NOTE: *This article has some details that are specific to America, but the overall principles are applicable to all, and I believe it will be useful for all Christians.* When it comes to things like voting, Christians tend to err to one of two extremes and seem to find difficulty finding the right balance as defined by God. Some Christians refuse to vote or get involved with politics at all. They don’t want to dirty themselves with politics. They know that their true home is heaven, so they don’t seem to care much for the nations they live in. On the other hand, some Christians are so focused on politics fixing everything and creating heaven on earth that they can become idolatrous lifting up politicians as a kind of savior. In this article, I’m going to address both extremes, using the Bible, and hopefully help you find a Biblical balance. ## Seek the Welfare of the City Where I Have Sent You As Christians we are just passing through our time on earth. Our true, eternal home, our true citizenship, is in heaven. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t care what happens on earth. We shouldn’t be like the old saying, “some Christians are so heavenly minded that they aren’t any earthly good.” I think Christians should organize our time here on earth kind of like the Israelites were commanded to live during their 70 year exile in Babylon and Persia. > Now these are the words of the letter which Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the rest of the elders of the exile, the priests, the prophets and all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. (Jeremiah 29:1) What did God say to the Israelites about how they should live their life in Babylon? > “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon, ‘Build houses and live in them; and plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and become the fathers of sons and daughters, and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; and multiply there and do not decrease. **Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf; for in its welfare you will have welfare**.’ (Jeremiah 29:4-7) {emphasis mine} Could we likewise say the same to Christians during their time on earth? “Build houses and live in them; and plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and become the fathers of sons and daughters, and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; and multiply there and do not decrease. Seek the welfare of the city, state, or nation where I have sent you to live for a short while, and pray to the Lord on its behalf; for in its welfare you will have welfare.” God expects us to live fruitful lives, to marry, to have many children (multiply), and to raise them up to do the same. He also wants us to seek the welfare of the city, state, and nation where God has put us. In a city, state, or nation with democratic elections, the best way to seek its welfare is to vote for honest candidates who support godly principles. We rightly understand that in our ungodly world there are no perfect candidates. It can even be hard to find mostly honest and mostly godly candidates, but we should seek to elect the best that is available. Why are we told to do this? We are told that “*for in its welfare you will have welfare*.” When we fail to vote, to teach our kids or support good schools, to live productive lives, and to generally live Godly lives, we WILL see the decline of our cities, states, and nations. We will pay the price. We are seeing exactly that decline because Christians have pulled out (and were pushed out) of the positions that influence the culture. We don’t have enough godly teachers, journalists, professors, advisors, economists, and politicians. We have given up the culture to those who oppose God, His people, and His commands. We are paying the price for withdrawing into the safety of our churches and leaving the world to the wolves. ## Political Religion Of course we also have an opposite extreme. We have some Christians that are too focused on politics and power. They spend all of their time and energy on political endeavors and very little, to none, on sharing the Gospel and being a godly example. Many act like they think a political candidate is going to save them from the culture, the media, the bureaucracy, or the government. They forget that there is only one Savior — the Lord Jesus Christ. They forget that God said things will get worse before they get better. They make idols out of politicians and religions out of political parties. > No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” (Luke 16:13) Although this verse is specifically talking about being obsessed with wealth, it is applicable to anything that takes our focus, attention, and especially our worship away from God. When a person spends all of their time serving one candidate or party and little to no time serving God, they have chosen to serve another god and are guilty, even if inadvertently and unintentionally. > You shall have no other gods before Me. > > You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments. (Exodus 20:3-6) When we look to a politician to save us from anything, we are making him/her a god before us. When we give our all to a political party, we are taking our heart away from God and giving it to an alternate religion. We may not think that we make idols in our modern world. It is true that we don’t usually carve them out of wood or mold them out of gold, but we have just as many idols as the Israelites did. They just look different. I hope you will seriously consider this next point because it may be very unpopular with many of my readers. There are lots of Christians that will throw as big, if not a bigger, fit at the desecration of the American flag than over the Bible. Nobody seems to fight to retain the pledge of allegiance more than a majority of Christians. I’d argue that the American flag has become a modern day idol and the “Pledge of Allegiance” has become a religious mantra repeated to the god of government. Look at the words of the pledge: *I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America,\ and to the Republic for which it stands,\ one Nation under God,\ indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.* I think the inclusion of the phrase “one Nation under God” makes Christians feel OK about this pledge originally invented by a socialist whose brother sold American flags. The important part, which is why I can’t say the pledge anymore, are the words, “I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands.” I really appreciate the principles America was founded upon, but as a Christian, I can only pledge allegiance to God. My allegiance isn’t to a flag (an idol) or the government (a god). I refuse to go through a religious ritual that includes particular stances, reciting special words, and showing undue respect. We cannot “*serve two masters*.” As Christians our master should be Christ alone. Anything that becomes more important than, or even equal to, the importance of God in our lives is idolatry. We need to get our priorities right. ## In the World, but Not of the World As we live our lives here on earth, we need to remember our God ordained purpose and our true allegiance to God. We need to remember our citizenship[1](https://trustjesus.substack.com/p/should-christians-vote#footnote-1-150236181) and family are in heaven, not here on earth. We want to have a positive influence on our culture, including working in influential positions and voting, but we should be most focused on personal evangelism and sharing the truth of the Bible. The best way to make a difference in our culture is to change hearts and minds through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. > But now I come to You; and these things I speak in the world so that they may have My joy made full in themselves. **I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world**, even as I am not of the world. I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one. **They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world**. Sanctify them in the truth; **Your word is truth**. (John 17:13-17) {emphasis mine} Although we want to be a light in the world, we have been warned that doing so will make us not fit in. It will cause many non-Christians (and maybe a few Christians whose priorities are not right) to hate us. No matter the consequences, we need to stand on the truth of the Word of God. Too often, because we are living with those who are of this world, we start to look and act a lot like those of the world instead of looking and acting like our Savior. > **Do not love the world nor the things in the world**. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. **The world is passing away**, and also its lusts; but **the one who does the will of God lives forever**. (1 John 2:15-17) {emphasis mine} The fact that we should not love the things of the world or take on the character of things of the world is true in every part of our lives, but since we are talking here about politics, let us discuss the way many Christians talk politics. Many Christians talk about politics in the same manner as non-Christians — cursing, name calling, insulting, and doing whatever it takes to win, no matter whether it is moral or not. I know the “other side” cheats, lies, name-calls, etc., but we should not stoop to their level. Nobody ever won another to their point of view by cursing or name calling. There are ways to point our their errors, and even how horrific some of the things pushed are, without going so low. Jesus didn’t hold back from speaking the truth. He didn’t hesitate to point out error, but was never crude about it. We should be the same. We should shine a light in such a way that those around us see such a difference that they say something similar to what was said about the apostles: > Now as they observed the confidence of Peter and John and understood that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were amazed, and began to recognize them as having been with Jesus. (Acts 4:13) There should be something about our words, actions, and demeanor that amazes our opponents causing them to recognize us “*as having been with Jesus*.” I hope this post has been helpful, truthful, and not too offensive. In so many areas it is hard to find that perfect balance and to not allow ourselves to be pulled to either extreme to the detriment of our witness and our relationship to God. > Give no offense either to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God; just as I also please all men in all things, not seeking my own profit but the profit of the many, **so that they may be saved**. (1 Corinthians 10:32-33) {emphasis mine} Trust Jesus.\ \ your sister in Christ, Christy

## Amber 2.0.8 - Fix signing private zaps Download it with [zap.store](https://zap.store/download), [Obtainium](https://github.com/ImranR98/Obtainium), [f-droid](https://f-droid.org/packages/com.greenart7c3.nostrsigner) or download it directly in the [releases page](https://github.com/greenart7c3/Amber/releases/tag/v2.0.8) If you like my work consider making a [donation](https://greenart7c3.com) ## Verifying the release In order to verify the release, you'll need to have `gpg` or `gpg2` installed on your system. Once you've obtained a copy (and hopefully verified that as well), you'll first need to import the keys that have signed this release if you haven't done so already: ```bash gpg --keyserver hkps://keys.openpgp.org --recv-keys 44F0AAEB77F373747E3D5444885822EED3A26A6D ``` Once you have his PGP key you can verify the release (assuming `manifest-v2.0.8.txt` and `manifest-v2.0.8.txt.sig` are in the current directory) with: ```bash gpg --verify manifest-v2.0.8.txt.sig manifest-v2.0.8.txt ``` You should see the following if the verification was successful: ```bash gpg: Signature made Fri 13 Sep 2024 08:06:52 AM -03 gpg: using RSA key 44F0AAEB77F373747E3D5444885822EED3A26A6D gpg: Good signature from "greenart7c3 <greenart7c3@proton.me>" ``` That will verify the signature on the main manifest page which ensures integrity and authenticity of the binaries you've downloaded locally. Next, depending on your operating system you should then re-calculate the sha256 sum of the binary, and compare that with the following hashes: ```bash cat manifest-v2.0.6.txt ``` One can use the `shasum -a 256 <file name here>` tool in order to re-compute the `sha256` hash of the target binary for your operating system. The produced hash should be compared with the hashes listed above and they should match exactly.

## Chef's notes This is a delicious, quick and easy meal you can do on the weeknights. Serve with mash potatoes. ## Details - ⏲️ Prep time: 10 minutes - 🍳 Cook time: 1 hour 10 minutes - 🍽️ Servings: 4 ## Ingredients - 4 lamb shanks - 28 oz. Can of whole San Marzano tomatoes - 2 table spoons of garlic powder - 1/3 bottle of dry white wine(cheap stuff is fine) - 2 table spoons of extra virgin olive oil - 1 tsp salt - 1 tsp pepper - 1 bag of frozen carrots ## Directions 1. Place carrots in the Instant pot to rest the meat on. 2. add the 4 lamb shakes on top of carrots 3. pour tomato can into instant pot. 4. sprinkle garlic powder into Instant Pot. 5. drizzle 2 tablespoons of olive oil. 6. add enought white wine to cover about a third of the meat. 7. add salt and pepper. 8. cook in instant pot for 1 hour. 9. slow release 10 minutes

**October's daily driver is the ana-digi Casio ABX-53 Twincept with module 1326. It features are world time, stopwatch, alarm and a databank for contacts.**  ## Design I have the gold/silver colored variant with a metal band. The watch has an analog clock and a floating display with the features listed above. Best thing is the "slider" mode that switches digital functions permanently. ## Storytime My log tells me that i bought the watch 6 years ago on a local flea market for close to nothing. It was in a bad condition and needed a new battery and some love. Sure enough it works fine since then. Most badass feature is that the analog hands are moved electronically not mechanically. Fun fact is that even my wife likes the floating display. First time she saw it I heard her say "Das ist echt cool", meaning "thats really cool".

Declaring myself a nerd on my resume has not yielded many interviews. Therefore, I a studying for an A + certification because most jobs require it. Although I geek-out on obscure Internet protocols, that’s not what businesses want yet. They want people to prove they know what SSH and FTP are. They want port memorization and you must know that an Ethernet cable is called an RJ45 cable. I use these things all the time. I already knew SSH uses port 22, but I didn’t know it was over TCP the Transmission Communications Protocol. Luckily I read the book The 4 Hour Chef by Tim Ferris. I know what you’re thinking. What the F does a cookbook have to do with IT? Well, this book was really about rapid learning. The idea is to learn any new skill by studying 4 hours per week. The book teaches you how to learn how to cook within 12 weeks by studying 4 hours per week. The beginning of the book is not about cooking at all. One chapter teaches you how to memorize a deck of cards or the first 100 digits of pi. You do this buy converting numbers into sounds and sounds into images. It’s almost as if you use cenesthesia as a memory tool. I used this card deck memorization technique](https://tim.blog/2013/02/07/how-to-memorize-a-shuffled-deck-of-cards-in-less-than-60-seconds/) to memorize common ports and protocols. ## How I Use Mnemonics To Remeber Ports Here is an example of how I used this mnemonic to memorize SSH is commonly found on tcp/22 I used cartoon characters to represent Internet Protocols like tcp or udp. - For tcp, I imagine a character I call taco pollo because it’s the first thing that came to mind when I tried to think of something using the letters t, c, and p. That’s not a real cartoon, so I used AI to dream up a picture of some taco wielding chicken. It’s a strange bird. I know, and so am I, but it works. I also considered using the cartoon chickens from Breaking Bad, but it didn’t quite fit.  - Chicken’s with tacos represent tcp. I thought of this because the word taco has a t and c in it and chicken in Spanish is pollo. This combination is ridiculous, but the more ridiculous the better when it comes to memorization. The goal is to make it unforgettable like Nat King Cole.  - For udp, I use Captain Underpants. Udp made me think of Captain Underpants for similar reasons. I used actions for the names of ports I memorizing. For example, SSH is the verb shelling. I use an object for the port number and try to think of an object that fits within the rules of the [major number system](https://major-system.info/en/). Instead of memorizing that SSH is tcp/22, I create an image in my mind’s eye. Taco Pollo shelling The Nanny. I embellished this phrase a little using a prompt generator and ran it through Stable AI Core. Here is the prompt I used. `Chicken donning a taco hat, firing artillery shells, towards Fran Drescher as The Nanny; surreal, pop-art style, vibrant colors, high-definition, references to Roy Lichtensteins comic-strip art.`  - The chicken and taco represent tcp. - The artillery shell represents Secure Shell, a.k.a. SSH - The nanny represents the number 22 because the n sound represents the number 2 in the major number system. Therefore, Nanny = 22. **This is my mnemonic for memorizing the Internet protocol, and port number of SSH**. I happen to have already know many of the port numbers already just from working with servers. I used to use Yunohost and it required me to open up many of the ports that I am learning about. A couple years ago, I ran my own email server. It wouldn’t work at first. My research lead me down a rabbit hole that taught me I needed to open port 25 to send emails. This is because SMTP(Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) needs port 25 open. A good mnemonic for this would be “a chicken taco” smurfs a nail. What does smurf mean? I don’t know, but the Smurfs used it as a verb all the time. It also helps me remember SMTP because s and m are the first two letters in the word Smurf. I didn’t know DNS used port 53 until I created the mnemonic, “Captain Underpants dines with Lemmy.” Is it gibberish? Yes. Is it effective? Hell yes! npub1marc26z8nh3xkj5rcx7ufkatvx6ueqhp5vfw9v5teq26z254renshtf3g0 867,467 Originally published on: https://marc26z.com/memorizing-protocols-and-port-numbers-with-mnemonics/ [Read on Tor](http://p66dxywd2xpyyrdfxwilqcxmchmfw2ixmn2vm74q3atf22du7qmkihyd.onion/memorizing-protocols-and-port-numbers-with-mnemonics/)

# `kind:1` maximalism and the future of other stuff and Nostr decentralization These two problems exist on Nostr today, and they look unrelated at first: 1. People adding more stuff to `kind:1` notes, such as making them editable, or adding special corky syntax thas has to be parsed and rendered in complicated UIs; 2. The _discovery_ of "other stuff" content (i.e. long-form articles, podcasts, calendar events, livestreams etc) is hard due to the fact that most people only use microblogging clients and they often don't appear there for them. Point **2** above has 3 different solutions: - **a.** Just publish everything as `kind:1` notes; - **b.** Publish different things as different kinds, but make microblogging clients fetch all the event kinds from people you follow, then render them natively or use NIP-31, or NIP-89 to point users to other clients that would render them better; - **c.** Publish different things as different kinds, and reference them in `kind:1` notes that would act as announcements to these other events, also relying on NIP-31 and NIP-89 for displaying references and recommending other clients. Solution **a** is obviously very bad, so I won't address it. For a while I have believed solution **b** was the correct one, and many others seem to tacitly agree with it, given that some clients have been fetching more and more event kinds and going out of their way to render them in the same feed where only `kind:1` notes were originally expected to be. I don't think clients doing that is necessarily bad, but I do think this have some centralizing effects on the protocol, as it pushes clients to become bigger and bigger, raising the barrier to entry into the `kind:1` realm. And also in the past I have talked about the fact that I disliked that some clients would display my long-form articles as if they were normal `kind:1` notes and just dump them into the feeds of whoever was following me: nostr:nevent1qqsdk90k9k30vtzwpj6grxys9mvsegu5kkwd4jmpyhlmtjnxet2rvggprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumn0wdmksetjv5hxxmmdqy8hwumn8ghj7mn0wd68ytnddaksygpm7rrrljungc6q0tuh5hj7ue863q73qlheu4vywtzwhx42a7j9n5hae35c These and other reasons have made me switch my preference to solution **c**, as it gives the most flexibility to the publisher: whoever wants to announce stuff so it can be _discovered_ can, whoever doesn't don't have to. And it allows microblogging clients the freedom to render just render tweets and having a straightforward barrier between what they can render and what is just a link to an external app or webapp (of course they can always opt to render the referenced content in-app if they want). It also makes the case for microapps more evident. If all microblogging clients become superapps that can render recipe events perfectly why would anyone want to use a dedicated recipes app? I guess there are still reasons, but blurring the line between content kinds in superapps would definitely remove some of the reasons and eventually kill all the microapps. --- That brings us back to point **1** above (the overcomplication of `kind:1` events): if solution **c** is what we're going to, that makes `kind:1` events very special in Nostr, and not just another kind among others. Microblogging clients become the central plaza of Nostr, thus protecting their neutrality and decentralization much more important. Having a lot of clients with different userbases, doing things in slightly different ways, is essential for that decentralization. It's ok if Nostr ends up having just 2 recipe-sharing clients, but it must have dozens of microblogging clients -- and maybe not even full-blown microblogging clients, but other apps that somehow deal with `kind:1` events in multiple ways. It's ok if implementing a client for public audio-rooms is very hard and complicated, but at the same time it should be very simple to write a client that can render a `kind:1` note referencing an audio-room and linking to that dedicated client. I hope you got my point and agreed because this article is ended.

# Zer da Cashu? Cashu Bitcoinentzako Ecash protokolo irekia da, transakzio azkarrak eta doakoak eskaintzen dituena. Protokolo honen ezaugarri nabarmenetako bat pribatutasun ia perfektua eskaintzea da. Nostr nostr:npub12rv5lskctqxxs2c8rf2zlzc7xx3qpvzs3w4etgemauy9thegr43sf485vg erabiltzaileak sortu zuen. Hona hemen Cashu eta on-chain Bitcoin alderatzen dituen taula, Bangkok 2023ko Bitcoin Konferentzian nostr:npub1cj6ndx5akfazux7f0vjl4fyx9k0ulf682p437fe03a9ndwqjm0tqj886t6-k aurkeztutako Nuts and Bolts hitzaldian oinarrituta: | **Cashu** | **Bitcoin (on-chain)** | |-----------------------|----------------------------| | Libururik gabe | Liburu banatua | | Titulartasun tokena | UTXO (Ustiaketa Ezberdinen Irteera) | | Transakzio itsutuak | Transakzio publikoak | | Zentralizatua | Deszentralizatua | | Konfiantzazkoa | Konfiantzarik gabe | | Aldi baterako transakzioak | Betiko transakzioak | Ikusten dugunez, Cashuk pribatutasuna hobetzeko konfiantza gabeko izaera eta deszentralizazioa sakrifikatzen ditu. Konpentsazio hauek zentzuzkoak dira zaintza-zerbitzuetan, erabiltzailea dagoeneko zerbitzu zentralizatu eta fidagarri bat erabiltzen ari baita. Zaintza tradizionaleko irtenbideek pribatutasun eskasa dute, zaintzaileak erabiltzailearen funtsak zenbat diren eta norekin ari den transakzioak egiten jakin dezakeelako. Horrek esan nahi du norbanakoak erraz helburu eta zentsura daitezkeela. Gainera, datu-erregistroek "honeypot" bihurtzeko arriskua dute, hau da, erasotzaileentzat erakargarri. Alderantziz, Cashu-ren mint-ek zaintzaile gisa jardun dezakete, baina erabiltzaileen nortasuna, duten funtsen kopurua edo norekin ari diren transakzioak egiten ezagutzeko aukerarik gabe. Mint-ek duten datu-erregistro bakarra gastatutako sekretuen zerrenda da, berriro erabili ezin direnak, baina erabiltzaileekin lotzeko modurik gabe. Horrela, Cashu-k pribatutasuna bermatzen du, zaintzaileak ez duelako inolako informaziorik erabiltzaileen jarduerei buruz, ohiko zaintza-soluzioekin gertatzen denaren kontrara.  ## Cashu-ren erabilera kasu batzuk Cashu-ren erabilera kasu batzuk honako hauek dira: bonuak, dagoeneko zentralizatuak eta zaintza-zerbitzuak dituztenak; baliabide bakoitzeko ordainketa (pay-per-resource) APIak, nostr bideratzaileak eta mixnet-ak bezalako zerbitzuetarako; sistema integratuak, kontu eta saldo eredu tradizionala ordezkatzen dutenak; eta truke/mixinge zerbitzuak, gordailuak eta ateratzeak deslotzeko, pribatutasuna hobetzeko. ## Historia Ecash David Chaum-ek 1982an asmatu zuen, sinadura itsuak erabiliz balio elektronikoaren transmisiorako protokolo gisa. Cashu Ecash-en inplementazio bat da, David Wagner-en 1996ko Chaum-en itsutze-aldaketan oinarrituta dagoena, eta nostr sortu zuen. ## Terminologia Cashu nola funtzionatzen duen ulertzen laguntzeko, lehenik eta behin funtsezko terminologia batzuk azalduko ditugu. ### Mint Cashu-ren mint-a erabiltzaileen funtsen zaintzailea da. Bere zeregina tokenak jaulkitzea eta erretzea da, baita bikoiztutako gastuak saihestea ere. Cashu-ren mint-a Lightning nodo baten gainean dago, beraz, Lightning ordainketak bidali eta jaso ditzake, beste mint batzuekin trukeak barne. Hala ere, Lightning nodoa lineaz kanpo badago ere, ecash tokenekin transakzioak egin daitezke. Lightning-ekin ez bezala, jasotzailea linean egon beharrik ez du tokenak jasotzeko. Mint-ak ez daki nor den erabiltzailea, zenbat funts dituzten edo norekin ari diren transakzioak egiten. Hala ere, mint-a erabiltzaileen funtsen zaintzailea denez, fidagarria den mint bat aukeratu behar duzu, eta eragilea nor den jakin. Erabil ezazu funts txikiekin edo tokenak berehala trukatu. ### Token Cashu token-a mint-ak sinatutako datu-puska bat da, eta erabiltzaileak token horiek bere zorroan gordetzen ditu. Ecash tokenak testu-kate hutsak direnez, edozein testu bidezko protokoloaren bidez bidal daitezke, adibidez, nostr, posta elektronikoa, SMS, etab. Cashu-k txanpon-sistema bat erabiltzen du, zenbateko finkatuak dituena. Analogia bat eginez, hau moneta fiduziarioen billeteen zenbatekoei dagokie. Adibidez, eurotan 5, 10, 20, 50, 100 euroko billeteak daude. Cashu-n, tokenak 2ren indarren arabera sailkatzen dira. Adibidez, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128 satoshi, eta horrela aurrera. Zenbatekoak erabiltzea erabiltzaileen artean anonimotasuna areagotzeko egiten da, eta mint-ek transakzioak erabiltzaileen nortasunekin lotzea zailagoa bihurtzeko. ## Nola funtzionatzen duen, 5 urteko bati bezala azaldua  Erabiltzaile Alice-k Cashu token berriak sortu nahi ditu. Horregatik, Bob mint-aren arduradunarengana joaten da eta esaten dio: "Kaixo! Cashu token berriak sortu nahi ditut."  Bob-ek erantzuten dio: "Ados, ordaindu iezadazu eta bidali iezadazu sekretu itsu bat." Sekretu itsua esan nahi du Alice-k sekretua ezagutzen duela, baina Bob-ek ezin duela sekretu hori ikusi.  Alice-k sekretu bat sortzen du, eta ondoren itsutzen du, horrela Bob-ek ez dezan jakin zein den sekretu hori.  Alice-k Bob-i ordainketa egiten dio eta ordainketaren egiaztagiria eta sekretu itsua bidaltzen dizkio. Bob ordainketa jaso duela ziur dagoenean, Alice-ren sekretu itsua sinatzen du eta sinatutako sekretu itsua itzultzen dio. Bob-ek sinatu duelako, etorkizunean ziur egon daiteke tokena baliozkoa dela.   Alice-k Carol-i ordaindu nahi dio. Horretarako, sekretua eta sinatutako sekretu itsua desitsutzeko gakoa bidaltzen dizkio Carol-i.   Carol-ek bere tokena trukatu nahi du. Beraz, Bob-engana (mint-aren arduradunera) joaten da eta Alice-k eman dion sekretua eta desitsututako gakoa erakusten dizkio. ### Nola jakiten du mint-ak Carol-i zenbat satoshi eman behar dizkion? Lehenago aipatu genuen bezala, Cashu tokenak 2ren indarren araberako zenbatekoetan banatuta daude (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32...), paperezko diru billeteen antzera. Bob mint-ak zenbateko bakoitza sinatzeko gako pribatu berezi bat du. Adibidez, 1 satoshi zenbatekoaren tokenak sinatzeko gako pribatu bat du, 2 satoshi zenbatekoaren beste bat, 8 satoshi zenbatekoaren beste bat, eta abar. Horrela, Carol tokenak trukatzera datorrenean, Bob-ek badaki zein gako pribaturekin sinatu zuen token hori, eta horren arabera, tokenak zein zenbatekotakoak diren ezagutzen du. Horrela, Bob-ek Carol-i dagokion satoshi kopurua itzuli diezaioke, sinatutako tokenaren zenbatekoa kontuan hartuta. ### Zer gertatzen da itzulkinekin? Cashu-n ez dago itzulkinik diru fisikoan bezala. Horren ordez, mint-ari (Bob-i) eskatu behar diozu token zaharrak suntsitzeko eta berriak sortzeko, zenbateko berarekin. Adibide batekin azalduz: Demagun Alice-k bi token dituela, guztira 10 satoshi balio dutenak. Bata 8 satoshi da eta bestea 2 satoshi. Alice-k 9 satoshi bidali nahi dizkio Carol-i. Horretarako, mint-ari (Bob-i) eskatzen dio bere 2 satoshi tokena bi 1 satoshi token bihurtzeko. Horrela, Alice-k 9 satoshi bidal diezazkioke Carol-i: 8 satoshi token bat eta 1 satoshi token bat erabiliz. Gainera, beste 1 satoshi tokena berarentzat gordetzen du. ### Lightning sarearen papera konektatzeko elementu gisa Zer gertatzen da Alice-k David-i ordaindu nahi dionean, baina David-ek Bob-en mint-a ez du fidatzen, eta, aldiz, Erin ezagutzen du eta bere mint-a erabiltzen du? Alice-k bere tokenak Bob-en mint-ean trukatzen ditu, eta Bob-i eskatzen dio token horiek "urtzeko" edo Lightning satoshietara bihurtzeko. Ondoren, Bob-en mint-ak Lightning transakzio bat bidaltzen dio Erin-en mint-ari. Erin-en mint-ak transakzio hori jasotzen du, eta David-entzat token berriak sortzen ditu Lightning sarearen bidez Bob-en mint-etik jasotako satoshiekin. Horrela, Lightning sareak mint ezberdinak konektatzen ditu, erabiltzaileak (Alice eta David) mint ezberdinak fidatu arren, transakzioak segurtasunez egiteko.  ## Zer dator hurrengoa Cashu-rentzat? ### Programagarri den ecash Cashu-ri gastatzeko baldintzak gehitu ahal izango zaizkio, mint-ak baldintza horiek betearaziko dituelarik. Horrek ahalbidetu dezake kontratu adimendun sendoak sortzea, oinarrizko katean (Bitcoin blockchain) edo Lightning sarean sartu gabe. Horrela, ordainketa publikoak, lineaz kanpokoak eta maiztasun handikoak posible izango dira. ### Zorren froga eskema (Proof of Liabilities Scheme) Zorren Froga (PoL) Eskema Cashu-rentzat zaintzailea den mint-ak erabiltzaileak iruzurrez erabiltzea zailtzen du, epoka kontzeptua aurkeztuz. Eskema honetan, zaintzaile den mint-ak epoka bakoitzean gako pribatuak aldian-aldian biratzen ditu, eta azken epokan jaulkitako eta erretako tokenen zerrenda publikoak argitaratzen ditu. Hau Erreserben Froga (Proof of Reserves) eskemarekin uztartzen da, non erreserbak katean bertan multisig batean gordetzen diren. Horrela, mint-ak ezingo du bere erantzukizunak murriztu, erabiltzaileek iruzurra detektatzeko arriskua handitu gabe. Xehetasun gehiagorako, eskema honen azalpen osoa kontsultatu dezakezu. ## Saiatu Cashu Cashu probatzeko, [Nutstash] eta [eNuts] gidak erabil ditzakezu. Horretarako Lightning zorro bat eta telefono edo ordenagailu bat besterik ez duzu behar.

# Zer da Cashu? Cashu Bitcoin-erako ecash protokolo ireki bat da, transakzio azkarrak eta komisio gabekoak eskaintzen dituena, pribatutasun ia perfektuarekin. Xehetasun gehiago nahi izanez gero, gure azalpena ikus dezakezu. ## eNuts eNuts Cashu-rako mugikorretarako zorro bikaina da, Android eta iOS (TestFlight) plataformetan eskuragarri dagoena. Mint anitzekin lan egitea ahalbidetzen du eta nostr bidez bidalketak egiteko aukera ere eskaintzen du. ⚠️ **eNuts eta Cashu oraindik beta fasean daude**. Funtsak galtzeko arriskua dago. Aplikazioa instalatzerakoan arriskuen inguruan irakurri. Galera ekonomikoei aurre egiteko gai zaren zenbateko txikiekin saiatu. ## Probatu Prozesu honetan zehar mint-ekin elkarreragin, ecash-a jaso eta bidali, segurtasun-kopiak egin, Lightning-era ateratzeak eta mint-en artean trukaketak egingo ditugu. Azkenik, nostr kontaktu funtzionalitatea probatuko dugu. ### Instalatu Sartu eNuts webgunera eta instalatu aplikazioa zure sistema eragilerako. ### Mint bat gehitzea Ecash-arekin elkarreragiteko, lehenik mint bat behar duzu. Mint honetan zure ecash token-ak sortzen eta itzultzen dira. Mint-a da zure Bitcoin-en zaindaria, baina ez daki nor zaren, norekin egiten duzun transakzioa, ezta zenbat diru duzun ere. Probetarako Txoko mint erabili dezakezu. 1. Joan Txoko Mint-era. Kopiatu mint URL-a. 2. eNuts-en, joan Aukerak > Mint kudeaketa eta sakatu + botoia. Itsatsi lehen urratsean kopiatu duzun mint URL-a. 💡 Mint gehigarriak ere gehitu ditzakezu. Mint publiko batzuk MintIndex-en aurki daitezke. Kontuan izan mint batzuek zenbateko jakin bat gordetzen dutela bideratze-gastuak ordaintzeko, eta, beraz, ezin dituzula zure sats guztiak atera. ### Tokenak sortzea Mint bat gehitu duzunean, eNuts-ek automatikoki galdetuko dizu mint horretatik Cashu token berriak sortu nahi dituzun. 1. Erantzun **Bai**. 2. Sortu faktura bat mintu nahi duzun zenbatekoarentzat. Zenbateko txiki batekin saiatu, adibidez, 100 sats. 3. Ordaindu faktura Lightning zorro batetik. Faktura ordaindutakoan, ecash token-ak izango dituzu. Prozesu honek aukera ematen dizu ecash token-ak sortzeko, eta horiek zure transakzioetarako erabiltzeko prest izango dituzu. ### Ecash-ekin transakzioak egitea Ecash-ekin transakzioak egitea, funtsean, datu multzoak bidaltzea eta jasotzea da. Funtzionalitate hauek zuk zeuk probatzeko, bidali eta jaso dezakezu zure buruari. 1. Ecash bidaltzeko, sakatu **Bidali > Ecash bidali**. 2. Mint bat baino gehiago erabiltzen baduzu, aukeratu bidali nahi duzun mint-a. Ondoren, aukeratu **Kopiatu eta partekatu**. 3. Aukeratu zenbatekoa. 4. Nahi izanez gero, gehitu ohar bat, eta sakatu **Jarraitu**. 5. Berretsi ordainketa xehetasunak eta sortu token-a. Une honetan, **coin selection** funtzioa erabil dezakezu zein token erabili nahi dituzun hautatzeko. Ohartu token-ak 1 sat, 2 sats, 4 sats, 8 sats, 16 sats eta antzeko zenbatekotan sailkatuta daudela. Horiek 10 euroko, 20 euroko edo 50 euroko billeteak bezala irudika ditzakezu. 6. Kopiatu token-a. Une honetan, token-a beste norbaiti bidal diezaiokezu edo zure zorroan berreskuratu. Saiakera moduan, bigarren aukera hau egingo dugu. 1. Ecash jasotzeko, sakatu **Jaso > Itsatsi eta berreskuratu Ecash**. eNuts-ek automatikoki irakurriko du zure arbeletik eta token-a berreskuratuko du. 💡 Zure transakzioen historian ecash token-a zain dagoen egiaztatu dezakezu, eta hartzaileak ez badu berreskuratu, itzuli dezakezu. Horretarako, sakatu zure historiako irteerako transakzioan eta aukeratu **Egiaztatu token-a gastatu den**. Token-a zain badago, **Itzuli token-a** sakatu dezakezu eta berriro zure zorroan izango duzu. ### Multimint trukeak Mint desberdinen artean bidalketak eta jasotzeak posibleak diren galdetu baduzu, erantzuna bai da, neurri batean. Hala ere, Cashu token-ak zuzenean mint batetik bestera bidaltzea ez da zuzenean egiten; horren ordez, transakzioak Lightning-era bideratzen dira, mint bat Lightning nodo bat ere badelako. Cashu token-ak ez dira bateragarriak nodo desberdinen artean. Hau probatzeko, beste mint bat gehitu dezakezu oraindik egin ez baduzu, adibidez, cashme LNbits mint edo eNuts mint lehenetsia. 💡 Kontuan izan mint batzuek sats kopuru bat gordetzen dutela bideratze-gastuak ordaintzeko. Arazo hau konpontzeko, zure mint propioa sor dezakezu Bitcoin Txoko LNbits zorroarekin, Cashu luzapena aktibatuz. 1. Joan **Aukerak > Mint kudeaketa** atalera, eta aukeratu trukatu nahi duzun mint-a. Ondoren, joan **Multimint trukeak** atalean. 2. Aukeratu trukatu nahi duzun mint-a. 3. Aukeratu zenbatekoa eta sakatu **Kuotak aurreikusi** Lightning gastuen kalkulua egiteko. 4. Sakatu **Jarraitu**. 5. Egiaztatu xehetasunak, eta nahi izanez gero, **coin selection** funtzioa erabili. Ondoren, sakatu **Orain trukatu**. Prozesu honetan, bidaltzen ari den mint-ak Lightning faktura bat ordaintzen du jasotzen ari den mint-aren bidez. Faktura osatu bezain laster, trukatuta dagoen token-a zure zorroaren saldoan agertu beharko litzateke jasotzen ari den mint-ean. ### Ateratzea Zure Cashu sats-ak berriro Lightning sats bihurtu nahi dituzunean, ateratzeko aukera duzu. Prozesua hauxe da: 1. Sakatu **Bidali > Lightning faktura ordaindu**. 2. Mint bat baino gehiago erabiltzen baduzu, aukeratu bidaliko duzun mint-a. 3. LN faktura edo LNURL atalean, sartu faktura bat, LNURL edo Lightning helbide bat; edo, besterik gabe, QR kode bat eskaneatu. 4. Aukeratu zenbatekoa eta sakatu **Kuotak aurreikusi**. 5. Egiaztatu xehetasunak, eta dena zuzen dagoela ikusi ondoren, sakatu **Ateratzea**. Prozesu hau amaitutakoan, mint-ak Cashu token-ak trukatzen ditu eta Lightning faktura ordaintzen du. ### Segurtasun kopiak Cashu token-ak babesteko prozesua, agian, ezberdina izango da Bitcoin eta Lightning zorroak babesteko ohiko prozesuekin alderatuta. Diru-funtsak datu blokeekin irudikatzen direnez, Cashu token-ak babesten dituzunean datu bloke horiek bakarrik babesten ari zara. Honek esan nahi du segurtasun-kopiak baliogabetzen direla transakzio berri bat egiten duzun bakoitzean. eNuts aplikazioak Cashu token bat sortzen du zure funts guztiekin, eta token horiek zein mint-ekoak diren jasotzen du. - **Segurtasun-kopia bat sortzeko**, joan Aukerak > **Segurtasuna > Sortu babeskopia token**. Kopiatu token-a eta gorde toki seguru batean. Bestela, mint bakoitza banaka babestu dezakezu: - Horretarako, joan Aukerak > **Mint kudeaketa** atalera eta aukeratu babestu nahi duzun mint-a. Ondoren, sakatu **Funtseak babestu**, kopiatu token-a eta gorde toki seguru batean. ### Berreskuratzea Berreskuratzeko, kopiatu babeskopia token-a eta ireki eNuts aplikazioa. Aplikazioak automatikoki irakurriko du zure arbelean dagoena eta galdetuko dizu token-a berreskuratu nahi duzun. ### Nostr eNuts aplikazioak Nostr integrazioa eskaintzen du, horrela zure kontaktu zerrendara ecash bidali ahal izateko. Funtzio hau erabiltzeko, honako pauso hauek jarraitu behar dituzu: 1. Joan **Kontaktuak** atalera eta itsatsi zure Nostr gako publikoa. 2. eNuts-ek zure kontaktu zerrenda eskuratuko du relays-etatik. Tamalez, bilaketa funtzioa oraindik ez dago eskuragarri, eta horrek kontaktu zuzena aurkitzea zaildu dezake, kontaktu asko izanez gero. Hartzaileak Nostr motako 4 mezu zuzena jasoko du, Cashu token-arekin. Hartzaileak mezu hau bere zorroan berreskuratu eta token-a erabili ahal izango du. ## Ondorioa Gida hau lagungarria iruditu zaizu? Saiatu Cashu token batzuk bidaltzen Nostr bidez!

# Zer da lightning address bat? Lightning address bat irakurgarria den helbide elektroniko baten antza duen helbidea da, adibidez username@domein.com, baina bitcoinetan ordainketak berehala eta merke jasotzeko aukera ematen du. Ez duzu zure gailuan nodo bat linean izatea behar, eta ez duzu eskuz faktura bat sortu behar norbaitek ordainketa egin nahi dizunean. Oso interesgarria, ezta? ## Nola funtzionatzen du, orduan? Lightning Address-ek LNURL pay protokoloa erabiltzen du, Lightning Network-aren gainean dagoen geruza bat da.  Prozesua hurrengo urratsetan laburbil daiteke: 1. Erabiltzaile batek zure Lightning Address erabiliz ordainketa egin nahi duenean, haien zorroak helbide hori LNURL payRequest batean bihurtzen du. 2. LNURL payRequest arrakastatsu baten bidez, zorroak BOLT11 faktura bat eskuratzen du, eta faktura hori ordainketa burutzeko erabiltzen da. Hau da, prozesuaren oinarrizko pausoak hurrengoak dira: 💡 **Lightning Address > LNURLp > BOLT11 faktura.** Lightning Network-ekin integratuta dagoen sistema honi esker, ordainketak erraz, azkar eta modu automatizatuan burutu daitezke. ### Oso ondo dirudi, baina zein da tranpa? Lightning Address-en inplementazio askok kustodia dute (nahiz eta ez den beti horrela), izan ere, domeinu bat eta beti linean dagoen nodo bat behar dira Lightning Address-ak funtzionatzeko. Kustodia sistema bat denez, zure fondoak kudeatzen dituenak edozein momentutan kontrolatu edo kendu ahal dizkizu eta zure transakzioak monitorizatu ditzake. Domeinuaren jabearengan fidatu behar duzu, zure Lightning Address-aren erregistroa aldatu ez dezan. Eta, gainera, LNURL zerbitzaria linean ez badago, sistema ez da funtzionatzen. **Bitcoin Txoko**-k LNbits-en oinarritutako Lightning Address irtenbide sinplea eskaintzen du. Hau ere kustodia sistemakoa da, beraz, gomendagarria da Bitcoin Txoko zorroan kopuru txiki bat bakarrik gordetzea eta gero auto-kustodia zorro batera ateratzea, satoshi gehiago jasotzen dituzun heinean. ## Hasteko prest bazaude, hona hemen behar duzuna: 1. **Zure zorroa sortzea** Lehenik eta behin, ez baduzu oraindik egin, joan [bitcointxoko.com](https://bitcointxoko.com) webgunera eta zorro bat sortu. Zorroari nahi duzun izena jar diezaiokezu. 2. **Luzapenak aktibatzea** Lightning Address-ak funtzionatzeko Pay Links luzapena behar da. Horretarako: - Joan tresna-barrako Extensions (Luzapenak) atalera eta Pay Links luzapena aktibatu. 3. **Ordainketa esteka bat sortzea** - Ireki Pay Links luzapena eta egin klik New Pay Link (Ordainketa Esteka Berria) aukeran. - Aukeratu sortu duzun zorroa. - "Item Description" atalean, nahi duzun testua sar dezakezu. - Aukeratu zure Lightning Address-erako erabiltzaile izena. Zure Lightning Address hau bezalakoa izango da: erabiltzailea@bitcointxoko.com. - Fixed Amount aukera desmarkatu eta jarri gutxieneko balioa 1 eta gehienekoa 500000.  ⚠️ Gehienezko balioa handiagoa jar dezakezu, baina ordainketa handiek huts egiteko probabilitate handiagoa dute, Bitcoin Txoko Lightning nodoaren kanalaren sarrera-gaitasun mugatua dela eta. Gomendagarria da 500000 satoshitan mantentzea. - Orain, ireki Advanced Options (Aukera Aurreratuak) eta aldatu Comment maximum characters (Komentarioaren gehieneko karaktere kopurua) 799-ra. Ez da beharrezkoa, baina aurrerantzean funtzionalitate gehiago emango dizu. - Azkenik, markatu Enable nostr zaps aukera behealdean, Lightning Address bidez zaps jasotzeko aukera izateko. Aukera aurreratuak beste parametro batzuk konfiguratzea ahalbidetzen dute, baina nahi baduzu hutsik utz ditzakezu. Azkenik, dena zuzen dagoela egiaztatu ondoren, egin klik **Create Pay Link** (Sortu Ordainketa Esteka) botoian. Horrela, zure Lightning Address sortuta izango duzu eta ordainketak jaso ahal izango dituzu! ## Proba egitea Zure Lightning Address ondo funtzionatzen duen probatu nahi baduzu, beste zorro batera joan, **Bidali (Send)** aukera hautatu eta helmuga gisa zure Lightning Address idatzi. Ondoren, bidali zeure buruari satoshi batzuk. Ondoren, itzuli Bitcoin Txoko zorrora eta egiaztatu ordainketa jaso duzun. Litekeena da orria freskatu behar izatea ordainketa agertzeko. Dena ondo atera bada, zorionak! 🥳 Bestela, jakinarazi iezaguzu. Beti prest gaude laguntzeko. ## Hurrengo urratsak ### Nostr zaps Zure Bitcoin Txoko Lightning Address nostr profilean gehitu dezakezu eta horrela zaps jasotzeko erabil dezakezu. Normalean, hau hurrengo pausuekin egiten da: - Joan **Profile** (Profila) atalera. - Hautatu **Edit** (Editatu) eta Lightning Address aldatu. ### LNDhub Zure LNbits zorroa telefonoan inporta dezakezu LNDhub bezala, Zeus edo BlueWallet bezalako aplikazioak erabiliz. Horrela, ez duzu nabigatzailean zorroa ireki beharko aldian-aldian saldoa egiaztatu edo ordainketak egiteko. Nola egin jakiteko, ikus ezazu nostr:naddr1qqxnzdej8y6ryvejxc6nvwpnqyg8wumn8ghj7mn0wd68ytnhd9hx2q3qtx0k0a7lw62vvqax6p3ku90tccgdka7ul4radews2wrdsg0m865sxpqqqp65w4hhl8s. ### QR kodea Zure LNURLp QR kodea parteka edo inprima dezakezu, jendeak mugikorrarekin eskaneatu dezan. Oso erabilgarria da zure denda lokaleko jabeak Lightning ordainketak jasotzeko sistema ezartzea nahi baduzu! - Parteka ezazu **Sharable Page** (Parteka daitekeen Orrialdea) esteka. - Edo, QR kodea PDF formatuan inprima dezakezu: joan **View Link** (Esteka Ikusi) atalera eta hautatu **Print** (Inprimatu). Horrela, zure Lightning Address erabilera praktikoa handitu eta errazago kudeatu dezakezu! Hasi zaitez !

i can post a note from my desktop to Nostr using Comet @captv iuihuhjhjhjk

i can post a note from my desktop to Nostr using Comet @captv

A atualidade acostumou-nos a uma lânguida linguagem devido à cultura do politicamente correto e ao crescente relativismo em que vivemos. A confusão é tanta que já não se chamam os bois pelos nomes e este ambiente faz com que inclusive desconheçamos o significado das palavras. A este respeito temos visto cada vez mais indefinição sobre o que são os vícios e sobre o que são as virtudes. Tal é a confusão que por vezes trocamos o significado de uns pelos outros. A coragem e a convicção facilmente passam por orgulho e arrogância, a castidade passa por beatice e por aí segue a confusão com muitos outros termos. A inversão de valores é tão disseminada que atrocidades como a pornografia, o aborto, o adultério entre outras atrocidades são celebrados como conquistas civilizacionais. A sua disseminação é de tal forma que hoje a pessoa média já banalizou e normalizou completamente estes aspectos. > “Primeiro estranha-se depois entranha-se.” > > ***Fernando Pessoa*** Enquanto isto acontece por um lado, por outro a defesa da família, da identidade e da tradição são abertamente atacadas como se se tratassem de produtos de uma cultura opressora que deve ser combatida por todos os meios. Por agora a perseguição destas ideias é ainda maioritariamente realizada através da exclusão social e económica, no entanto, não são escassos os exemplos da história em que essa perseguição assume uma outra dimensão. Desta forma, está criado um paradigma e um sistema de incentivos que premeia a pessoa que colabora com o sistema vigente. Tanto é assim que se multiplicam cada vez mais os exemplos de programas de quotas e subvenções que permitem, a quem possui um grau mais avançado de assimilação ideológica progredir socialmente atalhando o caminho para o fazer. > “Assim, toda a árvore boa produz bons frutos, porém a árvore má produz frutos maus. Não pode a árvore boa produzir frutos maus, nem a árvore má produzir frutos bons (…)” > > Mateus 7:17-18“Assim, toda a árvore boa produz bons frutos, porém a árvore má produz frutos maus. Não pode a árvore boa produzir frutos maus, nem a árvore má produzir frutos bons (…)” *> *Mateus 7:17-18* Desengane-se quem pensa que no paradigma pos-moderno não há moralização, sacerdotes e uma matriz religiosa, tudo isso existe. Os psicólogos, para mal da nossa sociedade, são crescentemente os sacerdotes desta religião pagã, aquela que baseada numa filosofia e antropologia erradas vai corrompendo intelecto e coração.  Nesta nova ordem social, que em abono da verdade é já antiga, a inversão de valores é tal que já a própria vida humana é sacrificada no altar do clima em abono da “mãe” natureza. Regredimos ao tribalismo que nos sugere que a natureza vale mais que a vida humana. Este é apenas um exemplo dos rituais de sacrifício proporcionados pela “nova” religião. Um outro exemplo que podemos dar é o da castração química e física de crianças e jovens no altar da falsa compaixão e empatia. Ainda um outro exemplo que podemos dar é o da promoção do homossexualismo, do transexualismo e da não-monogamia como caminhos saudáveis a seguir, sacrificando a vida de muitos jovens confusos no altar da inclusão. Muitos mais exemplos poderiam ser dados, porque à medida que esta “nova” religião aumenta a sua ortodoxia os rituais vão ficando cada vez mais assombrosos. Estes rituais têm por base uma apologia ao *anti logos*, quer isto dizer que procuram negar tudo o que é conhecimento básico sobre a realidade e sobre a verdade. A própria razão e lógica não se sustentam quando vemos situações como a de homens a competir em desportos femininos. As leis desta nova ordem são: “procura a felicidade (aqui muitas vezes entendida como o prazer) como fim último da vida “; “todas as opiniões são certas e não há uma verdade”; “Não servirás a nenhuma autoridade”; “não seguir o vício é opressão e seguir o vício é liberdade”. Neste ambiente inóspito, quem quiser preservar a honra e a virtude terá cada vez mais dificuldade uma vez que a dissidência desta nova religião não é aplaudida, pelo contrário é anatematizada. Porém, importa dizer que independentemente da época há sempre espaço para o heroísmo e para a transformação destas dificuldades em degraus para que o indivíduo se possa distinguir dos demais pelas suas virtudes. Onde o vício abunda também maior o destaque será em relação à graça, como uma pedra preciosa reluzente no meio da lama que aparenta brilhar mais intensamente aos nossos olhos tal é o contraste, ou como uma luz na escuridão que se distingue facilmente. ###### *Casper David Friedrich - dreaming man in church ruins*

