely be trying to build a career as probably both a drug dealer and a scammer just because I look at the world and be like, why the fuck should I participate in any of this goddamn non- like you want me to fork out $400,000 to get a fucking bachelor's degree while you got that shit for free? Like why the fuck shouldn't I just set fire to everything and watch it burn because What do I have to win in this system? Like, like I can work for 30 fucking years so I can get a down payment on a home that then I'll spend the next 30 fucking years trying to pay off scraping by. Like, I think shit is really, really fucked up. And I think the only reason that kids aren't outraged is because they're so dopamine addicted to the scrolling that they can't even pull their head far enough out of the phone to stop and look around and go, gee, shit's really fucking bad. But that terrifies them. So they look back at the phone and keep scrolling. so I think shit's kind of sad right now, but, you know, like I, I hope I'm wrong and that it's not actually that dark out there, but from the, from the young people that I speak to, like, there isn't a rage about it. There's like a very real defeat that like they have been beaten down into a cage that like, they're just doing their best to figure out how to be in. So, while I do agree that I did feel that way when I was younger, like I very sincerely feel like I just like found the fucking glitch in the system. And I remember like picking it up and being like, there's no fucking way that like magic internet money is going to become the global standard of the future and like make a difference in the 2024 presidential election. And the funniest thing is, that like, there was no political conversation about Bitcoin in my opinion, up until about 2016. Like there were, there was no conceivable difference. know, like crypto didn't even exist on a whole. There was a bunch of shit coin copies, like Litecoin and Feathercoin and shit. Erik Cason (01:21:07.812) But it was only with the premiere of Ethereum that Bitcoiners were like, hang on, like, we're trying to like make a kind of money that you can't fuck with. And they're like, yeah, like I thought, I thought this was the whole thing that we could just like make up Clowncoin and like make a bunch of money. And I was like, I think we have like different ethics here. And they're like, huh. So like, you don't want any Clowncoin? And I was like, no. Good luck with that though. HODL (01:21:32.28) No, mean, you know, I think that, okay, so one thing is, did you see the scammers who got caught for 250 million? They hit up a Genesis creditor for 250 million. Did you see that story? Erik Cason (01:21:44.022) yeah, yeah. Wasn't this a while ago that they just, you it was like, he had like fucking, like two FAA, like through texts or some shit and they just, just, yeah. HODL (01:21:52.438) Yeah, they posed as I think they pose as Genesis or so I can't remember how the scam worked. But anyway, like they got $250 million in Bitcoin off of this guy. And it wasn't that long ago. was like six months ago or something. And then what did they do? They went out to the clubs in Miami and LA and they started buying OnlyFans girls Birkin bags and Lamborghinis and whatever. And my favorite text message from the thread is by the way, and then the FBI caught them two months later because Everybody who's ever seen Goodfellas knows you don't go out and buy a fucking pink Cadillac day one. Are you fucking retarded? Robert De Niro is gonna whack you, okay? Or they don't watch it? Yeah, it's like, the kid literally bought a pink, he bought a pink Lambo for a girl. That is in Goodfellas, the guy does that and then he gets whacked. Erik Cason (01:22:29.509) Kids don't watch oldies anymore. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (01:22:31.567) No, the answers are all there. They gave you the answers. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (01:22:41.425) Also, like she's not going to bang you either way, bro. Like, you know, seriously, HODL (01:22:43.704) Well, that's the point. That's the point I'm getting to. So there's a text message from the girl and he goes, hey, what's up? I bought you a fucking pink Lambo Urus. You want it? Let's be friends, whatever. And she's like, lol, I have a boyfriend. Sorry. And it's like, dude, you are going to get ass raped in federal prison for the next 10 years. Erik Cason (01:22:44.377) Yeah, that's like the most beta fucking move you can make. HODL (01:23:09.568) and you couldn't even get the girl to sleep with you after you bought her a fucking Lamborghini. You know why? It's because when you earn money that way, girls know. They know that you're a fucking loser. They can feel it. They can sense it. Right? And so like she didn't want to have anything to do with you. So it's like, what did you get out of the score, bro? You went to Rodeo Drive and wore some gay Louis Vuitton shit for a little bit and we're in the nightclub fucking sipping on fucking... awesome, Migo, fucking Don Hoolit, whatever the fuck, like what the f- that's nothing. You threw away your life for nothing, bro. Come on. Erik Cason (01:23:41.263) Yeah, not to digress, but like if you want to like get rich and make a bunch of money to like get all the hot bitches, like I got news for you. Like it's not gonna work in any meaningful way. And like, you're actually gonna find yourself in like a super bitch beta position where you're gonna be like, huh, like I just like drove this girl in my Porsche over to this guy's house that she's like, that isn't my boyfriend. So. HODL (01:24:06.808) It's just her trainer dude, it's just her trainer dude. He's the only guy who can work her glutes right bro, it's a thing. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (01:24:09.639) It's just Pilates instructor. It's cool, man. Erik Cason (01:24:12.716) Yeah. I'm going to, you know, she needs me to pick her up in a half hour. So I'm just, I'm going to hang out at this coffee shop just cause I wonder why she's doing only a half hour of Pilate though. That's kind of weird. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (01:24:24.735) That's strange. Doesn't seem like enough to get a good burn. HODL (01:24:25.836) was like a... No, dude, it's more intense sweat, dude. If you do it that way, it's what... Erik Cason (01:24:31.644) Well, and look, the... This is all part of the general nihilism that's playing out, because like when you get that money, when you get money that easily, that quickly through doing dumb shit like scamming, like you're not going to like stop and be like, whoa, like I finally got the lotto ticket to get out of here. Like I'm going to buy a couple of laundry mats and maybe like, you know, like a driving range and a couple other places that can really generate some cashflow for me. No, you're gonna do like a bunch of retarded shit like that and you're gonna blow the money. like, this is one of the things I love the most about Bitcoin. It's like, Bitcoin doesn't solve cashflow problems or if like you don't have any meaningful like model that you're operating from the world from. if you can't save money, like you will not have any fucking Bitcoin. But like, if you're somebody who's like thoughtful and saving money and you have like a 401k and you've like played their game and gotten fucked by that, like. Bitcoin's going to be hugely helpful for you because like now you're actually going to have a like savings that like does the thing it's supposed to do. So good on you. And also like, I'm sorry for all the younger kids that are getting fucked by this system that hates them. Like you really should be on only a Bitcoin standard. And if you're not, like I, I would love to hear your solution on why we're fucking dumb and you have the solution. Cause as far as I can tell. You're gonna work at a Starbucks for the next 30 years and live in your mom's basement and like maybe, maybe if you want a family, you'll have like a chihuahua or something like, look, I got two dogs right now. Like these motherfuckers eat like nobody's business. So like get a really small dog that like you, you like don't need to like feed a lot of food to. HODL (01:26:08.075) Dude, you know what though, it's all mentality, truly. It's like, people don't, when you talk about like having children and caring about yourself for the future and you know, making money and how making money is a good thing, younger people are just straight up confused, right? And to us, that's like, that's the default that we grew up in. Those are our values. And yeah, but younger people are like, what? Is this some sort of like, trad, like trad? Chad movement thing, dude. And you're like, what? This is called being a normal person, retard. What are you talking about? And it's because it's so like they haven't heard it. They've been being dude, if you go to public school, you have been being lectured by cat ladies eight hours a day for a fucking 15 years. OK, like and they have like fucking unicorn fairy tattoos on them and stuff. And they're like, Donald Trump is a racist. That's what you've been dealing with. Erik Cason (01:26:46.577) You can't say that word anymore. HODL (01:27:06.432) Okay, so you come out of that and then Andrew Tate's like, if you want to be a fucking man, you gotta have a fucking Bugatti. And then you go, fuck, this is fucking speaking to me, dude. Right? Like, when we were young, that was just like common sense. It was like, yeah, sports cars and hot chicks. Like that's what we like, bro. Like, you know. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (01:27:26.162) Nobody needs to tell you that dude. Like, yeah. Erik Cason (01:27:26.46) I feel... I feel really fucking bad for younger people. Like particularly like if you're like a young guy going through puberty and like you want to like go talk to this girl, but you're all nervous because you've watched all this like cancel culture shit. Like now you're too terrified to ever go talk to her. And now like you haven't talked to any girls in your whole life and you want to, but you can't. So like you feel like total fucking wiener. And then like somebody was like, well, if you feel like a wiener and like being a man's really hard, like maybe you're a woman and they're like, maybe I am a woman. And like, It's something, it's fucked up. It's really wrong. And like a lot of times these poor kids just need somebody to be like, yeah, like you need to go talk to the woman. She could possibly like get really upset and sue you or some shit, but chances are she's just going to think you're kind of weird and you'll feel uncomfortable and walk away, you know, being blown out and like, that's okay. That that's part of life. It's okay when a woman rejects you. doesn't define you as a human being. HODL (01:28:17.56) I'm not supposed to say this but if you're a teenage boy Go and get a little drunk and do donuts in a parking lot. Okay. I'm not supposed to say that you probably shouldn't do it, but you know You should probably do it. Yeah, like in an empty parking lot empty. Don't go on the road. Just Donuts you can do it in don't do Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (01:28:31.498) Great advice. It's terrible advice, but it's great advice. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (01:28:41.608) And honestly, you live in the mid-west, like wait until, like you've got a little bit of snow there, wait until it's a little bit slick, it's much safer to do the donuts when your wheels are actually sliding versus you're like burning rubber. So that, we're tempering the donut device with some good Midwestern, you know, logical advice there. You know, I think, and Hodel, know you've got a hard stop coming up soon. I think we may need to do an entire other... HODL (01:28:57.653) Absolutely. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (01:29:08.702) show about the fact that you know who hates homeschooling and who has had homeschooling illegal for a long time. Germany. Thank you. It's it's I appreciate you knew where I was going with that. And you know who implemented that. It was the fucking Nazis. Why did they implement the fact that you can't it is illegal for you to homeschool your kids for you to raise and instruct your kids at home. HODL (01:29:18.754) Germany, right? Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (01:29:34.868) because they wanted to fucking control the narrative and control your kids and indoctrinate them and make them good little fucking Hitler's youth Nazis. And then we can go back a little bit further to the Prussian system of education, which is like what kind of was the genesis of the Nazi system, which is we want to create great little worker bees and great little soldiers. And the only way we can do that is if we have control of them from the first time they're able to fucking formulate a word. Until they are of a you an age where it's appropriate to send them off to fucking work until they die or fight until they die I digress a little bit but the point is that if you don't like homeschooling you're a nazi And I mean that literally not like the everyone's a nazi thing like you're literally agreeing with what the nazis wanted So congratulations. You're a literal nazi not a figurative nazi That's I just wanted to get that off my chest a little bit guys as a homeschooled guy myself who then went to public school because my parents Said it's your fucking decision do what you want to do. They didn't swear at me at that time They just said it's your decision, but I added the fucking but That was a fucking trip getting into public school and realizing I thought I was gonna be real stupid That was like my big worry where I was like mom and dad I think I should go to public school like what if I'm not as smart as the other kids They're always all my friends that I play sports with they're always doing homework and all this extra work like they've to be way ahead of me They're like, okay, that's your decision. You can decide to do that. But like you've got a you know, like it's your it's your choice So anything that comes with it's your you know your responsibility, okay? And then I got to school and I was like, my god, everybody is fucking stupid. shit They are catering to the lowest common denominator. And this is a fucking joke I dig and I'm not even like that smart like I was smart enough to be a valedictorian and like kind of a bumblefucky town but that's like, you know, like you're the skinniest kid at fat camp. You know what I mean? Like it's like, okay, like nice, nice job, but like you're still fat. Like, Hey, Hey, you guys are, you know, Erik Cason (01:31:31.689) There are all these kids from her high school listening right now, and I'm like, hey, I'm not that dumb. HODL (01:31:35.316) Hey, I often walk here. I often walk in my glue and he sniffed it. I thought we were friends. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (01:31:42.305) I knew some fucking great fucking people and there were also some great fucking teachers in there who actually were like fuck this administrative bullshit. I'm just going to actually teach these kids. They were also the teachers always getting in trouble with the administration for like you're not following the curriculum. know like but and like I fucking love the small town that I grew up in because there are fucking great people there. The point is that the public school system did no one any favors. And you know what you just don't fucking need it man. You should do like An hour or two of school a day and you'll be fucking good. That's all I did And then I went and started fires like not pyro fires But like I like to start controlled fires who doesn't you know what I mean? That's part of it And if you're a young guy listening to this and you've never just gone and started a fire fucking a go and start a fire because No, self-respecting woman will marry you unless you can start a fire like and I'm just telling you Yeah Erik Cason (01:32:31.926) Yeah, do it on metal trash can though, or like somewhere that you're not gonna start forest fire. know, like Smokey the Bear had a point. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (01:32:37.258) Well, yeah, don't do yet again not pyromaniac fires start controlled fires Learn how to control them and be a responsible member of society who knows how to make flame like fucking hey That's the only reason that we started drinking bone marrow that was actually cooked and had our brains grow and you want to spit on that I don't think so I've digressed a little bit but it felt like I needed to digress a little bit to get us off track enough for hodl for me to allow you to make a graceful exit here How much more time you got you got time for one last? HODL (01:33:05.928) got, yeah, I got like five more minutes. I can do five more minutes. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (01:33:06.81) thought Okay, okay, so Okay, it first. I just want to say thank you to everybody who tuned in on this Noster only live stream fuck YouTube fuck live stream on Twitter fuck wherever else you can live stream like twitch I've never used it, but I hear the kids do all these sats that you guys have sent which is almost 50,000 sats which is awesome I'm gonna send them all to open sats and provide receipts. So thank you guys for doing that We're gonna fund some open source development while shitting on ridiculous people Erik Cason (01:33:10.21) diatribe. HODL (01:33:34.072) Yeah. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (01:33:36.352) Closing thoughts, gentlemen. Hodel, you want to kick us off? HODL (01:33:40.888) Yeah, let me think about this here for a second. What are my closing thoughts? I think... in general, you gotta just keep living, man. No, I got nothing. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (01:33:57.792) Yeah, you don't have to have that. You already dropped so much wisdom. Well, Eric, what about you? What do want to leave people with? HODL (01:34:04.561) Come back to me. Do Eric first, then come back. Erik Cason (01:34:10.474) Look, Trump getting elected was like a the whole market was like waiting to see whether or not we're going to go into like socialism hell or if there's going to be an opportunity for something meaningful to happen. Now something meaningful is going to happen and Bitcoin is going to rip super fucking hard in the next six months. And so like if you've been like, I've been like, stacking a little here and there, but I got my 401k like you don't have enough fucking coin. You're going to want more coin later and you should stack harder. So you should really consider about like Put, you know, like stop messing around, like fucking shove it in, like, like put the whole thing in and enjoy what it means and be like, fucking go for it. In addition to, you know, you should really think for yourself, you know, like no, nobody actually has all of the right fucking answers. And if you actually spend some time and energy thinking hard about what your values are and what you want for the world and for yourself, you're probably going to come to some great conclusions. you know, So I really hope that more of you are going to fly your freak freak flags and like do your own thing. Walker, you're a great example. You're just doing the Bitcoin podcast to swipe the fact that Bitcoin podcasts were saturated as fuck. You were just like, you know what? I'm going to try my own fucking thing. Turns out people like you and like listen to you. So even if it seems in other people are like, hey, this is saturated. There's too many people like go do you and what you're supposed to like, that's what the world wants. That's where you're to find your power and that's where you're going to make the most money. Don't wait for somebody to be like, You need to call a degree in to suck five dicks at this law firm to get a job to practice law. find, like, find the fucking hack. Figure out the way that you can actually go do the thing that you want to do. What is the world wants for you and other people want for you? The system does not fucking want for you. Like realize that right now, you're going to be way fucking ahead for yourself. So. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (01:35:36.02) You Erik Cason (01:35:53.28) I hope to see all of you young entrepreneurs with the production of all of the great and wonderful things that you will be accepting only on a Bitcoin standard because you're smart enough that you don't want to get fucked holding a bunch of fiat that's going to go to zero. That's the end of what I have to HODL (01:36:06.496) I am. I actually do have something to say I was I was thinking about this. I think going into the bull market, an important message for people that they need to be aware of is that, yes, you should go hard. know, there's that clip of me on Walker show saying stack your fucking ass off and all that. And like, yes, you should go hard. You should you should be here. You should be fully committed to this and you should be, you know, investing a significant portion of what you have available. All true. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (01:36:06.728) A fucking HODL (01:36:34.648) but you know in bull markets people take leverage and Leverage is something that people mistakenly think is a time machine to being an og And it's not and you know, we've seen a lot of people get wrecked So if you are gonna take leverage be extremely careful it's it's one of those things that like if you warn enough people about doing it the people that you know, ignore all the warnings and walk through all the warning signs anyway, and then go do it and succeed. They were always meant to succeed. But for the vast majority of people like you won't succeed. You know what mean? So like you really should heed the warning and only you know if you're that person or not, and everybody thinks they are that person. But you only find out you're not that person who can walk through all the warning signs until you get fucking destroyed. So don't get destroyed. You know what I mean? Like Erik Cason (01:37:24.676) By the way, this is being said by the man who made a Bitcoin by betting the man who had the leverage platform that his leverage platform would go bankrupt within a year and it fucking did. just saying that Hoddle might actually know a little bit about what the fuck he's talking about. So with that, please don't go long and slam your fucking dick in the door because there's a 10 % drawdown, which could very well happen when we hit an all time high and your retarded ass did a 10X long and didn't realize. HODL (01:37:32.728) That's right. Erik Cason (01:37:51.928) that that's what happens. You get fucking liquidated when the price goes down. So don't be fucking retarded and lose the little bit of Bitcoin that you have because you thought that you could get more Bitcoin because you were smarter. You're not. You're a normal fucking person who will hurt yourself if you do that. So sorry, I just really wanted to add. HODL (01:38:07.746) So no, % 100 % and two cardinal sins here in Bitcoin you need to be aware of heading into the bull market is number one, not being bullish enough on Bitcoin. That's the biggest sin. It's the biggest sin anyone can make. Number two, unfortunately, is being too bullish on Bitcoin. So you got to strike the balance right in the middle there. Because if you're on either side, you're getting fucking wrecked. Okay, so the best way to do that, stack your Bitcoin, hodl your Bitcoin. do it in self custody, do it in cold storage, do it with a multi sig. Don't go crazy on this, these products, these MSTU and BTU and fucking these leverage products you can now get access to in the markets. Don't go crazy on MSTR stock, don't go crazy on shit coins or meme coins. You know, everybody has a plan. I've met a lot of guys who had a plan to get to 100 Bitcoin, who ended up with zero Bitcoin, right? So like, Try not to be one of those guys. If your plan has three elaborate steps that involve you hitting a million shot three times, you're not gonna execute that plan, man. I couldn't execute it. I don't know why you think you're good enough to. I don't know why anyone would ever think they're good enough to. Be smart. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (01:39:20.83) got a fucking three step plan and it's called DCA and fucking like literally guys, none of us are as smart as we think we are. And like that's good. Like you being too smart is just a pain. That's why you know, that's why you need to drink and stuff. But like literally just like just fucking DCA. Like it's actually like just this GCO like you can just buy Bitcoin, set up a daily DCA buy and then set up an hourly DCA buy. HODL (01:39:24.503) Yes. HODL (01:39:38.828) Totally. Walker (BitcoinPodcast.net) (01:39:49.492) and it'll just split the difference and you will be in large profit in the long term. And I have not been around as long as you guys been around since 2020 and I just dollar cost average. And you know what? It works. And I try to create some value. And Eric, to your point, I appreciate that, that you see this journey that I'm on creating another fucking Bitcoin podcast. But I just want to say until there are more Bitcoin podcasts than insufferable fucking finance bro podcasts, There are not enough Bitcoin podcasts. need to this needs to be the flippening where Bitcoin podcasts are more plentiful than fucking finance bro. Like here here's the real real estate stock stocks that you should buy that'll generate some passive income for you when you're 401k. It's like Jesus fucking Christ. Grow some balls and buy some Bitcoin guys. Yeah. I fucking appreciate you guys. Thanks for hopping on here. This this was a very enjoyable time. And I know that people fucking love hearing from both of you guys because you are principal dudes who always laid out straight and We are we are very blessed to have you in this fucking strange community of people and it's great to fucking hang out with you guys And I hope we can do it in fucking person over a beer again soon But yeah, hold on get the fuck out of here case it I'm you guys for everyone listening I'm gonna kill this live stream now and we're gonna just to make sure these guys are uploaded. So fucking love you all. Thanks for joining I'm killing it now.

@ fd208ee8:0fd927c1

You don't understand how insidious open-borders propaganda is, until you realize that _it's an attempt to remove all differentiating traits from humans_. They call this "strengthening individuality by removing nationality" (hello, newspeak), but what makes humans individual is their particular collection of traits, and nationality (and ethnicity, religion, etc. -- nationality is just the first domino they want to topple) is one of those.  Humans are not blank slates. Like DNA or physiognomy, our personalities are differing jumbles of cultural "letters". Each person selects consciously and subconsciously from amongst these letters, adding to or rejecting them, amplifying or suppressing them, twisting or combining them, building on top of them... and that's what makes you into You. Open borders is an attempt to reduce the number of cultural letters you can build your "You" out of. If you take away the word "German", I am not liberated. There is simply one less adjective, with which I can describe myself. You have merely eradicated information, crippled language, and reduced my choices. I can then no longer define myself according to "German things", but I can also no longer define myself in opposition to German things. ## Enter the Borg  We are easier to control and brainwash and persecute, if we are centralized and homogenized. As if the entire world were one, big prison and we were all forced to undergo the same education, wear the same clothes, follow the same rules, eat the same foods, enjoy the same entertainment, live the same lifestyle, share the same diseases and cures, enjoy the same lockdowns, join in the same cancel culture, fight the same wars. That is what globalization brings. That is the end game of Open Borders: * No more cultural evolution or revolution. * Genes, but no memes. * You can go everywhere, but everywhere is the same, so you just stay home. * You can meet people from all over, but they are all the same, so you just don't bother. * One mass of humanity, that can be easily molded and manipulated.

@ fd208ee8:0fd927c1

## You have no idea I regularly read comments from people, on here, wondering how it's possible to marry -- or even simply be friends! -- with someone who doesn't agree with you on politics. I see this sentiment expressed quite often, usually in the context of Bitcoin, or whatever _pig is currently being chased through the village_, as they say around here.  It seems rather sensible, but I don't think it's as hard, as people make it out to be. Further, I think it's a dangerous precondition to set, for your interpersonal relationships, because the political field is constantly in flux. If you determine who you will love, by their opinions, do you stop loving them if their opinions change, or if the opinions they have become irrelevant and a new set of opinions are needed -- and their new ones don't match your new ones? We could see this happen to relationships en masse, during the Covid Era, and I think it happens every day, in a slow grind toward the disintegration of interpersonal discourse. I suspect many people do stop loving, at that point, as they never really loved the other person for their own sake, they loved the other person because they thought the other person was exactly like they are. But no two people are alike, and the longer you are in a relationship with someone else, the more the initial giddiness wears off and the trials and tribulations add up, the more you notice how very different you actually are. This is the point, where best friends and romantic couples say, _We just grew apart._ But you were always apart. You were always two different people. You just didn't notice, until now.  I've also always been surprised at how many same-party relationships disintegrate because of some disagreement over some particular detail of some particular topic, that they generally agree on. To me, it seems like an irrelevant side-topic, but _they can't stand to be with this person_... and they stomp off. So, I tend to think that it's less that opinions need to align to each other, but rather that opinions need to align in accordance with the level of interpersonal tolerance they can bring into the relationship. ## I was raised by relaxed revolutionaries Maybe I see things this way because my parents come from two diverging political, cultural, national, and ethnic backgrounds, and are prone to disagreeing about a lot of "important" (to people outside their marriage) things, but still have one of the healthiest, most-fruitful, and most long-running marriages of anyone I know, from that generation. My parents, you see, aren't united by their opinions. They're united by their relationship, which is something _outside_ of opinions. Beyond opinions. Relationships are what turn two different people into one, cohesive unit, so that they slowly grow together. Eventually, even their faces merge, and their biological clocks tick to the same rhythm. They eventually become one entity that contains differing opinions about the same topics. It's like magic, but it's the result of a mindset, not a worldview. Or, as I like to quip: > The best way to stay married, is to not get divorced.  My parents simply determined early on, that they would stay together, and whenever they would find that they disagreed on something that _didn't directly pertain to their day-to-day existence with each other_ they would just agree-to-disagree about that, or roll their eyes, and move on. You do you. Live and let live. My parents have some of the most strongly held personal opinions of any people I've ever met, but they're also incredibly tolerant and can get along with nearly anyone, so their friends are a confusing hodgepodge of _people we liked and found interesting enough to keep around_. Which makes their house parties really fun, and highly unusual, in this day and age of mutual-damnation across the aisle.  The things that did affect them, directly, like which school the children should attend or which country they should live in, etc. were things they'd sit down and discuss, and somehow one opinion would emerge, and they'd again... move on. And that's how my husband and I also live our lives, and it's been working surprisingly well. No topics are off-limits to discussion (so long as you don't drone on for too long), nobody has to give up deeply held beliefs, or stop agitating for the political decisions they prefer. You see, we didn't like that the other always had the same opinion. We liked that the other always held their opinions strongly. That they were passionate about their opinions. That they were willing to voice their opinions; sacrifice to promote their opinions. And that they didn't let anyone browbeat or cow them, for their opinions, not even their best friends or their spouse. But that they were open to listening to the other side, and trying to wrap their mind around the possibility that they _might just be wrong about something_.  We married each other because we knew: this person really cares, this person has thought this through, and they're in it, to win it. What "it" is, is mostly irrelevant, so long as it doesn't entail torturing small animals in the basement, or raising the children on a diet of Mountain Dew and porn, or something. Live and let live. At least, it's never boring. At least, there's always something to ~~argue~~ talk about. At least, we never think... we've just grown apart.

@ fd208ee8:0fd927c1

## The newspaper barons are all into crypto, now Watching the outsized-impact we crypto enthusiasts (I'm including Bitcoin in that category), had on the 2024 USA presidential election, was a sobering affair. At the moment, our impact is primarily over the voting box, but, already, indirectly, (over Elon Musik, Donald Trump, and Jack Dorsey, etc.) through our sheer wealth (and the ingenuity that brought us that wealth) being able to influence the voting population, by changing/shifting the communications channels and influencing what is written there. Elon even reached deep into his foreign-learned bag of political tricks and started [handing out money, directly](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crlnjzzk919o), to petition signers.  ## Survival of the fittest, ongoing Now, you all know that I have full respect for an expert player, when I see one, so no hating the hustle, from my side. We all play the hand we are dealt, and the political game is now such a pigsty, that you have to get a bit dirty, to have a chance at winning. Trying to stay neat and above the fray cost Republicans the last election.  It was the most dramatic display of the greatest power following the best money, that has been seen, since the Medici family began minting gold coins. The entire world is in shock. Change is upon us. He who has the best money, makes the rules. On a smaller, but not insignificant scale, private wealth and access to Bitcoin funding, have allowed quite a few of us Nostriches, to dedicate time and energy toward promoting and developing the New Internet. Whereas, other people's hobby is increasingly the night shift at the gas station, or doing something mind-numbing, to escape the realities of their current economic misery. You don't need money to be here, but you can spend more time here, if you have money. And we are here, writing the rules. We call them NIPs.  ## Same ole, same ole But back to us Bitcoiners... I increasingly don't see us morally any different than the clever people crowding into any safe asset, during any financial crisis. Like the people who bought agricultural land, gold, and Swiss Francs, before the Reichsmark melted down. The people who had that stuff, mostly managed to keep it, and their children and grandchildren have inherited it. Or they managed to marry back into families, that have done so, by remaining in the same social class, through beauty or talent.  We Bitcoiners have a good narrative to go along with our flight to economic safety, but everyone has that narrative. Humans have a conscience and need to justify their own actions, to themselves. I'm also a goldbug, you see, and a stockholder, and all three assets are rife with the same virtuous narrative. ## How do we save our financial behinds, without being evil? Some people are simply more situationally aware and have more agency, by nature and circumstances, and they adapt faster. It's not mere intelligence, rather, it also requires a willingness to act and take risks. There's an element of chance to it, but it's still always the same types of people ending up with the assets, with the winners slightly shifting with each round, due to evolution and changes in the environment. Charity was invented, to get such people to willingly share their assets, or the fruits of their assets, for the common good. So, rather than fret over the morality of the asset, itself, the better response is to consider stepping up your charity (effort or payments), to balance out the inevitable negative impact of the coming _Age of Bitcoin Inequality_.  ## Coming down from the ATH Even now, Bitcoin isn't the only safe asset; it's just the most-fungible and partitionable one, so that it's the one most akin to money. And lines are being blurred, as corporations, funds, governments, and insurers discharge dollars and stock up on harder reserve assets, including Bitcoin. They can hear the money printers rolling out, already, because nobody can print-n-spend, like Trump can. Let's not forget that the money for the last big bump came from the infamous Trump stimmy checks, that lots of us stacked on crypto.  As Bitcoin flows into such markets, the power will rest with both groups (the direct-hodlers and the title-holders), although the hodlers will initially have the upper hand. I say, _initially_ because many hodlers will need to discharge or invest Bitcoin, to live off of it, but the others don't need to, so it should eventually even out. It could take dozens or even hundreds of years to rebalance. By then, the world will be a very different place, and we don't know if Bitcoin will even still be a part of it. Assets come, assets go, and I'm just glad I didn't let down my forefathers, by leaving them with the first generation, who failed to adapt. Even if I'm a bit late, to the Bitcoin game, the ball is still in play. May the best money win. And may it be mine. And may I do good with it.

@ fd208ee8:0fd927c1

## Unsucking the feed is real As a Nostrich with an interesting, thought-provoking, and informative feed... a feed so good, that we're creating clients just to look at that feed... a feed that puts a lie to the idea that Nostr is nothing, but people reposting from Twitter or rehashing worn-out Bitcoin memes... a feed that I personally and increasingly enjoy perusing... I am here to tell you that the feed is real.  It's taken me over a year, to produce this feed. I literally spent hours and hours, day in and day out, scouring the Nostrverse for people worth introducing other people to. It was brutally difficult, as I was fighting the inherent nature of the Nostr clients and relays, in their current, most-popular form. ## It goes like so... Here are the steps I took, that sometimes weren't possible to take, until I tried to take them, and that still will sometimes break your client because the clients are often _intentionally_ designed to steer you into having one particular feed: 1) **Make a screenshot** of your current relay list and copy your follows list. 2) **Unsubscribe from all the relays**, that you are currently subscribed to. Your feed should disappear. If it doesn't, or it doesn't allow for this, switch to a different client app because yours is corrupted. 3) **Unfollow everyone.** Delete the whole list. You are taking your follows private, which will invariably result in only following npubs whose stuff you actually want to see, since there's no longer any virtue-signaling going on. Also, it's easier to explain having no list, than a very short one. If your client doesn't allow for this, or starts throwing error messages and freezing up, then switch to a different client app because yours is corrupted. 4) **Curate your copied follows list.** Go line by line and look at the feed produced by the npub on that list. * Do you want to see that in your feed, going forward? * Do they produce original content and/or are they interesting conversationalists, in the replies? * Have they been active, within the past three months? * Are they simply good friends or real-life acquaintances, that you want to keep tabs on? * If not, cross out their name. * If you have been following someone because they repost or quote interesting things, **look at who they've been reposting** and follow them, instead. 5) Of the npubs remaining on your list, go through and select the 10 most interesting ones, and **look at the reposts and quotes** in their feed, and their topical lists like \"Favorites\", \"Devs\", \"Recipes\", etc. (Not their follows list, unless it's quite short, as follows tend to be full of people they follow for social-signaling or client-functional reasons, that they don't actively look at.) Find some new follows, there. 6) Now, set up a personal relay and add all the follows, that made the cut, to **your allowed-npubs list**. Do not add people to the list, just to make them feel better, or because you feel guilty, as they follow you, or to keep them from yelling at you. Remember, they can't see the list! 7) Think about the topics you find interesting, and add an **allowed-keywords list** (this is better than hashtags, as it searches the entire content of the notes), with the OR operator (these allowed npubs OR these allowed topics). 8) Make sure that you choose words likely to find the content you are most-interested in, and not people just ranting about it or spamming (those are great additions to your relay's block-list). If you are Muslim, for instance, instead of "Islam" or "shariah", choose "hadith" or "riba", as those are words more-likely to be used by people who know what they are talking about. If you are into bread baking, add "sourdough", "rye", "yeast", or "whisk", but don't add "bread" or "carbs". Once a note from those people shows up in your feed, and their feed looks like someone interesting, you can add their npub to your allow list. Remember: **The topics are there to find people to add to the allow list**, not merely for their own sake, as this is not a topical relay, but a personal one. 9) Open up a faucet (or relay syncing) with some of the big relays you previously unsubscribed from, some WoT relays, and some of the paid relays (nostr.land, nostr.wine, nostr21.com, and sovbit.host, for example). **Your relay will filter that feed** and only accept the events from the people and topics on your list. As your relay becomes more popular, npubs will begin writing directly to it, and the connections to other relays will sink in significance. 10) Go to your client of choice and **subscribe to your new relay**. Also subscribe to some topical relays, or curated neighborhood relays, you find interesting or your frens are running. This is an easy way to find new, interesting npubs, to add to your own relay.  That's a lot of work, you say? Yes, but the result is great, and you are now fully in-charge of your own feed. You also -- here's the cool part -- have a feed good enough, that other people can add your feed to theirs and enjoy your manual curation. As you refine and expand your feed, theirs will also be refined, in parallel. You are now an official Nostr Community Curator. My sincere congratulations.  ## Why is this so hard? This is only a lot of work because the clients aren't designed to interact with relays, to this extent, as they were created to service mega-relays, download all their crap to your local cache, and adjust the feed over the follows/mutes lists. This was an idea borne of the axiom that Relays Are Hard, so there will only ever be a handful of them, where we'd all clump together and the relay operators would never judge the quality of someone's content. Then, some unusually clever people made relays increasingly easy, and the mailbox communication model was invented, and here we are. What we have now, and that is slowly growing in popularity, among the #NostrIntelligentsia, are Nostr clients aimed at curating and viewing individual relays or personalized sets of smaller or more-specialized relays. The reigning client devs refused to give us those clients, and most of us aren't up to developing our own clients, so the relay devs took matters into their own hands and made the clients themselves. The free market remains undefeated. This is a total game-changer. Last one to board this train is a rotten egg. Originally, relays were supposed to be completely stupid and clients were supposed to be completely smart, but it's now actually the other way around, because most relay devs have a market-born incentive to make their content highly customizable and appealing to individuals (so that more people run relays). ## But what about algos? Can't you just slap an algo on top of Damus, Lol, or Primal relays, and get the same result? I would argue... no. No, you can't. Or, rather, only in the short to medium term. Running your own relay, is running your own server. You are now _intellectually independent_, at a machine-level, and therefore a fully sovereign consumer. If you then use algos to control your own server, or in a client that subscribes to your own server, then you can further-refine a feed that is already in a high-to-you-signal state, rather than risking an algo inching you toward the Consensus Feed. I have noticed that my own feed is slowly drifting away from the ReplyGuy-Cryptobot-Porny-Bitcoin-Meme Dumpster Fire, that almost everyone else is looking at, and it's due to running my own relay. If I use DVMs, those algos sometimes refer to relays I intentionally avoid, so they return results according to those relays. The results are as underwhelming, as you would expect, and often are simply 31 flavors of the Trending List. But, that isn't your problem, anymore. From here, you can actively expand and refine your feed, over your whitelist, the topics, and your personally-managed algos. Happy Nostr-ing!