### Project Name Nostr ### Project Description Nostr (Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays) is an open, censorship-resistant, and decentralized communication protocol designed for simplicity and resilience. Unlike traditional platforms, Nostr doesn’t rely on centralized servers. It already supports various use cases with free, open-source clients—offering alternatives to platforms like Twitter/X, Meetup.com, Excel 365, healthcare system and more. We will help you get started with Nostr. Nostr has seen remarkable adoption and growth within the open-source community, evidenced by over 12,500 GitHub stars, 500+ forks, and contributions from more than 350 developers. The protocol has catalyzed the creation of an impressive ecosystem of over 390 projects, including mobile and web clients, relays, tools, and services that further enhance Nostr’s functionality. With over 70 tools and 48 libraries, developers can integrate Nostr into a wide array of applications—ranging from chat platforms to file storage and even decentralized marketplaces. These resources help to build decentralized, censorship-resistant systems without the need for centralized servers. Whether you’re working on peer-to-peer markets, privacy-focused messaging apps, or decentralized social media, Nostr’s ecosystem offers the tools. ### Project website [https://github.com/nostr-protocol](https://github.com/nostr-protocol)  ### Source code [https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips](https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips)  ### Project Theme World Wide Web ### Do you want a stand for the entire event or just for one day? Entire event ### Why do you want to be at FOSDEM? We want to be at FOSDEM because it’s the perfect place to connect with like-minded developers and open-source enthusiasts who share our passion for decentralization, innovation, and building open permissionless technologies. FOSDEM fosters collaboration and the growth of community-driven projects and Nostr is a natural fit as a real grassroots project with its open protocol and commitment to build communication technology with resilience and simplicity in mind. By being at FOSDEM, we aim to raise awareness, share knowledge and inspire others to explore the potential of decentralized communication systems. We also want to engage with the FOSS community and gain feedback to help Nostr grow. If people are really interested in how they can use Nostr we will show the possibilities, demo existing clients and provide in-depth explanations of how the protocol can replace the social layer (with user accounts in living a database) in existing software. ### What is the relation between the project and the primary contact? Jurjen works with the community to promote its development, onboard new developers, and contribute to its open-source ecosystem. My role includes helping to raise awareness of Nostr's potential, organizing events, and supporting adoption by providing educational resources and technical guidance. ### What is the relation between the project and the secondary contact? Sebastian (37) is an independent creative / fullstack web developer who is the maintainer of a PHP helper library supported by OpenSats. Besides this project he is also making contributions with developing Nostr modules for Drupal. _“Since I've been online on the internet (1998), I'm highly interested in online communities, social networking and new ways of digital interactions. The internet has changed radically in the last decade and that change is not serving our interests. It's fair to say the web is broken in many ways. With Nostr we can fix this.”_ ### Social media links `npub1l77twp5l02jadkcjn6eeulv2j7y5vmf9tf3hhtq7h7rp0vzhgpzqz0swft` (Jurjen) `npub1qe3e5wrvnsgpggtkytxteaqfprz0rgxr8c3l34kk3a9t7e2l3acslezefe` (Sebastian) `npub1hz5alqscpp8yjrvgsdp2n4ygkl8slvstrgvmjca7e45w6644ew7sewtysa` (Tanja) `npub1nkmta4dmsa7pj25762qxa6yqxvrhzn7ug0gz5frp9g7p3jdscnhsu049fn` (Kevin) ### Anything else you like to add? We’d also like to highlight that Nostr was created by Fiatjaf, an anonymous founder, which aligns with its principles of openness and decentralization. As an open protocol, Nostr is designed to evolve and find its own way, just like the foundational protocols of the internet. Importantly, Nostr is not a blockchain project—there are no tokens, no costs, and no barriers. It’s also not a platform nor a NFT. It’s purely decentralized, built for resilience and simplicity. While payment solutions like Bitcoin can be integrated, they are optional, not intrinsic to the protocol. This makes Nostr accessible and flexible, truly embodying the spirit of the open internet. Nostr is more than just a technological protocol; it’s about the energy, problem-solving, and sense of hope that draws people in. Even newcomers can play a significant role in the ecosystem, gaining insight from the outside while discovering the protocol’s potential. Tanja, for example, isn’t from a tech background, yet after just three months, she’s taken on a major organizational role. She’s been spreading the message of freedom of speech and is leading the Nostr Booth LATAM tour, where volunteers, entrepreneurs, and Nostr-based businesses come together, supported by the entire community, to raise awareness about Nostr. Her passion for decentralization and open collaboration also drives her efforts to bring Nostr to FOSDEM, where she will help connect the project with like-minded developers and open-source advocates. Please reach out to us if there are any questions. We’re really looking forward to presenting Nostr as a protocol at one of the best places where free and open-source software is flourishing. This content will be used for a FOSDEM stand submission via [https://pretalx.fosdem.org/fosdem-2025-call-for-stands/](https://pretalx.fosdem.org/fosdem-2025-call-for-stands/)

Revelation Chapter 2:17 “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes I will give some of the hidden manna to eat. And I will give him a white stone, and on the stone a new name written which no one knows except him who receives it.” Revelations is a mysterious book with some verses that seems to make very little sense. Q: Why do we need names? A: To identify ourselves. Same reason nature opted for us to have uniquely identifiable faces. But a name no one knows except him who receives it? Why would you need that? When you are born you have very little in the way of personality and character. Doctor exclaims, “It’s a boy!” First verifiable identifier is recognised. One newborn baby looks very similar to another. For that reason they can accidentally be mixed up and given to the wrong mother at the hospital. But if the mother knows that she birthed a boy she would immediately know something is amiss if she gets handed a newborn girl. Gender is important as the first verifiable, unique identifier of the new being. The newly confirmed male child gets issued a verbally spoken and symbolically scripted identifier. This identifier is known as a name. Name and surname please. These identifiers are of little consequence to the being who knows only feelings of pain and sensations of comfort. The survival of the biological spawn is dependant on the instinct to suckle and the tendency to cry at slight discomfort. This is the language of human instinct to cry and suck. As the toddler develops it starts to respond to the vocally repeated identifier (known as a name) to the point where it has been sufficiently trained to respond to the verbal enunciation of it. When you call for someone you are evoking hope that the entity being called to will respond by coming to your physical location so that you can share or enquire information. When the summons is answered by presence you maintain connection not by repetition of the name but by eye contact and directing conversation to the face of the person. The face being the most accurate point with which to verifiably establish identity. In the book of Genesis Jacob is able to fool Isaac (His father) by exploiting his bad eyesight to steal an inheritance blessing from his older brother Esau. The face of Jacob was obscured through Isaac’s blindness which gave a false signal to the issuer of a blessing. As our proverbial John Doe grows up he develops a personality and character which allows for people to gauge the levels of trust they are willing to risk on him. Character and personality are also unique identifiers. Mother knows best at who will be diligent when keeping their rooms clean and whose rooms she will have to clean for them. She can through experience predict outcomes using knowledge of character and personality as a reference. This information is valuable and can only be established or measured when there is an ongoing relationship where trust and responsibility are continuously tested and stressed. We all have identifiers that are publicly displayed wherever we go. : Physical appearance, Wedding ring, Tatoo We have identifiers that represent or address us verbally and textually. : Names, titles, seals, signatures, handwriting et cetera. Ambiguous identifiers : Left handed, smoker, married, divorced, affiliations, church, political views, phone number, address, favourite colour, drivers license ad infinitum. In this digital world our identifiers are all exploitable by a large number of unidentifiable bad actors. This is weakness. If you are a man of character and strength but have no control over your identity. You are weak and defenceless in the eyes of these virtually indistinguishable, androgynous scammers, fraudsters, monopolies and governments. We have to take digital sovereignty over our digital identities. That means we have to train our minds in the establishment of truth. The truth being... Be true to thine self and let the truth about you be established by you. That means abandoning trust in third parties and know that no one is coming to save you and protect your personal data. Like there is no spoon in the matrix, there is also no institution who loves you enough to protect your identity in a digitally encrypted world. In some cases they might be legally obligated to, but who will take responsibility and how do you quantify and reverse the damage of leaked information. You don’t. No justice for the slave. The spoon is a lie. It simply does not exist. Revelation Chapter 2 verse 17 “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes I will give some of the hidden manna to eat. And I will give him a white stone, and on the stone a new name written which no one knows except him who receives it.” If you have an identifier that only you know about then you have a private key. You can verify your holdings of assets. You can prove your identity on nostr. You can own not only the data but prove you are the source of it. Anything that a trusted third party is currently doing for you, analog or digital is systemically being open sourced and you could do it for yourself with the press of a button. All you need is a white stone with a name on it no one else knows and be willing to carry the responsibility. You could then selectively reveal yourself to the world and prove it is you without exposing the you that is private. I will give an example to help you understand the power. John 19:31–42 31 Therefore, because it was the Preparation Day, that the bodies should not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away. 32 Then the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who was crucified with Him. 33 But when they came to Jesus and saw that He was already dead, they did not break His legs. 34 But one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out. One thing is certain, Jesus was verifiably dead. The Romans, Jews and disciples who were present at the execution and burial all concurred. He is dead. Deceased. Gone from the realm of the living. Roman soldiers were veritable experts at death and declaring the dead so. A few days later some disciples were proclaiming excitedly about Jesus being alive. A certain guy named Thomas would not be had. You guys are crazy, trying to establish some weird cult by pretending a fantastic impossibility. Nope. They were adamant. He lives. They claimed, like a bunch of fanatics. Thomas, being the voice of reason says the following. John 21:25 25 The other disciples therefore said to him, “We have seen the Lord.” So he said to them, “Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” Thomas was a real Bitcoiner. He does not trust, he verifies. Verification in progress. The body of Jesus, should he have been alive will have been littered with scar tissue all across his back and legs. It would have been easy for Him to selectively reveal his identity to whoever he chose by exposing his body and letting them verify the proof of his identity without doubt. No one in world history has ever committed suicide by flogging and crucifixion so you cannot even fake or repeat it if you wanted to commit identity theft and pretend to be the Christ. A proof of work hash in history so profound that civilisations collapsed on the realisation of its profundity. Another consequential exposition of identity verification is also expounded on by the gospel accounts. Matthew 24:5 “For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will deceive many. Eric Cason on the "What Bitcoin Did" podcast said that he thinks Bitcoin is a messianic event. I agree with him. Liberation from economic tyranny is messianic if a figure initiates the salvation process. That would suggest that there will be messianic implications, namely identity fraud of messiah with the intent to deceive and extort. Matthew 24:23 23 “Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There!’ Do not believe it. We have ourselves an example of this in Craig Wright who claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto. Yet he refuses to verify it by transferring Genesis bits. Like Thomas demands to see the scars of crucifixion so too must we demand to see on chain movement of Genesis coinbase block reward as proof of identity and proof of work from anyone who publicly makes a claim to the person of Satoshi Nakamoto. Historic records in the future might mark this dispensation, BWP (Before white paper) and ASN (After Satoshi Nakamoto) or something of this nature could stand in the annals of history, marking a era of mankind similar to BC, Before Christ and AD, anno domini, the year of our Lord. Jesus is yet to give me a secret name like Satoshi already did. Which leaves me wondering… The simulacral spectre created by Satoshi is an ongoing rabbit hole, I have no doubt. ... #bitbib

### Tldr - Nostr relays help users post and read notes on the network - Relay operators have launched a variety of relays for you to use - You too can launch your own relay for any reason you like - Launching your own relay gives you a lot of power in how you use Nostr - Many relay softwares exist for you to use - I launched a personal relay using HAVEN relay software on my VPS - I am now more in control of saving notes, cutting spam, and protecting my privacy - My personal relay is now hosted at relay.rodbishop.nz ### What are Nostr Relays Anyway? When you're a user of a social network, you post and read notes from other users on the network. In a centralised network like Twitter or Instagram the company's servers receive all user's notes and relay them to other users. On Nostr, there is no single company's servers to relay messages, so instead the task is taken up by relay operators. Anyone can be a relay operator and they can run a relay for any purpose. When you start using Nostr you will usually be connected to any one of a number of "public" relays, and be able to post and receive notes from users on the network via these. Configuring these relays can tailor your experience somewhat–for example the client Nostrudel allows you to select from Western or Japanese relay set. It is also possible to set up your own relay to use for your own purposes. All kinds of people have launched relays for all kinds of purposes. For example, to: - Power your own client - Support your community - Run a for-profit relay business - Relay a certain a type of content you need - Back up your own notes, decrease spam, or increase privacy - Curate your own social feed with your own algorithm #### Relay instances available to connect with Today is an interesting time in relay-ops. The evolution of the technology has inspired users to experiment with diverse types of relays tailored to various needs. As a result there are very many relay instances in operation and available to connect with. A few sites try to collate which relays are in operation, like [nostr.info](https://nostr.info/relays/) and [xport.top](https://relays.xport.top/) and [sesseor's relay list](https://github.com/sesseor/nostr-relays-list/blob/main/relays.txt) . These lists are long (Sessor's list counted 2,500+ relays) and it's not clear to me whether it's even possible to be comprehensive as relays may join or leave the network all the time. Broadly speaking, relays might be available for different users to use in different ways: - A relay where anyone can post, like [relay.damus.io](http://relay.damus.io) - A paid relay where anyone can post after payment, to cut spam, like [nostr.wine](http://nostr.wine) - A "web of trust" relay where anyone can post if they are related to the owner's social graph, to cut spam, like [nostrelites.org](http://nostrelites.org) - A speciality relay where a particular community can post, like [nostr.com.au](http://nostr.com.au) for #austriches (Australians) - A relay where anyone can post just specific content, like [purplepag.es](http://purplepag.es) for user profiles only - A team relay for your company or organisation only - A personal relay for your own personal use [Nostr.Band](https://stats.nostr.band/) shows which of these available relays are most popular, such as [relay.damus.io](http://relay.damus.io) and [nos.lol](nos.lol) and [eden.nostr.land](http://eden.nostr.land) #### Relay softwares for you to launch your own You may decide to launch you own relays, and if you do there are many different relay softwares to choose from: - Simple, like [Bucket](https://github.com/coracle-social/bucket) (<100 lines of code) - Widely used, like [Nostream](https://github.com/Cameri/nostream) (top ranked on Github) - Customisable, like [Khatru](https://khatru.nostr.technology/) (a framework for customised relays) - Specialised, like [HAVEN](https://github.com/bitvora/haven) or [Team Relay](https://github.com/bitvora/team-relay) (for personal or teams relays, based on Khartu) You can run these on your own server, or local machine, or [phone](https://github.com/greenart7c3/Citrine) or with a third-party host. [Aljaz](nostr:npub1aljazgxlpnpfp7n5sunlk3dvfp72456x6nezjw4sd850q879rxqsthg9jp) provides a [great resource](https://github.com/aljazceru/awesome-nostr?tab=readme-ov-file#relays) with 45+ relay softwares to choose from. In summary, at a high level, - Anyone can connect to any of the relay instances that are available for them to use - Anyone who wants to launch their own can select the relay software that best suit their needs, launch an instance, and have it used by whichever users they like ### Reasons to Run Your Own Relay As a normal user of a Nostr client there's no obligation to run a relay. But having your own relay does give you more power. For my own journey down the #nostr rabbit hole, I was looking for a relay to: - back up my notes - decrease spam - increase my privacy - learn skills I could later use for running a community or team or paid relay Backing up notes – When you post notes to a public relay there's no guarantee that the relay is going to keep them long-term. It's job is relaying your notes to other clients, not storing them. Running your own relay allows you to keep your notes online. Decrease spam – To first spam we can use a "Web of Trust" model–in which users endorse other users as trustworthy. A "Web of Trust" relay will reject notes from parties too far removed from your network. Running your own relay makes you more difficult to spam. Increasing privacy – When you connect to a public relay, they can determine personal information about you, such as your IP address. Running your own relay keeps things more private. For communities and teams and paid relays – Many opportunities exist to tailor relays to certain users needs, be they businesses or communities or as a for-profit business. For me, I am hoping that running my own relay helps me learn skills I can use in these kinds of further ventures. To start I decided to focus on a personal relay. However, when I really got under the hood, it turned out I would need multiple relays not just one. #### The outbox model [Mike Dilger](nostr:npub1acg6thl5psv62405rljzkj8spesceyfz2c32udakc2ak0dmvfeyse9p35c) proposed [the outbox model](https://mikedilger.com/gossip-model/) (originally called the gossip model) as a way for users to engage with the wider Nostr network. It's a great model that is helpful to understand, as it suggests to establish different relays for different purposes. Many clients and relay softwares have now adopted and continued to elaborate on this model. An example is to run specialised relays for Outbox, Inbox, Chat and Private needs. **Outbox Relay (also called Home Relay)** - This relay is for notes you have written, so that everyone knows where to find your notes - In a set up where you are running your own, this relay is restricted so that only you can post to it, and you should set up your clients to post your notes to it - An advanced version may take any notes received to this relay and "blast" them to other public relays so that your notes get wider reach **Inbox Relay (also called Public Relay)** - This relay is for public notes that other users want you to see, so that you always find notes that are relevant to you, including all replies, comments, likes, and zap payments - In a set up where you are running your own, this relay is where you should look for notes relevant to you, and you should set up your clients to read from it - An advanced version may search other public relays for notes that tag you, and import them into this relay so that you never miss a relevant note **Chat Relay (also called Direct Message Relay)** - This relay is for private direct message notes from other users, so that you always find your direct messages and so that they stay private - In a set up where you are running your own, this relay is restricted so that only you can read from it, and you should set up your clients to read from it - An advanced version may cut spam by only accepting direct messages from other users within your Web of Trust **Private Relay** - This relay is for your private use only, so that you can store private drafts or thoughts - Only you can write to it and only you can read from it (and so, it is a bit mis-named as it does not actually relay anything to anywhere at all) - In a set up where you are running your own, it gives you true privacy for these notes **In summary as a user** - I post my notes to my outbox relay. Network users can read them there, and if the relay is advanced it will also blast the notes out to other relays on the network - I read from my inbox relay. Network users know to reach me there, and if the relay is advanced it will also bring me notes from the wider network - I can have private direct message conversations with others in my chat relay. - I can save private notes in my private relay For me, this model has a lot of appeal and I went looking for a personal relay which adopted this model and contained all of these features. #### HAVEN as a personal relay I decided to go with HAVEN relay software. HAVEN is all four of the above relays in one–outbox, inbox, chat and private. It contains advanced features like blasting your notes from outbox to other relays, importing notes from other relays to your inbox, and preventing spam with Web of Trust. [HAVEN](https://github.com/bitvora/haven) is written by [Utxo the Webmaster](nostr:npub1utx00neqgqln72j22kej3ux7803c2k986henvvha4thuwfkper4s7r50e8) . It is based upon the [Khatru](https://khatru.nostr.technology/) relay framework by [Fiatjaf](nostr:npub180cvv07tjdrrgpa0j7j7tmnyl2yr6yr7l8j4s3evf6u64th6gkwsyjh6w6) ### Setting up HAVEN as a Personal Relay I am mostly non-technical, but on my #Nostr journey I have been having success with technology set ups that use Docker. - I have a cheap VPS which currently runs [Albyhub and Phoneixd with Docker](nostr:naddr1qq34xet5w35kueedw4cz65rp09kk2mn5wvkk7m3dfehhxarj95mk7dnvwvmszythwden5te0dehhxarj9emkjmn99upzqx760c0h894a5tg7lxgr8k506twrv2qs0yxln0nz7kgs8zae03xeqvzqqqr4gua7fyfn), - My objective was to set up HAVEN to run alongside it, in a separate Docker on the same server. HAVEN does not include Docker by default, but [Sebastix](nostr:npub1qe3e5wrvnsgpggtkytxteaqfprz0rgxr8c3l34kk3a9t7e2l3acslezefe) published a [fork with Docker support](https://github.com/nostrver-se/haven/tree/docker_compose_support). To get HAVEN up and running in Docker on your VPS: 1. Clone and configure HAVEN with the right variables 2. Launch it in Docker on your VPS 3. Check the URLs and logs to see your HAVEN running 4. Configure a subdomain to point to the VPS 5. Configure the VPS to reverse proxy to the Docker port 6. Configure the relays in your favourite Nostr client 7. Post a note to your outbox and see if it blasts! #### Running HAVEN I cloned Sebastix fork to start. ``` git clone -b docker_compose_support https://github.com/nostrver-se/haven.git cd haven ``` The software sets up all environment variables in the `.env` file, and comes with an `.env.example` file. Duplicate and rename the file to `.env`. Within the `.env` file you need to set up the environment variables. The file is long but it contains lots of repetition and for the most part defaults can be retained–only a few changes are required: - Replace all instances of the default user npub with your own (for me, `npub1r0d8...`) - Change the default relay URL to your own (for me, `relay.rodbishop.nz`) - Replace all instances of the default name in the relay names (for me, "Rod's ...") - Replace all instances of the default profile image with your own To enable automatic blasting from your outbox, and importing to your inbox, the software comes with an example list of relays to blast and import from. See `relays_blastr.example.json` and `relays_import.example.json`. To use these features simply duplicate and rename these files to `relays_blastr.json` and `relays_import.json` respectively. Within these files you can specify the public relays of your choice. I simply used the default list. There are other features available, such as backups and initial imports, but I decided to handle these later. To start with I wanted to launch the relay and test it. To launch the relay run Docker Compose. ``` docker-compose up -d docker logs haven-relay ``` Then you should explore the logs in the command line and the ports in your browser to see if it launched successfully. The logs should show your web of trust has been built successfully and the browser should show simple landing pages. The logs should show that the relay has queried the network and built a web of trust from your followers. Mine looked as follows. ``` 2024/10/14 12:02:08 🌐 building web of trust graph 2024/10/14 12:02:16 🫂 total network size: 13296 2024/10/14 12:02:16 🔗 relays discovered: 335 2024/10/14 12:02:17 🌐 pubkeys with minimum followers: 9394 keys ``` Your browser should show you have four relays in operation, for example as follows. - `your_IP_address:3355` (your outbox or home relay) - `your_IP_address:3355/private` (your private relay) - `your_IP_address:3355/chat` (your direct message relay) - `your_IP_address:3355/inbox` (your inbox relay) That's it. Your relay is online. #### Connecting HAVEN Now all that remains is the plumbing to connect your domain, relay, and Nostr clients together. **Configure DNS** First, configure your domain. At a high level – 1. Get your domain (buy one if you need to) 2. Get the IP address of your VPS 3. In your domain's DNS settings add those records as an A record to the subdomain of your choice, e.g. `relay` as in `relay.your_domain_name.com`, or in my case `relay.rodbishop.nz` Your subdomain now points to your server. **Configure reverse proxy** Next, you need to redirect traffic from your subdomain to your relay at port `3355`. On my VPS I use Caddy as a reverse proxy for a few projects, I have it sitting in a separate Docker network. To use it for my HAVEN Relay required two steps. I am sure that the way I do this is not very elegant, but it worked. If you prefer a different method, the HAVEN readme also comes with instructions on how to perform a similar setup using nginx. For my method, my steps were as follows: 1. Add configuration to Caddy's `Caddyfile` to tell it what to do with requests for the `relay.rodbishop.nz` subdomain 2. Add the Caddy Docker network to the HAVEN `docker-compose.yml` to make it be part of the Caddy network For the addition to the `Caddyfile`, I used as follows: ``` relay.rodbishop.nz { reverse_proxy haven-relay:3355 { header_up X-Forwarded-For {remote} header_up X-Forwarded-Proto {scheme} header_up X-Forwarded-Port {server_port} } } ``` For the addition to the `docker-compose.yml`, I used as follows: ``` networks: - caddy # Added this line to services to connect to the Caddy network networks: caddy: external: true # Added this to section specify the Caddy network ``` Once your DNS configuration and reverse proxy setup are completed, you should now be able to access your Nostr client at `relay.your_domain_name.com`. For my set up, this was `relay.rodbishop.nz`. **Connecting your Nostr client** Most Nostr clients allow you to specify any relay you choose. My go-to client at the moment is Amethyst on Android. Amethyst allows you to specify discrete relays for each role in the outbox model which ties up very neatly with HAVEN. - In the sidebar, select Relays - For "Public Outbox/Home Relays" enter `relay.your_domain_name.com` - For "Public Inbox Relays" enter `relay.your_domain_name.com/inbox` - For "DM Inbox Relays" enter `relay.your_domain_name.com/chat` - For "Private Home Relays" enter `relay.your_domain_name.com/private` - Click Save to broadcast your new relays to the Nostr network. Your new relay configuration is now live. **Testing your relay** Lastly, it's time to test. Amethyst provides a simple method to test this as it allows you to configure the relays used on each post. - Create a test note, and then before you post it, edit your relays using the icon at the top - Turn off all relays except your own outbox relay, and post the note - Access your HAVEN docker logs with `docker logs haven-relay` and see if there is a log to indicate if the note was received and blasted to other public relays - Copy the `nevent` of the note, and attempt to find it in another client If you're in luck, you may see something like this (the blasted note, and then users on the network responding to the note in turn). ``` 2024/10/22 00:12:23 🔫 blasted 95c477af7e6b612bf5d1d94309d2d57377a0a67d2181cfbb42a2e3fbc0feeaaf to 26 relays 2024/10/22 00:13:50 🤙 new reaction in your inbox 2024/10/22 00:14:42 🫂 new reaction in your inbox 2024/10/22 00:14:45 ✅ new reaction in your inbox 2024/10/22 00:15:12 💜 new reaction in your inbox 2024/10/22 00:17:03 ✅ new reaction in your inbox 2024/10/22 00:17:03 🫂 new reaction in your inbox 2024/10/22 00:17:55 🫂 new reaction in your inbox 2024/10/22 00:19:02 📰 new note in your inbox ``` That's it. If you followed this successfully your personal relay is up and running. #### What I did wrong so you don't have to **My first relay was too public** This blog comes after much trial and error. The first error I made was I set up a relay to use as a personal relay, but without any restrictions on use. I very quickly found other people discovered and started using my relay to save their own notes! This was unintended and I had to take it down. **Unfamiliar with Go language** I am mostly non-technical, and completely unfamiliar with Go. I got the project up and running with Go on my localhost–with a lot of help from my AI–but I then completely failed in migrating this to my VPS. Moving to Docker made the difference for me here. **I failed a few times due to a messy folder** After messing with Go, I moved to the Docker setup, but I started my work from a messy folder which contained remnants of the Go build, which caused various failures. Deleting the folder and cloning again from scratch solved the issue. **Trouble with Nostr.wine** I subscribe to the Nostr.wine paid relay, and I initially added it to the list of relays in my blaster. However, it didn't work, and the logs showed an error as follows ``` CLOSED from wss://nostr.wine: 'auth-required: this relay only serves private notes to authenticated users' ``` It seems my npub's subscription to Nostr.wine is not enough for it to permit my relay to blast notes to it. In the end, I removed Nostr.wine from my relay config, and kept Nostr.wine as a separate entry in my Client's outbox settings. **Failed to create web of trust graph** When I first launched the relay on my VPS, HAVEN failed to complete the Web of Trust graph, with a log that looked as follows (note the zeroes). As a result, no one would have been able to send me DM's to my Chat relay (it would flag every message as spam). ``` 2024/10/14 12:02:08 🌐 building web of trust graph 2024/10/14 12:02:16 🫂 total network size: 0 2024/10/14 12:02:16 🔗 relays discovered: 0 2024/10/14 12:02:17 🌐 pubkeys with minimum followers: 0 keys ``` I never got to the bottom of why this was. In the process of trying to fix it I rebuild the container, and on the rebuild it spontaneously worked. Accordingly my lesson learned is "if in doubt, turn if off and on again". **Failed to run --import function** HAVEN comes with a function to import all your old notes from other public relays to your own outbox relay. When I run it I get an error as follows: ``` panic: Cannot acquire directory lock on "db/private". Another process is using this Badger database. error: resource temporarily unavailable ``` I have yet to work out the solution for this, and will update this note when I do so! ### What's Next? Over the past four blogs I have - [Mined a Nostr pubkey and backed up the mnemonic](nostr:naddr1qqsy66twd9hxwtteda6hyt2kv9hxjare94g82cntv4uj6drfw4cxyeszyqda5lslwwttmgk3a7vsx0dgl5kuxc5pq7gdlxlx9av3qw9mjlzdjqcyqqq823c6e2ekw) - [Set up Nostr payments with a Lightning wallet plus all the bells and whistles](nostr:naddr1qq34xet5w35kueedw4cz65rp09kk2mn5wvkk7m3dfehhxarj95mk7dnvwvmsygqmmflp7uukhk3drmueqv763lfdcd3gzpusm7d7vt6ezquth97ymypsgqqqw4rsuql6je) - [Set up NIP-05 and Lighting Address at my own domain](nostr:naddr1qqyx2efcvy6rvcnrqyghwumn8ghj7mn0wd68ytnhd9hx2tczyqda5lslwwttmgk3a7vsx0dgl5kuxc5pq7gdlxlx9av3qw9mjlzdjqcyqqq823c634nh0) - Set up a Personal Relay at my own domain This feels like a very comprehensive personal set up now. Also, I have uncovered some new rabbit holes and feel like I have some projects to tackle. Perhaps one of these? - Set up a personal homepage with my Nostr feed to round-out my rodbishop.nz domain - Experiment with different signers like Amber and Nsec.app and NFC cards - Set up a paid relay for #austriches (Australians and Kiwis on Nostr) - Set up a team relay to experiment with Nostr for business or community projects - Or something else ... ? Please be sure to let me know if you think there's another Nostr topic you'd like to see me tackle. Pura vida Nostr.

## Chef's notes These "crackers" go well as a chip alternative when having carnivore tacos, as well as serves as a general snack. They are not really shelf stable and will get stale fairly quickly. I would recommend eating them within 24 hours of baking. While any thickness of cheese can be used, I've found that the ultra thin sliced cheese works the best. ## Details - ⏲️ Prep time: 5 - 🍳 Cook time: 40-45 minutes depending on your oven. - 🍽️ Servings: 1-2 ## Ingredients - Ultra Thin Sliced Cheese (pick your favorite type) - Parchment Paper ## Directions 1. Preheat oven to 250 degrees. 2. While the oven is preheating, line a baking sheet with parchment paper. 3. Take the individually sliced cheese and cut into any size you prefer. I recommend cutting in 4 equal squares for use as traditional cracker or "chip" when eating tacos. 4. Place on the parchment paper allowing space between each cheese slice. 5. Bake in a 250 degree oven for 40-45 minutes checking periodically to determine the cheese has achieved your desired level of crispness. 6. One your cheese is done, remove from the oven and place the cheese slices on a paper towel to cool and allow for excess oil to drain. 7. Place in a ziplock back and eat within 24 hours.

# **Destination: Medieval Venice, 1100 AD** *How did Venice build its trade empire through collaboration, innovation, and trust in decentralized networks?* --- ## **Venice: A City of Merchants and Innovators** In medieval times, Venice was a symbol of freedom and prosperity. Unlike the monarchies that dominated Europe, Venice was a republic – a city-state where important decisions were made by the Council of Nobles, and (the Doge, the elected chief magistrate of Venice who served as a ceremonial head of state with limited power), not an absolute ruler. Venice became synonymous with innovative approaches to governance, banking, and trade networks, which led to its rise as one of the most powerful trading centers of its time. --- ### **Decentralized Trade Networks** The success of Venice lay in its trust in decentralized trade networks. Every merchant, known as a **patrician**, could freely develop their trade activities and connect with others. While elsewhere trade was often controlled by kings and local lords, Venetians believed that prosperity would come from a free market and collaboration between people. Unlike feudal models based on hierarchy and absolute power, Venetian trade networks were **open** and based on **mutual trust**. Every merchant could own ships and trade with the Middle East, and this decentralized ownership of trade routes led to unprecedented prosperity. --- ### **Story: The Secret Venetian Alliance** A young merchant named **Marco**, who inherited a shipyard from his father, was trying to make a name for himself in the bustling Venetian spice market. In Venice, there were many competitors, and competition was fierce. Marco, however, learned that an opportunity lay outside the traditional trade networks – among **small merchants** who were trying to maintain their independence from the larger Venetian patricians. Marco decided to form an alliance with several other small merchants. Together, they began to share ships, crew costs, and information about trade routes. By creating this informal network, they were able to compete with the larger patricians who controlled the major trade routes. Through **collaboration** and shared resources, they began to achieve profits they would never have achieved alone. In the end, Marco and his fellow merchants succeeded, not because they had the most wealth or influence, but because they trusted each other and worked together. They proved that small players could thrive, even in a market dominated by powerful patricians. Satoshi ends his journey here, enlightened by the lesson that even in a world where big players exist, trust and collaboration can ensure that the market remains free and open for everyone. --- ## **Venice and Trust in Decentralized Systems** Venice was a symbol of how **decentralization** could lead to prosperity. There was no need for kings or powerful rulers, but instead, trust and collaboration among merchants led to the creation of a wealthy city-state. Venice demonstrated that when people collaborate and share resources, they can achieve greater success than in a hierarchical system with a single central ruler. --- ## **A Lesson from Venice for Today's World** Today, as we think about the world of Bitcoin and decentralized finance (DeFi), Venice reminds us that trust among individuals and collaboration are key to maintaining independence and freedom. Just as in Venice, where smaller merchants found strength in collaboration, we can also find ways to keep the crypto world decentralized, open, and fair. --- ## **Key** | Term | Explanation | |------|-------------| | Doge | The elected chief magistrate of Venice who served as a ceremonial head of state with limited power. | | Patrician | A member of the noble class in Venice, typically involved in trade and governance. | | Decentralized Finance (DeFi) | A financial system that does not rely on central financial intermediaries, instead using blockchain technology and smart contracts. | originally posted at https://stacker.news/items/737232

## Chef's notes This recipe is for 48 buns. Total cooking time takes at least 90 minutes, but 60 minutes of that is letting the dough rest in between processing. The baking is a simple three-step process. 1. Making the Wheat dough 2. Making and applying the filling 3. Garnishing and baking in the oven When done: Enjoy during Fika! PS; * Can be frozen and thawed in microwave for later enjoyment as well. * If you need unit conversion, this site may be of help: https://www.unitconverters.net/ * Traditionally we use something we call "Pearl sugar" which is optimal, but normal sugar or sprinkles is okay too. Pearl sugar (Pärlsocker) looks like this: https://search.brave.com/images?q=p%C3%A4rlsocker ## Ingredients - 150 g butter - 5 dl milk - 50 g baking yeast (normal or for sweet dough) - 1/2 teaspoon salt - 1-1 1/2 dl sugar - (Optional) 2 teaspoons of crushed or grounded cardamom seeds. - 1.4 liters of wheat flour - Filling: 50-75 g butter, room temperature - Filling: 1/2 - 1 dl sugar - Filling: 1 teaspoons crushed or ground cardamom and 1 teaspoons ground cinnamon (or 2 teaspoons of cinnamon) - Garnish: 1 egg, sugar or Almond Shavings ## Directions 1. Melt the butter/margarine in a saucepan. 2. Pour in the milk and allow the mixture to warm reach body temperature (approx. + 37 ° C). 3. Dissolve the yeast in a dough bowl with the help of the salt. 4. Add the 37 ° C milk/butter mixture, sugar and if you choose to the optional cardamom. (I like this option!) and just over 2/3 of the flour. 5. Work the dough shiny and smooth, about 4 minutes with a machine or 8 minutes by hand. 6. Add if necessary. additional flour but save at least 1 dl for baking. 7. Let the dough rise covered (by a kitchen towel), about 30 minutes. 8. Work the dough into the bowl and then pick it up on a floured workbench. Knead the dough smoothly. Divide the dough into 2 parts. Roll out each piece into a rectangular cake. 9. Stir together the ingredients for the filling and spread it. 10. Roll up and cut each roll into 24 pieces. 11. Place them in paper molds or directly on baking paper with the cut surface facing up. Let them rise covered with a baking sheet, about 30 minutes. 12. Brush the buns with beaten egg and sprinkle your chosen topping. 13. Bake in the middle of the oven at 250 ° C, 5-8 minutes. 14. Allow to cool on a wire rack under a baking sheet.

## Chef's notes Ingredients 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter 2 ounces thinly sliced prosciutto, cut into thin strips 1 1/4 cups orzo (about 8 ounces) 3 cups low-salt chicken broth 1/2 teaspoon (loosely packed) saffron threads, crushed 1 pound slender asparagus, trimmed, cut into 1/2-inch pieces 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese Parmesan cheese shavings Preparation Melt 2 tablespoons butter in large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add prosciutto and sauté until almost crisp, about 3 minutes. Using slotted spoon, transfer to paper towels to drain. Melt 2 tablespoons butter in same skillet over high heat. Add orzo; stir 1 minute. Add broth and saffron; bring to boil. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer until orzo begins to soften, stirring occasionally, about 8 minutes. Add asparagus; cover and simmer until tender, about 5 minutes. Uncover; simmer until almost all liquid is absorbed, about 1 minute. Remove from heat. Mix in prosciutto and 1/2 cup grated cheese. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Transfer to large bowl. Garnish with Parmesan shavings. Makes 6 servings. ## Details - ⏲️ Prep time: 30 - 🍳 Cook time: 30 ## Ingredients - See Chef’s Notes ## Directions 1. See Chef’s Notes

# Amber why, what, how? ## Why? Downstairs different then other social media apps. Instead of passwords managed by a central entity that can be recovered your identity is secured cryptographically with a public and private key pair. This grants you a lot of freedom. It also burdens you with a lot of responsibility. If your private key gets lost you lose access to your account forever. No one can help you. If your private key gets compromised the attacker will have access to your account in perpetuity. Able to impersonate you to all your contacts forever. We need a way to keep our nsec's safe. We want to be able to try out all the latest nostr apps without compromising our keys. We need a way to back up our keys offline. ## What? Enter Amber. By Greenart7c3. Amber allows you to leverage any noster app that utilizes nip-46. Which is rapidly growing in popularity. And it's relatively simple to implement for developers so I expect it will become standard at some point. It's based on nsec bunker. The main difference being instead of your keys being on a remote server they are on your phone. Basically, a app that supports this and send request to Amber which will sign the event with your key and then be published via whichever app you are using. communications through a NOSTR relay. **Having your keys on your phone does post some security risks in and of itself. But I always recommend a strong pin instead of face or fingerprint ID anyways. As well as being very selective with the apps you put on your phone and the permissions you give them. I personally use graphene OS because it gives me complete control over app permissions including the otherwise mandatory Google Play and Android system apps. If your phone is wide open first considered changing that. If you're unable to then maybe look for another key management solution** Amber also enables nip-06 which allows for key generation with a mnemonic backup. For anyone who's ever had a Bitcoin wallet it's the exact same thing. In fact you can even use them as a different wallet. This way you can store your key's backup safely offline as a hard copy. Write them on paper, stamp on on stainless steel, or for ultimate resilience chisel them in a granite tablet. ##How?  If it's not displaying in your client here's the link: [Video](https://v.nostr.build/GYRZeCeUPvCyRh9o.mp4) **All zaps from this note are %100 split with greenart7c3 so show some love** greenart7c3: >npub1w4uswmv6lu9yel005l3qgheysmr7tk9uvwluddznju3nuxalevvs2d0jr5

**Destination: Medieval Iceland, 930 AD** *What lead almost 100 years old decentralized grouping of Icelandic settlers to start centralization and what we can learn from it in modern days?* ***The Icelandic Commonwealth and the Danger of Centralized Power*** In 930 AD, Iceland underwent a pivotal moment in its history. After nearly a century of living without kings, formal government, or centralized authority, the Icelanders decided to establish a parliament—***Alþing***. **Iceland Before 930 AD** Iceland was settled in the 9th century, primarily by Norse settlers seeking to escape the *rule of kings* in Norway. This new land, with its rugged landscape filled with volcanoes, hot springs, and vast uninhabited plains, offered refuge to those who desired ***freedom and independence*** For almost a ***hundred*** years, Icelanders lived without a formal state. Society was organized around family ties and personal agreements. Power was decentralized, divided among various ***goðar***—chieftains or leaders of local communities. These goðar were not rulers but intermediaries in disputes and protective patrons of their followers. People turned to them for help negotiating peace or resolving conflicts, but there was no ***central*** authority to impose laws or collect taxes. This system of ***personal responsibility*** and mutual aid was the cornerstone of Icelandic society. If conflicts arose, they were resolved through negotiation between individuals or families. Many Icelanders took pride in maintaining order without the need for a centralized state. By 930 AD, Iceland thrived on its simple way of life. Its inhabitants sustained themselves through fishing, herding, and trade. Farms sprouted across the country, often miles apart, and people were accustomed to self-sufficiency. The distance between settlements and the harsh terrain made travel difficult, further reinforcing the need for local relations and decentralized governance. However, this decentralized way of life was ***not without problems***. As the population grew and wealth began to concentrate in the hands of some ***agressive*** goðar, disputes became more frequent. Personal conflicts between powerful families sometimes escalated into ***violence***, which started to affect entire communities. In this context, the idea of a formal parliament—Alþing—began to take shape as a way to maintain peace and resolve these disputes. **Alþing** The Alþing is one of the oldest parliamentary institutions in the world, established in 930 AD in Iceland. It served as a national assembly where chieftains, known as goðar, and free men gathered at ***Þingvellir*** to settle disputes, create laws, and maintain social order. The Alþing functioned as both a legislative and judicial body, where people could present grievances and seek resolutions. Although there was no centralized ruler, the Alþing became a key institution for organizing Icelandic society and resolving conflicts through a legal framework rather than violence. While this was seen by many as a step towards civilizing the resolution of disputes, some feared that this move would lead to the loss of the freedom that Icelandic settlers had cherished for so long. **The Story: A Family’s Loss in the Shadow of the Alþing** The story begins with ***Úlfljótur***, a man sent to Norway to study its laws. Úlfljótur believed that Iceland needed a better way to resolve disputes among powerful goðar and maintain peace. After years of studying abroad, he returned with a legal system that would form the basis of the Alþing. Úlfljótur joined forces with his half-brother, ***Grímur Geitskör***, who was tasked with finding a suitable location for the assembly. After a long search, Grímur discovered the wide plains of ***Þingvellir***, a dramatic landscape that proved ideal for public gatherings. While many Icelanders, especially the powerful goðar, welcomed the establishment of the Alþing as a means to maintain order, one of them ***Hallr the Saylor*** was almost in agonia. He saw an opinion how to become even more stronger. But not everyone was in agreement. ***Hrafna-Flóki Vilgerðarson***, the legendary explorer who had discovered Iceland and given it its name, was deeply skeptical. Flóki, who had made his living fishing and trading with other settlers, had always relied on unwritten rules of mutual respect and honest dealings among free people. The idea of a ***centralized*** parliament filled him with distrust. ***Hallr the Saylor*** visited Flóki with asking to go to on his side with asking and Flóki asks *“Why should we need laws crafted by a few men far from our homes?”* Flóki asked during a public gathering. *“Iceland has been a free land where every man governs his own affairs. What will Alþing bring, other than power for those who crave to rule?”* ***Hallr the Saylor*** he says *because it will help mostly the people he cares about and it will make the community thrive and that's what we're all about* And unfortunately, that kind of faking was enough for ***Saylor*** to convince the naive Flóki **Drama at Þingvellir: The Hidden Agenda of the Goðar** **Fateful night** In 930, the first Alþing was convened. The goðar, including Úlfljótur and other powerful chieftains, gathered at Þingvellir to establish a legal framework for resolving disputes. Hrafna-Flóki did not attend the assembly, but his grandson, young ***Þorleifur***, traveled in secret to witness what was happening. Behind the scenes, Þorleifur discovered that some goðar, especially ***Hallr the Saylor*** (fictional character created for drama), were planning to use the Alþing to strengthen their own power. Rather than serving as a tool for fairness, the parliament was becoming a mechanism for a ***few individuals*** as Saylor to consolidate wealth and influence. Hallr the Saylor, in particular, was positioning himself to control key disputes and resources of sound like food and water. On the day the Alþing was founded, the assembly was celebrated as a triumph of cooperation. But Þorleifur saw the truth—it was the beginning of a subtle yet devastating shift in power. Although no king sat on a throne, the seeds of ***monopolistic rule*** had been planted. Returning home, Þorleifur confronted his grandfather, Flóki, with what he had learned. Flóki, a man who had always trusted in the integrity of Icelandic society, was heartbroken. On the other side of Iceland were Úlfljótur returning home after that Alþing surprisingly heartbroken too. He realized too late that the Alþing, which he suggested to preserve peace, had laid the foundation for centralized control. It was allready late to do something and that is where Satoshi ending his travel to Medival Iceland and he’s going back to home, enlightened by mistakes of settlers. **Conclusion: Iceland’s Lesson for Today** The founding of the Alþing was a milestone in Iceland’s history, but it also serves as a reminder of how ***quickly*** power can be centralized into the hands of a few. While Icelandic settlers had survived for almost a century without a formal government, the Alþing symbolized the beginning of ***centralized power***, which would later have serious consequences for Icelandic society. The lesson for us today is clear: centralization of power—whether in legal or financial systems—can easily lead to the erosion of personal freedom. In today’s Bitcoin ecosystem, we see figures like ***Michael Saylor***, who resemble the powerful chieftains of Medieval Iceland, using the legal framework of the Alþing to consolidate their power. Although Saylor’s large purchases of Bitcoin might not seem harmful at first, the danger lies in his potential to use Bitcoin’s strength to support centralized systems with monopolistic control. Just as the Alþing, originally intended in good faith, it was eventually used by a few to dominate Icelandic society, Bitcoin’s decentralized promise could also be hijacked. If influential figures like Saylor push for solutions that favor centralization within Bitcoin’s infrastructure, they risk undermining its core values. What started as a tool for financial freedom could quickly become another system controlled by a select few, leading to the same monopolistic dominance that Bitcoin was meant to resist. **Just don’t sell your coins to Saylor!** originally posted at https://stacker.news/items/735970