@ 6871d8df:4a9396c1

Today is Election Day here in the US, and it's a big deal. As of now, this is my bet on the vote: <a href="https://www.270towin.com/maps/Z4y6z"><img src="https://www.270towin.com/map-images/Z4y6z.png" width="800"></a> For myself, as I did in 2020, I will be voting for Donald Trump. My biggest reasons for this are as follows: 1. Dismantling the bureaucracy. 2. Financial Freedom 3. Food Freedom There are others, but those are my top three. For me, the fact that unelected bureaucrats essentially run our government (Joe Biden is still our President right now, though no one has seen or heard from him in months) is our largest red flag. I think it is our biggest priority to return to a place where the people we elect to run our government _actually_ run our government. Trump swung and missed on this in his first term, but with his commitment to RFK and having people on his side like Vivek, I do not think he will sing and miss this time. Next is financial freedom. The Biden-Harris administration has been incredibly hostile to what I am calling financial freedom. They mostly got their policies from the Warren camp, which hates digital currencies. Being a part of Bitcoin startups for most of the Biden admin, I have seen this first hand. [Operation Chokepoint 2.0](https://www.piratewires.com/p/crypto-choke-point) was a real thing and it was scary living through it. Actively seeing the government try to de-bank you was something I never would have thought was possible in the 'Land of the Free.' The fact that the gov could de-bank you at all was an even bigger catalyst of how necessary a neutral, open, digital, and global money was critical for not only freedom itself, but our future. Trump _clearly_ is the better candidate regarding this. Yes, he may have launched a [grifting shitcoin](https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/16/trump-crypto-world-liberty-financial.html), but he doesn't want my industry — and financial freedom itself — dead. This is a no-brainer. Andreessen Horowitz had a great [podcast](https://youtu.be/n_sNclEgQZQ?si=bwHh8jD2LVOYXVrS) summarizing this that is worth the listen. It sums up where I sit as opposed to the current administration. Trump has also promised to [free Ross](https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/25/trump-commute-ross-ulbricht-sentence-libertarian-convention-00160025), which is _absolutely_ necessary. Last is food freedom. I think the US is going the absolute wrong direction when it comes to health and food. In the name of saving animals and climate, food guidelines have been captured by this horrible, anti-human ideology. I personally think it's not only necessary but _good_ for humans to eat lots of beef and just meat in general. So much of what we've been told about nutrition and cholesterol is blatantly wrong. Only one side of the aisle is trying to mandate this in the name of 'science.' I think they are wrong. There is also only one side of the aisle that is anti-seed oils. I haven't eaten seed oils for almost four years, and bringing that mainstream, I think, is incredibly important. RFK is leading the way here. Trump putting him in a position of power to 'Make America Healthy Again,' I believe, is a fantastic initiative and one that is at the forefront for me for this election.

@ fd208ee8:0fd927c1

## All memed out It finally happened. I think it was October 25th, at circa 18:45 in the evening. I was doomscrolling my Nostr feed, and kept seeing the same Bitcoin memes repeated over and over, by different people. They weren't even reposts, they were copy-pasted versions of the same image. A very funny image. Well, it was very funny last year... and the year before that... and probably the year before that, when it appeared on a different network. Because it's all just reposts, copy-pastes and rehashes of the Best of Bitcoin Twitter, just like the tiresome influencers, with their groupies and their Episode 498 of *Let's all eat a large chunk of lightly-burnt dead animal and count our stacks before jetting off to talk about how to save the poors by getting them to buy individual satoshis with money they don't have*.  ## I'm the poors your looking for It's all so tiresome. It has little bearing on the real world I see around me, where most people are thinking all day about 99 problems and Bitcoin ain't one.  Which is, of course, what the Bitcoin influencers would have you believe, is the reason that they're poor. What in the world could be more important, than thinking about Bitcoin? Why do these people not get with the program? Don't they know, that we are trying to save them?  Why are they worrying about OtherProblems? Don't they know that all OtherProblems can be fixed with Bitcoin? Really, if you just go back far enough, in any current, situational problem, you will discover that there was some slight, negative shift to the history record that involved soft money. It's the financial version of the Butterfly Effect.  That's why #BitcoinFixesThis. Bitcoin fixes everything, if you just think about it, for long enough. The same way that we all actually come out of Africa, supposedly, if you go back enough generations. So, coming out of Africa, now, as a Real Life Person in The Present is supposed to have no significance. What does someone from Cameroon know about Africa, that someone from Alaska doesn't? Both people come out of Africa, if you just think about it, for long enough.  And maybe that really is true. Maybe Bitcoin will eventually end all vice and crimes, save the planet, and we will all just hold hands and sing kumbaya all day, while waiting for the Singularity to upload us to Satoshi. ## Bitcoin envelope budgeting Or maybe it's not. Maybe it's just a really hard, digital money that incentivizes savings, functions as a reliable measure, and makes micropayments possible on a global scale. Those really are things that will help the poors, including myself. I can see it, already, when trying to organize pre-paid meetups or figure out what to do with our household's meager savings, when the stock market is looking particularly bubblicious.  But this is what I would consider Boring Bitcoin. Bitcoin home economics. Penny-pinching Bitcoin. Bitcoin for homemakers. How to use the Bitcoin envelope budgeting system to beat inflation by a margin of 13%. The actual use of Bitcoin as money, rather than as a mere investment gamble or hype machine. That's the part of Bitcoin that nobody seems to really talk about because it's incredibly practical, dull, and useful, and it can only be tested by -- Oh, the horror! -- actually spending Bitcoin. But... perhaps I will begin talking about it. Perhaps those of us, Bitcoiners, who are having fun staying poor, while stacking sats, should speak up a bit more. Perhaps the boring stuff is actually the interesting stuff. Perhaps there is more to say about Bitcoin, than can fit into a meme.

@ fd208ee8:0fd927c1

## It arrived! I was feeling impatient, waiting for my snazzy, brand-spanking new mobile phone to arrive, but when it got here, I just stared at the box, in trepidation. Everyone kept walking by, asking how it is, but I just shook my head. After nearly four years, with my (originally Android 10), Moto G8 Power, which I loved to death, I wasn't yet ready to move on. I needed a moment, to grieve. RIP, my trusty fren.  ## Anyways... Around 10 pm, I managed to emotionally recover enough to begin the Big Transition, and I was up until 2 am, and still didn't finish. My **SimpleX** database is sort of large, and slow to migrate. Also, took me a while to figure out how to do it, and the whole thing made me terribly nervous, that I'd accidentally get locked out. But it worked, after eight failed attempts, so yay. **Telegram** was back online, almost immediately, since it's tied to the SIM card. Which was convenient, but sorta creeped me out. Our family-internal favorite, **Threema**, was a snap. Took 5 minutes. I had four failed starts with **Slack**, as it kept sending a login code to my Proton Mail, but I didn't have Proton app installed on my new phone, yet, and I was really sleepy, so I kept confirming on the old phone and then Slack would freeze up, and I had to kill the process and restart. My **key manager** is cloud-based, so that went really fast, and I had the nos2x browser extension going in Firefox within 10 minutes, or so. Logged into Habla.News, Nostr.Build, Zap.Cooking, and Nostrudel.Ninja, immediately, so that I can get my Nostr fix. Then I took a deep breath and mass-installed F-Droid, Minibits, **Amethyst**, Citrine, Orbot, and Amber. And breathed out, again, because MIRACLES NEVER CEASE: it seems to be actually working.  Everyone knows that this is the unbeatable Android Nostr setup, but it's also a resource-gobbling monster, that should only be tried at home, kids. Make sure you don't use Amethyst when out-and-about, unless you have a gigantic battery and an unlimited, high-speed, mobile plan. So, basically, everyone in the First World, who isn't me, can do it. Oh, well. At least, I can now indulge over WiFi. The phone itself is just like the old one, but thinner, faster, and doesn't freeze up or take a long time to start. The Motorola is dead. Long live the Motorola.

@ fd208ee8:0fd927c1

# It's that season, again I've been growing my hair out (too lazy to cut it) and it has -- once again -- quickly reached a length at which it draws unnecessary attention and sheds everywhere. I suppose it always sheds everywhere, but shedding short hairs is just generally less-gross than finding a 12-inch strand lying on the toast, you were about to consume. So, I'm back to the _50 Shades of Updo_ stage, where I struggle to figure out how to best wear my head, usually defaulting to the _Messy Bun_ look, because it's still too short to do anything more elaborate and looks silly, as a ponytail.   It's really not that great of a look for me, I know, especially, now that my chin is finally succumbing to gravity, but doing something more-elegant is usually more time-consuming and doesn't have that wonderful "swept up" feeling to it. You know that feeling, when you tie all of that heavy hair to a higher point on your skull and the roots just sigh with relief. Another look, I tend to gravitate toward, at the moment, is head scarves, like this one:  ...or a Bavarian-style bandana, for gardening or hiking (don't have a selfie handy, so here is some random chick, who also suffers from poofy, dark hair).  Hiking bare-headed, with flowing tresses, is not recommended, due to all of the Nature, that you have to comb back out of it. Generally, just bored of my inbetween length and looking forward to braiding it, in a few months. Or giving up, in frustration, and cutting it all off.

@ fd208ee8:0fd927c1

## Chef's notes I got the recipe from the [byanjushka website](https://byanjushka.com/erdnussbutter-kekse-rezept-8177/). She includes a lot more information on there, and lots of pictures and instructions. But it's all in German, so here's my quickie, English version. I've doubled the amounts, as I first baked this for the #PurpleKonnektiv meetup, and I knew I'd have some hungry guests. The cookies are vegan, but they're mostly just peanut, so it's sort of irrelevant. Just make sure you get the really high-quality peanut butter that is 100% peanut. You can usually identify it by the fact that the oil separates from the base, a bit. Everything else is probably with hardened palm oil, or something. ## Details - ⏲️ Prep time: 15 min - 🍳 Cook time: 10 min - 🍽️ Servings: 30 cookies ## Ingredients - 500 g peanut butter, normal or crunchy - 300 g brown (or raw) sugar - 160 ml plant-based milk (or cows' milk, if you don't care about vegan) - 1 pkg vanilla sugar (bourbon is nice) or 1 tsp vanilla - 250 g flour - 2 tsp baking powder - 2/3 tsp salt ## Directions 1. Preheat oven to 180 °C (350 °F). 2. Beat together the peanut butter and the sugars, with an electric mixer. 3. Mix in milk and vanilla. 4. In a separate bowl, stir together flour, salt, and baking powder. 5. Stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, and then knead the dough a bit. 6. (At this point, I put the dough in the fridge overnight, and baked it the next day.) 7. Line your baking sheet with baking paper. 8. Form tbsp-spoon-sized balls of dough. 9. Press each one flat, with a fork, dipping the fork in water, before each press (to keep the dough from sticking to the fork).

@ fd208ee8:0fd927c1

## You don't choose software. You choose software developers. I've done lots of internal and external software project audits. The clue to a good audit, is that you are judging the building and the builder, because the former determines the present state of the code and the latter determines how things will be built going forward. Here's what to look for in a good developer: * _curious_ : eager to learn from others * _humble_ : seems slightly embarrassed, when you report an issue, and tries to reproduce and fix the problem * _responsive_ : they try to get back to you within 24 hours, or they arrange a sub or post a notice, when they'll be away for a while. They feel bad, if they leave someone waiting, so they'll send updates, even if it's just to ask them to be patient. * _diligent_ : they don't leave websites rotting, abandoned. They either maintain it or pull it down. They check their repos regularly and actively manage the PRs and issues. * _egalitarian_ : they care about all of their users, whether they are rich or poor, famous or unknown, premium or freewarers * _agile_ : they don't let the system go stale, for months, and then dump a gigantic commit * _honest_ : they don't lie, ever. Never ever. They're not sneaky or evasive. If something they promised won't work out, they announce it. They readily admit to things that make them look bad. * _calm_ : they are not histrionic, hyperventilatory or prone to needing a Wellness Break, to recover from the stress of dealing with humans and code * _centered_ : they have a plan, for their software, that they regularly refine, but they don't flit from one Next Big Thing, to another. They resist hype and examine concepts soberly and analytically. * _concerned_ : they test their software before giving it to other people because they want them to have a positive experience, while using it. If something is just a prototype, they make that clear, when announcing it.

@ fd208ee8:0fd927c1

## Yesterday was also a day I'm still quite bullish about using Nostr to publish, and generally for OtherStuff, but I was feeling a bit pessimistic about the microblogging (kind 01) feeds on Nostr, yesterday. And, rightly so. Mine has been grinding slowly to a halt, and not for lack of effort, on my part. I regularly hear reports, from other npubs, that they sense the same phenomenon. Most of the people I have whitelisted on the wss://theforest.nostr1.com relay (currently 302, in number) are beginning to give up on Kind 01 clients, except for occasionally making an announcement, and are increasingly moving their chatting off-Nostr. (I'm still privy to those conversations, but most of you no longer are.) So, my feed has been getting quieter and quieter. Even adding new people doesn't help much, as they don't tend to stick around, for long, so it's a Sisyphean task.  Some others are still bothering to show up, regularly, but they increasingly see it as a chore, or something they do to "keep up appearances". Add me to this group of wearied, diligent noters, holding down the microblogging feeds, with our exhausting attempt at #KeepingNostrWeird, while the influencers surround the gates and the Kind 01 feeds dissolve into nothing but warmed-over Bitcoin memes, GM notes, notifications from the OtherStuff, and Things Copied from X.  The problem of barren, intellectually-emptying Kind 01 feeds is further exacerbated by the fact that new entrants to the Nostrverse find it increasingly easy to "find good follows", but they're all only finding the same follows: whoever is on the trending list. ## The See-Nothings I keep complaining about this, but the responses I get are generally unhelpful. They are: * mockery -- Oh, Miss Hoity-Toity wants more attention! * insults -- Nobody is talking to you because you are boring and stupid, and nobody likes you. * clueless -- You should try replying to other people, then they might reply to you. * or they tell me to just stop looking at the list, if it upsets me.  What people are missing, by telling me to just not look at the trending lists, is that the lists are a statistic of what real humans are looking at, on Nostr. The bizarrely-high concentration of npubs, on the list, so that their entries show up multiple times, suggests that what people are primarily looking at... is the trending list.  Either directly, because they use a client that has that built in, or indirectly, as they have been onboarded with the lists or told to "just follow the people I follow", which leads to a steadily-rising concentration of follows. This concentrating effect is accelerating. The newly-popular WoT (web of trust) relays further exacerbate this effect, as they put a premium on the npubs that have the highest WoT score, which -- surprise, surprise! -- are the same people as on the trending list. And this is why everyone on the trending list insists Nostr is a fun, happening place, full of human interaction. A place where replying reverently to Jack and posting GM religiously will make you a sought-after conversant. It is that place. For them. In fact, they've reached that glorious state of #PeakSocialMedia, where they have become famous for being famous, and no longer have to even pretend to be trying to appeal to anyone with their content. They can post literal garbage, and their ~~fans~~ ~~groupies~~ ~~sycophants~~ commentariat will cheer them on, and flood their replies with ardent encouragement. Less because those other npubs actually cared about what they posted, than because they are hoping to pick up new followers in those threads, since they know that everyone is looking at those threads, because those threads are trending. It's a pyramid scheme of following.  For the rest of us... the vast majority of us... that blue line at the bottom is mostly how it feels. ## The trend is to trending. What we no longer have, is people looking directly at relay feeds, to find new people, or even their own follow list feeds, to see npubs they've already subscribed to. Even when people follow me, they usually don't respond until I'm trending, which suggests that they're also seeing me on the trending list because that is what they're primarily looking at. This is why, as soon as you get on the trending list, your replies explode. And your replies will be concentrated in a hardcore few, otherwise. Those few are the reason I keep coming back, but as they're also often chatting with me off-Nostr, I am facing the question of: _Why bother with Nostr microblogging?_ This is the question I am struggling with. If kind 01 isn't for plebs chatting, anymore, (and it increasingly isn't) then it's mostly a sort of bulletin board, where we post notifications of items we've added in OtherStuff clients, or make announcements of meetups, software releases, or conferences. This, however, is compounding the dullness of the feeds and turning it into a sort of "info flyer", except for a lucky few. But, perhaps, I am simply a #NostrBoomer, who is failing to move with the times and get with the program.  I'm slowly reaching the conclusion that Kind 01 in an open, centralized market of notes, will always coalesce around a small subset of #NostrElite and turn into a largely passive form of entertainment, or a frustratingly lonely place, for everyone else. There can only be so many people talking, at once, in a public square. The only movement I currently see, that might end the slow slide of Kind 01 into irrelevance and tedium, is to create lots of smaller, public squares, through single-relay communities. This has been such a long time, in coming, and has been resisted by client devs so ferociously, that I worry that it's merely an attempt to close the barn door after the npubs have escaped. I sincerely hope to be proven wrong, though. Perhaps the relay devs, who have valiantly taken up the fight, will #SaveKind01. We shall see.

@ fd208ee8:0fd927c1

(Please note that this is not official financial or business advice, but rather a description of something we have done, on an informal basis.) # A long, long time ago It's been nearly a year, since nostr:nprofile1qydhwumn8ghj7argv4nx7un9wd6zumn0wd68yvfwvdhk6tcpypmhxue69uhkummnw3ezuetfde6kuer6wasku7nfvuh8xurpvdjj7qpqs3ht77dq4zqnya8vjun5jp3p44pr794ru36d0ltxu65chljw8xjqv5atj2 came into being, mostly as a lark, involving a couple of members of our private chat group. Our initial plan was to work toward bounties, but Nostr bounties are a bit of a biased, uncertain thing, and our enthusiasm for that quickly waned. So, what to do? Here we are, we three (nostr:npub1ecdlntvjzexlyfale2egzvvncc8tgqsaxkl5hw7xlgjv2cxs705s9qs735, nostr:npub1wqfzz2p880wq0tumuae9lfwyhs8uz35xd0kr34zrvrwyh3kvrzuskcqsyn, and I): IT professionals with little time, but plenty of intellectual energy, a Slack chat, a [GitHub repo](https://github.com/ShadowySupercode), and lots of frustration with the Nostr status quo. We were, you see, Nostr end-users. We loved the idea of the protocol, but we were being regularly stymied by the poor quality of many implementations. * Why can I not login? Oh, they fixed the login! Nope, still can't login. * If I press this button, it says it sent, but it didn't send. Where note? * They announced a new feature, but I tried it and it didn't work. Oh well. * I noticed a bug in the client, reported it, and the issue is just rotting away in the project repo. Ignored. * The website/relay/repo was here... yesterday. Today it has disappeared, and taken my zaps with it. It was enough to make us want to tear our hair out. We decided that what Nostr needed... what it _really_ needed... was a **Nostr Stable Version**. Nothing glamorous. Nothing exotic. Nothing busy or excitable. Just something that stayed where you initially found it, ran, and actually worked. Something where you could report a bug and receive a prompt response. Maybe even something, where you could pay a reasonable fee and be _allowed to have expectations_ of some particular service being returned. And who better to build such a version, than people who want to use it, themselves? # Things working is an underrated concept I know that the very idea of software _running as expected_ and websites not appearing and disappearing suddenly, based upon what some particular developer had for lunch, tends to be met with little but scorn, from hardened, seasoned Nostriches (who are convinced that bugs are _all_ features), but I think the majority of potential users would see it differently. I'm with the majority, on this one. I like to click "save" buttons and have them save. If I publish something, I want it to appear under my list of published somethings. I like to type in the website address I always type in, and have it magically appear on my screen, as if there were a little man sitting at controls in my laptop, just waiting for me to write H-T-T-P-S... and then jump to attention. My unreasonable expectations have no bounds, it is true. But unreasonable people are also people, so we would also like to have our own unreasonable things to play with. Scorn away. My save button will save, and my published something will publish, and my website will load _every damn time_, just to spite you. In the larger scheme of things, you see, we win even if we fail, if we at least increase the competition enough, that _things working_ becomes the new standard. We can simply prove, definitively, that it is possible for Nostr things to work, if they are built by people who care if they work. If we also have fun together, learn something new, and come up with some cool, novel use cases, then that's pure profit. We can only win, at this endeavor. # Where to start? ## Name that brand So, we had a team, we had a business idea, and we had a heck of a lot of motivation. What we didn't have, is a name. (Never underestimate the importance of naming things.) We decided to name ourselves "GitCitadel" because "git" sounds techy, hints at our GitRepublic project, and is reminiscent of open-source development, and "citadel" reminds us of Bitcoin. The republic is at home in the citadel, naturally. All other products also live in the same citadel, hence the naming-convention of prefacing everything with "GC" (i.e. "GC Alexandria", "GC Sybil", "GC Aedile", etc.). ## Brand yourself The next thing we did, was rent a domain and run a webserver on it. This is an important step because it gives you an Internet presence, allows you to have company NIP-05 and email addresses (a form of promotion), and it's simply exciting to have one. Feels so much more "official" and it helps increase the name-recognition of your company. ## Define yourself We then sat down, together, over the Internet, and figured out who we are. Not who we individually are, but who we are, as a company. A company, after all, (according to the Cambridge Dictionary) is "an organization that produces or sells goods or services in order to make a profit". Now, a company's profits don't have to be monetary, but they should be something tangible. A company, in other words, is a team of people working toward some defined goal. What is our goal? Well, we decided to think it over, sat down with the newer additions to the company (you can see who they are, on our [project wiki page](https://wikistr.com/gitcitadel-project), and came up with a Vision and a Mission:  The _vision_ is what the overall goals of the company are, whereas the _mission_ describes how those goals shall be achieved. Now, this is a sort of lofty, abstract statement, so it was important that we posted it someplace publicly (to keep ourselves accountable) and look at it regularly, so that we can ponder it and realign whatever we are currently working on, with this statement. We know the statement is well-designed, if considering it helps us make decisions about what to do next. ## Pay yourselves (I'm going to switch from "we" to "you", here, as it's easier to write this part, but let's just pretend I didn't.)  The next thing on the list, is to arrange the finances, usually by setting up a Geyserfund, with an associated wallet, and then deciding how the funds from the wallet will be dispersed or stored. (I won't tell you how we are handling that, as that's internal company business, but I'm sure you'll think of something clever, yourselves. Or just google it.) I would encourage you to arrange to pay yourselves profits. Not merely because your idea is going to make you all fabulously wealthy and internationally famous (although, that is obviously true), but because _profits are the most pure form of communication that consumers in the market have_ with its producers, and one of the best ways to make decisions and measure increases in efficiency (increasing profits and/or output, while keeping prices steady or falling). Cutting off this signal, in order to look pious to outsiders, is to shoot yourself in your free-market foot. Nobody says that you have to spend your profits on the proverbial _lambo and a bimbo_. You could donate them to charity, reinvest them, or store them for your nephews to inherit, but **pay them out, you should**. You don't have to love money, to value it as a tool and use it shrewdly. Money is a measure, and companies should regularly measure themselves: against their previous state, against their potential state, and against their competition. (Also, you can use money to buy a lambo and a bimbo, but you didn't hear that from me.) ## Organize yourselves Once you've been working together, for a while, you'll find that you need to figure out how to organize yourselves. The first step is to... ### Form a board of directors. Stop laughing. I'm serious. Any company has at least two roles (President and Secretary), ideally held by two different people, so any single-proprietor company is a man down. Find a different person, to be your Second, even if they're just your confident, who lets you cry on your shoulder on The Bad Days, when your code refuses to compile, and can tell people that you've become a Bitcoin millionaire and have gone on a sabbatical to hike the Himalayas and will be back in 3 months on The Very Good Days. Because business man was not meant to be alone. If, like us, you're a small herd of people and have already been working together for a while, then this step is actually really, really fun. Just think about what people are already doing, and put a label on it. That role is now defined and it is clear who is in charge of what. Scientists become "Chief Science Officer" or "Scientific Advisor". The person who always writes the _okay, so this is what we've decided_ comment in the thread becomes the Secretary, the one managing the Lightning wallet and worrying over paying for the servers is the CFO, the person running the remote server becomes the CTO, and so on and etc. And everyone knows who the CEO is. Everyone always knows. They do. Just write it down. ### Agree how to disagree Now, have the secretary write up a Member's Agreement. It's a contract between the members, about whatever the group thinks is important concerning the way the company will operate. According to [Investopedia](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/llc-operating-agreement.asp), common topics are:  Is this legally binding? Probably not. Maybe. I don't know and wouldn't tell you, even if I did. But it's _emotionally binding_, which is arguably more important. Writing things down is an advanced form of _naming things_ and it provides clarity, helps to manage expectations, and allows you to define a working agreement before Real Money shows up and taints your interaction. You're just accepting tips, at the moment. Everyone is calm and cheerful, so now is your best time to negotiate. Keep it very simple and only address the most basic things. If you wish to incorporate, at a later date, then you just take this to a registered agent, or other experienced person, and have them tidy up any loose ends and add the fine print. ## Go forth, together This has probably taken you weeks, or even months, but you're now a company. Get a logo and a company npub, start dropping the company name into your notes, and get on with the business of being in business.

@ df8f0a64:057d87a5

## 書き散らす動機 残暑続きからの急な気温低下で鼻炎がひどくなる今日この頃、皆様お元気でしょうか 株主への抗議のために退職してから2ヶ月半、流石に暇を持て余してきました 時間がある上に能動的に働く気も起きず、ひたすらボーッとしたりうねうね考え事をする日々です 幸いにして人生も折り返しにさしかかる頃になり、時折「今、人生が終わって構わないのでは？」というようなことも考えたりします （鬱病既往歴ありますが私は元気です） 子どものお迎えを終えて、いつもどおり夕食をとり、またうねうねしているうちに ふと、6年前の年末に急死された、仕事でお世話になったTさんのことを思い出しました 子を寝かしつけてもまだ頭の中をぐるぐるしていたので、ここに吐き出してすっきりしようという魂胆です ## Tさんとの出会い 私のキャリアの（ほぼ）スタートはVC（ベンチャーキャピタル）でした 誰のせいでもないとある経緯もあり、周囲からは警戒され避けられ、わずか6年ではありますが、 インナーサークルに入り込めない時期を過ごし、当時の上司と二人、とにかくやれることをやり続ける毎日でした いつものようにピッチイベントに参加しているとき、近くの席にいたスーツ姿の3人組と目が一瞬合います 「事業会社の人だ」 協調投資やファンド出資のきっかけを掴むべく、その3人に話かけます 「よろしければ弊社投資先のご紹介や御社の...」 ひととおりの挨拶を済ませ、この人たちにも避けられるんだろうと思いながらも要件を切り出します 「是非やりましょう」 いつもとは違う嬉しい返事をくれたのがTさんでした ## 面倒見の良い他社の先輩 そのときの3人組であるMさん・Iさん・Tさんには、私の仕事人生の中で最もお世話になったと言っても過言ではありません ファンドの営業を受けていただき、協調投資を行い、VCからの転職後にも協業相手として他部署のキーマンをご紹介いただき... 社会人になったばかりの私の、今思い返せば恥ずかしい（部下がこんな提案したら卒倒する）レベルの提案を、 誰もが知る一流企業の多忙な役職持ちであるにも関わらず、毎回一時間も割いて丁寧に対応してくださる心の広い方でした 当時、VCと接点をもつような事業会社の対スタートアップ部隊は、本業でご活躍されている方が兼任で取り組むパターンが多く、Mさん・Iさん・Tさんももちろんそう その後も昇進され、最後には本社の取締役に。今年遂に退任され、所謂「あがり」でしょうか、子会社の取締役に異動 長い社会人人生をほぼ走りきり、有終の美を飾ろうとする時期にさしかかっています でもTさんはそこにはいません ## 残される側 冒頭触れたとおり、Tさんは6年前のこの時期に急死されました 死因については、Tさんのご友人がFBに投稿していた文章を読んでも、Iさんに聞いてもわからない 悲しいかな、四十年近く生きていると、死因が明かされない理由がわかるようになる機会が一度や二度はあります Tさんもおそらくそうだったのでしょう 直前まで、Iさんと一緒にベイエリアに出張され、楽しそうなコメントと共に写真を投稿されていたのに 晩婚なのか再婚なのか、とにかくご結婚されて一年ちょっと。お子様も生まれたばかりだったのに Tさんは近い人間に心中を隠して、静かにこの世を去りました あなたの快い返事に、どれほど私が救われたのか 転職後の提案のとき、受付で顔を出してすぐ「元気？」と声をかけてくださったことがどれほど私を安心させてくれたか あなたが声をかけてくれる度、私の社会人としての成果が生まれたことに、私は十分に感謝を伝えられていません ## まだしばらく残る理由 振り返って、Tさんのように誰かの人生をenhanceできたのか？と自分に問うと、まだできたとは思えません。残念ですが 今ここで死んでも私は構わないけど、まだもうちょっと頑張るべきかな、老いてから誰かに感謝をしてもらうまで生きてみてもいいかな そうふと思い直しているうちに日付が変わりました

@ fd208ee8:0fd927c1

## Why waste time, looking at other people's stuff? I get this question a lot, on Nostr, and it feeds immediately back to the next question: *Why don't you just build your own client, if you're so smart?* This was a completely new question for me, as I'm used to collaborating with at least one other person, even when doing FOSS stuff. (No, this isn't my first such project; we just used to call it "volunteering" and "sharing the code", which sounds way less glamorous.) It never occurred to me, that a habit of collaboration and interaction was some sign of my ignorance and incompetence, or somehow proof that I can't vomit up "Hello World!" in 5 different programming languages. I also made the deadly political mistake, when I entered the Nostrsphere, of refusing to call myself a "dev". For me, "dev" is a special title, given to someone doing a specific type of programming (fiddling with GUIs, mostly, which I've only done occasionally, as a sub), whereas the types I've done are "test automation", "development operations", "database management and data curation", "requirements engineering", and "application administration". Because it's so much easier to find someone interested in building a GUI, rather than building AnythingElse, I tend to slide into AnythingElse and it eventually became my professional specialty to be the Girl Friday of every project.  But, in Nostr, there is no AnythingElse category. There are only (GUI) client devs and AllOfTheIdiotsWhoMustBowDownToTheDevs. Which merely doubled my instinct to distance myself from the term. I do not want to join some cargo cult and be pedestalized and regarded as some sort of superhuman everyone owes fealty to, in return for raining GUI presents down on my loyal subjects. Software engineers are simply people who are skilled craftsman, not gods, and it is fair to point out that some are more skilled than others. It is also completely fair to criticize their products, report bugs, and wonder aloud at endemic low-quality. Which brings me back to the initial question: ## What does the inquisitive dev know, that the others don't? 1) You learn an awful lot about an awful lot, by looking at specs, reviewing code, and trying out various implementations of concepts you are already familiar with. There are, in fact, n number of use cases for every event type, and I've seen so many of them, that I can conjure them up, or invent new ones, on the fly, rather than wasting time inventing similar events. 2) They don't have to explain their concept to you, later, when you interact. Each interaction brings you closer to parallel-levels of knowledge, which raises the signal-strength of the interaction, and widens your own knowledge base, for interacting with third parties. 3) You are increasingly-likely to contribute code or perform some other more-advanced task, for other people, as you don't face the hurdle of adjusting to a new repo or unfamiliar language, while being less-likely to merely fork-and-ignore because you have a standing business relationship with the other developer. 4) If the other dev stops maintaining the repo, you'll be inclined to continue on your own. You may even eventually receive administrative access, rather than needing to fork, as they trust you with their stuff. This means that the risk of the repo becoming abandoned falls, with each active dev snooping around it, even if that is not their primary project. 5) It helps you determine who to focus your energy on interacting with, further. Is this person new to software development, perhaps, but has some interesting transfer-knowledge from some other branch, that has resulted in a surprisingly novel concept? Is this person able to write very clean code, so that merely reading their code feels like mental training for your own craftsman's toolbox? ...and many more reasons, but this is getting too long, so, let's just cut to the chase. ## What does a craftswoman want? But, this still doesn't answer the question of my private motivation. Why do I want to gather all of this knowledge, from those further ahead, than I? I think Nostr has long moved past the initial stage, where mere speed was of the essence, so that one npub could _finally_ post a note and have it appear on the other npubs' client. That must have felt like a miracle, but it increasingly feels like a disaster, as the steadily-rising complexity of the Nostr ecosystem causes haphazardly-structured and largely-unexamined code bases to begin to atrophy, or result in developers running around at an exhausting speed, with their bug-extinguishers, to put out fire after fire. I think the time has arrived, for a different kind of development. Maybe even for a different kind of developer. Not replacing the experimentalism that made Nostr fun, but adding the realm of production-quality software engineering. The sort of software development that requires relay administration, testing, support... collaboration, interaction, maybe even someone who does AnythingElse. I want to build useful, elegant products people enjoy using and feel comfortable relying on. I want them to use them, naturally and happily, to accomplish tasks they consider worthwhile. I don't want them thinking about me, while they use it. The craftswoman should never be greater than her work. I want them to feel free -- nay, be eager! -- to give me both positive and negative feedback. My assumption is _always_ that our production is imperfect because we are imperfect, so you do us a favor, by pointing out where we can improve. That's why we wish to integrate a feedback form that produces ngit issue events, putting your questions and comments straight on our board. And there will be an AnythingElse person, reading that board, and responding promptly, rest assured.