This is the full AI-generated transcript, lightly edited, of Bitcoin Infinity Show #131 with Adam Back! He joined us from Baltic Honeybadger in Riga to talk about the last year in Bitcoin, and the outlook on Bitcoin in the future, both in the near and long term. We explore the challenges posed by spam transactions, the 'freeloader' problem, and the future of Bitcoin's security incentives. The episode also touches on the complexities of fractional reserve banking, rehypothecation risks, and the rise of decentralized systems and free speech platforms. # Welcoming Adam Back **Luke:** Adam, welcome back to the Bitcoin Infinity Show, **Adam:** Good to be here again. **Knut:** Yeah, welcome, Adam, back to the Bitcoin Infinity Show, right? So, how are you **Knut:** today? **Adam:** Yeah, pretty good. Good to be back in Riga at this conference. One of the few kind of Bitcoin only conferences that's still running. I mean, they did a panel yesterday talking about the history of Bitcoin, of the conference. And they observed that there were some people that came to all of them. **Adam:** Apparently I was one of them. I didn't realize, that's, that's true though, in the sense that I like Bitcoin only conferences. So, you know, there's too many conferences really for people who have a day job to go to, or maybe even for anybody's case at this point, there's so many conferences, right? But. If you've got to make a choice, you want to come to the Bitcoin Only ones. **Adam:** And this is one of the good ones. **Knut:** Yeah, I missed the first one, but I've been to all the other **Knut:** ones. So like, this is where everything started for me. And I, I really like it because it's so high signal, low noise. **Luke:** And I don't think there's a single shit coiner in here this year. I've met a couple of, people who aren't fully orange pilled, but yeah, there aren't any crypto vendors or **Luke:** anything. **Knut:** one's shilling this stuff. **Luke:** I've got a good thing going. # Adam's Last Year **Knut:** so how has your year been? Well, last time we interviewed you was here in Riga last year. **Adam:** it was. **Knut:** What has happened? You made a price prediction then, **Adam:** yeah, I was seeing the, well, let me see what time of year. Yeah, it's probably this time of year. So I think the price was like a bit depressed, 30k range or something. And I was saying, we might see 100k before the halving and everybody thought I was insane because they thought we were going to see 10k or something dismal. **Adam:** And so, you know, of course, if you make a price prediction and you miss, you always get ragged, but like, it's not a precise science, right? And so, so my argument is, well, I was directionally right, that we had a new all time high before the half inc, which had never happened before, and it wasn't 100, but it was like, over 70, which nobody saw coming. **Adam:** So, there's a lot of stuff going on in the world, so I take that as a kind of philosophical win, personally. **Knut:** The all time high was when we were on Madeira, I believe. **Knut:** That's when it happened. **Knut:** So that was a big moment. # Adam's Price Prediction **Knut:** when does Bitcoin hit a hundred thousand? **Adam:** well probably, maybe even this year or next year, like, I think there are a lot of temporary headwinds which are wearing off, you know, the bankruptcy selling, like FTX bankruptcy selling. Because Some of these bankruptcies take a dollar denominated definition. **Adam:** So they declare a bankruptcy date and they sell everything to dollars. And then they run their process, try and claw back what they can, and then pay it out. And so people get back, you know, the people who had the bitcoins on there would sooner have the bitcoin and experience the bitcoin price movement between the bankruptcy date and today. **Adam:** Even if it's like a fraction of the bitcoin. I don't know, what they did is they sold to dollars and they declared that everybody made a profit. But now they have to buy the bitcoin back, you know, four times the price or something. So, I mean, there's a lot of things like that, you know. different bankruptcies, selling, government seizures, Mt. **Adam:** Gox paying out. Mt. Gox doesn't seem to be having that much effect. But, you know, there's a new, new game in town, which is the ETF buyers. And they are, I think, predominantly in the U. S., I mean, these U. S. ETFs, of course you can buy them internationally, but presumably mostly U. **Adam:** S. buyers. And if you look at a segment of the U. S. kind of individual investors. So if you take the top 10 percent of wealth, you subtract the top 1%, you know, the billionaires kind of thing. The top 10 percent might be, you know, professionals, doctors, lawyers. Business owners, people with a portfolio ranging from a few hundred thousand to a few million kind of thing. **Adam:** And between them, they have, 30 trillion worth of stocks and bonds and different things in their portfolio, basically. And so we think it's those guys that are buying. And if you look at the ETF inflows, 30 trillion, 1 percent of, if they did a 1 percent allocation, it'd be 300 billion, which would move the Bitcoin price, because even though Bitcoin's market cap's like maybe 1. **Adam:** 3 trillion, price is set at the margin, and there's a multiplier of money in, as we know, right? and so if you look at their allocations so far, if you assume it's all US, they're like at six basis points or something, so they've got a way to go. not all of the wealth management firms have internal approvals or training materials or, rules about what they can, how they can sell it in place yet. **Adam:** Another thing that was going on is post harving, miners are having a bad time. hash price is down, miner profitability is not so good. There's still a surplus of miners. And so, you've got people with sunk cost miners. So, they're going to turn them online, even if they are just to reduce their loss. **Adam:** Right? And so that kind of suppresses the hash price. and so some of them have been selling Bitcoin. I mean, they try to accumulate and keep Bitcoin on a balance sheet, but some of them have been selling their Bitcoin, to, Get through this tough period, so once, I think once that runs out and you've seen some consolidation, like acquisitions and mergers and bankruptcies in the mining sector. **Adam:** So once they're selling stops, that helps as well, right? So it's all about like the balance of sellers and buyers. So yeah, I think, and the other kind of positive surprise is the ETF buyers seems to be good hotlists. Like, they buy and they don't sell. Like, you know, there's a decent pullback and there's very little outflow from the ETFs. **Adam:** Have, you know, with, with stocks, there are analysts who are looking at prices that work for pension funds and things like that. And they will have a price target. And if the price gets low, they'll say it's cheap and they'll put money in and they'll buy it because they've got a thesis. With Bitcoin, most of the people who have the thesis have no fear left. **Adam:** And so absorbing downside is difficult. Structurally, right? people who buy and panic actually might be a net negative. but the ETF buyers apparently are not like that, so that's positive news, for the market structure. So, yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of, goods set up here, and, you know, people are talking about institutional. **Adam:** Interest, but I don't think there's that, that hasn't landed yet, really. You know, there's a few very early funds. So institutional, we would mean pension funds, mutual funds, like managed by professionals on behalf of individuals rather than individuals making allocations within their own portfolio. **Adam:** And so there are a few places where, you know, BlackRock has added it to some managed fund or Fidelity, but there's very few of them right now. And they've made small allocations. So I think, you know, there's lots of, all of that is ahead of us. And that's even more money than this, you know, the top, 10 percent minus 1 percent band of investors in the US. # The Problem of Spam **Knut:** Yeah, you mentioned minor profitability there, and one thing we've explored on this show a lot is the spam issue, so I'd love to pick your brain on what your stance on that is, how big of a problem it is, how we solve the problem, **Adam:** Yeah. **Knut:** what the fee spikes are doing to it. You know, custodial lightning providers and stuff like, what are your thoughts? **Adam:** Yeah. I mean, of course, because Bitcoin is permissionless, there's nothing we can do about it. And we need that to be the case because, you know, if censorship is possible, it can be directed at anything at spam and, things that, some group of people don't like there's not much we can do about it in terms of selective filtering, because Bitcoin is permissionless and censorship resistant. **Adam:** But in terms, and some people would say just a kind of market statement that spam doesn't exist. If people pay, it's not spam because they paid for it. But I disagree. I think it's clear that Bitcoin is, focused on use cases and an outcome for savings and ability to transact the savings, ability to do transactions, to use it, to support second layers for more kind of permissionless payments and activities that degrade the ability to transact. **Adam:** that hurts, you know, hurts layer two. Maybe, you know, they're also consuming UTXO space and it's a scarce resource, so they're gonna price some newcomers out of it. Like the wealth levels in the world are quite disparate. And so, you know, they may price some newcomers out of being able to even own A-U-T-X-O, which is not a positive thing. **Adam:** And you know, the, the spam transactions are not. I think they're useless and stupid, right? They're just putting JPEGs on the chain that, you know, obliterate the space of a hundred UTXOs at a pop. And so, you know, maybe they think they derive value from it in their kind of NFT Ponzi game, but it's a negative for Bitcoin.   **Knut:** Yeah. So, what about an initiative like Ocean, for instance, that just chooses to, or let's, let's the individual miners select the block and. **Adam:** Well, I think it's good. It's good for individual miners to be able to select blocks because, you want kind of decentralization theory that you get a more robust system, that's basically how censorship resistance works in Bitcoin, which is if one miner won't process your transactions because he doesn't like you, another one will because there's a fee involved or because philosophically he doesn't want to see any policy there. **Adam:** So from that point of view, it's good. Now they do get some ribbing because their blocks may be less profitable. some people will mine the block with the highest fees, even if it's full of JPEGs or something. **Knut:** Yeah, **Knut:** but I think the rationale there, as far as I understand it, is that the bigger mining pools, mining these blocks with all the spam in them, that they might be getting payments under the table, so to speak. So it's not transparent, so the individual hash salesman that sells their hashing power to that particular pool, Might not get, as big a cut of the reward as they think they do, and that in the long run you might be even more profitable mining with something like Ocean. **Adam:** That's been, there was, I think Bob Burnett looked at this and did this over quite some time and his ocean pointed, ASICs did better than, Various FPPS pools. He didn't name the pools, but yeah. I mean, it's clear that when they're doing this, the fees go up. I mean, they saw a fee spike just a few days ago, right? And, well, I mean, it's very positive if, if the rational thing to do, you know, that's, that's positive for Bitcoin, actual native use cases also is more profitable because it shows the free market potentially has a solution. **Adam:** and also, you know, just because we are, Economic actors doesn't mean we have to be, hyper rational. Like, you know, there is some ethical, like some people won't accept stolen goods on a principle, a lot of people. And like you say, but it's cheap. You save money, you make money by doing it, but they don't want to do it because they disagree philosophically. **Adam:** And so there is potentially some scope within Bitcoin mining for, Kind of soft, policy type of things, right? Which is, you know, they choose to deprioritize JPEGs or something, right? it's interesting. I mean, it's possible that what that's saying as well is that the pools taking under the table payments are being unethical actually, right? **Adam:** So they are, Under reporting or keeping the profit or excluding the profit from their payout calculations or something. So, yeah. **Knut:** Maybe it's not that they're being unethical, but that the hash salesmen aren't vigilant enough in checking what is actually going on. So they just accept, oh, I'm making a profit, so therefore I'm good. When they could have been making a bigger profit with a more ethical behavior. I mean, the spam, like the long term risk of the spam is that the cost of firing up a new node gets so high, so it's somewhat of an attack surface that in the long run will reduce the number of attacks. **Knut:** individual nodes because they're too expensive to run, and hard decentralization. So what's your take there? **Adam:** Well, I think, the miners are typically, not the pools, but the miners themselves are typically Bitcoin holders. They want to mine a Bitcoin at discount and keep as many of it as they can. Because they're trying to build a bitcoin stash or treasury for the company or, stacking sats for the owner or operator. **Adam:** And some of these pools have been around a long time, so they're like privately owned and stuff like that, right? And some of the miners too. If that's the case, they're not just kind of short term profiteers. They have a long term alignment in Bitcoin's adoption curve, usefulness. If everybody went crazy and like, shrunk the blocks effectively, or made it very disruptive. So it hurt use cases, made Lightning harder to use. Then, you know, that could impact people's confidence in transact with Bitcoin. or it could push everybody to custodial wallets or something. **Adam:** So it could have a long term negative effect on the Bitcoin economic, you know, price and adoption curve. And so from that point of view, as a long term investor in Bitcoin, as a miner, let's say, Maybe you're willing to forego some, you know, fee spikes because you think that will help Bitcoin and you help everybody eventually. **Knut:** Now the problem is the freeloader, right? So, you know, if everybody takes that view or enough people take that view, it works out. But if it's, only 10 percent of people do it, then the people who take the more freeloader kind of mentality, they actually profit short term. Yeah, so the question boils down to, is that incentive strong enough? the incentive to keep Bitcoin alive for a long time? or is that a weak chain in the link of Bitcoin security? **Adam:** Well, I think, because one other sort of risk that people talk about, which I think is premature, is the prospect that the reward eventually stops because the halvings or becomes less significant, right? and then they wonder, does the network have enough incentive to secure itself? **Adam:** My argument is, most other forms of money are weaker. fiat depends on, 10, 000 banks, none of them being hacked, kind of weakest link in the chain and audit discovery of insider theft or unauthorized printing and stuff like that. So I think people, need money to work. **Adam:** And so, you know, with Bitcoin, there's a trillion dollar incentive for it to work from all the savers, right? And so I think they would actually find ways to make it work regardless, Because they value bitcoin, or you know, they have a business that makes money because of bitcoin, and if it becomes less functional, that has their business. **Adam:** So, there are other, you know, kind of mutual cooperation situations. I mean, a close one is internet peering arrangements, right? So, you know, the internet, everybody, retailers using an internet connection is paying a service provider. But at a certain level of service provider or telecom provider, they have peering arrangements where they agree to transit each other's traffic in like a tit for tat or, you know, without payment or with some calculated rebalancing or something. **Adam:** So it shows that, those companies need the internet to work. And so they'll find a way to cooperate, Because ultimately they make all their money from selling, from the internet working well. And so you could see that working with Bitcoin. **Adam:** If Bitcoin is the internet of money, why couldn't that go up with Bitcoin? So I think it could ultimately. So I'm not really worried about, you know, I think long term things will work out. And, and I think the other point is, you know, these use cases might just price themselves out. Like, you know, the fee spikes haven't lasted that long so far. **Adam:** And also they tend to be You know, rug pull the investors and I think the investors are getting fatigue, like, you know, get sick of losing money and then they eventually learn. So, you know, I saw a post last month by some altcoin guy, but it was basically a plea to altcoin creators and memecoin creators to reduce the pre mine. **Adam:** Because it was making hard to sell new coins because there was no possible, almost no possibility even for a lucky retail investor to make any money because the insiders were just, you know, dumping on it before it had a chance to succeed. And the users just gave up, lost interest in playing the roulette game. **Adam:** Right. So near from that point, if you, this kind of profiteering is sort of killing itself slowly as well. **Knut:** I guess the devil's advocate argument to that is that what if a spammer has an actual money printer and like, if this is actually a state funded attack to reduce the usability of Bitcoin and thereby saving the legacy system, it's far fetched, I know, but **Adam:** Hmm. Yeah. **Knut:** even possible? **Adam:** I guess they would be. Paying. So, you know, potentially the Bitcoin ecosystem would have more money to fight back because the attacker is paying it. So, you know, maybe something creative could be done. I think there are like, if it became a problem, there would be workarounds, right?   **Knut:** All right. next topic. # Layer 2s and the Spam Problem **Luke:** Well, a follow on on this one is the effect on the layer twos. And I mean, Liquid, I think, saw quite a bit of adoption, right? As a result of these fee things. Like the incentives, the other incentives that people move to other layers, basically. And people with lightning channels were very happy, but other people without lightning channels were less happy. things like, Boltz's interoperability with liquid and things like that seems to have solved that, so I mean, what has been the effect on liquid, in all this? **Adam:** Yeah, I think we were talking about this last time, so it was like, it had just started to happen then, and it's actually continued and grown. so there are more wallets using liquid and bolts combo, **Adam:** you have a liquid wallet and use the bolts exchange to swap liquid for lightning or swap lightning for liquid. to the user, it feels like they are able to interoperate with lightning. It feels like they have a lightning wallet, but actually they're using the managed channels, using bolts, his own capital on the main chain. **Adam:** And they're atomically swapping liquid. So I mean, the original mechanism they built was to rebalance lightning channels. And it started on the main chain, it got disrupted by the first wave of ordinals and inscriptors. And so they rapidly implemented a liquid Bitcoin atomic, submarine atomic swap to rebalance the main chain. **Adam:** But over a period of months, that became used by wallets as an API. You know, originally it was just for people managing channels to rebalance channels, but it became actually second use, which is a wallet API. so that has continued to grow in popularity. So it's sort of competing with other Lightning stacks. **Adam:** You know, say Blockstream, for example, has Core Lightning, which is, you know, there are a few, like three or four Lightning kind of node and library implementations. And Core Lightning is one of them that focuses on interoperability, and standards, you know, evolving the standards, doing things in a standard interoperable way. **Adam:** we have Greenlight, which is a kind of. Lightweight, way to integrate Lightning into wallets. it puts more of the kind of support intelligence on a server and, but the key signing and verification is done on the device. So it, it makes it more lightweight cause you don't have to download as much stuff. **Adam:** And so effectively BoxStream has two products indirectly. Now, of course, like, because these are infrastructure products, other people are building things around them and innovating, right? So. But effectively Blockstream has part in two things, which ended up competing with each other, which is Greenlight as a, as a way to make a Lightning Wallet and Liquid plus Bolt's Atomic Swaps, which is, now, I mean, both of those things are growing, but they're like competing with each other, right? **Adam:** Because there are alternatives, you know, you either, you either run a Greenlight integrated Lightning Wallet, or you, you do a full node Lightning Wallet or, you know, some other system, right? Or, You don't do a lightning wallet and you get one anyway by using bolts API and swaps. So that's pretty cool. Ball Bitcoin stepped up and really gone for this model. Peach Bitcoin is doing it. I just hope somebody at this conference is also doing it. And Breeze is, Breeze is actually using, Greenlight. But, yeah, so it seems to be growing as a convenient way. And I think the other thing that is, you know, the next bottleneck you could foresee coming is that, okay, you can use other layer twos and you could also use like e cash, right? **Adam:** Like the, the cashew and a fetty, the glue that holds those together and they, they can have multiple mints, right? is lightning. So you can also implicitly rebalance a lightning channel using, you know, fetty cash or cashew cash, right? So the ability to rebalance existing main chain lightning channels with other layer twos, like you said, that helps if you already have a channel, but what if you don't have a channel? Now you've got to establish a channel, and if the fees are really high, maybe that becomes impractical. So, now you can clearly see that Boltz maybe helps because it's, you don't actually have to lay any channel, they do, right? **Adam:** And so they can survive in higher fee environments because they've got fat channels, because they're shared amongst lots of users, right? But for users that actually want a soft custodial channel, They, I mean, like just, just to be clear that you are self custodial with, with bolts, it's just that your, your custody is on liquid, right? **Adam:** So it's kind of neat cause you get the sort of reliability and performance advantages of a custodial channel like arrangement, except that not yours. There are bolts and it doesn't affect your self custody, right? Whereas, A wallet, I think Blue Wallet was an Satoshi is the biggest one, right, where it's actually custodial. **Adam:** You just own a share of the, of a big channel, and that's it, it's an IOU, right. so Boltz doesn't have that problem. So, the obvious problem is, nevertheless, like, what's gonna happen next? What we're doing with Greenlight is, there is lightning on Liquid, so, you know, because Liquid is organized in the same way as Bitcoin as a blockchain, lightning works on it, and a core lightning implementation has worked on Liquid for, I don't know, five years or something, right? **Adam:** But there has never been enough demand or reason to, you know, grow a network and liquidity and interconnectivity there. But the time may be rising for that. And so the idea there is that using green light, we can, merge the networks. So you can route through both types of channels. **Adam:** And that's good because it means that you get interoperability. So somebody has a main chain channel. They don't really need to know or care that the sender has a liquid lightning channel. or if they also have a Bitcoin Lightning Channel, but some of the intermediate hops are liquid Lightning Channels, because, it all interoperates and it's anyway atomic. **Adam:** So, right, you don't really care if the characteristics of the channels are slightly different in the middle. and so, you know, that opens a new prospect, which is some, once that's in play, that's in development now, some wallets might. You know, the different types of users in the network, right? We've seen that the The service providers, the API providers, and the stores, they can afford fat channels. **Adam:** So actually they can, they're okay. They can survive, right? but the retail endpoints, that gets expensive. You know, if you want to like set up a lightning wallet and receive five, five dollars of liquidity, which, which by the way, somebody is probably, you know, lending you and trying to recoup by charging you fees later. **Adam:** So that, that liquidity is expensive. if it costs 5 of fees to put 5 on there, that starts to get problematic, right? And so, you know, there is a, there is a, the world where retail users end up using Liquid on Lightning and for the, for the endpoints that are, you know, direct soft custody, not using bolts. **Adam:** and they're cheaper and, the obvious thing to say about Liquid is, blockchains blockchain and, if you pushed it too far, giga blocks, like some forks we won't mention, then it will also stop being a blockchain for many purposes. But I think the middle ground is that because it's anyway not as decentralized, you can assume a. Kind of more power user profile, like you need a reasonable, home internet connection with, 10, 20 megabits or something higher, right? And you need a faster computer, like maybe a reasonable laptop class computer and not a Raspberry Pi and then it can keep up. But if you try it with a Raspberry Pi and we have to scale it in this kind of middle range, I mean, at the moment it runs on a Raspberry Pi, but if it needs to get scaled. **Adam:** Then that won't be the case. so I think there's a sort of incremental scale you can get to, but beyond a certain point, it stops making sense. So I think that means that there is scope for, lightning on liquid to fill in a bit. But like the other observation is that, the market is still evolving things like the bolts API is like a pure market innovation and, almost a happenstance, right? **Adam:** The people who built it weren't anticipating it. So there's like three parties involved. Like we built liquid, built an atomic swap, and then wallet users started using their channel rebalancing to build a new architecture standard, right? So, who knows what the future holds, right? There may be new things that evolve. **Adam:** of course the e cash protocols are very scalable, but they have a different trade off. so the limitation there is. Firstly, the model is quite similar to Liquid, like it's a federation, it's just that the federation is, a community situation, where Liquid is a federation of Bitcoin exchanges and wallets and different companies, right? **Adam:** so you've got that factor, but then laid on top of that, you also have the trade offs of the e cash protocols, and so they have extremely good privacy. They're unauditable because it's a side effect of the privacy. You can't how many coins have been issued. And so you don't know, you can audit the coins that are pegged into it, but you can't audit if they issued a matching number of coins. **Adam:** And so you have to prospect that, you know, with any kind of peg, there's a risk that the peg gets bypassed somehow and the peg coins get taken out and then you're fractional and then that's game over, right? But with the e cash protocols, you've got the possibility of it going fractional in an undetectable way and staying that way for years. **Adam:** if there's people generally paying in and not paying, you know, if you can see that there are a hundred Bitcoin in and, a hundred Bitcoin out, but people are still using it and think they have Bitcoin, then clearly it's been, it's fractional, right? But you won't find out until that's the case. **Adam:** But now, so in between. You know, you could think there's a hundred Bitcoin in there, but actually they issue 200 and you, you wouldn't, you don't have to have a way to detect that, right? So that, that's the trade off. Now, there's a positive side effect of that, which is because you can't audit it, there's no audit stream, there's no like, big amounts of data, of past transactions to download and blocks. **Adam:** And so it becomes very scalable, right? you don't have to sync a node. You just like connect to a new cash server. There's very little data. So that's a trade off there. So, I mean, I think the other variable is other than custody, we don't know how much people will favor the Feddy and Cashy approach. **Adam:** You know, if that gets a lot of adoption, that's form of scalability with a different trade off. So we'd have to wait and see what the market likes, # Fractional Reserve on Bitcoin **Knut:** Yeah, I think it was Lynn Alden that made the point that even with custodial lightning and stuff like this you can do a Fractional reserve banking on Bitcoin effectively, but to a much smaller degree than in the legacy system, because you have something to measure against. **Knut:** You can see, it's not like there are cameras in Fort Knox that we can see all the gold there and how much is actually there But you can still see on chain transactions, so that it's possible, but **Knut:** not on the scale that the legacy system has. **Adam:** Well. Yeah, I mean, I hope that, you know, I think Lynn is talking about kind of competitive free banking. So the concept that you could have a fractional reserve Bitcoin bank. Now, I hope that never happens and that people refuse to use any such proposals, right? But, I mean, And maybe some free banking people would think that's okay. **Adam:** You know, that you can have fractional Bitcoin banks and people can choose them based on how well managed they are or how long they lasted or whether people trust them. But I, I would say never accept fractional Bitcoin. Like, and so I hope that the market like takes that outlook, does not use fractional Bitcoin. **Adam:** But I think the challenge is that. You know, particularly with some of these community run things, you don't necessarily know who's running them, or even that, if it's like a three or five, that that's not all the same person. Can't necessarily tell, right? So sooner or later, somebody is going to try and rug pull them and you don't actually know, how many coins they printed. **Adam:** Right. cause I mean, basically what happens is you, what's supposed to happen is you peg in coins into the mints and it issues you with coins, but because of the privacy, they can issue, the owners of it can issue, if they collude as a federation, can issue themselves more coins and you can't audit it. **Adam:** You can't detect that. And then they can spend them. Eventually it might become apparent because, you know, People might withdraw and then it hits zero. And yet there are lots of people who think they still have a balance, right? Then you'd notice. So that, that kind of trade off. And of course it's like, it has IOU risk as well, right? **Adam:** Cause it's, if the operators are regulatory attacks, they might be forced to like freeze it or something, right? So, and it's a very interesting trade off as well between, you know, identified company operated federations and community federations. So, I think, you know, people tend to trust themselves, so like, they feel good about community because they can participate, they can run their own and they trust themselves and their friends trust them. **Adam:** And it differs in countries, right? **Adam:** Some countries have very little banking and so everything is organized like this, right? So maybe that's, you know, the target use case, but at least with the exchange companies, you, you know, the pool of companies that may be running the, the hardware, the nodes, and they are anyway operating regulated businesses typically, right? **Adam:** I mean, they're operating an exchange where they do KYC and they have banking, you know, their bank accounts. And saying. It's maybe not introducing them to, you know, they're already regulated, right? So, you know, maybe it doesn't change their profile that much. So, I mean, my, my viewpoint is generally, just build things and react to what works in the market. cause it's like very, you can't like centrally plan or plan ahead because it's too complicated to like map out some of these altcoins do, you know, there's a dictator, like, who thinks he's benevolent, who's like drawing roadmaps and saying this is how it's going to work. **Adam:** And I think in the real world that never works. So people are just going to build things. And if you want to succeed in that environment, you have to adapt to what gets innovated, what gets traction and what the market wants to use. users are maybe, more pragmatic. than the operator of an individual company who thinks, things really should work this way and they like this and not that. **Adam:** If users make a pragmatic choice, they won't use that product, So I think that's one of the reasons you have to adapt.   **Luke:** some people already make the choice not to use specifically Wallet of Satoshi and choose just a different custodial provider because it seems like the risk is lower in others. The Wallet of Satoshi seems to be like the big one that if that one were to collapse, it would be a big deal, basically. **Adam:** Yeah. I mean, it's interesting in some areas you see people gravitate towards the biggest because I think it's the best, but in this case, the biggest is the highest risk because it's relevant. And, you know, they have more users, so one of the users will do something incredibly stupid or illegal and create the external investigation. **Adam:** So it's probably the most at risk. probably a balance though, right? If it's super unknown, maybe it's just set there to like rug pull some unsuspecting users. So I guess, you know, there is some kind of owner reputation, like if the owner is publicly known and, Also, if they've been involved in the space for a long time, probably helps, like, they've, a Lindy effect, right, that's been operating for a while. **Adam:** There's no guarantee, like, you can get late rug pulls. **Knut:** Yeah, if I got the point right from Lynn's book about free banking, it's like that there's nothing inherently wrong with fractional reserve banking, as long as it's transparent and the users or the customers of the bank know that that is what they're doing. the banker can tell. the clients are you okay with us using a portion of your, wealth to invest in other things? **Knut:** if you are, we will be able to give you an interest over time. **Knut:** And she always said, like, the problems come in when you have a central bank and banks get bailed out and you have all these government guarantees and stuff because then that whole system becomes way, way, way much more complex and it's very hard, at least if you have a bank that, a fractional reserve bank, and it goes bankrupt, it's the users of that bank that pay the **Knut:** bill in the end. **Adam:** it's true that it avoids the moral hazard and kind of perverse side effects of central banking, And it's also true that the right people suffer the consequences, which is if you thought this was a good idea, and there's a bank run, **Knut:** Yeah. **Adam:** it's, it's you that loses, right? But at the same time, like, there were a lot of bank runs. **Adam:** So historically, right before they introduced central banking, now I don't like central banking. And, but I also don't want to experience a bank run when Bitcoin repeats the pre central banking fractional reserve situation, so I want full reserve banking. In fact, I want like multi, like either single custody or a multi sig so they can't spend it without, so they can't make fractional without my approval or something, right? **Adam:** And I mean, there's a gray area of fractionality, which is kind of rehypothecation, which is to say, you know, you put your Bitcoin into a bank, they make a business loan of the Bitcoin to somebody, and they have collateral for the business loan. So if the business fails, they can sell the business assets and rebuy the Bitcoin and pay you back. **Adam:** So, you know, A small amount of rehypothecation sort of sounds okay. And like, I think a lot of that happened in the DeFi though. the problem is that people get greedy and the competing people offering interest. They have a race to the bottom, right? They, they offer a high and higher interest and they take more and more crazy risks till they're ultimately lending to people who are running Ponzi's or hedge funds making directional bets that backfire. **Adam:** Because like, you know, to their point of view, they take the upside and if it fails, they shrug, right? Now, if a wealthy investor chooses to take that risk profile as a hedge fund investor, Fair game. But if somebody who is a, Gemini Urn user who just thinks, oh, they're offering interest and assumes that it's in some, they don't think about how does that work, right? **Adam:** That it's, yeah, it creates problems and you get contagion and so on. So I think the, non fractional reserve is the way to go or. At least fully collateralized, like over collateralized lending. And the problem is, people know, but the prevailing interest rates on Bitcoin and dollars in the Bitcoin trading and exchange ecosystem are very different. **Adam:** So the dollar interest rates are double digit, 10, 15, 20%, depending on the market conditions. It's mostly used for leverage, right? But also for business work in capital, like miners will borrow. Dollars to, I don't know, buy more miners or something against Bitcoin or against miners. So the prevailing interest rate is, is high because there's a shortage of dollars because too many people are, I mean, I think it's a good thing, but like everybody's very all in, so they don't have any dollars. **Adam:** So there's a shortage of dollars and the big pools of institutional capital and bank capital outside of Bitcoin doesn't understand the risk. And so they're scared, right? So, so they, you know, they'll be earning, you know, 5%, they could earn 15, but they're scared of the risk profile. They think it's not worth it, right? **Adam:** So, and then on the Bitcoin side, there are very, very few people who are short Bitcoin for long periods of time. And so it's very cheap to borrow Bitcoin to short it on exchanges. There's lots of bitcoins sitting there, so they've got like a free market rate, there's a huge amount of bitcoin and very few people that want to borrow it. **Adam:** Because the borrowing rate is like, you know, a fraction of a percent. It's not worth intentionally exposing yourself to the custody risk to get the interest rate. That's a bad deal, right? so consequently when people offer you, you know, mid single digit interest rates on Bitcoin, like five percent, that implies necessarily, for the most part, that they're making unsecured, uncollateralized loans of Bitcoin to other people. And then if that person is, you know, how are they creating an interest rate? Or they're gambling on something, right? And if they get it wrong, then the person rehypothecating it, it's going to lose money. And then you're going to lose the coins. And that's basically what happened in the DeFi implosion. **Knut:** And especially if you have a huge bull run in the midst of it, then they'll never be able to buy back the coins. **Adam:** Yeah. I mean, it's all about directional bets. So lots of examples, you know. Some users, because the problem is the RISC profile is getting laundered through intermediary Borrowers and lenders, right? So you'll put it in something that is trying to be conservative and they'll give it to some other party that's providing an interest rate and on what, you know, hand waving about, oh, how they, you know, they do due diligence, they only lend to reputable borrowers, blah, blah, blah, right? **Adam:** And all that they stand in the way, like they will repair a loss. But then what really happens is it lends to somebody else who lends to somebody else who's doing something crazy, right? And then, you know, even if these guys say that they'll stand in the way, they're just doing that to make a sale. **Adam:** And when too many things go wrong, they go bankrupt, right? So the guarantee is also not worth anything. # The Big Short and Gamestop **Knut:** It's the big short, that's **Knut:** the plot synopsis of the big short. **Knut:** Yeah, I love that film. And it's very ironic that, the Bitcoin ecosystem is like repeating the exact same problems. Did you see the GameStop one? I don't remember the name of the film, but it was very similar to the big short. **Adam:** I haven't seen that. **Knut:** you haven't seen **Knut:** I'll go look. Yeah. you should because it's very like. There's, so it's about the game shop's, stock and, there's a ton of Bitcoin, memes in it that originates from Bitcoin, like HODL, for instance, and we're not selling and all of this stuff. **Knut:** And, the thing is when you see that movie, it's like all of these people that were involved in this did this When Bitcoin was already a thing so it's not that far back So if they had done the exact same thing with Bitcoin Then the big hedge funds and stuff and Robin Hood couldn't have suppressed it at any point So it gives you like holy shit when Some guy like that gets the same idea and gets the same momentum on social media and stuff on Bitcoin It's like game over when it's Every single saver starts just, I'm not selling,   **Adam:** yeah, I mean, like the GameStop is interesting because of, exposes a few things. I mean, one is the, people with different power have different access to the market. So the retail traders are trading through Robinhood in this case. And Robin Hood, for technical reasons, might have to suspend trading. Just when you need to trade. **Knut:** yeah, **Adam:** And that's a problem. **Knut:** reasons. **Adam:** I mean, the technical reason is that they, the delayed settlement, like the T plus one stuff. and of course, like the technical reasons could be politically biased, right? Is to save their big friends, right? So. It's like, any kind of brokerage like that is going for a prime broker and a clearing house, so there's a stack rank. **Adam:** And, because of the delayed settlement, it's really naked selling, right? So you're selling and buying on your platform, if there's an imbalance, like your users are more buying than selling. Now, you haven't actually paid for it yet, and so they're worried you're going to be able to, if the price moves. **Adam:** And so, they have to have a certain amount of, working capital with their prime brokerage to guarantee their trades. But if they get a massive, run of buying, they run out of capital and their prime broker cuts them off because they're like, well, we're not going to absorb that risk. **Adam:** you either send us tens of millions of more capital, or we're going to suspend trading on this stock. And they couldn't do it that quickly. And so for the users, it was horrendous because, they got stuck holding a bubble. And the fact that the trading stopped probably caused the bubble to collapse as well. **Adam:** And they've got to sit there and watch it fall where they can't react, right? Dysfunctional. I mean, the Bitcoin market never does that, you know, because it's, it's global, 24 by seven, it's, it's real time. There's no delayed settlement. Nobody's naked selling anything. You don't have these problems, but it shows like the structure problem. **Adam:** It deserves to be shorted and the hedge funds for shorting it for good reason, because it's a defunct business. But, you know, if you're short, it's dangerous to short things. And so, you know, these crowded social media guys on Reddit decided to play a game of chicken with the hedge funds and like basically bankrupt a few hedge funds along the way and cause the short squeeze. **Adam:** So as well as the hitting the limits of the market function due to the way it works and exposing the biases, right? Cause the hedge funds will be desperately calling in favors with a prime broker and they're big. So maybe the prime broker wants to keep them happy and doesn't mind screwing over the retail users on GameStop, right? **Adam:** Sorry, on Robinhood. So it's a pretty ugly situation. Yeah, so, I mean, in Bitcoin terms, you have different, different games. I guess like Luna, Terra Luna was an example, right? that there you had basically what was pretty clearly a Ponzi to anybody who bothered to look at it. And I don't care about it, but the reason I looked at it was because, They were buying a lot of Bitcoin, I think like a hundred million dollars or something. **Adam:** And people were getting excited. Like, you know, Bitcoin, some Bitcoiners were saying, well, look, this is great. There's a new buyer in town. They're buying lots of Bitcoin. And I, my view was, well, wait a minute. Like, what are they doing with it? You know, are they going to like, is that Ponzi going to collapse and they're going to market sell a hundred million Bitcoin in an automated, you know, they have these automated market makers. **Adam:** They're kind of trading bots that. become dysfunctional if there's a huge reaction in the market and, you know, they could cause a stupid flash crash or something, right? At least in their local market. So my thought was, I don't think this is a good thing. I think it's some ponzi that's going to collapse. **Adam:** So I went and looked at it and I was like, yeah, that looks like a ponzi to me. within a few months, it died spectacularly, right? **Knut:** Yeah, it was glorious. **Adam:** Yeah, and actually, it didn't look like they actually had finished automating the Bitcoin selling part of it. So I think some of that got sold through, some kind of market maker that did it carefully. **Adam:** And I think they stole some of it. So it didn't actually all get sold in one go. But if you just hit market sell on something like that, you can wipe out the order book basically, right? but I think it also shows that making a trading bot, the smart contract guys in Altcoins like to, think they're a bit naive about market function. **Adam:** So they've got a smart contract and it's, it's gonna sell if this happens. And, it's decentralized and the decentralized things are using these automated market makers, which have some liquidity and they have some kind of mathematical curve where it will react to an imbalance of trade and put the price up. **Adam:** but the problem with those is that I think they only work within a narrow band, and if things get extreme, like there's a massive rush of selling or buying, people can pull their liquidity out, and the curve can get steep, and it can just get silly and stop functioning. So, that was what I thought was going to happen to that bitcoin, but it turned out, you know, they stole it, and it wasn't, they hadn't done the development work to add it to their automated market. **Adam:** Suffered the most radical hyperinflation in history, right? Like, billions of percent in a few days or something.     # Arrest of Pavel Durov **Luke:** the crazy things that can happen on Bitcoin and kind of this still early phase where kind of things are still finding the equilibrium as more capital flows in. And then just overnight, this is day two of Baltic Honey Badger. the news comes out that the CEO of Telegram has been. Arrested for, I don't know, the charges are, I guess they're in the news, but, but, **Knut:** Refusing to censor people. **Luke:** what are your thoughts about that whole situation, and maybe there's some, solutions in the development pipeline? **Luke:** What do you think? **Adam:** Well, I mean, we have this book in front of us with the, clown world logo, and that's pretty much the situation. the charges are, like, ludicrous on their face, You know, there are lots of communication channels in the world and, I think they were, what they were saying is like, he hadn't put moderation in effect. **Knut:** Same thing. **Adam:** I mean, yeah, exactly. actually some people are like, Pro moderation, anti censorship, because they draw a distinction, but I hate moderation too, because, you know, I used to, there are a few sort of mailing lists related to Bitcoin, some of them are still around. One of them was Cypherpunk's list, and one of them is the cryptography list, and the cryptography list was operated by an individual who's still there, and You know, he's moderating. **Adam:** So, you know, for example, there was a long discussion about Bitcoin in 2009 where people were saying, Oh, that won't scale and blah, blah, blah. a long discussion and he cut it off like, oh, that's enough talking about Bitcoin. I think it's kind of silly and if you write a paper about it, maybe I will allow the conversation to continue. **Adam:** And that just enrages me, right? Because if I want to talk about something, I don't want anybody citing it's boring or They've had enough of the discussion, or they don't like the topic, or they don't like how you're saying it, moderation enrages me, basically, I hate it. **Adam:** the idea that the government should, demand moderation, isn't there a, Like with the internet where you're a common carrier, so you're not responsible for the content. And so, at least in some countries, if you do moderate content, you lose your common carrier status and you really don't want to do that because then you become responsible for what people are doing and saying on your platform, like if you fail at moderation. **Adam:** So like the fact that they are trying to insist that he moderate it would actually like lose his common carrier status and you don't want to do that, right? So, now I guess like architecturally the problem is that he could implement a moderation policy, and I think there are people who get their telegram accounts banned. **Adam:** I've heard people complaining about that. So, you know, they're kind of probably in a bit of a gray area where they're kind of, you know, reactively censoring things. that exposes the difference between, decentralized chat platform and a centralized one. and Twitter was horrendous I mean, I think people still get banned on Twitter unreasonably, but, at least Elon cares about free speech and does a lot less of it and fired a lot of people who were doing political, I mean, there's like moderation for some kind of policy, but then there's political interference, moderation, abuse, which unfortunately Twitter and a number of companies were doing in a very extreme way, like interfering with election discussions and all kinds of stuff, right? **Adam:** So. Yeah, I think the Nostr protocol is, you know, that's showing that actually we need more of that kind of thing. I don't know, what's going on behind the scenes with Pavel Djurov at Telegram. maybe there's something they're trying to squeeze in for access to some data or something. **Adam:** Don't like free speech. Somebody was saying that there is something political going on in one of the French jurisdictions, like offshore jurisdictions, where there's some political upheaval and people are coordinating their protests with. Telegram, so it could be related to that timing wise, who knows, but it's, ridiculous that, a government or, I mean, it's effectively a group of governments, right? **Adam:** Because it's in Europe. If you'd been in another European country, they would have done the same thing. They're just losing the pretense of independence of law and the rule of law, but they're just going to arbitrarily, you know, see somebody off the street, like in a, you know, a third world tin pot dictatorship. **Adam:** Fortunately, they just, increasing The pace of the process because like these things have been going on for a long time. Right. I remember the Pirate Bay founders in Sweden were prosecuted on very loose grounds because they had a website that provided links. **Knut:** There were no actual files on the site. And Google was pointing to their website. So why are they guilty and Google not? And it's all grey area. where do you draw the line between moderation and censorship and political censorship? and, and there is, it's so clear to me that the, the, the people in power, the so called elites, the most successful thieves are abusing this on such a grand scale. **Knut:** And the way out of it is not through another private companies, through things like Nostr and Bitcoin, that we truly take the power back. There's no other way. And **Knut:** we need to spread the message about it and get it out there and get people to adopt these things because that is the only way to fight it. **Knut:** I mean, it's true, you know, like it's in a way it's positive that there are people who are fighting within the system, like Elon, who will, you know, go to court or buy the company. **Knut:** his price tag is higher. If anyone wants to censor him, they have **Knut:** to pay a very much higher **Adam:** but you know, he may not be immune, because, he's doing the right thing standing up for free speech, but they do have levers to attack him. And he has some vulnerabilities, for example, the subsidies that a Tesla company is receiving, maybe the military launch contracts that SpaceX has, or just trumped up, political charges like Jurov, right? **Adam:** So, could that apply to Twitter? maybe. **Knut:** it could be called a $5 trillion wrench attack, **Knut:** like that. **Adam:** I think we should care about the rule of law, like, if there are rules, they should be impartially exercised by an independent judiciary, and the fact that that is going downhill is, a bad thing. So, in a sense, us retreating into decentralized technology, Is, a defense mechanism for, civilized society to continue while governments are devolving. **Adam:** But it should be a nice thing if governments want devolving and, but I think there's things into play as well because if things are decentralized, you know, while the establishment powers that are pulling the strings behind things like the Jurov arrest, they want some control outcome, right? They resent that people can talk privately and coordinate on channels and things like that. If they could see that arresting somebody would have no effect, they're probably not going to do it. So you know, **Knut:** yeah, **Adam:** it's Nostr, and there are some people who are like lead developers, you know, there's no central server. There's no company operating a server. You could like seize one coordinator or, you know, arrest that guy or shut down that company or sue this person, but it's going to be pointless, you know, and it might even have a stride stand effect that, you know, there were 10 servers. **Adam:** Now there are a hundred and more jurisdictions or something. So to that point of view, it forces a bit of internet physics on these people that want to abuse establishment power, which is like, you can't say it's 3 because the internet doesn't care, kind of thing. So I think it's the, you know, it's decentralized things that erode the internet physics and that things should be implemented in robust, decentralized ways. # Nostr and Fedi **Knut:** And, I mean, the same logic that applies to Nostr sort of applies to a plethora of other things like Fede, for instance. **Adam:** Mm hmm, **Knut:** things are going to be much harder to take down in the future. And that's very promising. # Lightning, Liquid, and Fedi **Adam:** Yeah, I mean, I think if you think about it from that point of view, you know, we were discussing the trade offs between Feddy and Liquids. The one advantage Feddy has is that You know, it has a higher rug pull risk of a federation because you don't know who they are and some, and they could be all one person, but it's, there are multiple of them. So if, if, you know, and Feddy, the company is not operating them. Now look, Blockstream, the company is not operating Liquid, but you know, the federation members, potentially, if there was like some kind of major global crackdown on Bitcoin or something, could be told to stop, right? Now, with FedE, they could stop some, but like people have all the tools and could start all the ones, right? Now, it's also true with Liquid, you know, like there's a lot of, most of the technology is open source that, you know, you could stand up another Liquid network and a few, like, very technical people have done that, so, you know, for experimentation purposes. And we're interested to take steps to make that easier, like to sell the hardware, because part of the formula as well that we didn't talk about is that With a federation, it's a blockchain, the interpretation that people have, taken from independent legal advice and so on, from regulatory expert independent advice, and from asking for opinions from a few government regulators, is that this kind of collection of software decentralization, it qualifies as a blockchain. **Adam:** That's the argument, and that's the opinions that, that people have had, right? But, Part, you know, if you compare that with Bitcoin, now nothing, nothing as good as Bitcoin is as good as Bitcoin. And if anybody generally invents some technology that would improve the picture, Bitcoin would generally want to adopt it. **Adam:** So it's like any kind of layer two is generally going to be inferior to Bitcoin in, in multiple ways, right? including their lightning and liquid and FedE and all these things, right? they're making trade offs because if there was a silver bullet, Bitcoin would already do it. So the point is. **Adam:** You know, like with Lightning, you get faster transactions, but it's all a hot wallet. So, you know, there's a trade off, right? You get something, you lose something, and that's sort of inherent, I think. what we're interested to do is to sell the HSMs, so that people can, you know, and they're programmable, tamper resistant devices, and so they do help The blockchain argument, right, which is the architecture of Bitcoin that makes it neutral or censorship resistant is that there are competing miners in anybody, then people that will mine things, right? **Adam:** So if one doesn't mine it because they don't like your op return, or they don't like something about, you know, some taint tracing, another one will mine it. What helps with that, with Liquid, I mean, that's possibly true, right? one, block signer could refuse to sign and other ones would, and it only takes two thirds of them to process it, right? **Adam:** So that's one factor. Another factor is it has confidential transactions, so it's harder for them to tell what the transactions are about. So like, if somebody has a policy view that they want to Block this type of transaction or something. Maybe they lack the information to make their policy decision because they enhance confidentiality. **Adam:** So that's another factor. But the third factor is that you have an HSM in place of the, so it's a block signer instead of the miners, comparing two architectures. The block center is a piece of hardware, and so it's a black box. You know, you can't like, reach in there and change its behavior because you'll reset the keys. **Adam:** And it's only running signed software. So Blockstream doesn't have any kind of auto update for obvious reasons. So the operators of the hardware, you know, they have the source code, they can look at the changes, they can see there's nothing malicious about it, they have to upgrade it, but once they've upgraded it, they can use it. **Adam:** They can't, you know, open the box up and like change the software in it because they'll reset it. And so, you know, it's not a piece of software in a decentralized system. It's a slightly less decentralized system, but with a piece of hardware. And so, you know, it gets to a similar location via different technologies. **Adam:** Confidential transactions and, hardware tamper resistance. So I think the hardware tamper resistance is a useful tool. And as you may be aware, one of the very early sort of Bitcoin like systems, RPAL by Hal Finney, Reusable Proof of Work, is actually using this tamper resistant hardware. I mean, the much earlier first versions of it, they're trustworthy computing stuff. **Adam:** So he bought an IBM manufactured tamper resistant hardware device. And his system was, you would mine using hashcash. You would send it to his server. And it would send you an e cash token, and so that would prevent the rug pull inflation, because the hardware gives you a kind of call it a remote attestation, but basically the hardware signs and provides to the users a signature of what code is running. And he can't influence that, right? he can load new code, but then change the signature. And so people can see, Oh, that new code is malicious. **Adam:** I think that trustworthy computing or temp resistant HSMs are an interesting building block for a lot of things like for cache, for FedE. For lightning routing nodes, you know, cause they're hot wallets. So if you can provide better security for lightning routing nodes, it becomes safer to have big channels. **Adam:** Cause you know, if somebody compromises a hot wallet, lightning routing node, they could steal the channel balance, let's say, right. as they become more accessible, like if we resell them. Then that helps. I mean, cause we're just going to like, it's a programmable device. You can do what you want with it, right? **Adam:** So you can use it to build like an arc thing or a cache thing, whatever you want, basically, or to make an HSM for cold storage or something. Right. So like another sort of blockchain adjacent building block, which can be used to harden some blockchain related things. # Coming Up At Blockstream **Luke:** Looking forward to seeing that coming out. Anything else you're excited about in the coming year?   **Adam:** So I mean, we've been working on a Bitcoin ASIC. So really the idea was that a couple of things. So at the time we started, we acquired Spondulis, which is a company that's been making ASICs, Bitcoin ASICs since 2013, I think, or maybe in 2012. So they made multiple generations of Bitcoin ASICs. And the team is like, you know, came from, you ASIC design company, so they had some prior experience. **Adam:** And I think the Bitcoin ASIC is a challenging type of ASIC design because of the duty cycle and the hand optimization that's needed and so on. we made an ASIC, we've done a shuttle run, which is a kind of a test run. So we have sample chips that we're testing and continue to optimize. **Adam:** So. You know, the motivation really at the time was that all of the mining manufacturers were in China and, not that the foundries weren't because none of the, advanced nodes foundries are in China. they have foundries, but they're like a generation or two behind. So, you know, you've got, but still there aren't many foundries. **Adam:** And that seemed potentially like a centralization risk and China is like intermittently hostile to Bitcoin, like banning Bitcoin, banning mining, things like that. So, you know, it's not inconceivable they could apply pressure to those companies to stop making Bitcoin miners or impose something, right? **Adam:** So we thought it was, you know, potentially risk and we'd like to try and reduce that risk for, you know, because we're interested in Bitcoin. So we embarked on that. I think, the situation has improved a bit. There are a few more companies internationally making Bitcoin ASICs now. some talking about them publicly, for example, Block, Intel was for a while, but they, exited the business. **Adam:** I think they were having general, economic problems in the company. So they, cut back some divisions. there are a few other companies that have been making ASICs so we're, hoping that we'll have some more announcements about that in the next year. **Adam:** and I think another motivation for having an ASIC is that none of the Bitcoin mining companies would sell anybody ASICs. So people who have made. Bitcoin devices like block eruptors and space heaters and water heaters and things like that, which are kind of cool. they can't buy the ASICs. **Adam:** They have to buy the miners and desolder the ASICs off them. And of course you break some doing it and it's kind of inefficient, right? So, you know, I think we were more interested to allow people to buy ASICs, like have some more open innovation where people can build, different profile miners or consumer miners or appliances with ASICs in for various reasons. # Wrapping Up **Knut:** Yeah. I think it's time to wrap this up soon. So anywhere else you want to direct our listeners other than to. Blockstream.   **Adam:** I think it's an interesting time for Bitcoin at the moment. we've also been. getting into the hardware wallet space recently with the Jade hardware wallet. So we're continuing to involve that, improving the firmware, improving usability. the differentiator for Jade is that it's full open. **Adam:** Now, some of the other hardware wallets are also open hardware, like OpenSpec. You could, take the blueprints and build one, but the difference with Jade is that it's even more open in the sense that it will work on some IoT devices you can buy. On the market today or from an electronics store, you can, go pick some parts out of a hopper and pretty much run it or snap a few things together and flash Jade on it. **Adam:** Compile your own software, modify your software. Now it won't, you know, it won't be as elegant a piece of hardware or maybe be bulkier or have lumps sticking out of it, or, no case or something like that, but it can also be pretty cheap, right? You can buy a, lower spec device, without the battery, without the camera, and it will still function, right? **Adam:** Because you can use Jade in different modes, you can use it with Bluetooth, you can use it with USB. And you know, when it's in Bluetooth mode, you can, of course, if you're using it with USB, you're anyway powered over the USB, so the battery is not necessary. But if you're using it on Bluetooth or with a camera, then the battery is useful, **Adam:** So, you know, you can buy one of these, ESP32 devices for maybe like 10 is able to function with Jade software on USB mode. So that's pretty cool. so it opens the door for emerging market people to do things and for people who want to try building custom apps to do that and like maybe send them back to us and, we could add them. **Luke:** Fantastic. So, again, it's awesome to see all this innovation and the drive to decentralize all this stuff. To give the power to people to run their own things and sovereignty that way. **Adam:** Well, I mean, it's an interesting strategy. I guess it comes partly from the open source mindset, which is, you know, a lot of software companies in the kind of feels like tradfy world, like the traditional software world, like the Microsofts and Oracle, it's all super proprietary, right? It's like secretive, It's closed source, or Apple's another good example, it's aggressively licensed, they try to price, you know, they try to like muscle in to the application space and demand payment on the downstream applications in Apple's case. **Adam:** And the open source mentality is more, well, you know, the rising tide, rises or ships kind of thing. That actually the ecosystem would grow faster and everybody would be better if everything is super open. Like it's open source, open hardware. You get faster innovation on open networks. **Adam:** You get faster innovation on open source. And, Bitcoin is more an area of, friendly competition, right? In the sense that, the people that are competing are not enemies. They're like comrades trying to grow Bitcoin. So I think there's one specific unique thing about Bitcoin, which is a lot of things have to be open source or you shouldn't trust them in a don't trust verify sense, a closed source. **Adam:** Hardware or software is something you should worry about because it could have a bug in it or a backdoor and you wouldn't know it. **Knut:** No, I mean, 100 percent we talk about that all the time, how in Bitcoiners are inherently incentivized to help one another **Knut:** because we help ourselves by doing so. And it's just awesome to live that way. You get to have conversations like this. So, Adam, thank you very much for coming back to the show, great to see you and, make sure you get a signed, we'll sign you a **Knut:** copy of Clown **Adam:** I hope we can climb back from the precipice and I think Bitcoin is one of the few kind of technologies and societal forces that is pushing in the right direction at this point. **Knut:** that is why we wrote the book, describing what the process looks like. **Luke:** So, yeah, hope you give it a read and tell us what you think, but yeah, Adam, thank you again for coming on, this has been the Bitcoin Infinity Show, and thank you for listening!