@ bf95e1a4:ebdcc848

This is the AI-generated full transcript of Bitcoin Infinity Show #129 with Max Hillebrand! Check out the <https://bitcoininfinitystore.com/> for our books, merch, and more! **Luke:** Max, welcome for the first time to the Bitcoin Infinity Show. # The Lodging of Wayfaring Men **Knut:** Yeah, so one of the first things, you have made the best book recommendations to me that I've ever gotten from anyone. And one was The Ethics of Liberty by Murray Rothbard, and the other one was Economic Science and the Austrian Method by Hans Hermann Hoppe. And now you recommended another book, which I haven't read yet, called The Lodging of Wayfaring Men. what is that book about and why do you recommend it so much? **Max:** It's a beautiful book. it's incredible. And it's written for us and for Bitcoiners, but it's over 20 years old. it was written in like 1997 to 2002 and that time period. And it's loosely based on real events, which is fascinating. the book is crazy. it goes about a group of cypherpunks who are, Building an anonymous marketplace, and the first attempts of an anonymous digital currency. And again, this shit really happened. the story is quite wild. With, the freedom tech being built for very good reasons. people who understood the philosophical impact. and the deep reasons for why freedom is important. So they were very motivated, and, dedicated to make the world a better place in their lifetime. And so they got their shit together and got organized and built something incredible, right? And it took them a couple attempts. and eventually they rolled it out and enabled people to trade right, to do their business, online in cyberspace, and encrypt it. And so that made a lot of people very happy because, you know, you get to live life free and undisturbed, so it got adopted by many users. So much so that eventually the government started to notice that somehow they're making less tax revenue than before. And something's a bit fishy, you know. And then they started to investigate and You know, the NSA and FBI put a decent amount of people on the topic and tried to de anonymize the users of these services and infiltrate them. And yeah, so the story is about this whole clash between the first and second realm, you know, people who built FreedomTag. And people who enslave others and how those two worlds kind of clash. it's a book that's very inspiring. **Knut:** What was the website called? **Max:** So, the author's name is Paul Rosenberg. originally this book was published anonymously, years later, when it was safe to, associate their actual name with this, he did. he was, a teacher, an electrical engineer's teacher. He wrote 30 books on that subject, and is a very eloquent and practiced writer, but also a hardcore cypherpunk and freedom lover, and very well read, So he has the freemansperspective. com. This is a newsletter. You can go back. It's going for, I don't know, 10, 20 years or something. And every week there's one or two short pieces of articles that he writes. And this book is actually also includes some writings that he did in the past and published. so it's somewhat a collection of his thought. The Lodging of Wayfaring Men is a fiction book, right? It's basically a fictionalized story with, character arcs and such. the author is very technical, and he understands cryptography and how to apply it. He understands distributed networks and laying fiber optic cables and stuff like this. So there's a lot of real computer science in this fictional world. And that makes it quite applicable to today where we're surrounded with cryptography much more than at the time when this book was written.   **Knut:** So, all right. # Taxes **Knut:** bit of a jump here, but why is, avoiding paying taxes the most altruistic thing you can do in life?   **Max:** this is actually one thing that gets covered in the book, right, where, **Knut:** that was the case. **Max:** because this is also why this book is so interesting to recommend to newcomers, to this philosophy, because at the beginning, not everyone is convinced that this is a good idea. Even the creators of this technology don't know the end result and how other people will use this tech. There's a lot of ambiguity there. And so this book follows characters who reason through these very difficult questions. For example, I'm going to spoil this book a bit, but everyone should read it anyway. So, there's one character who was a lawyer, right? He works together with an ex FBI agent, who both of them share this common, seeking of justice, like real justice, to stop bad guys from doing bad things, to good people. the ex FBI guy is somewhat disillusioned. With the institution of the FBI to actually provide and establish justice. so now he is somewhat like walking this line in between the institution and, the actual free realm, vigilant justice basically. and here then when thinking of. this case. is there a wrong being done by the FBI trying to stop this project? Or is this project actually good? Do they have justice in doing what they do? then, he, reasoned of, is the avoidance of tax, of, of taxation evil. And, and, of course then walks through the reasonable steps of thinking. No, if, two people transact voluntarily. both people are better off after the trade than before, right? Both people are happy, both say thank you and shake hands. that's trade. That's the market, right? and then you have coercion, Where one guy says, give me that, and the other says, no, actually, I don't want to give you that, but the guy hits him and takes it anyway. And so that means afterwards that the guy who stole it is obviously better off. He's happy, right? He got the thing, but the guy who was the victim was being stolen from is worse off. And so humans have the capacity to do mutually beneficial things, right? To literally create value, make both of us better off than we were before. And we also have the potential to destroy value and take from others. and one is beneficial and fosters the growth of civilization and the other destroys it. **Knut:** And so, you know, avoiding being stolen from is a good thing. Reminds me of one thing we go into in the new book, about the difference between lawful and illegal. I don't remember the name of the guy now, but some Dutch libertarian thinker, who emphasized on the terms, made the point that something being lawful is like lawful in an ethical sense, like the basis in Don't Steal, whereas legal is the top down government imposed legal framework, and how the two don't always align, or rather, they almost never align. # Natural vs Man Made Law **Max:** Yeah, this is the difference between natural law and man made law. A natural law is one that is universal across time and space. It's always present, and it's immutable. It cannot be changed, at least not by us. And, you know, physics, for example, is a natural law. And arguably there is a natural law to ethics as well. Specifically, as morality increases, freedom increases. And as morality decreases, freedom decreases. That's the law of gravity in the ethical realm. and, that man didn't make it, right? We just realize it because it is what it is. And then we have man made law on the other hand. this is depends on a certain territory, right? The law in the U. S. is different from the law in Russia. And it also depends on time. I think the American law in the 1700s is very different from what it is today. and so there are these imaginary lines where these rules apply and there's Other places or times where they do not apply. So they're arbitrary, right? And so they can be designed, to the benefit of some and at the expense of others. And that is ultimately what, politics is about. **Knut:** Yeah, I think this is one of the key points that that quote unquote normies have such a hard time wrapping their head around. Natural law and like what, what makes don't steal a natural law? Like what, what is the very foundation of, libertarianism or anarcho capitalism or absolute property rights or whatever you may call it, consensualism? And to my understanding, it has to do with homesteading. If you're the first person that acquired something, then no other person has a right to take that away from you. And you can logically deduct your way to that being true. Like, what's your view on that? And what's your understanding of that? And how would you explain that to a layman? **Max:** Well, the reality is such that we have limited scarce resources. If we have one piece of steak on the table and three guys who are hungry, like some are gonna go home on an empty stomach, right? We literally don't have enough food to feed us all, right? And one piece of something can only be used by one person at one time, right? We cannot duplicate one piece of steak into many and satisfy everyone. So this is a natural form part of reality, right? That's just how things are, you know? So there's a potential of conflict over who gets to allocate these scarce resources. And there's a couple solutions to it, right, that have been proposed. Like one would be like, nobody owns it, right? Nobody gets to eat it because it's natural and it's not part of your body, so don't touch it, right? But then we die, you know, all **Knut:** that's the problem with that. **Max:** That's kind of a problem. **Knut:** Yeah. **Max:** so **Knut:** Yeah. # Resource Allocation **Max:** So let's rule that option out. another solution is, of course, we all own it. Right? And we all, get to use it. But, that doesn't really work either, right? Because, sure, we all own it, but who actually gets to eat it? Because there's three different mouths and the food only goes into one of them. we can't all actually own something if we cannot all use it. It is limited and only a few can use it. So, everyone owns it isn't the solution to the problem. Because everyone cannot own it, there's not enough for everyone. So again, that's an issue. Ultimately, we all starve. And another option would be, we vote. We somehow pick who gets to allocate these resources. But then, I mean, we're 8 billion people. How are we all going to vote on who gets to stake? Right? Like That's, that's going to be impractical. Like, how are we even going to communicate, all 8 billion of us, to get together in a vote? So again, until we have the result of the vote, nobody eats the steak, so we all starve again. It's not really a good solution either. And then we have one option that, like, a small subset of the people gets to make the choice of, you know, how to allocate these resources. And we can just pick them, vote for them, for example. But here again, now other people are allocating the resources for others, right? Like, and some bureaucrat, a hundred kilometers away, is not gonna know, like, who of us is vegetarian and doesn't want the meat. Right? and that just means that someone who's far off doesn't have the knowledge to actually allocate the resources in a proper manner. And that leads to misallocations, right? We starve, again. Because the guy who doesn't want the meat gets it and then it rots. And the guys who would actually like it never get access to it and they starve. So that's the fundamental problem of socialism, basically, of some priest class allocating the resources for others. So again, the solution doesn't work either. So we're not left with much. But one thing that seems to work is private property rights. Again, as you said, the person who creates something, the butcher, or the farmer who raised the cow, can now decide what to do with it. Does he butcher it himself? Does he sell it to a butcher? So the person who created something gets to own it, and gets to decide how to allocate this, and then he has the right to either consume it himself, or to abdicate the consumption of this good. So to say, I won't use it, I will trade it, I will give it to you, right? And he can make it a gift. Just say here, half the entire cow, like, I like you, I like your family, you, like, I'm happy that you're happy, right? Great, that's possible, right? Or, of course, he would want something from you in return, like, give me a bar of gold, or, a bushel of wheat, or something else. we now have a way that we can allocate resources in a clear, simple rule set, the person who created it. can decide what to do and have a contractual agreement to transfer this ownership to someone else. the people who actually have the problem now have the power to allocate the resources to solve those problems and not some guy far away, but just you and me who created stuff. # Ownership of Information **Knut:** And as you said, this only applies to scarce resources. So what, would be an example of a resource where you could eat the steak, but I could have it too. And, the thing that comes to mind, is information, of course. So, can you own information? **Max:** No, like, because that, that doesn't really make sense, right? To own means to allocate, how to allocate these, to decide how to allocate these resources. All right. And then, that's a solution to a problem of a lack of resource allocation, right? or for a lack of resources that need to be allocated rather. But with information, there is no lack. Like if I have a PDF, I can copy it to you and I can send it to you, and I can send it to a hundred other people, and I still have the exact same high fidelity version. Of the information that I shared with others, and of course it's the same with words, right? The words that I speak, they're not lost on me, right? I still retain them and the information that they represent. and that means we don't need to be, stingy with information. We can give it to everyone. and it doesn't degrade the quality quite on the contrary, right? without information there is no production. imagine yourself on an island, and you have all the raw materials, all the machinery, like everything there, but you don't know anything about physics, or material science, or just production stages of how to build things. If you don't know any of that, the raw material is worth nothing to you. Nothing. Because you don't know how to allocate, how to shape this raw material into other things so that it actually solves your problems in the end. we need information in order to produce things. That's the theory behind it. The blueprints, so to say. the cool thing is, we don't have to be stingy with the blueprints. We can give every human on this planet Equal access to all of the information that we as humans have accumulated, and now all of a sudden you will never be stranded on an island not knowing how to do something, because you can just look it up. In the grand database of accumulated human knowledge, of course, technology has made that much more possible and low cost. Back in the day, in order to share an information, you needed to speak verbally to it, right? So you're limited to time and space, or you need to scratch it on some stone or clay or write it on a piece of paper, And then still, you have the scarcity of the paper, right? There's only one book. And there's a hundred people who want to read it. So again, information is limited. Not because the information itself is limited, but because the medium of the information is scarce. And that was a big tragedy that we were never able to communicate at a large scale, and remember these conversations and easily access them. Until the cypherpunks who came up with computers, right? And realized that we can build this realm of information That is so cheap to transfer and store information, that we can just basically do it for free, for anybody, for 8 billion people. And all they need is a rather cheap form of silicon, and like, nicely arranged. but of course people try to hold on to the protection schemes that extract money from others, and capital from others, and You know, nation states have enforced intellectual property rights and patents and such, and that just harms people. It doesn't bring forward the best out of humanity. And that's a big shame. **Knut:** Now, very well put. this has been Praxeology 101 with Max Hillebrand.   # Bitcoin and Praxeology **Knut:** where I want to follow on, follow up here is, how does this apply to Bitcoin? Because Bitcoin is only information, so how can anyone theoretically ever own a Satoshi? Do you really own it, or what is it? **Max:** What is actually a Satoshi? Look into the Bitcoin code base. There is no such thing as Satoshi, right? The transaction has a field that is an integer. But it's just an integer. It doesn't even have a unit associated to it, right? So, it's just a number. Satoshis are just numbers in a database. And you don't own the number 270, 000 just because you have 270, 000 bitcoin. The actual number of satoshis, no, you don't control them. You don't own them. But information has another interesting thing that cypherpunks realized, right? That, once, like, when you have a secret, then you can choose to share it with others. And then once you've shared it with one person, however, you cannot control what that person does with the information. He can keep it secret for himself, or he can tell it to the entire world. And so, there is such a thing as giving access rights to information. And this is an important part in Bitcoin, of course, right? Our secret keys should be secret, privately kept just for us, because if you do share your secret key publicly, then all of a sudden anyone can, Signed messages, with this private key and therefore spent Bitcoin in the transaction chain of Bitcoin. and well, that's a critical part of it. So Bitcoin basically relies on keeping information, hidden from others, in order to ensure that we, solve, like, basically Bitcoin. It's just a piece of software, right? So it is non scarce information, but it wants to be money. And money needs to be scarce, right? Because if I can spend a bar of gold first to you, and then the same bar of gold later to you, we have infinite inflation, right? The money system just dies. so scarcity is required. It's a required feature for money and digital money therefore requires digital scarcity. And so what Bitcoin does is it establishes a set of computer code that defines the access, right? Two certain chunks of money, so to say, right? And the chunks of money are Bitcoin UTXOs, unspent transaction outputs, and the spending condition, so to say, or like the rule how to allocate this money, who gets to decide it. Where this money goes next is defined by a script and a small computer program that evaluates either to true or to false, depending what input you provide. And so the script is the lock, and usually it's a single public key. And then the way to prove that You're actually authorized to spend this coin is by creating a valid witness. You know, the input to the script, to the program that returns it to true rather than to false. And usually, again, that's a signature of a single private key over the transaction structure that you're actually spending the money. Bitcoin's genius realization is that. We just all have to check every transaction of everyone else. And when we do that, we can be sure that, nobody's being stolen from, That nobody is, losing access to his money, that someone is spending the money with a wrong signature. he doesn't have the private key. He cannot produce a valid signature. So we have to make sure that such a transaction does never make it into the blockchain, right? that's the first important aspect. And the second is we want to ensure that there's no inflation. that's Because if we can just create as many tokens as we want, then the value of the token goes to the marginal cost of production. If we can produce a token with the click of a button, then the marginal cost of that token, or the value of that token, will be zero, right? So we need to make it, Difficult, or in fact, in Bitcoin, impossible to create additional units, you know, there's 21 million and that's it, right? That's the set of rules. And therefore, when we check each transactions, we also ensure that there is no transaction that has one Bitcoin on the input side and 10 Bitcoin on the output side, therefore increasing the total supply of Bitcoin. And so Bitcoin is a massive verification machine to ensure that this computer system is this way of speaking to each other, actually balances the books of the system. of how many units of money are there, and who has the right to allocate these, and so it's basically a system that creates a natural resource, and then also manages the allocation of this natural resource. **Knut:** so Bitcoin is almost a parallel universe where, in fact, you do own the Bitcoin, basically, but the ownership is not defined by you as a person. It's defined by the knowledge of a secret. so you prove that you have access to it by having access to the private key, which unlocks it. # Ownership of Bitcoin **Knut:** On earth that can prove that you own a Bitcoin except you, the holder of the private key. **Max:** If the holder of the private key reveals information to others that indicates such, one very common way that this would be is you have a mobile wallet, that does not run a Bitcoin full node, That connects to someone else's full node to check if you have Bitcoin, You don't use Tor, so there's an IP address linked from you to the server, and so the server operator knows that this IP address just asked how much money is on this address, and so we have, a very strong indication, that this IP address owner owns **Knut:** It can be a very strong indication, but in my mind it can never be proof. Because you need to sign with the actual private key to prove. Otherwise it's boating accident time. **Max:** guy with the gun doesn't need proof, right, he just needs a good enough guess. For him, he needs, like, there is a praxeology to violence. thieves are actors. They live in a state of uneasiness, they have problems, and they try to find a solution to that problem. They don't have ethics, they don't have morals, and so their solution to the problem harms other people. But nevertheless, they are still actors. And so they think that they will be better off after the action of theft than before. That's a value judgment. And it's an entrepreneurial one. So they might be correct, they might not. They break into a house, hoping that there is a bar of gold hidden under the couch, right? Turns out there's not, right? So, if they spend a lot of money breaking into the house, and there's no loot, they're not profitable thieves. And this means that they destroyed their capital, right? They spent 10 Bitcoin on getting the equipment, and they got 0 Bitcoin back. So, that means they're 10 Bitcoin poorer, and eventually they will run out of money and starve. So, thieves need to be profitable in order to do their thieving, and that's the genius that cypherpunks realized. If we exponentially increase the cost of attack, and exponentially decrease the cost of defense, then we make thievery unprofitable. And that's the genius of private public key cryptography and encryption, right? It's trivial to generate a private key and then generate a public key or a signature, right? But to brute force a private key or to forge a signature without it, like, requires more energy that would collapse into a black hole, you know? So that's kind of a problem. And for thieves, right? It's really good for the people who want to defend themselves. Because they can very cheaply do it, and it just doesn't make sense to attempt to break the encryption. But nevertheless, computer systems are very complex, and there's a lot of metadata associated with, computing and communicating between computers. And so, there are, microphones and radio frequency scanners that you can point on computers and see the computation happening in the machine because there's a lot of radiation outside of the computer that can be correlated to which bits are being flipped you can have all types of side channel attacks to extract secrets from a computer while it's running the problem is that the holistic technology stack we have is quite susceptible to revealing information that should have been kept secret. And again, that is a critical part, of course, to communication encryption, but even more so for Bitcoin. If we lose the assurance that only we know the private key, the money system is broken. And that's why Bitcoiners were so paranoid and started this whole thing of hardware wallets and secure elements to Really ensure that we don't leak private key material, but it's an extremely difficult task, because, well, this reality is very observable, and the cards are, to some extent, quite in favor of surveillance, unfortunately. the guy with the gun in this case could be the government, Yeah, exactly, it can just be like a poor guy who needs to provide for his children, you know, and, he sees a way for feeding his family for the next two years, and that's a good trade off for him. **Knut:** Yeah, momentarily. **Max:** right? # Bitcoin and World Peace **Knut:** So, if we manage to do this, on a grand scale, and if people in general manage To exponentially increase the cost of the attack while simultaneously decreasing the cost of defense. Does that lead to world peace at one point? Is that the end goal? **Max:** Yeah, I think so. Oh, I mean, that makes sense. If every economically rational thief will realize that he is worse off if he does this stealing, right? Like, actually, because he needs to spend much more money in an attempted theft, and most likely he's not going to succeed. And, I mean, this exponential difference has to be huge, though, right? Because, like, we had castles, you know? Like, castles are quite, like, quite extreme asymmetric protection. Like, if you're behind castle walls, with a well staffed militia that actually defends the walls, It's quite difficult to get to you if you just have, you know, like, humans and swords and ladders. that's, like, sieges are, in the favor of the defender. But still, they happened a lot, right? And people were able to overcome these defenses. Because, I guess they weren't never holistically secure, you know? There was always some backdoor that enabled the attacker to go through, to get through, right? and that might just be brute force, right? You just bring a huge army and You're fine with tens of thousands of your own guys getting killed, but eventually, you know, after you throw a couple hundred thousand people at the problem, someone will succeed to break through. Quite a brutal tactic, obviously, but it worked. **Knut:** you get in. **Max:** But then cryptographers came around and were like, well, but there's math. **Luke:** Yeah, we can use RAM in another way. 1 plus 1 is 2. What? Are you sure? **Knut:** that might be offensive. **Luke:** That's a different kind of worms. **Knut:** Yeah. . Yeah. So, the, # Bitcoin For Attack **Knut:** so Bitcoin being this perfect defense mechanism, because all it does is increase the cost of the attack, can Bitcoin ever be used for attack in your opinion? Like, can it be used in an aggressive way? **Max:** I think directly not, because again, it is just, speech and such, but on the other hand, maybe yes. Because, let's say, if someone hacked your machine, and got access to your private key, and spends the Bitcoin, like, in the context of Bitcoin itself, it's a valid signature, it's a valid transaction, and it will be included. So, in the legalities of Bitcoin, it is no theft, right? It is a valid transaction. but, On the ethical realm, you worked hard to get these Bitcoin and you didn't want to send them to the attacker, so he is definitely stealing them from you. So, Bitcoin can be stolen, certainly, in the human analysis. Not on a technical level, we've never seen a transaction confirmed with an invalid signature, but on the human level, There have been a lot of people that got separated from their Bitcoin against their will, right, against their consent. and, and that is theft. So, thieves can use Bitcoin, thieves can get paid in Bitcoin, thieves can take your Bitcoin and pay them to themselves, right? that's a fact of reality too. # Aggression and Spam **Knut:** Could that be used in an aggressive way? **Max:** it is just the writing of bits and bytes, right? So there's, however, again, a limited amount of resources that are available specifically in Bitcoin. And not just do we have 21 million Bitcoin, we also have like, Two and a half slash four megabyte blocks, right? And so this means there's only a certain number of transactions that can be fit into a single block. that means we have, again, a scarce resource and we need to allocate it. this is why there is a price for Bitcoin transactions, because that's how we solve the scarcity problem, right? by whoever pays the most gets in. that's a, or it's not even whoever pays the most. It's like. You can choose who goes in by mining a block, right? You have full freedom of choice of which transaction do you include into your block. And if you don't mine, then you can propose to someone else, say, please include my transaction into a block. But again, there's a large demand and a limited supply. so most likely people will start bribing each other and it's like, yeah, if you include my transaction in your block, I'll give you sats. And in fact, Bitcoin, the Bitcoin software launched with a anonymous peer to peer marketplace for the scarce good, which is Blockspace. Satoshi didn't have to do that, right? Bitcoin would have totally worked, if, if you could not, like, if every input sum has to be exactly equal to every output sum, right? There cannot be that outputs are smaller than inputs and the leftover goes to the miners, but that could have been a consensus rule, right? But then most likely we would have seen some third party external marketplace. Where people would do the bidding on please include my transaction into the block. And then of course they would have to figure out how do we actually pay the miner to get our transaction in the block. So Satoshi had the genius to embed an anonymous marketplace. Into the core essence of the protocol, right, with the rule that outputs can be smaller than inputs, and the rule that we have this gossip peer to peer network, which like the whole peer to peer network is kind of optional, by the way, but it's just there to kind of make it easier so that we have this anonymous marketplace for Blockspace that we can propagate offers, right, and one person sends the offer and gets spread to the entire network. So the demand side is no monopoly. Anyone can broadcast a message to the peer to peer network hoping to be included. And then on the supply side, the actual miners, there's also no monopoly. Anyone can spin up his computer and start SHA 256 hashing. On the most recent chain, right, with his own candidate block. And nobody can stop you, right? That's the definition of no monopoly. New market participants are not hindered to enter the system. And so this is the most radical free market that we've seen probably ever. And it's been kind of hidden inside Bitcoin since the very beginning. # Mining vs Hashing **Knut:** Yeah, you can of course also pay the miner in something else than sats to get included into a block. And if a mining pool does this, the individual miners doesn't necessarily have a claim to a piece of the pie of whatever money was paid to the mining pool owner under the table and not on the system, right? They can't even see it. So how big of a problem is that, and can you really call yourself a miner if you're just selling hash power to a pool and the pool isn't transparent? **Max:** I mean, it's actually true that we, like, there could be in the future, A alternative marketplace for block space that's not inside the Bitcoin Core client. And by the way, arguably that's better, because we have a piece of software that does one thing really well, and then, you know, we just specialize and put the two modules together. architecturally speaking, this might be better. we see things like, for example, the mempool. space explorer, or accelerator, right, is one. Marketplace that is now establishing that that seems to work now quite well. Of course, it has the issue of there's a central, like, order book, so to say, and probably custodian for the money as well. And so, I'm not sure, but it's one approach of doing such an alternative marketplace and there can be downsides. it's not really public of how much Volume is going through here, right? how much are people speeding up their transactions, And I guess the same goes to much earlier where we just had mining pools offering this in their own API, or a webpage. so at least now, like we, we have a dedicated service provider. That's not a mining pool doing this, which I think is an improvement. but we could also, you know, build. A, like, off chain peer to peer network, so to say, that's not related to Bitcoin per se, but that has all of the aspects that we want just dedicated for an optimized market book for this resource. And Bitcoin should still work, I think. Like, the marketplace inside Bitcoin Core is not essential in the long run. It was just very convenient to bootstrap it. But, you know, in 50, 100 years, I wouldn't be surprised if we have Dedicated systems for, for these things that potentially are in different repositories and such different softwares. **Knut:** So, in your opinion, how damaging is a temporary fee spike over a weekend or something where it goes up to like, 2000 SATs per transaction. what impact does it have on lightning channels and lightning providers and so on? Like do you consider it an attack or what is it?   **Max:** it's an inevitability almost, right? If you have a hard, extremely limited supply, right? there is only two and a half megabytes in the usual block, and you have extremely fluctuating demand, and there is no way to speed up production of the good. there is bound to be extreme, differences of we have way more demand than supply or way less, right? But it will be very rare that we will fill just exactly everyone who wanted to gets in. So to actually clean out every transaction that wanted to be made is quite rare already now and in the future, if Bitcoin continues to be used, this is even more unlikely, right? So then the question is just how, like, do you get into the top, like, the top payers to get included in the block still? And this is where just the technology is quite difficult, because this is like, you're, you're, you're, it's an order book, right? You're trading, basically, and you don't know if the price goes up or price goes down. And this is all at least supposed to be automated. Bitcoin wallet developers are building trading bots, block space accountants charged to purchase block space on behalf of the user. the user just clicks send and that's it. the software does all of the complexities of constructing a transaction that is of a size acceptable, right? Because if fees are super high, you don't want to build a transaction with a hundred inputs and one output, right? You would want to have a transaction with one input, one output. It would be way cheaper if the fee spike is currently high. a smart robot should build a different structured transaction with more or fewer inputs and outputs to accommodate the current fluctuation of the market. And of course, the fee rate is another, like what's actually your bid that you put into this marketplace? And that's trading like. How much are you going to pay for the stock? Nobody really knows, right? And so it's kind of good luck and you don't know if it goes up or goes down. And sometimes you overpay, right? And you pay way more than was actually needed to get into that block. And so you lose money, you lose capital. And sometimes you don't pay enough and you don't get included for months, right? but there's better software that can alleviate a lot of these problems.     # Spam Making Bitcoin Worse as Money **Luke:** Well, so I guess another side to this question, because everything you're saying makes makes total sense from the perspective of that this stuff is definitely going to happen from from hyperbitcoinization side. There's just going to be more demand than there is supply of block space. But I think the issue that we've been exploring a lot. Lately, is, is that when there are transactions that aren't really being made for the purpose of moving value from one person to another in the form of Satoshis, they're, they're another form of value, subjective value that is communicated through arbitrary data, or at least some other type of, of data. Does that change the property of Bitcoin as money? That's essentially, I think the, the root of the, the argument any, anyone talking **Knut:** Yeah, exactly. **Luke:** the functionality of Bitcoin is **Max:** Well, I think. There's a couple aspects to this, right? We have again a scarce resource block space, and there's the problem of how do we allocate this block space. And there are very stringent rules on this, right? You cannot have arbitrary data in blocks, right? There needs to be, for example, the transaction structure. There needs to be inputs that point to previous outputs, and there need to be outputs, the sum of the inputs, sum of outputs, hashes, transaction headers, all of the stuff needs to be followed in order for this to be considered a valid block. So the Bitcoin developers have, from the very beginning, had a very, I guess, authoritarian regime to allocating these resources, which makes sense. If you don't put stringent, like, structure in a protocol, then people just fill it with garbage and every software breaks, right? So it's like a practicality thing that we need to have a very opinionated, kind of thing. Set of rules and we need to pick one of them and like just do it because if we don't pick any then it won't work and also if we pick the wrong one it won't work either. imagine the rules would have been like a broken hashing algorithm, for example, not SHA 256 but SHA 1 or something that's broken. People can create collisions, right? So there could be two transactions that have the exact same transaction ID. breaks the system, right? So if that would have been the set of rules, Bitcoin would have broken, right? And now also, again, if we allow arbitrary things to be built, then people will just use it as data storage, for example, and just fill it up with megabytes of images. And again, limited amount of resources. If all of it is used for, for pictures, then none of it can be used for money transfer, right? So this is again, an inherent conflict. the tricky thing though is, now we have this. established set of rules in the Bitcoin consensus and how do we change it, right? And that's the really tricky part of, making up man made rules. Bitcoin is not Natural in the sense, right? Like, humans came up with this shit. Like, this is our creativity that made this happen. and so, it's not nature made, right? It's man made. Of course, men are part of nature and such. So it's a bit, wishy washy here, but ultimately, we made it, we can change it, we can make it better, and we can break it. And that's a really scary position, because I think we all realize that this is quite an important project, and we definitely have it in our power to break this thing. I hope we do our best effort. # Caution When Changing Bitcoin **Luke:** my interpretation of that is, is that, caution when making changes to Bitcoin is paramount. Would you agree with that? **Max:** Well, inaction is an action too, right? And that might be even more dangerous. So, there might be critical bugs in the protocol that if not addressed will break the system and potentially they are currently being exploited, right? And so, in such a case, we should do our best to fix it as soon as possible. Satoshi knew that from the very beginning, right? So, how exactly we do that? Who knows? **Knut:** Well, if it's up to the individual miners, which it is, what blocks they want to mine, what transactions they want to include in a block. And it can be fixed that way, a sly roundabout way, if you will. **Max:** Well, if we could trust the miners with stuff like this, then we could trust the miners with enforcing the 21 million, right? But we can't, right? We don't rely on anyone. We verify it ourselves, right? And so the reason why we don't have actual JPEGs in Bitcoin blocks is because your node says no to any block that actually has a JPEG in it, right? Blocks have to have transaction in it. If not, you kick them out, right? So even if there's valid proof of work Proof of Work doesn't solve the problem of integrity of the block, right? This has nothing to do with Proof of Work. In fact, Proof of Work is one part of the rules of the integrity of the block that is defined, enforced, and verified by the full nodes itself, right? Specifically, if you want to get rid of inscriptions, that's certainly a hard fork. Like, taproot transactions are currently valid, and if we make these taproot transactions in the future invalid, that's a hard fork, right? It would be great to hard fork Bitcoin. We could clean so much stuff. It's just a practical reality that breaking the hard fork use of a running protocol is extremely difficult and arguably, unethical. Because people have signed up to the previous system, built businesses and, stored their money in these types of scripts. If we now make them unspendable, what is that? No? # Mining Incentives **Knut:** so, when it comes to mining, there's, minor incentives, like, the thing we talked about before, about, under the table payments to big mining pools, To me, the obvious fix to this problem is to get it into the brains of the hash salesmen, that they ought not be mere hash salesmen, but actual miners and know what block they're mining on. Because I think the ethos among the individual miners is, better than, these bigger pools that might not be, as, concerned with the longevity of the Bitcoin experiment, but, more fiat minded and wanting a quick buck now rather than save the system in the long run. So, right now it feels like we're trusting these bigger entities to have as much of a disincentive to destroy Bitcoin so that they won't, it's tricky. Like it's a gray zone, right? What's your thoughts? **Max:** I think Satoshi's genius in designing the Bitcoin protocol was that he did his best to separate different tasks that need to be done in the system into different like conceptual entities, and then to ensure that each of these aspects is distributed as widely as possible. And this is ultimately what it means that Bitcoin is decentralized, right? There is not one person that defines the set of rules, for example, or one person that writes the candidate block, Or one person that provides the proof of work for the candidate block, or one person that provides the signature for each transaction, right? Each of these things is distributed. And in the ideal case, in the original Bitcoin client, to every user, right? Like, the Bitcoin software in 2009 was mining by default for everyone, right? So, literally the entire stack of the operation was at 100 percent of the users, right? There was no non validating, non mining users. In the beginning, right? We had perfect decentralization, so to say, right? And then if efficiencies kick in and economies of scale and division of labor, and we start to optimize each of these things kind of on its own and split it out into different branches of government. Yeah, specialized entities, so to say. And if you specialize on being the best hasher that you could possibly be, you just give up on being the best block candidate creator that you could possibly be. Because if you do the one thing that you're marginally better at and focus all your attention on that, you will be the most profitable. so, yes, it is. It is an issue. and we, Bitcoin would be better off if we further distribute the risk and responsibility of each of these tasks to as many people as possible. And I think we've done a really good job, for example, of distributing the ownership of private keys. And like, there's, I don't know, many millions of private key holders on the Bitcoin blockchain, right? So that's, that's great. but, and we have. Probably done this as well with hashers, right? There's a decent amount of quite large independent hashing institutions, right? Not so well with mining pools and actual block candidate creation, like, that's pretty bad. Like, there's two or three of them, so that's scary as fuck. Right there we've utterly failed and we've made Bitcoin way worse than it was before. in this one metric of resilience, of decentralization, of distribution of risks, we made it a lot more efficient, but we made it much more vulnerable to attack. that is a problem. Thankfully, a lot of people are working on fixing it. It's a really difficult problem, right? It's not that there's some malicious, attempt of trying to break it. I mean, maybe there is, but the more likely answer is just bloody difficult computer science. it just needs an insane amount of research and development before we will have tools that are even coming close to being actually adequate. Right? I'm not praising Satoshi's 2009 code as being perfect, because it was a pile of shit, right? And you could break it in a million ways. so we've improved a lot, but we're very far from done because to some extent the realities of the difficulty of the situation have caught on much faster than our ability to solve these. Yeah, I mean, the problems that are currently existent in Bitcoin and that now we're at Nostriga today and talking about Nostr, this sort of related communication layer in relation to Bitcoin, you mentioned at the very beginning, Freedom Tech. # Freedom Tech and Nostr **Luke:** So, we, when we last talked to you, you were focusing on Wasabi Wallet and now obviously that project has just been made open source, essentially, and so my question to you on that is, what are you focusing on in terms of Freedom Tech now? **Max:** Nostr is definitely a highlight, right? Nostr is just incredibly cool. And it's so wild to think that Nostr is like two years old. it's not old, but look at the amount of stuff that we've built. In this short time frame, how powerful are we? It's incredible, right? If we get our act together and actually build on, such an open protocol and get people excited about it and people using it, it doesn't take us long to fundamentally change the pattern of speech on this planet. Wow, that's incredible. Like, we did that. And we're just getting started. think about where Nostr is going to be in five years. It will be wild. Absolutely insane. that's very bullish and very encouraging. And it's super exciting to work at such an early stage in the protocol, because there's so many obvious improvements. There's so many obvious use cases. There's so many low hanging fruits of how we can make it even better than it currently is. Alright, so we have something that's already great, and we know a million ways on how we can make it even better. and you can be part of making a meaningful improvement in getting this to like an exponential blow off of awesomeness. **Knut:** Meaningful improvement of humanity, really. **Max:** Yeah. Yeah, that's the other thing, like, that's why Freedom Tech is so exhilarating to work at, because we're ending slavery. That's kind of a big deal, you know, **Knut:** Yeah, it should have been done at least 300 years ago. **Max:** Yeah. **Luke:** No, it's, it's amazing. And well, and actually, so a couple of things here. First of all, we've talked about this a little bit, how Nostr seems like it's the playground that people wanted as an alternative to Bitcoin. In other words, people who went and started making shitcoins were basically just wanting a playground to do all this stuff. But now is, is, is Nostr basically the place where people can do that and channel their energies in a way that isn't going to break money? **Max:** Yeah. I absolutely agree. So I'm very bullish on a lot of these use cases and one other area that currently interests me a lot, is just zero knowledge cryptography. it's wild what's possible. it's absolutely wild. Within the last five years or so. The theory has developed. And again, a lot of shitcoin projects putting zero knowledge proofs on blockchains and such, and I'm not quite convinced that we actually need a blockchain for that. I think relays are just fine. And so I'm quite bullish on having actual zero knowledge proofs much more integrated in Nostr clients. Like, you can do amazing things with this. Like, for example, anonymous web of trust, right? You could prove to me under an ephemeral anonymous identity, right, that you are in fact, On my follower list. Like, I'm following you, but I don't know who you are. Right? So, these types of things are trivial with zero knowledge stuff. And we don't have any size constraints or computation constraints in Nostr. Because it is not a global consensus system. Only the people who are interested in this proof actually have to, like, download it and verify it and such. so, it's, I think we can do a lot of amazing stuff here. it seems pretty obvious wins here.   **Knut:** driving these 180 IQ young developers into Nostr instead of shitcoin development is, is like moving them? To do, to think more of what they should rather than what they could, because I think that's, that's sort of the main problem with this nerdy set of shitcoin developers is that they, oh, I could do this if I just do this and they, they focus on what they can do rather than what they should do. And it's Nostr, Changing the direction of that, are people thinking more of ethical things while developing on this than   **Max:** it's a big claim, right? That like a piece of tech can **Knut:** it's hopium **Max:** improve the morality of people. it's definitely a big claim, but it seems true. Like, if you think about it in Bitcoin, like probably each of us, our level of morality before we discovered Bitcoin and what it is now. And our understanding of morality has substantially, improved, right? And I'm not sure if it would have happened, at least to this extent, without being exposed to the Bitcoin technology. and Bitcoin is just money, you know, like, humans do a lot more than buy stuff, sure, money is incredibly important, but it's far from everything of the human experience. And I think Nostr. We'll do a lot of the other stuff and Nostr has this freedom mindset embedded into the protocol just as Bitcoin has. And so I'm extremely bullish on seeing the people who get exposed to Nostr and what it does to them in the long run. # Hyperbitcoinization vs Hypernostrification **Max:** So what happens first? Hyper ossification or hyper ization both at the same time. **Knut:** does one lead to the other?   **Max:** there's definitely synergies here, right? and, yes, one leads to the other. there's, I met a bunch of people who got interested into Nostr first, and then used Bitcoin for the first time. It's a very common theme, actually. again, because Like, social, like, think of the, think of the, like, average screen time of people, right? it, for sure. I think Nostr is going to be way bigger than Bitcoin in the improvement of the human condition. **Knut:** Then again, every time you press the like button or the retweet button or whatever on your social media app, even the legacy system, you are providing someone with some value. That's why your account is valuable to, Facebook's and the Twitters of the world. There is a value thing embedded into everything you do on the internet. **Max:** It's just, you don't get a tradable good. **Knut:** No, no, **Max:** sell the like to someone else. **Knut:** not at this point. **Max:** They have now a star emoji. If you send the star emoji, you can send the star emoji back to the company, and they will give you money. So, voila. It's basically a shitcoin, but it's a star. **Luke:** is it more important to fix money or the other stuff? **Max:** Well, that's a big one. Both again, because money is only half of every transaction, right? And so maybe the earlier example of the marketplace for Bitcoin block space is perfect because why did Satoshi include the marketplace, the other stuff together with the money? Because it was kind of essential, right? you need to have both at the same time in order to live, right? You need to speak, you need to advertise your products, you need to negotiate with the customers, right? You need to convince them of the value that you will provide to them, and then you need to receive the money and tell them that you've received it, and ultimately hand over the goods, right? So there's a lot of human interaction into every trade, and the money aspect is just Like, one small part of this long interactive chain of protocol, basically. I think we need both at the same time. And we're just discovering upgrades to each of them as we move along. But this has always been in synergy. Like, the internet is way older than Bitcoin, right? So arguably, we need the other stuff first, right? We needed like 20, 30 years of other stuff before we could actually come up with the money. **Knut:** so fix the money, fix the world then fix the world and you fix the money. **Luke:** No, but seriously, we actually talked about this. in that, maybe an analogy to, that the internet needed to develop in a centralized way because the, literally the hardware and everything, the architecture, the client server model was literally a centralized and centralizing system. Model and that needed to exist first. And then the analogy is that gold was centralized naturally in the sense that physically the physical constraints of gold made it so that it naturally centralized into banks and then fiat solved that problem to sort of decentralize it, but it broke everything. So now the mechanism of fixing the money and decentralizing the money was gold. Bitcoin, but the corollary for decentralizing the communication is Nostr. So both things have kind of happened in a parallel. That's, what we were discussing. # Wrapping Up **Luke:** That is the alarm Oh, **Knut:** Oh, okay. **Max:** so we'll wrap it up.   **Knut:** Well, I'm **Max:** Nostr for sure. Max at TowardsLiberty. com. You can send me mail, notes and sats to that, which is, by the way, crazy, right? That we can have like this unique identifier to get, like, all of your needs settled is wild. Check out, lodging of Wayfaring Men. That's, the main shill of this video. And I made the audiobook for it. it's on a podcast. The podcast is by the author, Paul Rosenberg. And, it's called Parallel Society, right? So check that out. right now we've released the first episode. the others will come shortly thereafter. the other book recommendation I should highlight, which we haven't mentioned yet, is Cryptoeconomics by Eric Voskuhl. Most of what I said here was very much inspired by that book. He has the most rigorous understanding of Bitcoin. It's by far the best Bitcoin book. So I also did the audiobook for that. Just search for Cryptoeconomics in your **Knut:** audio book though.   **Max:** when you have to read tables of math formulas, it's starting to fall apart. But there's a lot of verbal logic in the book that goes very well. Just get the free PDF for the actual graphs and **Knut:** And keep using Wasabi and fire up your own coordinators and whatnot, right? **Luke:** Now get on stage, Max. Don't want to make you late. **Max:** Bye the book, that's not what I said. **Luke:** right, that's it.

@ fd208ee8:0fd927c1

There was once a man, who missed an important meeting because his alarm clock didn't ring. He was a bit upset, and wished for it to be corrected, so he promptly got up, got dressed, and took the alarm clock back to the store, where he'd gotten it from. He stood in line, patiently, at the service counter, and waited his turn. When he got to the front, the clerk asked, "How may I help you?" "Oh, I'm having trouble with this alarm clock. You see, it doesn't ring, when the time is reached. I was wondering if that could be fixed." "Why should we fix that? We're actually very busy building the new model. Should be out in a few weeks. Just wait for that one. Goodbye." "What? Wait! You can't just leave it broken, like this." "Why not? What right do you have, to demand an alarm clock that rings? Besides, how many alarm clocks have you built?" The customer was now quite flustered and a bit ashamed of his self, "Well, none. I admit that, but..." "Well, there you go! Outrageous, that you should criticize something someone else has accomplished, that you have not. Besides, you are incompetent to tell if anything is even wrong. Maybe this is some sort of non-ringing alarm clock. Perhaps it has lights or wave sounds..." The second customer in line suddenly piped up, "Ahem. I'm sorry to interrupt. I must admit, I've also never built an alarm clock, but I'm a jeweler, who sells and repairs watches, and I must agree with you, sir," nods to first customer, "This is most definitely a ringing alarm clock and... See here? This bit of the bell arm has rusted through and broken off. Shoddy craftmanship, I'd say." "Oh, Mr High-n-Mighty jeweler, claims to know how a good alarm clock is to be made, while having zero experience. I've had enough of this outrage. I'm getting the vapors and need at least a two-week sabbatical, to recover from such gross mistreatment. The store is closing immediately. Everyone out!" "But my clock, sir!" The door slams in his face, and he heads home, dumping his clock in the garbage bin down the street. Next time, he will simply use the alarm on his cell phone. That always rings.

@ fd208ee8:0fd927c1

## The 4P's Remember the Four "P"s of Marketing? Let's look at them, in relation to digital creative work on Nostr. ### Product The product needs to be designed to fulfill a need or desire in the market. If you are writing things nobody wants to read, singing songs nobody wants to hear, or posting pictures that nobody wants to see, then you need to reevaluate your product choices because *you are spam*. You are wasting your time, which means you bear a cost for the production of these goods. Is it really worth it? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe you could do something else, or do something in addition, to make the product more appealing. On the other hand, if you are producing something valuable to a niche audience, you might want to think more about specifically aiming for and catering to that audience, rather than wasting your energy trying to appeal to a larger, indifferent group. It is better to be loved by a few and hated by many, than to be uninteresting to nearly everyone and ignore those who love you. ### Price People should have some anchor for the price, even if you have not explicitly named a price, so that they can know what such effort is "normally" worth and orient your value-provided up or down from there. It should also be clear what they are paying for, so that they know what the scope of the payment covers. If there is no such anchor available, you can help create one by coming up with your own personal scale for other people's works and discussing it, in public. Any listeners will react positively or negatively, but they will all now have a mental "price point" to orient their own prices around. If you have fixed and/or variable costs, the price you name should at least cover them, otherwise you need to lower the costs or raise the price. If you name no price, expect to get nothing, and you will never be disappointed. But you may also occasionally get a lot, and have it nearly knock you off your feet, so be prepared for that, too. Generally, things that are free are of lower quality because producers have no incentive to expend great effort to produce things nobody values enough to pay for. The only major exceptions to this are cross-financing, such as freemium or preview models (typical for things like Substack or OnlyFans), or production funded by third parties (as is the case with Linux and GitHub). In both these cases, the payment exists, but is deferred or distanced. Many products or services therefore start off "free", during an introductory period, but if they aren't getting enough income from it, they'll eventually give up and wander off. We pay creatives for their _continued efforts_ and _continued presence_. ### Placement It is of vital importance that you place your products efficiently. Things you should consider: 1. What relays will this work be accessible from? Large relays will extend your reach, but your product will appear within a sea of spam, so its relative value will decline, the same way the perceived worth of the nicest house on the block is dragged down by the houses around it. 2. Writing to large relays also destroys the perceived exclusivity of the offer, although this can be partially mitigated by encryption. A mix of wide/exclusive is probably best, since exclusive access to someone unknown is less valuable than to someone well-known. 3. Remember that the people paying for exclusive access, aren't necessarily paying for access to "better" material, they're paying for access to *you*, as a person, and/or they are trying to encourage you to continue your work. Rather than having your blockbusters behind a paywall, have the more personal items there and spend more time responding to the people who actually care about you and your art. 4. Do you even want the work directly accessible over Nostr? Perhaps you prefer to store the work off-Nostr and simply expand access to that, to npubs. 5. Something that covers price and placement is what sort of payment rails the hosting platform provides and/or you will accept. Some people only want to accept Lightning zaps, but others might be okay with fiat transactions of some sort, on-chain Bitcoin, gift cards, badge or NIP-05 sales, or some other method. Generally, the more payment options available, the less friction preventing payment. Lightning is arguably the payment method with the least friction, so it should go first in the list. ### Promotion #### Get Noticed Who is your target audience and how can you get their attention, so that they find out which product you are offering? This one is extremely difficult, on Nostr. Mostly, everyone just screams things into the void, and people with more followers scream louder and are more-likely to be heard. So, I'd say: * try to have more followers, * find someone with lots of followers to help you with marketing, or * join a "boost cooperative", where you join forces with other smaller accounts, to promote each other's notes. #### Find your tribe Use hashtags, but limit yourself to those that are truly relevant, and never have more than 3 in a note. Post to communities/topic-relays or groups, or write an article or wiki page or etc. and then cross-post to your kind 01 feed, with a hyperlink to a website that displays your work properly.

@ fd208ee8:0fd927c1

I entered STEM in the late 90s and women weren't discouraged (much), but we also weren't actively encouraged. Neither were the guys. The head of our IT department was a woman, and that was actually not that rare, back then. In fact, the % of women getting comp sci or IT majors has been steadily _falling_, as this article by [Texas Tech University magazine](https://today.ttu.edu/posts/2021/09/Stories/why-is-computer-science-unpopular-among-women) notes.  I've long been puzzled by the big "Girls Coding" push, that the corporations have been engaging in. It accomplished nothing in my workspace, except causing potential colleagues to view me with increasing suspicion. Entering IT teams in the 90s, everyone assumed I must be a genius because everyone there was some sort of genius. Now, they assume that I'm there to fix their "lack of diversity". This starts me off on the wrong foot, every time. People went into IT because they cared about the subject matter. There wasn't much money in it, so the work atmosphere wasn't cutthroat or dominated by venture capitalistic intentions. We were just a bunch of middle class mathematicians and engineers, basically, hiding out in the computer room with our nerdy friends, building stuff we thought would be useful and cracking our dorky jokes. Destroying this wholesome atmosphere with divisive company politics, turning it into a high-stakes game for gamblers, and the constant economic precariousness of software projects, is what made women leave IT and it is what is keeping women away. We've managed to recreate that familial atmosphere, in our nostr:npub1s3ht77dq4zqnya8vjun5jp3p44pr794ru36d0ltxu65chljw8xjqd975wz team, and that's probably why we girls like being there. Turns out, the people who are best at recognizing your talents and accomodating your personal responsibilities, are your friends on the team, who are simply happy that you're there and want you to keep showing up.

@ bf95e1a4:ebdcc848

This is the full AI-generated transcript of Bitcoin Infinity Show #127 featuring George Manolov! If you'd like to support us, check out <https://bitcoininfinitystore.com/> for our books, merch, and more! BIS128 - Ben Perrin - Transcript **Knut:** Ben, welcome to the Bitcoin Infinity Show. Thanks for having me, guys. Yeah, this is where we first met, in Riga, five years ago. Yeah, that's wild. Yeah, and our lives took a turn. **Ben:** Yeah. I mean, it's amazing what can happen in a seemingly short period of time. Everything is markedly different, I think, on both ends. **Knut:** Yeah, but I mean, I can't believe how you do what you do, like, you do like the double amount of conferences that I do. **Ben:** I think I need to slow myself down a bit. **Knut:** but you've been traveling around a lot, like, with the family as well. **Ben:** Yeah, we try to strike a balance. Sometimes I go solo, sometimes it's the full family. Sometimes it's, me and the missus. It really depends, but, a little bit of both all through the year. how's it been, like, what's your, well, Yeah. I mean, the travel aspect of it is fantastic. I love seeing all these places and it's kind of cool. To be honest, seeing all the Bitcoiners just in different parts of the globe all through the year, it's like every time it's a quasi family reunion, right? In cool locations. **Knut:** Who was that that called us a traveling circus? Joe, yeah, it's Joe Hall. **Ben:** Yeah. Yeah. That's, I mean, accurate. I think it's based, I was just saying outside that we should just collectively, you know, buy a jet, put all the necessary stuff in it and just hop around the globe and host a bunch of events and then get it all done in a couple of months and then **Luke:** It's not a bad strategy. **Knut:** no, it's a low time preference **Ben:** are we going to start a geyser fund for the jet, **Knut:** yeah, what private jet wanted, like, **Luke:** If anything, it would be a good meme anyway, right? **Ben:** How many bitcoin do you think we need for a jet? Sats. **Knut:** Yeah, well, it'll take a while to gather the funds and we'll call that a jet lag. **Ben:** I all enjoy seeing the exorbitant amount of Bitcoin required. And then like, you know, 5, 000 sats raised so far. **Knut:** Yeah, and then five years later, 5, 000 sats is enough for a jet. **Luke:** there we go. Oh, absolutely. # The Origins of BTC Sessions **Luke:** So can you give us a little bit of, your story, how this all started? how did you get into Bitcoin and how did you become a, cause you're not actually Mr. Sessions, but you are, you get confused for that all the **Ben:** Yeah. so, prior to Bitcoin, I actually, taught kids how to breakdance for years. **Knut:** Australian ladies, **Ben:** Yeah, non Australian ladies, no, no, I, I taught, I was basically doing in school residencies. So, like, in, in phys ed, instead of the phys ed teacher, you know, helming the, the dance unit, I would come in as a novelty and, You know, teach the kids a routine over the course of a week and then they'd perform at the end of the week. And, so it was a fun job, but it didn't particularly, pay the bills. So I needed a side hustle. And that side hustle for a while was, I went on a bunch of tech blogs and I just kind of learned how to tear, tear apart a MacBook and like swap out the hard drive and the RAM and things like that. And then, so I would flip MacBooks because everybody wanted a MacBook, but you could get it used. And so I would upgrade it and then sell it and earn a few hundred bucks in an afternoon. And that felt pretty decent. But because I was on those tech blogs, the Bitcoin articles would be in front of me from time to time. it took about a year of saying, ah, crap, I missed the boat over and over again, to finally say, maybe I should actually read into this and figure out what it was. And, I spent the better part of two years trying to learn how to use it. And searching desperately for video tutorials because I'm a very visual learner. It was always like, Oh, go to this blog and, or, or go to this forum and halfway down in the comments, some dude described in point form how to do this. And I was like, I, I can't learn like this, but I had to. And so the channel was more like a response to the itch I couldn't scratch for myself. And I figured if, if I wanted that, somebody might find Bitcoin tutorials useful, and, that was eight years ago. And so now, yeah, eight, eight years worth of, doing tutorials. **Knut:** So, do you have any other, educational background? university studies or anything like **Ben:** this was just like, it was a com, so the skills that kind of came together were, even though I was teaching dance, like, teaching a concept that can be complex to like a school kid. As long as you can break it down in a simple manner, like I had to get used to sometimes five year olds trying to learn and memorize a routine. With very foreign movements to them. regardless of subject matter, it translates if you can break something down. And the tech aspect of it, like I was not technical whatsoever before Git. Other than like, I mean, yeah I said I tore up Macbooks, but like, if you can, put in a Nintendo cartridge. That's like the skillset that you needed to do that. and so that was just like trial and error, you know, tearing your hair out, doing it again, trying again, learning what not to do. and then just the being comfortable, like in front of a camera, I guess, over time. **Knut:** So, the stripe from tearing your hair out? **Luke:** Yeah, it grew back eventually, but turned color. Yes. did you realize that you're never allowed to change your hairstyle ever again? **Ben:** The first time going to a conference and, somebody coming up and saying like, Oh, I saw you from across the parking lot. And I was like, Oh crap, I'm stuck with this forever. Yeah, now it's like, I literally, but this is going to be the OPSEC thing. Cause when it's time to disappear, I just have to die this back. And I, I'm a ghost. **Luke:** Yeah, Nobody will know who I am. It's like if Knut shaves his **Ben:** Yeah, **Knut:** yeah, yeah, yeah. **Ben:** Yeah. **Luke:** Although actually the beard hasn't even been going that long, but now you're used to it. **Ben:** Yeah, yeah. # What Has Changed in Bitcoin? **Luke:** So, what's changed over this eight years? Because I imagine early days that you're teaching vastly different things from now in the space. **Ben:** Yes and no. there's a lot more to teach now than there ever was. like the early days, I was more or less confined to whatever phone app happened to be out as a wallet, there was very limited option for hardware, like it just kind of started to pop up as I was early days. and then like Bitcoin ATMs or online exchanges, that was kind of the crop of what I could do. And now, the list of things I would like to cover is growing faster than I can cover it. It's an impossible task to teach everything. And so, that's a great thing, because there's so much optionality out there for people. I think because of that now, we're seeing a lot more people do tutorial videos, which is fantastic. every time I see a new person throw their hat in the ring and start making video tutorials, I'm like a mini victory. I've treated the opposite of. Competition because you can never have too much education, just as everybody should have a Bitcoin podcast. # Neutrality **Knut:** Yeah, so speaking of podcasts and video tutorials, like, how do you stay neutral in terms of the products? I mean, you must be getting offers from everyone here and there, like, can you promote this for me? Can you do that for me? **Ben:** so there's two aspects to it. I mean, number one, obviously the only way that I can do this full-time is to have sponsors on the show. But the sponsors that I usually have, it's typically not them coming to me. Not to say there isn't people coming to me, but the ones that come to me typically are like shitcoin casinos and stuff like that. And saying it's a default. No. but the sponsors that I tend to have typically it's me saying, Oh, I use this and it's great. And then I reach out to that entity and say, would you like to sponsor the show? But that comes with a caveat of no matter what, The whole point of the channel is to educate people how to use things, so I will be covering your competitors and teaching people how to use them as well. So, it's just, you gotta just be forthcoming with, like, the pros and cons of everything, and be realistic about how things work, and, yeah. **Knut:** yeah, yeah. Oh, can I have that water? Sorry. yeah, this is a tricky thing, like, especially for consumers, like, how can you trust the content you're consuming, but I think, the essence of that is that, authenticity is the currency of the future, whoever said that, but, it's such a great. Like your reputation is everything. if you're discovered to be a sellout or if people discover you're a sellout, you lose, or your sponsors too, at certain point, right. So, **Ben:** It's, especially in Bitcoin, I feel like, Bitcoiners hold each other to a higher standard than fiat world does. and, Bitcoiners it's not so easy to forget, somebody. not that you can't, redeem yourself when you make a mistake as long as you own it. I think the worst thing that you can do is just double down instead of being like, you know, fucked up kind of thing. So, yeah. # Early Days **Luke:** No, exactly, and I mean, I was actually curious about this. Did you ever go to, like, when you're getting into Bitcoin, were you ever curious about some of the, checkcoins and **Ben:** Oh yeah, like, especially early on, because, there was no good resources, that succinctly described the difference between Bitcoin and everything else. It wasn't until, I spent most of my time learning about Bitcoin specifically, and then, I heard little things about other shitcoins but I never gained any conviction with any of the other ones, and to me it was always considered gambling, if I had anything like that. And so it took working at an OTC desk in 2017, like a physical walk in with cash and buy Bitcoin or shitcoins to open my eyes to just how degenerate all of that stuff was. like my experience at the peak of the 2017 bull run. Was being in a room probably about double or triple the size of this. we had three desks, with money counters on them, and it was shoulder to shoulder people in this room, all standing with stacks of cash, Ready to buy whatever coin had gone up the most that day. Ripple hit 3. 50. I'd love 10, 000 worth of Ripple, please. and it was just that day after day after day. And people convinced that like, oh, this is the future. This is how it's gonna be. And after going through all that and seeing the ICO craze and everything, it just put such a bad taste in my mouth witnessing that and in a way being party to it, like working and being on the other side of the desk from that, that, discussions with and working with Francis Pouliot, with BullBitcoin. He actually poached me from that company that I was at and it was a breath of fresh air to get somewhere and focus on Bitcoin. And so that was the formation of where I'm at now. # Bull Bitcoin **Knut:** In 2019, you were here with the bull Bitcoin **Ben:** Mm hmm. how many of you were here? was a lot of us. 15 Yeah, there was, there was a lot. it was like they brought a bunch of the Debs and like Madex was here. 'cause he did the shirts and everything. Yeah. Francis Dave, like, yeah. We were all out here and it was a good time. **Knut:** Bull Bitcoin is definitely the most based exchange in the world, I think. think there are exchanges nowadays that are on par with them, but if you take the historical perspective, there is no second **Ben:** Yeah, well it was such a departure for Francis to come out and be like, his announcement of what BullBitcoin was going to be and to say, we are actively Bitcoin only I remember people in the room as he announced it being like, Seriously, you guys are only doing Bitcoin. You're actively choosing not to do anything else. And, it seemed like a crazy move to a number of people that watched that announcement and it was the best thing that they could have done. **Knut:** Of course. I mean, I love that before and after picture of Francis, you know, when he's in his corporate suit and everything. The before picture and the second picture, it looks like something out of Commando or Yeah. Rolled out of the jungle. No, it's great. **Ben:** Yeah, that was a formative time for sure.   # Calgary Community Building **Luke:** Yeah, and I mean, those were my first touch points with crypto, the 2017 run, and I mean, in the offices in Calgary, because I'm just starting my career, just out of school, and I'm working at an oil and gas company, and it's like, everyone's talking about Ethereum or Ripple, Yeah, and so that was the only thing that I got off my ass and went and bought a little bit for a little while with some Ethereum, and as soon as everything crashed in 2017, it's just like, I'm like, Yeah, I forgot about it for four years until things started to climb again. And so no, no regrets, like, what ifs or anything like that. But, but yeah, that, that was, that was the culture at the time though, is, is, is what I'm saying. and this, this was all like, I had no idea this was all going on around me, the Bitcoin community, in, in Calgary. Right. and so this is, this is now where. You're active in building the community in Calgary, right? **Ben:** yeah, so, we're now kind of, you know, I've reached a point where, you know, it's great using Bitcoin as a savings mechanism and all that, but, I think it was late last year. there was some announcement in and around like exchanges, basically sending out the warnings to everybody, like, Hey, if you coin join and then send to the exchange, we'll have to shut your account. Like you've got to at least add a hop and every, and people were. We're getting angry and almost like shooting the messenger, like, Oh, like, why don't you just not comply? And it's like, well, then the business doesn't exist. So I, like, I kind of get it. But at the end of the day, I got annoyed because people were, again, shooting the messenger rather than like just trying to do something about it. And, and so that kind of, spurred me into. You know, recognizing that the only way around that is to actively use Bitcoin peer to peer, right? Like, not just save it. Cause like, if you're, if you're saving your Bitcoin and you're putting it away and everything, and then all of a sudden, every on and off ramp, it just Disappears overnight because of regulatory overreach. What the hell do you do? Like, yeah, you can find your, your, your peer to peer exchanges and stuff like that, but like, isn't it so much better if you can just know the place where you can get beef or, you know, your barber, if you, if you can just use your money for everything that you need and then also just save it. Like, isn't that a far better world than having to rely on somebody somewhere to exchange for a worse money? # Vexl **Knut:** Are you familiar with Vexl? Yes. looks really promising, I think. yeah, we had Grafton on. Weeks ago. And, it's great. most of the users are in Prague at the moment, but still, if we can get that going, it's like, I view it as VL being is to local Bitcoins what B2C pay server is to BitPay you're taking these centralized models and. making them peer to peer and more decentralized. **Ben:** it, yeah, it's needed, whatever the, I really like the idea of what Vexel's doing, again, like, it's thin in my area for people listing stuff on there, but, again, at the end of the day, I think in, however we can do it to kind of build out, starting from the Bitcoiners themselves, ways to meet our daily needs, just using Bitcoin, like, I've been, I've been basically living on a Bitcoin standard since 2020. Now, 90 something percent of my income is all Bitcoin. and I use it, like I, by default, don't have dollars beyond, like, exactly what needs to come out of a bank account each month for some specific payments that I can't do externally. **Knut:** So what is your reaction when people say that Bitcoin isn't money? **Ben:** So you can say it, but you're fucking wrong. it's puzzling when somebody says that to me because my entire life is a refutation of that statement. Like, **Knut:** that's a clip right **Ben:** Yeah. # Sats Market **Luke:** that's fantastic. I had no idea any of this stuff existed. I literally got into Bitcoin as I was leaving Canada and I haven't been back to Calgary in three years now. I'm super looking forward to next summer. I'll make it to your sats market and the Bitcoin rodeo and everything. So can you tell us a little bit about the sats market **Ben:** Yeah, so, I guess I kinda went off the rails when I was about to dive into that, but that knee jerk of me getting angry that people weren't doing anything about it, that spurred me into doing the first sat market, and So I was like, guys, the only way around this is to just start using Bitcoin. And so I put out the word online and said let's do this in three weeks, let's do a market. And we got 35 merchants together in that period of time, put on a big, Christmas market. And it was great. I was surprised how many people got together and made that happen. And so now we've done three of them. we did a spring one as kind of like a dry run, to prep for the Bitcoin rodeo one that we did in July. but now I think we're going to do two per year so that it's kind of more of an event. but then we want to actually form relationships with each other so that, you don't need the market to get the things that you want. So like, you know, my kid shoved something in the toilet, I called the Bitcoin plumber. And he came and I paid him in sats for sorting out my shit coin problem. and I think a big part of the market was, yes, it's great having, Bitcoin related merch and goodies and stuff like that. But like, It shouldn't be all that. It needs to be stuff that people actually need. So we have local farmers come in, and you know, they've got beef and eggs and chickens and all that. We have a lot of tradesmen, like roofers, people doing flooring, people doing all kinds of different stuff. We've got a guy who, one of the services he's offering is teaching people how to homestead. so like there's, there's a wide variety, there's a children's author, there's a whole bunch of different stuff. and it's a very eclectic mix of a lot of different things. but also like the useful, like, oh, I need food, you know, I need my haircut. # Canada and Alberta **Knut:** so, do you expect, I mean, if you look up government overreach during the early 2020s in the dictionary, you'll get a picture of a Castro's bastard doing, do you expect some kind of clamp down or like problems with this from a government side in Canada? **Ben:** Well, the nice thing about it is that it's the hardest thing to prevent when I know the guy I get my eggs from. When, you know, what are you going to say? you guys can't be friends anymore. Go fuck yourself. like if I happen to go visit my buddy at his house And he happens to give me some eggs, and I happen to slip and scan a QR code then like I was to stop that Yeah **Luke:** would go, Well, I mean, some calibration on this as well. I think for people who aren't familiar with how Canada is basically, Alberta and Calgary is like the heart of freedom country in Canada. Quebec is also a little bit, it's got its own flavor of that essentially, but Alberta has been going through some really interesting times in the last decade. **Ben:** so It's very different from the US in that the individual states have so much more, free reign to set things how they like, and you can freely move around between states. But in Canada, the federal government has a lot more power over each individual province than I would like. But Alberta, as of late, has been really pushing back against federal overreach, in particular, and around energy, health, and education. so there's been all of these things that have culminated in, we created the Alberta Sovereignty Act, which Gives us a conduit to any time the federal government tries to do something where they're stepping out of their wheelhouse, we basically can now refer to that and flip them the bird and say, tough. We saw that province next to us, Saskatchewan, when they tried to impose a carbon tax, the entire province, the government just said, we're not collecting it. And so like, you're starting to see, and it's very interesting because The sovereign individual, the book, when they were discussing, the idea of local governance and the breakdown of larger nation states, when they were talking about Canada, it was written in the 90s when Quebec was voting whether it wanted to remain part of Canada. And so one would have assumed at the time they would have said Quebec will be the first to separate from Canada. But they said no, it's more likely to be Alberta because it's so energy heavy. and we get kind of screwed by the rest of Canada, so there's what's known as equalization payments, if we produce and have a lot of industry, rather than using that as a mechanism to incentivize people to move away from areas where industry may not justify so many people living towards where the good jobs and the resources are. they just say, Oh, you guys are doing pretty well. We're going to take, however many billions of dollars of that, and we're going to pepper it over here. **Knut:** Yeah. **Ben:** when you look at say Quebec versus Alberta, Alberta, I can't remember what this is. Very recently, in the past few years, there was a year where I think Alberta paid 10 billion dollars in equalization payments, and, Quebec received 11. And, and, and so basically we just gave Quebec all the money, and that's like 40 percent of their GDP. **Knut:** yeah, it's socialism. That's how socialism works. The problem with socialism is that eventually you'll run out of other people's money. **Ben:** Yeah. and so, but I mean, what would have happened if that wasn't in place is there wouldn't be as many jobs in Quebec and a number of people might have said, Oh, there's more jobs over here. We're going to move to where the industry is. **Luke:** Yeah. Free market. It's natural. It's what happens when you leave things be and let people cooperate and collaborate the way they want. but instead we're incentivizing people to stay put Well, and I mean, the other thing, not just the equalization, right, is that the energy is literally landlocked in Alberta, and to get the oil to market, you have to take it to a coast, that's how this stuff gets sold, and there's just been fights over building pipelines within Canada or into the United States, Barack Obama cancelled the Keystone pipeline, the Keystone XL pipeline the first time, Then Trump re approved it, and then Biden finally cancelled it, and I think they're actually giving up on it now. But even within Canada, that's the problem, is that Quebec, who gets all of this money from Alberta, says they will not let a pipeline through their province. **Knut:** yeah, it's, in the book. yeah. yeah, **Luke:** your feeling on just the political situation in general in Alberta and Canada as a whole? **Ben:** it's interesting because I don't put Too much or really any trust in politicians, but the political pendulum making it's I feel like it already peaked to one side and it's about to swing back and they'll be that degree of What seems like normalcy for a while and then it'll swing too far the other direction again in the 90s growing up I felt as if These conservatives are gonna censor everything and, it was always like, Oh, we need to take this off TV and off the radio and we don't want anybody to see this In my head, I was always like, well, just don't watch it. Don't listen to it. If you don't like Like, why are you telling others what they can or can't do or watch? And so I always grew up thinking that's where the pressure's gonna come from. But as that political pendulum swung to the left, it doesn't matter who's in power, it's just what are they censoring, right? And so I think I leaned left, politically speaking, early in my life because it was just like a knee jerk. Against whoever was telling me not to do things, and so I felt like I swung left, and then it got to a point where I was just insufferable, like, actively, trumpeting whatever the leftist politicians would say, and it wasn't until a friend of mine actually said to me, I asked him about the election when Trudeau got elected for the first time, which I voted for, and, **Luke:** Sorry. **Ben:** The thing that opened my eyes to how insane I had gotten was, a friend of mine that I would have assumed for like the, who he was and kind of his lifestyle and everything like that would have, definitely been voting for Trudeau. So I asked him what he thought of the election. And he said, you made me vote conservative. And I was like, I stepped away from that conversation and took a long hard look in the mirror and realized the person that I thought I was helping by voting this way voted the opposite because I was such a loud mouth. what I ended up doing is I started searching for the exact opposite of what I would have searched for on like YouTube and all that. And it was my first peek into how bad the algorithms get you. And because all of a sudden I was getting served inside of a couple of weeks, I was getting served the polar opposite end of the spectrum and nothing but that, and like rage bait. it made me realize like. There's, there's no winner in that scenario. # Pendulum **Knut:** it's so funny that they use the word pendulum because that's one of the chapter names from the new book. And we describe exactly that process of left and right, but also how this dynamic happens in smaller communities as well. And the danger we see in the Bitcoin community here is that, I've noticed this effect that Whenever people discover Bitcoin and realize that the government is lying to them. The lazy thing to do is just to buy the opposite narrative and buy into all the conspiracy theories, and all of a sudden Alex Jones is not a liar, have you noticed that too, and like, are you worried about the Bitcoin community, that we're getting sloppy, buying into stuff? **Ben:** Yeah, I think it's inevitable that people have that reaction in that we're at that point in time where people are deeply distrustful of every single institution. And I think it's exactly what you're saying, is that the knee jerk reaction is, so everything's a conspiracy, or everything's a scam. And, you know, kudos to the people that are a little bit more nuanced with the thinking. I can fall into that trap too. And, I think it's also, to go back to one of the other formative moments in Bitcoin for me was, as I first started getting involved. Seeing the coverage of Mt. Gox, on the news because I had, I still knew very, very little about Bitcoin at that point. I had just started learning, but even with, a month or two of reading, I knew that all of the reporting was completely wrong. where they were saying Bitcoin got hacked. And I knew it was just a bad company, lost people's money. And, to see every news outlet report it the same and all be wrong, and know that I've done effectively the minimal viable research, and I know that you're incorrect. It made me step back and say, well, God, like, what if other things that I know even less about are being reported incorrectly? **Knut:** I know exactly what I reacted to the most, that they describe Bitcoin ma mining as solving this super complex **Ben:** Yes. **Knut:** Yes. When it's really just guessing a number over and over again. so it's portrayed as something that's absolutely isn't **Ben:** Yeah. it's blindly throwing a dart at a dart board somewhere. **Knut:** I had experiences with this earlier on where, you know, being interviewed for smaller things and just reading the interview afterwards and seeing how much they got wrong. this is so often everything. **Ben:** Yeah. Cause I mean, there's people in society that are tasked with trying to distill information and present it in a friendly public facing manner. And, when you're trying to do that, it's difficult to do that accurately and also in an entertaining way that drives clicks and views and all that kind of stuff. so I think a lot of people by default just use some of those bad habits and, you know, go for the clicks, I suppose.   # Nostr **Luke:** Well, and how do you feel about an antidote to this in Nostr, decentralizing communication? **Ben:** Yeah, I think. With this, it definitely puts us in the right direction in that, you know, previously, the way, we've seen dissenting opinions dealt with is just shutting them down. you know, now, I still very much think that the entire world has not yet grappled with the fact that you can instantly communicate with anybody, anywhere, and get a megaphone to tell the world whatever you think. and people have not been great at learning how to distill information and decide if the information is right and true. we're still as a species not great at that, but I think having Absolute censorship resistance puts us towards that because then the only tool you have to fight against bad information is better information. And so people need to stop being babysat and actually be forced into a space where they have to distill information and think critically. and that's a muscle that most people haven't exercised and even myself, at times just, you know, it's easy to go the lazy way. But I think, yeah, with something like Nostr where, you can say whatever you want. Nobody can remove it afterwards. it forces hard conversations to be had rather than trying to silence them. So I think it's a slow process and it's not gonna happen anytime soon. But it gets us stepping in the right direction. **Knut:** I think communication is the thing that elevates us from barbarism to civilization, really. Because if you go down to first principles and what this is all about, it's like humans have two ways of resolving conflict, and the one is violence, And the other is communication. You agree and you argue and you come up with a solution. And the latter is obviously preferable to the former, because we don't want violence. seeing things that way makes everything so much clearer, you realize that even without the internet communication would have won out in the long run, because it's more efficient than violence. Violence is costly. so, and it did sort of like there were fewer wars, like in, Early 90s when the internet wasn't a thing than ever before. So like, fewer people were killed in wars. So the internet has just sped up the process. And right now you can communicate with anyone in the entire world at an instant. And it's not only text, it's video, like without a lag. And on top of that you have bitcoin, which is, part of that, because it is communication. What bitcoin pointed out was that money doesn't have to be anything but communication. That's why I'm so extremely optimistic about it, because it is the cure all, in that sense, because it's so damn powerful, # Why Are You Bullish? **Knut:** so Ben Sessions, why are you bullish? **Ben:** am I bullish? in this moment, I think I'm most bullish because people haven't stopped building and they're doing so at such a breakneck pace that I guess alluding to earlier in the conversation, how that list of things for me to teach people about is growing faster than I can teach it. And, and that's a great place to be in, given that when I started, the most common question I got from people hearing, Oh, you're doing a Bitcoin tutorial channel. I mean, you're going to run out of stuff to do, aren't you? And it's the exact opposite. and so I, when there's that much of a brain drain and, and there's so many people Interested in somehow being involved and contributing and seeing this as the seismic shift that it is. how can you not be bullish about that? I mean, we started a company a few months ago called Bitcoin Mentor. Educators, one on ones and all that. But we put out the word that we were looking for people that wanted to be Bitcoin educators. We had 350 applicants. Isn't that insane? **Luke:** It's amazing. **Knut:** Yeah, **Ben:** Obviously we couldn't take all 350, but we built a solid team from the people that were there and there was some really talented people there. # The Bitcoin Mentor **Ben:** So can you talk us through what this is? what is the Bitcoin? It's the Bitcoin Mentors. Yeah, Bitcoin Mentor. I, have previously for a number of years done, Private one on ones with people, typically, you know, Zoom or whatever, video call. those were usually people that had gone to the free tutorials on YouTube, but they need a little bit of extra hand holding. Maybe, like, it's either just their confidence in doing it themselves, and they just want somebody to kind of walk them through it the first time, or they hit a snag and I didn't cover it as in depth as I should have or, there's a lot of moving parts. I got to the point where I was so busy with these sessions, these one on ones, that I wasn't having time to make the tutorials anymore. And, you know, I can't not have that. You know, that's like, it's such an important thing to have the free resource out there as well. So, I met, my co founder now, Mike, and, we just kind of formulated an idea of building a team and, yeah, so it's basically for anybody that's either like brand new and is just trying to wrap their head around, key management or hardware or whatever, or for the, you know, What I would refer to as the Bitcoin luddites, the ones that have, and this isn't at all a dig because this happens to everybody, but. Where you come in, you learn the few things you're comfortable with, and then you stand still for a long time and you begin wondering like, is my setup still as good as I thought it was when I originally did it? Should I add to it? Should I learn something new? Or I just wanna level up and learn some new things? We get a lot of people coming in like that, being like. Yo, I, I don't know, I got a ledger like five years ago and I set it up and I haven't done anything since. And now I think I want to try a cold card or whatever else, or now I want to run a node or now I want to, you know, I want to learn again. **Luke:** And so we get a lot of those people coming in the door saying, help walk me through this. And once they've done it once, then, okay, that's a skill they've attained and they can do it themselves without any assistance after that. Oh, awesome initiative. And I mean, yeah, like obviously there's a need there for people to get involved in this stuff. And I mean, the user experience in Bitcoin is still very much, you have to do the things or else it's not quite going to work. And I mean, do you think it's ever going to be? So simple that anyone can just quickly get on to Bitcoin in a self sovereign way. I don't, I don't think that there's ever going to **Knut:** always a trade **Luke:** there's always a trade off. do you think about that? **Ben:** there's always a trade off. I think, and it also depends on what our interactions with Bitcoin look like in the future, like in terms of what is the average person's experience using Bitcoin. Bitcoin, I would venture to say that their initial interaction with Bitcoin inside of Five years or less is not going to be on chain. Like people aren't going to be onboarded directly to on chain. They're going to, I think the way that we teach needs to be completely inverted because the way I used to teach was, okay, let's attack a regular on chain Bitcoin wallet first. here's how you set it up. Here's your seed phrase on chain transactions work like this, you know, every 10 minutes, all like, here's how the fees work. That was typically the first thing you wrapped your head around and then you would say, Oh, and now there's this thing called lightning. And this allows you, you know, for more day to day, smaller trends. And so you'd, you'd start at the base and you'd build the knowledge to the upper layers. But that's not going to be how people interact with Bitcoin because, economically speaking, that's not going to make sense. They're going to come in from a top layer first with their first few sats. custodial lightning. exactly. But what will be the goal is working your way down through the self sovereignty stack to hopefully get as close to the base as you can for that person. And so it's gonna be like, oh, I came in through a Fediment, or I came in through a Cashument, or I came in through a Custodial Lightning Wallet. **Knut:** You'd be like, okay, great. Transactionally, you now know what you're doing, but let's see if we can give you more control. And move that direction. had a thought about the 350 applicants, because they all want to be Bitcoin mentors. I think they probably all are, just on a smaller scale. Like, all of those people are teaching their friends and family how to use things. It's already amazing. Because you're right, all of those applicants were vying to be part of a specific group but nothing precludes them from continuing to be the bitcoin person in their group of friends that people come to for advice and help. beautiful.   # What is Ben Most Excited About - Fedi(Mint) **Luke:** And so you mentioned a couple of things like, Fedimint and Cashew as one example, like just new stuff that's been coming up. What are you most excited about that's, like projects that look really exciting to you right now? **Ben:** I'm very interested in the Fediment stuff. I think it's really cool. Now, again, you gotta recognize that it's a trade off. But, I tend to look at things from the perspective of What is available to us right now? No, I recognize that things can change and maybe you have the ability to have shared, you know, UTXO custody in a way, But with how Bitcoin works right now and the tools that are available to us, I think FedAmends are pretty damn good trade off, to enable a number of things that are very attractive. So like, instant, peer to peer free and perfectly private transactions within a mint. Gaining the privacy of the crowd if you spend to another mint. and what I mean by that is, maybe you have a mint that has a thousand people in it, and another mint that has a thousand people in it. When you go to send money to somebody in the other mint, it's a lightning transaction between the two. federations, but nobody knows which person in this mint initiated the transaction and nobody knows which person in that mint received it. yeah, it's beautiful. so I love that. there's things like you can do offline payments. there's a lot of really cool things. and Feddy app is doing is something that I think it would be super. Useful in the context of what we're doing with the sat market in Calgary is if we had, you know, within, if we had everybody sound like a mint. And within the Feddy app, we could have a community that in that same app with their wallet management, they also see all of the resources needed to use said Bitcoin locally. So maybe it, it, by default, we have built in there, the btcmap. org that will center in on Calgary when you tap on it within the app, maybe it has bit refill or whatever to get your gift cards. Maybe it has whatever other, because It's like a whole ecosystem in a singular app that you can tailor for your specific community, which is, so useful, and I didn't know exactly what it was going to be until I actually physically saw it. Yeah, Yeah, so I love it. Now, yeah, we still have some questions about it, but we'll talk to Obi one of these, like, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. So we're looking forward to interrogate him about the nooks and crannies about Fede. But, yeah, it's very, very promising. yeah, it's, I think that particular ecosystem is gonna make leaps and bounds in the coming years and it'll be very interesting to see how it's used and how resilient it is, in the way that they're trying to flesh out that ecosystem because at this point anybody can make a mint. And so, and that's a double edged sword, because anybody will make a mint, and some will be, they won't all be created equally. Some will rug, for sure, some will rug pull, but others will, you know, It'll likely be done well and stand the test of time and kind of, it'll be more of a reputation based thing rather than, **Knut:** that's reputation based is, is, is based. I mean it's, that's what we're excited about, about Nostr, a lot of the You know, web of trust things so that you get all the, the reputation score is basically your, you own your social graph and your friends and your connections and your posts and everything. And that's where you get your recommendation is from. So I think that ends up, you know, killing woke disney one day because there won't be a discrepancy between user scores and critics **Ben:** yes, **Knut:** like so **Ben:** yeah, **Knut:** much going on **Ben:** yeah, that's fantastic. **Luke:** It's fantastic to get your perspective on this because you're probably one of the people who really actually gets in there and tries the most things Amplifying, right? like that **Ben:** I tend to tinker around with pretty much everything that I can get my hands on. there's more people that are starting to be that as well. if you were to look at my apps on my phone, it's just like a disgusting amount of different Bitcoin wallets and everything. and those are just the ones that I have put in a folder. If you go through the entire app drawer, it's just, I don't remember when I downloaded this # Outlook for Canada and Alberta **Luke:** No, it's funny, but, you're clearly bullish on Bitcoin. And what about Canada? What's your feelings on Canada, Alberta as well? **Ben:** I hope Alberta secedes. So that's that would be, I'm, I'm, I'm very pro, smaller and more local governance. I, you know, I, I think that you become disconnected from, your constituents when you try to govern too many of them all at once, it's very difficult when you have. a large group of people in very, very different conditions and trying to say, you guys are all gonna live by the exact same rules. I think more local governance is great. I feel like Trudeau will be gone next year. everybody's sick of him, including his own party, but at the same time, if I had to guess, I would say that, he'll be stubborn enough to run again. And that Polyev will probably win he's a bitcoiner but at the same time, I don't think that he'll do anything, in terms of regulatory that would be super favorable. **Luke:** I think it'll just kind of be status quo. if anything, it'll at least buy some time. To build out things that make Bitcoin more resilient in the face of the next tyrant. I've still got all my family in Canada, tons of friends in Canada, I hope for the best in Canada, I'm the coward, sort of, and left, but no, no, it was more of a pull than a push, I mean, as much as things were difficult a few years ago in Alberta, I mean, like, yeah, it was other reasons, but still, of course, close to my **Knut:** voted with your feet. It's good. you made a freedom footprint. That's what you **Luke:** Well, yeah, awesome to have you and other great people in, in Calgary and, and Canada, you know, still bearing the torch and everything. So, **Ben:** Yeah, there's a good, there's a solid group there, and yeah, the Calgary, the Alberta, generally, like all the Alberta Bitcoiners, there's something there, and I can't wait to see that blossom into what it seems to be becoming. **Luke:** well, sign us up for the sats market, in June, July, next year. Cause, yeah, well, a hundred percent **Knut:** We need Knut to come stampeding I can do the stampeding. yeah, apparently it's not optional. # Wrapping Up **Knut:** anyway, where do you want to send our listeners? Like with btc sessions. com? Is that a thing now? Dot ca, **Ben:** flair on there. if somebody's listening or watching this that is unfamiliar, and you need to learn anything, just search BTC Sessions on YouTube. you'll find it there. I'm on, Nostr, I'm on X still. you gotta be where the normies are at when you're trying to orange pill and educate, I suppose, too. the Bitcoin Mentor stuff, you can check out at bitcoinmentor. io if you need some more hand holding on anything. There's a solid group of educators there. **Luke:** fantastic. And I'm going to look at this camera now to my friends from Calgary, who I've been telling you to go attend the sats market. Get to it, talk to this guy, you won't regret it, and you know who you are. Thanks for everything you do, and thanks for being on the show. thanks for having me, guys. Appreciate it. Ben, thanks again. This has been the Bitcoin Infinity Show.