# Nostr Tips for Beginners ## Setting Up Your Account - Choose a Nostr client (e.g., Damus for iOS, Amethyst for Android, nostrudel for web) - Generate your public/private key pair - **Store your private key securely** (password manager, browser extension or my personal recommendation amber) - Set up a Lightning wallet for tipping and payments (minibits recommended) ## Customizing Your Profile - Add a profile picture (use nostr.build or postimages.org) - Complete your profile information - Verify your account (use nostrplebs.com or nostrcheck.me for the easy route.) there are also many guides for setting up a nip-5 on a custom domain. ## Finding and Interacting with Others - Search for friends using public keys or usernames - Explore hashtags like #grownostr or #foodstr - Follow interesting users and check their follower lists - Interact through comments, likes, and reposts ## Understanding Relays - Connect to reliable relays for better user experience - Subscribe to specific relays for targeted content - Consider using paid relays for improved performance ## Hashtags "#" - don't just "explore hashtags" - use them. - follow them. - people will find you through them and you will find people to follow with them. ## Best Practices - Use text replacement shortcuts for your public key - Experiment with different Nostr clients - Be patient and engage with the community - Remember Nostr's censorship-resistant nature - Keep your software and apps updated Remember, Nostr is evolving, so stay curious and don't hesitate to ask for help from the community when needed.

# 2024年3月 フィリピンのセブ島へ旅行。初海外。  Nostrに投稿したらこんなリプライが nostr:nevent1qqsff87kdxh6szf9pe3egtruwfz2uw09rzwr6zwpe7nxwtngmagrhhqc2qwq5 nostr:nevent1qqs9c8fcsw0mcrfuwuzceeq9jqg4exuncvhas5lhrvzpedeqhh30qkcstfluj （ビットコイン関係なく普通の旅行のつもりで行ってた。というか常にビットコインのこと考えてるわけではないんだけど…） #### そういえばフィリピンでビットコイン決済できるお店って多いのかな？ ### 海外でビットコイン決済ってなんかかっこいいな！ ## やりたい！ <br> ----------- <br> # ビットコイン決済してみよう！ in セブ島 [BTCMap](https://btcmap.org/map#14/10.31403/123.91797) でビットコイン決済できるところを探す 本場はビットコインアイランドと言われてるボラカイ島みたいだけど セブにもそれなりにあった！  なんでもいいからビットコイン決済したいだけなので近くて買いやすい店へ いざタピオカミルクティー屋！  ちゃんとビットコインのステッカーが貼ってある！  つたない英語とGoogle翻訳を使ってビットコイン決済できるか店員に聞いたら ### 店員「ビットコインで支払いはできません」 （えーーーー、なんで…ステッカー貼ってあるやん…。） まぁなんか知らんけどできないらしい。 店員に色々質問したかったけど質問する英語力もないのでする気が起きなかった 結局、せっかく店まで足を運んだので普通に現金でタピオカミルクティーを買った <br> タピオカミルクティー 話題になってた時も特に興味なくて飲んでなかったので、これが初タピオカミルクティーになった 法定通貨の味がした。  ### どこでもいいからなんでもいいから ### 海外でビットコイン決済してみたい <br> ----------- <br> # ビットコイン決済させてくれ！ in ボラカイ島 ビットコインアイランドと呼ばれるボラカイ島はめちゃくちゃビットコイン決済できるとこが多いらしい でもやめてしまった店も多いらしい でも300もあったならいくつかはできるとこあるやろ！ nostr:nevent1qqsw0n6utldy6y970wcmc6tymk20fdjxt6055890nh8sfjzt64989cslrvd9l 行くしかねぇ！ <br> ## ビットコインアイランドへ フィリピンの国内線だぁ  ``` 行き方： Mactan-Cebu International Airport ↓飛行機 Godofredo P. Ramos Airport (Caticlan International Airport, Boracay Airport) ↓バスなど Caticlan フェリーターミナル ↓船 ボラカイ島 料金： 飛行機（受託手荷物付き） 往復 21,000円くらい 空港～ボラカイ島のホテルまで（バス、船、諸経費） 往復 3,300円くらい （klookからSouthwest Toursを利用） このページが色々詳しい https://smaryu.com/column/d/91761/ ``` 空港おりたらSouthwestのバスに乗る 事前にネットで申し込みをしている場合は5番窓口へ  港！  船！（めっちゃ速い）  ボラカイついた！  ### ボラカイ島の移動手段 セブの移動はgrabタクシーが使えるがボラカイにはない。 ネットで検索するとトライシクルという三輪タクシーがおすすめされている。  （トライシクル：開放的で風がきもちいい） トライシクルの欠点はふっかけられるので値切り交渉をしないといけないところ。 最初に300phpくらいを提示され、行き先によるけど150phpくらいまでは下げられる。 これはこれで楽しい値切り交渉だけど、個人的にはトライシクルよりバスの方が気楽。 Hop On Hop Off バス： https://www.hohoboracay.com/pass.php 一日乗り放題250phpなので往復や途中でどこか立ち寄ったりを考えるとお得。  バスは現金が使えないので事前にどこかでカードを買うか車内で買う。 私は何も知らずに乗って車内で乗務員さんから現金でカードを買った。 バスは狭い島内を数本がグルグル巡回してるので20～30分に1本くらいは来るイメージ。 逆にトライシクルは待たなくても捕まえればすぐに乗れるところがいいところかもしれない。 <br> ## 現実 ボラカイ島 BTC Map  BTC決済できるとこめっちゃある <br> さっそく店に行く！ 「bitcoin accepted here」のステッカーを見つける！ 店員にビットコイン支払いできるか聞く！ できないと言われる！ <br> もう一軒行く 「bitcoin accepted here」のステッカーを見つける 店員にビットコイン支払いできるか聞く できないと言われる <br> 5件くらいは回った 全部できない！ <br> 悲しい <br> で、ネットでビットコインアイランドで検索してみると 旅行日の一か月前くらいにアップロードされた動画があったので見てみた 要約 - ビットコイン決済はpouch.phというスタートアップ企業がボラカイ島の店にシステムを導入した - ビットコインアイランドとすることで観光客が10％～30％増加つまり数百～千人程度のビットコインユーザーが来ると考えた - しかし実際には3～5人だった - 結果的に200の店舗がビットコイン決済を導入しても使われたのはごく一部だった - ビットコイン決済があまり使われないので店員がやり方を忘れてしまった - 店は関心を失いpouchのアプリを消した https://youtu.be/uaqx6794ipc?si=Afq58BowY1ZrkwaQ <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uaqx6794ipc?si=S3kf0K49Z4NASxJt&amp;start=254" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe> なるほどね～ しゃあないわ <br> ## 聖地巡礼 動画内でpouchのオフィスだったところが紹介されていた これは半年以上前の画像らしい  現在はオフィスが閉鎖されビットコインの看板は色あせている  おもしろいからここに行ってみよう！となった で行ってみた 看板の色、更に薄くなってね！？  記念撮影  これはこれで楽しかった 場所はこの辺 https://maps.app.goo.gl/WhpEV35xjmUw367A8 ボラカイ島の中心部の結構いいとこ みんな～ビットコイン（の残骸）の聖地巡礼、行こうぜ！ <br> ## 最後の店 Nattoさんから情報が <blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="ja" dir="ltr">なんかあんまりネットでも今年になってからの情報はないような…<a href="https://t.co/hiO2R28sfO">https://t.co/hiO2R28sfO</a><br><br>ここは比較的最近…？<a href="https://t.co/CHLGZuUz04">https://t.co/CHLGZuUz04</a></p>&mdash; Natto (@madeofsoya) <a href="https://twitter.com/madeofsoya/status/1771219778906014156?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 22, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> もうこれで最後だと思ってダメもとで行ってみた なんだろうアジア料理屋さん？  もはや信頼度0の「bitcoin accepted here」  ビットコイン払いできますか？ 店員「できますよ」 え？ほんとに？ビットコイン払いできる？ 店員「できます」 できる！！！！ なんかできるらしい。 <br> 適当に商品を注文して 印刷されたQRコードを出されたので読み取る ここでスマートに決済できればよかったのだが結構慌てた 自分は英語がわからないし相手はビットコインがわからない それにビットコイン決済は日本で１回したことがあるだけだった  どうもライトニングアドレスのようだ 送金額はこちらで指定しないといけない 店員はフィリピンペソ建ての金額しか教えてくれない 何sats送ればいいのか分からない ここでめっちゃ混乱した でもウォレットの設定変えればいいと気付いた 普段円建てにしているのをフィリピンペソ建てに変更すればいいだけだった 設定を変更したら相手が提示している金額を入力して送金 送金は2、3秒で完了した <br> やった！ ### 海外でビットコイン決済したぞ！ ログ  PORK CHAR SIU BUN とかいうやつを買った  普通にめっちゃおいしかった なんかビットコイン決済できることにビビッて焦って一品しか注文しなかったけどもっと頼めばよかった ここです。みなさん行ってください。 Bunbun Boracay https://maps.app.goo.gl/DX8UWM8Y6sEtzYyK6 ### めでたしめでたし <br> ----------- <br> # 以下、普通の観光写真 ## セブ島 ジンベエザメと泳いだ  スミロン島でシュノーケリング  市場の路地裏のちょっとしたダウンタウン？スラム？をビビりながら歩いた  ## ボホール島 なんか変な山  メガネザル  現地の子供が飛び込みを披露してくれた  ## ボラカイ島 ビーチ   夕日  藻  ボラカイ島にはいくつかビーチがあって宿が多いところに近い南西のビーチ、ホワイトビーチは藻が多かった（時期によるかも） 北側のプカシェルビーチは全然藻もなく、水も綺麗でめちゃくちゃよかった  プカシェルビーチ    <br> ----------- <br> # おわり！

# long form note ## just a test ### using habla I guess I can just copy & paste markdown. Here is a meme to test photos insertion ![[https://i.nostr.build/ob0weHDqLkzAxrcR.jpg]]  ![https://i.nostr.build/ob0weHDqLkzAxrcR.jpg]() What else can this do? Links? Let's try.... [https://i.nostr.build/ob0weHDqLkzAxrcR.jpg]() And a list: * Item 1 * Item 2 * Item 3

(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.

# Portfolio I run 72 services on three servers - [Umbrel](https://getumbrel.com/) - [Start9](https://start9.com/) - -[PopOS! with a Cloudflare Tunnel](https://pop.system76.com/) This has given me experience in running my own cloud, ticketing system, full bitcoin node, decentralized blog, a meal management system, and Docker experience in both Linux and Portainer. ## Umbrel Server. I run an Umbrel Server and host many services on the clear-net using the Cloudflare tunnel.  ## Start9 Server I also run a start9 Server with services also exposed to the clearnet and TOR  ## Bitcoin Node I began running a full bitcoin node in 2019. I also run two pruned nodes. You can see the Genesis Block on [my instance of mempool](https://mempool.marcleon.work/block/000000000019d6689c085ae165831e934ff763ae46a2a6c172b3f1b60a8ce26f) . ## Peppermint Ticketing System You can submit a ticket on my [ticketing system here](https://ticket.bitcoinit.work/submit) I wrote about it in [my blog here](https://marc26z.npub.pro/post/gain-ticketing-experience/). This service runs on a AMD computer with the PopOS! Operating system and cloudflare.  ## Mealie This is my favorite service on Umbrel. It’s a meal management system that allows me to plan my meals and automate my grocery lists. It saves so much time. You can find [my instance of mealie here(https://mealie.marcleon.work/).  ## Self Hosted and Decentralized Blog I host a ghost blog on Start9 [here](https://marc26z.com/).  This blog is also published on nostr at: ### npub.pro https://marc26z.npub.pro/  ### habla.news/ https://habla.news/u/marc26z@nostrplebs.com/  ### Highlighter.com https://highlighter.com/marc26z@nostrplebs.com  ### Portainer I am currently working on a website using WordPress using Portainer on Umbrel. It’s not done, but the idea is to create a website that allows me to help people learn how to take self custody of bitcoin, run nodes, and mine. It is not finished, but the idea is to offer bitcoin IT services.  ## Tails On An Air Gapped Computer I removed the Wi-Fi card and hard drive from an old laptop to create an air gapped computer using [TAILS](https://tails.net/) [Click here to watch the video hosted on nostr.build](https://v.nostr.build/nb9552.mp4).  ## Bitcoin Mining Heater I converted an old S9 into a space heater. The 3D printed case was made by CryptoCloaks. The S9 miner was a gift from the first person I met after starting my meetup.  ## PeerViewer This is free and open source software that can be found at https://github.com/PeerViewer/. - It’s like a free and open source version of RDP on Windows or TeamViewer on Linux. [Watch the video here](https://pics.marcleon.work/api/v1/videos/44a1b62e5757992a145da0bf4efa3d741a96ed3e/3j8zlc5w/avc)  ## Certifications [Google Technical Support Certificiate](https://t.ly/Ro6Aj)  [Responsive Web Design](https://www.freecodecamp.org/certification/fcc90766bba-c1e4-45d8-9ffa-e6e81fe48f1a/responsive-web-design)  [Automate The Boring Stuff With Python](https://www.udemy.com/certificate/UC-49a4e757-2454-4359-8911-d374d9c409cd/) 

LNDhub-ek zure zorroa erraz inportatzea ahalbidetzen du bateragarriak diren aplikazioetan. Bitcoin Txoko LNbits zorroa progresiboko web aplikazio (PWA) modura gorde dezakezun arren zure telefonoan, [Zeus](https://zeusln.app/) edo [BlueWallet](https://bluewallet.io/) bezalako aplikazio natibo batek erabiltzaile-esperientzia hobea eta segurtasun handiagoa eskaintzen du. [Alby](https://getalby.com/) erabiliz, zorroa zure nabigatzailearen luzapenean ere inporta dezakezu, webgunean Lightning ordainketak egiteko eta Nostr zap-ak egiteko erraztasun handiagoz. Zorionez, zorro hauek guztiek hizkuntza komun bat ulertzen dute, [LNDhub](https://github.com/BlueWallet/LndHub/tree/master) izenekoa. Gida honetan, zorroa zure nabigatzailera eta telefonora nola inportatu azalduko dugu. Zorroa nabigatzailean eta telefonoan erabili nahi baduzu, hasi [Alby konfigurazioarekin](#Alby), pausoetako batek zorroa Zeus-era erraz inportatzeko aukera emango baitizu. Baina zorroa soilik zure telefonoan erabili nahi baduzu, zuzenean [Zeus atalera](#Zeus) jo dezakezu. ## Alby nostr:nprofile1qqsyv47lazt9h6ycp2fsw270khje5egjgsrdkrupjg27u796g7f5k0s8jq7y6 nabigatzailearen luzapena da, Lightning eta Nostr nabigatzailera ekartzen dituena. [WebLN](https://www.webln.dev/) protokoloa erabiliz, luzapenak webguneetan fakturak automatikoki detekta eta ordaintzen ditu, eta Lightning bidez webguneetan saioa hasteko aukera ematen du. Gainera, Lightning gune gogokoenetan aurrekontuak ezar ditzakezu. Luzapen honek [NIP-07](https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/07.md) protokoloa erabiliz Nostr sinadura gisa ere funtziona dezake, zure giltza pribatua web bezeroetan sartzea baino askoz seguruagoa dena. ### Zer behar dut? - Chrome edo Firefox luzapenak onartzen dituen web nabigatzailea. - LNbits zorroa. Oraindik zorro bat ez baduzu, joan [gure zorroen orrira](https://bitcointxoko.com) eta sortu bat. - (Aukerazkoa) Zeus konfiguratzeko mugikor bat. ### 1. LNDhub luzapena gaitzea zure LNbits zorroan Nabigatzailean, joan zure zorroaren estekara. Egin klik Extensions atalean eta gaitzazu `LNDhub` luzapena. Gaitu ondoren, joan LNDhub luzapenaren orrira. ### 2. Alby luzapena instalatu Joan [getalby.com](https://getalby.com/)-era eta egin klik `Add Browser Extension` botoian. Instalatu luzapena zure nabigatzailearen luzapen dendetik. Ezarri desblokeatzeko pasahitza eta gorde toki seguruan. ### 3. Inportatu Alby-ra  Hurrengo pantailan, aukeratu `Connect`, eta ondoren aukeratu `LNDhub`. Itzuli zure LNDhub luzapenera eta kopiatu konexioaren URL-a. Itsatsi hori LNDhub esportazioaren URI eremuan. Sakatu `Continue`. Orain LNbits zorroa LNDhub bidez konektatuta eduki beharko zenuke! 💡 Aukeratu dezakezu Invoice URL eta Admin URL artean. Bi hauek Alby-ri zure LNbits zorroarekin elkarreragiteko baimen desberdinak ematen dizkiote: - *Invoice URL*-ak fakturak sortzea eta ordainketak jasotzea ahalbidetzen du. - *Admin URL*-ak ordainketak bidaltzeko aukera ere ematen du. ### 4. (Aukerazkoa) Zeus konfiguratu Alby-rekin  Orain LNbits zorroa Alby-rekin konektatu duzunez, Zeus-en ere erraz inportatu dezakezu. Ireki luzapena, egin klik zure zorroaren izenean, eta joan `Account Settings` atalean. `Account` azpian aurkituko duzu `Connect your mobile wallet` aukera. Sakatu `Connect`, eta Zeus-ekin eskaneatzeko QR kode bat erakutsiko dizu. Zeus aurretik instalatu ez baduzu, joan [zeusln.app](https://zeusln.app/)-era eta deskargatu Zeus zure mugikorreko sistema eragilerako. Zeus deskargatu ondoren, joan `Settings` > `Add a new node` atalera. Hemen, Alby-k erakusten dizun QR kodea eskaneatu eta zorroa inportatu dezakezu. Listo! Orain Lightning-aren indarra zure eskuetan duzu. Jainko baten moduan sentitzen al zara jada? ## Zeus nostr:nprofile1qqsrf5h4ya83jk8u6t9jgc76h6kalz3plp9vusjpm2ygqgalqhxgp9g84ctjf kode irekiko aplikazio bikaina da, zure nodo propioa mugikorrean konektatzeko aukera ematen duena. Lightning nodo nagusi guztiak onartzen ditu, hala nola LND, CLN eta Eclair, bai eta Tor bidezko zein clearnet bidezko konexioak ere. Azkenaldian, beren LSP (Lightning Service Provider) propioa iragarri dute. ### Zer behar dut? - Android edo iOS telefono bat. - LNbits zorroa ikusi ahal izateko beste gailu bat (QR kodea eskaneatzeko). - LNbits zorroa eskuragarri izatea. Zorro bat oraindik ez baduzu, joan [gure zorroen orrira](https://bitcointxoko.com) eta sortu bat. ### 1. Zeus deskargatu Deskargatu Zeus aplikazioa zure sistema eragilerako [hemen](https://zeusln.app). ### 2. LNDhub luzapena gaitzea zure LNbits zorroan Zure LNbits zorroaren orrian, egin klik `Extensions` atalean eta gaitzazu `LNDhub` luzapena. Gaitu ondoren, ireki LNDhub luzapenaren orria. ### 3. Inportatu Zeus-en Joan `Settings` > `Add a new node` atalera Zeus-en. Eskaneatu nahi duzun zorroa inportatzeko. 💡 Aukeratu dezakezu Invoice URL eta Admin URL artean: - *Invoice URL*-ak fakturak sortzea eta ordainketak jasotzea ahalbidetzen du. - *Admin URL*-ak ordainketak bidaltzeko aukera ere ematen du. QR kodea eskaneatu ondoren, Zeus-en eremu guztiak automatikoki beteko dira. Zorroarentzat ezizena ere gehitu dezakezu.  Orain, `Save Node Config` sakatu eta zorroa zure mugikorretik kontrolatu dezakezu! ### Bonus Zeus-ek ezaugarri interesgarriak ere eskaintzen ditu, hala nola gai pertsonalizatuak, prezioen bihurketak, lurker modua eta biometria bidezko egiaztapena. Gida honen esparrutik haratago doazen ezaugarriak dira hauek, baina aplikazioa erabili eta zuk zeuk aurkitu ditzakezu!

LNDhub te permite importar fácilmente una billetera en aplicaciones compatibles. Si bien puedes guardar tu billetera Bitcoin Txoko LNbits en tu teléfono como una aplicación web progresiva (PWA), una aplicación nativa como [Zeus](https://zeusln.app/) o [BlueWallet](https://bluewallet.io/) ofrece una mejor experiencia de usuario así como un mayor nivel de seguridad. Con [Alby](https://getalby.com/), también puedes importar la billetera a la extensión de tu navegador para facilitar los pagos Lightning en la web y para los zaps de Nostr. Por suerte para nosotros, todas estas billeteras hablan un lenguaje común llamado [LNDhub](https://github.com/BlueWallet/LndHub/tree/master). En esta guía cubriremos cómo importar la billetera a tu navegador y a tu móvil. Si quieres usar tu billetera tanto en el navegador como en tu móvil, empieza con [la configuración de Alby](#Alby), ya que uno de los pasos te permitirá importar fácilmente tu billetera también a Zeus. Pero si sólo te interesa utilizar la billetera en tu móvil, puedes pasar directamente a [la sección de Zeus](#Zeus). ### Alby nostr:nprofile1qqsyv47lazt9h6ycp2fsw270khje5egjgsrdkrupjg27u796g7f5k0s8jq7y6 es una extensión de navegador que lleva Lightning y Nostr a tu navegador. Utilizando el protocolo [WebLN](https://www.webln.dev/), esta extensión puede detectar facturas LN en paginas web y pagarlas, así como posibilita iniciar sesión en sitios web con Lightning. También puedes fijar presupuestos para tus sitios favoritos de Lightning. Por otro lado también puedes utilizarla para firmar en Nostr utilizando [NIP-07](https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/07.md), lo cual es mucho más seguro que ingresar tu clave privada en clientes web. #### ¿Qué necesito? - Un navegador web que soporte extensiones Chrome o Firefox - Acceso a tu billetera LNbits. Si todavía no tienes una billetera LNbits, dirígete a [nuestra página de billeteras](https://bitcointxoko.com) y crea una - (Opcional) Un dispositivo móvil para configurar Zeus #### 1. Habilita la extensión LNDhub en tu LNbits wallet Dirígete a tu billetera LNbits. Haz clic en `Extensiones` y habilita la extensión `LNDhub`. Una vez se haya habilitado, dirígete a la página de extensión de LNDhub. #### 2. Instala la extensión Alby Dirígete a [getalby.com](https://getalby.com/) y instala la extensión desde el store de extensiones del navegador. Configura tu contraseña de desbloqueo y guárdala en un lugar seguro. #### 3. Importar a Alby  (Esta es una billetera de prueba. No hay fondos en ella. ¡No muestres a nadie tu URI de exportación real!) En la siguiente pantalla, elige `Conectar` y luego elige `LNDhub`. Vuelve a tu extensión LNDhub y copia la URL de conexión. Pégala en el campo `URI de exportación de LNDhub`. Pulsa continuar. ¡Ahora deberías haber estado conectado a tu billetera de LNbits con LNDhub! 💡 Puedes elegir entre la URL de la factura (Invoice URL) y la URL de administración (Admin URL). Le dan a Alby diferentes permisos para interactuar con tu cartera de LNbits. - La URL de factura te permite crear facturas y recibir pagos - La URL de administración también te permite enviar pagos #### 4. Configurar Zeus con Alby (opcional)  Ahora que ya has conectado tu LNbits con Alby, también puedes importarlo de una manera sencilla a Zeus con Alby. Abre la extensión, haz cilc en el nombre de tu billetera y navega a la configuración de la cuenta. En `Wallet Settings` > `General` se encuentra la opción de conectar tu billetera móvil. Al pulsar conectar, se mostrará un código QR para escanear desde Zeus. Si no tienes instalada Zeus con anterioridad, dirígete a [zeusln.app](https://zeusln.app/) y descarga la aplicación de Zeus para tu sistema operativo móvil. Una vez tengas descargado Zeus, entra en `Configuración` > `Añadir un nuevo nodo`. Aquí puedes escanear el código QR que te muestra Alby para importar la billetera. Voilà! Ahora tienes el poder de Lightning al alcance de la mano ¿Ya te sientes como un dios? ### Zeus nostr:nprofile1qqsrf5h4ya83jk8u6t9jgc76h6kalz3plp9vusjpm2ygqgalqhxgp9g84ctjf es una formidable aplicación de código abierto que permite conectar tu propio nodo a tu dispositivo movil. Es compatible con todas las principales implementaciones de nodos Lightning, como LND, CLN y Eclair, así como conexiones a través de Tor y clearnet. Recientemente también han anunciado su propio LSP (Lightning Service Provider). ### ¿Qué necesito? - Teléfono Android o iOS - Otro dispositivo en el que puede acceder a tu billetera LNbits (para mostrar el código QR para escanear) - Acceso a tu billetera LNbits. Si todavía no tienes una billetera LNbits, dirígete a [nuestra página de billeteras](https://bitcointxoko.com) y crea una #### 1. Descarga Zeus Puedes descargar la aplicación Zeus para tu sistema operativo [aquí](https://zeusln.app/). #### 2. Habilita la extensión LNDhub en tu billetera LNbits Dirígete a tu billetera LNbits. Haz clic en `Extensiones` y habilita la extensión `LNDhub`. Una vez habilitada, abre la pagina de la extensión LNDhub. #### 3. Importar a Zeus Ve a `Configuración` > `Añadir un nuevo nodo en Zeus`. Escanea la cartera que quieras instalar. 💡 Puedes elegir entre la URL de la factura (Invoice URL) y la URL de administración (Admin URL). - La URL de la factura te da permiso para generar facturas y recibir pagos. - La URL de administración también te permite enviar pagos. Una vez que hayas escaneado el código QR, todos los campos en Zeus deberían rellenarse automáticamente. También puedes añadir un apodo para tu billetera.  ¡Ahora puedes guardar la configuración del nodo y controlar la billetera desde tu teléfono! #### Extra Zeus también ofrece funciones interesantes como temas personalizados, conversiones de precios, modo acechador y verificación biométrica. Estos temas están más allá del alcance de esta guía, ¡juega en la aplicación y descubre todas esas características por ti mismo!

# political motivations of J6 judges: ## Judicial Sentencing Patterns Federal judges in Washington have been handling the sentencing of Capitol riot defendants, with some notable trends emerging: **Harsher Sentences**: Judges appointed by Democratic presidents have generally imposed tougher sentences compared to their Republican-appointed counterparts. This disparity suggests a potential political bias in the sentencing process. **Partisan Divide**: The sentencing patterns reveal a clear partisan divide, with Democratic-appointed judges more likely to view the January 6 events as a severe threat to democracy. ## Specific Examples **Judge Tanya Chutkan**: Appointed by President Obama, Judge Chutkan has consistently handed down sentences exceeding prosecutors' recommendations. Her actions could be interpreted as politically motivated, given her Democratic background. **Judge Trevor McFadden**: In contrast, Judge McFadden, appointed by President Trump, has been more lenient in his sentencing, even acquitting a defendant in a bench trial. This stark difference in approach further underscores the potential political influence on judicial decisions. ## Implications

Merkatari bat zara eta zure negozioan Bitcoin onartzen hasteko prest zaude? Edo agian Bitcoin zale sutsua zara, tokiko negozioak Bitcoinen mundura erakartzeko gogoz? Beharbada, ez zaizu Bitcoin interesatzen, baina ordainketa-prozesadore azkar eta merke bat erabili nahi duzu edo web-denda sinple bat sortu nahi duzu? Galdera hauetakoren bati baiezkoa erantzun badiozu, gida hau zuretzat da. Bitcoin Txoko-k ostatatutako [BTCPay Server](https://btcpayserver.org)-en denda bat konfiguratu dezakezu eta zure produktuak eta zerbitzuak Bitcoinen truke saltzen hasi hamar minuturen buruan, doan. ## Zer behar dut? Mugikor edo ordenadore bat baduzu eta posta elektronikoko kontu bat ere bai, orduan prest zaude! ## Kontu bat sortu Bitcoin Txoko-n BTCPay Server-en kontu bat sortzea doakoa da. Joan [btcpay.bitcointxoko.com](https://btcpay.bitcointxoko.com) helbidera kontu bat erregistratzeko. Egiaztatu zure posta elektronikoa, bertan bitcointxoko@gmail.com helbidetik bidalitako mezu bat aurkituko duzu, baieztapen-esteka bat izango duena. ## Zure lehen denda sortu Baieztapen-estekan klik egitean, dendaren sorrera orrialdera eramango zaitu. Eman zure dendari izen bat eta hautatu moneta lehenetsia eta prezio iturri hobetsia. Adibidez, *EUR* eta *Kraken* aukeratu ditzakezu, azken hau gomendatutako prezio iturria baita. BTCPay Server-ek zure produktuen edo zerbitzuen prezioa *EUR*-tik *Bitcoin*-era bihurtuko du, erosketa unean aukeratutako prezio iturriaren arabera. ## Zorro bat konfiguratu Ordainketak onartzen hasteko, lehenik eta behin zure denda zorro batera lotu behar duzu. Transakzio handiak (500 EUR baino gehiago) maiz espero ez badituzu, Lightning zorro bat konfiguratzeko gomendioa egiten dizugu, eta une honetan (on-chain) Bitcoin zorroa ez erabiltzea gomendatzen da. Lightning zorroa erabiliz, transakzioak azkarragoak eta merkeagoak izango dira. 💡 **Lightning** sarea Bitcoin ordainketak jasotzeko sare ezin hobea da, transakzio berehalakoak eta komisiorik baxuenak eskaintzen baititu **on-chain** transakzioekin alderatuta. Horrela, zure negozioak eraginkortasunez eta kostu txikiarekin jaso ditzake ordainketak. Lightning zorro bat konektatzeko modurik errazena LNDhub erabiltzea da, zure Lightning nodo propioa exekutatu beharrik ez baituzu izango. LNDhub zorro bat ez baduzu oraindik, ez kezkatu; Bitcoin Txoko-k doako LNDhub zorroak eskaintzen ditu, eta bost minutu baino gutxiago behar dira konfiguratzeko. Begiratu nostr:naddr1qqxnzd3exuerqdfkxccnyv3cqgs9n8m87l0hd9xxqwndqcmwzh4uvyxmwlw0637kuhg98pkcy8ana2grqsqqqa28nkyu7t zure LNDhub zorroa nola lortu jakiteko, eta prest zaudenean itzuli konfigurazioa jarraitzeko.  Zure LNDhub zorroa prest dagoenean, jarraitu urrats hauek BTCPay kontuan konfiguratzen: 1. Joan zure BTCPay kontura eta `Wallets` aukera bilatu alboko barran, ondoren `Lightning` aukeratu. 2. Hautatu `Use custom node`. 3. Kopiatu zure LNDhub administrazio URL-a eta itsatsi konexioaren konfigurazioan. 4. Proba ezazu zure zorroaren konexioa. 5. Ondo joan bada, honako mezua agertu beharko litzateke: *Connection to the Lightning node successful, but no public address has been configured*. Ez kezkatu *"no public address has been configured"* atalaz, horrek zure nodo propioa exekutatzen ari bazara bakarrik du garrantzia. 6. Zorroaren konexioa arrakastaz probatu ondoren, sakatu `Save` botoia. 7. `Save` sakatu ondoren, `LNURL` atalean, desaktibatu `Enable LNURL` aukera. Egin aldaketak eta ez ahaztu berriro `Save` botoian klik egitea. 8. (Hautazkoa) Une honetan, gomendagarria da `Display Lightning payment amounts in Satoshis` aukera markatzea, Satoshitan zenbatutako ordainketa kopuruak irakurtzeko errazagoak baitira. Satoshi Bitcoin-en zatirik txikiena da; Bitcoin bat 100 milioi satoshik osatzen dute. Jarraitu urrats hauek zure zorroa arrakastaz konfiguratuta izateko eta Lightning bidezko ordainketak onartzeko.  💡 Zure Lightning nodo propioa erabiltzen ari bazara, konfigurazio prozesua antzekoa da. Ziurtatu zure nodo inplementaziorako konexio kate egokia ematen duzula. ## Saltoki puntua (PoS) sortu Urrats honetara iritsi bazara, zorionak! Zati aspergarriena amaitu da, eta orain zure Saltoki puntua (Point of Sale, PoS) sortzeko unea iritsi da, BTCPay bidez zure lehen Bitcoin ordainketa onartzen hasteko! Saltoki puntu bat sortzeko: 1. Joan `Plugins` > `Point of Sale` atalera. 2. Eman izen bat zure Saltoki puntuari eta sakatu `Create` botoia. Jarraian, zure PoS aplikazioarekin egin ditzakezun gauza erraz batzuk azalduko ditugu. BTCPay-k ezaugarri asko ditu, baina gida honetan oinarrizkoak soilik azalduko ditugu, hasiera emateko. 💡 **Gogoratu** BTCPay Server-en saltoki puntu bat baino gehiago sor ditzakezula, bakoitza erabilera jakin baterako. Horrela, negozio desberdinetarako edo produktu eta zerbitzu berezietarako konfigurazio bereiziak izatea posible da. ### Teklatua (Keypad)  Demostrazio erraz baterako, PoS estilo gisa teklatuaren eredua erabiliko dugu. 1. Eman zure PoS-ari izen bat eta erakusteko titulua. 2. Hautatu `Keypad` estiloa `Point of Sale style` aukeraren azpian. 3. Sakatu `Save` eskuineko goiko izkinan, eta ondoren `View` sakatu zure PoS begiratzeko. Ordainketak lehenago konfiguratutako LNDhub zorroan jasoko dira. Jolas ezazu fakturak sortzen eta deskontu eta tip (aholkularitza) aukerak aktibatuz. Gainera, telefono bat baduzu (adibidez, iPhone ez den bat) NFC teknologia onartzen duena, bezeroek NFC txartelak erabiliz ere ordain dezakete, hala nola BoltCard erabiliz (ikusi nostr:naddr1qqxnzd3e8qcr2wfn8qcrgwf4qgs9n8m87l0hd9xxqwndqcmwzh4uvyxmwlw0637kuhg98pkcy8ana2grqsqqqa28qjzxr4). Ez al da zoragarria? 💡 PoS estilo honen erraztasuna maximizatzeko, Keypad PoS zure telefonoan Progressive Web App (PWA) gisa gorde dezakezu sarbide azkarrerako. Mugikor gehienetako nabigatzaileetan aukera hau `Install App` edo `Gehitu orri nagusian` izenarekin agertzen da. Horrela, zure negozioan Bitcoin ordainketak erraz onar ditzakezu, eta erabiltzaileek ere modu intuitibo batean ordaindu ahal izango dute. ### Product list (with cart)  Posible da saltoki puntu bat sortzea produktu zehatzekin, bakoitza bere prezioarekin. Ezaugarri hau erabil dezakezu kutxa sinple bat, bezeroen auto-ordainketa sistema edo web denda bat konfiguratzeko. Nola sortu produktu-zerrendadun Saltoki Puntua: 1. Joan berriro alboko barrara eta aukeratu `Point of Sale`. 2. Oraingoan, `Point of Sale Style` azpian, hautatu `Product list with cart`. "With cart" aukerak bezeroari produktu bat baino gehiago aldi berean erosteko aukera ematen dio. 3. Zure produktuak sortu, edo zuzenean sakatu `Save` eta `View` produktu laginak probatzeko. ## Ondorioa Gida honetan, zure negozioan Bitcoin onartzen hasteko BTCPay Server erabiliz jarraitu beharreko oinarrizko urratsak azaldu ditugu. BTCPay Server [proiektu irekia](https://github.com/btcpayserver/btcpayserver) da eta etengabe garatzen ari da. Askoz ere ezaugarri eta funtzionalitate gehiago eskaintzen ditu, hala nola Shopify integrazioa, crowdfunding eta ordainketen banaketa automatikoa. Gainera, zure denda pertsonaliza dezakezu gaikako diseinuekin, ordainketa-gune pertsonalizatuarekin, erabiltzaileen kudeaketarekin, posta elektronikoko jakinarazpenekin eta askoz gehiago. BTCPay Server-en ahalmen guztiak aprobetxatu nahi badituzu, zure [Lightning nodoa konfiguratu](https://v2.minibolt.info/home/readme) eta zure [BTCPay zerbitzaria ostatatzea](https://docs.btcpayserver.org/Deployment/) gomendatzen dizugu. Informazio gehiago lortzeko, haien [dokumentazioa](https://github.com/btcpayserver/btcpayserver) eta [bideoak](https://www.youtube.com/@BTCPayServer) ikustea komeni da. Zalantzarik edo galderarik baduzu, jakinarazi iezaguzu! Zure iritziak entzutea gustatuko litzaiguke eta galderak argitzen lagundu nahi dizugu. Bitcoin Txoko komunitate ireki bat da. Gure zerbitzu guztiak dohaintzekin finantzatzen dira. Gida hau erabilgarria iruditu bazaizu, kontuan hartu gure zerbitzariak martxan mantentzen laguntzeko [dohaintza](https://fund.bitcointxoko.com) bat egitea. Eskerrik asko aldez aurretik!

Have you ever wanted to learn from lengthy educational videos but found it challenging to navigate through hours of content? Our new tool addresses this problem by transforming long-form video lectures into easily digestible, searchable content. ## Key Features: ### Video Processing: - Automatically downloads YouTube videos, transcripts, and chapter information - Splits transcripts into sections based on video chapters ### Content Summarization: - Utilizes language models to transform spoken content into clear, readable text - Formats output in AsciiDoc for improved readability and navigation - Highlights key terms and concepts with [[term]] notation for potential cross-referencing ### Diagram Extraction: - Analyzes video entropy to identify static diagram/slide sections - Provides a user-friendly GUI for manual selection of relevant time ranges - Allows users to pick representative frames from selected ranges ## Going Forward: Currently undergoing a rewrite to improve organization and functionality, but you are welcome to try the current version, though it might not work on every machine. Will support multiple open and closed language models for user choice Free and open-source, allowing for personal customization and integration with various knowledge bases. Just because we might not have it on our official Alexandria knowledge base, you are still welcome to use it on you own personal or community knowledge bases! We want to help find connections between ideas that exist across relays, allowing individuals and groups to mix and match knowledge bases between each other, allowing for any degree of openness you care. While designed with #Alexandria users in mind, it's available for anyone to use and adapt to their own learning needs. ## Screenshots ### Frame Selection  This is a screenshot of the frame selection interface. You'll see a signal that represents frame entropy over time. The vertical lines indicate the start and end of a chapter. Within these chapters you can select the frames by clicking and dragging the mouse over the desired range where you think diagram is in that chapter. At the bottom is an option that tells the program to select a specific number of frames from that selection. ### Diagram Extraction  This is a screenshot of the diagram extraction interface. For every selection you've made, there will be a set of frames that you can choose from. You can select and deselect as many frames as you'd like to save. ## Links - repo: https://github.com/limina1/video_article_converter - Nostr Apps 101: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Flxa_jkErqE ## Output And now, we have a demonstration of the final result of this tool, with some quick cleaning up. The video we will be using this tool on is titled Nostr Apps 101 by nostr:npub1nxy4qpqnld6kmpphjykvx2lqwvxmuxluddwjamm4nc29ds3elyzsm5avr7 during Nostrasia. The following thread is an analog to the modular articles we are constructing for Alexandria, and I hope it conveys the functionality we want to create in the knowledge space. Note, this tool is the first step! You could use a different prompt that is most appropriate for the specific context of the transcript you are working with, but you can also manually clean up any discrepancies that don't portray the video accurately. nostr:nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzp5r5hd579v2sszvvzfel677c8dxgxm3skl773sujlsuft64c44ncqy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyv9kh2uewd9hj7qgwwaehxw309ahx7uewd3hkctcpzemhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0wd68ytnsw43z7qghwaehxw309aex2mrp0yhxummnw3ezucnpdejz7qgewaehxw309aex2mrp0yh8xmn0wf6zuum0vd5kzmp0qqsxunmjy20mvlq37vnrcshkf6sdrtkfjtjz3anuetmcuv8jswhezgc7hglpn Or view on Coracle https://coracle.social /nevent1qqsxunmjy20mvlq37vnrcshkf6sdrtkfjtjz3anuetmcuv8jswhezgcppemhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mp0qgsdqa9md83tz5yqnrqjw07hhkpmfjpkuv9hlh5v8yhu8z274w9dv7qnnq0s3

* Worked on the [https://nostr-php.dev](https://nostr-php.dev) docs * [Introduction](https://nostr-php.dev/introduction) * [Request events](https://nostr-php.dev/guides/request-events) * [Publish event](https://nostr-php.dev/guides/publish-event) * Discussed a FOSDEM stand application with Jurjen and Tanja to attend that conference with Nostr * Release version `1.4.2` of Nostr-PHP * [https://github.com/nostrver-se/nostr-php/releases/tag/1.4.2](https://github.com/nostrver-se/nostr-php/releases/tag/1.4.2) * Pre-release `2.0.0-alpha1` * [https://github.com/nostrver-se/nostr-php/releases/tag/2.0.0-alpha1](https://github.com/nostrver-se/nostr-php/releases/tag/2.0.0-alpha1)

### Week 40 * Added a page with my research findings around async concurrent websocket requests: [https://nostr-php.dev/references/async-concurrent-requests](https://nostr-php.dev/references/async-concurrent-requests) ### Week 41 I attended the Nostrdam meetup and helped as a volunteer at the Nostr booth at the Bitcoin Amsterdam 2024 conference. Here are some photo's:   I also wrote down my personal learned lessons from this expierence: [https://nostrver.se/note/my-learned-nostr-lessons-nostr-booth-bitcoin-amsterdam-2024](https://nostrver.se/note/my-learned-nostr-lessons-nostr-booth-bitcoin-amsterdam-2024)

*Note: This is not some fancy writing piece. this is just brain farting that I thought it was too long for a regular post.* Alex Gleason is always doing a lot of crazy interesting work. [Ditto](https://soapbox.pub/ditto/) is a step in the right direction for an alternate type of relay ecosystem that runs alongside the standard globally focused community we all know. While #Ditto is awesome, what I'd really like to see something similar, but more focused on a multi-community experience that simultaneously makes each community's viewing experience focused only on that community's content. Just for fun, to write down some ideas, below are the 2 big changes that I think would make ditto the ultimate "communities" system that could trounce Reddit. ### 1. Single relay experience on the domain: By default, I think community sites should only show content from the built in relay (or a relay group for redundancy). Currently on ditto.pub, when you first sign in, it feels a lot like any other web nostr client. The default home just shows follows I have from other relays instead of being thrown into the community content. You have to click the local feed, to filter the community's content, but it's limited to people who registered a NIP-05 for that domain. I think that it would be great if you could contribute with any NIP-05 and it counts as community content. That could be accomplished by equate community content to content posted on the relay. There are countless apps to get a feed of your relays, so it doesn't benefit me to see it on a communty's domain. ### 2. Sister client giving multi-community aggregation experience: I think communities should like pokemon and you grab the ones to identify with. Create a set of web and mobile app clients that manage viewing and switching single relays at a time. The client experience would be like reddit where you navigate ditto communities like subreddits. If a community is a pokemon, then this is the pokedex? OK I actually don't know shit about pokemon so that might not be the slam dunk I thought it was. Whoops. ### Ideas / more particulars * To see a community's content, you add a community relay subscribing to subreddit, or simply visit the domain. * Another great feature would be customizing the relays that make up your home feed, and making other named combo-feeds (especially awesome if you are a part of 2 rival communities who's focus generally overlap) * The client would use more globally used relays to handle settings like your list followed ditto communities, etc (configurable) * Similarly, to help users find communities, ditto servers can optionally publish their relay info to a list on a "discovery" relay. Main popular discovery relays would be set by default (where communities publish discovery info to), but could be configured to other relays (if people wanted to set up custom curation relays or something.) * Registering a domain handle (NIP-05) at the community domain can be more focused on people with relay moderation roles, or just people who really for some reason want that community to be their whole identity (i don't personally get that, which is why mastodon is not for me) * Communities could work independently of the aggregator app(s) If people just wanted to visit the domain to post (from any NIP-05)

Nostr proxy baten erabilera modu oso eraginkorra da internet banda-zabaleraren eta mugikorretan bateriaren kontsumoa optimizatzeko. Proxy batek hainbat errelei-konexio konexio bakarrean biltzen dituenez, baliabideen erabilera nabarmen murrizten du, eta erabiltzailearen IP helbidea ezkutatuz pribatutasun-geruza bat gehitzen du. Hona hemen nola funtzionatzen duen eta nola konfigura daitekeen: ### Nola funtzionatzen du? Nostr proxy batek hainbat erreleirekin konektatzen du. Errele horietara gertaerak eskuratu eta argitaratzen ditu. Bezeroaren aplikazioak WebSocket konexio bakarra ireki behar du proxy-ra, eta horren bidez proxy-ak konektatuta dituen errele guztiak eskuragarri izango ditu.  *Irudiaren egiletza: Yonle 2023* Bezeroak konexio bakarra irekitzen duenez, datuak eta bateria aurrezten ditu. Proxy-ak bezeroaren izenean erreleekin konektatzen denez, erreleek proxy-aren IP helbidea ikusten dute, eta ez bezeroarena. (Hala ere, proxy hornitzailearengan konfiantza izan behar duzu). ### Erabiltzeko Modua Nostr proxy bat erraz auto-ostata daiteke. Auto-ostatatzeko jarraibideak lortzeko, begiratu nostr:npub1x3azxuysp5vmfer4vgs4jn5tmfcx4ew8sh0qnev7gczljxsr7jwqa3g4el erabiltzailearen [biltegi](https://github.com/Yonle/bostr/) hau. Auto-ostatzeko baliabiderik ez dutenentzat, [Bitcoin Txoko-k komunitate-instantzia](https://bostr.bitcointxoko.com) bat ostalaratzen du. Erabiltzeko, gehitu besterik ez duzu: ``` wss://bostr.bitcointxoko.com ``` zure errele zerrendara. Orain ez duzunez zuzeneko konexioak behar, errele bikoiztuak ezabatu ditzakezu. Ikusiko dugu elkar Nostr-en!

# カスタム絵文字とは 任意のオリジナル画像を絵文字のように文中に挿入できる機能です。 また、リアクション（Twitterの いいね のような機能）にもカスタム絵文字を使えます。  # カスタム絵文字の対応状況（2024/02/05）  カスタム絵文字を使うためにはカスタム絵文字に対応した[クライアント](https://welcome.nostr-jp.org/tutorial/explore-client.html)を使う必要があります。 ※表は一例です。クライアントは他にもたくさんあります。 使っているクライアントが対応していない場合は、クライアントを変更する、対応するまで待つ、開発者に要望を送る（または自分で実装する）などしましょう。 #### 対応クライアント - [Amethyst](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vitorpamplona.amethyst) - [FreeFrom](https://freefrom.space/) - [nostter](https://nostter.app/) - [Rabbit](https://rabbit.syusui.net/) - [Snort](https://snort.social/) - [noStrudel](https://nostrudel.ninja/) ここではnostterを使って説明していきます。 # 準備 カスタム絵文字を使うための準備です。 - Nostrエクステンション（NIP-07）を導入する - 使いたいカスタム絵文字をリストに登録する ## Nostrエクステンション（NIP-07）を導入する Nostrエクステンションは使いたいカスタム絵文字を登録する時に必要になります。 また、環境（パソコン、iPhone、androidなど）によって導入方法が違います。 Nostrエクステンションを導入する端末は、実際にNostrを閲覧する端末と違っても構いません（リスト登録はPC、Nostr閲覧はiPhoneなど）。 Nostrエクステンション（NIP-07）の導入方法は以下のページを参照してください。 [ログイン拡張機能 (NIP-07)を使ってみよう | Welcome to Nostr! ～ Nostrをはじめよう！ ～ ](https://welcome.nostr-jp.org/tutorial/nip-07.html) 少し面倒ですが、これを導入しておくとNostr上の様々な場面で役立つのでより快適になります。 ## 使いたいカスタム絵文字をリストに登録する 以下のサイトで行います。 [emojito](https://emojito.meme/) 右上の**Get started**からNostrエクステンションでログインしてください。 例として以下のカスタム絵文字を導入してみます。 実際より絵文字が少なく表示されることがありますが、古い状態のデータを取得してしまっているためです。その場合はブラウザの更新ボタンを押してください。 [generalJP | カスタム絵文字](https://emojito.meme/a/naddr1qqykwetwv4exzmz22qqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dspzpmzzcaj5rzeah8y940ln4z855wa72af4a6aac4zjypql55egcpsqqvzqqqr4fcp4fwv8)  - 右側の**Options**から**Bookmark**を選択  これでカスタム絵文字を使用するためのリストに登録できます。 # カスタム絵文字を使用する 例としてブラウザから使えるクライアント nostter から使用してみます。 [nostter](https://nostter.app/) nostterにNostrエクステンションでログイン、もしくは秘密鍵を入れてログインしてください。 ## 文章中に使用 1. **投稿**ボタンを押して投稿ウィンドウを表示 2. **顔😀**のボタンを押し、絵文字ウィンドウを表示 3. **＊タブ**を押し、カスタム絵文字一覧を表示 4. カスタム絵文字を選択 5. : 記号に挟まれたアルファベットのショートコードとして挿入される  この状態で投稿するとカスタム絵文字として表示されます。 カスタム絵文字対応クライアントを使っている他ユーザーにもカスタム絵文字として表示されます。 対応していないクライアントの場合、ショートコードのまま表示されます。  ショートコードを直接入力することでカスタム絵文字の候補が表示されるのでそこから選択することもできます。  ## リアクションに使用 1. 任意の投稿の**顔😀**のボタンを押し、絵文字ウィンドウを表示 2. **＊タブ**を押し、カスタム絵文字一覧を表示 3. カスタム絵文字を選択  カスタム絵文字リアクションを送ることができます。  # カスタム絵文字を探す 先述した[emojito](https://emojito.meme/)からカスタム絵文字を探せます。 例えば任意のユーザーのページ [emojito ロクヨウ](https://emojito.meme/p/npub1a3pvwe2p3v7mnjz6hle63r628wl9w567aw7u23fzqs062v5vqcqqu3sgh3) から探したり、 [emojito Browse all](https://emojito.meme/browse) からnostr全体で最近作成、更新された絵文字を見たりできます。 また、以下のリンクは日本語圏ユーザーが作ったカスタム絵文字を集めたリストです（2024/06/30） ※漏れがあるかもしれません [日本ユーザー作 カスタム絵文字](https://nostviewstr.vercel.app/npub17hczqvxtfv3w69wr6lxrttnpdekwdwel55mld60fr24zwjuu6utqtj8mjx/10030) 各絵文字セットにある**Open in emojito**のリンクからemojitoに飛び、使用リストに追加できます。 ----------- 以上です。 次：Nostrのカスタム絵文字の**作り方** Yakihonneリンク [Nostrのカスタム絵文字の作り方](https://yakihonne.com/article/_@lokuyow.github.io/1707912490439) Nostrリンク nostr:naddr1qqxnzdesxuunzv358ycrgveeqgswcsk8v4qck0deepdtluag3a9rh0jh2d0wh0w9g53qg8a9x2xqvqqrqsqqqa28r5psx3 ----------- # 仕様 [NIP-30 Custom Emoji](https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/30.md) [NIP-30 カスタム絵文字（和訳）](https://github.com/nostr-jp/nips-ja/blob/main/30.md)

this is in response to Shinobis recent piece occupy bitcoin found here https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/occupy-bitcoin-bitcoin-is-not-just-libertarian?new Occupy bitcoin is a thing every single one of us tries to do. There isn't a single one individual that doesn’t see bitcoin for what it is and have it not occupy all of them to varying degrees. There’s an innate fascination with coming upon previously unknown knowledge and become overtly obsessed with it and exploring all of the facets in which the new knowledge can be applied. When one does so, it normally can lead to finding previously unknown areas that you come to find with the more that you learn you find out just how much you truly don’t understand. Now with this being the foundation of what all of humans are doing. None of us, not ONE, know everything. Its a fallacious argument to claim to do. In the journey for the discovery that is truth one can happen to fall upon the political rabbit hole that can be called or dubbed Libertarianism/Anarchism/ AnCap/AnCom etc. I use these labels very lightly as they are just words at the end of the day words mean different things to different people. I cant know what these words mean to you dear reader but I can only know what they mean to me, and my journey specifically. What we as humans do is to come to an agreement upon to what does these words mean to the both of us when we are communicating them to each other. I do my best to not fall into being pigeon holed into believing or having to defend that when I say one of the aforementioned words that I should have to commit to whatever it is your preconceived understanding of what that is. We must remember that these words are collectivized terms, they are strictly USEFUL fictions that we humans use in order to better conceptualize the ideas to better understand. That to take any attribute pulled from any one of the above and blanket paint “some” or “most” individuals that claim to align with above ideologies/alignments/political beliefs that these individuals represent that is an absurd claim. One cannot claim that individuals acting in mean/harsh ways when facing others who don’t agree with them is the wrong way to act. We are humans we disagree, were free to act as we please to anyone we wish to do so. We’re NEVER free to ignore the consequences of those actions. One could characterize the vehement disdain for the acceptance all ideas, and letting others have their own opinions, is how we as individuals got here in the first place. It was the ideas of society being more important than the whole that had legitimized the aggression sanctified by the state as an omnipotent entity free from doing no wrong in lieu of the greater good. Individuals can do as such with their minds as they please but your actions of freedom stop at the point of my nose begins. The individuals that understand freedom and its core philosophy understand this. Treating one side as an evil and the other side as some glorified good is a cop out of intellectual dishonesty. In the realm of bitcoin there can be disagreements and even out right hostility towards any number of ideas/opinions. This is the nature of freedom itself. As I’ve seen it and as I have championed it myself do with freedom what you will, but whatever you do if I think its stupid I’m going to tell you its stupid. Social pressures have been with human civilizations for thousands of years to think that the idea of attacks to your ideas not being a thing because we should accept all ideas and be kind to differing opinions is a farce at best and some unicorn fart huffing at worst. It was the individuals that were unwavering IN SPITE of the social attacks, the public slandering, the outright social ostracization, the being called dumb and stupid that paved the way for the best and most historical moments in history Ideas don’t care about these passing affronts. If your viewpoint/idea needs soft corners to gain traction then maybe you should reassess your idea in the first place. The battleground that is the societal/accepted norm isn't one that’s for the faint of heart. Everyone has limited time and resources available to them if they are choosing not to hear you then its probably time to seek out others to speak to. In the realm of freedom everyone CAN choose any ideas they wish to follow and interact with others that agree, where that stops is you can NO LONGER force everyone else to participate in your own shared delusions with the others you associate with. The freedom to EXCLUDE is one of the core tenets of freedom principles. We DO NOT have to be accepting of everyone if we do not wish to do so, the belief that everyone should ALWAYS accept everyone and everything is a communistic one. No one individual has the time and resources to accept every person and accept or contemplate every single idea presented to him. What freedom DOES allow for is for YOU to find the individuals that ARE accepting of your views/beliefs and do with that what you wish. By trying to call out one group of individuals as being too “tribal” in what they view as the best course of action for themselves while SIMULTANEOUSLY praising another group for their favored tenets of “acceptance” is a laughable and down right sad view that “everyone should be more like the accepting crowd”. It is only through the choices we make that we get to where we are going on this journey. Those choices are inherently going to REQUIRE dissociation, omission, & exclusion. The ideologies/beliefs mentioned at the beginning of this article are only a starting point to the journey. They are in no way shape or from a claim to be a complete set of knowledge's that allow everyone to be able to navigate this earth. Are some things flawed? Probably. Do some things work for some and not others? Absolutely. But the major core belief at all of them is the belief that violence is never permitted, in all its facets to the individual liberty of the person. Its the only morally justifiable way to navigate life. This is in and of itself the most open and accepting philosophy of all life choices. Individuals can do with their lives as they please, nobody is stopping you from doing that, but you because someone said some mean things to me about what I believe. Its about time some individuals get that we must remain steadfast in our mission. We don’t get there by being nice to everyone. We only get there by allowing everyone to do what they wish and not expecting others to bend to our will because you hurt my feelings. The ultimate arbiter for what you should pick and choose is you the individual, don’t let others decide that for you. Don’t be a passenger in your own life, take that wheel and choose for yourself where you are headed. But if you're going to let someone who was mean to you stop you from using probably the greatest tool that a human has ever invented, then maybe there isn't hope for humanity after all. The one thing that I know for sure is that there is one thing that that can hinder you or augment you, that thing is choice. Embrace it.

NIPs (Nostr Implementation Possibilities) are technical specifications that Nostr developers create to define how specific event types and tags are used. These can be written before or after the feature is implemented and often go through multiple revisions before becoming stable enough to matter. Once two or more clients fully implement the proposal, it is merged into the main repository. This process ensures that while new ideas are encouraged, they are also rigorously reviewed and tested. There are generally two paths for NIPs: 1. New Ideas, when developers just have a hunch on a new solution and want to quickly write something up to gather feedback from the community. These are my favorite NIPs because they generally introduce a new way of thinking about a problem we are all having. And because they are not just a general solution, but a specific proposal, it allows us to see the entire picture in just a few paragraphs. Even though they are my favorite, they are quite "green" and usually spur 2-3 separate solutions in following PRs by different authors. 2. Existing implementations that need to explain what they are doing. These happen when a client is already running the code in production and simply wants to explain to the rest of the community how to generate and interpret the events the client is creating. These NIPs start much more stable than the former and allow for fewer changes, but because there is already an implementation available, it's a market-tested solution that might just need a few adjustments before others start implementing it. Well-written specs ensure clarity, reduce ambiguity, and help developers implement the proposal consistently. The text should be VERY short, precise, prescriptive, and actionable by other devs. Start by introducing the new kind or tag in the first sentence and jump straight into a mockup of how the event looks like. The mockup should be self-explanatory and provide clues to what the remaining of the document will talk about. Some folks like to add long/verbose introductions, conclusions, and discussions of the reasons why the NIP is needed or why certain features are there. But those are largely unnecessary and are more appropriate to be placed in the body of the Pull Request descriptor. Start your NIP with the following template: ``` NIP-<pick a number> ====== <Title> ------------------ `draft` `optional` Event kind <new kind> defines <whatever it does>. Tags <one or two of the most important ones> <describe what they do>. As an example: ```jsonc { "kind": <your kind>, "tags": [ <your tags> ], "content": "", //... } `` ` Relays MUST... Clients MUST... ## <Details 1> ## <Details 2> ## <How to find them> ``` Your number for the NIP is irrelevant. Just pick a random number that is available so that you can fork the repo, create a file with that name, and start writing. This number will likely change once the NIP is merged. The NIPs title must be self-explanatory and short. If it helps, try to imagine which name would be best to add to the list of NIPs on the readme.md file. Same for event type names. Picture something that is short, unique and that devs can just remove the space to have a class name. The `draft` `optional` tags are there because unless you are working on NIP-01, everything is draft and everything is optional. If you want to write a mandatory NIP, you better make sure your text is so good that it can be added to `01.md` directly without overcomplicating the protocol. Start by describing the new event type, what it does and its main tags. Show the mockup and then start introducing all the other tags and how clients and relays should behave when implementing it. Use the words MUST, SHOULD, MAY, SHOULD NOT, and MUST NOT to define the mandatory behaviors of those declaring compliance with the NIP. Keep it simple. The specification should be designed to ensure that different clients, relays, and services can implement it without requiring substantial changes to their existing infrastructure. Ideally, devs should be able to implement the entire NIP from near scratch in just a few hours. Don't use jargon. Don't declare a vocabulary of words. Use simple words that anyone can understand and quickly code a demo of all the features in the NIP. They can learn about your reasons as they develop their implementation. Write expecting buggy implementations. The protocol must be resilient to varying implementations and network conditions, and gracefully handle coding errors or random gibberish. You want to promote a defensive design that anticipates misguided implementations, avoids breaking changes, and maximizes compatibility across the ecosystem. What happens if there are two tags with the same name? What happens if events that have missing tags are found? Buggy implementations will exist. The writing and reading clients are generally different and must be ready for anything that shows up on each side. Avoid abstractions, extensible and modular designs. Yes, they can be hidden underneath your text, but writing for them is a mistake and just overcomplicates things. Write for a specific use case and close all possible options to the items/features declared in the text. Make sure you are implementing those. There is no point in declaring things that are not going to be used in the short term. We can always add more in the future and we don't need a recipe on how to add more later. Label your relay hosts, setting kinds, and other data management necessities. Every NIP has a way to find out the user's preferred relay associated with the use case. Sometimes it's through a relay hint others through a separate event kind that just lists the user's home relays or contains a list of "following" events designed for the use case. Each NIP can create their own way of finding events. You cannot add new root fields. Use tags instead. Root fields are special and require changes to the core protocol everyone implements. Any new field will take years to come to reality. Once you propose an idea, try not to change too much. It will take time for other devs to wrap their minds around it. If you keep changing it, even if those changes reflect the request of the reviewers in the PR, it just confuses everyone. Sometimes things change so much that it is worth doing two PRs with separate specifications that solve the same problem. That allows devs to analyze the two propositions side by side and decide which one is better. Always add a test case or an example. This is an absolute requirement if the NIP is complex, like a new encryption scheme. But even for simpler NIPs, test cases help devs to quickly verify if their implementations meet the minimum standard for compliance. They not only add peace of mind, but they also provide some welcoming dopamine when a new dev is trying to implement your NIP. Managing state is hard. Doing it with different implementations and hosting them in separate relays is even harder. If your NIP has multiple events to manage state, like group administration actions (add/remove member, change names/icons, invite/reporting events) try to structure them in a way that devs can quickly see the state machine of all possible state changes. Specify data formats explicitly. Clearly define the format of all data fields, including type (e.g., string, integer), encoding (e.g., base64, hex), and structure (e.g., array, object). Specify constraints like length limits, valid characters, and optional/required fields. Tags are case-sensitive. Avoid having to specify new encodings, but if you do, make sure to include test cases that encompass all potential cases. It's ok to not propose the most efficient way of solving the problem. A simple but slightly less efficient design is preferred over a complex but more efficient one. We already use hex and base64 codes to represent binary bytes in JSON, which wastes 25-50% of space. That level of waste is ok if the solution becomes simpler to code. It's not about you. You may think you must convince everyone that your particular way of solving the problem is the best and get some ego points with yourself. While some of that is beneficial to the debate, be open-minded to the other possible solutions. Once merged, the NIP is not yours anymore. Anyone can change in any way they see fit. If your work is great, people will remember your name. If it just got the conversation started to become something completely different from what you proposed, they will also remember you.