@ fd208ee8:0fd927c1

# A fortnight of being real on Nostr  It's been over two weeks, since I announced that I would primarily be noting from my lesser-known [Silberengel npub](nostr:nprofile1qydhwumn8ghj7argv4nx7un9wd6zumn0wd68yvfwvdhk6tcpr3mhxue69uhhg6r9vd5hgctyv4kzumn0wd68yvfwvdhk6tcqyr7jprhgeregx7q2j4fgjmjgy0xfm34l63pqvwyf2acsd9q0mynuzlmgw80), and it's been an interesting experience. As with anything I ever do, I clicked around a lot, tested out a lot, and tried out a lot. Mostly, I observed. ## Let me share, what I've learned 1. Nostr-related products are increasingly useless, if you don't follow anyone, or only follow a handful of people. **Everything is geared to follows** and you usually really do need to follow gobs of people, to have an interesting feed, by capturing the most-active people (about 10% of the people you follow). Those people tend to quote and boost other people's notes into your stream, allowing you to follow those additional people and so on, like a snowball scheme. This means that follows are actually a feed-management mechanism, rather than any indication of a relationship between npubs. It also means that 10% of the npubs decide what everyone will look at. 2. Many people collect followers, by being active for a very short time, following lots and lots of people and getting follow-backs, then they unfollow the smaller npubs or abruptly change their tone or the content (this is common with spammers and scammers). Then they have a high WoT score. **What, precisely, is being trusted here?** (Also, centering WoT on follows is influencer-maxxing for plebs, KWIM?) 3. Why are individuals never unfollowing these npubs? Because nobody unfollows anyone who hasn't seriously upset them. **Follow-inertia is rampant** and the follow lists are so long that most people don't even know who they are following. So long as the "bad npub" doesn't spam the people who are following them directly, they don't notice anything. That means following spam can inadvertently protect you from spam, whilst the same spammers throw crap at your own frens, all damned day. 4. Most relay owners/operators don't ever look directly at the feed from their own relay, so it's usually full of enormous amounts of garbage. Your clients and personal/private relays are often downloading and broadcasting all of that garbage indiscriminately, so **the garbage gets passed around, like a social media virus**. Many of you just haven't noticed, because you also don't look at the feed from your relays (see 1). 5. Almost all business logic (the controls, in the classic model-view-controller setup) has been placed on the client-side. This is great, if you're a client developer, as it makes relays superfluous and traps your customers in your app, by **making moving to a different app more onerous**. Every move requires a period of readjustment and fiddling, before they can see their feed the way that they are used to seeing it. This is less great, if you're a user and are interested in trying out a different app. 6. When I began, two weeks ago, the concept of topical, private, and personal relays interacting were mostly a pipe dream (pun intended), but I've been pleased to see, that some other people are beginning to catch on to **the appeal of decentralizing and specializing the model layer**. A diverse, sprawling network of relays, connected through the [outbox model](https://mikedilger.com/gossip-model/) and [negentropy syncing](https://github.com/hoytech/strfry/blob/master/docs/negentropy.md), is really next-generation communication, and essential for ensuring censorship-resistance, while supporting smooth interaction. 7. Once you get above a few hundred followers (which I already have, *That went fast!*), additional followers are increasingly spam or inactive/bot npubs, and once you get a few thousand followers, **that Bot Effect goes parabolic**, as your notes are spread more widely onto spammy relays. You won't notice, yourself, as anything over a few hundred becomes Some Big Number and you'll eventually stop even looking to see who they are, or caring about them, at all. Which leads directly to my next point... 8. The number of followers a person has, **correlates with an increase in their disdain for people who care** about follower counts, likes, reactions, or even zaps. This *noblesse oblige* says nothing about the usefulness or information any of these signals carry. You will please also notice that they never change npubs and rarely change profile pics because of reasons I don't need to elaborate on, further. 9. On-boarding is a lonely experience because **nobody looks at the feed, and you initially have no followers**. Even if you reply to people, they often can't see what you wrote because of your low WoT score. That is, unless you already know someone there, who can vouch for you. Or are lucky to get discovered by the Nostr Welcoming Committee and end up one of the biggest npubs overnight, which is like winning the follower lottery. For most new npubs, the experience is terrible and they eventually give up, for a handful the experience is absolutely fantastic and they are hooked. Obvious lesson: nobody should onboard, who doesn't know at least 1 other person: so invites only. Unlike Those Other Protocols, Nostr doesn't need a centrally-determined invite, as every client or relay can offer their own version, geared to a different audience. The goal simply needs to be: get off 1. 10. I don't get many zaps or reactions, anymore, but **I still have interesting conversations**, and I no longer face the surreal situation of every cough, hiccup, or sneeze I emit being front-page news. Nostr feels more like Nostr, again, and less like Twitter, and now I want communities and forums even harder.  

@ fd208ee8:0fd927c1

# Let's talk about baking bread I've mentioned a few times, how large-scale central planning leads inevitably to artificial scarcity and rising prices. Allow me to illustrate -- using a completely invented allegory about bread -- that has absolutely no parallels to any economy you may already be familiar with. ## We start with 20 Let us say, there is a group of 20 people in a village doing something that requires some niche skill and interest, but not inordinate amounts of talent or uncommon knowledge, such as baking loaves of bread containing emmer wheat. This is not an easy thing to do, and you'd have to read up on it and practice, to begin with, but it's not an insurmountably-high barrier for anyone who already knows how to bake. Now, they're not baking all that much of this bread, as the market for people who want to eat it, is still rather small. But, they're happy to bake the bread, and sell it below cost (at $10), as they can see that the market is steadily growing and they know that there is a possibility of recuperating their investments, and maybe even turning some profit. They hope to eventually profit either directly (through the selling of the bread), or indirectly (as A Person Who Helped Invent Emmer Bread), or ideally some combination of the two. They are baking away, and honing their baking skills, and scrounging up the money for bigger and better ovens or cleverly-arranging discounted contracts for slightly-larger deliveries of wheat, and more and more bakers see this activity and wander over to their village, to see how this bread is made. Well, the current bakers are starting to sink under all of the bread orders they are receiving, and customers are complaining of late deliveries, so they start to ask the 10 visiting bakers, if they would like to also set up a bakery and take some of the production off of their hands. ## We now have 25 bakers The visiting bakers consider it and 5 agree and the rest wander off again, as they already are quite busy baking the bread they've always baked, and they aren't as certain of the possibility of growth, for this new type of bread. The 5 additional bakers take a while to setup shop and assemble staff and place wheat orders and etc., but after a few weeks or months, they are also adding to the bread supply. There are now 25 bakers, all completely booked-out, producing bread. The price of bread has fallen, to $8/loaf. And the bread they produced! All of the bakers competing for orders and expanding their product lines and customer base quickly lead to the white emmer bread being followed by whole-grain emmer bread, emmer dinner rolls, emmer-raisin bread, and even one rebel daring to bake spelt-emmer pretzels because... Well, why not? The customer, (who, at this point, is the person eating the bread), gets to decide which bread will be baked, and the pretzels sell like hotcakes. The emmer hotcakes also sell like hotcakes. No baker is making much (or any) money off of the baking, but they all can see where this will end up, so they are still highly motivated and continue to invest and innovate at breathtaking speed. We now have emmer baking mixes, "We luv emmer" t-shirts, emmer baking crowd-sourcing, all-about-emmer recipe books and blogs, etc. The bakers see this all as an investment, and cross-finance their fledgling businesses through selling other bread types, their spouse's day job, burning through their savings, or working Saturday night, stocking shelves at the grocery. Everyone can be a winner! Everyone can find their niche-in-niche! Everyone can specialize! Private enterprise for every baker, who rises and falls on his own efforts alone! And although everyone was competing with everyone else, there was no bitterness, as everyone could clearly see that effort and reward were in some sort of balance. ## We are now short 3 But, alas, that was not meant to be. The joy and harmony is short-lived. A gigantic, wealthy foundation, who is dedicated to "ensuring much emmer bread will be baked, by financially supporting emmer bakers" enters the chat. "We have seen that there is much baking going on, here, but just think how much better and more baking could be done, if we financed your baking! Isn't that clever? Then you could really concentrate on baking, instead of having to worry about financing your business or marketing your products. All you have to do, is apply to receive our baker's grant, by signing this form, acknowledging that you will only bake products containing nothing but emmer and you will otherwise support our mission. We promise to pay you $100/loaf." The 2 people making spelt-emmer pretzels, and the 1 person making spelt-emmer cookies, refuse to sign on, and slink off, as they are very convinced of the rightness of including spelt. One emmer-purist baker refuses on some economic principle that nobody comprehends, and immediately turns around and goes back to work in their bakery, with their shoulders hunched. But the remaining 21 bakers happily apply for a baker's grant. The mixed-grain bakers are upset about the breakup of the emmer market, and spend some time sulking, before wandering off to the new, much-smaller, spelt bread market, that is setting up, down the street. Where they sell their bread for $6 and slowly go bankrupt. ## And then there were 10 2 weeks go by. 4 weeks go by. Baking has slowed. The grant hopefuls hold a meeting, where they discuss the joys of baking. Baking slows further. Everyone is too excited, to find out if their new Universal Customer will be paying for the bread they bake. $100 a loaf! Just think of it! All of the bakers quickly do the math and realize that they not only will turn a profit, they can buy themselves a nice house and a new car and... Nobody listens to the complaints from The Old Customers, who are the useless individual people only paying $8, despite them slaving away, all day, in front of a hot oven. They should be happy that they are getting bread, at all! Instead they complain that the bread is dry, that the delivery is late, that the bottoms are burnt. Ingrates. And, then, the big day arrives, and the foundation happily announces that they will be giving 10 lucky bakers a grant. The bakers are stunned. It had seemed that all of the bakers would be getting the grants, not only part of them. But, of course, the Universal Customer looked through the applications and tried to spend its money wisely. Why give grants to 5 bakers, who all produce the same type of olive-emmer bread? Give it to one, and then tell him to produce 5 times as much bread. He is then the olive-emmer bread expert and they will simply keep loose tabs on him, to nudge him to bake the bread in a sensible manner. And, of course, he shall always focus on baking olive bread, as that is what the grant is for. The bakers stroll off, to their bakeries. Those who baked olive bread and received no grant, close up shop, as they can see which way the wind is blowing. The other grantless bakers reformulate their bakery plans, to see if they can somehow market themselves as "grant-free bakers" and wonder at how long they can stand the humiliation of selling to demanding, fickle customers at $8/loaf, when others are selling at $100/loaf, to an indifferent customer who doesn't even eat it. The happiest 10 bakers leave for another conference, and while they are gone, their bakeries burn down. Their grants continue to flow, regardless, and the actual bread eaters are now standing in line at the last few bakeries, paying $20/loaf. The End.

@ fd208ee8:0fd927c1

Young people, in Europe and America, started moving out at the turn of the last century. It wasn't a tradition, in those countries. Housing was formerly multigenerational, but people became steadily more transient, with industrialization and the following rise of office work and the concentration closer to cities.  Prior to then, housing (including rents) was prohibitively expensive, so everyone tried to stay in their parents' or employers' home, for as long, as possible. Both the "Go west!" and "Lebensraum!" slogans hint at that crowded past. People risked their lives, en mass, trying to find enough cheap land, to build their own home. Many people left Germany, and similarly crowded countries, to move to places like Texas, where you could own your own home and therefore marry without your employers' or parents' permission. It is still common to have inheritance fueds, here, in Bavaria, with the children squabbling over who gets to "keep" the house and how much "payout" the other children will receive, as compensation. Because you cannot always simply move to a different home in the same area (there is little available land for building and nothing to rent), leaving the ancestral home can result in de facto banishment from the entire region. Wages increased, after WWI created a tighter labor market, and governments and large corporations (receiving government subsidies) began building or subsidizing massive amounts of homes, while the size of each home shrank dramatically. Those factors combined to lower the *relative* cost of housing, to the individual purchaser.  But the resulting Baby Boom construction explosion so overwhelmed the housing and mortgage markets, that housing is a very unappealing long-term investment, now, as there is hardly anyone around, to move into those many homes, when the Boomers pass. Their children and grandchildren (if they have any) are much poorer than they are, and much fewer in number, which guarantees that the housing market in most areas will eventually begin to collapse, in real terms, as Boomers pass away, or attempt to downsize. To stabilize prices and prevent fires or delinquency, governments will begin demolishing empty houses, as they already sometimes do, in the former East Germany. Former West Germany dealt with steadily-falling house prices by mass-importing foreigners and paying for their rent at above-market prices, to artificially reinflate the housing market, but it appears that the easterners had a more politically- and economically- sustainable model for ridding themselves of excess homes.  But the era of cheap housing is over, and will continue to be so, for the next 10-15 years, so young people increasingly stay home, well into adulthood. As some cultures now have "moving out", as a prerequisite to dating, their childrens' marriage rate has plummeted and, consequently, so has the birth rate. 

@ 01d0bbf9:91130d4c

## Chef's notes Amazingly tangy, firey hot, but still mellow and bright. I use this on everything– Use it to dress salads, dip (honey mustard) for fried chicken, elevate your taco nights, heck a spoonful first thing in the morning will wake you up better than coffee! Don't forget to use up those delicious chilis and garlic, they are so good! ## Details - ⏲️ Prep time: 20 min - 🍳 Cook time: 1-2 weeks - 🍽️ Servings: (12x) 8oz jars ## Ingredients - 16oz fresh chili peppers - 8oz red onion - 8oz garlic - 96oz honey - Fresh thyme ## Directions 1. Thinly slice peppers, garlic, shallots and fresh thyme 2. Add chopped ingredients to the honey 3. Leave to ferment (loosely covered) for 1-2 weeks 4. Drizzle that amazing pungent firey gold liquid over EVERYTHING. (Don't forget to use up those amazing chilis and garlic too.)

@ a9434ee1:d5c885be

## 1. Relay = Community? If spinning up a relay is getting easier and cheaper by the day, why can't the relays literally **be** the group/community? Then: * Any relay is by default a public community. The more restricted read- or write-access is, the more it becomes a private group. * Any publication targeted at (h-tag) and stored, and thus accepted, by a relay can be seen as a publication in that community. * All-in-1 hosting solutions (integrated blossom servers, lightning nodes, ...) are made easier. ## 2. Why invent new kinds? Why can't Kind 1 posts that are targeted and accepted by a relay (i.e. community) just be the forum-posts of that community? Why create new kinds for this? And even weirder, why create a new kind with that exclusively serves as a reply to that new kind? Why not just use generic replies (kind 1111) and take the #otherstuff (event kinds and apps) as an opportunity to introduce those? For chat messages, however, I get it. You need a kind + reply-kind for those. ## 3. Community VS Private group It seems like the only distinction you really need, both for the user and the apps implementing all this, is: 1. **Public Community**: anyone can read and follow this community but for writing the admins can set limits (pricing, white listings, ...) 2. **Private group**: only the profiles that even know this relay (i.e. group) exists can interact with it. Read-access has to be granted (invite, pricing, ...) and admins can set limits for writing too. Beyond this distinction it's a bit naive to try to categorize them. Open vs Closed doesn't really mean much for example, since technically all groups/communities set limits and are thus closed. It's more interesting to look the ways in which they can be closed and build on the simplest distinctions you can make there. The difference between Public communities and private groups is the most important one because they both have very different UX and specification requirements: ### Memberlist **Communities**: None existent Anyone can read and follow. It just has limits on who can publish what, when. So the most interesting thing to surface is probable something like a list of most active members or a highlighted set of profiles that have special characteristics within this community (top supporter, god-mode, resident artist, ...). **Private Groups**: Necessary for it's existence The whitelisted npubs for read-access are the members. ### Moderation actions **Both types of groups** need a way for the admin(s) to: * Block/remove users * Remove events * Edit metadata (name, description, guidelines...) * Specify who can write publish what, under what condition **Only private groups** need a way for the admin(s) to: * Add/approve new members → specify who has read-access, under what condition Generalizing too many actions like `add member`, `join request`, etc... that are only applicable to one of these categories just creates bad UX for the other one. You don't "add a member" to a public community. People can follow it without asking anyone's permission (ok yes, some will AUTH for reading but that's besides the point). Some of its followers will then just choose to publish something there and the admin either allows them or not. Having a common protocol for specifying the **conditions for this write-access interoperably** (as mentioned above) is what I would like to see instead: * Both Communities and Private groups need it anyway * You have to assume admins need granularity in the conditions they set for publishing in their group/community: Who, what, under what condition, ... * You don't want to link out to custom websites (or similar) explaining their allowance schemes *Sidenote*: we need a similar kind of spec for the services that allow you to spin up your hosting solution (relay, server, node, ...) so that, when you click "Create new community" in an app, those services can be surfaced. With their business models (including options to self-host parts of it) just there, in the app, without linking out. Same for the lines of communication and payments that are needed to make those business models work from within any app. ### Publication and Discovery **Only Communities** allow for the exciting possibility of publishing something in multiple overlapping communities at once. Someone writing about how [Bees are Capitalists](nostr:naddr1qvzqqqr4gupzp22rfmsktmgpk2rtan7zwu00zuzax5maq5dnsu5g3xxvqr2u3pd7qqfyyet9wdqhye2rv9cxjarpd35hxarna3k565) can target their article at the communities that most overlap with its content (and with the author's means and write-access of course). Members of a community around beekeeping can organically discover content and communities on Austrian economics relevant to them. With **Private groups** publication happens only in the group and discovery is blocked on purpose.

@ 1d5357bf:1bdf0a52

**If Bitcoin Is in Its Infancy, Nostr Is Still in Its Nursing Stage** Skepticism is healthy, especially within the Bitcoin community. At the moment, Nostr users are predominantly Bitcoiners, and it's understandable that people are cautious about adopting new technologies. However, based on my limited experience over the last few months, Nostr has shown immense potential and is evolving at a breakneck pace. **The Speed of Development: A Double-Edged Sword** The rate at which new functionality is being rolled out on Nostr is staggering. On the one hand, this rapid development brings constant innovation and new tools for users to explore. On the other hand, it often means that many implementations still need refinement, or at the very least, better documentation. It's exciting, but there are still bumps in the road that need to be ironed out. Censorship Resistance and Relay-Based Architecture One of Nostr’s most appealing features is its decentralized architecture, which revolves around relays. This design ensures that the protocol is censorship-resistant. If you’re tech-savvy enough, you can even run your own relay, allowing you to retain full control of your notes. This distributed system empowers users by giving them the tools to protect their content and stay independent of centralized entities. **A Protocol, Not a Platform** Nostr is not a platform—it's a protocol. This distinction is crucial because it enables a high degree of interoperability, which can pave the way for a diverse ecosystem of applications. This opens up a world of possibilities and allows for network effects to take hold as more people and applications begin to interact with the protocol. **Privacy and Control** Another advantage is the ability to manage your privacy more effectively. With Nostr, you can use multiple nsec/npub keys, giving you more control over your identity and interactions. This flexibility is a game-changer in a world where privacy is often compromised by centralized platforms. **Areas for Improvement** Of course, Nostr is not without its challenges. Many of the available applications feel unpolished, and spam is a growing issue (the infamous "reply guy" problem). The ephemeral nature of the content also presents a challenge—once you post something, you can't "put the toothpaste back in the tube," sort to speak. **Enjoying the Ride** Despite its growing pains, I’ve found Nostr to be an enjoyable experience so far. There are no algorithms dictating what you see, which results in a signal-rich environment with minimal toxicity—for now, at least. It’s refreshing to engage in conversations that aren’t manipulated by unseen forces, and I look forward to seeing where Nostr goes from here.