This is the full AI-generated transcript of Bitcoin Infinity Show #130 with Obi Nwosu! If you'd like to support us, check out bitcoininfinityshow.com for all our books, merch, and more! # Welcoming Obi Nwosu **Luke:** Obi, welcome for the first time to the Bitcoin Infinity Show. **Obi:** well, **Knut:** We rebranded. **Obi:** what is time in infinity? No, no, it's the second time, great to have you back. yeah, we have, it's been a wild ride and the journey is just beginning. So yeah, thank you. # The Launch of Fedi   **Knut:** so Fedimin launched, two weeks ago. Is it the Fedi **Obi:** Fedi, launched? **Knut:** launched? Yeah. These terms. **Obi:** no, no, Fedi Mint launched, effectively Fedi Mint launched nearly five years ago. FediMint is a very old technology, very, you know, the first, the first FediMint transaction, where someone used FediMint e cash over Lightning to buy a cup of coffee, which was after, you know, a year plus of development was on, I believe it was the 3rd of the 8th, 3rd of August, 2021. **Obi:** And so we're trying to, like you have a Bitcoin Infinity Day, we're suggesting, that was actually Erik, my, the inventor of Fedi Mint. from Parinelli Police, just actually, and so I like to think of that as e cash coffee day. Cause actually it was like, you actually bought the cup of coffee with e cash. **Obi:** so yeah, but yeah, Fedi finally launched two weeks ago. **Knut:** All right. so I think, for those who haven't seen the previous episode with you, if they want to know more about you, we should probably go back to that episode, but I think you're going to have to do the TLDR on what Fedi is for our listeners. Like that's a good start, I think. **Obi:** So yeah, and now we can be clear about what Fedi is. And so Fedi, is two things still. Even Fedi is two things. One is the company called Fedi and the other is this product called Fedi. So if we talk about the product that people have on their phone, Fedi is a community super app. And so it's an app that takes the best of freedom technology. **Obi:** it's got Bitcoin functionality in it, Lightning connectivity, obviously FediMint for handling community custody. but it's also got Nostr support and any other freedom technology that's out there that's mature and reliable. We've taken the time to integrate into one simple to use app. So it allows you to have chat. **Obi:** We use Matrix as this federated, decentralized, encrypted chat protocol. It has money with the combination of Lightning, Bitcoin, and Fediment and more. So it has a built in web browser inside it. And therefore you can access all of the Bitcoin ecosystem of apps from Bitrefill to Unleash. chat to BTCmaps and beyond. **Obi:** All in one place. So you don't have to have this smorgasbord of different apps and tabs open one app to use them all. And the app itself, we announced as well, is now source available and will eventually be open source as well. So we're trying to make the best of it. portal into the freedom technology space. **Obi:** So that's Fedi. And then Fedi the company builds the Fedi app. And we also have something we call the FedEye Order, which is, this selection of incredible people, FedEye Knights, who are on the ground and they, you can think of them as like a Decentralized genius bar. If you've got an iPhone, you have the genius bar that goes along with the phone. **Obi:** The reason why the iPhone is so amazing is not just the phone, but it's also the incredible support you can get. If you can go to an Apple store and you go to the genius bar, they can help you. we have that instead of it being in, you know, Fifth Avenue or Oxford street in London or so on. **Obi:** It's in, the capital of Togo or Uganda or. Guatemala, or so on. On the ground, they will locate communities, they will educate communities. and they will support communities on Bitcoin, on Lightning, on FediMent, on all of these different websites and services that are out there to provide that sort of support that's needed for the communities that are outside of the existing Bitcoin space. # How Federations Work **Knut:** Okay, great. so how does a federation work? **Obi:** so the first thing you have to do, wherever you custody is where you transact and do and you live and so on, which is why. Banks try very much when you're young to get you to hold a bank account with them because they know that most people never leave and then all other services are provided. So how do you actually custody? **Obi:** For many people they've had two choices. Either they do everything themselves and that's the best if you can do it just like it's the best to be able to build and fix your own car or house but not everybody can do that but that is always the best because no one's going to love you. And put as much care in as yourself. **Obi:** The other extreme is to fully outsource it, fully give it to some private party, which is actually what ends up 95 percent plus people doing, and that's putting their money on a Coinbase or some other centralized service. and the same with communication. They would use some sort of centralized service. **Obi:** They would use a WhatsApp, an X. com, a Telegram, a WeChat or so on. They would use some centralized chat. And if you think about it. Our lives are communication and money and value. So both those things, most people outsource, some people take it in house. If I want to set up a federation, which is to do with the custody of the money, where FedeMint is this middle, middle house, I can find within my community, a number of trusted parties. **Obi:** We call them guardians. So let's say. You found us three plus, you know, your great t shirt, Greg Voss. The minimum we suggest is four for various Esoteric reasons From a cryptographic security point of view we suggest four, but you can have seven You can have you can keep growing you could have we've seen people have seen Federation stood up with as many as 40 people in them And it will get slower and slower if it gets beyond that, but, but technically you can. **Obi:** It'll be this, it'll create this huge multisig, i. e. multiple people have to sign before you do a transaction on chain. And so multisig starts to get expensive of a certain size. But let's say us three plus Greg. We would FedeMint software. we would download the 30 minute software onto a machine that we have spare, and we would set up and run it. **Obi:** The setup process will, part of it will enter the information about the other three. And we make that very simple, it's a web interface, you point and click and you get a code and you share that code with the other parties, everybody shares the code of each other. Maybe you go into a group chat and paste each other's code. **Obi:** Everybody copies each other's, enters it into our own FediMint and then they connect to each other and they form a federation. As long as you keep that box, running, connected to the internet, and connected to electricity, the federation, for each, all the four, the federation are one. **Obi:** But because it's a federation, if one of them, for example, had a power cut, or lost their internet, or had to change their domain name, or something like that, The other three will be able to continue and operate. Yep, so you've now created this community custody platform. Now, anyone with the FEDI app or any other app that supports the FEDIMINT protocol, Webimint, and we're hoping that many others will set up FEDIMINT wallets, like there are multiple Lightning wallets in future. **Obi:** Any FDI min wallet compatible wallets like Fedie, can connect to your federation At the end of setting up the fed min server will show a QR code and the string that represents how to connect to your Federation. So you could take your Fed app, or the Mutiny wallet, or Web Mint, or any other, fed mint compatible wallet, and you'll scan that QR code. **Obi:** And you've now connected to that federation and that federation becomes, you can now use it to custody. Now, what will happen is, if for example, someone wants to send money to you, you would, just as if you're using a Bitcoin wallet, let's say it's on chain. you would say, I want to receive, enter the amount and it'll show a QR code. **Obi:** Someone else who's using a normal Bitcoin wallet will scan that code and send over the Bitcoin main chain money to you. But what's actually happening is your Fediap is communicating with the Federation. Your Federation is creating a Bitcoin address for you to send to and sends it back to you for you to display. **Obi:** Okay. And then a user, someone else who's using a completely different wallet will send money to that address. Actually goes to the federation and they, the four of us combined will process that and create e cash, which is like a token representation of the **Obi:** Bitcoin. And then the e cash will be sent to you. But the way it, the way it's sent is completely privacy preserving. So the guardians have no way of knowing who they are providing that service for, who's receiving the money. **Obi:** There's full privacy. **Obi:** All right, and neither does the sender, I assume, like the sender doesn't, that they sent Bitcoin to us and address. They have no idea who, so if there are, let's say we set this up and we're using it for our friends and extended family and in total, there are 40 of us or 50 of us **Obi:** When you send to that address, there's no way to know out of those 40 or 50 people who received it or who requested it. **Knut:** All right, so, a bit about the guardians and the multisig, that's obviously because you don't want to have a single point of attack for each, federation, right? **Obi:** point of failure, **Knut:** A single point of **Obi:** the more likely thing is that someone's machine, if you had one machine, the most likely thing that will happen, almost guaranteed, at some point you'll have some sort of power cut or internet cut. Internet cut is probably the most likely you'll, you'll have a glitch on your internet for 30 minutes. **Obi:** If you do, Everyone using your federation won't be able to use your system for 30 minutes. **Knut:** but it's also an attack vector. Like if the, if the, if there's a lot of money in the federation and, so there's, there's an incentive to attack the guardians. Like, can you be completely sure that the guardians don't know each other's identities and stuff like that? Like how, I know you think a lot about the attack vector. **Knut:** So I'm like, can you go into that a bit? **Obi:** can't be completely sure of anything in life. So the answer to that is automatically no. Can you be completely sure of something? but, it depends on the Also, there's an assumption that you have, that the people don't know each other. Cause I think very often in, there's two types of scenarios. **Obi:** It could be that each party completely doesn't know each other, or the more common scenario will be that you're some community or some group of friends. And within you, you've decided. Of the people who are my friends and family and so on, these four people are the ones who are consistently the most reliable, the most trusted and so on. **Obi:** They do know each other, and you know who they are, and it's because you know who they are that you're comfortable with them holding. they're the Uncle Jims of the family. they're known to be reliable. They're known to be people who care about their friends and family. **Obi:** that's very often actually what we're seeing is the more common scenario than the ones where people are completely, anonymous to each other. But as it matures, we may see the other scenario happen as well. # The Uncle Network **Luke:** It's a literal uncle network. I know Uncle Rockstar started the uncle network here on infinity day. Yeah, you got the brother Luke, and so that's four, so we're **Obi:** are you an uncle? **Knut:** am an uncle officially now. **Knut:** an uncle as well, are like, but dubbed by Uncle Rockstar **Obi:** I haven't been dubbed I, so **Obi:** you are a good candidate. candidate, but I am biologically now, an **Knut:** oh, congratulations, **Obi:** Yeah, # How Fedi Launched **Luke:** Okay, well, I think we are looking just to dig in more about Fedi Fedi Mint and, what does your launch actually mean? Because the app has been in beta for quite a while, right? what's happened, to make it that you can launch? **Obi:** Yeah, that's a very good question, because, we, the app from the, if you just focus on the app, from the previous version to the one we went live, there are only a few, changes. It was more about, did we have enough feedback from enough people on the ground that we thought that the product was stable enough, reliable enough? **Obi:** behind the scenes, we've done a lot of internal plus from trusted friends, external security audits of different elements as well. I don't like to publicize it because it's just something we do. We don't think it's something you should promote to saying, Hey, look at what we're doing. We just try to build the best that we can. **Obi:** and the really, big thing was to just say, a lot of people ask, is Fedi ready? And we wanted to get to a line where we thought it was good enough. And we got to that line. And then, we also wanted to have enough proof points in, the world. And again, we got to that line. So these things were separate things that were happening. **Obi:** And finally, it was very clear to us that we wanted to make the software, Ultimately open source. And that was a big call because, you know, we raised 21 million and, normally you go two routes. You go, you raise a little bit and you stay open source and so on. Or you raise a lot and you stay closed source. **Obi:** We believe that, over time, it's going to be considered, over the coming years, it's going to consider that you should always go open source no matter what you're doing, but we're in a transition. Five years ago, raising this much and going open source would be considered crazy, in five years time, raising this much and not being open source would be considered crazy. **Obi:** And we wanted to be, afforded in that. So. We actually went source available. It's called a business source license. So it means you go source available and you set a date where you must go open source or earlier. and we set those. So we cannot change it now. We cannot say we're going to actually change our mind. **Obi:** Well, the only thing we can say is that we're going to go open source earlier. that's the only thing we could do. Or if we decide to shut down, it's automatically open source as well. That's the sort of dead man's switch as well. Or we decide we're no longer going to develop the software. **Obi:** we've added caveats like that, which are not optional, but actually add more restrictions. So no one's going to complain with us going open source earlier. that was agreed and put in place on May the 4th. So May the 4th we review of this year, 2024, just for posterity. **Obi:** we, got enough proof points from different markets, that we felt that we're onto something here. Does that mean that we've finished? No, there's a lot of work to do, but enough to say that the idea of taking all of the best of freedom technologies out there. And putting them into one place and one app that's easy to use is something that's compelling to people. **Obi:** And also we had enough to see the federation model. of this sort of really simple to use and privacy preserving multi sig is also a powerful model. So the model was proven out. And then finally the software, we got to a point where we thought, it's, of course, we've got years of more development, but it was good enough as well. **Obi:** I think that was the final piece. And we thought, okay, we're ready to go. And we then set a date a few weeks after that. But even when we were getting close to it, we started the process of shooting a video because we just wanted to show people are wondering what were we doing for the last nearly two years and we wanted to show that as well.   **Luke:** what's the synopsis of the last two years? Like the big highlights?   **Obi:** so, I always say there's three phases in the business. There's initialization, of a startup, initialization, market product fit, in our case, not product market fit, I can go into why. And then, growth. And so, this phase that was, the end was finally, we crossed the line, on August the 6th, 2024, was the initialization phase. **Obi:** And so, if you think about the analogy of, like you wanted to have A shop selling designer pet clothing, and you've decided you have this crazy idea and you have to first fund it, find the people to build it, and then find the place, set up the store, make the clothes and, open. **Obi:** That's the initialization phase. And then once it's launched, you then. Start figuring out, okay, people come in, there's initial, interest, and then, you have this trickle of people coming in, you have to figure out what do they like, what do they not like, what do I have to adjust until it becomes this sort of regular viable business. **Luke:** That's the market product fit phase. And then you start saying, okay, I've got something that's working fully and then I will repeat it, make more and more and more, Widgets? **Obi:** Doggy fashion, Excel stores, whatever you want to call it. the last two years was our initialization phase. **Obi:** we had this, amazing product with FediMint. we had this initial set of, crazy people with Erik, the inventor of FedEvent, Justin, who's, who was also incredible engineer, who was actually the one who suggested that we make a commercial enterprise. up until that, both myself and Erik just suggested it would be an open source project. **Obi:** And then myself as well with my just, you know, only maybe six or seven months before we were finally finished selling. a Bitcoin exchange, the UK's longest running Bitcoin exchange. and so having that experience of building a company that was profitable and understanding what it meant to build something that custodies a large amount of money for people and provides them services is easy to use and all that sort of stuff. **Obi:** and everything around that customer service, everything around that. So, we were there, I had a visit to the Oslo Freedom Forum, and that was the catalyst. we did one talk at, Bitcoin Miami, and, Alex Gladstein saw that, he suggested I go to Oslo Freedom Forum. I went, my mind was blown and I also realized whenever you're thinking about a business, you have to always think about chicken and the egg and how do you find your initial market for eventually this product is applicable to everybody everywhere, but who's the first use case that has a demand so high that they're going to willing to go through the really buggy early versions and help you. **Obi:** Stabilize it to the point where it's something that people can click a button and it works everywhere. I realized that the community of human rights defenders and later on also humanitarian organizations fit that, need. We really cared about that need and we were concerned, we wanted to help, but we realized that this product could help in combination with the rest of the Bitcoin ecosystem. **Obi:** That's what's quite cool. FediMint is the thing that handles the custody, but you still need to buy things, sell things, find things, and so on, and that's where the Fedi app also comes into play, but without FediMint as the core to handle the custody, the rest didn't make sense. **Obi:** Then we started, it was, then you had this sort of scene from like the Magnificent Seven or so on where you're, you're finding your initial team members. So we found Renato Rodriguez, I chased her for like six months ago. She should have, you know, got a restraining order for six months trying to get her to join. **Obi:** just if you look at the initial team, it was just everybody, the whole team is amazing. But it was just trying to find these incredible people. they tended to just immediately understand the value proposition and the market we were trying to help and were already doing incredibly well in their own careers, but there was something missing for them. **Obi:** And when they saw this, it was like this fulfilled There's some other need that they had beyond the monetary need. The potential was amazing, but the mission side of it was what helped us bring on this incredible team. So I believe in philosophy, people, process, product. The philosophy was amazing, who we're helping, the potential, it's helping people and in so doing we're helping Bitcoin, in so doing we're helping the world. **Obi:** And that's a powerful philosophy and mission and that attracted this incredible group of people. And if you've got the philosophy and you've got an incredible group of people, they will put in the processes that will lead to the right product. **Obi:** It's like, let's say the video, for example. I said to Renata, I want a really powerful launch video and it should be like the best Apple keynote speech combined with a UNICEF or Save the Children commercial. That's it. That's the whole brief and that whole video. And somebody says, you need to go to Madeira. **Obi:** You need to say this. And I just woke up and I say what she says. But the whole elements of it, all of it was her and her team, Mary and marketing and everybody building that over the following X months. and I didn't actually see the video myself. Until less than a month before we launched it for the first time as a rough draft. **Obi:** And it was just basically perfect. My comments were like, I actually didn't have any significant comments, but that was the same for most of the team and the design of the product. We had this incredible designer, Skylar. I would give a brief and so as, Erik's brief was, I just want to be proud of something that I should be proud of, and that was it, you know? **Obi:** And I was like, it just needs to be really simple. And that's the high level. And I might give comments on a little bit here or there, but in general, whenever he gave me it, I would say, well, he Skylarized it, like just Skylarize it. And he would just come up with something that was great. and I think that was the last two years. **Obi:** We had the team we raised. again, the choice of investors was really, really key. I was very, very sure, especially from my previous experiences, that I only wanted Bitcoin on the investors, especially for the first couple of rounds. And when I've sometimes do talks on how to set up a Bitcoin company, my first slide says don't do it, but instead sort of a Bitcoin business, not a Bitcoin startup. **Obi:** And I explain the difference between the two. but one part is, if you do want to raise capital, be really careful about your choice of investors. The wrong investors will, well, and they don't mean to, but they will kill your business without meaning to, but the right investors will. So, we were really, really careful about our choice of investors and the initial team and then the initial team brought on the rest of the team after that. **Obi:** And that was the last, that's the last two years we've set ourself up very well. I did, being a classic entrepreneur, think it'll take six months, took two years. So I, so my estimation on that was a little bit off, but the end result, I'm really excited about. And now, now we're, now we're off to the races. Great news, everyone! Bitcoin, the inverse of clown world is out now. It's the successor to everything divided by 21 million. And it's based on the last two years of podcasts that we've done together. So if you like the show, you're going to love the book. Find the book on bitcoininfinitystore. com or on Amazon. That's right. We have our own store now. BitcoinInfinityStore. com. You can find not just books, but merchandise based on everything divided by 21 million, check out Bitcoin, the inverse of Clown World today and buy some other stuff while you're there too. This show is brought to you by Bit Box, our favorite hardware wallet. It's Swiss engineered and has all the most important security features to keep your Bitcoin safe while keeping a user experience that even your grandma can use. So visit Bit Box. Do Swiss slash Freedom to learn more, or use Code Freedom at checkout for 5% off. And remember, it's the Bit Box zero two Bitcoin only edition. Make sure to get that Bitcoin only firmware. # How does Fedi Make Money? **Knut:** How does the app make money? **Obi:** Yeah. **Knut:** For the company? **Obi:** if you use the app, whenever you use the Freddie app. whenever a transaction happens, which would have occurred a fee. So it's a Bitcoin transaction, e cash or a lightning transaction. We add on an additional fee, 21, 21 basis points. So 0. **Knut:** Oh, yeah, **Obi:** And so, and the good thing is because we can charge in sats and I believe actually even fractions of a sat, it's a progressive tax, which a fee. **Obi:** So what I mean by that is. If you're sending, let's say 100 through, then you would be charged on 100. 21, but if you're, worth of value, but if you're sending through 1, then you'll be charged 0. 21 cents. And if you're sending through 0. 10, you'll be charged 0. 20. 0 to 1 cents. So it'll always be a very small percentage of what you're sending. **Obi:** Now, people might say in certain countries, don't they have mobile money and so on. But the problem is those mobile money systems have minimum fees. And it might be, 1%, which is not that bad, say. And it might be, even in some terms of scale, it could be half a percent, but with a minimum fee of 20 cents. **Obi:** So if you're sending a hundred dollars, that's okay. But if you're sending, 1, that's 20%. And so if you have someone who has a monthly salary of. 10 in some of these markets, that 0. 20 fee starts becoming quite a significant per transaction hit. So therefore it becomes unaffordable for you to use mobile money. **Obi:** So even though it's prolific above a certain wealth level, and so that leaves many people out, in the rain. But because this is progressive, if you're selling 10 cents, the, fee will actually round to zero. I mean it will be a fee, but you'll see it in sats, but if you were showing, trying to show it in local currency, it would basically be, it'll say about zero and then you click and you realize it's this small amount of sats. **Knut:** so, yeah. the big thing that I'm thinking of if I'm like. Playing this out in my head with where this could be in 10 years, like you could run entire virtual nations on a federation, right? If you have the money and the communication and whatever other useful apps, **Obi:** I think the big thing I think is, if you look at the internet, there are large organizations where, people use and they're highly centralized. You have a few people who may be wealthy enough to have their own direct connection to the internet, but the majority of people are connected on the internet. **Obi:** I don't know at this stage, millions of intranets, like household intranets effectively, company intranets and school intranets and so on, where it's one connection to the internet shared by multiple people. That's actually the majority of people. And it's that middle ground between these huge mega organizations that people are connected to one mainframe. **Obi:** With millions of users, I think there are very few of them now, but that was the denominant way at the beginning. It was these huge, centralized ways of connecting AOL, CompuServe, and so on. Now, they're actually relatively rare, but that was at the beginning. All of the internet was that. A few centralized parties, and I would liken them, conceptually in value terms, in value custody terms versus information custody terms, to, a coin basis. **Obi:** And also there were a lot of hobbyists who had their own direct ISDN connection to the internet. but now most people connect through these intranets where they get one router, one connection, and they share with everybody in their household. That would be a criminal of the Uncle Jim federations or in their school or in their football club or in their office. **Obi:** That's probably 95 percent of people and I think that this approach of federated model from the size from. Five or six people up to five or six hundred thousand, that range can cover 80, 90 percent of usage. # How to Use Fedi(Mint) **Luke:** Can we go back to the basics of how feint works in the perspective of someone actually using this thing? So, you explained to us last time how it works, but just for my own sanity, check that I got it. if you are sending e cash within the federation, that is just. **Luke:** Direct between two users. There's not even a record outside of that. No one knows those transactions are even happening. Is that essentially correct? **Obi:** Yeah. So the federation helps you mint technically, because actually the user creates their own e cash, they create their own e cash, but it's unstamped and then they give it to the federation and they stick in an envelope. And they give it to the federation with some carbon copy paper on the inside the envelope as well. **Obi:** the federation collectively signs. So let's say all four people go stamp, stamp, stamp. And that makes it valid. then they give back the envelope to the user. The user then opens the envelope with the cache that they created, just some random piece of data. **Obi:** And they now have this Ucash, but the Ucash they've created now has got the four stamps on it, say, for the four of us. And so anyone else in that federation, any other, person who's also connected to the federation. They can just literally, directly give them this, random set of data. **Obi:** Let's say it's a picture of a fashionable dog and they can just give it to someone else. and the person will receive it and they don't really care what the data says. They just look, are the four stamps on it? Yes. Then it means it was stamped by the Federation, which means it's backed by a certain amount of information. **Obi:** Actual Bitcoin. Yeah. So take the whole, the full path. Someone deposits some Bitcoin in return. They also, along with the Bitcoin, send them an envelope, give them an envelope with this random piece of data in it to the Federation and the Federation receives the Bitcoin. Okay. I've received the Bitcoin envelope. **Obi:** Okay. I've received the Bitcoin. I will stamp. I received one, let's say. 10, 000 Satoshis. So I'm going to take my 10, 000 Satoshi stamp and stamp this envelope with 10, 000 Satoshis, pass it around to the other four, they all stamp the 10, 000 Satoshi stamp. And then give that back to the user. **Obi:** User opens the envelope and says, I've got, okay, I've got an e cash note with, with, that's been proven that the, that it's been validated by the guardians. So as long as we all trust the guardians are holding that and that they will honor this and redeem. That's it. So now I can pass it to anyone in the Federation. **Obi:** They receive it. They look at this picture of the cute dog, but what they're really looking at is, is it got the four stamps on it and it's 10, 000. So that means I've now received 10, 000 token. They can now at some point in the future, Often they do it immediately if they've gone into connection, but they don't have to. **Obi:** They can give it back to the Federation. Federation will receive it and each one will check their own signature of the guardians. Okay, it's properly signed. Therefore, I'm willing to, and they might give them a Bitcoin address to send the money on chain to. **Obi:** So they will receive it, it looks good, they will then, record that this, e cash note has been spent. But they don't know, of all the e cash they received, which one it was, because each one they received in the first place was in an envelope. So was it the first one they received, or the middle one they received? **Obi:** They have no idea. It could have been received yesterday or a month ago. No way. All they know is, I must have stamped it, so it was one of the ones I stamped. And then they will look at the address the person's asking to send the Bitcoin to, and they will take some of the Bitcoin that they're holding in the multi sig that we're holding between the four of us and send it to that address. **Obi:** So that's called Redeem versus Mint. Now, the user experience from a user, we can get onto Lightning, that's another level of complexity, but it's simple just for Bitcoin and eCash for now. **Obi:** Someone sends me Bitcoin or I send it to myself from an outside wallet and I receive e cash. And then someone else in the, in the federation wants to, once I want to pay them some e cash, they will give me, they will give me a QR code to, to scan to pay and I will scan. And literally the e cash that's on my phone gets sent to them directly. **Obi:** From me to them, one to one, that person when they receive it could keep it on their phone or they could say, you know what, I want to send that back to the federation and they can send it back to the federation and then the federation can destroy that, issue them new, fresh e cash in different denominations, maybe not 10, 000, but 10, 1, 000, you know, just like with notes, you could go and get change. **Obi:** Yeah, because if someone transacts, if you're saying it gets sent from one computer, phone being a computer, whatever, one device to another, well, that original device would still **Obi:** Yes, **Luke:** copy of the thing on, right. **Obi:** So they will still have a copy. Now you are in the same, this is where the community aspect works, you are in the same community, If you're in the same community, and the person, it's a merchant and you receive, and your phone will remember when you received what e cash, yeah? **Obi:** Even though it's private, you do know this e cash was received at this time and this time for, and so, especially when you integrate with points of sale, it will say, well, you received this e cash for this purchase. You'll know that. so then if you go to redeem it, at the end of the day, and some of it doesn't match, you will know as the merchant, which e cash was involved in that. **Obi:** You'll say, well, the e cash involved in this transaction. And that transaction was with John. So you've got proof of work. it's the same as if you have a merchant and you receive cash and then you finally got the end of the day to a bank. **Obi:** And some of the notes are counterfeit. Now, you don't find high levels of counterfeit notes in a community where people know each other. It's normally in these widespread communities. But in those scenarios, what most people will do and how the default way the app works is the moment you receive it, it immediately goes off and redeems it and then issues itself back new, new change. **Obi:** Yeah, that seems like a good default implementation. but if you have no internet connectivity, you can still use it and still receive. even if you can't send over the internet, you can create a QR code, which contains the e cash in the QR code, and the person can literally scan it and receive through the screen. **Obi:** Because as long as it's the QR code, the e cash note is just some text. So a QR code can represent that text and you can scan it, even if you have no data. So for example, it could be you're in an area where you have no data, rural, Latin America or so on. But it could also be something more innocuous. **Obi:** You could just be in a big sort of, But the thing is is that you might be at a Glastonbury like concert and there are a thousand phones and there's no data. Or you're in an indoor conference place underground and there's no data. But you can still take payments or the merchant has internet because they're the ones who really need it. **Obi:** But the buyer doesn't and so in which case the merchant has internet because they're connected wired in because they're fixed, but the buyer doesn't need to have internet to pay and the merchant will just take a risk just like in most merchants in high streets they accept a certain amount of breakage and a certain amount of transactions are gonna be charged back by, credit card companies and so on. **Obi:** I used to be a CTO for a major pan-European, online auction company. At the time I was competing with, eBay and so on. we were in a headliner, 300 hundred people working for me in technology. It was a very big technology offering. And we were doing millions of transactions a week. **Obi:** It was very high volume. And in those e commerce sites, you just accept a certain amount of breakage, a certain amount of returns, and a certain amount of chargebacks, even if you do nothing wrong and you just factor it into your costs. For the benefit of the simplicity of the experience. # Fedi and Nostr **Knut:** you mentioned Nostr before, like, what's the marriage between Fedi and Nostr? Well, I would say right now, we are, because I think. **Knut:** we're beyond dating. We're engaged. But we want to really take the two footed tackle of no return, to use a football euphemism. a web of trust thing, right? **Obi:** Yeah, I think, whenever, from the first point I saw Nostr, a lot of people thought it was just social media and so on. **Obi:** I think social media is Trojan horse is the wrong word, but it's the, initial vector by which it infiltrates communities. But what you're actually doing is building a simple, trust system and a simple discovery system. It's a form of decentralized search and it's a form decentralized identity. **Obi:** Cause you, to search, you have to identify things to be able to search. So they're sort of two sides of the same coin. now the first thing you're using it for is identifying people who want to speak publicly and share their thoughts and so on and so forth and follow them and give feedback and like. **Obi:** But it always seemed to me to, way more powerful than that. And I think now people, generally understand it that way. And so, What we've already done, in Fedi, and a lot of developers really like the way it works, if you sign up to Fedi, or if you download the Fedi app and start using it, you, first of all, you don't need to give your email, you don't need to give your phone number because it's not required, but, we do ask you to come up with some sort of Username for yourself. **Obi:** That doesn't even have to be unique, by the way. We will add a unique element at the end, from it. But what we do is, whenever you create that label, which you can change the name, but we create, an NSEC, which is a Nostr, identity effectively. A unique identity and we automatically create that for you. **Obi:** So again, for our users, we don't want to start educating them on the history of Austrian economics and Bitcoin and inflation at the beginning or a Nostr, et cetera, and how it works and relays. And we just want them to start using it. then subtly over time we expose certain features of it. So people become curious and then eventually. **Obi:** You want to learn how this thing that's delivering value works, but we've put proof of work first, proof of talk second. So we educate through letting people see the benefits. And then there might be some people might say, well, how does this car thing work? Or how does this fridge thing work? But I don't need to know how refrigerant works to be able to use a fridge or how microwaves work to use a microwave. **Obi:** When they want to know how all this stuff works, but we benefit first. So, and so and that's how it works with Nostr We immediately give you an NSEC. **Obi:** And so because we've got that if you go and use unleash. chat, for example within the app It will go and you click login and there's one option login by Nostr You click that and it'll just within the app pop up something saying Nostr Do you want to log in with Nostr? And you click yes, and you're logged in and it just works and then you, and then also now you're logged in and then you can, and then you click, deposit money and instead of having to go to a different app, copy and paste the QR codes, it just, it pops up and says, do you, this, this, what the app's asking you to deposit this amount of money? **Obi:** Do you want to go ahead? Yes. And then it's e cash. Is, is converted into lightning and then that you pay by lightning. But from your point of view, there's a circling key for three or four seconds. You have now credited your account. Do you want to withdraw the money back account? You click withdraw the amount. **Obi:** Three or four seconds, it's been withdrawn to your account and, and it's all within the same app. so, but that only works because now if you, close the app or delete the mods, because you can delete these mods or these additional pieces of functionality, they're basically webpages, but the icon for them, and they have an app like experience, but they're actually just webpages. **Obi:** and then you go away and then you delete the app from your service. Like six months later, you come back, you, you, you enter your 12 words, you're, you're re log on. And then if you scan to join a federation again, it will recognize that you were a member of the federation before, and it will reconstitute and recreate all your e cash and put it back on your phone. **Obi:** And then if you click on, Unleash your chat or Stacker News or anyone that supports logging by Nostr. Your login with the same details and so on. So you basically, and we want to make that even more seamless. So from 12 words, your entire life can you think about moving from one mobile phone to another, where you have to move all your apps, your banking apps, your chat apps. **Obi:** And now you could do that with just go and also try moving from an iPhone to an Android phone, Android to an iPhone. It's a nightmare. Here you could just download the Fedi app on your iPhone. this is some far point in the future. You don't have just chat, but you also have voice. You have video, all of that running from encrypted chat. # 12 Magic Words **Obi:** you have access to money from, custody and payments. You have access to all these apps and then you back up 12 words. And there's something we call social backup, which is mind blowing, but, that's in beta. But let's just say backup 12 words, and then you delete that app, go to a different phone, could be an Android or an iPhone, and you just enter 12 words, and your entire thing comes back. **Obi:** Not partially back, but it all will come back. based on just those 12 words and that's only made possible because of Nostr and we want it over time. **Knut:** mean, when you think about it, it's insane. It's already insane with bitcoins, with the 12 magic words, because like every time I pass a security check at an airport, I think that go ahead, have my 200 milliliters of toothpaste. I'll, I have my 12 magic words, like it's the ultimate fuck you to, to anyone trying to meddle with your business, right? **Knut:** that's the dream. I mean, we're not fully there, but it's, I would say it's like, we're like 90 percent there, but to extend beyond just your Bitcoin, Nostr is the protocol that allows us to do that because it's notes and other stuff and the other stuff can be, an encrypted version of the settings and so on that you have that we can store and be willing to pay for. **Obi:** And then when you recover, you have your bitcoin, but then you can go off and send a request to say here, I'm willing to recover this file. Here's some zaps for the file and you get the file back and that additional file then contains the information. Okay, these are the federations you are a member of, you rejoin them. **Obi:** These are the mods that you had, they're reset up. These are the settings you had, they're reset up. And then you log on them automatically using Nostr as well, the NSEC and Nostr login. from your point of view as the user, 12 words, it's back. I mean, you might have to drink a cup of coffee while it's happening, but 5, 10, 20 minutes later, it's back. **Knut:** it's amazing, and it's an inheritance plan. Like, you can live forever by just letting your descendants, giving them the 12 words when you're on your deathbed. **Obi:** backup also becomes really powerful, because social backup means that, cause the 12 words is still another thing to secure. And it's sort of one of these turtles all the way down type scenarios. Okay. We've got all this incredible security Fort Knox like, but behind them, but I walk around the back of the Fort Knox is these 12 words that's stored. **Obi:** you also give one to your cousin and you say, look after this as a backup. And your cousin stores it on a fridge magnet. You know, you don't know, or you don't know your, your, your security is the lowest common denominator. **Obi:** For your 12 words. And **Knut:** is never stronger than the weakest **Obi:** then the weakest link. And so with social backup, which is definitely an early beta. what we can do is use the power of the federation where we can take your 12 words, encrypt them and then split it up between the four guardians in this case, or seven guardians or 40 guardians or whatever. **Obi:** For larger federations, and they all hold a piece of your encrypted piece of your, of **Knut:** is important here. **Obi:** Yeah. Knut, what are you doing over there? I'm stamping my seed. Everyone tells me I should, that it's good for bitcoin security and whatnot, and that I should go balls deep into bitcoin security, so I'm stamping. You don't do it like that, Knut. You don't stamp that seed. You stamp your seed phrase. What? Your seed phrase. Oh, so that's what these things are for. oh, I get it now. That's exactly right, Knut. And you can get everything you need to stamp your seed phrase at stampseed. com. And be sure to check out our limited edition Everything Divided by 21 Million Titanium Seed Plate. And use code INFINITY at checkout for 15 percent off. That's fantastic! And it hurts way less!     # Redundancy in Fedi **Luke:** So this gets me back to what happens when one of the guardians drops off, and if it's like in a permanent way, if that one guardian is holding a piece of everyone else's 12 words, does everyone **Obi:** Yeah. But it uses a prot, this is crypto, where cryptography comes in. So it's not like. We've taken your 12 words and split it up free between four guardians. Instead, you encrypt it using a scheme that allows each one of the four of us to have a cryptographic piece. **Obi:** But as long as any three of us combine our piece together, we can recombine. It is, it's called, SHAIR Secret Sharing Scheme, but it's a way of cryptographically achieving that. **Luke:** Excellent, I think you mentioned last time as well that if a guardian does go down, essentially you can replace that guardian, can you take us through that, adding or replacing a guardian if that ever were to need to happen? **Obi:** replacing a garden is, probably one of the most complex things. And so you wouldn't necessarily replace a guardian, but what you would do is, some, if someone were to go down, there's two different things. The machine. Or the guardian, the actual person. So if the machine goes down, you can set up a new machine and you can recover the status of that. **Obi:** You can, you can download the 30 minute software on that new machine. So that's the actual server that's running. And that will then connect to the rest of the federation and, and carry on. So as long as the guardian has a backup of their keys, they can recover that one machine and, and catch up and it'll automatically catch up. **Obi:** Just like if you turn off a Bitcoin node and turn it on, it will reconnect to the Bitcoin network and catch up. It's a similar concept. so that's if a machine went down, if a machine was temporarily disconnected from the internet or, lost power, it would just restart and reconnect and you will have zero downtime as a user, as long as it's still running and active. **Obi:** And this will all be, you'll notice that the performance will still be the same, but if you went into settings for that federation, you'll see that three of the four are running, so one is not running, but that won't affect your usage. **Obi:** Is the N of M like a ratio, or is it always N 1, for example? It's a ratio. the number of guardians that, you need to have is dependent on how much redundancy. So if you want to be able to handle one guardian going down, then you'll need to have, one times by three plus one. So that's four. So that's why you need three or four. **Obi:** if you want to handle two going down, then you need two times by three plus one, which is seven. So it's five of seven. 7 of 10, 9 of 13, and so on and so forth. You can have more than that, but the time that you get additional redundancy is every 3, but you can have, for example, 4 of 5, if you wanted to. **Obi:** Anyway, so, yeah, in the event that someone goes down, that the machine goes down, you can recover. recently there was an issue where one machine, where two federations, had an issue with the domain name for one of those servers. And so if the domain name for someone is no longer available, you can now, with the update that came out a couple of weeks after that, you can modify, the domain name **Obi:** for a Guardian 30 minute server, and it would communicate that securely with the other, Federation servers and then reconnect and, continue to operate. But it's important to, even in that scenario where the Federa Guardian, the domain name server went down, the Federation itself, Continue to operate because there was still at least free running. **Obi:** So there was no downtime for the user. Whereas if, if we hadn't been federated, then for the one week or so where that was down, the users would have had no access at all, which would be the case where you're connecting to a centralized or a single server, offering. now, if one of the guardians, for some reason, the actual people who are running the Fedemyst server, for some reason, you no longer trusted them, they'd been helpful all their life and all of a sudden they decided, or they've been turned by some, malevolent nefarious actor. **Obi:** Then you, if you could in theory pass to someone else, but in practice, you know, how do I know that the other person isn't still going to continue to operate it and so on and so forth. So what you actually want to do is set up a different federation and transfer people, the other three guardians and inform people with a different set of four people. **Obi:** So those three, plus someone else. And just tell people to transfer their balances across. But transferring balances across is as easy as doing a lightning transaction from one server to another. You can, you know, within the FEDI app, be a member of multiple federations at the same time. I mean, right now, I mean, I'm a bit of a power user, but I'm a member of, over a dozen different federations from around the world. **Obi:** I mean, well over a dozen, I think, yeah. and as we've, I'm sure there's people in the team with way more than that. but obviously I can't advertise the names because many of them are private federations. So, but there's a few public ones, but there's way more private ones. # Interoperability **Luke:** So is the e cash, if you're in multiple federations, is it interoperable there, or it's like a more like a, it's a lightning transaction between those two federations, but it's e cash that lives **Obi:** You got it. It's, E cash lives within its federation, but the interoperability layer for most people is not on chain. It's for the vast majority of people, it's Lightning, so, but the user experience of sending e cash from one person to another in the same federation, sending e cash from one person to someone else receiving Lightning. **Obi:** on a different wallet that's got nothing to do with Ferdie Mint. And finally sending e cash from one person in one federation. To someone else in another federation over the Lightning Network in between is exactly the same. From your point of view, QR code scan and the system will combination of the Fedi app and or whatever Fedi Mint compatible app you're using and Fedi Mint servers will make the experience **Obi:** I just need to send the person the cash. In this case I can send e cash out over Lightning and that's my job is done. And then the other side would be a Lightning wallet and it will receive. And in this case, I will send e cash over Lightning to another federation, but I don't even know if it's another federation, it's just a Lightning address. **Obi:** And then the other federation, receives the transaction and the other 30 minute server receives e cash on the other side. But from a user's point of view, this is the thing that also took the two years to make the experience the same. You just don't have to worry about which one is doing. **Obi:** The fees will be slightly different. One won't have a Lightning component to the fee, e cash to e cash, but, the other two will because it will be like, in both cases, it will be e cash to Lightning, from your point of view. **Luke:** So is there a fee to send e cash to someone else in the same federation? No, I guess. Right. **Obi:** It depends on the federation. the federation, could choose not to charge a fee and many in these times choose not to because they're doing it for friends and family and so on and the fees are minimal. the Ferryman protocol does support, what we call a DDoS fee. So basically you're spending effort time **Obi:** to sign these notes, the issuing is done by the user, but the stamping takes time. you're signing something cryptographically, that's effort. and you're also doing it in a federated manner, so you're coordinating and then you're all collectively signing. **Obi:** So, to avoid DDoS, you can turn on a fee and, by our calculations, it doesn't need to be very large, one sat per note that issued is enough to prevent, because if someone really tried to DDoS you at scale, they could, but on normal sort of consumer laptops or hardware, they'll have to spend, hundreds of thousands a month at that sort of, one sat per note, and in which case you'll say, fine, you're giving me hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of Bitcoin to burn my, CPU. **Obi:** Well, not to burn it, but just to heat my CPU. so you can charge a fee. And I think some will experiment with charging a DDoS fee, which is similar to Bitcoin. the fees in Bitcoin are a DDoS protection vector. So it's the same concept. # Fedi's Roadmap **Knut:** All right. So, what's on the roadmap? What's going on? How does the future look like? What will you be working on the next five years? And where do you see FedeMint going? **Obi:** that's actually, the most, fun phase. up until now, we had a hypothesis and we had some early feedback, but a lot of it was based on, A hypothesis and theory as to what we thought people needed and we felt that freedom technology had got to a stage where they were good enough to provide this combined experience. **Obi:** And that was a hypothesis. And we think we've got early validation, but we built that. Now it's life. And now it's the fun, but it's also the scary bit because we now actually see people using it and we test all our hypothesis. And this is the point where you have to be very detail oriented, very much listening to the users and listening to what they say **Obi:** we cannot ignore if there are. Parts of our hypothesis that are incorrect, we have to adjust to support that. So it's going to be a lot of listening and we've already got hundreds of requests for feedback. and then working to rectify, or deal with the questions or feedback they've given us or the suggestions they've given us. **Obi:** and we're going to continue to iterate and then we bring it back out to users and see what they think. And we keep in that loop. This is the market product fit loop until. The product that we produce, fits the requirements of the market. Now, again, I, I'm hoping that takes six months or less, just like I hoped it took six months or less **Obi:** for the initialization phase, but it might take less. It might take a bit more, but it's fun. and that's the next phase. After that, we then go into the growth phase. Once we know we've got something that's repeatable, that really. is at the quality level that users need for it to be used a daily part of their life. **Obi:** We'll then go into growth phase and that's where we'll really, you know, pull down, put our pedal to the metal and, and just repeat, repeat, repeat until. You know, billions of people are using this around the world, but that, that's phase three. And I'm, I'm very focused on this phase. You don't want to rush into phase three. **Obi:** We're not going to rush to grow the numbers, until we are very sure that we've got something that's really slick, really reliable, and where we're meeting a clear demonstrable demand consistently. And that process is called human centered design. So it's not focused on this is my app, this is what I want, and I'm going to keep trying to make you agree with what I want. **Obi:** this is what we've built. This is our first stab at it, but we're going to keep iterating until it serves your need properly. And that might require some, this is what makes this one very hard because it requires a very different mindset to the phase one. Phase one is like We can do everything and the impossible is possible phase two is really being pragmatic. **Obi:** Or very self critical and being very open to killing your darlings, as the saying goes, you know, and saying this is not working or, or there's some fundamental issue. I mean, I don't think this will be the case at this stage, but if the feedback was from our market that we need to make some fundamental changes that would mean that 80 percent of the code we built has to be thrown away and have to start again. **Obi:** Well, that's what we're being told. we've got far enough to think that's highly unlikely. cause most of the feedback, like some of the big pieces of feedback cause how can we make it easier to set up federations? So that's a really good sign because lots of people said there's only going to be a demand for like free federations and it's going to be very centralized. **Obi:** Well, a very large percentage. I don't want to give it. These are the very large percentage of all our queries so far have been, how can I set my own federation up? So even based on those queries, there's not going to be free. You know, I can put it that way. **Luke:** Super quick question on that, I guess, is it the Fetiman software? Is it on, for example, the note in a box, solutions, the umbrellas, start nines, et **Obi:** Well, that's part of the feedback that we're getting. For example, can we set it up? Can you integrate with Umbro? Can you integrate with Start9? Can you integrate with RastyBlitz? can you make it simpler to set up? So, I think, a lot of that's done by the FediMint team. **Obi:** Because remember, FediMint is an OpusSource project versus a different OpusSource project. At some point in the future, it will be two different open source projects. However, we are using them as the bedrock, because if you want to custody significant amounts of value We know that you want to go multisig. **Obi:** Multisig for significant amounts of value is the best standard, and also you want privacy, so then privacy and multisig, that's FedEvent, basically. but, on the FedE side, we can do a lot as well. So we can provide, even though it's open source software, we can take it and provide it. **Obi:** again, it will be open source, but tools to help you build it really easily or put efforts to integrate with people like Umbrell and Start9. we've already had an integration with an organization called Clover, which we've been working on, and you're going to see more on that. But from our point of view, that's a lot of where the work is. **Obi:** Also you want to connect this to the Lightning Network. And connected to the Lightning Network and maintaining a reliable connection is not easy. it can be complicated for people, especially managing liquidity. And now again, over time, I could get easier, but right now it's not easy. **Obi:** There are organizations like, Breeze and others who make that easy. and you just saw an announcement from Erik, where they've already started, showing connectivity and support for LDK, which is this cross, LSP standard. So, again, we at Fedi can provide tools for FediMint, or people who are using FediMint, whether it's with Fedi or someone else, that make it really easy. **Obi:** And again, our aim is one click, and you have a connection. You can set up your own lightning node that's set up in a relatively good way, so it'd be relatively reliable, but you don't have to manage it yourself. Or, you can connect to one of these LSP's and for a fee, they'll just handle all the light and management, but you're still in a trust minimized way. **Obi:** So there's, but given all the feedback we're getting, it's not, this is completely wrong. You need to go back to the drawing board, it's all, okay, I get it, but you need to go further. You need to integrate with more. You need to make it easier. so that's a good sign that we're on the right track. **Knut:** Yeah. So, what about this date when you go open source? is that public or, when you have to go open source, it might be then or **Obi:** in the, it's, it's, it's memorializing the business source license. In fact, we memorialized it. We actually have this memo memorializing when it happened. when we launched Freddy, we, we did this thing on the Bitcoin block. You can see it. We were established on a certain block. **Obi:** And we said Fedi is here. When we, quietly on May the 4th, we also put something that said Fedi colon and it was a hash. That hash is a hash of a memo. And the memo, which is on our, Fedi's got an open source, you can see the link and you can verify it. Showed that on May the 4th, the code became business source license. **Obi:** And by January the 3rd, 2026 or earlier, we must go, open source. And if we were to shut down or to stop development, we will instantly go open source. and so, so that, and we put it in block. I tried to find a core block. So it was block 8, 42069. It was actually was the block that was the core block as well. **Obi:** so yeah, it's, it's there. And, that's the date. We, we cannot go open source later than that. And we may very well go open source a lot earlier than that. # Wrapping Up **Luke:** Hey Obi, I think we could keep on grilling you on this and that little detail, but this has been really enlightening, fantastic to see how far this has come, even since our last conversation back in October, and yeah, just looking forward to everything you guys are doing, and I guess just as a last thing, people can now grab the Fedi app and Public federations are available to start to try **Obi:** federations and there are, and you can set up your own federation There's a lot, I don't like to talk too much about what's coming in future because we just work on everything in order of customer demands. So if customer demand comes in, that changes the order, but we're working really hard to make it, It's already easy for if you're quite technical, but we're going to make it easier and easier to set up a federation, so keep looking out because that's a very common request to set up a federation yourself, and we want to see what people do with it, create Fedi mods, create federations, use it, give us feedback, and we will continue to work on making an incredible, Open source interface portal to this freedom technology world. **Luke:** Absolutely fantastic. We'll need to keep on having these conversations regularly, get updates because always fantastic to hear about this and good luck moving forward and I think we'll be trying some FETI stuff in our futures here. Lots of cool things have come out of Nostriga and Baltic. Honey Badger by **Luke:** I'm exciting to see that. And anywhere else you want to direct our listeners and viewers. **Obi:** So for Fedi, that's probably the best place because everything, that's a jumping off ground for everything else. And that's Fedi, F E D I dot X, Y, Z. **Luke:** Fantastic. **Obi:** One of the cooler things that came out in Nostriga and Honeybadger was of course, yes, the inverse of clown world, our new book, and we want to give you one. if you're not given one during this weekend, you'll find it on bitcoininfinitystore. com. Thank you very much. **Luke:** and we need to sign it for you. Yeah, we'll do that offline. But Obi, thank you again. And this has been the Bitcoin Infinity Show. 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\\fet0{\*\\wgrffmtfilter 2450} \\nofeaturethrottle1\\ilfomacatclnup0\\ltrpar \\sectd \\ltrsect\\linex0\\headery708\\footery708\\colsx708\\endnhere\\sectlinegrid360\\sectdefaultcl\\sectrsid13517917\\sftnbj {\*\\pnseclvl1\\pnucrm\\pnstart1\\pnindent720\\pnhang {\\pntxta .}}{\*\\pnseclvl2 \\pnucltr\\pnstart1\\pnindent720\\pnhang {\\pntxta .}}{\*\\pnseclvl3\\pndec\\pnstart1\\pnindent720\\pnhang {\\pntxta .}}{\*\\pnseclvl4\\pnlcltr\\pnstart1\\pnindent720\\pnhang {\\pntxta )}}{\*\\pnseclvl5\\pndec\\pnstart1\\pnindent720\\pnhang {\\pntxtb (}{\\pntxta )}}{\*\\pnseclvl6 \\pnlcltr\\pnstart1\\pnindent720\\pnhang {\\pntxtb (}{\\pntxta )}}{\*\\pnseclvl7\\pnlcrm\\pnstart1\\pnindent720\\pnhang {\\pntxtb (}{\\pntxta )}}{\*\\pnseclvl8\\pnlcltr\\pnstart1\\pnindent720\\pnhang {\\pntxtb (}{\\pntxta )}}{\*\\pnseclvl9\\pnlcrm\\pnstart1\\pnindent720\\pnhang {\\pntxtb (}{\\pntxta )}}\\pard\\plain \\ltrpar\\s16\\ql \\li0\\ri0\\sa260\\widctlpar\\wrapdefault\\aspalpha\\aspnum\\faauto\\adjustright\\rin0\\lin0\\itap0\\pararsid13517917 \\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0\\afs56\\alang1025 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\fs56\\lang1033\\langfe1033\\cgrid\\langnp1033\\langfenp1033 {\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 BIS130 - Transcript \\par }\\pard\\plain \\ltrpar\\s18\\ql \\li0\\ri0\\sa360\\widctlpar\\wrapdefault\\aspalpha\\aspnum\\faauto\\adjustright\\rin0\\lin0\\itap0\\pararsid13517917 \\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0\\afs28\\alang1025 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\fs28\\lang1033\\langfe1033\\cgrid\\langnp1033\\langfenp1033 {\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf19\\insrsid13517917 Knut:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Welcome to the Bitcoin Infinity Show, brought to you by BitBox Stampseed, the Bitcoin Advisor and ShopInBit. Enjoy the conversation. \\par }\\pard\\plain \\ltrpar\\s1\\ql \\li0\\ri0\\sb120\\sa260\\widctlpar\\wrapdefault\\aspalpha\\aspnum\\faauto\\outlinelevel0\\adjustright\\rin0\\lin0\\itap0\\pararsid13517917 \\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0\\afs48\\alang1025 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\fs48\\lang1033\\langfe1033\\cgrid\\langnp1033\\langfenp1033 {\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Welcoming Obi Nwosu \\par }\\pard\\plain \\ltrpar\\s18\\ql \\li0\\ri0\\sa360\\widctlpar\\wrapdefault\\aspalpha\\aspnum\\faauto\\adjustright\\rin0\\lin0\\itap0\\pararsid13517917 \\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0\\afs28\\alang1025 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\fs28\\lang1033\\langfe1033\\cgrid\\langnp1033\\langfenp1033 {\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf20\\insrsid13517917 Luke:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Obi, welcome for the first time to the Bitcoin Infinity Show. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 well, \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf19\\insrsid13517917 Knut:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 We rebranded. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 what is time in infinity? No, no, it's the second time, great to have you back. yeah, we have, it's been a wild ride and the journey is just beginning. So yeah, thank you. \\par }\\pard\\plain \\ltrpar\\s1\\ql \\li0\\ri0\\sb120\\sa260\\widctlpar\\wrapdefault\\aspalpha\\aspnum\\faauto\\outlinelevel0\\adjustright\\rin0\\lin0\\itap0\\pararsid13517917 \\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0\\afs48\\alang1025 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\fs48\\lang1033\\langfe1033\\cgrid\\langnp1033\\langfenp1033 {\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 The Launch of Fedi \\par }\\pard\\plain \\ltrpar\\s18\\ql \\li0\\ri0\\sa360\\widctlpar\\wrapdefault\\aspalpha\\aspnum\\faauto\\adjustright\\rin0\\lin0\\itap0\\pararsid13517917 \\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0\\afs28\\alang1025 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\fs28\\lang1033\\langfe1033\\cgrid\\langnp1033\\langfenp1033 {\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917\ \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf19\\insrsid13517917 Knut:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 so Fedimin launched, two weeks ago. Is it the Fedi \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Fedi, launched? \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf19\\insrsid13517917 Knut:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 launched? Yeah. These terms. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 no, no, Fedi Mint launched, effectively Fedi Mint launched nearly five years ago. FediMint is a very old technology, very, you know, the first, the first FediMint transaction, where someone used FediMint e cash over Lightning to buy a cup of coffee, whic h was after, you know, a year plus of development was on, I believe it was the 3rd of the 8th, 3rd of August, 2021. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 And so we're trying to, like you have a Bitcoin Infinity Day, we're suggesting, that was actually Erik, my, the inventor of Fedi Mint. from Parinelli Police, just actually, and so I like to think of that as e cash coffee day. Cause actually it was like, you actually bought the cup of coffee with e cash. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 so yeah, but yeah, Fedi finally launched two weeks ago. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf19\\insrsid13517917 Knut:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 All right. so I think, for those who haven't seen the previous episode with you, if they want to know more about you, we should probably go back to that episode, but I think you're going to have to do the TLDR on what Fedi is for our listeners. Like that 's a good start, I think. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 So yeah, and now we can be clear about what Fedi is. And so Fedi, is two things still. Even Fedi is two things. One is the company called Fedi and the other is this product called Fedi. So if we talk about the product that people have on their phone, Fed i is a community super app. And so it's an app that takes the best of freedom technology. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 it's got Bitcoin functionality in it, Lightning connectivity, obviously FediMint for handling community custody. but it's also got Nostr support and any other freedom technology that's out there that's mature and reliable. We've taken the time to integra te into one simple to use app. So it allows you to have chat. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 We use Matrix as this federated, decentralized, encrypted chat protocol. It has money with the combination of Lightning, Bitcoin, and Fediment and more. So it has a built in web browser inside it. And therefore you can access all of the Bitcoin ecosystem of apps from Bitrefill to Unleash. chat to BTCmaps and beyond. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 All in one place. So you don't have to have this smorgasbord of different apps and tabs open one app to use them all. And the app itself, we announced as well, is now source available and will eventually be open source as well. So we're trying to make th e best of it. portal into the freedom technology space. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 So that's Fedi. And then Fedi the company builds the Fedi app. And we also have something we call the FedEye Order, which is, this selection of incredible people, FedEye Knights, who are on the ground and they, you can think of them as like a Decentraliz ed genius bar. If you've got an iPhone, you have the genius bar that goes along with the phone. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 The reason why the iPhone is so amazing is not just the phone, but it's also the incredible support you can get. If you can go to an Apple store and you go to the genius bar, they can help you. we have that instead of it being in, you know, Fifth Avenue or Oxford street in London or so on. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 It's in, the capital of Togo or Uganda or. Guatemala, or so on. On the ground, they will locate communities, they will educate communities. and they will support communities on Bitcoin, on Lightning, on FediMent, on all of these different websites and se rvices that are out there to provide that sort of support that's needed for the communities that are outside of the existing Bitcoin space. \\par }\\pard\\plain \\ltrpar\\s1\\ql \\li0\\ri0\\sb120\\sa260\\widctlpar\\wrapdefault\\aspalpha\\aspnum\\faauto\\outlinelevel0\\adjustright\\rin0\\lin0\\itap0\\pararsid13517917 \\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0\\afs48\\alang1025 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\fs48\\lang1033\\langfe1033\\cgrid\\langnp1033\\langfenp1033 {\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 How Federations Work \\par }\\pard\\plain \\ltrpar\\s18\\ql \\li0\\ri0\\sa360\\widctlpar\\wrapdefault\\aspalpha\\aspnum\\faauto\\adjustright\\rin0\\lin0\\itap0\\pararsid13517917 \\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0\\afs28\\alang1025 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\fs28\\lang1033\\langfe1033\\cgrid\\langnp1033\\langfenp1033 {\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf19\\insrsid13517917 Knut:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Okay, great. so how does a federation work? \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 so the first thing you have to do, wherever you custody is where you transact and do and you live and so on, which is why. Banks try very much when you're young to get you to hold a bank account with them because they know that most people never leave an d then all other services are provided. So how do you actually custody? \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 For many people they've had two choices. Either they do everything themselves and that's the best if you can do it just like it's the best to be able to build and fix your own car or house but not everybody can do that but that is always the best because no one's going to love you. And put as much care in as yourself. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 The other extreme is to fully outsource it, fully give it to some private party, which is actually what ends up 95 percent plus people doing, and that's putting their money on a Coinbase or some other centralized service. and the same with communication. They would use some sort of centralized service. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 They would use a WhatsApp, an X. com, a Telegram, a WeChat or so on. They would use some centralized chat. And if you think about it. Our lives are communication and money and value. So both those things, most people outsource, some people take it in hou se. If I want to set up a federation, which is to do with the custody of the money, where FedeMint is this middle, middle house, I can find within my community, a number of trusted parties. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 We call them guardians. So let's say. You found us three plus, you know, your great t shirt, Greg Voss. The minimum we suggest is four for various Esoteric reasons From a cryptographic security point of view we suggest four, but you can have seven You ca n have you can keep growing you could have we've seen people have seen Federation stood up with as many as 40 people in them And it will get slower and slower if it gets beyond that, but, but technically you can. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 It'll be this, it'll create this huge multisig, i. e. multiple people have to sign before you do a transaction on chain. And so multisig starts to get expensive of a certain size. But let's say us three plus Greg. We would FedeMint software. we would dow nload the 30 minute software onto a machine that we have spare, and we would set up and run it. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 The setup process will, part of it will enter the information about the other three. And we make that very simple, it's a web interface, you point and click and you get a code and you share that code with the other parties, everybody shares the code of e ach other. Maybe you go into a group chat and paste each other's code. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Everybody copies each other's, enters it into our own FediMint and then they connect to each other and they form a federation. As long as you keep that box, running, connected to the internet, and connected to electricity, the federation, for each, all t he four, the federation are one. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 But because it's a federation, if one of them, for example, had a power cut, or lost their internet, or had to change their domain name, or something like that, The other three will be able to continue and operate. Yep, so you've now created this communi ty custody platform. Now, anyone with the FEDI app or any other app that supports the FEDIMINT protocol, Webimint, and we're hoping that many others will set up FEDIMINT wallets, like there are multiple Lightning wallets in future. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Any FDI min wallet compatible wallets like Fedie, can connect to your federation At the end of setting up the fed min server will show a QR code and the string that represents how to connect to your Federation. So you could take your Fed app, or the Muti ny wallet, or Web Mint, or any other, fed mint compatible wallet, and you'll scan that QR code. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 And you've now connected to that federation and that federation becomes, you can now use it to custody. Now, what will happen is, if for example, someone wants to send money to you, you would, just as if you're using a Bitcoin wallet, let's say it's on c hain. you would say, I want to receive, enter the amount and it'll show a QR code. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Someone else who's using a normal Bitcoin wallet will scan that code and send over the Bitcoin main chain money to you. But what's actually happening is your Fediap is communicating with the Federation. Your Federation is creating a Bitcoin address for y ou to send to and sends it back to you for you to display. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Okay. And then a user, someone else who's using a completely different wallet will send money to that address. Actually goes to the federation and they, the four of us combined will process that and create e cash, which is like a token representation of the \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Bitcoin. And then the e cash will be sent to you. But the way it, the way it's sent is completely privacy preserving. So the guardians have no way of knowing who they are providing that service for, who's receiving the money. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 There's full privacy. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 All right, and neither does the sender, I assume, like the sender doesn't, that they sent Bitcoin to us and address. They have no idea who, so if there are, let's say we set this up and we're using it for our friends and extended family and in total, the re are 40 of us or 50 of us \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 When you send to that address, there's no way to know out of those 40 or 50 people who received it or who requested it. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf19\\insrsid13517917 Knut:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 All right, so, a bit about the guardians and the multisig, that's obviously because you don't want to have a single point of attack for each, federation, right? \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 point of failure, \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf19\\insrsid13517917 Knut:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 A single point of \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 the more likely thing is that someone's machine, if you had one machine, the most likely thing that will happen, almost guaranteed, at some point you'll have some sort of power cut or internet cut. Internet cut is probably the most likely you'll, you'll have a glitch on your internet for 30 minutes. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 If you do, Everyone using your federation won't be able to use your system for 30 minutes. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf19\\insrsid13517917 Knut:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 but it's also an attack vector. Like if the, if the, if there's a lot of money in the federation and, so there's, there's an incentive to attack the guardians. Like, can you be completely sure that the guardians don't know each other's identities and stu ff like that? Like how, I know you think a lot about the attack vector. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf19\\insrsid13517917 Knut:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 So I'm like, can you go into that a bit? \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 can't be completely sure of anything in life. So the answer to that is automatically no. Can you be completely sure of something? but, it depends on the Also, there's an assumption that you have, that the people don't know each other. Cause I think very often in, there's two types of scenarios. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 It could be that each party completely doesn't know each other, or the more common scenario will be that you're some community or some group of friends. And within you, you've decided. Of the people who are my friends and family and so on, these four peo ple are the ones who are consistently the most reliable, the most trusted and so on. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 They do know each other, and you know who they are, and it's because you know who they are that you're comfortable with them holding. they're the Uncle Jims of the family. they're known to be reliable. They're known to be people who care about their frie nds and family. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 that's very often actually what we're seeing is the more common scenario than the ones where people are completely, anonymous to each other. But as it matures, we may see the other scenario happen as well. \\par }\\pard\\plain \\ltrpar\\s1\\ql \\li0\\ri0\\sb120\\sa260\\widctlpar\\wrapdefault\\aspalpha\\aspnum\\faauto\\outlinelevel0\\adjustright\\rin0\\lin0\\itap0\\pararsid13517917 \\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0\\afs48\\alang1025 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\fs48\\lang1033\\langfe1033\\cgrid\\langnp1033\\langfenp1033 {\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 The Uncle Network \\par }\\pard\\plain \\ltrpar\\s18\\ql \\li0\\ri0\\sa360\\widctlpar\\wrapdefault\\aspalpha\\aspnum\\faauto\\adjustright\\rin0\\lin0\\itap0\\pararsid13517917 \\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0\\afs28\\alang1025 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\fs28\\lang1033\\langfe1033\\cgrid\\langnp1033\\langfenp1033 {\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf20\\insrsid13517917 Luke:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 It's a literal uncle network. I know Uncle Rockstar started the uncle network here on infinity day. Yeah, you got the brother Luke, and so that's four, so we're \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 are you an uncle? \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf19\\insrsid13517917 Knut:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 am an uncle officially now. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf19\\insrsid13517917 Knut:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 an uncle as well, are like, but dubbed by Uncle Rockstar \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 I haven't been dubbed I, so \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 you are a good candidate. candidate, but I am biologically now, an \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf19\\insrsid13517917 Knut:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 oh, congratulations, \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Yeah, \\par }\\pard\\plain \\ltrpar\\s1\\ql \\li0\\ri0\\sb120\\sa260\\widctlpar\\wrapdefault\\aspalpha\\aspnum\\faauto\\outlinelevel0\\adjustright\\rin0\\lin0\\itap0\\pararsid13517917 \\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0\\afs48\\alang1025 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\fs48\\lang1033\\langfe1033\\cgrid\\langnp1033\\langfenp1033 {\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 How Fedi Launched \\par }\\pard\\plain \\ltrpar\\s18\\ql \\li0\\ri0\\sa360\\widctlpar\\wrapdefault\\aspalpha\\aspnum\\faauto\\adjustright\\rin0\\lin0\\itap0\\pararsid13517917 \\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0\\afs28\\alang1025 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\fs28\\lang1033\\langfe1033\\cgrid\\langnp1033\\langfenp1033 {\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf20\\insrsid13517917 Luke:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Okay, well, I think we are looking just to dig in more about Fedi Fedi Mint and, what does your launch actually mean? Because the app has been in beta for quite a while, right? what's happened, to make it that you can launch? \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Yeah, that's a very good question, because, we, the app from the, if you just focus on the app, from the previous version to the one we went live, there are only a few, changes. It was more about, did we have enough feedback from enough people on the gro und that we thought that the product was stable enough, reliable enough? \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 behind the scenes, we've done a lot of internal plus from trusted friends, external security audits of different elements as well. I don't like to publicize it because it's just something we do. We don't think it's something you should promote to saying, Hey, look at what we're doing. We just try to build the best that we can. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 and the really, big thing was to just say, a lot of people ask, is Fedi ready? And we wanted to get to a line where we thought it was good enough. And we got to that line. And then, we also wanted to have enough proof points in, the world. And again, we got to that line. So these things were separate things that were happening. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 And finally, it was very clear to us that we wanted to make the software, Ultimately open source. And that was a big call because, you know, we raised 21 million and, normally you go two routes. You go, you raise a little bit and you stay open source and so on. Or you raise a lot and you stay closed source. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 We believe that, over time, it's going to be considered, over the coming years, it's going to consider that you should always go open source no matter what you're doing, but we're in a transition. Five years ago, raising this much and going open source w ould be considered crazy, in five years time, raising this much and not being open source would be considered crazy. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 And we wanted to be, afforded in that. So. We actually went source available. It's called a business source license. So it means you go source available and you set a date where you must go open source or earlier. and we set those. So we cannot change it now. We cannot say we're going to actually change our mind. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Well, the only thing we can say is that we're going to go open source earlier. that's the only thing we could do. Or if we decide to shut down, it's automatically open source as well. That's the sort of dead man's switch as well. Or we decide we're no lo nger going to develop the software. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 we've added caveats like that, which are not optional, but actually add more restrictions. So no one's going to complain with us going open source earlier. that was agreed and put in place on May the 4th. So May the 4th we review of this year, 2024, just for posterity. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 we, got enough proof points from different markets, that we felt that we're onto something here. Does that mean that we've finished? No, there's a lot of work to do, but enough to say that the idea of taking all of the best of freedom technologies out th ere. And putting them into one place and one app that's easy to use is something that's compelling to people. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 And also we had enough to see the federation model. of this sort of really simple to use and privacy preserving multi sig is also a powerful model. So the model was proven out. And then finally the software, we got to a point where we thought, it's, of c ourse, we've got years of more development, but it was good enough as well. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 I think that was the final piece. And we thought, okay, we're ready to go. And we then set a date a few weeks after that. But even when we were getting close to it, we started the process of shooting a video because we just wanted to show people are wond ering what were we doing for the last nearly two years and we wanted to show that as well. \\par\ \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf20\\insrsid13517917 Luke:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 what's the synopsis of the last two years? Like the big highlights? \\par\ \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 so, I always say there's three phases in the business. There's initialization, of a startup, initialization, market product fit, in our case, not product market fit, I can go into why. And then, growth. And so, this phase that was, the end was finally, w e crossed the line, on August the 6th, 2024, was the initialization phase. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 And so, if you think about the analogy of, like you wanted to have A shop selling designer pet clothing, and you've decided you have this crazy idea and you have to first fund it, find the people to build it, and then find the place, set up the store, ma ke the clothes and, open. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 That's the initialization phase. And then once it's launched, you then. Start figuring out, okay, people come in, there's initial, interest, and then, you have this trickle of people coming in, you have to figure out what do they like, what do they not l ike, what do I have to adjust until it becomes this sort of regular viable business. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf20\\insrsid13517917 Luke:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 That's the market product fit phase. And then you start saying, okay, I've got something that's working fully and then I will repeat it, make more and more and more, Widgets? \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Doggy fashion, Excel stores, whatever you want to call it. the last two years was our initialization phase. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 we had this, amazing product with FediMint. we had this initial set of, crazy people with Erik, the inventor of FedEvent, Justin, who's, who was also incredible engineer, who was actually the one who suggested that we make a commercial enterprise. up unt il that, both myself and Erik just suggested it would be an open source project. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 And then myself as well with my just, you know, only maybe six or seven months before we were finally finished selling. a Bitcoin exchange, the UK's longest running Bitcoin exchange. and so having that experience of building a company that was profitable and understanding what it meant to build something that custodies a large amount of money for people and provides them services is easy to use and all that sort of stuff. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 and everything around that customer service, everything around that. So, we were there, I had a visit to the Oslo Freedom Forum, and that was the catalyst. we did one talk at, Bitcoin Miami, and, Alex Gladstein saw that, he suggested I go to Oslo Freedom Forum. I went, my mind was blown and I also realized whenever you're thinking about a business, you have to always think about chicken and the egg and how do you find your initial market for eventually this product is applicable to everybody everywhere , but who's the first use case that has a demand so high that they're going to willing to go through the really buggy early versions and help you. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Stabilize it to the point where it's something that people can click a button and it works everywhere. I realized that the community of human rights defenders and later on also humanitarian organizations fit that, need. We really cared about that need an d we were concerned, we wanted to help, but we realized that this product could help in combination with the rest of the Bitcoin ecosystem. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 That's what's quite cool. FediMint is the thing that handles the custody, but you still need to buy things, sell things, find things, and so on, and that's where the Fedi app also comes into play, but without FediMint as the core to handle the custody, t he rest didn't make sense. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Then we started, it was, then you had this sort of scene from like the Magnificent Seven or so on where you're, you're finding your initial team members. So we found Renato Rodriguez, I chased her for like six months ago. She should have, you know, got a restraining order for six months trying to get her to join. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 just if you look at the initial team, it was just everybody, the whole team is amazing. But it was just trying to find these incredible people. they tended to just immediately understand the value proposition and the market we were trying to help and wer e already doing incredibly well in their own careers, but there was something missing for them. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 And when they saw this, it was like this fulfilled There's some other need that they had beyond the monetary need. The potential was amazing, but the mission side of it was what helped us bring on this incredible team. So I believe in philosophy, people, process, product. The philosophy was amazing, who we're helping, the potential, it's helping people and in so doing we're helping Bitcoin, in so doing we're helping the world. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 And that's a powerful philosophy and mission and that attracted this incredible group of people. And if you've got the philosophy and you've got an incredible group of people, they will put in the processes that will lead to the right product. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 It's like, let's say the video, for example. I said to Renata, I want a really powerful launch video and it should be like the best Apple keynote speech combined with a UNICEF or Save the Children commercial. That's it. That's the whole brief and that wh ole video. And somebody says, you need to go to Madeira. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 You need to say this. And I just woke up and I say what she says. But the whole elements of it, all of it was her and her team, Mary and marketing and everybody building that over the following X months. and I didn't actually see the video myself. Until less than a month before we launched it for the first time as a rough draft. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 And it was just basically perfect. My comments were like, I actually didn't have any significant comments, but that was the same for most of the team and the design of the product. We had this incredible designer, Skylar. I would give a brief and so as, Erik's brief was, I just want to be proud of something that I should be proud of, and that was it, you know? \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 And I was like, it just needs to be really simple. And that's the high level. And I might give comments on a little bit here or there, but in general, whenever he gave me it, I would say, well, he Skylarized it, like just Skylarize it. And he would just come up with something that was great. and I think that was the last two years. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 We had the team we raised. again, the choice of investors was really, really key. I was very, very sure, especially from my previous experiences, that I only wanted Bitcoin on the investors, especially for the first couple of rounds. And when I've someti mes do talks on how to set up a Bitcoin company, my first slide says don't do it, but instead sort of a Bitcoin business, not a Bitcoin startup. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 And I explain the difference between the two. but one part is, if you do want to raise capital, be really careful about your choice of investors. The wrong investors will, well, and they don't mean to, but they will kill your business without meaning to, but the right investors will. So, we were really, really careful about our choice of investors and the initial team and then the initial team brought on the rest of the team after that. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 And that was the last, that's the last two years we've set ourself up very well. I did, being a classic entrepreneur, think it'll take six months, took two years. So I, so my estimation on that was a little bit off, but the end result, I'm really excited about. And now, now we're, now we're off to the races. \\par Great news, everyone! Bitcoin, the inverse of clown world is out now. It's the successor to everything divided by 21 million. And it's based on the last two years of podcasts that we've done together. So if you like the show, you're going to love the book . Find the book on bitcoininfinitystore. com or on Amazon. \\par That's right. We have our own store now. BitcoinInfinityStore. com. You can find not just books, but merchandise based on everything divided by 21 million, check out Bitcoin, the inverse of Clown World today and buy some other stuff while you're there too . \\par This show is brought to you by Bit Box, our favorite hardware wallet. It's Swiss engineered and has all the most important security features to keep your Bitcoin safe while keeping a user experience that even your grandma can use. So visit Bit Box. Do Swi ss slash Freedom to learn more, or use Code Freedom at checkout for 5% off. \\par And remember, it's the Bit Box zero two Bitcoin only edition. Make sure to get that Bitcoin only firmware. \\par }\\pard\\plain \\ltrpar\\s1\\ql \\li0\\ri0\\sb120\\sa260\\widctlpar\\wrapdefault\\aspalpha\\aspnum\\faauto\\outlinelevel0\\adjustright\\rin0\\lin0\\itap0\\pararsid13517917 \\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0\\afs48\\alang1025 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\fs48\\lang1033\\langfe1033\\cgrid\\langnp1033\\langfenp1033 {\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 How does Fedi Make Money? \\par }\\pard\\plain \\ltrpar\\s18\\ql \\li0\\ri0\\sa360\\widctlpar\\wrapdefault\\aspalpha\\aspnum\\faauto\\adjustright\\rin0\\lin0\\itap0\\pararsid13517917 \\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0\\afs28\\alang1025 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\fs28\\lang1033\\langfe1033\\cgrid\\langnp1033\\langfenp1033 {\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf19\\insrsid13517917 Knut:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 How does the app make money? \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Yeah. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf19\\insrsid13517917 Knut:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 For the company? \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 if you use the app, whenever you use the Freddie app. whenever a transaction happens, which would have occurred a fee. So it's a Bitcoin transaction, e cash or a lightning transaction. We add on an additional fee, 21, 21 basis points. So 0. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf19\\insrsid13517917 Knut:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Oh, yeah, \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 And so, and the good thing is because we can charge in sats and I believe actually even fractions of a sat, it's a progressive tax, which a fee. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 So what I mean by that is. If you're sending, let's say 100 through, then you would be charged on 100. 21, but if you're, worth of value, but if you're sending through 1, then you'll be charged 0. 21 cents. And if you're sending through 0. 10, you'll be charged 0. 20. 0 to 1 cents. So it'll always be a very small percentage of what you're sending. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Now, people might say in certain countries, don't they have mobile money and so on. But the problem is those mobile money systems have minimum fees. And it might be, 1%, which is not that bad, say. And it might be, even in some terms of scale, it could b e half a percent, but with a minimum fee of 20 cents. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 So if you're sending a hundred dollars, that's okay. But if you're sending, 1, that's 20%. And so if you have someone who has a monthly salary of. 10 in some of these markets, that 0. 20 fee starts becoming quite a significant per transaction hit. So the refore it becomes unaffordable for you to use mobile money. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 So even though it's prolific above a certain wealth level, and so that leaves many people out, in the rain. But because this is progressive, if you're selling 10 cents, the, fee will actually round to zero. I mean it will be a fee, but you'll see it in s ats, but if you were showing, trying to show it in local currency, it would basically be, it'll say about zero and then you click and you realize it's this small amount of sats. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf19\\insrsid13517917 Knut:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 so, yeah. the big thing that I'm thinking of if I'm like. Playing this out in my head with where this could be in 10 years, like you could run entire virtual nations on a federation, right? If you have the money and the communication and whatever other u seful apps, \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 I think the big thing I think is, if you look at the internet, there are large organizations where, people use and they're highly centralized. You have a few people who may be wealthy enough to have their own direct connection to the internet, but the ma jority of people are connected on the internet. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 I don't know at this stage, millions of intranets, like household intranets effectively, company intranets and school intranets and so on, where it's one connection to the internet shared by multiple people. That's actually the majority of people. And it 's that middle ground between these huge mega organizations that people are connected to one mainframe. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 With millions of users, I think there are very few of them now, but that was the denominant way at the beginning. It was these huge, centralized ways of connecting AOL, CompuServe, and so on. Now, they're actually relatively rare, but that was at the beg inning. All of the internet was that. A few centralized parties, and I would liken them, conceptually in value terms, in value custody terms versus information custody terms, to, a coin basis. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 And also there were a lot of hobbyists who had their own direct ISDN connection to the internet. but now most people connect through these intranets where they get one router, one connection, and they share with everybody in their household. That would b e a criminal of the Uncle Jim federations or in their school or in their football club or in their office. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 That's probably 95 percent of people and I think that this approach of federated model from the size from. Five or six people up to five or six hundred thousand, that range can cover 80, 90 percent of usage. \\par }\\pard\\plain \\ltrpar\\s1\\ql \\li0\\ri0\\sb120\\sa260\\widctlpar\\wrapdefault\\aspalpha\\aspnum\\faauto\\outlinelevel0\\adjustright\\rin0\\lin0\\itap0\\pararsid13517917 \\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0\\afs48\\alang1025 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\fs48\\lang1033\\langfe1033\\cgrid\\langnp1033\\langfenp1033 {\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 How to Use Fedi(Mint) \\par }\\pard\\plain \\ltrpar\\s18\\ql \\li0\\ri0\\sa360\\widctlpar\\wrapdefault\\aspalpha\\aspnum\\faauto\\adjustright\\rin0\\lin0\\itap0\\pararsid13517917 \\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0\\afs28\\alang1025 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\fs28\\lang1033\\langfe1033\\cgrid\\langnp1033\\langfenp1033 {\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf20\\insrsid13517917 Luke:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Can we go back to the basics of how feint works in the perspective of someone actually using this thing? So, you explained to us last time how it works, but just for my own sanity, check that I got it. if you are sending e cash within the federation, tha t is just. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf20\\insrsid13517917 Luke:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Direct between two users. There's not even a record outside of that. No one knows those transactions are even happening. Is that essentially correct? \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Yeah. So the federation helps you mint technically, because actually the user creates their own e cash, they create their own e cash, but it's unstamped and then they give it to the federation and they stick in an envelope. And they give it to the federa tion with some carbon copy paper on the inside the envelope as well. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 the federation collectively signs. So let's say all four people go stamp, stamp, stamp. And that makes it valid. then they give back the envelope to the user. The user then opens the envelope with the cache that they created, just some random piece of da ta. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 And they now have this Ucash, but the Ucash they've created now has got the four stamps on it, say, for the four of us. And so anyone else in that federation, any other, person who's also connected to the federation. They can just literally, directly giv e them this, random set of data. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Let's say it's a picture of a fashionable dog and they can just give it to someone else. and the person will receive it and they don't really care what the data says. They just look, are the four stamps on it? Yes. Then it means it was stamped by the Fed eration, which means it's backed by a certain amount of information. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Actual Bitcoin. Yeah. So take the whole, the full path. Someone deposits some Bitcoin in return. They also, along with the Bitcoin, send them an envelope, give them an envelope with this random piece of data in it to the Federation and the Federation rec eives the Bitcoin. Okay. I've received the Bitcoin envelope. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Okay. I've received the Bitcoin. I will stamp. I received one, let's say. 10, 000 Satoshis. So I'm going to take my 10, 000 Satoshi stamp and stamp this envelope with 10, 000 Satoshis, pass it around to the other four, they all stamp the 10, 000 Satoshi stamp. And then give that back to the user. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 User opens the envelope and says, I've got, okay, I've got an e cash note with, with, that's been proven that the, that it's been validated by the guardians. So as long as we all trust the guardians are holding that and that they will honor this and rede em. That's it. So now I can pass it to anyone in the Federation. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 They receive it. They look at this picture of the cute dog, but what they're really looking at is, is it got the four stamps on it and it's 10, 000. So that means I've now received 10, 000 token. They can now at some point in the future, Often they do it immediately if they've gone into connection, but they don't have to. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 They can give it back to the Federation. Federation will receive it and each one will check their own signature of the guardians. Okay, it's properly signed. Therefore, I'm willing to, and they might give them a Bitcoin address to send the money on chain to. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 So they will receive it, it looks good, they will then, record that this, e cash note has been spent. But they don't know, of all the e cash they received, which one it was, because each one they received in the first place was in an envelope. So was it the first one they received, or the middle one they received? \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 They have no idea. It could have been received yesterday or a month ago. No way. All they know is, I must have stamped it, so it was one of the ones I stamped. And then they will look at the address the person's asking to send the Bitcoin to, and they wi ll take some of the Bitcoin that they're holding in the multi sig that we're holding between the four of us and send it to that address. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 So that's called Redeem versus Mint. Now, the user experience from a user, we can get onto Lightning, that's another level of complexity, but it's simple just for Bitcoin and eCash for now. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Someone sends me Bitcoin or I send it to myself from an outside wallet and I receive e cash. And then someone else in the, in the federation wants to, once I want to pay them some e cash, they will give me, they will give me a QR code to, to scan to pay and I will scan. And literally the e cash that's on my phone gets sent to them directly. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 From me to them, one to one, that person when they receive it could keep it on their phone or they could say, you know what, I want to send that back to the federation and they can send it back to the federation and then the federation can destroy that, issue them new, fresh e cash in different denominations, maybe not 10, 000, but 10, 1, 000, you know, just like with notes, you could go and get change. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Yeah, because if someone transacts, if you're saying it gets sent from one computer, phone being a computer, whatever, one device to another, well, that original device would still \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Yes, \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf20\\insrsid13517917 Luke:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 copy of the thing on, right. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 So they will still have a copy. Now you are in the same, this is where the community aspect works, you are in the same community, If you're in the same community, and the person, it's a merchant and you receive, and your phone will remember when you rece ived what e cash, yeah? \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Even though it's private, you do know this e cash was received at this time and this time for, and so, especially when you integrate with points of sale, it will say, well, you received this e cash for this purchase. You'll know that. so then if you go t o redeem it, at the end of the day, and some of it doesn't match, you will know as the merchant, which e cash was involved in that. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 You'll say, well, the e cash involved in this transaction. And that transaction was with John. So you've got proof of work. it's the same as if you have a merchant and you receive cash and then you finally got the end of the day to a bank. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 And some of the notes are counterfeit. Now, you don't find high levels of counterfeit notes in a community where people know each other. It's normally in these widespread communities. But in those scenarios, what most people will do and how the default w ay the app works is the moment you receive it, it immediately goes off and redeems it and then issues itself back new, new change. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Yeah, that seems like a good default implementation. but if you have no internet connectivity, you can still use it and still receive. even if you can't send over the internet, you can create a QR code, which contains the e cash in the QR code, and the p erson can literally scan it and receive through the screen. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Because as long as it's the QR code, the e cash note is just some text. So a QR code can represent that text and you can scan it, even if you have no data. So for example, it could be you're in an area where you have no data, rural, Latin America or so o n. But it could also be something more innocuous. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 You could just be in a big sort of, But the thing is is that you might be at a Glastonbury like concert and there are a thousand phones and there's no data. Or you're in an indoor conference place underground and there's no data. But you can still take p ayments or the merchant has internet because they're the ones who really need it. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 But the buyer doesn't and so in which case the merchant has internet because they're connected wired in because they're fixed, but the buyer doesn't need to have internet to pay and the merchant will just take a risk just like in most merchants in high s treets they accept a certain amount of breakage and a certain amount of transactions are gonna be charged back by, credit card companies and so on. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 I used to be a CTO for a major pan-European, online auction company. At the time I was competing with, eBay and so on. we were in a headliner, 300 hundred people working for me in technology. It was a very big technology offering. And we were doing milli ons of transactions a week. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 It was very high volume. And in those e commerce sites, you just accept a certain amount of breakage, a certain amount of returns, and a certain amount of chargebacks, even if you do nothing wrong and you just factor it into your costs. For the benefit o f the simplicity of the experience. \\par }\\pard\\plain \\ltrpar\\s1\\ql \\li0\\ri0\\sb120\\sa260\\widctlpar\\wrapdefault\\aspalpha\\aspnum\\faauto\\outlinelevel0\\adjustright\\rin0\\lin0\\itap0\\pararsid13517917 \\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0\\afs48\\alang1025 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\fs48\\lang1033\\langfe1033\\cgrid\\langnp1033\\langfenp1033 {\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Fedi and Nostr \\par }\\pard\\plain \\ltrpar\\s18\\ql \\li0\\ri0\\sa360\\widctlpar\\wrapdefault\\aspalpha\\aspnum\\faauto\\adjustright\\rin0\\lin0\\itap0\\pararsid13517917 \\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0\\afs28\\alang1025 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\fs28\\lang1033\\langfe1033\\cgrid\\langnp1033\\langfenp1033 {\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf19\\insrsid13517917 Knut:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 you mentioned Nostr before, like, what's the marriage between Fedi and Nostr? Well, I would say right now, we are, because I think. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf19\\insrsid13517917 Knut:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 we're beyond dating. We're engaged. But we want to really take the two footed tackle of no return, to use a football euphemism. a web of trust thing, right? \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Yeah, I think, whenever, from the first point I saw Nostr, a lot of people thought it was just social media and so on. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 I think social media is Trojan horse is the wrong word, but it's the, initial vector by which it infiltrates communities. But what you're actually doing is building a simple, trust system and a simple discovery system. It's a form of decentralized search and it's a form decentralized identity. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Cause you, to search, you have to identify things to be able to search. So they're sort of two sides of the same coin. now the first thing you're using it for is identifying people who want to speak publicly and share their thoughts and so on and so fort h and follow them and give feedback and like. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 But it always seemed to me to, way more powerful than that. And I think now people, generally understand it that way. And so, What we've already done, in Fedi, and a lot of developers really like the way it works, if you sign up to Fedi, or if you downlo ad the Fedi app and start using it, you, first of all, you don't need to give your email, you don't need to give your phone number because it's not required, but, we do ask you to come up with some sort of Username for yourself. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 That doesn't even have to be unique, by the way. We will add a unique element at the end, from it. But what we do is, whenever you create that label, which you can change the name, but we create, an NSEC, which is a Nostr, identity effectively. A unique identity and we automatically create that for you. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 So again, for our users, we don't want to start educating them on the history of Austrian economics and Bitcoin and inflation at the beginning or a Nostr, et cetera, and how it works and relays. And we just want them to start using it. then subtly over t ime we expose certain features of it. So people become curious and then eventually. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 You want to learn how this thing that's delivering value works, but we've put proof of work first, proof of talk second. So we educate through letting people see the benefits. And then there might be some people might say, well, how does this car thing w ork? Or how does this fridge thing work? But I don't need to know how refrigerant works to be able to use a fridge or how microwaves work to use a microwave. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 When they want to know how all this stuff works, but we benefit first. So, and so and that's how it works with Nostr We immediately give you an NSEC. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 And so because we've got that if you go and use unleash. chat, for example within the app It will go and you click login and there's one option login by Nostr You click that and it'll just within the app pop up something saying Nostr Do you want to log i n with Nostr? And you click yes, and you're logged in and it just works and then you, and then also now you're logged in and then you can, and then you click, deposit money and instead of having to go to a different app, copy and paste the QR codes, it just, it pops up and says, do you, this, this, what the app's asking you to deposit this amount of money? \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Do you want to go ahead? Yes. And then it's e cash. Is, is converted into lightning and then that you pay by lightning. But from your point of view, there's a circling key for three or four seconds. You have now credited your account. Do you want to with draw the money back account? You click withdraw the amount. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Three or four seconds, it's been withdrawn to your account and, and it's all within the same app. so, but that only works because now if you, close the app or delete the mods, because you can delete these mods or these additional pieces of functionality, they're basically webpages, but the icon for them, and they have an app like experience, but they're actually just webpages. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 and then you go away and then you delete the app from your service. Like six months later, you come back, you, you, you enter your 12 words, you're, you're re log on. And then if you scan to join a federation again, it will recognize that you were a memb er of the federation before, and it will reconstitute and recreate all your e cash and put it back on your phone. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 And then if you click on, Unleash your chat or Stacker News or anyone that supports logging by Nostr. Your login with the same details and so on. So you basically, and we want to make that even more seamless. So from 12 words, your entire life can you th ink about moving from one mobile phone to another, where you have to move all your apps, your banking apps, your chat apps. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 And now you could do that with just go and also try moving from an iPhone to an Android phone, Android to an iPhone. It's a nightmare. Here you could just download the Fedi app on your iPhone. this is some far point in the future. You don't have just cha t, but you also have voice. You have video, all of that running from encrypted chat. \\par }\\pard\\plain \\ltrpar\\s1\\ql \\li0\\ri0\\sb120\\sa260\\widctlpar\\wrapdefault\\aspalpha\\aspnum\\faauto\\outlinelevel0\\adjustright\\rin0\\lin0\\itap0\\pararsid13517917 \\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0\\afs48\\alang1025 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\fs48\\lang1033\\langfe1033\\cgrid\\langnp1033\\langfenp1033 {\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 12 Magic Words \\par }\\pard\\plain \\ltrpar\\s18\\ql \\li0\\ri0\\sa360\\widctlpar\\wrapdefault\\aspalpha\\aspnum\\faauto\\adjustright\\rin0\\lin0\\itap0\\pararsid13517917 \\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0\\afs28\\alang1025 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\fs28\\lang1033\\langfe1033\\cgrid\\langnp1033\\langfenp1033 {\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 you have access to money from, custody and payments. You have access to all these apps and then you back up 12 words. And there's something we call social backup, which is mind blowing, but, that's in beta. But let's just say backup 12 words, and then yo u delete that app, go to a different phone, could be an Android or an iPhone, and you just enter 12 words, and your entire thing comes back. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Not partially back, but it all will come back. based on just those 12 words and that's only made possible because of Nostr and we want it over time. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf19\\insrsid13517917 Knut:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 mean, when you think about it, it's insane. It's already insane with bitcoins, with the 12 magic words, because like every time I pass a security check at an airport, I think that go ahead, have my 200 milliliters of toothpaste. I'll, I have my 12 magic words, like it's the ultimate fuck you to, to anyone trying to meddle with your business, right? \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf19\\insrsid13517917 Knut:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 that's the dream. I mean, we're not fully there, but it's, I would say it's like, we're like 90 percent there, but to extend beyond just your Bitcoin, Nostr is the protocol that allows us to do that because it's notes and other stuff and the other stuff can be, an encrypted version of the settings and so on that you have that we can store and be willing to pay for. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 And then when you recover, you have your bitcoin, but then you can go off and send a request to say here, I'm willing to recover this file. Here's some zaps for the file and you get the file back and that additional file then contains the information. Ok ay, these are the federations you are a member of, you rejoin them. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 These are the mods that you had, they're reset up. These are the settings you had, they're reset up. And then you log on them automatically using Nostr as well, the NSEC and Nostr login. from your point of view as the user, 12 words, it's back. I mean, y ou might have to drink a cup of coffee while it's happening, but 5, 10, 20 minutes later, it's back. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf19\\insrsid13517917 Knut:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 it's amazing, and it's an inheritance plan. Like, you can live forever by just letting your descendants, giving them the 12 words when you're on your deathbed. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 backup also becomes really powerful, because social backup means that, cause the 12 words is still another thing to secure. And it's sort of one of these turtles all the way down type scenarios. Okay. We've got all this incredible security Fort Knox like , but behind them, but I walk around the back of the Fort Knox is these 12 words that's stored. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 you also give one to your cousin and you say, look after this as a backup. And your cousin stores it on a fridge magnet. You know, you don't know, or you don't know your, your, your security is the lowest common denominator. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 For your 12 words. And \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf19\\insrsid13517917 Knut:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 is never stronger than the weakest \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 then the weakest link. And so with social backup, which is definitely an early beta. what we can do is use the power of the federation where we can take your 12 words, encrypt them and then split it up between the four guardians in this case, or seven gu ardians or 40 guardians or whatever. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 For larger federations, and they all hold a piece of your encrypted piece of your, of \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf19\\insrsid13517917 Knut:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 is important here. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Yeah. \\par Knut, what are you doing over there? I'm stamping my seed. Everyone tells me I should, that it's good for bitcoin security and whatnot, and that I should go balls deep into bitcoin security, so I'm stamping. You don't do it like that, Knut. You don't stam p that seed. You stamp your seed phrase. What? Your seed phrase. \\par Oh, so that's what these things are for. oh, I get it now. That's exactly right, Knut. And you can get everything you need to stamp your seed phrase at stampseed. com. And be sure to check out our limited edition Everything Divided by 21 Million Titanium Seed Plate. \\par And use code INFINITY at checkout for 15 percent off. That's fantastic! And it hurts way less! \\par\ \\par\ \\par }\\pard\\plain \\ltrpar\\s1\\ql \\li0\\ri0\\sb120\\sa260\\widctlpar\\wrapdefault\\aspalpha\\aspnum\\faauto\\outlinelevel0\\adjustright\\rin0\\lin0\\itap0\\pararsid13517917 \\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0\\afs48\\alang1025 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\fs48\\lang1033\\langfe1033\\cgrid\\langnp1033\\langfenp1033 {\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Redundancy in Fedi \\par }\\pard\\plain \\ltrpar\\s18\\ql \\li0\\ri0\\sa360\\widctlpar\\wrapdefault\\aspalpha\\aspnum\\faauto\\adjustright\\rin0\\lin0\\itap0\\pararsid13517917 \\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0\\afs28\\alang1025 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\fs28\\lang1033\\langfe1033\\cgrid\\langnp1033\\langfenp1033 {\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf20\\insrsid13517917 Luke:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 So this gets me back to what happens when one of the guardians drops off, and if it's like in a permanent way, if that one guardian is holding a piece of everyone else's 12 words, does everyone \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Yeah. But it uses a prot, this is crypto, where cryptography comes in. So it's not like. We've taken your 12 words and split it up free between four guardians. Instead, you encrypt it using a scheme that allows each one of the four of us to have a crypto graphic piece. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 But as long as any three of us combine our piece together, we can recombine. It is, it's called, SHAIR Secret Sharing Scheme, but it's a way of cryptographically achieving that. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf20\\insrsid13517917 Luke:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Excellent, I think you mentioned last time as well that if a guardian does go down, essentially you can replace that guardian, can you take us through that, adding or replacing a guardian if that ever were to need to happen? \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 replacing a garden is, probably one of the most complex things. And so you wouldn't necessarily replace a guardian, but what you would do is, some, if someone were to go down, there's two different things. The machine. Or the guardian, the actual person. So if the machine goes down, you can set up a new machine and you can recover the status of that. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 You can, you can download the 30 minute software on that new machine. So that's the actual server that's running. And that will then connect to the rest of the federation and, and carry on. So as long as the guardian has a backup of their keys, they can recover that one machine and, and catch up and it'll automatically catch up. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Just like if you turn off a Bitcoin node and turn it on, it will reconnect to the Bitcoin network and catch up. It's a similar concept. so that's if a machine went down, if a machine was temporarily disconnected from the internet or, lost power, it would just restart and reconnect and you will have zero downtime as a user, as long as it's still running and active. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 And this will all be, you'll notice that the performance will still be the same, but if you went into settings for that federation, you'll see that three of the four are running, so one is not running, but that won't affect your usage. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Is the N of M like a ratio, or is it always N 1, for example? It's a ratio. the number of guardians that, you need to have is dependent on how much redundancy. So if you want to be able to handle one guardian going down, then you'll need to have, one tim es by three plus one. So that's four. So that's why you need three or four. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 if you want to handle two going down, then you need two times by three plus one, which is seven. So it's five of seven. 7 of 10, 9 of 13, and so on and so forth. You can have more than that, but the time that you get additional redundancy is every 3, but you can have, for example, 4 of 5, if you wanted to. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Anyway, so, yeah, in the event that someone goes down, that the machine goes down, you can recover. recently there was an issue where one machine, where two federations, had an issue with the domain name for one of those servers. And so if the domain nam e for someone is no longer available, you can now, with the update that came out a couple of weeks after that, you can modify, the domain name \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 for a Guardian 30 minute server, and it would communicate that securely with the other, Federation servers and then reconnect and, continue to operate. But it's important to, even in that scenario where the Federa Guardian, the domain name server went do wn, the Federation itself, Continue to operate because there was still at least free running. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 So there was no downtime for the user. Whereas if, if we hadn't been federated, then for the one week or so where that was down, the users would have had no access at all, which would be the case where you're connecting to a centralized or a single serve r, offering. now, if one of the guardians, for some reason, the actual people who are running the Fedemyst server, for some reason, you no longer trusted them, they'd been helpful all their life and all of a sudden they decided, or they've been turned b y some, malevolent nefarious actor. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Then you, if you could in theory pass to someone else, but in practice, you know, how do I know that the other person isn't still going to continue to operate it and so on and so forth. So what you actually want to do is set up a different federation and transfer people, the other three guardians and inform people with a different set of four people. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 So those three, plus someone else. And just tell people to transfer their balances across. But transferring balances across is as easy as doing a lightning transaction from one server to another. You can, you know, within the FEDI app, be a member of mul tiple federations at the same time. I mean, right now, I mean, I'm a bit of a power user, but I'm a member of, over a dozen different federations from around the world. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 I mean, well over a dozen, I think, yeah. and as we've, I'm sure there's people in the team with way more than that. but obviously I can't advertise the names because many of them are private federations. So, but there's a few public ones, but there's wa y more private ones. \\par }\\pard\\plain \\ltrpar\\s1\\ql \\li0\\ri0\\sb120\\sa260\\widctlpar\\wrapdefault\\aspalpha\\aspnum\\faauto\\outlinelevel0\\adjustright\\rin0\\lin0\\itap0\\pararsid13517917 \\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0\\afs48\\alang1025 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\fs48\\lang1033\\langfe1033\\cgrid\\langnp1033\\langfenp1033 {\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Interoperability \\par }\\pard\\plain \\ltrpar\\s18\\ql \\li0\\ri0\\sa360\\widctlpar\\wrapdefault\\aspalpha\\aspnum\\faauto\\adjustright\\rin0\\lin0\\itap0\\pararsid13517917 \\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0\\afs28\\alang1025 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\fs28\\lang1033\\langfe1033\\cgrid\\langnp1033\\langfenp1033 {\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf20\\insrsid13517917 Luke:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 So is the e cash, if you're in multiple federations, is it interoperable there, or it's like a more like a, it's a lightning transaction between those two federations, but it's e cash that lives \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 You got it. It's, E cash lives within its federation, but the interoperability layer for most people is not on chain. It's for the vast majority of people, it's Lightning, so, but the user experience of sending e cash from one person to another in the sa me federation, sending e cash from one person to someone else receiving Lightning. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 on a different wallet that's got nothing to do with Ferdie Mint. And finally sending e cash from one person in one federation. To someone else in another federation over the Lightning Network in between is exactly the same. From your point of view, QR co de scan and the system will combination of the Fedi app and or whatever Fedi Mint compatible app you're using and Fedi Mint servers will make the experience \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 I just need to send the person the cash. In this case I can send e cash out over Lightning and that's my job is done. And then the other side would be a Lightning wallet and it will receive. And in this case, I will send e cash over Lightning to another federation, but I don't even know if it's another federation, it's just a Lightning address. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 And then the other federation, receives the transaction and the other 30 minute server receives e cash on the other side. But from a user's point of view, this is the thing that also took the two years to make the experience the same. You just don't have to worry about which one is doing. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 The fees will be slightly different. One won't have a Lightning component to the fee, e cash to e cash, but, the other two will because it will be like, in both cases, it will be e cash to Lightning, from your point of view. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf20\\insrsid13517917 Luke:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 So is there a fee to send e cash to someone else in the same federation? No, I guess. Right. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 It depends on the federation. the federation, could choose not to charge a fee and many in these times choose not to because they're doing it for friends and family and so on and the fees are minimal. the Ferryman protocol does support, what we call a DD oS fee. So basically you're spending effort time \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 to sign these notes, the issuing is done by the user, but the stamping takes time. you're signing something cryptographically, that's effort. and you're also doing it in a federated manner, so you're coordinating and then you're all collectively signing. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 So, to avoid DDoS, you can turn on a fee and, by our calculations, it doesn't need to be very large, one sat per note that issued is enough to prevent, because if someone really tried to DDoS you at scale, they could, but on normal sort of consumer lapto ps or hardware, they'll have to spend, hundreds of thousands a month at that sort of, one sat per note, and in which case you'll say, fine, you're giving me hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of Bitcoin to burn my, CPU. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Well, not to burn it, but just to heat my CPU. so you can charge a fee. And I think some will experiment with charging a DDoS fee, which is similar to Bitcoin. the fees in Bitcoin are a DDoS protection vector. So it's the same concept. \\par }\\pard\\plain \\ltrpar\\s1\\ql \\li0\\ri0\\sb120\\sa260\\widctlpar\\wrapdefault\\aspalpha\\aspnum\\faauto\\outlinelevel0\\adjustright\\rin0\\lin0\\itap0\\pararsid13517917 \\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0\\afs48\\alang1025 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\fs48\\lang1033\\langfe1033\\cgrid\\langnp1033\\langfenp1033 {\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Fedi's Roadmap \\par }\\pard\\plain \\ltrpar\\s18\\ql \\li0\\ri0\\sa360\\widctlpar\\wrapdefault\\aspalpha\\aspnum\\faauto\\adjustright\\rin0\\lin0\\itap0\\pararsid13517917 \\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0\\afs28\\alang1025 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\fs28\\lang1033\\langfe1033\\cgrid\\langnp1033\\langfenp1033 {\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf19\\insrsid13517917 Knut:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 All right. So, what's on the roadmap? What's going on? How does the future look like? What will you be working on the next five years? And where do you see FedeMint going? \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 that's actually, the most, fun phase. up until now, we had a hypothesis and we had some early feedback, but a lot of it was based on, A hypothesis and theory as to what we thought people needed and we felt that freedom technology had got to a stage where they were good enough to provide this combined experience. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 And that was a hypothesis. And we think we've got early validation, but we built that. Now it's life. And now it's the fun, but it's also the scary bit because we now actually see people using it and we test all our hypothesis. And this is the point wher e you have to be very detail oriented, very much listening to the users and listening to what they say \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 we cannot ignore if there are. Parts of our hypothesis that are incorrect, we have to adjust to support that. So it's going to be a lot of listening and we've already got hundreds of requests for feedback. and then working to rectify, or deal with the qu estions or feedback they've given us or the suggestions they've given us. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 and we're going to continue to iterate and then we bring it back out to users and see what they think. And we keep in that loop. This is the market product fit loop until. The product that we produce, fits the requirements of the market. Now, again, I, I 'm hoping that takes six months or less, just like I hoped it took six months or less \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 for the initialization phase, but it might take less. It might take a bit more, but it's fun. and that's the next phase. After that, we then go into the growth phase. Once we know we've got something that's repeatable, that really. is at the quality leve l that users need for it to be used a daily part of their life. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 We'll then go into growth phase and that's where we'll really, you know, pull down, put our pedal to the metal and, and just repeat, repeat, repeat until. You know, billions of people are using this around the world, but that, that's phase three. And I'm , I'm very focused on this phase. You don't want to rush into phase three. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 We're not going to rush to grow the numbers, until we are very sure that we've got something that's really slick, really reliable, and where we're meeting a clear demonstrable demand consistently. And that process is called human centered design. So it's not focused on this is my app, this is what I want, and I'm going to keep trying to make you agree with what I want. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 this is what we've built. This is our first stab at it, but we're going to keep iterating until it serves your need properly. And that might require some, this is what makes this one very hard because it requires a very different mindset to the phase one . Phase one is like We can do everything and the impossible is possible phase two is really being pragmatic. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Or very self critical and being very open to killing your darlings, as the saying goes, you know, and saying this is not working or, or there's some fundamental issue. I mean, I don't think this will be the case at this stage, but if the feedback was fro m our market that we need to make some fundamental changes that would mean that 80 percent of the code we built has to be thrown away and have to start again. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Well, that's what we're being told. we've got far enough to think that's highly unlikely. cause most of the feedback, like some of the big pieces of feedback cause how can we make it easier to set up federations? So that's a really good sign because lots of people said there's only going to be a demand for like free federations and it's going to be very centralized. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Well, a very large percentage. I don't want to give it. These are the very large percentage of all our queries so far have been, how can I set my own federation up? So even based on those queries, there's not going to be free. You know, I can put it that way. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf20\\insrsid13517917 Luke:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Super quick question on that, I guess, is it the Fetiman software? Is it on, for example, the note in a box, solutions, the umbrellas, start nines, et \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Well, that's part of the feedback that we're getting. For example, can we set it up? Can you integrate with Umbro? Can you integrate with Start9? Can you integrate with RastyBlitz? can you make it simpler to set up? So, I think, a lot of that's done by t he FediMint team. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Because remember, FediMint is an OpusSource project versus a different OpusSource project. At some point in the future, it will be two different open source projects. However, we are using them as the bedrock, because if you want to custody significant a mounts of value We know that you want to go multisig. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Multisig for significant amounts of value is the best standard, and also you want privacy, so then privacy and multisig, that's FedEvent, basically. but, on the FedE side, we can do a lot as well. So we can provide, even though it's open source software, we can take it and provide it. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 again, it will be open source, but tools to help you build it really easily or put efforts to integrate with people like Umbrell and Start9. we've already had an integration with an organization called Clover, which we've been working on, and you're goin g to see more on that. But from our point of view, that's a lot of where the work is. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Also you want to connect this to the Lightning Network. And connected to the Lightning Network and maintaining a reliable connection is not easy. it can be complicated for people, especially managing liquidity. And now again, over time, I could get easie r, but right now it's not easy. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 There are organizations like, Breeze and others who make that easy. and you just saw an announcement from Erik, where they've already started, showing connectivity and support for LDK, which is this cross, LSP standard. So, again, we at Fedi can provide tools for FediMint, or people who are using FediMint, whether it's with Fedi or someone else, that make it really easy. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 And again, our aim is one click, and you have a connection. You can set up your own lightning node that's set up in a relatively good way, so it'd be relatively reliable, but you don't have to manage it yourself. Or, you can connect to one of these LSP's and for a fee, they'll just handle all the light and management, but you're still in a trust minimized way. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 So there's, but given all the feedback we're getting, it's not, this is completely wrong. You need to go back to the drawing board, it's all, okay, I get it, but you need to go further. You need to integrate with more. You need to make it easier. so that 's a good sign that we're on the right track. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf19\\insrsid13517917 Knut:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Yeah. So, what about this date when you go open source? is that public or, when you have to go open source, it might be then or \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 in the, it's, it's, it's memorializing the business source license. In fact, we memorialized it. We actually have this memo memorializing when it happened. when we launched Freddy, we, we did this thing on the Bitcoin block. You can see it. We were estab lished on a certain block. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 And we said Fedi is here. When we, quietly on May the 4th, we also put something that said Fedi colon and it was a hash. That hash is a hash of a memo. And the memo, which is on our, Fedi's got an open source, you can see the link and you can verify it. Showed that on May the 4th, the code became business source license. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 And by January the 3rd, 2026 or earlier, we must go, open source. And if we were to shut down or to stop development, we will instantly go open source. and so, so that, and we put it in block. I tried to find a core block. So it was block 8, 42069. It wa s actually was the block that was the core block as well. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 so yeah, it's, it's there. And, that's the date. We, we cannot go open source later than that. And we may very well go open source a lot earlier than that. \\par }\\pard\\plain \\ltrpar\\s1\\ql \\li0\\ri0\\sb120\\sa260\\widctlpar\\wrapdefault\\aspalpha\\aspnum\\faauto\\outlinelevel0\\adjustright\\rin0\\lin0\\itap0\\pararsid13517917 \\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0\\afs48\\alang1025 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\fs48\\lang1033\\langfe1033\\cgrid\\langnp1033\\langfenp1033 {\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Wrapping Up \\par }\\pard\\plain \\ltrpar\\s18\\ql \\li0\\ri0\\sa360\\widctlpar\\wrapdefault\\aspalpha\\aspnum\\faauto\\adjustright\\rin0\\lin0\\itap0\\pararsid13517917 \\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0\\afs28\\alang1025 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\fs28\\lang1033\\langfe1033\\cgrid\\langnp1033\\langfenp1033 {\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf20\\insrsid13517917 Luke:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Hey Obi, I think we could keep on grilling you on this and that little detail, but this has been really enlightening, fantastic to see how far this has come, even since our last conversation back in October, and yeah, just looking forward to everything y ou guys are doing, and I guess just as a last thing, people can now grab the Fedi app and Public federations are available to start to try \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 federations and there are, and you can set up your own federation There's a lot, I don't like to talk too much about what's coming in future because we just work on everything in order of customer demands. So if customer demand comes in, that changes the order, but we're working really hard to make it, It's already easy for if you're quite technical, but we're going to make it easier and easier to set up a federation, so keep looking out because that's a very common request to set up a federation yours elf, and we want to see what people do with it, create Fedi mods, create federations, use it, give us feedback, and we will continue to work on making an incredible, Open source interface portal to this freedom technology world. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf20\\insrsid13517917 Luke:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Absolutely fantastic. We'll need to keep on having these conversations regularly, get updates because always fantastic to hear about this and good luck moving forward and I think we'll be trying some FETI stuff in our futures here. Lots of cool things ha ve come out of Nostriga and Baltic. Honey Badger by \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf20\\insrsid13517917 Luke:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 I'm exciting to see that. And anywhere else you want to direct our listeners and viewers. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 So for Fedi, that's probably the best place because everything, that's a jumping off ground for everything else. And that's Fedi, F E D I dot X, Y, Z. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf20\\insrsid13517917 Luke:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 Fantastic. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf21\\insrsid13517917 Obi:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 One of the cooler things that came out in Nostriga and Honeybadger was of course, yes, the inverse of clown world, our new book, and we want to give you one. if you're not given one during this weekend, you'll find it on bitcoininfinitystore. com. Thank you very much. \\par }{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\ab\\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\b\\cf20\\insrsid13517917 Luke:}{\\rtlch\\fcs1 \\af0 \\ltrch\\fcs0 \\insrsid13517917 and we need to sign it for you. Yeah, we'll do that offline. But Obi, thank you again. And this has been the Bitcoin Infinity Show. 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e529fd1edb01feffffff00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000ffffffffffffffffffffffff00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000ffffffffffffffffffffffff0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000ffffffffffffffffffffffff000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000105000000000000}}BIS130 - Transcript Knut: Welcome to the Bitcoin Infinity Show, brought to you by BitBox Stampseed, the Bitcoin Advisor and ShopInBit. Enjoy the conversation. Welcoming Obi Nwosu Luke: Obi, welcome for the first time to the Bitcoin Infinity Show. Obi: well, Knut: We rebranded. Obi: what is time in infinity? No, no, it's the second time, great to have you back. yeah, we have, it's been a wild ride and the journey is just beginning. So yeah, thank you. The Launch of Fedi Knut: so Fedimin launched, two weeks ago. Is it the Fedi Obi: Fedi, launched? Knut: launched? Yeah. These terms. Obi: no, no, Fedi Mint launched, effectively Fedi Mint launched nearly five years ago. FediMint is a very old technology, very, you know, the first, the first FediMint transaction, where someone used FediMint e cash over Lightning to buy a cup of coffee, which was after, you know, a year plus of development was on, I believe it was the 3rd of the 8th, 3rd of August, 2021. Obi: And so we're trying to, like you have a Bitcoin Infinity Day, we're suggesting, that was actually Erik, my, the inventor of Fedi Mint. from Parinelli Police, just actually, and so I like to think of that as e cash coffee day. Cause actually it was like, you actually bought the cup of coffee with e cash. Obi: so yeah, but yeah, Fedi finally launched two weeks ago. Knut: All right. so I think, for those who haven't seen the previous episode with you, if they want to know more about you, we should probably go back to that episode, but I think you're going to have to do the TLDR on what Fedi is for our listeners. Like that's a good start, I think. Obi: So yeah, and now we can be clear about what Fedi is. And so Fedi, is two things still. Even Fedi is two things. One is the company called Fedi and the other is this product called Fedi. So if we talk about the product that people have on their phone, Fedi is a community super app. And so it's an app that takes the best of freedom technology. Obi: it's got Bitcoin functionality in it, Lightning connectivity, obviously FediMint for handling community custody. but it's also got Nostr support and any other freedom technology that's out there that's mature and reliable. We've taken the time to integrate into one simple to use app. So it allows you to have chat. Obi: We use Matrix as this federated, decentralized, encrypted chat protocol. It has money with the combination of Lightning, Bitcoin, and Fediment and more. So it has a built in web browser inside it. And therefore you can access all of the Bitcoin ecosystem of apps from Bitrefill to Unleash. chat to BTCmaps and beyond. Obi: All in one place. So you don't have to have this smorgasbord of different apps and tabs open one app to use them all. And the app itself, we announced as well, is now source available and will eventually be open source as well. So we're trying to make the best of it. portal into the freedom technology space. Obi: So that's Fedi. And then Fedi the company builds the Fedi app. And we also have something we call the FedEye Order, which is, this selection of incredible people, FedEye Knights, who are on the ground and they, you can think of them as like a Decentralized genius bar. If you've got an iPhone, you have the genius bar that goes along with the phone. Obi: The reason why the iPhone is so amazing is not just the phone, but it's also the incredible support you can get. If you can go to an Apple store and you go to the genius bar, they can help you. we have that instead of it being in, you know, Fifth Avenue or Oxford street in London or so on. Obi: It's in, the capital of Togo or Uganda or. Guatemala, or so on. On the ground, they will locate communities, they will educate communities. and they will support communities on Bitcoin, on Lightning, on FediMent, on all of these different websites and services that are out there to provide that sort of support that's needed for the communities that are outside of the existing Bitcoin space. How Federations Work Knut: Okay, great. so how does a federation work? Obi: so the first thing you have to do, wherever you custody is where you transact and do and you live and so on, which is why. Banks try very much when you're young to get you to hold a bank account with them because they know that most people never leave and then all other services are provided. So how do you actually custody? Obi: For many people they've had two choices. Either they do everything themselves and that's the best if you can do it just like it's the best to be able to build and fix your own car or house but not everybody can do that but that is always the best because no one's going to love you. And put as much care in as yourself. Obi: The other extreme is to fully outsource it, fully give it to some private party, which is actually what ends up 95 percent plus people doing, and that's putting their money on a Coinbase or some other centralized service. and the same with communication. They would use some sort of centralized service. Obi: They would use a WhatsApp, an X. com, a Telegram, a WeChat or so on. They would use some centralized chat. And if you think about it. Our lives are communication and money and value. So both those things, most people outsource, some people take it in house. If I want to set up a federation, which is to do with the custody of the money, where FedeMint is this middle, middle house, I can find within my community, a number of trusted parties. Obi: We call them guardians. So let's say. You found us three plus, you know, your great t shirt, Greg Voss. The minimum we suggest is four for various Esoteric reasons From a cryptographic security point of view we suggest four, but you can have seven You can have you can keep growing you could have we've seen people have seen Federation stood up with as many as 40 people in them And it will get slower and slower if it gets beyond that, but, but technically you can. Obi: It'll be this, it'll create this huge multisig, i. e. multiple people have to sign before you do a transaction on chain. And so multisig starts to get expensive of a certain size. But let's say us three plus Greg. We would FedeMint software. we would download the 30 minute software onto a machine that we have spare, and we would set up and run it. Obi: The setup process will, part of it will enter the information about the other three. And we make that very simple, it's a web interface, you point and click and you get a code and you share that code with the other parties, everybody shares the code of each other. Maybe you go into a group chat and paste each other's code. Obi: Everybody copies each other's, enters it into our own FediMint and then they connect to each other and they form a federation. As long as you keep that box, running, connected to the internet, and connected to electricity, the federation, for each, all the four, the federation are one. Obi: But because it's a federation, if one of them, for example, had a power cut, or lost their internet, or had to change their domain name, or something like that, The other three will be able to continue and operate. Yep, so you've now created this community custody platform. Now, anyone with the FEDI app or any other app that supports the FEDIMINT protocol, Webimint, and we're hoping that many others will set up FEDIMINT wallets, like there are multiple Lightning wallets in future. Obi: Any FDI min wallet compatible wallets like Fedie, can connect to your federation At the end of setting up the fed min server will show a QR code and the string that represents how to connect to your Federation. So you could take your Fed app, or the Mutiny wallet, or Web Mint, or any other, fed mint compatible wallet, and you'll scan that QR code. Obi: And you've now connected to that federation and that federation becomes, you can now use it to custody. Now, what will happen is, if for example, someone wants to send money to you, you would, just as if you're using a Bitcoin wallet, let's say it's on chain. you would say, I want to receive, enter the amount and it'll show a QR code. Obi: Someone else who's using a normal Bitcoin wallet will scan that code and send over the Bitcoin main chain money to you. But what's actually happening is your Fediap is communicating with the Federation. Your Federation is creating a Bitcoin address for you to send to and sends it back to you for you to display. Obi: Okay. And then a user, someone else who's using a completely different wallet will send money to that address. Actually goes to the federation and they, the four of us combined will process that and create e cash, which is like a token representation of the Obi: Bitcoin. And then the e cash will be sent to you. But the way it, the way it's sent is completely privacy preserving. So the guardians have no way of knowing who they are providing that service for, who's receiving the money. Obi: There's full privacy. Obi: All right, and neither does the sender, I assume, like the sender doesn't, that they sent Bitcoin to us and address. They have no idea who, so if there are, let's say we set this up and we're using it for our friends and extended family and in total, there are 40 of us or 50 of us Obi: When you send to that address, there's no way to know out of those 40 or 50 people who received it or who requested it. Knut: All right, so, a bit about the guardians and the multisig, that's obviously because you don't want to have a single point of attack for each, federation, right? Obi: point of failure, Knut: A single point of Obi: the more likely thing is that someone's machine, if you had one machine, the most likely thing that will happen, almost guaranteed, at some point you'll have some sort of power cut or internet cut. Internet cut is probably the most likely you'll, you'll have a glitch on your internet for 30 minutes. Obi: If you do, Everyone using your federation won't be able to use your system for 30 minutes. Knut: but it's also an attack vector. Like if the, if the, if there's a lot of money in the federation and, so there's, there's an incentive to attack the guardians. Like, can you be completely sure that the guardians don't know each other's identities and stuff like that? Like how, I know you think a lot about the attack vector. Knut: So I'm like, can you go into that a bit? Obi: can't be completely sure of anything in life. So the answer to that is automatically no. Can you be completely sure of something? but, it depends on the Also, there's an assumption that you have, that the people don't know each other. Cause I think very often in, there's two types of scenarios. Obi: It could be that each party completely doesn't know each other, or the more common scenario will be that you're some community or some group of friends. And within you, you've decided. Of the people who are my friends and family and so on, these four people are the ones who are consistently the most reliable, the most trusted and so on. Obi: They do know each other, and you know who they are, and it's because you know who they are that you're comfortable with them holding. they're the Uncle Jims of the family. they're known to be reliable. They're known to be people who care about their friends and family. Obi: that's very often actually what we're seeing is the more common scenario than the ones where people are completely, anonymous to each other. But as it matures, we may see the other scenario happen as well. The Uncle Network Luke: It's a literal uncle network. I know Uncle Rockstar started the uncle network here on infinity day. Yeah, you got the brother Luke, and so that's four, so we're Obi: are you an uncle? Knut: am an uncle officially now. Knut: an uncle as well, are like, but dubbed by Uncle Rockstar Obi: I haven't been dubbed I, so Obi: you are a good candidate. candidate, but I am biologically now, an Knut: oh, congratulations, Obi: Yeah, How Fedi Launched Luke: Okay, well, I think we are looking just to dig in more about Fedi Fedi Mint and, what does your launch actually mean? Because the app has been in beta for quite a while, right? what's happened, to make it that you can launch? Obi: Yeah, that's a very good question, because, we, the app from the, if you just focus on the app, from the previous version to the one we went live, there are only a few, changes. It was more about, did we have enough feedback from enough people on the ground that we thought that the product was stable enough, reliable enough? Obi: behind the scenes, we've done a lot of internal plus from trusted friends, external security audits of different elements as well. I don't like to publicize it because it's just something we do. We don't think it's something you should promote to saying, Hey, look at what we're doing. We just try to build the best that we can. Obi: and the really, big thing was to just say, a lot of people ask, is Fedi ready? And we wanted to get to a line where we thought it was good enough. And we got to that line. And then, we also wanted to have enough proof points in, the world. And again, we got to that line. So these things were separate things that were happening. Obi: And finally, it was very clear to us that we wanted to make the software, Ultimately open source. And that was a big call because, you know, we raised 21 million and, normally you go two routes. You go, you raise a little bit and you stay open source and so on. Or you raise a lot and you stay closed source. Obi: We believe that, over time, it's going to be considered, over the coming years, it's going to consider that you should always go open source no matter what you're doing, but we're in a transition. Five years ago, raising this much and going open source would be considered crazy, in five years time, raising this much and not being open source would be considered crazy. Obi: And we wanted to be, afforded in that. So. We actually went source available. It's called a business source license. So it means you go source available and you set a date where you must go open source or earlier. and we set those. So we cannot change it now. We cannot say we're going to actually change our mind. Obi: Well, the only thing we can say is that we're going to go open source earlier. that's the only thing we could do. Or if we decide to shut down, it's automatically open source as well. That's the sort of dead man's switch as well. Or we decide we're no longer going to develop the software. Obi: we've added caveats like that, which are not optional, but actually add more restrictions. So no one's going to complain with us going open source earlier. that was agreed and put in place on May the 4th. So May the 4th we review of this year, 2024, just for posterity. Obi: we, got enough proof points from different markets, that we felt that we're onto something here. Does that mean that we've finished? No, there's a lot of work to do, but enough to say that the idea of taking all of the best of freedom technologies out there. And putting them into one place and one app that's easy to use is something that's compelling to people. Obi: And also we had enough to see the federation model. of this sort of really simple to use and privacy preserving multi sig is also a powerful model. So the model was proven out. And then finally the software, we got to a point where we thought, it's, of course, we've got years of more development, but it was good enough as well. Obi: I think that was the final piece. And we thought, okay, we're ready to go. And we then set a date a few weeks after that. But even when we were getting close to it, we started the process of shooting a video because we just wanted to show people are wondering what were we doing for the last nearly two years and we wanted to show that as well. Luke: what's the synopsis of the last two years? Like the big highlights? Obi: so, I always say there's three phases in the business. There's initialization, of a startup, initialization, market product fit, in our case, not product market fit, I can go into why. And then, growth. And so, this phase that was, the end was finally, we crossed the line, on August the 6th, 2024, was the initialization phase. Obi: And so, if you think about the analogy of, like you wanted to have A shop selling designer pet clothing, and you've decided you have this crazy idea and you have to first fund it, find the people to build it, and then find the place, set up the store, make the clothes and, open. Obi: That's the initialization phase. And then once it's launched, you then. Start figuring out, okay, people come in, there's initial, interest, and then, you have this trickle of people coming in, you have to figure out what do they like, what do they not like, what do I have to adjust until it becomes this sort of regular viable business. Luke: That's the market product fit phase. And then you start saying, okay, I've got something that's working fully and then I will repeat it, make more and more and more, Widgets? Obi: Doggy fashion, Excel stores, whatever you want to call it. the last two years was our initialization phase. Obi: we had this, amazing product with FediMint. we had this initial set of, crazy people with Erik, the inventor of FedEvent, Justin, who's, who was also incredible engineer, who was actually the one who suggested that we make a commercial enterprise. up until that, both myself and Erik just suggested it would be an open source project. Obi: And then myself as well with my just, you know, only maybe six or seven months before we were finally finished selling. a Bitcoin exchange, the UK's longest running Bitcoin exchange. and so having that experience of building a company that was profitable and understanding what it meant to build something that custodies a large amount of money for people and provides them services is easy to use and all that sort of stuff. Obi: and everything around that customer service, everything around that. So, we were there, I had a visit to the Oslo Freedom Forum, and that was the catalyst. we did one talk at, Bitcoin Miami, and, Alex Gladstein saw that, he suggested I go to Oslo Freedom Forum. I went, my mind was blown and I also realized whenever you're thinking about a business, you have to always think about chicken and the egg and how do you find your initial market for eventually this product is applicable to everybody everywhere, but who's the first use case that has a demand so high that they're going to willing to go through the really buggy early versions and help you. Obi: Stabilize it to the point where it's something that people can click a button and it works everywhere. I realized that the community of human rights defenders and later on also humanitarian organizations fit that, need. We really cared about that need and we were concerned, we wanted to help, but we realized that this product could help in combination with the rest of the Bitcoin ecosystem. Obi: That's what's quite cool. FediMint is the thing that handles the custody, but you still need to buy things, sell things, find things, and so on, and that's where the Fedi app also comes into play, but without FediMint as the core to handle the custody, the rest didn't make sense. Obi: Then we started, it was, then you had this sort of scene from like the Magnificent Seven or so on where you're, you're finding your initial team members. So we found Renato Rodriguez, I chased her for like six months ago. She should have, you know, got a restraining order for six months trying to get her to join. Obi: just if you look at the initial team, it was just everybody, the whole team is amazing. But it was just trying to find these incredible people. they tended to just immediately understand the value proposition and the market we were trying to help and were already doing incredibly well in their own careers, but there was something missing for them. Obi: And when they saw this, it was like this fulfilled There's some other need that they had beyond the monetary need. The potential was amazing, but the mission side of it was what helped us bring on this incredible team. So I believe in philosophy, people, process, product. The philosophy was amazing, who we're helping, the potential, it's helping people and in so doing we're helping Bitcoin, in so doing we're helping the world. Obi: And that's a powerful philosophy and mission and that attracted this incredible group of people. And if you've got the philosophy and you've got an incredible group of people, they will put in the processes that will lead to the right product. Obi: It's like, let's say the video, for example. I said to Renata, I want a really powerful launch video and it should be like the best Apple keynote speech combined with a UNICEF or Save the Children commercial. That's it. That's the whole brief and that whole video. And somebody says, you need to go to Madeira. Obi: You need to say this. And I just woke up and I say what she says. But the whole elements of it, all of it was her and her team, Mary and marketing and everybody building that over the following X months. and I didn't actually see the video myself. Until less than a month before we launched it for the first time as a rough draft. Obi: And it was just basically perfect. My comments were like, I actually didn't have any significant comments, but that was the same for most of the team and the design of the product. We had this incredible designer, Skylar. I would give a brief and so as, Erik's brief was, I just want to be proud of something that I should be proud of, and that was it, you know? Obi: And I was like, it just needs to be really simple. And that's the high level. And I might give comments on a little bit here or there, but in general, whenever he gave me it, I would say, well, he Skylarized it, like just Skylarize it. And he would just come up with something that was great. and I think that was the last two years. Obi: We had the team we raised. again, the choice of investors was really, really key. I was very, very sure, especially from my previous experiences, that I only wanted Bitcoin on the investors, especially for the first couple of rounds. And when I've sometimes do talks on how to set up a Bitcoin company, my first slide says don't do it, but instead sort of a Bitcoin business, not a Bitcoin startup. Obi: And I explain the difference between the two. but one part is, if you do want to raise capital, be really careful about your choice of investors. The wrong investors will, well, and they don't mean to, but they will kill your business without meaning to, but the right investors will. So, we were really, really careful about our choice of investors and the initial team and then the initial team brought on the rest of the team after that. Obi: And that was the last, that's the last two years we've set ourself up very well. I did, being a classic entrepreneur, think it'll take six months, took two years. So I, so my estimation on that was a little bit off, but the end result, I'm really excited about. And now, now we're, now we're off to the races. Great news, everyone! Bitcoin, the inverse of clown world is out now. It's the successor to everything divided by 21 million. And it's based on the last two years of podcasts that we've done together. So if you like the show, you're going to love the book. Find the book on bitcoininfinitystore. com or on Amazon. That's right. We have our own store now. BitcoinInfinityStore. com. You can find not just books, but merchandise based on everything divided by 21 million, check out Bitcoin, the inverse of Clown World today and buy some other stuff while you're there too. This show is brought to you by Bit Box, our favorite hardware wallet. It's Swiss engineered and has all the most important security features to keep your Bitcoin safe while keeping a user experience that even your grandma can use. So visit Bit Box. Do Swiss slash Freedom to learn more, or use Code Freedom at checkout for 5% off. And remember, it's the Bit Box zero two Bitcoin only edition. Make sure to get that Bitcoin only firmware. How does Fedi Make Money? Knut: How does the app make money? Obi: Yeah. Knut: For the company? Obi: if you use the app, whenever you use the Freddie app. whenever a transaction happens, which would have occurred a fee. So it's a Bitcoin transaction, e cash or a lightning transaction. We add on an additional fee, 21, 21 basis points. So 0. Knut: Oh, yeah, Obi: And so, and the good thing is because we can charge in sats and I believe actually even fractions of a sat, it's a progressive tax, which a fee. Obi: So what I mean by that is. If you're sending, let's say 100 through, then you would be charged on 100. 21, but if you're, worth of value, but if you're sending through 1, then you'll be charged 0. 21 cents. And if you're sending through 0. 10, you'll be charged 0. 20. 0 to 1 cents. So it'll always be a very small percentage of what you're sending. Obi: Now, people might say in certain countries, don't they have mobile money and so on. But the problem is those mobile money systems have minimum fees. And it might be, 1%, which is not that bad, say. And it might be, even in some terms of scale, it could be half a percent, but with a minimum fee of 20 cents. Obi: So if you're sending a hundred dollars, that's okay. But if you're sending, 1, that's 20%. And so if you have someone who has a monthly salary of. 10 in some of these markets, that 0. 20 fee starts becoming quite a significant per transaction hit. So therefore it becomes unaffordable for you to use mobile money. Obi: So even though it's prolific above a certain wealth level, and so that leaves many people out, in the rain. But because this is progressive, if you're selling 10 cents, the, fee will actually round to zero. I mean it will be a fee, but you'll see it in sats, but if you were showing, trying to show it in local currency, it would basically be, it'll say about zero and then you click and you realize it's this small amount of sats. Knut: so, yeah. the big thing that I'm thinking of if I'm like. Playing this out in my head with where this could be in 10 years, like you could run entire virtual nations on a federation, right? If you have the money and the communication and whatever other useful apps, Obi: I think the big thing I think is, if you look at the internet, there are large organizations where, people use and they're highly centralized. You have a few people who may be wealthy enough to have their own direct connection to the internet, but the majority of people are connected on the internet. Obi: I don't know at this stage, millions of intranets, like household intranets effectively, company intranets and school intranets and so on, where it's one connection to the internet shared by multiple people. That's actually the majority of people. And it's that middle ground between these huge mega organizations that people are connected to one mainframe. Obi: With millions of users, I think there are very few of them now, but that was the denominant way at the beginning. It was these huge, centralized ways of connecting AOL, CompuServe, and so on. Now, they're actually relatively rare, but that was at the beginning. All of the internet was that. A few centralized parties, and I would liken them, conceptually in value terms, in value custody terms versus information custody terms, to, a coin basis. Obi: And also there were a lot of hobbyists who had their own direct ISDN connection to the internet. but now most people connect through these intranets where they get one router, one connection, and they share with everybody in their household. That would be a criminal of the Uncle Jim federations or in their school or in their football club or in their office. Obi: That's probably 95 percent of people and I think that this approach of federated model from the size from. Five or six people up to five or six hundred thousand, that range can cover 80, 90 percent of usage. How to Use Fedi(Mint) Luke: Can we go back to the basics of how feint works in the perspective of someone actually using this thing? So, you explained to us last time how it works, but just for my own sanity, check that I got it. if you are sending e cash within the federation, that is just. Luke: Direct between two users. There's not even a record outside of that. No one knows those transactions are even happening. Is that essentially correct? Obi: Yeah. So the federation helps you mint technically, because actually the user creates their own e cash, they create their own e cash, but it's unstamped and then they give it to the federation and they stick in an envelope. And they give it to the federation with some carbon copy paper on the inside the envelope as well. Obi: the federation collectively signs. So let's say all four people go stamp, stamp, stamp. And that makes it valid. then they give back the envelope to the user. The user then opens the envelope with the cache that they created, just some random piece of data. Obi: And they now have this Ucash, but the Ucash they've created now has got the four stamps on it, say, for the four of us. And so anyone else in that federation, any other, person who's also connected to the federation. They can just literally, directly give them this, random set of data. Obi: Let's say it's a picture of a fashionable dog and they can just give it to someone else. and the person will receive it and they don't really care what the data says. They just look, are the four stamps on it? Yes. Then it means it was stamped by the Federation, which means it's backed by a certain amount of information. Obi: Actual Bitcoin. Yeah. So take the whole, the full path. Someone deposits some Bitcoin in return. They also, along with the Bitcoin, send them an envelope, give them an envelope with this random piece of data in it to the Federation and the Federation receives the Bitcoin. Okay. I've received the Bitcoin envelope. Obi: Okay. I've received the Bitcoin. I will stamp. I received one, let's say. 10, 000 Satoshis. So I'm going to take my 10, 000 Satoshi stamp and stamp this envelope with 10, 000 Satoshis, pass it around to the other four, they all stamp the 10, 000 Satoshi stamp. And then give that back to the user. Obi: User opens the envelope and says, I've got, okay, I've got an e cash note with, with, that's been proven that the, that it's been validated by the guardians. So as long as we all trust the guardians are holding that and that they will honor this and redeem. That's it. So now I can pass it to anyone in the Federation. Obi: They receive it. They look at this picture of the cute dog, but what they're really looking at is, is it got the four stamps on it and it's 10, 000. So that means I've now received 10, 000 token. They can now at some point in the future, Often they do it immediately if they've gone into connection, but they don't have to. Obi: They can give it back to the Federation. Federation will receive it and each one will check their own signature of the guardians. Okay, it's properly signed. Therefore, I'm willing to, and they might give them a Bitcoin address to send the money on chain to. Obi: So they will receive it, it looks good, they will then, record that this, e cash note has been spent. But they don't know, of all the e cash they received, which one it was, because each one they received in the first place was in an envelope. So was it the first one they received, or the middle one they received? Obi: They have no idea. It could have been received yesterday or a month ago. No way. All they know is, I must have stamped it, so it was one of the ones I stamped. And then they will look at the address the person's asking to send the Bitcoin to, and they will take some of the Bitcoin that they're holding in the multi sig that we're holding between the four of us and send it to that address. Obi: So that's called Redeem versus Mint. Now, the user experience from a user, we can get onto Lightning, that's another level of complexity, but it's simple just for Bitcoin and eCash for now. Obi: Someone sends me Bitcoin or I send it to myself from an outside wallet and I receive e cash. And then someone else in the, in the federation wants to, once I want to pay them some e cash, they will give me, they will give me a QR code to, to scan to pay and I will scan. And literally the e cash that's on my phone gets sent to them directly. Obi: From me to them, one to one, that person when they receive it could keep it on their phone or they could say, you know what, I want to send that back to the federation and they can send it back to the federation and then the federation can destroy that, issue them new, fresh e cash in different denominations, maybe not 10, 000, but 10, 1, 000, you know, just like with notes, you could go and get change. Obi: Yeah, because if someone transacts, if you're saying it gets sent from one computer, phone being a computer, whatever, one device to another, well, that original device would still Obi: Yes, Luke: copy of the thing on, right. Obi: So they will still have a copy. Now you are in the same, this is where the community aspect works, you are in the same community, If you're in the same community, and the person, it's a merchant and you receive, and your phone will remember when you received what e cash, yeah? Obi: Even though it's private, you do know this e cash was received at this time and this time for, and so, especially when you integrate with points of sale, it will say, well, you received this e cash for this purchase. You'll know that. so then if you go to redeem it, at the end of the day, and some of it doesn't match, you will know as the merchant, which e cash was involved in that. Obi: You'll say, well, the e cash involved in this transaction. And that transaction was with John. So you've got proof of work. it's the same as if you have a merchant and you receive cash and then you finally got the end of the day to a bank. Obi: And some of the notes are counterfeit. Now, you don't find high levels of counterfeit notes in a community where people know each other. It's normally in these widespread communities. But in those scenarios, what most people will do and how the default way the app works is the moment you receive it, it immediately goes off and redeems it and then issues itself back new, new change. Obi: Yeah, that seems like a good default implementation. but if you have no internet connectivity, you can still use it and still receive. even if you can't send over the internet, you can create a QR code, which contains the e cash in the QR code, and the person can literally scan it and receive through the screen. Obi: Because as long as it's the QR code, the e cash note is just some text. So a QR code can represent that text and you can scan it, even if you have no data. So for example, it could be you're in an area where you have no data, rural, Latin America or so on. But it could also be something more innocuous. Obi: You could just be in a big sort of, But the thing is is that you might be at a Glastonbury like concert and there are a thousand phones and there's no data. Or you're in an indoor conference place underground and there's no data. But you can still take payments or the merchant has internet because they're the ones who really need it. Obi: But the buyer doesn't and so in which case the merchant has internet because they're connected wired in because they're fixed, but the buyer doesn't need to have internet to pay and the merchant will just take a risk just like in most merchants in high streets they accept a certain amount of breakage and a certain amount of transactions are gonna be charged back by, credit card companies and so on. Obi: I used to be a CTO for a major pan-European, online auction company. At the time I was competing with, eBay and so on. we were in a headliner, 300 hundred people working for me in technology. It was a very big technology offering. And we were doing millions of transactions a week. Obi: It was very high volume. And in those e commerce sites, you just accept a certain amount of breakage, a certain amount of returns, and a certain amount of chargebacks, even if you do nothing wrong and you just factor it into your costs. For the benefit of the simplicity of the experience. Fedi and Nostr Knut: you mentioned Nostr before, like, what's the marriage between Fedi and Nostr? Well, I would say right now, we are, because I think. Knut: we're beyond dating. We're engaged. But we want to really take the two footed tackle of no return, to use a football euphemism. a web of trust thing, right? Obi: Yeah, I think, whenever, from the first point I saw Nostr, a lot of people thought it was just social media and so on. Obi: I think social media is Trojan horse is the wrong word, but it's the, initial vector by which it infiltrates communities. But what you're actually doing is building a simple, trust system and a simple discovery system. It's a form of decentralized search and it's a form decentralized identity. Obi: Cause you, to search, you have to identify things to be able to search. So they're sort of two sides of the same coin. now the first thing you're using it for is identifying people who want to speak publicly and share their thoughts and so on and so forth and follow them and give feedback and like. Obi: But it always seemed to me to, way more powerful than that. And I think now people, generally understand it that way. And so, What we've already done, in Fedi, and a lot of developers really like the way it works, if you sign up to Fedi, or if you download the Fedi app and start using it, you, first of all, you don't need to give your email, you don't need to give your phone number because it's not required, but, we do ask you to come up with some sort of Username for yourself. Obi: That doesn't even have to be unique, by the way. We will add a unique element at the end, from it. But what we do is, whenever you create that label, which you can change the name, but we create, an NSEC, which is a Nostr, identity effectively. A unique identity and we automatically create that for you. Obi: So again, for our users, we don't want to start educating them on the history of Austrian economics and Bitcoin and inflation at the beginning or a Nostr, et cetera, and how it works and relays. And we just want them to start using it. then subtly over time we expose certain features of it. So people become curious and then eventually. Obi: You want to learn how this thing that's delivering value works, but we've put proof of work first, proof of talk second. So we educate through letting people see the benefits. And then there might be some people might say, well, how does this car thing work? Or how does this fridge thing work? But I don't need to know how refrigerant works to be able to use a fridge or how microwaves work to use a microwave. Obi: When they want to know how all this stuff works, but we benefit first. So, and so and that's how it works with Nostr We immediately give you an NSEC. Obi: And so because we've got that if you go and use unleash. chat, for example within the app It will go and you click login and there's one option login by Nostr You click that and it'll just within the app pop up something saying Nostr Do you want to log in with Nostr? And you click yes, and you're logged in and it just works and then you, and then also now you're logged in and then you can, and then you click, deposit money and instead of having to go to a different app, copy and paste the QR codes, it just, it pops up and says, do you, this, this, what the app's asking you to deposit this amount of money? Obi: Do you want to go ahead? Yes. And then it's e cash. Is, is converted into lightning and then that you pay by lightning. But from your point of view, there's a circling key for three or four seconds. You have now credited your account. Do you want to withdraw the money back account? You click withdraw the amount. Obi: Three or four seconds, it's been withdrawn to your account and, and it's all within the same app. so, but that only works because now if you, close the app or delete the mods, because you can delete these mods or these additional pieces of functionality, they're basically webpages, but the icon for them, and they have an app like experience, but they're actually just webpages. Obi: and then you go away and then you delete the app from your service. Like six months later, you come back, you, you, you enter your 12 words, you're, you're re log on. And then if you scan to join a federation again, it will recognize that you were a member of the federation before, and it will reconstitute and recreate all your e cash and put it back on your phone. Obi: And then if you click on, Unleash your chat or Stacker News or anyone that supports logging by Nostr. Your login with the same details and so on. So you basically, and we want to make that even more seamless. So from 12 words, your entire life can you think about moving from one mobile phone to another, where you have to move all your apps, your banking apps, your chat apps. Obi: And now you could do that with just go and also try moving from an iPhone to an Android phone, Android to an iPhone. It's a nightmare. Here you could just download the Fedi app on your iPhone. this is some far point in the future. You don't have just chat, but you also have voice. You have video, all of that running from encrypted chat. 12 Magic Words Obi: you have access to money from, custody and payments. You have access to all these apps and then you back up 12 words. And there's something we call social backup, which is mind blowing, but, that's in beta. But let's just say backup 12 words, and then you delete that app, go to a different phone, could be an Android or an iPhone, and you just enter 12 words, and your entire thing comes back. Obi: Not partially back, but it all will come back. based on just those 12 words and that's only made possible because of Nostr and we want it over time. Knut: mean, when you think about it, it's insane. It's already insane with bitcoins, with the 12 magic words, because like every time I pass a security check at an airport, I think that go ahead, have my 200 milliliters of toothpaste. I'll, I have my 12 magic words, like it's the ultimate fuck you to, to anyone trying to meddle with your business, right? Knut: that's the dream. I mean, we're not fully there, but it's, I would say it's like, we're like 90 percent there, but to extend beyond just your Bitcoin, Nostr is the protocol that allows us to do that because it's notes and other stuff and the other stuff can be, an encrypted version of the settings and so on that you have that we can store and be willing to pay for. Obi: And then when you recover, you have your bitcoin, but then you can go off and send a request to say here, I'm willing to recover this file. Here's some zaps for the file and you get the file back and that additional file then contains the information. Okay, these are the federations you are a member of, you rejoin them. Obi: These are the mods that you had, they're reset up. These are the settings you had, they're reset up. And then you log on them automatically using Nostr as well, the NSEC and Nostr login. from your point of view as the user, 12 words, it's back. I mean, you might have to drink a cup of coffee while it's happening, but 5, 10, 20 minutes later, it's back. Knut: it's amazing, and it's an inheritance plan. Like, you can live forever by just letting your descendants, giving them the 12 words when you're on your deathbed. Obi: backup also becomes really powerful, because social backup means that, cause the 12 words is still another thing to secure. And it's sort of one of these turtles all the way down type scenarios. Okay. We've got all this incredible security Fort Knox like, but behind them, but I walk around the back of the Fort Knox is these 12 words that's stored. Obi: you also give one to your cousin and you say, look after this as a backup. And your cousin stores it on a fridge magnet. You know, you don't know, or you don't know your, your, your security is the lowest common denominator. Obi: For your 12 words. And Knut: is never stronger than the weakest Obi: then the weakest link. And so with social backup, which is definitely an early beta. what we can do is use the power of the federation where we can take your 12 words, encrypt them and then split it up between the four guardians in this case, or seven guardians or 40 guardians or whatever. Obi: For larger federations, and they all hold a piece of your encrypted piece of your, of Knut: is important here. Obi: Yeah. Knut, what are you doing over there? I'm stamping my seed. Everyone tells me I should, that it's good for bitcoin security and whatnot, and that I should go balls deep into bitcoin security, so I'm stamping. You don't do it like that, Knut. You don't stamp that seed. You stamp your seed phrase. What? Your seed phrase. Oh, so that's what these things are for. oh, I get it now. That's exactly right, Knut. And you can get everything you need to stamp your seed phrase at stampseed. com. And be sure to check out our limited edition Everything Divided by 21 Million Titanium Seed Plate. And use code INFINITY at checkout for 15 percent off. That's fantastic! And it hurts way less! Redundancy in Fedi Luke: So this gets me back to what happens when one of the guardians drops off, and if it's like in a permanent way, if that one guardian is holding a piece of everyone else's 12 words, does everyone Obi: Yeah. But it uses a prot, this is crypto, where cryptography comes in. So it's not like. We've taken your 12 words and split it up free between four guardians. Instead, you encrypt it using a scheme that allows each one of the four of us to have a cryptographic piece. Obi: But as long as any three of us combine our piece together, we can recombine. It is, it's called, SHAIR Secret Sharing Scheme, but it's a way of cryptographically achieving that. Luke: Excellent, I think you mentioned last time as well that if a guardian does go down, essentially you can replace that guardian, can you take us through that, adding or replacing a guardian if that ever were to need to happen? Obi: replacing a garden is, probably one of the most complex things. And so you wouldn't necessarily replace a guardian, but what you would do is, some, if someone were to go down, there's two different things. The machine. Or the guardian, the actual person. So if the machine goes down, you can set up a new machine and you can recover the status of that. Obi: You can, you can download the 30 minute software on that new machine. So that's the actual server that's running. And that will then connect to the rest of the federation and, and carry on. So as long as the guardian has a backup of their keys, they can recover that one machine and, and catch up and it'll automatically catch up. Obi: Just like if you turn off a Bitcoin node and turn it on, it will reconnect to the Bitcoin network and catch up. It's a similar concept. so that's if a machine went down, if a machine was temporarily disconnected from the internet or, lost power, it would just restart and reconnect and you will have zero downtime as a user, as long as it's still running and active. Obi: And this will all be, you'll notice that the performance will still be the same, but if you went into settings for that federation, you'll see that three of the four are running, so one is not running, but that won't affect your usage. Obi: Is the N of M like a ratio, or is it always N 1, for example? It's a ratio. the number of guardians that, you need to have is dependent on how much redundancy. So if you want to be able to handle one guardian going down, then you'll need to have, one times by three plus one. So that's four. So that's why you need three or four. Obi: if you want to handle two going down, then you need two times by three plus one, which is seven. So it's five of seven. 7 of 10, 9 of 13, and so on and so forth. You can have more than that, but the time that you get additional redundancy is every 3, but you can have, for example, 4 of 5, if you wanted to. Obi: Anyway, so, yeah, in the event that someone goes down, that the machine goes down, you can recover. recently there was an issue where one machine, where two federations, had an issue with the domain name for one of those servers. And so if the domain name for someone is no longer available, you can now, with the update that came out a couple of weeks after that, you can modify, the domain name Obi: for a Guardian 30 minute server, and it would communicate that securely with the other, Federation servers and then reconnect and, continue to operate. But it's important to, even in that scenario where the Federa Guardian, the domain name server went down, the Federation itself, Continue to operate because there was still at least free running. Obi: So there was no downtime for the user. Whereas if, if we hadn't been federated, then for the one week or so where that was down, the users would have had no access at all, which would be the case where you're connecting to a centralized or a single server, offering. now, if one of the guardians, for some reason, the actual people who are running the Fedemyst server, for some reason, you no longer trusted them, they'd been helpful all their life and all of a sudden they decided, or they've been turned by some, malevolent nefarious actor. Obi: Then you, if you could in theory pass to someone else, but in practice, you know, how do I know that the other person isn't still going to continue to operate it and so on and so forth. So what you actually want to do is set up a different federation and transfer people, the other three guardians and inform people with a different set of four people. Obi: So those three, plus someone else. And just tell people to transfer their balances across. But transferring balances across is as easy as doing a lightning transaction from one server to another. You can, you know, within the FEDI app, be a member of multiple federations at the same time. I mean, right now, I mean, I'm a bit of a power user, but I'm a member of, over a dozen different federations from around the world. Obi: I mean, well over a dozen, I think, yeah. and as we've, I'm sure there's people in the team with way more than that. but obviously I can't advertise the names because many of them are private federations. So, but there's a few public ones, but there's way more private ones. Interoperability Luke: So is the e cash, if you're in multiple federations, is it interoperable there, or it's like a more like a, it's a lightning transaction between those two federations, but it's e cash that lives Obi: You got it. It's, E cash lives within its federation, but the interoperability layer for most people is not on chain. It's for the vast majority of people, it's Lightning, so, but the user experience of sending e cash from one person to another in the same federation, sending e cash from one person to someone else receiving Lightning. Obi: on a different wallet that's got nothing to do with Ferdie Mint. And finally sending e cash from one person in one federation. To someone else in another federation over the Lightning Network in between is exactly the same. From your point of view, QR code scan and the system will combination of the Fedi app and or whatever Fedi Mint compatible app you're using and Fedi Mint servers will make the experience Obi: I just need to send the person the cash. In this case I can send e cash out over Lightning and that's my job is done. And then the other side would be a Lightning wallet and it will receive. And in this case, I will send e cash over Lightning to another federation, but I don't even know if it's another federation, it's just a Lightning address. Obi: And then the other federation, receives the transaction and the other 30 minute server receives e cash on the other side. But from a user's point of view, this is the thing that also took the two years to make the experience the same. You just don't have to worry about which one is doing. Obi: The fees will be slightly different. One won't have a Lightning component to the fee, e cash to e cash, but, the other two will because it will be like, in both cases, it will be e cash to Lightning, from your point of view. Luke: So is there a fee to send e cash to someone else in the same federation? No, I guess. Right. Obi: It depends on the federation. the federation, could choose not to charge a fee and many in these times choose not to because they're doing it for friends and family and so on and the fees are minimal. the Ferryman protocol does support, what we call a DDoS fee. So basically you're spending effort time Obi: to sign these notes, the issuing is done by the user, but the stamping takes time. you're signing something cryptographically, that's effort. and you're also doing it in a federated manner, so you're coordinating and then you're all collectively signing. Obi: So, to avoid DDoS, you can turn on a fee and, by our calculations, it doesn't need to be very large, one sat per note that issued is enough to prevent, because if someone really tried to DDoS you at scale, they could, but on normal sort of consumer laptops or hardware, they'll have to spend, hundreds of thousands a month at that sort of, one sat per note, and in which case you'll say, fine, you're giving me hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of Bitcoin to burn my, CPU. Obi: Well, not to burn it, but just to heat my CPU. so you can charge a fee. And I think some will experiment with charging a DDoS fee, which is similar to Bitcoin. the fees in Bitcoin are a DDoS protection vector. So it's the same concept. Fedi's Roadmap Knut: All right. So, what's on the roadmap? What's going on? How does the future look like? What will you be working on the next five years? And where do you see FedeMint going? Obi: that's actually, the most, fun phase. up until now, we had a hypothesis and we had some early feedback, but a lot of it was based on, A hypothesis and theory as to what we thought people needed and we felt that freedom technology had got to a stage where they were good enough to provide this combined experience. Obi: And that was a hypothesis. And we think we've got early validation, but we built that. Now it's life. And now it's the fun, but it's also the scary bit because we now actually see people using it and we test all our hypothesis. And this is the point where you have to be very detail oriented, very much listening to the users and listening to what they say Obi: we cannot ignore if there are. Parts of our hypothesis that are incorrect, we have to adjust to support that. So it's going to be a lot of listening and we've already got hundreds of requests for feedback. and then working to rectify, or deal with the questions or feedback they've given us or the suggestions they've given us. Obi: and we're going to continue to iterate and then we bring it back out to users and see what they think. And we keep in that loop. This is the market product fit loop until. The product that we produce, fits the requirements of the market. Now, again, I, I'm hoping that takes six months or less, just like I hoped it took six months or less Obi: for the initialization phase, but it might take less. It might take a bit more, but it's fun. and that's the next phase. After that, we then go into the growth phase. Once we know we've got something that's repeatable, that really. is at the quality level that users need for it to be used a daily part of their life. Obi: We'll then go into growth phase and that's where we'll really, you know, pull down, put our pedal to the metal and, and just repeat, repeat, repeat until. You know, billions of people are using this around the world, but that, that's phase three. And I'm, I'm very focused on this phase. You don't want to rush into phase three. Obi: We're not going to rush to grow the numbers, until we are very sure that we've got something that's really slick, really reliable, and where we're meeting a clear demonstrable demand consistently. And that process is called human centered design. So it's not focused on this is my app, this is what I want, and I'm going to keep trying to make you agree with what I want. Obi: this is what we've built. This is our first stab at it, but we're going to keep iterating until it serves your need properly. And that might require some, this is what makes this one very hard because it requires a very different mindset to the phase one. Phase one is like We can do everything and the impossible is possible phase two is really being pragmatic. Obi: Or very self critical and being very open to killing your darlings, as the saying goes, you know, and saying this is not working or, or there's some fundamental issue. I mean, I don't think this will be the case at this stage, but if the feedback was from our market that we need to make some fundamental changes that would mean that 80 percent of the code we built has to be thrown away and have to start again. Obi: Well, that's what we're being told. we've got far enough to think that's highly unlikely. cause most of the feedback, like some of the big pieces of feedback cause how can we make it easier to set up federations? So that's a really good sign because lots of people said there's only going to be a demand for like free federations and it's going to be very centralized. Obi: Well, a very large percentage. I don't want to give it. These are the very large percentage of all our queries so far have been, how can I set my own federation up? So even based on those queries, there's not going to be free. You know, I can put it that way. Luke: Super quick question on that, I guess, is it the Fetiman software? Is it on, for example, the note in a box, solutions, the umbrellas, start nines, et Obi: Well, that's part of the feedback that we're getting. For example, can we set it up? Can you integrate with Umbro? Can you integrate with Start9? Can you integrate with RastyBlitz? can you make it simpler to set up? So, I think, a lot of that's done by the FediMint team. Obi: Because remember, FediMint is an OpusSource project versus a different OpusSource project. At some point in the future, it will be two different open source projects. However, we are using them as the bedrock, because if you want to custody significant amounts of value We know that you want to go multisig. Obi: Multisig for significant amounts of value is the best standard, and also you want privacy, so then privacy and multisig, that's FedEvent, basically. but, on the FedE side, we can do a lot as well. So we can provide, even though it's open source software, we can take it and provide it. Obi: again, it will be open source, but tools to help you build it really easily or put efforts to integrate with people like Umbrell and Start9. we've already had an integration with an organization called Clover, which we've been working on, and you're going to see more on that. But from our point of view, that's a lot of where the work is. Obi: Also you want to connect this to the Lightning Network. And connected to the Lightning Network and maintaining a reliable connection is not easy. it can be complicated for people, especially managing liquidity. And now again, over time, I could get easier, but right now it's not easy. Obi: There are organizations like, Breeze and others who make that easy. and you just saw an announcement from Erik, where they've already started, showing connectivity and support for LDK, which is this cross, LSP standard. So, again, we at Fedi can provide tools for FediMint, or people who are using FediMint, whether it's with Fedi or someone else, that make it really easy. Obi: And again, our aim is one click, and you have a connection. You can set up your own lightning node that's set up in a relatively good way, so it'd be relatively reliable, but you don't have to manage it yourself. Or, you can connect to one of these LSP's and for a fee, they'll just handle all the light and management, but you're still in a trust minimized way. Obi: So there's, but given all the feedback we're getting, it's not, this is completely wrong. You need to go back to the drawing board, it's all, okay, I get it, but you need to go further. You need to integrate with more. You need to make it easier. so that's a good sign that we're on the right track. Knut: Yeah. So, what about this date when you go open source? is that public or, when you have to go open source, it might be then or Obi: in the, it's, it's, it's memorializing the business source license. In fact, we memorialized it. We actually have this memo memorializing when it happened. when we launched Freddy, we, we did this thing on the Bitcoin block. You can see it. We were established on a certain block. Obi: And we said Fedi is here. When we, quietly on May the 4th, we also put something that said Fedi colon and it was a hash. That hash is a hash of a memo. And the memo, which is on our, Fedi's got an open source, you can see the link and you can verify it. Showed that on May the 4th, the code became business source license. Obi: And by January the 3rd, 2026 or earlier, we must go, open source. And if we were to shut down or to stop development, we will instantly go open source. and so, so that, and we put it in block. I tried to find a core block. So it was block 8, 42069. It was actually was the block that was the core block as well. Obi: so yeah, it's, it's there. And, that's the date. We, we cannot go open source later than that. And we may very well go open source a lot earlier than that. Wrapping Up Luke: Hey Obi, I think we could keep on grilling you on this and that little detail, but this has been really enlightening, fantastic to see how far this has come, even since our last conversation back in October, and yeah, just looking forward to everything you guys are doing, and I guess just as a last thing, people can now grab the Fedi app and Public federations are available to start to try Obi: federations and there are, and you can set up your own federation There's a lot, I don't like to talk too much about what's coming in future because we just work on everything in order of customer demands. So if customer demand comes in, that changes the order, but we're working really hard to make it, It's already easy for if you're quite technical, but we're going to make it easier and easier to set up a federation, so keep looking out because that's a very common request to set up a federation yourself, and we want to see what people do with it, create Fedi mods, create federations, use it, give us feedback, and we will continue to work on making an incredible, Open source interface portal to this freedom technology world. Luke: Absolutely fantastic. We'll need to keep on having these conversations regularly, get updates because always fantastic to hear about this and good luck moving forward and I think we'll be trying some FETI stuff in our futures here. Lots of cool things have come out of Nostriga and Baltic. Honey Badger by Luke: I'm exciting to see that. And anywhere else you want to direct our listeners and viewers. Obi: So for Fedi, that's probably the best place because everything, that's a jumping off ground for everything else. And that's Fedi, F E D I dot X, Y, Z. Luke: Fantastic. Obi: One of the cooler things that came out in Nostriga and Honeybadger was of course, yes, the inverse of clown world, our new book, and we want to give you one. if you're not given one during this weekend, you'll find it on bitcoininfinitystore. com. Thank you very much. Luke: and we need to sign it for you. Yeah, we'll do that offline. But Obi, thank you again. And this has been the Bitcoin Infinity Show. Thank you for listening. Obi: Thanks.