@ bf95e1a4:ebdcc848

This is the full AI-generated transcript of Bitcoin Infinity Show #127 featuring George Manolov! If you'd like to support us, check out <https://bitcoininfinitystore.com/> for our books, merch, and more! # Welcoming George Manolov **Luke:** George, welcome to the Bitcoin Infinity Show, thank you for joining us. **George:** Thank you, Knut. **Knut:** Good to have you here, George. **George:** to be here, yeah. you're here to tell us about the city that I was most surprised by ever. Like, I've never heard of the city before I went to Bulgaria, Yeah, time flies. **Knut:** So Plovdiv, Bulgaria, which was amazing, this rich, Thousands of years of history plays with a lot of different eras and different styles of architecture and stuff, really enjoyed Plovdiv, and you have a football team there. **George:** yeah, indeed. # George Manolov and Botev Plovdiv **George:** Please give us the story about George and Plovdiv Yeah, sure. **Knut:** Plovdiv. **George:** Sure, sure. So, Plovdiv is, well, I would say it's the oldest living city in Europe, so continuously inhabited. Like you say, not many people know it. I guess, like, we don't have good enough marketing, but, that's probably part of my job right now, right? To spread the word about it. so it's, like the second largest city in the country. And, yeah, it's just this, it's very, like, I love how you put it because almost nobody has really heard of Plovdiv, right? Most people, when they hear of Bulgaria, they've probably heard of Sofia but Sofia is, okay, but Plovdiv is kind of the chill place, Plovdiv is the place that is actually worth visiting, the place where, people just enjoy going there. I was born there, right? and, grew up there till 18 or so, then, Studied, lived in Sofia most of the time. And, last year, in kind of summer, I was already kind of way deeper into Bitcoin. I decided I'm going to go full time into Bitcoin, just commit all my time in Bitcoin at the time, educating, publishing books in Bulgarian about Bitcoin, creating my own educational platform. And then I got, reached out and connected really to the owner of the football club in the city, which is also the oldest football club in the country, Botev Plovdiv, who was, well, he got introduced into Bitcoin himself and he realized it's going to be a very big, project. You know, going to play a central role in where the world is going. **Knut:** What is this the owner of the club? **George:** That's right. The owner of the club. was like, Hey, I think we can do something unique with Bitcoin because, you know, the club is really a company, right? It's a business on the one hand, but it's a special type of business, it's not where just you produce a certain product or service. It's really a living organism where people are involved into it, for very emotional reasons. people feel like it's their own and it's not like a small group of people. It's a very large group of people. In our case, we have tens of thousands, arguably more than a hundred, 200, 000 people who care, who watch, who follow the club. And so on the one hand, like there's many different ways in which we can look into this, but on the one hand. It's for me, what really inspired me and what got me like, Oh my God, like, is this really happening is that we can bring the conversation about Bitcoin from a completely different angle into society to a group of people who for the most part would never really They would like this, they would never listen to podcasts like this, they would never get to any of the kind of places and things we listen to, watch, consume, right? and people go, You know, people go kind of for bread and circus, right, **Knut:** yeah, yeah. **George:** for the games. That's what really football is, right? It's fun and it's emotion, it's enjoyment, but then we push them censorship resistance and hard money, right? And we don't really push it, you know, that's the thing, right? Because are like consistently, progressively, gradually over time, introducing it and finding the best way and the most appropriate way to, yeah, plant that seed. To the minds of the people, into the views of the people and so on and so forth. so it's really like, you know, what we're trying to build is, we feel we're in a very privileged position, right? because we've been, the first really professional sports club globally, I would say, to have, uh, crypto Bitcoin, you know, people, departments, who is actually full time employed to, you know, think of a way to grow the business, to think of a way to integrate Bitcoin natively, within the various aspects of, of, of the organization, which obviously initially includes like accepting payments and so on and so forth. But, um, but there's so much more you can do exactly with this type of, Like organization, again, like not, not, not just a business in a traditional sense. **Knut:** Yeah. And, uh, won the league, right? Is that, is that right? **George:** Yeah, man, like it's, uh, yeah, so we, um, when I started last year, things were super bad. Like exactly one year ago, I was there for the, for one of the first games. It was horrible. Like, I was like, okay, this is a great idea, but if the team is doing so bad and if, uh, if they keep losing and if the fans keep getting, you know, being unhappy, Um, it's not gonna go anywhere, but still, I gave it a, I gave it a go, right, because I was like, okay, I just hope that the sports side guys are going to do their, their part, and I have my opportunity here, um, to, to just like push, to educate, to, To do what, what, what life is giving me an opportunity to do. And, uh, very fortunately, as we started working, the team started performing better and better and better. We got a completely new coach. We got a new sports director. We, we had a lot of key staff changes across the organization, which, Um, relatively quickly started showing results. So, uh, yeah, like, 10 months later in May, we won the Bulgarian Cup. **Luke:** Is that the cup or the league? Like, uh, **George:** it's the cup, it's the cup. So, so, I was saying, like, we started very bad in the league. And so, we were doing better and better, but still, like, we finished 9th in the league out of 16 clubs at the end of the day. But which was still okay, because, like, when I joined, like, we were, like, **Luke:** Worried about relegation or something like that? **George:** there. I mean, **Knut:** We're complete, uh, like I've tried to take an interest to football, but like, uh, my ADD just, the brain just wanders away after five minutes and I can't concentrate anymore. So I don't **Luke:** a basketball fan. **Knut:** Am I now? # Football for Noobs **Knut:** Uh, so, uh, what's the difference between the cup and the league? Let's begin there. That's, that's how much of a football noob I **George:** So, so pretty much in every country is the same, right? You have a league or a championship where you have, in our case, 16 teams, and every team plays twice against every other team. So home game, away game, and then, you know, you either win three points when you win, or you lose, or you draw, and you, you, you win one point. And then, so after you play, after you play, in our case, this, what is it, games? You know, **Luke:** 30. **George:** yeah, about 30. Yeah, right. You're better than Matt, it's obvious. So, um, so once you play these 30 games, um, you, um, yeah, like the team with the most points wins, right? Whereas, uh, the cup is direct elimination **Knut:** So quarterfinals, semifinals, all that. **George:** exactly. So it's the easier way. So this was the way for us to due to the bad start of the season. This was the way for us to, to achieve something in this season and to achieve something important because what the Cubs gives us as an opportunity and gave us was to play in the European Leagues. So UEFA Leagues. And we just did that. We played six games. Uh, for the Europe, uh, Europe League and the Europe Conference League. **Knut:** Okay. But to, to be in the champions league, that's a totally, you have to, yeah, yeah. You have to win the league and you have to win all sorts of stuff. Like how does that work? **George:** yeah. You have to win the league. And then in our case, so in every country it's different, but in our case, we have to win, like we go to qualifications for the Champions League. So it's like, I mean, three to four games. And if we win that, we go to the Champions League. **Knut:** Alright, **George:** That's the current state of affairs, although that can change over the years. **Knut:** alright, uh, it all makes sense to me now, that's a lie, but anyway. **Luke:** No, uh, I'll definitely, we'll acknowledge here that I'm more of the, the sports fan, uh, generally here, and I, I follow football, I like, uh, I like European, uh, football, uh, well, and obviously I'm using the correct, uh, term despite my, um, my pseudo American accent, uh. Yeah, anyway, um, uh, no, it's fantastic to see, and I mean, yeah, for the non sports fans, uh, listening to this, I get that **Knut:** Well, I am a sports fan, it's just that Starcraft 2 is my sport, and yeah, yeah, **Luke:** yeah, **George:** eSports. **Knut:** yeah, yeah, so I watch, watch Starcraft 2 games. That's what I do for procrastination sometimes. **Luke:** valid sports, I'm not going to compare it to other things that aren't **Knut:** breakdancing? Is that a valid sport? **Luke:** Breakdancing is, um, hmm, interesting. I think anything with points, that judges give points, is kind of not a sport, it's an activity. **Knut:** yeah. **Luke:** but, yeah, anyway, **Knut:** thing to do. **Luke:** is a thing to do, yes, definitely, but back to, back to, um, um, Botev Plod, is it Botev, Botev, what's, what's, Botev, Botev Plod, yeah, so, so, um, yeah, yeah, like, the, the, the achievement, winning, winning the cup, I mean, the, The cups are sort of more difficult. They're both difficult in their own way, right? Like, the cup, you lose one game, you're out, basically, right? But, I mean, the league is like this endurance, achievement, right? You have to perform well over the course of the whole season. But the cheat code, so to say, and I probably subconsciously used the other football team's terminology, who's in the space, Real Bedford, um, # Botev Plovdiv's Bitcoin Strategy **Luke:** The, the idea right, if, if I'm getting it, is that you guys would, would keep the Bitcoin in the, in the, the treasury, the, the company, and then over the course of time it's just gonna do the number go up thing and, and the, the club will have more resources. Right. Is that, is that the idea you're thinking with the, the bitcoin strategy? **George:** There's actually many, many things to it. And this is kind of the most, let's say, vanilla type of approach. Yeah, like just buy Bitcoin and hold it on the balance sheet, which is, which is great. But there's actually so many other things you can do. And that's where, because if you just do that, frankly, like, I mean, you don't need me involved, right, much. I mean, just call Coinbase, whatever, wire the money, crack in and, buy. but with us it's like, really, uh, we see a huge opportunity to, first of all, align our brand with the Bitcoin brand, which is a royalty free, uh, The biggest brand in finance, for sure. One, uh, like it's going to be the biggest brand in the world for sure at some point. Right. So that's, that's one play. And to do this, it's not enough for you to just buy Bitcoin and hold it on a balance sheet. It's what you need to do is proof of work, right? You need to do things that nobody has ever done. You need to really kind of be creative. Uh, and, and, um, to push the boundaries of what anyone has ever done before, right? So, so that is, uh, that is my kind of job and it's a lot of, um, a lot of just like, let's, let's think of what, what new things we can do with Bitcoin and sports and football that nobody has ever done. Just because others are focused on the short term things, they're focused on, hitting those, those quick wins, those quick goals, which is why, for example, like a lot of the sports and, and that have, you know, interact, they haven't really interacted outside of Bedford with Bitcoin, right? It's mostly been crypto because it's just, okay, let's make some quick money. Um, **Luke:** usually, it's usually just sponsorships, right? **Knut:** yeah, **George:** yes. Um, and for us, because on the one hand, like, we're not like Manchester United, right? We're not Chelsea. So we don't have that much to monetize immediately. Like we're a large club, but. **Luke:** You're a large club in a local league, which is, which is different from the, it's not one of the leagues that is internationally positioned like that. But, but, I mean, the, the difference between you guys and Bedford that I, that I think is, is really interesting. Like, McCormack, what he, Peter McCormack, what he's doing, I mean, he's, he's taking a club from the bottom and aiming for the top. But who knows how long that's going to take him to get there, right? But you guys are already in the top of your league, right? Like, in the top league. **George:** right, yeah, and also there's, there's different in this, we're in the top of our league. My goal, personally, is to go to Champions League, but this is very hard, right? Because, like, okay, when you start from Peter's ground, like, it's easy, okay, every year you level up, you level up, or, I mean, I'm not gonna say it's easy, but it's easier than, uh, than once you're, you know, at our level. For us, it's important to play currently every year in European leagues like we've done so far and to every year consistently, like, increase the level of the sports, level of the business department bit by bit, and, but like breaking that point where we, you know, win the league, Where we win several more games and enter the Champions League, that, that's really hard. I mean, because you're already at that stage where everybody, like, so many teams are so strong, right? So it's um, it takes just a lot of ingredients for you to, to, to hit, uh, in order to win. But we're gonna get there. **Knut:** and does the club self custody it's bitcoin? And if so, is it a something out of 11 multisig, that sounds like a football thing? **George:** Why so? Ah, yeah, an 11? Nah, nah, fuck that. I mean Nah, even, even 7 Motosick is a, is a killer, but no. Um, yeah, I can't really speak too much about this at this point. Yeah. Um, but, um, but yeah, I mean, we do, of course we do self custody. So that's, that's the approach that we've chosen with kind of a lot of, um, we've chosen to go really pure, pure Bitcoin in terms of the strategy. And that's how we set ourselves apart. That's how we believe we win the long game because for instance, like we Bitcoin with BTC pay server. Which in my mind they don't even have competition. It's the only like, real, solid, autonomous, sovereign way to accept payments. And it's also the way which makes sense for like, Frankly, any standard business, because like, man, we're selling scarves, we're selling, um, membership boat cards, we're selling jerseys, we're selling basic merch, and if we are to sell it with basically any other service out there, outside of BTC Pay Server, we have to basically, uh, indirectly do KYC, right? Like, we have to go through KYC, we have to go through KYB, which is ridiculous, um, in my mind. And so, um, so that's why we're exceptionally thankful to B2C Pay Server guys, uh, for what they've built. Uh, it's been like an absolute pleasure to, um, to use their product, to use their service. Uh, we have, you know, outside of B2C Pay, we, uh, we are the first, uh, sports club on Nostr. Where, uh, we have, uh, actively been posting, exploring, you know, meeting people here. Kind of thinking of what we could do from our angle again, like first, first time on Nostr. # Aqua WAllet **George:** Um, we have partnered with, uh, Aqua, JAN3's Aqua wallet, which has a, a Botive skin mode now. So if you go to settings, you can turn Botive mode and then it turns into the colors of the club and, you know, have the picture of the stadium there. Um, **Luke:** I'm using Aqua right now because, uh, uh, usually I like to use Aqua as like a sort of a middle wallet, uh, uh, because it's still slightly slower than other lightning wallets because they, they, the, everything actually lives on, on liquid and then they, they, uh, go out via bolts. Uh, so it's slightly slower than a faster, um, like, like than other, um, more direct lightning wallets. And so usually when I come to a conference, I'm going to load up a, like a temporary. I don't know, Blink or something like that, but I forgot to do that, so I'm just using my Aqua wallet, and you know what, it's been great here, it's been working, uh, so yeah, we're big fans of Aqua wallet and what **Knut:** Yeah, and a BTC pay server. I mean, uh, we can echo everything you said that we, BitcoinInfinity. com, like, and the store here We just fired up. Everything is powered by a BTC pay server, and we just love it. Yes. **Luke:** So what was your question about, uh, Aqua? **George:** If yours is on BOTEV mode. **Luke:** Uh, I don't think I've gone into the settings and changed it to Vaudev mode, I'll have to do that, maybe we'll take **George:** It's dark mode, but cooler. **Luke:** Doc dark mode, but cooler. Okay. Okay. Actually that's a, that's a, that's a good point. That's a good point. Yeah. We'll take a, we'll take a picture after, uh, after the episode and we'll de proof, bot, uh, bot e mode, and, uh, uh, post that on Nostr. How does that sound? **George:** Let's go.   **Knut:** Yeah. Nostr. Um, is there a connection there between both a plot and Nostr while you're doing Nostr stuff as well? # History and Freedom **George:** Yeah. Well, look, um, a lot of these things is like, so What Botev Plovdiv stands for, um, very importantly, so the club was named after Hristo Botev, who's, uh, like, one of the most Bulgarians, if the most famous Bulgarian revolutionaries, like, historical figure, uh, he was a poet, he was a revolutionary, he fought for Bulgaria's freedom back in the day, **Luke:** Which, which day, which, what day did you **George:** uh, 110, uh, what is it, like, 50 years ago or so? Yeah. **Knut:** Mm-Hmm? **Luke:** Okay. So, so **Knut:** before the Commes. **Luke:** ottoman, uh, **George:** Yeah, yeah, yeah. He, he, he, he fought for the, for the liberation of Bulgaria from, from the Ottoman Empire. And a lot of what he stands for is this fight for freedom, his fight for liberty. Um, and this, this lives until this very day into the identity of the club and to what we stand for into the songs, into the, into the music. Um, you know, um, the kind of like what, what our fans also resonate with, um, and, and what they sing like in many, in many ways. Right. So, um, Freedom of speech, freedom of, uh, of like freedom in general is, is a value that is deeply ingrained into kind of like what the club stands for. Um, and, uh, you know, that's why I'm into Bitcoin. That's why I believe. And that's, that's why I saw this even bigger opportunity. Oh my God, like, how is this happening? There's so many, sometimes, you know, some like weird things happen in life and you have no explanation why and how all these things align. But, but for me, it's like this club was made really to. to be aligned with BOTEF and to be, uh, to, to, to be aligned with Bitcoin and with Nostr. If I look at all the other clubs in Bulgaria, right, like just in Bulgaria, none of the others, like, there's no this contextual historical background that you can make these connections. But with us, we have it, and what a chance that, like, we have this owner, and he got, like, introduced to it, and then we got connected. Like, how the hell does this happen, man? I don't know, **Luke:** We like to say this, the surreal doesn't end, you know, and like, uh, my, my whole story, I've been talking about this, uh, at the, the conference here is like two years ago was the first time I ever met Bitcoiners here in Baltic Honeybadger. We, we met for the, for the first time, uh, all three of us, uh, met for the first time two years ago, I've been in Baltic Honeybadger and it's like, things, things happen so fast. Uh, I've, I've, uh, I've thought it was been awesome just following, uh, what you've been doing with the, the club and the story. So great to, Great to get to talk about it, but, uh, # Bitcoin in Football **George:** Yeah. No, for, for me, like really the, the most exciting part is really even coming forward. So, uh, because, so now it's been, so we, a long, we announced, uh, publicly that we're doing this, uh, 31st October last year. So the anniversary of the, of the, uh, Bitcoin White paper, um, we've built a lot right. And very, very importantly, I'm super proud, like, I don't know if you saw this, but like a month ago, we played on European League, the UEFA League with Bitcoin straight on our jerseys, which was like, like, when I saw this, I'm like, dude, it's crazy that this is happening. But, but the best is really yet to come, like, like we like to say. Um, so I, I think we, we're, we have, um, we have still so much more to do. So for me, the next big part, which I'm super excited about literally in the coming month as, uh, as I go back. So is to finally get some of our. Players or at least one or two to get to do something publicly about this, because at the end of the day, that's why for me, the more I do, the more I, uh, play in this arena, I realized this is really a Trojan horse for us to bring Bitcoin into the conversation, into the minds, like I said, of people who otherwise wouldn't and, and our players, you know, especially a few of them, they're really influencers, right? Um, a lot of people follow them. A lot of people respect them. And, um, and if they do, uh, you know, something meaningful, something cool, something impactful, this is going to have a huge impact onto our forwards. This could very well have impact onto, um, other sportsmen, other football people, other football clubs, right? Uh, so that's why I'm doing it, right? Really? **Luke:** No, this is fantastic, and actually this was exactly where I was hoping to go next, so thank you for queuing that up. But, no, no, the game theory of all this, right? Like, one club getting, Positioning as the, as the Bitcoin club in a league, uh, really means that eventually all the other clubs are going to need to adopt Bitcoin. If they're going to be able to compete, because if play playing out the game theory, number go up, whatever it is, Bitcoin strategy plays out, you guys are going to be the most financially capable club. Financially sustainable in not very long, you know, assuming everything plays out the way we're thinking it will, right? So, so other, other clubs then would become incentivized to also adopt Bitcoin. So what, what do you, what do you think about that? Like you, do you, do you see that, uh, happening as well? **George:** Yeah, I'm not really sure if it would happen to me. That fast, to be fair. Like, I think it's inevitable, right, obviously, but I think it, yeah, like, I think this definitely takes at least three, four years, maybe more. Um, **Luke:** That's, that's still pretty fast. **George:** yeah, I guess. I mean, I mean, like, okay, let me define it better. It takes three, four years. So, for other clubs within our league to start doing something like this, uh, maybe it takes less time for other clubs to realize it, but I think for them to do it, it also depends on our actions, right? So because like, we don't have like a treasury of microstrategy or something, so it's not, and we're not doing like a **Luke:** you don't? **George:** monthly like leverage on top of leverage on top of another leverage, you know, uh, we're not in, in Michael's privileged position. but we can do other cool things, right? Uh, one of the, um, so this is not yet live and this is not yet happening, but one of the, like two, two projects, let's say, I'm gonna briefly, like, tease here that, that I'm working on that I hope to have very large impact is first, uh, building this, uh, simple tool Uh, called like a Bitcoin, uh, football salary calculator that, uh, it's like really a DCA tool, but like looking back and like tailoring it to our niche where I want to, for us to visually and emotionally Show, um, to players, but also to fans of ours, like what Bitcoin could have done for their remuneration, if you look one year back in time, two years back in time, three years back in time, four years back in time, and for them to really realize, Oh my God, this is a no brainer. Right? I want to make this mess. And this is hard, right? Um, because like, there's so many tools and like, but I want to be, because the audience is very wide, very different types of audience. I want to make this so that you can consume it in like two, three, four minutes. And you're like, okay, I need to learn more about this. This actually is interesting. There's like, that's so much dense and emotional and compact information that you're like, Whoa. Why am I not doing this? How did I miss this? **Knut:** What, what, what was the name of that website? I, I don't know if it's still up, but bitcoin or [shit.com](http://shit.com) or something like that. So, so it lists if you bought this item when it came out, an iPhone five or whatever, uh, and if you had bought b bitcoin [instead.com](http://instead.com), I think that that's the, that's the name. So if you bought, uh, if you bought Bitcoin instead, it shows you how much, how much more money you'd have now and how many iPhones you **George:** Yeah. Yeah. And of course there's many of these tools, obviously like we've all see them and we all like like them and retweet them and repost them. And it's all great. But I think, at least I hope that we can do something impactful with this. If we really tailor it, compact it to a specific type of niche audience with a specific message designed for them. And because this audience is also like. A type of audience who can also like, um, you know, bring it to other bubbles that we ourselves are not part of, right? So that's, for example, one like, uh, one like project I'm very, very excited about and I hope we can, um, yeah, we'll bring forward relatively soon. There's a few moving elements, but definitely in the coming month or two, uh, at most. And then, uh, and then, you know, speaking of the other clubs, what, what I want us to do is what we're working is next year, we're targeting to do, I hope we could do the world's first, uh, Bitcoin, uh, Cup tournament. Uh, for youth players, 70 year old boys who are, you know, right there before they sign their first professional contract, start earning money, for them, first of all, like, it's a Bitcoin football cup, like, it's the first time this, this could potentially ever happen And then it's, it's a football first tournament, right? This is the, we want to make it like top quality, like really the highest quality when it comes to sports, but then you have Bitcoin involved all over the place, right? In terms of brand, in terms of rewards, in terms of, um, in terms of like plays, um, like, like games and, and interactions, activations, uh, throughout, before, throughout, and after the, And after the event, and for this, I'm targeting to get really like, like big clubs. I mean, because it's academies, right? I mean, I cannot get the Manchester United first team, just maybe we could get the Manchester United 17 year old team or, you know, another big club. We get some of these, and then like we get their brands, we get them on the focus of Bitcoin. And we drive the conversation faster, you know, not three, four years from now, but Less **Knut:** what about, um, like right now there's you and there's, um, you guys and there's a real bed for it, right? Those are the two I know of in Europe. Are you aware of any other clubs that are doing a Bitcoin strategy? I mean, is this virus spreading? Like, have you heard anything like, **George:** Um, Oh, there's, uh, there's the Austrian Admira Vakir who have done some integration. So it's a second tier, uh, second league, uh, second league, uh, club that have, uh, that have, uh, you know, they've also had Bitcoin on the, their second team jersey. And, um, and they, they also accept Bitcoin payments, uh, here and there, but you know, the thing is, there's some other clubs, um, there's a Miami, um, not Miami, um, a Hawaiian club that, that is doing, uh, that is doing like their Bitcoin gig, **Knut:** yeah, there are other, other sports, right, other sports team and sports teams in other sports that are doing it. But, but for football specifically, **George:** which ones? **Knut:** Uh, I'm so bad with sports, but wasn't there like a hockey team or a basketball team or **Luke:** I'm not aware of any others, actually. Yeah, like, uh, there's been some attempts at **Knut:** it's **Luke:** an orange colored team or something like **Knut:** more the individual athletes, **Luke:** Yeah, yeah, there have been individual **Knut:** for instance, a **Luke:** have been individual **Knut:** player, and there was some American football player. **George:** There's been individual athletes, a lot of them. There's been, I was asking if you know, but there's been a baseball club in Australia, the Port Heat. Uh, who did kind of a Bitcoin strategy. Uh, but very unfortunately that didn't work out. They kind of started this at the peak of the last bull cycle. And, um, and as I understand, uh, there wasn't like a strong alignment between the owners and the management in terms of like understanding that this is a long game. So that's why this kind of flopped. Um, but yeah, like I, I think the reason why it's not happening in more, unfortunately, and, and, and I see this even, even within our club, uh, you know, but, but definitely no other clubs because Fiat has permitted sports as well. Right. So all the sports club, uh, clubs or the vast majority in football, for sure. They're like, you know, on the hamster wheel themselves. **Knut:** They're indebted, **George:** They're indebted. **Knut:** to an extreme level, **George:** yeah, like, like fighting for every dollar for every income. So it's, it's hard for you to like, Oh yeah, we're going to have this long term Bitcoin strategy that's going to take like two, three, four, five years to play out. And we can benefit a lot from it. It's very, very hard in, you know, unfortunately for a large organizations, sports club in particular to To have this realization, to map this out, to get others on board. That's why it's not so popular and uh, and that's why I'm grateful and keep pushing that we have this chance. **Luke:** I mean, you make a great point here about essentially the, it's the organizational alignment, right? Like the, the, these are companies, sports clubs are companies. They just have this large, the business is involved around getting fans to come in and consume this sort of marketing. Product, essentially. So it's, it's a certain kind of company that's run a certain way, but just like any other company, you need, you need alignment from the management. So it's, it's fantastic that, uh, Boteb Plovdiv has, has the, uh, alignment and is, is putting their, their trust in you to, to move this thing forward. And I mean, from the, from the perspective of this thing, Playing out, right? The, the best part that, uh, I think one of the best parts that you, you mentioned again was the, the influencers. Like you get, you get some players, there's, there's so many angles to, to reach people through this. I think it's, I think it's fantastic. The, uh, orange pilling a player and then they move to another club, but they, they, maybe they don't get to get paid in Bitcoin, but maybe they still put, put their money in, in Bitcoin. Maybe they even ask their club to, to, uh, pay them in Bitcoin, something like that. And then the, the Questions start getting, uh, asked and all this. # 5 Year Goals **Luke:** So what, what is the, the goal in, in five years, for example, where, where do you see the club in the five year mark? **George:** Oh man. Yeah, in five years, I think we definitely have to be in Champions League. Like in my mind, you know, like people around me like, oh, you're too ambitious. I'm like, man, yeah, like in five years, we definitely have to be in Champions League. Uh, that's, that's my personal goal. On our internal Slack, I have the Champions League icon there. That's why I'm there, right? Um, so, uh, it's a lot of hard work. Like, it's really a lot of hard work. And it's also not completely dependent on me and my work, to be fair. Like, because, at all. I mean, really, like, uh, I mean, at the end of the day, the most important part is the sports department, right? Uh, in the club. Um, so that has to continue going well. But, but I think We're going in a good direction there too, because we have the, they're the long term view as well, right. We have our academy internally, which is, yeah, it's one of the best academies. It's the best really academy in terms of infrastructure in the country. That's why we're also can't afford to think of this Bitcoin Cup tournament, because we have the infrastructure, we have like a super cool stadium, that's crazy. If we can, if we can do a final for, for such a tournament there. Um, so, so we have all the things in place in terms of In terms of assets, I would say, uh, it's just a lot of moving parts. a lot of work, consistency, and a bit of luck. Always it comes, you know, when, when it comes to, when it comes to football and sports, but, but five years from now, I want us to be in the champions league. I want us to be the absolute, you know, international professional level, uh, Bitcoin level, Bitcoin sports club. and, uh, and I want for this tournament that I start to be like a, like, like to have the fourth edition by then. Uh, and, and I want to have clubs, but five years is a lot of time, you know, as you say, like, I also want to have other clubs following us by then. I think that's absolutely, absolutely is going to be doable. **Knut:** What, what are the, what are the tax laws around Bitcoin in Bulgaria? Like what, are there any issues there? Or like what, is it easy enough, **George:** It's kind of okay. Uh, it's kind of okay. So if you just buy Bitcoin and hold it, like you don't, uh, you don't, uh, incur taxes, uh, until you sell it, if you accept Bitcoin for payments, um, and if you don't sell it, you can just, uh, keep it as inventory on your balance sheet. So again, no, **Knut:** but there's a capital gains tax or something if you sell it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Alright. **George:** 10%. So it's, it's, uh, **Knut:** Pretty good. **George:** Yeah, I mean, it's not like El Salvador. Okay. Uh, but, but it's, uh, it's, it's way better than many other places. Um, and, uh, yeah, so we've been looking, looking actually, so I was in El Salvador a couple of months ago, because we've been looking very much to do stuff there. And we've been, uh, yeah. Um, because we've been, we've been thinking of what to do more with Bitcoin, right? So that's why I said, like, it's not just about buying and accepting Bitcoin. It's about corporate strategies, about branding strategies, about how to make money. Um, it's about education strategies. It's, there's so much around it. So in terms of corporate strategy, I was, uh, we're very attracted by El Salvador, um, and their, uh, capital markets regulation, because they're basically striving to build capital markets on top of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is legal tender there. They have all kinds of, tax incentives for companies to issue debt or to sell equity. on their capital, on their, um, well, let's say nascent upcoming capital markets, because it's not like it's, you know, hustling and bustling yet. Um, but, but they're, they've put a lot of the rails, uh, um, or they're building a lot of the rails to, um, to really enable the, the, the creation of Bitcoin based capital markets. So, um, we've had great talks there. We have meetings with, uh, um, we have. Yeah, with the Bitcoin office, right? Um, so, ideally, like, we're striving to build some connection there and to do something, interesting and world first again from a corporate perspective. It's just that, as many things, it's a little harder than you would expect it to be, or it takes a little more time than, Then you would hope to do it. But my idea or long term vision, frankly, like what we want to do with Bitcoin, uh, and with the club is to enable our current fans and global fans to become co owners of the club. And that's why, you know, I have big hopes for, uh, for us being able to do this out of El Salvador and through El Salvador, because this would, like from a tax perspective, from a branding perspective, from legal security perspective would be, would be ideal. It's just that, again, um, my enthusiasm is a little over, uh, ahead of kind of like how, uh, how, how advanced and set up everything there is, but, uh, but we're, we're very actively talking to them. We're working with many parties there, so. Just maybe we can have big news there too.   # International and Local Effects **Luke:** Well, no, and, and you actually said something great about global fans. I think this is a, a fantastic thing, right? A a again, Bedford is, is similar. They've, they've got, they've got fans all over the world and, and I think for you guys it's like who is going to tune into the Bulgarian football league outside of Bulgaria before, well, not too many people, but now a bunch of Bitcoiners. If they're into, if they're into football or, or not even, because this is the funny thing. There were, there were a lot of people posting about that. They, they've got, they, they don't usually follow, follow sports at all, but, but they'll follow the Bitcoin team. So the, the funny thing is, I think, I think the first, the first club to adopt Bitcoin in every league is going to get all of these global fans. And maybe the, maybe the, the second one, the third one, maybe can get some kind of other support, but it's really the first one in every **George:** really. **Luke:** That, that **George:** Not **Luke:** That's that. I, I completely agree with you there. It's the, it's the first one **Knut:** first mover advantage. **Luke:** mover advantage. It's gonna get, it is gonna get all of the, all of the Bitcoiners are gonna now be, be supporting and, uh, uh, yeah. I mean, have, have you seen, uh, some, some uptick in, uh, kind of international **George:** yeah, yeah. So, international but also local. Like, local is very important. Like, we have, like, so many people in the country who's like, just what you say, like, I didn't care about sports or football, like, forever, or at all, ever, but now I follow, now I buy merch, now I come, you know, every now and then they come to games, so **Luke:** Well, because there's the bread and circuses thing that you said, it gets tossed around in the Bitcoin world and also some other places on kind of the Twitter sphere and whatever, it's like it's a distraction, that sports is sort of a distraction from clown world basically and it's a way of people to sort of Uh, forget about what's going on around them, but I think that's also missing the, the positives, which it, it's a, it's a community builder, it brings people together, there's a, there's a sense of, of pride in, in something local succeeding, everyone, everyone's happy, there's, there's real economic, uh, effects usually when a, when a local sports team wins, and so, so from, from my perspective, I, I, I think, I think sport is a good thing, and it's, and it's, it's something that, that people can rally around, and so, **George:** an amazing thing. **Luke:** Yeah. And, and so what, what are, what are you looking at locally? Like what, what do you hope to have the effect, uh, uh, locally in, in piv? **George:** Yeah. Um, yeah, no, look, uh, for me, sports, like, for us, the, the, the, the, about Plovdiv, for me, that's what I realized, like, we're kind of very much into Bitcoin and stuff, obviously, that's our interest, but I think when we go on a Bitcoin standard, Right. And, uh, in general, people start feeling wealthier, opposed to, like, being in the grind. You're just going to have more time for fun stuff, right? Like playing football, I mean, or volleyball, or whatever your sport is, or, like, going and cheering your team, and, uh, and being part of such a community. And I think that's really what, you know, even Nostr is about. Like it's, Being part of these communities, because that's fun, and like, we as humans, at the end of the day, we are living to be part of communities, right? And you find your community, you're an active part of it, you contribute to it, you evolve it, right? You build it in one way or another. And unfortunately, you know, today in the fiat world, this is just like A stress valve in many ways, or like you say, like Brothers and Sisters, whatever. Um, but, uh, but I think it can be so much more, right? It is, but it can be so much more for a larger amount of people and so on and so forth. uh, but yeah, well, back in Plovdiv, man, like, I have big hopes. I really have big, big ambitions there. I want to get Bitcoin into the wallets of, uh, of like tens of thousands of people. I want people to wake up. I want people to see. **Luke:** big is piv? How many **George:** It's like three, four hundred thousand people. So it's a lot. Uh, our stadium is, uh, 21, 000 seats stadium. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. It's, it's 19. I wish it was 21. **Luke:** Yeah. You'll have to add 2000 more **George:** Maybe, yeah, we'll, we'll think of some additional construction. **Luke:** the, make the infinity stand when **George:** Right. Right. But, uh, but yeah, like the setting was super cool. Like, it's really cool. Like when it's feel like, man, the atmosphere is amazing. Um, and so it's, and it's really this community that you can feel that people are involved. So it's, it's like consistency and it's social engineering in one way or another, right? **Knut:** one of our favorite words, **George:** but in a positive way. **Knut:** in a positive way, okay. **George:** So it's social engineering for us to ingrain Bitcoin and make it part of kind of what people see, do, have, own, interact with, right? So, uh, I think exactly because of this community element, exactly because, Because, you know, football is a football club and there's this unique living organism we can, we can create this and, you know, it's fascinating. I'm so much into this and there's other people who are so much into this. Oh my god, like, we can make such a big difference. And, and like in the country. You know, on a political and economic level, they don't get it. Like, they don't see it. They just are in their, you know, like, oh, are we going to accept the euro? Oh, what's happening with the war? I'm like, who cares? Let's build. # Bulgarian Currency Situation **Knut:** Yeah, Bulgaria has its own shitcoin, I almost forgot about that, but uh, what's it called again? **George:** Kinda. Um, but not quite, to be fair. It's, it's a good coin, uh, not for investing, but, but for medium of exchange is actually decent. Uh, Lev, Lev **Knut:** Lev, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, **George:** and I recently got educated about this. So, uh, the lev is pegged to the euro. So, um, uh, so, so that, that is super cool for, for us, for me as a consumer, for businesses, because like the fixed rate. So for trade is, um, It's, it's good, right? As the world would be in the future. You have one currency, Bitcoin, you don't have the currency exchange risk, right? We don't have it only with the European Union. And the good part with this, so, we got, we got hyperinflation back in 1997. Was really bad. People lost almost everything, everything, in many cases. Um, and then we got this so called currency board introduced and the currency board is like we have the left, but the left has to be backed up by other currencies. So it's like a stable coin, kind of like how Tether is backed by, by dollars. You know, the levy is backed by euro and like a basket of, I think they have some other currencies and assets, which is cool because the local politicians, they cannot print, they cannot, you know, so, so it's been, it's been, I think, way better than Hungary, Sweden, uh, Finland, you have your, oh but Sweden I've heard it's kind of bad, **Knut:** It's kinda bad, Norway too, like, both Swedish and Norwegian crown, and the crown in Czechia, like the Czech Republic, it's also **George:** Yeah. **Knut:** I mean, they're all going to shit the smaller **George:** So, so for us, it's like, I would say we're better than, than the Corona, the, and, and all these like local currencies, because we kind of just are there to the, peg to the Euro. The local politicians don't have the opportunity to print. So it's, it's a very good position for us to be. **Luke:** You, you get the, the negatives of the, the euro. But, but still, I mean, I mean the, the realistically, the dollar at the Euro and maybe the, the Chinese currency are the only, are the only ones that are in the, sort of within our own, within our own lifetimes are, are going to be not as terribly bad against Bitcoin. But all the other ones are just, are. All the other ones are **Knut:** Yeah, I think it's just a matter of time before both, uh, at least Sweden, uh, switches to Euro standard. If not switching to Bitcoin standard happens first, but well, we'll see, we'll see what happens. **George:** man. I'm very bearish about the Euro. **Knut:** yeah, yeah, it's like, **Luke:** It'll be the second last to fall or third last but but yeah it's it's it's it's not going to be the the last and so it's yeah. **Knut:** So that is what it is. I mean, speaking of Bulgaria and currencies and stuff, # Bitcoin Adoption in Bulgaria **Knut:** like, how is the rest of, how is Bitcoin adoption in general in Bulgaria? What's happening in other places? Like, Plamen opened a bar, I saw, and like, what are the connections? What's happening? **George:** It's actually quite cool. I'm, I'm, I'm quite happy with, with how the ecosystem is evolving. There's, there's Plamen, um, with his whole community, like content creation, the conferences he's been doing, which has been like a very, I think he's responsible for like, I don't know, probably like, 000, maybe several 10, 000s of people who have opened their eyes and even if they're not hard bitcoiners, they now own bitcoin. Uh, so that's huge. We have other content creators also who've had an impact. We have now once or twice per, yeah, about twice per year we have like, uh, A small, uh, merchant, uh, like, conference events, so for merchants to accept Bitcoin. we have these people who are active and who are doing things. Now, actually, yeah, there's something new that's coming up here, uh, literally in Plovdiv is we have this, um, this, uh, great dudes who have this, um, um, it's an application for, uh, ordering food, like takeaway and, uh, what is it, like, **Knut:** like Glovo or **George:** yeah, yeah, like Glovo, um, but, um, but, um, But it's not like this big corporate thing that, but, but still, it's a very good product and they've integrated accepting Bitcoin there for quite some time now they've made it even easier and they've introduced. So we have like about, I think it's 15 restaurants in Sofia and like five or so in Plovdiv where through their system, you can order food. And pay with Bitcoin online, or you can also go in the restaurant and pay in Bitcoin online, and they just, um, they just won a, uh, grant from, uh, Bitcoin Beach, uh, and, uh, they're going to use the grant, uh, to, well, the attempt is really to start like a small circular economy, if you would Um, where, so if you go, uh, to one of those restaurants and pay with Bitcoin, you're going to get sats back 10%, and then, um, the restaurant is also going to get 10 percent sats back. And if you order food, um, through their app, also the driver is going to get, uh, some sats back. And, uh, we've just been discussing, because obviously we're partnering with them, with the football club, so we'll push this out, because some of the restaurants that are there are our, I mean, basically, like, we have two restaurants locally that are partners, we got them in, right, obviously, in the deal, um, So, so that is also like, for me, it's like super cool because now for so far, the club has been pushing Bitcoin. Now we have two of our restaurant partners who are themselves like hard Botevists, Botefans, and like they're popular. Now they're starting to accept Bitcoin in their, in their two restaurants, right? And they're going to have their campaigns. We're going to push them more. So, um, so I'm really excited about this and fingers crossed this goes well. We have good metrics because if we have good metrics. Yeah, we'll look for ways to grow this. So there's a lot of grassroots things happening, which I love. On the top, nothing. **Knut:** It's the way it's supposed to be. **George:** But it's the way it is. Yeah, it's a better **Luke:** Yeah it really seems like that you get one or two of these big anchors like like for example you you guys have had that had that conference last couple of years but now with both of Plavdev now Bulgaria is really got a couple of big anchors. Big relative in relative terms, uh, and all of this other stuff can, can start coming up around it. And, uh, love, love to see it. I mean, he, I mean here, here with Rega, there's Honey Budger has been going for a really long time, and I, and I even think that they are honest about, we, we would, we just talked to, to Max, uh, about this, uh, from Defi and like yeah, there's not much other adoption in, in Lavia and this conference has been going on for a long time. Exactly. And so it's just like, uh, it's, it's, it's great to see, uh, in, in your case, in Bulgaria's case, that there's, there's more of this, uh, picking up. So, yeah, **George:** Well, I think it's really, in our case, I don't know, like it's grassroots, like I said, and I really believe grassroots and then Rio or for the vast majority, Rio adoption comes permissionless life. It comes like it's not forced. You know, there is this point where, okay, there's Plamen, like, he got the inspiration, he makes his content, he does the conferences, Like, our owner, he sees this opportunity for Bitcoin, for the club. He takes the action, right? So it's, it's not like, so it's individuals, right? Taking actions and then, as you have, you know, several of them, maybe others get inspired or get ideas going and that's how the magic happens. And, uh, yeah. Excited about it. # Wrapping Up **Luke:** it's awesome, man. Great hear your story. So, was, uh, was there anything else that you wanted to discuss or bring up on this topic? **George:** no, I mean, what I would say is absolutely, uh, Please, uh, you know, Knut, you've been, but please, you're absolutely welcome, Luke, join as well, like, both of you should come **Knut:** Absolutely. Highly recommend it. I had a great time in Bulgaria, and it's such a fascinating country, it's such a rich history and such a beautiful place, and the food is great, and it's very affordable, it's very, yeah, very **George:** like, I have people who come in Plogis specifically to, like, nomads, spend, like, a or a month. So, so please enjoy, visit the game. come spend in the restaurants where they accept Bitcoin, follow us on social media for sure, so, X and Nostr, **Luke:** Yes, all the details, please. **Knut:** And also like one of the eras, uh, infamous eras of Bulgaria is the commie era, right? Where you can see the impact that system had on the country and how horrid it is. Uh, so it's, it's, uh, that might not be a good pitch for, uh, but that's **Luke:** Let him, let him share his social medias, Knut. **George:** wait, do you have, do you have something **Knut:** no, no, I think like the, The point I was getting to is, if you get to Bulgaria, don't only go to Sofia, go around the rest of the country, because it's not as raped as that town was by, as that city was by communism, all this concrete, yeah, yeah, **George:** yeah, the, **Knut:** you can really see the impact there. I'm not, um, yeah, this came out totally wrong, but I'm trying to, I'm trying to, To hype Bulgaria here, but also there's a historical lesson to be learned in the country, for sure, **George:** sure. It's really like, there's so many different things there. So there's the communist part, there's like fucking amazing nature, there's like **Knut:** is everything, yeah. **George:** if you're into hiking, there's like, just like from Sofia, what I love about Sofia, like just last week, twice, end of the day, I'm like fucked up, like tired of computer. 40 minutes up and I'm up in the mountains, hiking, in like 2000 meters altitude. Uh, so, so there's all these like super cool things, but on the socials, yeah, we're on Twitter. we're on Nostr, uh, so Twitter is, um, botif underscore, uh, en, on Nostr, uh, we are just botif. Yeah, you can find us. **Luke:** going say you're NPUB? No, no, no, **George:** I'm still learning it, okay? **Luke:** we'll post, you're still learning, we'll post all the details in the show **George:** Yes. Yes. And feel free to also check out our website. We have, due to our El Salvadorian, um, kind of project, we already have a Salvadorian website, which is very easy to remember, botif. sv. So you can go there and from there you'll find all the links and information. **Luke:** Absolutely fantastic. **Knut:** Great! Get the inverse of Clown World. This is a shill. BitcoinInfinityStore. com And thank you very much for coming on, **George:** was great having **Knut:** Great to have **Luke:** George, thanks so much. This has been Bitcoin Infinity Show. Thank you for

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This is the cleaned, AI-generated transcript of Bitcoin Infinity Show #127 If you'd like to support us, check out <https://bitcoininfinitystore.com/> for all our books, merch, and more! # Welcoming George Manolov **Luke:** George, welcome to the Bitcoin Infinity Show, thank you for joining us. **George:** Thank you, Knut. **Knut:** Good to have you here, George. **George:** to be here, yeah. you're here to tell us about the city that I was most surprised by ever. Like, I've never heard of the city before I went to Bulgaria, Yeah, time flies. **Knut:** So Plovdiv, Bulgaria, which was amazing, this rich, Thousands of years of history plays with a lot of different eras and different styles of architecture and stuff, really enjoyed Plovdiv, and you have a football team there. **George:** yeah, indeed. # George Manolov and Botev Plovdiv **George:** Please give us the story about George and Plovdiv Yeah, sure. **Knut:** Plovdiv. **George:** Sure, sure. So, Plovdiv is, well, I would say it's the oldest living city in Europe, so continuously inhabited. Like you say, not many people know it. I guess, like, we don't have good enough marketing, but, that's probably part of my job right now, right? To spread the word about it. so it's, like the second largest city in the country. And, yeah, it's just this, it's very, like, I love how you put it because almost nobody has really heard of Plovdiv, right? Most people, when they hear of Bulgaria, they've probably heard of Sofia but Sofia is, okay, but Plovdiv is kind of the chill place, Plovdiv is the place that is actually worth visiting, the place where, people just enjoy going there. I was born there, right? and, grew up there till 18 or so, then, Studied, lived in Sofia most of the time. And, last year, in kind of summer, I was already kind of way deeper into Bitcoin. I decided I'm going to go full time into Bitcoin, just commit all my time in Bitcoin at the time, educating, publishing books in Bulgarian about Bitcoin, creating my own educational platform. And then I got, reached out and connected really to the owner of the football club in the city, which is also the oldest football club in the country, Botev Plovdiv, who was, well, he got introduced into Bitcoin himself and he realized it's going to be a very big, project. You know, going to play a central role in where the world is going. **Knut:** What is this the owner of the club? **George:** That's right. The owner of the club. was like, Hey, I think we can do something unique with Bitcoin because, you know, the club is really a company, right? It's a business on the one hand, but it's a special type of business, it's not where just you produce a certain product or service. It's really a living organism where people are involved into it, for very emotional reasons. people feel like it's their own and it's not like a small group of people. It's a very large group of people. In our case, we have tens of thousands, arguably more than a hundred, 200, 000 people who care, who watch, who follow the club. And so on the one hand, like there's many different ways in which we can look into this, but on the one hand. It's for me, what really inspired me and what got me like, Oh my God, like, is this really happening is that we can bring the conversation about Bitcoin from a completely different angle into society to a group of people who for the most part would never really They would like this, they would never listen to podcasts like this, they would never get to any of the kind of places and things we listen to, watch, consume, right? and people go, You know, people go kind of for bread and circus, right, **Knut:** yeah, yeah. **George:** for the games. That's what really football is, right? It's fun and it's emotion, it's enjoyment, but then we push them censorship resistance and hard money, right? And we don't really push it, you know, that's the thing, right? Because are like consistently, progressively, gradually over time, introducing it and finding the best way and the most appropriate way to, yeah, plant that seed. To the minds of the people, into the views of the people and so on and so forth. so it's really like, you know, what we're trying to build is, we feel we're in a very privileged position, right? because we've been, the first really professional sports club globally, I would say, to have, uh, crypto Bitcoin, you know, people, departments, who is actually full time employed to, you know, think of a way to grow the business, to think of a way to integrate Bitcoin natively, within the various aspects of, of, of the organization, which obviously initially includes like accepting payments and so on and so forth. But, um, but there's so much more you can do exactly with this type of, Like organization, again, like not, not, not just a business in a traditional sense. **Knut:** Yeah. And, uh, won the league, right? Is that, is that right? **George:** Yeah, man, like it's, uh, yeah, so we, um, when I started last year, things were super bad. Like exactly one year ago, I was there for the, for one of the first games. It was horrible. Like, I was like, okay, this is a great idea, but if the team is doing so bad and if, uh, if they keep losing and if the fans keep getting, you know, being unhappy, Um, it's not gonna go anywhere, but still, I gave it a, I gave it a go, right, because I was like, okay, I just hope that the sports side guys are going to do their, their part, and I have my opportunity here, um, to, to just like push, to educate, to, To do what, what, what life is giving me an opportunity to do. And, uh, very fortunately, as we started working, the team started performing better and better and better. We got a completely new coach. We got a new sports director. We, we had a lot of key staff changes across the organization, which, Um, relatively quickly started showing results. So, uh, yeah, like, 10 months later in May, we won the Bulgarian Cup. **Luke:** Is that the cup or the league? Like, uh, **George:** it's the cup, it's the cup. So, so, I was saying, like, we started very bad in the league. And so, we were doing better and better, but still, like, we finished 9th in the league out of 16 clubs at the end of the day. But which was still okay, because, like, when I joined, like, we were, like, **Luke:** Worried about relegation or something like that? **George:** there. I mean, **Knut:** We're complete, uh, like I've tried to take an interest to football, but like, uh, my ADD just, the brain just wanders away after five minutes and I can't concentrate anymore. So I don't **Luke:** a basketball fan. **Knut:** Am I now? # Football for Noobs **Knut:** Uh, so, uh, what's the difference between the cup and the league? Let's begin there. That's, that's how much of a football noob I **George:** So, so pretty much in every country is the same, right? You have a league or a championship where you have, in our case, 16 teams, and every team plays twice against every other team. So home game, away game, and then, you know, you either win three points when you win, or you lose, or you draw, and you, you, you win one point. And then, so after you play, after you play, in our case, this, what is it, games? You know, **Luke:** 30. **George:** yeah, about 30. Yeah, right. You're better than Matt, it's obvious. So, um, so once you play these 30 games, um, you, um, yeah, like the team with the most points wins, right? Whereas, uh, the cup is direct elimination **Knut:** So quarterfinals, semifinals, all that. **George:** exactly. So it's the easier way. So this was the way for us to due to the bad start of the season. This was the way for us to, to achieve something in this season and to achieve something important because what the Cubs gives us as an opportunity and gave us was to play in the European Leagues. So UEFA Leagues. And we just did that. We played six games. Uh, for the Europe, uh, Europe League and the Europe Conference League. **Knut:** Okay. But to, to be in the champions league, that's a totally, you have to, yeah, yeah. You have to win the league and you have to win all sorts of stuff. Like how does that work? **George:** yeah. You have to win the league. And then in our case, so in every country it's different, but in our case, we have to win, like we go to qualifications for the Champions League. So it's like, I mean, three to four games. And if we win that, we go to the Champions League. **Knut:** Alright, **George:** That's the current state of affairs, although that can change over the years. **Knut:** alright, uh, it all makes sense to me now, that's a lie, but anyway. **Luke:** No, uh, I'll definitely, we'll acknowledge here that I'm more of the, the sports fan, uh, generally here, and I, I follow football, I like, uh, I like European, uh, football, uh, well, and obviously I'm using the correct, uh, term despite my, um, my pseudo American accent, uh. Yeah, anyway, um, uh, no, it's fantastic to see, and I mean, yeah, for the non sports fans, uh, listening to this, I get that **Knut:** Well, I am a sports fan, it's just that Starcraft 2 is my sport, and yeah, yeah, **Luke:** yeah, **George:** eSports. **Knut:** yeah, yeah, so I watch, watch Starcraft 2 games. That's what I do for procrastination sometimes. **Luke:** valid sports, I'm not going to compare it to other things that aren't **Knut:** breakdancing? Is that a valid sport? **Luke:** Breakdancing is, um, hmm, interesting. I think anything with points, that judges give points, is kind of not a sport, it's an activity. **Knut:** yeah. **Luke:** but, yeah, anyway, **Knut:** thing to do. **Luke:** is a thing to do, yes, definitely, but back to, back to, um, um, Botev Plod, is it Botev, Botev, what's, what's, Botev, Botev Plod, yeah, so, so, um, yeah, yeah, like, the, the, the achievement, winning, winning the cup, I mean, the, The cups are sort of more difficult. They're both difficult in their own way, right? Like, the cup, you lose one game, you're out, basically, right? But, I mean, the league is like this endurance, achievement, right? You have to perform well over the course of the whole season. But the cheat code, so to say, and I probably subconsciously used the other football team's terminology, who's in the space, Real Bedford, um, # Botev Plovdiv's Bitcoin Strategy **Luke:** The, the idea right, if, if I'm getting it, is that you guys would, would keep the Bitcoin in the, in the, the treasury, the, the company, and then over the course of time it's just gonna do the number go up thing and, and the, the club will have more resources. Right. Is that, is that the idea you're thinking with the, the bitcoin strategy? **George:** There's actually many, many things to it. And this is kind of the most, let's say, vanilla type of approach. Yeah, like just buy Bitcoin and hold it on the balance sheet, which is, which is great. But there's actually so many other things you can do. And that's where, because if you just do that, frankly, like, I mean, you don't need me involved, right, much. I mean, just call Coinbase, whatever, wire the money, crack in and, buy. but with us it's like, really, uh, we see a huge opportunity to, first of all, align our brand with the Bitcoin brand, which is a royalty free, uh, The biggest brand in finance, for sure. One, uh, like it's going to be the biggest brand in the world for sure at some point. Right. So that's, that's one play. And to do this, it's not enough for you to just buy Bitcoin and hold it on a balance sheet. It's what you need to do is proof of work, right? You need to do things that nobody has ever done. You need to really kind of be creative. Uh, and, and, um, to push the boundaries of what anyone has ever done before, right? So, so that is, uh, that is my kind of job and it's a lot of, um, a lot of just like, let's, let's think of what, what new things we can do with Bitcoin and sports and football that nobody has ever done. Just because others are focused on the short term things, they're focused on, hitting those, those quick wins, those quick goals, which is why, for example, like a lot of the sports and, and that have, you know, interact, they haven't really interacted outside of Bedford with Bitcoin, right? It's mostly been crypto because it's just, okay, let's make some quick money. Um, **Luke:** usually, it's usually just sponsorships, right? **Knut:** yeah, **George:** yes. Um, and for us, because on the one hand, like, we're not like Manchester United, right? We're not Chelsea. So we don't have that much to monetize immediately. Like we're a large club, but. **Luke:** You're a large club in a local league, which is, which is different from the, it's not one of the leagues that is internationally positioned like that. But, but, I mean, the, the difference between you guys and Bedford that I, that I think is, is really interesting. Like, McCormack, what he, Peter McCormack, what he's doing, I mean, he's, he's taking a club from the bottom and aiming for the top. But who knows how long that's going to take him to get there, right? But you guys are already in the top of your league, right? Like, in the top league. **George:** right, yeah, and also there's, there's different in this, we're in the top of our league. My goal, personally, is to go to Champions League, but this is very hard, right? Because, like, okay, when you start from Peter's ground, like, it's easy, okay, every year you level up, you level up, or, I mean, I'm not gonna say it's easy, but it's easier than, uh, than once you're, you know, at our level. For us, it's important to play currently every year in European leagues like we've done so far and to every year consistently, like, increase the level of the sports, level of the business department bit by bit, and, but like breaking that point where we, you know, win the league, Where we win several more games and enter the Champions League, that, that's really hard. I mean, because you're already at that stage where everybody, like, so many teams are so strong, right? So it's um, it takes just a lot of ingredients for you to, to, to hit, uh, in order to win. But we're gonna get there. **Knut:** and does the club self custody it's bitcoin? And if so, is it a something out of 11 multisig, that sounds like a football thing? **George:** Why so? Ah, yeah, an 11? Nah, nah, fuck that. I mean Nah, even, even 7 Motosick is a, is a killer, but no. Um, yeah, I can't really speak too much about this at this point. Yeah. Um, but, um, but yeah, I mean, we do, of course we do self custody. So that's, that's the approach that we've chosen with kind of a lot of, um, we've chosen to go really pure, pure Bitcoin in terms of the strategy. And that's how we set ourselves apart. That's how we believe we win the long game because for instance, like we Bitcoin with BTC pay server. Which in my mind they don't even have competition. It's the only like, real, solid, autonomous, sovereign way to accept payments. And it's also the way which makes sense for like, Frankly, any standard business, because like, man, we're selling scarves, we're selling, um, membership boat cards, we're selling jerseys, we're selling basic merch, and if we are to sell it with basically any other service out there, outside of BTC Pay Server, we have to basically, uh, indirectly do KYC, right? Like, we have to go through KYC, we have to go through KYB, which is ridiculous, um, in my mind. And so, um, so that's why we're exceptionally thankful to B2C Pay Server guys, uh, for what they've built. Uh, it's been like an absolute pleasure to, um, to use their product, to use their service. Uh, we have, you know, outside of B2C Pay, we, uh, we are the first, uh, sports club on Nostr. Where, uh, we have, uh, actively been posting, exploring, you know, meeting people here. Kind of thinking of what we could do from our angle again, like first, first time on Nostr. # Aqua WAllet **George:** Um, we have partnered with, uh, Aqua, JAN3's Aqua wallet, which has a, a Botive skin mode now. So if you go to settings, you can turn Botive mode and then it turns into the colors of the club and, you know, have the picture of the stadium there. Um, **Luke:** I'm using Aqua right now because, uh, uh, usually I like to use Aqua as like a sort of a middle wallet, uh, uh, because it's still slightly slower than other lightning wallets because they, they, the, everything actually lives on, on liquid and then they, they, uh, go out via bolts. Uh, so it's slightly slower than a faster, um, like, like than other, um, more direct lightning wallets. And so usually when I come to a conference, I'm going to load up a, like a temporary. I don't know, Blink or something like that, but I forgot to do that, so I'm just using my Aqua wallet, and you know what, it's been great here, it's been working, uh, so yeah, we're big fans of Aqua wallet and what **Knut:** Yeah, and a BTC pay server. I mean, uh, we can echo everything you said that we, BitcoinInfinity. com, like, and the store here We just fired up. Everything is powered by a BTC pay server, and we just love it. Yes. **Luke:** So what was your question about, uh, Aqua? **George:** If yours is on BOTEV mode. **Luke:** Uh, I don't think I've gone into the settings and changed it to Vaudev mode, I'll have to do that, maybe we'll take **George:** It's dark mode, but cooler. **Luke:** Doc dark mode, but cooler. Okay. Okay. Actually that's a, that's a, that's a good point. That's a good point. Yeah. We'll take a, we'll take a picture after, uh, after the episode and we'll de proof, bot, uh, bot e mode, and, uh, uh, post that on Nostr. How does that sound? **George:** Let's go.   **Knut:** Yeah. Nostr. Um, is there a connection there between both a plot and Nostr while you're doing Nostr stuff as well? # History and Freedom **George:** Yeah. Well, look, um, a lot of these things is like, so What Botev Plovdiv stands for, um, very importantly, so the club was named after Hristo Botev, who's, uh, like, one of the most Bulgarians, if the most famous Bulgarian revolutionaries, like, historical figure, uh, he was a poet, he was a revolutionary, he fought for Bulgaria's freedom back in the day, **Luke:** Which, which day, which, what day did you **George:** uh, 110, uh, what is it, like, 50 years ago or so? Yeah. **Knut:** Mm-Hmm? **Luke:** Okay. So, so **Knut:** before the Commes. **Luke:** ottoman, uh, **George:** Yeah, yeah, yeah. He, he, he, he fought for the, for the liberation of Bulgaria from, from the Ottoman Empire. And a lot of what he stands for is this fight for freedom, his fight for liberty. Um, and this, this lives until this very day into the identity of the club and to what we stand for into the songs, into the, into the music. Um, you know, um, the kind of like what, what our fans also resonate with, um, and, and what they sing like in many, in many ways. Right. So, um, Freedom of speech, freedom of, uh, of like freedom in general is, is a value that is deeply ingrained into kind of like what the club stands for. Um, and, uh, you know, that's why I'm into Bitcoin. That's why I believe. And that's, that's why I saw this even bigger opportunity. Oh my God, like, how is this happening? There's so many, sometimes, you know, some like weird things happen in life and you have no explanation why and how all these things align. But, but for me, it's like this club was made really to. to be aligned with BOTEF and to be, uh, to, to, to be aligned with Bitcoin and with Nostr. If I look at all the other clubs in Bulgaria, right, like just in Bulgaria, none of the others, like, there's no this contextual historical background that you can make these connections. But with us, we have it, and what a chance that, like, we have this owner, and he got, like, introduced to it, and then we got connected. Like, how the hell does this happen, man? I don't know, **Luke:** We like to say this, the surreal doesn't end, you know, and like, uh, my, my whole story, I've been talking about this, uh, at the, the conference here is like two years ago was the first time I ever met Bitcoiners here in Baltic Honeybadger. We, we met for the, for the first time, uh, all three of us, uh, met for the first time two years ago, I've been in Baltic Honeybadger and it's like, things, things happen so fast. Uh, I've, I've, uh, I've thought it was been awesome just following, uh, what you've been doing with the, the club and the story. So great to, Great to get to talk about it, but, uh, # Bitcoin in Football **George:** Yeah. No, for, for me, like really the, the most exciting part is really even coming forward. So, uh, because, so now it's been, so we, a long, we announced, uh, publicly that we're doing this, uh, 31st October last year. So the anniversary of the, of the, uh, Bitcoin White paper, um, we've built a lot right. And very, very importantly, I'm super proud, like, I don't know if you saw this, but like a month ago, we played on European League, the UEFA League with Bitcoin straight on our jerseys, which was like, like, when I saw this, I'm like, dude, it's crazy that this is happening. But, but the best is really yet to come, like, like we like to say. Um, so I, I think we, we're, we have, um, we have still so much more to do. So for me, the next big part, which I'm super excited about literally in the coming month as, uh, as I go back. So is to finally get some of our. Players or at least one or two to get to do something publicly about this, because at the end of the day, that's why for me, the more I do, the more I, uh, play in this arena, I realized this is really a Trojan horse for us to bring Bitcoin into the conversation, into the minds, like I said, of people who otherwise wouldn't and, and our players, you know, especially a few of them, they're really influencers, right? Um, a lot of people follow them. A lot of people respect them. And, um, and if they do, uh, you know, something meaningful, something cool, something impactful, this is going to have a huge impact onto our forwards. This could very well have impact onto, um, other sportsmen, other football people, other football clubs, right? Uh, so that's why I'm doing it, right? Really? **Luke:** No, this is fantastic, and actually this was exactly where I was hoping to go next, so thank you for queuing that up. But, no, no, the game theory of all this, right? Like, one club getting, Positioning as the, as the Bitcoin club in a league, uh, really means that eventually all the other clubs are going to need to adopt Bitcoin. If they're going to be able to compete, because if play playing out the game theory, number go up, whatever it is, Bitcoin strategy plays out, you guys are going to be the most financially capable club. Financially sustainable in not very long, you know, assuming everything plays out the way we're thinking it will, right? So, so other, other clubs then would become incentivized to also adopt Bitcoin. So what, what do you, what do you think about that? Like you, do you, do you see that, uh, happening as well? **George:** Yeah, I'm not really sure if it would happen to me. That fast, to be fair. Like, I think it's inevitable, right, obviously, but I think it, yeah, like, I think this definitely takes at least three, four years, maybe more. Um, **Luke:** That's, that's still pretty fast. **George:** yeah, I guess. I mean, I mean, like, okay, let me define it better. It takes three, four years. So, for other clubs within our league to start doing something like this, uh, maybe it takes less time for other clubs to realize it, but I think for them to do it, it also depends on our actions, right? So because like, we don't have like a treasury of microstrategy or something, so it's not, and we're not doing like a **Luke:** you don't? **George:** monthly like leverage on top of leverage on top of another leverage, you know, uh, we're not in, in Michael's privileged position. but we can do other cool things, right? Uh, one of the, um, so this is not yet live and this is not yet happening, but one of the, like two, two projects, let's say, I'm gonna briefly, like, tease here that, that I'm working on that I hope to have very large impact is first, uh, building this, uh, simple tool Uh, called like a Bitcoin, uh, football salary calculator that, uh, it's like really a DCA tool, but like looking back and like tailoring it to our niche where I want to, for us to visually and emotionally Show, um, to players, but also to fans of ours, like what Bitcoin could have done for their remuneration, if you look one year back in time, two years back in time, three years back in time, four years back in time, and for them to really realize, Oh my God, this is a no brainer. Right? I want to make this mess. And this is hard, right? Um, because like, there's so many tools and like, but I want to be, because the audience is very wide, very different types of audience. I want to make this so that you can consume it in like two, three, four minutes. And you're like, okay, I need to learn more about this. This actually is interesting. There's like, that's so much dense and emotional and compact information that you're like, Whoa. Why am I not doing this? How did I miss this? **Knut:** What, what, what was the name of that website? I, I don't know if it's still up, but bitcoin or [shit.com](http://shit.com) or something like that. So, so it lists if you bought this item when it came out, an iPhone five or whatever, uh, and if you had bought b bitcoin [instead.com](http://instead.com), I think that that's the, that's the name. So if you bought, uh, if you bought Bitcoin instead, it shows you how much, how much more money you'd have now and how many iPhones you **George:** Yeah. Yeah. And of course there's many of these tools, obviously like we've all see them and we all like like them and retweet them and repost them. And it's all great. But I think, at least I hope that we can do something impactful with this. If we really tailor it, compact it to a specific type of niche audience with a specific message designed for them. And because this audience is also like. A type of audience who can also like, um, you know, bring it to other bubbles that we ourselves are not part of, right? So that's, for example, one like, uh, one like project I'm very, very excited about and I hope we can, um, yeah, we'll bring forward relatively soon. There's a few moving elements, but definitely in the coming month or two, uh, at most. And then, uh, and then, you know, speaking of the other clubs, what, what I want us to do is what we're working is next year, we're targeting to do, I hope we could do the world's first, uh, Bitcoin, uh, Cup tournament. Uh, for youth players, 70 year old boys who are, you know, right there before they sign their first professional contract, start earning money, for them, first of all, like, it's a Bitcoin football cup, like, it's the first time this, this could potentially ever happen And then it's, it's a football first tournament, right? This is the, we want to make it like top quality, like really the highest quality when it comes to sports, but then you have Bitcoin involved all over the place, right? In terms of brand, in terms of rewards, in terms of, um, in terms of like plays, um, like, like games and, and interactions, activations, uh, throughout, before, throughout, and after the, And after the event, and for this, I'm targeting to get really like, like big clubs. I mean, because it's academies, right? I mean, I cannot get the Manchester United first team, just maybe we could get the Manchester United 17 year old team or, you know, another big club. We get some of these, and then like we get their brands, we get them on the focus of Bitcoin. And we drive the conversation faster, you know, not three, four years from now, but Less **Knut:** what about, um, like right now there's you and there's, um, you guys and there's a real bed for it, right? Those are the two I know of in Europe. Are you aware of any other clubs that are doing a Bitcoin strategy? I mean, is this virus spreading? Like, have you heard anything like, **George:** Um, Oh, there's, uh, there's the Austrian Admira Vakir who have done some integration. So it's a second tier, uh, second league, uh, second league, uh, club that have, uh, that have, uh, you know, they've also had Bitcoin on the, their second team jersey. And, um, and they, they also accept Bitcoin payments, uh, here and there, but you know, the thing is, there's some other clubs, um, there's a Miami, um, not Miami, um, a Hawaiian club that, that is doing, uh, that is doing like their Bitcoin gig, **Knut:** yeah, there are other, other sports, right, other sports team and sports teams in other sports that are doing it. But, but for football specifically, **George:** which ones? **Knut:** Uh, I'm so bad with sports, but wasn't there like a hockey team or a basketball team or **Luke:** I'm not aware of any others, actually. Yeah, like, uh, there's been some attempts at **Knut:** it's **Luke:** an orange colored team or something like **Knut:** more the individual athletes, **Luke:** Yeah, yeah, there have been individual **Knut:** for instance, a **Luke:** have been individual **Knut:** player, and there was some American football player. **George:** There's been individual athletes, a lot of them. There's been, I was asking if you know, but there's been a baseball club in Australia, the Port Heat. Uh, who did kind of a Bitcoin strategy. Uh, but very unfortunately that didn't work out. They kind of started this at the peak of the last bull cycle. And, um, and as I understand, uh, there wasn't like a strong alignment between the owners and the management in terms of like understanding that this is a long game. So that's why this kind of flopped. Um, but yeah, like I, I think the reason why it's not happening in more, unfortunately, and, and, and I see this even, even within our club, uh, you know, but, but definitely no other clubs because Fiat has permitted sports as well. Right. So all the sports club, uh, clubs or the vast majority in football, for sure. They're like, you know, on the hamster wheel themselves. **Knut:** They're indebted, **George:** They're indebted. **Knut:** to an extreme level, **George:** yeah, like, like fighting for every dollar for every income. So it's, it's hard for you to like, Oh yeah, we're going to have this long term Bitcoin strategy that's going to take like two, three, four, five years to play out. And we can benefit a lot from it. It's very, very hard in, you know, unfortunately for a large organizations, sports club in particular to To have this realization, to map this out, to get others on board. That's why it's not so popular and uh, and that's why I'm grateful and keep pushing that we have this chance. **Luke:** I mean, you make a great point here about essentially the, it's the organizational alignment, right? Like the, the, these are companies, sports clubs are companies. They just have this large, the business is involved around getting fans to come in and consume this sort of marketing. Product, essentially. So it's, it's a certain kind of company that's run a certain way, but just like any other company, you need, you need alignment from the management. So it's, it's fantastic that, uh, Boteb Plovdiv has, has the, uh, alignment and is, is putting their, their trust in you to, to move this thing forward. And I mean, from the, from the perspective of this thing, Playing out, right? The, the best part that, uh, I think one of the best parts that you, you mentioned again was the, the influencers. Like you get, you get some players, there's, there's so many angles to, to reach people through this. I think it's, I think it's fantastic. The, uh, orange pilling a player and then they move to another club, but they, they, maybe they don't get to get paid in Bitcoin, but maybe they still put, put their money in, in Bitcoin. Maybe they even ask their club to, to, uh, pay them in Bitcoin, something like that. And then the, the Questions start getting, uh, asked and all this. # 5 Year Goals **Luke:** So what, what is the, the goal in, in five years, for example, where, where do you see the club in the five year mark? **George:** Oh man. Yeah, in five years, I think we definitely have to be in Champions League. Like in my mind, you know, like people around me like, oh, you're too ambitious. I'm like, man, yeah, like in five years, we definitely have to be in Champions League. Uh, that's, that's my personal goal. On our internal Slack, I have the Champions League icon there. That's why I'm there, right? Um, so, uh, it's a lot of hard work. Like, it's really a lot of hard work. And it's also not completely dependent on me and my work, to be fair. Like, because, at all. I mean, really, like, uh, I mean, at the end of the day, the most important part is the sports department, right? Uh, in the club. Um, so that has to continue going well. But, but I think We're going in a good direction there too, because we have the, they're the long term view as well, right. We have our academy internally, which is, yeah, it's one of the best academies. It's the best really academy in terms of infrastructure in the country. That's why we're also can't afford to think of this Bitcoin Cup tournament, because we have the infrastructure, we have like a super cool stadium, that's crazy. If we can, if we can do a final for, for such a tournament there. Um, so, so we have all the things in place in terms of In terms of assets, I would say, uh, it's just a lot of moving parts. a lot of work, consistency, and a bit of luck. Always it comes, you know, when, when it comes to, when it comes to football and sports, but, but five years from now, I want us to be in the champions league. I want us to be the absolute, you know, international professional level, uh, Bitcoin level, Bitcoin sports club. and, uh, and I want for this tournament that I start to be like a, like, like to have the fourth edition by then. Uh, and, and I want to have clubs, but five years is a lot of time, you know, as you say, like, I also want to have other clubs following us by then. I think that's absolutely, absolutely is going to be doable. **Knut:** What, what are the, what are the tax laws around Bitcoin in Bulgaria? Like what, are there any issues there? Or like what, is it easy enough, **George:** It's kind of okay. Uh, it's kind of okay. So if you just buy Bitcoin and hold it, like you don't, uh, you don't, uh, incur taxes, uh, until you sell it, if you accept Bitcoin for payments, um, and if you don't sell it, you can just, uh, keep it as inventory on your balance sheet. So again, no, **Knut:** but there's a capital gains tax or something if you sell it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Alright. **George:** 10%. So it's, it's, uh, **Knut:** Pretty good. **George:** Yeah, I mean, it's not like El Salvador. Okay. Uh, but, but it's, uh, it's, it's way better than many other places. Um, and, uh, yeah, so we've been looking, looking actually, so I was in El Salvador a couple of months ago, because we've been looking very much to do stuff there. And we've been, uh, yeah. Um, because we've been, we've been thinking of what to do more with Bitcoin, right? So that's why I said, like, it's not just about buying and accepting Bitcoin. It's about corporate strategies, about branding strategies, about how to make money. Um, it's about education strategies. It's, there's so much around it. So in terms of corporate strategy, I was, uh, we're very attracted by El Salvador, um, and their, uh, capital markets regulation, because they're basically striving to build capital markets on top of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is legal tender there. They have all kinds of, tax incentives for companies to issue debt or to sell equity. on their capital, on their, um, well, let's say nascent upcoming capital markets, because it's not like it's, you know, hustling and bustling yet. Um, but, but they're, they've put a lot of the rails, uh, um, or they're building a lot of the rails to, um, to really enable the, the, the creation of Bitcoin based capital markets. So, um, we've had great talks there. We have meetings with, uh, um, we have. Yeah, with the Bitcoin office, right? Um, so, ideally, like, we're striving to build some connection there and to do something, interesting and world first again from a corporate perspective. It's just that, as many things, it's a little harder than you would expect it to be, or it takes a little more time than, Then you would hope to do it. But my idea or long term vision, frankly, like what we want to do with Bitcoin, uh, and with the club is to enable our current fans and global fans to become co owners of the club. And that's why, you know, I have big hopes for, uh, for us being able to do this out of El Salvador and through El Salvador, because this would, like from a tax perspective, from a branding perspective, from legal security perspective would be, would be ideal. It's just that, again, um, my enthusiasm is a little over, uh, ahead of kind of like how, uh, how, how advanced and set up everything there is, but, uh, but we're, we're very actively talking to them. We're working with many parties there, so. Just maybe we can have big news there too.   # International and Local Effects **Luke:** Well, no, and, and you actually said something great about global fans. I think this is a, a fantastic thing, right? A a again, Bedford is, is similar. They've, they've got, they've got fans all over the world and, and I think for you guys it's like who is going to tune into the Bulgarian football league outside of Bulgaria before, well, not too many people, but now a bunch of Bitcoiners. If they're into, if they're into football or, or not even, because this is the funny thing. There were, there were a lot of people posting about that. They, they've got, they, they don't usually follow, follow sports at all, but, but they'll follow the Bitcoin team. So the, the funny thing is, I think, I think the first, the first club to adopt Bitcoin in every league is going to get all of these global fans. And maybe the, maybe the, the second one, the third one, maybe can get some kind of other support, but it's really the first one in every **George:** really. **Luke:** That, that **George:** Not **Luke:** That's that. I, I completely agree with you there. It's the, it's the first one **Knut:** first mover advantage. **Luke:** mover advantage. It's gonna get, it is gonna get all of the, all of the Bitcoiners are gonna now be, be supporting and, uh, uh, yeah. I mean, have, have you seen, uh, some, some uptick in, uh, kind of international **George:** yeah, yeah. So, international but also local. Like, local is very important. Like, we have, like, so many people in the country who's like, just what you say, like, I didn't care about sports or football, like, forever, or at all, ever, but now I follow, now I buy merch, now I come, you know, every now and then they come to games, so **Luke:** Well, because there's the bread and circuses thing that you said, it gets tossed around in the Bitcoin world and also some other places on kind of the Twitter sphere and whatever, it's like it's a distraction, that sports is sort of a distraction from clown world basically and it's a way of people to sort of Uh, forget about what's going on around them, but I think that's also missing the, the positives, which it, it's a, it's a community builder, it brings people together, there's a, there's a sense of, of pride in, in something local succeeding, everyone, everyone's happy, there's, there's real economic, uh, effects usually when a, when a local sports team wins, and so, so from, from my perspective, I, I, I think, I think sport is a good thing, and it's, and it's, it's something that, that people can rally around, and so, **George:** an amazing thing. **Luke:** Yeah. And, and so what, what are, what are you looking at locally? Like what, what do you hope to have the effect, uh, uh, locally in, in piv? **George:** Yeah. Um, yeah, no, look, uh, for me, sports, like, for us, the, the, the, the, about Plovdiv, for me, that's what I realized, like, we're kind of very much into Bitcoin and stuff, obviously, that's our interest, but I think when we go on a Bitcoin standard, Right. And, uh, in general, people start feeling wealthier, opposed to, like, being in the grind. You're just going to have more time for fun stuff, right? Like playing football, I mean, or volleyball, or whatever your sport is, or, like, going and cheering your team, and, uh, and being part of such a community. And I think that's really what, you know, even Nostr is about. Like it's, Being part of these communities, because that's fun, and like, we as humans, at the end of the day, we are living to be part of communities, right? And you find your community, you're an active part of it, you contribute to it, you evolve it, right? You build it in one way or another. And unfortunately, you know, today in the fiat world, this is just like A stress valve in many ways, or like you say, like Brothers and Sisters, whatever. Um, but, uh, but I think it can be so much more, right? It is, but it can be so much more for a larger amount of people and so on and so forth. uh, but yeah, well, back in Plovdiv, man, like, I have big hopes. I really have big, big ambitions there. I want to get Bitcoin into the wallets of, uh, of like tens of thousands of people. I want people to wake up. I want people to see. **Luke:** big is piv? How many **George:** It's like three, four hundred thousand people. So it's a lot. Uh, our stadium is, uh, 21, 000 seats stadium. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. It's, it's 19. I wish it was 21. **Luke:** Yeah. You'll have to add 2000 more **George:** Maybe, yeah, we'll, we'll think of some additional construction. **Luke:** the, make the infinity stand when **George:** Right. Right. But, uh, but yeah, like the setting was super cool. Like, it's really cool. Like when it's feel like, man, the atmosphere is amazing. Um, and so it's, and it's really this community that you can feel that people are involved. So it's, it's like consistency and it's social engineering in one way or another, right? **Knut:** one of our favorite words, **George:** but in a positive way. **Knut:** in a positive way, okay. **George:** So it's social engineering for us to ingrain Bitcoin and make it part of kind of what people see, do, have, own, interact with, right? So, uh, I think exactly because of this community element, exactly because, Because, you know, football is a football club and there's this unique living organism we can, we can create this and, you know, it's fascinating. I'm so much into this and there's other people who are so much into this. Oh my god, like, we can make such a big difference. And, and like in the country. You know, on a political and economic level, they don't get it. Like, they don't see it. They just are in their, you know, like, oh, are we going to accept the euro? Oh, what's happening with the war? I'm like, who cares? Let's build. # Bulgarian Currency Situation **Knut:** Yeah, Bulgaria has its own shitcoin, I almost forgot about that, but uh, what's it called again? **George:** Kinda. Um, but not quite, to be fair. It's, it's a good coin, uh, not for investing, but, but for medium of exchange is actually decent. Uh, Lev, Lev **Knut:** Lev, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, **George:** and I recently got educated about this. So, uh, the lev is pegged to the euro. So, um, uh, so, so that, that is super cool for, for us, for me as a consumer, for businesses, because like the fixed rate. So for trade is, um, It's, it's good, right? As the world would be in the future. You have one currency, Bitcoin, you don't have the currency exchange risk, right? We don't have it only with the European Union. And the good part with this, so, we got, we got hyperinflation back in 1997. Was really bad. People lost almost everything, everything, in many cases. Um, and then we got this so called currency board introduced and the currency board is like we have the left, but the left has to be backed up by other currencies. So it's like a stable coin, kind of like how Tether is backed by, by dollars. You know, the levy is backed by euro and like a basket of, I think they have some other currencies and assets, which is cool because the local politicians, they cannot print, they cannot, you know, so, so it's been, it's been, I think, way better than Hungary, Sweden, uh, Finland, you have your, oh but Sweden I've heard it's kind of bad, **Knut:** It's kinda bad, Norway too, like, both Swedish and Norwegian crown, and the crown in Czechia, like the Czech Republic, it's also **George:** Yeah. **Knut:** I mean, they're all going to shit the smaller **George:** So, so for us, it's like, I would say we're better than, than the Corona, the, and, and all these like local currencies, because we kind of just are there to the, peg to the Euro. The local politicians don't have the opportunity to print. So it's, it's a very good position for us to be. **Luke:** You, you get the, the negatives of the, the euro. But, but still, I mean, I mean the, the realistically, the dollar at the Euro and maybe the, the Chinese currency are the only, are the only ones that are in the, sort of within our own, within our own lifetimes are, are going to be not as terribly bad against Bitcoin. But all the other ones are just, are. All the other ones are **Knut:** Yeah, I think it's just a matter of time before both, uh, at least Sweden, uh, switches to Euro standard. If not switching to Bitcoin standard happens first, but well, we'll see, we'll see what happens. **George:** man. I'm very bearish about the Euro. **Knut:** yeah, yeah, it's like, **Luke:** It'll be the second last to fall or third last but but yeah it's it's it's it's not going to be the the last and so it's yeah. **Knut:** So that is what it is. I mean, speaking of Bulgaria and currencies and stuff, # Bitcoin Adoption in Bulgaria **Knut:** like, how is the rest of, how is Bitcoin adoption in general in Bulgaria? What's happening in other places? Like, Plamen opened a bar, I saw, and like, what are the connections? What's happening? **George:** It's actually quite cool. I'm, I'm, I'm quite happy with, with how the ecosystem is evolving. There's, there's Plamen, um, with his whole community, like content creation, the conferences he's been doing, which has been like a very, I think he's responsible for like, I don't know, probably like, 000, maybe several 10, 000s of people who have opened their eyes and even if they're not hard bitcoiners, they now own bitcoin. Uh, so that's huge. We have other content creators also who've had an impact. We have now once or twice per, yeah, about twice per year we have like, uh, A small, uh, merchant, uh, like, conference events, so for merchants to accept Bitcoin. we have these people who are active and who are doing things. Now, actually, yeah, there's something new that's coming up here, uh, literally in Plovdiv is we have this, um, this, uh, great dudes who have this, um, um, it's an application for, uh, ordering food, like takeaway and, uh, what is it, like, **Knut:** like Glovo or **George:** yeah, yeah, like Glovo, um, but, um, but, um, But it's not like this big corporate thing that, but, but still, it's a very good product and they've integrated accepting Bitcoin there for quite some time now they've made it even easier and they've introduced. So we have like about, I think it's 15 restaurants in Sofia and like five or so in Plovdiv where through their system, you can order food. And pay with Bitcoin online, or you can also go in the restaurant and pay in Bitcoin online, and they just, um, they just won a, uh, grant from, uh, Bitcoin Beach, uh, and, uh, they're going to use the grant, uh, to, well, the attempt is really to start like a small circular economy, if you would Um, where, so if you go, uh, to one of those restaurants and pay with Bitcoin, you're going to get sats back 10%, and then, um, the restaurant is also going to get 10 percent sats back. And if you order food, um, through their app, also the driver is going to get, uh, some sats back. And, uh, we've just been discussing, because obviously we're partnering with them, with the football club, so we'll push this out, because some of the restaurants that are there are our, I mean, basically, like, we have two restaurants locally that are partners, we got them in, right, obviously, in the deal, um, So, so that is also like, for me, it's like super cool because now for so far, the club has been pushing Bitcoin. Now we have two of our restaurant partners who are themselves like hard Botevists, Botefans, and like they're popular. Now they're starting to accept Bitcoin in their, in their two restaurants, right? And they're going to have their campaigns. We're going to push them more. So, um, so I'm really excited about this and fingers crossed this goes well. We have good metrics because if we have good metrics. Yeah, we'll look for ways to grow this. So there's a lot of grassroots things happening, which I love. On the top, nothing. **Knut:** It's the way it's supposed to be. **George:** But it's the way it is. Yeah, it's a better **Luke:** Yeah it really seems like that you get one or two of these big anchors like like for example you you guys have had that had that conference last couple of years but now with both of Plavdev now Bulgaria is really got a couple of big anchors. Big relative in relative terms, uh, and all of this other stuff can, can start coming up around it. And, uh, love, love to see it. I mean, he, I mean here, here with Rega, there's Honey Budger has been going for a really long time, and I, and I even think that they are honest about, we, we would, we just talked to, to Max, uh, about this, uh, from Defi and like yeah, there's not much other adoption in, in Lavia and this conference has been going on for a long time. Exactly. And so it's just like, uh, it's, it's, it's great to see, uh, in, in your case, in Bulgaria's case, that there's, there's more of this, uh, picking up. So, yeah, **George:** Well, I think it's really, in our case, I don't know, like it's grassroots, like I said, and I really believe grassroots and then Rio or for the vast majority, Rio adoption comes permissionless life. It comes like it's not forced. You know, there is this point where, okay, there's Plamen, like, he got the inspiration, he makes his content, he does the conferences, Like, our owner, he sees this opportunity for Bitcoin, for the club. He takes the action, right? So it's, it's not like, so it's individuals, right? Taking actions and then, as you have, you know, several of them, maybe others get inspired or get ideas going and that's how the magic happens. And, uh, yeah. Excited about it. # Wrapping Up **Luke:** it's awesome, man. Great hear your story. So, was, uh, was there anything else that you wanted to discuss or bring up on this topic? **George:** no, I mean, what I would say is absolutely, uh, Please, uh, you know, Knut, you've been, but please, you're absolutely welcome, Luke, join as well, like, both of you should come **Knut:** Absolutely. Highly recommend it. I had a great time in Bulgaria, and it's such a fascinating country, it's such a rich history and such a beautiful place, and the food is great, and it's very affordable, it's very, yeah, very **George:** like, I have people who come in Plogis specifically to, like, nomads, spend, like, a or a month. So, so please enjoy, visit the game. come spend in the restaurants where they accept Bitcoin, follow us on social media for sure, so, X and Nostr, **Luke:** Yes, all the details, please. **Knut:** And also like one of the eras, uh, infamous eras of Bulgaria is the commie era, right? Where you can see the impact that system had on the country and how horrid it is. Uh, so it's, it's, uh, that might not be a good pitch for, uh, but that's **Luke:** Let him, let him share his social medias, Knut. **George:** wait, do you have, do you have something **Knut:** no, no, I think like the, The point I was getting to is, if you get to Bulgaria, don't only go to Sofia, go around the rest of the country, because it's not as raped as that town was by, as that city was by communism, all this concrete, yeah, yeah, **George:** yeah, the, **Knut:** you can really see the impact there. I'm not, um, yeah, this came out totally wrong, but I'm trying to, I'm trying to, To hype Bulgaria here, but also there's a historical lesson to be learned in the country, for sure, **George:** sure. It's really like, there's so many different things there. So there's the communist part, there's like fucking amazing nature, there's like **Knut:** is everything, yeah. **George:** if you're into hiking, there's like, just like from Sofia, what I love about Sofia, like just last week, twice, end of the day, I'm like fucked up, like tired of computer. 40 minutes up and I'm up in the mountains, hiking, in like 2000 meters altitude. Uh, so, so there's all these like super cool things, but on the socials, yeah, we're on Twitter. we're on Nostr, uh, so Twitter is, um, botif underscore, uh, en, on Nostr, uh, we are just botif. Yeah, you can find us. **Luke:** going say you're NPUB? No, no, no, **George:** I'm still learning it, okay? **Luke:** we'll post, you're still learning, we'll post all the details in the show **George:** Yes. Yes. And feel free to also check out our website. We have, due to our El Salvadorian, um, kind of project, we already have a Salvadorian website, which is very easy to remember, botif. sv. So you can go there and from there you'll find all the links and information. **Luke:** Absolutely fantastic. **Knut:** Great! Get the inverse of Clown World. This is a shill. BitcoinInfinityStore. com And thank you very much for coming on, **George:** was great having **Knut:** Great to have **Luke:** George, thanks so much. This has been Bitcoin Infinity Show. Thank you for

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### **OBJECTIVES** To establish a guideline for the management of Acute Community-Acquired Pneumonia (CAP) in our center, for both outpatient and hospitalized patients, with the aim of: * Reducing morbidity and mortality associated with the condition. * Improving the quality of medical care and optimizing hospital resources. * Delaying the progression of antimicrobial resistance. ### **SCOPE** All patients over 16 years of age diagnosed with Acute Community-Acquired Pneumonia who are being followed by our institution in an outpatient or inpatient setting. ### **RESPONSIBILITIES** Physicians from the Medical Clinic, Medical Emergency, Coronary Unit, and Intensive Care Service. Nursing Coordination. Pharmacy Service. Infection Control Committee. ### **REFERENCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY** 1. Community-Acquired Pneumonia in Adults. Recommendations for its management. Lopardo et al. MEDICINA (Buenos Aires) 2015; 75: 245-257. Argentine Society of Infectiology. ISSN 0025-7680 2. Diagnosis and Treatment of Adults with Community-acquired Pneumonia. An Official Clinical Practice Guideline of the American Thoracic Society and Infectious Diseases Society of America. 2019. American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine Volume 200 Number 7 | October 1, 2019. DOI: 10.1164 rccm.201908-1581ST 3. ERS/ESICM/ESCMID/ALAT guidelines for the management of severe community-acquired pneumonia. Intensive Care Med (2023) 49:615–632 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00134-023-07033-8 4. Antimicrobial resistance. WHO. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/antimicrobial resistance 5. Internal Medicine. Farreras-Rosman. Volume I. Elsevier. 2008 Edition. 6. Considerations for the Responsible Use of Antibiotics in COVID-19. Argentine Society of Infectiology. 2020. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BmXD5x6rEpSqDIc8urccdqLcZKkP3U7X/view 7. Penicillin Allergy. Castells M. New England Journal of Medicine, 381(24), 2338–2351. doi:10.1056 nejmra1807761 ### **INTRODUCTION** Pneumonia is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide, affecting patients of all ages and with various risk factors. Proper management in both outpatient and hospital settings is crucial for improving clinical outcomes and reducing associated complications. This document aims to standardize and optimize the treatment of pneumonia based on the most current evidence and recommendations from leading scientific organizations. It seeks to be a practical tool for healthcare professionals, providing a clear and concise approach to the diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up of patients with pneumonia. ### **FOUNDATIONS. HOSPITAL SITUATION ANALYSIS:** * Pneumonias represent a significant burden on the healthcare system due to their high prevalence and potential severity, underscoring the need for a standardized approach. * A clinical guideline facilitates decision-making, ensuring that all healthcare professionals follow a uniform protocol that integrates best practices, thereby reducing variability in treatments. This allows for better resource utilization, optimizing antibiotic use and reducing the emergence of antimicrobial resistance. * Antimicrobial resistance has been proposed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and related organizations as the leading cause of death and hospital expenditure by the year 2050. * Pneumonias in our center, in their various presentations, have shown significant prevalence in hospitalizations according to measurements taken in 2024. * In our center, antibiotics, as a whole, have been the main source of financial losses related to drugs during the billing cycle from June 2023 to July 2024. ### **EPIDEMIOLOGICAL SITUATION:** Pneumonias represent a global incidence of 1.26 cases per 1000 inhabitants. It has been documented in some centers that this incidence can increase in patients over 65 years of age, representing 34 cases per 1000 inhabitants. Outpatient mortality varies between 0.1% and 5%, but can reach up to 50% in hospitalized patients, especially those requiring Intensive Care Unit stay. The main risk factors for developing pneumonia are: * Chronic Heart Disease. * Chronic Respiratory Disease. * Chronic Kidney Disease. * Advanced-stage HIV infection. * Immunosuppressed. Solid Organ Transplant. Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation. * Diabetes mellitus. * Neoplasms. * Smoking. * Chronic use of Corticosteroids or Proton Pump Inhibitors. * Multiple Myeloma and Hypogammaglobulinemia. * Anatomical or Functional Asplenia. The main causative agents of acute community-acquired pneumonia in our setting are: * Respiratory Viruses (Influenza, SARS-CoV2, RSV). * Streptococcus pneumoniae. * Haemophilus influenzae. * Staphylococcus aureus. * Mycoplasma pneumoniae and Chlamydophila pneumoniae. It should be noted that Streptococcus pneumoniae shows a good sensitivity pattern to penicillin and continues to be the most frequent causative microorganism. Haemophilus influenzae only shows beta-lactamase production in 10% to 23% of cases. Staphylococcus aureus in our setting has a low incidence of methicillin resistance, although this possibility should be considered in certain situations and severe clinical presentations. Given these considerations, beta-lactams remain the first-line treatment. Regarding Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolates, they will only be relevant in patients with risk factors such as bronchiectasis, cystic fibrosis, prior treatment with corticosteroids, or broad-spectrum antibiotics. Emerging pathogens of some relevance include the eventual emergence of cases caused by Leptospira interrogans, Legionella pneumophila, and Hantavirus. These cases should always be associated with a specific epidemiological link. ### **DIAGNOSIS** The diagnosis of pneumonia is based on clinical and imaging criteria. For the diagnosis of Acute Community-Acquired Pneumonia, we will consider: Symptoms and Clinical Signs (at least 1 of the following): * Fever. * Altered general condition. * Cough. * Sputum production. * Chest pain. * Dyspnea. * Hemoptysis. plus Radiopacity on Chest X-ray (Alveolar consolidation with or without air bronchogram, interstitial pattern, bronchiectasis, cavitation, pleural effusion, new radiopacity, etc.). It is always recommended to request both frontal and lateral views. Chest CT remains a method with greater sensitivity and specificity for evaluating lung parenchyma compared to conventional X-ray in infectious pathology. However, a simple chest X-ray is an adequate method for the initial evaluation of the condition and its complications, which is why a CT scan is not recommended as an initial method for evaluating pneumonia and should always be preceded by a conventional chest X-ray. CT studies should be considered in the following situations: * Respiratory failure. * Evaluation or suspicion of differential diagnoses to Acute Community-Acquired Pneumonia. * Evaluation or suspicion of complications of Acute Community-Acquired Pneumonia. * Evaluation of radiological patterns that are not entirely clear on the chest X-ray. ### **CHOICE OF CARE SITE AND TREATMENT** For the choice of care site and treatment of pneumonia, it is recommended to complement clinical criteria with validated mortality scores associated with risk factors and clinical status. CURB-65 (1 point for each item): * Confusion * Elevated urea greater than 90 mg/dl * Respiratory rate greater than 30/minute * Systolic blood pressure < 90 mmHg or diastolic blood pressure < 60 mmHg * Age equal to or greater than 65 years Results: * Groups 0 to 1: Outpatient management. * Groups 1-2: Admission to General Ward. * Groups 3-5: Admission to Intensive Care Unit. * Appendix: A pulse oximetry reading of less than 92% is recommended as an independent factor for inpatient management under expert recommendation to complement the score. ### **COMPLEMENTARY STUDIES AND CULTURE SAMPLING** Once the diagnosis is completed, the patient's risk stratification and the choice of admission site are made, the following complementary studies and culture sampling are recommended to proceed with the patient's study during treatment. Outpatient patient: * Pulse Oximetry. * Laboratory routine (complete blood count, glucose, urea, creatinine, liver function tests). Inpatient patient in general ward: * Pulse Oximetry. * Laboratory routine (complete blood count, glucose, urea, creatinine, liver function tests). Acid-base status if pulse oximetry is less than 92%. * Sputum sample (Gram stain, culture, antibiogram). * Blood cultures. * In the presence of pleural effusion: Thoracentesis. Physical-chemical study for Light's Criteria. Direct and Culture of Pleural Fluid. Inpatient patient in intensive care unit: * Pulse Oximetry. * Laboratory routine (complete blood count, glucose, urea, creatinine, liver function tests) plus acid-base status. * Sputum sample (Gram stain, culture, antibiogram). Tracheal aspirate, Mini-BAL, or BAL sampling for patients requiring ARM upon admission. * Blood cultures. * Urinary antigen for detection of Streptococcus pneumoniae, if available in microbiology. * In the presence of pleural effusion: Thoracentesis. Physical-chemical study for Light's Criteria. Direct and Culture of Pleural Fluid. Special considerations for Viral Pneumonias: * We recommend performing a viral panel for Influenza A/B for any pneumonia presenting at least 1 risk factor mentioned during periods of viral circulation in the community. * We recommend performing a viral panel for SARS-CoV2 for any pneumonia presenting at least 1 risk factor mentioned during periods of viral circulation in the community or having epidemiological criteria of a suspected COVID-19 case. * The Infection Control Committee will timely inform based on the National Epidemiological Bulletin about the presence of circulating respiratory viruses in our setting. Special considerations for Atypical Pneumonias and HIV Testing: * We recommend serological testing for IgM/IgG for Chlamydia and Mycoplasma for any pneumonia presenting a subacute evolution at the time of clinical presentation or clinical-radiological dissociation in its presentation. * In the suspicion of pneumonia caused by emerging pathogens (Legionella pneumophila, Leptospira interrogans, Hantavirus), consider the necessary epidemiological link as a prior epidemiological background before requesting specific diagnostic tests. * HIV testing is recommended for all pneumonias, with special emphasis on those that do not present the conventional risk factors mentioned. ### **ANTIMICROBIAL TREATMENT AND DURATION OF TREATMENT:** Directed antimicrobial treatment will be based on the present risk factors and the choice of care site and treatment. **Outpatient patient <65 years and without risk factors:** First choice: * Amoxicillin 875mg/12h orally for 5-7 days. Scheme for history of allergy to Beta-Lactams: * Clarithromycin 500mg/12h orally for 5 days or * Azithromycin 500-1000mg/day for 5 days. **Outpatient patient >65 years or with at least 1 risk factor:** First choice: * Amoxicillin-Clavulanate 1g/12h orally for 7 days. Scheme for history of allergy to Beta-Lactams: * Clarithromycin 500mg/12h orally for 5 days or * Azithromycin 500-1000mg/day orally for 5 days. **Inpatient patient in General Ward <65 years and without risk factors:** First choice: * Ampicillin-Sulbactam 1.5g/6h IV +/- Clarithromycin 500mg/12h orally/IV for 5-7 days. Scheme for history of allergy to Beta-Lactams: * Ceftriaxone 1g/day IV for 5-7 days. **Inpatient patient in General Ward >65 years or with at least 1 risk factor:** First choice: * Ampicillin-Sulbactam 1.5g/6h IV for 7 days +/- Clarithromycin 500mg/12h orally/IV for 5 days. Scheme for history of allergy to Beta-Lactams: * Ceftriaxone 1g/day IV for 7 days. **Inpatient patient in Intensive Care Unit:** First choice: * Ampicillin-Sulbactam 1.5g/6h IV for 7 days +/- Clarithromycin 500mg/12h orally/IV for 5 days. Scheme for history of allergy to Beta-Lactams: * Ceftriaxone 1-2g/day IV for 7 days. **Special Considerations for Inpatients:** Scheme for risk factors for Pseudomonas aeruginosa*: * Piperacillin/Tazobactam 4.5g/6h IV or Cefepime 2g/8h IV for 7 days +/- Clarithromycin 500mg/12h orally/IV for 5 days. Scheme for risk factors for Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus**: * Add to conventional scheme: Vancomycin 15-20mg/kg/8-12h IV +/- Clindamycin 600mg/8h IV for 7-14 days. **Aspiration Pneumonia:** First choice: * Ampicillin-Sulbactam 1.5g/6h IV for 5-7 days. *Risk factors for Pseudomonas aeruginosa: Bronchiectasis, cystic fibrosis, prior treatment with corticosteroids or broad-spectrum antibiotics. Documented isolates in respiratory cultures of Pseudomonas aeruginosa. **Risk factors for Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus: Previously healthy young patients with severe, necrotizing, and rapidly progressive pneumonia, cavitary infiltrates, hemoptysis, prior influenza, intravenous drug users, rash, leukopenia, recent or concomitant skin and soft tissue infections. The routine use of corticosteroids in pneumonia is not recommended. ### **CONSIDERATIONS ON ANTIMICROBIALS IN VIRAL AND ATYPICAL PNEUMONIAS:** In the case of a concomitant antigen test or PCR for Influenza A/B or SARS-CoV2, the following treatment recommendations are made: **Influenza Virus A/B:** First choice: * Oseltamivir 75mg every 12 hours orally for 5 days. Other considerations: * In cases of Respiratory Failure in ARM or Obesity: Oseltamivir 150mg every 12 hours orally for 5 days. * Concomitant antimicrobial treatment is recommended as there is documented frequent association of Influenza Virus and Streptococcus pneumoniae. **COVID-19:** * First choice is conventional treatment with dexamethasone 8 mg IV for 10 days in the event of respiratory failure. * Routine antimicrobial treatment is not recommended for COVID-19; therefore, upon a positive SARS-CoV2 test, it is recommended to discontinue antimicrobials. Consider maintaining concomitant antimicrobial treatment only in suspected bacterial infection due to severe presentation: * Focal alveolar consolidation +/- air bronchogram in imaging studies plus 1 of the following: sepsis, risk factors, and/or immunosuppression. **Atypical Pneumonias with Seroconversion for Chlamydia or Mycoplasma:** First choice: * Clarithromycin 500mg every 12 hours IV/orally for 14 days. * Azithromycin 500-1000mg/day IV/orally for 14 days. * Doxycycline 100mg every 12 hours IV/orally for 14 days. ### **CONSIDERATIONS ON PENICILLIN AND OTHER BETA-LACTAM ALLERGIES:** Patients who report penicillin allergy are often misclassified. It is documented that more than 95% of patients who report penicillin allergy can receive beta-lactams without any complications. Additionally, penicillin hypersensitivity diminishes over the years. Allergy to one beta-lactam does not imply the impossibility of using the entire spectrum of beta-lactams, as there are only a few cases of cross-hypersensitivity. Therefore, we recommend the safe use of beta-lactams except in cases of a reported or documented history of severe allergy to penicillin (anaphylaxis). In doubtful cases or confirmed allergy events during hospitalization, a consultation with an Allergy Specialist is available to evaluate the case. ### **FOLLOW-UP IN OUTPATIENT TREATMENT MODALITY** Patients undergoing pneumonia treatment in an outpatient setting can continue their treatment at home, considering advising them to seek further consultation in case of alarm signs (fever that does not subside after 48 to 72 hours, dyspnea, hemoptysis, chest pain, etc.). Nevertheless, it is good practice to consider a follow-up consultation in the emergency department or clinic after 48 to 72 hours of starting antibiotic therapy. It is not routinely recommended to repeat a chest X-ray or CT scan to evaluate the evolution of pneumonia under outpatient treatment. Only in the case of suspected complications or unfavorable evolution. A follow-up at the end of treatment with the primary care physician is suggested. ### **FOLLOW-UP IN INPATIENT TREATMENT MODALITY** For hospitalized patients, we should consider transitioning from parenteral medication to oral when the following conditions are met * Completion of 48 hours of parenteral treatment. * Presence of a 24-hour afebrile period, with hemodynamic stability and significant clinical improvement. * Availability of the oral route. It is not routinely recommended to repeat a chest X-ray or CT scan to evaluate the evolution of pneumonia under outpatient or inpatient treatment. Only in the case of suspected complications or unfavorable evolution. ### **PREVENTION** The prevention of pneumonia is based on timely immunization with pneumococcal vaccines, influenza vaccination, and COVID-19 vaccination according to the immunization recommendations and current schedule from the Ministry of Health. ### **ICD-11 CODING** * CA40 - Pneumonia. * CA40.0 - Bacterial Pneumonia. * CA40.1 - Viral Bronchopneumonia. * CA40.2 - Fungal Pneumonia. * CA40.Z - Pneumonia, organism unspecified. ### Autor **Kamo Weasel - MD Infectious Diseases - MD Internal Medicine - #DocChain Community** npub1jdvvva54m8nchh3t708pav99qk24x6rkx2sh0e7jthh0l8efzt7q9y7jlj