BRM 200 km – Samstag, 28.09.2024 05:30 – 09:30 Uhr We left on Saturday morning and enjoyed a great day on the bike, meeting some friends along the way and dropped some. with an average speed of 26.5 we needed around 7.3 hours to complete the track. It was a sunny but windy day at the end we even ended up with some cold shower at the end. A Brevet is not a race along the way we had to pick up some proof that we visited certain points like gas stations.

Inoiz pentsatu al duzu norbaiti satoshiak modu originalean oparitzea, Bitcoin mundura hurbiltzeko? LNbits zorro batekin NFC opari txartel bat erraz sor dezakezu. Honek LNURLw esteka bat NFC txartelean idatziz funtzionatzen du, eta jasotzaileak bere satoshiak erabili ditzake LNURL gaitutako zorro batekin. ### Zer behar dut? - LNbits zorroa - Android telefono bat - NTAG2* gaitasunak dituen NFC txartela, adibidez NTAG216. 💡 NTAG2* txartelek esteka **bat** idazteko aukera ematen dute. Adibidez, enpresaren webgunerako URLa duen bisita-txartel gisa joka dezakete. NTAG424 txartelek ez dute memoria handiagoa bakarrik, baizik eta SUN parametro deitzen den zerbait ere badute, zerbitzariaren autentifikazioa ahalbidetzen duena, eta horrek segurtasun gehiago ematen die zure ordainketei. Azkenean txartel mota hau [BoltCard](https://boltcard.org/) bat bihur daiteke. ### 1. Hedapena aktibatu Ireki zure LNbits zorroa. Tresna-barran, aktibatu `Withdraw Links` hedapena eta ondoren joan hedapenera. ### 2. Erretiratzeko esteka sortu `Withdraw Links` hedapen orrian, aukeratu `Advanced Withdraw Link(s)` aukera. Ondoren, aukeratu satoshiak ateratzeko erabiliko duzun zorroa. Ziurrenik, hori zure LNbits zorro nagusitik bereizi nahi izango duzu. Horretarako, LNbits zorro berri bat sor dezakezu tresna-barratik, `+ Add a new wallet` aukera hautatuz. Behin zorro berria sortuta, sartu satoshi batzuk bertan.  Eman izenburu bat erretiratzeko estekari. Ezarri erreskatatu daitezkeen gutxieneko eta gehienezko zenbatekoak. Ezarri esteka zenbat aldiz erabil daitekeen eta erretiratze saiakeren arteko denbora. Aukeran, argazki pertsonalizatu bat gehi dezakezu `Use a custom voucher design` laukitxoa markatuz, eta .png irudi baten URL-a sartuz. Gogoan izan “assmilking” laukitxoa ez markatzea. Konfigurazioa amaitu ondoren, jarraitu erretiratzeko esteka sortzera. ### 3. Idatzi esteka NFC txartelean Zure erretiratzeko esteka berrian, klikatu `View LNURL` estekan. Ondoren, sakatu `Write to NFC` botoia eta eutsi NFC txartela telefonoaren aurrean idazketa-prozesua burutzeko.  ✔️ **EGINDA** 💡 Esan txartelaren jasotzaileari satoshi saldoari buruz, denbora ez dezan galdu azkeneko satoshia lortzen saiatzeko. 💡 Jasotzaileak txartelaren satoshiak atera ondoren, bere zorroan berridatzi dezake eta berrerabili. Gainera, eman diozun txartela NTAG424 bada, aurreko gidako (nostr:naddr1qqxnzd3e8qcr2wfn8qcrgwf4qyg8wumn8ghj7mn0wd68ytnhd9hx2q3qtx0k0a7lw62vvqax6p3ku90tccgdka7ul4radews2wrdsg0m865sxpqqqp65whwqrr5) bezala Lightning "zor txartela" bihur dezake. Baina txartela NTAG2* bakarrik bada, beste opari txartel bat bihur dezake soilik.

Kaspa Empire - Ceb System - Planet Hithe III The day was hot and the manor sounded eerily quiet compared to the hustle and commotion of the hours prior. On the estate and in the master bedroom specifically, a married pair had become parents. “He looks so much like you Domitius.” Cleolia remarked while stroking the newborn's tiny arms. “He has strong blood.” The father responded smiling fondly sitting on the bedside. A silent nurse was tidying up the apparel and instruments of labour while the couple waited patiently for her exit to have more private discourse. “I am so glad to have born you an heir my love.” Domitius stared intently at his offspring. He had no qualms neglecting obligations to his property and recessed momentarily to celebrate the occasion with his wife. “I will send for the priest, register the child as an Imperial citizen and have him scribed into our family archives, but in the meantime, you must recover. Let a servant girl take our son for a while.” She pouted a playful but exhausted look of non compliance. “You must rest.” He insisted. “How can I let him go when I only just met him? Who are you little man?” She smiled faintly and nodded. “You are right, Domitius, where are you going?” “To the fields, the slaves are behind schedule, our harvest is big and taxes are high. This war is taking it's toll, we must excel to adequately serve the Empire in these pressing times. If the tamed Osteri could only comprehend what is at stake.” Cleolia peered cautiously at the embellishment and carvings on the wooden door knowing that Sethari was standing just beyond. Domitius trailed her gaze. “Don't worry my love, he means well, at least he tries to understand the urgency of my affairs.” He stood up straitening his vest and prepared to leave the room. “Domitius, wait...” He stopped at the door. “What will you tell the priest?” Domitius paused. “I will tell him Albin... Albin Domitius Chevalier.” He left the room and it was quiet, the help entered and swaddled the baby rocking him while Cleolia drifted between sleep and conciousness. “Albin.” She repeated to herself as deep slumber enveloped her. Domitius and his overseer walked briskly out of the manor towards the grain fields squinting as blue Ceb light reflected off the lanscape. “I honour you on the spawn of your son my lord, I hope for a good strong boy, you will be a happy father. I am happy with Seth.” He pounded his chest softly and proudly. “Thank you Sethari, is your son walking yet?” Domitius queried. “No my lord, still crawling on his belly like a beast.” The headman was trying to make his master laugh though Domitius was in a sterner mood having a weight on conscience. “I am in no mood to jest Sethari.” Domitius suddenly clenched his fists. “Get those slaves to work, I cannot have them idling when they should be harvesting.” Sethari made a small bow to his master and started yelling at his Osteri kinsmen, threatening them with a rolled up whip he procured from somewhere inside his tunic, waving it about and cracking it in the air every so often. Domitius picked up a scythe and proceeded to cleave down large swathes of grain. This had a more compelling effect of rallying the straggling workers to action than did the whip. They all toiled together in the pale light of Ceb. Domitius was sweating, sweating and praying for a swift victory over the Jeula Federation. Fighting his small part in a increasingly complicated war, loyal to his Empire in his own unique way even though the conflict was far from home. A powerful loyalty that cannot be bought with riches or broken by coercion. A loyalty born through inheritance and blood. ... The priest was in a more jovial mood than usual. The break of routine was a welcome one. The birth was indeed a momentous occasion. Few things seem of much report in a small planetary expansion program. He did not even seem to mind carrying a keg full of honey mead over the rolling hills of the plantation colony. “Domitius comes to church submissions far to infrequently.” The portly man mumbled to himself while wiping the accumulated sweat from his brow. “I eat too well among all these farmers.” The habit of speaking to himself was ordinary for this man of the cloth who always felt socially disconnected from his flock, caring for their souls, protecting their dignity and general well being like a responsible patron. “I feed their spirits, they feed my body, Hahaha. Tonight I will share my good spirits! Hahahaha.” Impressed by his own sense of humour he turned to witness the majestic blue star set over the skyline. Everything turned a silvery gray hue, and then the stars broke through the atmosphere lighting his way. “Clear skies, the blessed stars guide me.” He continued on the path approaching the Domitian manor and rapped a quick knock on the side of the root cellar doors. It creaked open upwards and a tall muscular Osteri took his baggage and let him in. “Thank you Setharis, my arms are weary, ready to fall off, bless you.” Domitius looked up from his bench seat below a glowing lantern. “Good to see you Father Ecknard.” “Dispense with the formalities and bring the dispenser.” He motioned to Setharis who placed the heavy keg on a table next to an assortment of documents, quill and sealed inkpot. “You pour Setharis and I will write. Name?” Ecknard scratches his chin with the quill contemplating his seat and it’s adequacy for the prolonged exercise of scribble. “Name?” Domitius paused. “Albin Domitius Chevalier.” The priest focused, started with his calligraphic art and fashioned the name and ASN standard block height beautifully onto the family records all the while biting his tongue. “He will inherit the colonial estates, all your assets in Kaspa Prime and the parochial offices at Magar Prime. Correct?” “Yes.” Replied Domitius solemnly. “I'll soon have to amend your will and testament. I'd have to make a registry at the parish and send correspondence to Magar Prime. There would be many from the royal courts who'll send their best regards from afar when this news becomes public.” Domitius did not seem as enthusiastic as Ecknard would have liked. “What ails you Domitius?” The priest could not help but make the pun and restrained a grunted laugh inside himself. “I wonder if we should wait before registering and announcing him to Empire.” Ecknard’s expression slowly changed to puzzlement sitting up straight, his belly pushing on the heavy table. “In the voids name why?” “I am concerned... about this war...” “It is on the other side of Magar space!” The priest interjected in astonished retort. “I know father, maybe I am just being overly cautious, but with the Magar Dominus fleet occupied at the divide I am worried about the colonies in the isolated regions.” “Surely Kaspa prime will spare no expense to our defence in the improbable event of an invasion.” “The core keepers will not allow foul play from the Jeul.” “Yes Ecknard, but the fleet is not capable because most of our ships are at the aforementioned objective!” “No, no, no. Suggesting that conflict would happen outside of the divide is practically blasphemy. I cannot imagine insubordination to the Core mandates and the Accords." Domitius remained silently astute and father Ecknard decided to not argue further with the lord. His shoulders sagged. “I will not register the boy in the Imperial records.” “Thank you father.” “What do you know that I fail to see Domitius.” The two men stared at each other from across the table. The hulking bodyguard ever present in body but semi ignorant in mind silently and intriguingly observing the discussion. “The value of sat. It is not calculated well by the common people, no offence father.” The priest piously lifted his hand and with tilted brow motioned. “None taken.” “My son and our blood line is invested with empiric power, if opportunists become aware of his existence and being outside the Magar prime void, we might have problems here on Hithe III.” Cumbersome thoughts and machinations of the mind darkened the mood of the party. Not at all what Father Ecknard was projecting in his minds eye during his arduous walk to what he was hoping, a celebration and getting drunk with an old friend. “The war does not seem to be ending any time soon, how long shall we stall his registration?” The priest reasoned on. “Think of the rites he will not be allowed to partake in at the church. He will be like Osteri.” Ecknard gestured towards Sethari. “This is a small colony Ecknard. My son will be educated as a member of royalty, all on Hithe III will acknowledge his social standing, I am only concerned that the secret be kept from the outside worlds. He will never be considered Osteri, he will know who he is and what his position is in the greater void. When the war is over we will properly introduce him to the families, currently they would be too occupied with politic as it is, and might not offer him due ceremony as they would under more peaceable circumstances.” The priest capitulated and grabbed a mug. “Your secret is safe with me Domitius, the lack of technology on this forsaken planet is good for your purposes, seeing as the only comms service on the planet is in the church tower. That blinking comms station hounds me daily with requests for your return to Magar Prime. The high counsel want to rebalance and need your signature.” Domitius sighed and looked away as if some spectre loomed in front of him. I swear silence on the birth my lord, though let me make a final amendment to your proposal. A bit of extra security shall I say.” Domitius filled a cup of mead for Sethari and himself, becoming more relaxed and hospitable. “I am listening.” “If the risks are as great as you assume, let us pretend for the child's sake that he is Kaspian royalty only, and not true Magar. We then continue his education to the full and not put him in a position where he could compromise himself should he be... void forbid, captured by some opportunistic prospector.” Domitius looked ponderously into his cup. “Ecknard, my son is an infant... If we have to keep the boy in the dark about the true nature of his identity, how long do you predict this war to continue?” Father Ecknard leaned forward... “I sit at the comms desk every night and listen to the chatter. This war... is going to be a long one.” ... #scifi

Keet is a peer to peer video chat room that is available on: • App Store • Google Play • Linux • Mac • Windows It uses technology similar to BitTorrent, but you make video calls instead of downloading music, free and open source software, and movies that are in the public domain. If you have ever used BitTorrent, I'm sure these are the things you have used Bittorrent for.😉 You can use Keet for: • Video Chat • Voice Phone Calls • An Online Chat Room • Sending Files Between Devices Since we are in the very early days, not too many people know about it, but I prefer this because the sound quality and speed are superior to most corporate alternatives. If you've ever tried sending a large file through the InterTubes, you'll know this can be a sucky experience. Even if you run your own cloud like NextCloud, it's an inefficient. You upload your large file to the Nextcloud instance which is basically another computer. Then you download the file to the compter you really want it on. In this case, your Nextcloud acts like a middle man. This man in the middle architecture used to transfer large files is inefficient. <video src="https://keet.io/videos/keet-explainer.mp4" width="320" height="240" controls></video> **note: This was originally published on my [Ghost blog.](https://marc26z.com/) It may not work on all nostr clients. Jeff Swann told me about this new technology a couple years ago. He told me how he used Keet lo transfer files. I heard what he said, but I didn't quite understand how powerful this was until I tried it myself. I can send videos from my phone to my desktop computer within second just by using Keet rooms. This is a computer networking super power. I just can’t reiterate how much time this has saved me. It is something you need to experience for yourself. By the way, anyone who can download an app and install a program on their computer can do this. You don’t need to be a network administrator wizard or learn how to code. If you would like to join my keet room, check out my nostr page or LinkedIn and I'll send you a link. ## Keet Vs. Legacy Video Calling Legacy chat rooms and video calling services require a server. The data is hosted on their server. This is inefficient and requires a ton of centralized infrastructure to handle the bandwidth. This infrastructure requires a lot of maintenance, marketing and other stuff. They have thousands of employees working for them to get your videos from point A- to point C- to point B. I’m sure these people do a wonderful job, but Keet is different. Keet allows you to go from point-A to point-B. According to their website it is: - Private & encrypted - Has amazing video quality • Allows you to instantly share huge files That huge file sharing is awesome by the way—Even if you don’t really talk to that many people on it very often. It is made by a peer-to-peer company named Holepunch. They have not yet open sourced it yet, but they say they have plans to do this on Guy Swann’s podcast. They also made something called pear-runtime. You can learn more about this at pears.com. From what I understand, this is a new way to do computer networking. It basically makes it possible to host an app or website from your computer using one line of code. This allows you to create your own Intranet with the greatest of ease. I tried it one time using an application named HoleSail. I was able to access a website using a local IP address from a LAN outside of my home network. I didn't need to fiddle with the DNS or buy a domain name. I just installed the program on my computer, wrote one line of code, and copied the key to access the website. ### Keet Is Brand New Technology. I just want to mention this is on the bleeding cutting edge of technology. I am explaining this to the best of my ability, but it is beta software so what I say today may be totally different a year from now. It is also quite possible that I misunderstood some stuff and if that is the case then I apologize in advance. I find this technology interesting and think it opens us up to a new ways of using the Internet, but I don’t have a crystal ball. Do not confuse this as investment advice, but as far as I know, this is not even something you can invest in. You don’t even need to buy Keet. You just download it. I don’t know much about the big corporate video calling companies, but I’m pretty sure they charge a fee for some of their services. Please don’t take my word for this, I have no idea how they work or what their fee structures are. Here are the sources where I have learned about these things: Hat tip to Jeff Swan who taught me how Keet worked and to his brother Guy Swann for making all these great podcasts about it. • Interview with SuperSu • The Pear Report Episode: 2 • Bitcoin Audible: Keet AMA - Twitter Spaces on January 30th • [The Pear Report: Updates From The Pear World]((https://fountain.fm/episode/blklbIi1GZCgIvX9E8nY) ✌️ https://tinyurl.com/marc26z 865,210 As Seen On TOR: http://p66dxywd2xpyyrdfxwilqcxmchmfw2ixmn2vm74q3atf22du7qmkihyd.onion/pear-to-pear/ On The Clearnet: https://marc26z.com/pear-tp-pear/

## Using tools like Continue in your vault As the capabilities of artificial intelligence continue to expand, integrating AI into our workflows has become an increasingly attractive option. One of the most exciting applications of AI is its potential to enhance the way we manage and organize information. Obsidian, a powerful knowledge management tool, provides a robust platform for building a personal knowledge base. By layering AI tools like Continue over your Obsidian vault, you can unlock new levels of efficiency, creativity, and insight. This article will start to explore how to effectively use AI tools within Obsidian to enhance your note-taking, information management, and productivity. ## An Explosion of AI Tools Over the past few years, I have tinkered with ChatGPT and other chat interfaces, but I only recently stumbled upon the rapidly growing space of AI tools for coding. In such a short time, some amazing tools have emerged, most notably: - [Aider](https://aider.chat/): A command line interface tool to iteratively generate, edit, and refactor code. - [Cursor](https://cursor.sh/): A fork of Visual Studio Code (VS Code) with integrated AI functionality. - [Cline](https://github.com/cline/cline): A plug-in for command line and code editor built to work with Antropic's Claude 3.5. - [Continue](https://continue.dev/): A customizable VS Code plug-in with chat and code editing abilities. These tools are designed to assist developers in writing, debugging, and even generating code from natural language prompts. They are powered by large language models (LLMs) like GPT-4 and Llama 3, which are trained on vast amounts of text data and can produce human-like responses to a wide range of prompts. In this article, I will focus on [Continue](continue.dev), a [VS Code](https://code.visualstudio.com/) plug-in that offers multiple ways to interact with AI. It features autocomplete powered by an LLM of your choice, as well as the ability to generate new code blocks directly in the editor. It can also incorporate context from external sources or the local codebase. Additionally, it includes a standard chat window for interacting with the LLM. The new twist is that I won't be using Continue to write code, but rather to write notes in Obsidian. I will be using the chat window to generate notes, and the autocomplete feature to assist me in writing them. By leveraging the context feature, I can bring in information from my Obsidian vault, allowing me to create more complete, accurate, and better-organized notes. I can also use the vault as context to ask for summaries or retrieve information from my notes, even as the vault continues to grow. It's worth mentioning that while I am focusing on Continue, there are likely other tools that can be used in a similar way or provide better features. One example is the [text-generator plug-in](https://docs.text-gen.com/) for Obsidian. This plug-in allows you to generate text using an LLM of your choice, and it can be used to generate notes, summaries, or even entire documents. It can also generate code, but I was unable to get the plug-in working with my LLM provider. Using Continue is a bit of a hack, as it requires working through an IDE like VS Code, but it's a good way to get started with AI tools in Obsidian. I will assume that you already have an Obsidian vault set up. If you don't, you can ask your assistant to help you organize it once you have it up and running. The system I am going to describe here relies on two primary components: 1. **Continue** (installed in an IDE like VS Code) 2. **An LLM provider** to power Continue Let's start by talking about LLM Providers. If you already know how these work, feel free to skip to the next section. ## LLM Providers LLM providers are services that offer access to large language models (LLMs) like GPT-4 or Llama 3.1, typically via an API (application programming interface). These providers usually charge by the token, which is the number of words processed by the model. You can go directly to a provider like OpenAI or Anthropic, or you can use an aggregation site like [OpenRouter](https://openrouter.ai/) that provides a single API to access multiple models. Each provider has its own data privacy policies, so it's important to review them carefully. For this reason, I have been using [DeepInfra](https://deepinfra.com/). They run their own models and offer a clear privacy policy - even better, they tend to have the lowest costs. h/t nostr:npub17vhnjkt04m6thytr8dna67v2pa4tjk7uh3ut40eq9wy8d28u0kvq7qnhkq nostr:note1qfckzxm687peaddwjpmms92kj3v59wrrx0cs2fcxlkm6pm9lyu3squscxa Another option is to use Ollama to run some of these models locally. However, the hardware requirements for achieving good results quickly are quite demanding. For example, the smaller chat model I use in my configuration, which has 72 billion parameters, requires a 48 GB GPU to run efficiently—something that is not within my budget. This is why I am using DeepInfra. > Note: If you are setting this up for the first time, consider adding a small amount (less than $5) to a provider like DeepInfra and testing it out before you invest time in setting up a local Ollama instance. I have also had some issues with shutting down Ollama on Windows, so your mileage may vary. If you choose to use a provider like DeepInfra, you are ready to move to the next section. If you prefer to set up Ollama, you can refer to their documentation for installation instructions. I prefer to run it in Docker, which can be done in Linux by running ```bash docker run -d -v ollama:/root/.ollama -p 11434:11434 --name ollama ollama/ollama ``` or if you want to have an interface like ChatGPT, you can even run [Open WebUI](https://github.com/open-webui/open-webui) in the same command with ```bash docker run -d -p 3000:8080 --add-host=host.docker.internal:host-gateway -v open-webui:/app/backend/data --name open-webui --restart always ghcr.io/open-webui/open-webui:main ``` Once Ollama is running in docker you can start up the models you want to use by running the following in your terminal. ``` docker exec ollama ollama run model_name ``` See the [Ollama model library](https://ollama.com/library) to choose which models you want to run locally. ## Getting Started with Continue Continue is installed as a plug-in for VS Code or JetBrains. I personally use it with VS Code, so my instructions will be based on that. If you are using a JetBrains IDE, you should refer to the [Continue documentation](https://docs.continue.dev/) for installation instructions. After installing the plug-in, continue will prompt you to set up your LLM provider. In my experience, once this initial GUI goes away, you can't get it back. Instead, you will do most of the configuration within the `config.json` file for Continue, which you can access by clicking in the lower right corner of the Chat box. In VS Code, if you ever can't find anything, `F1` is your friend and will launch a searchable menu. Continue provides recommended settings from each provider, which you can find [here](https://docs.continue.dev/customize/model-providers). For my coding and writing, I chose the very new [Qwen2.5 72B Instruct](https://deepinfra.com/Qwen/Qwen2.5-72B-Instruct) due to its high benchmark scores and relatively low costs. This model costs $0.35-0.40 USD per million tokens, compared to the best available on DeepInfra, the [Llama3.1 405B Instruct](https://deepinfra.com/meta-llama/Meta-Llama-3.1-405B-Instruct), which costs $1.78 per million tokens. The results may be slightly worse, but I prefer cheaper and faster for my purposes. For autocomplete, I am using a faster and code-specific model, [Qwen2.5-Coder-7B](https://deepinfra.com/Qwen/Qwen2.5-Coder-7B). I have not yet tried changing the autocomplete model for usage with Obsidian, but that is on my to-do list. Lastly, by the time you read this article, these models may be out of date. One nice thing about having a provider API is that you can easily switch and test different models to see how they work. Aider has [one of many model leaderboards that will show you some benchmarks](https://aider.chat/docs/leaderboards/). After working through the configuration, your `config.json` file will have a list of chat models and a tab for the autocomplete model. It will look something like this: ```json "models": [ { "title": "DeepInfra Qwen2.5 72B Instruct", "provider": "deepinfra", "model": "Qwen/Qwen2.5-72B-Instruct", "apiKey": "your-api-key" }, { "title": "DeepInfra Llama3.1 405B Instruct", "provider": "deepinfra", "model": "meta-llama/Meta-Llama-3.1-405B-Instruct", "apiKey": "your-api-key" }, ], "tabAutocompleteModel": { "title": "DeepInfra Qwen/Qwen2.5-Coder-7B", "provider": "deepinfra", "model": "Qwen/Qwen2.5-Coder-7B", "apiKey": "your-api-key" } ``` ## Trying it Out ### The Chat UI Once you have Continue configured, you can open your Obsidian Vault in VS Code. You will want to add a `.continueignore` file in your folder that lists `.obsidian` and any other files or folders you want Continue to ignore for context purposes. Click the three dots in the bottom of the chat bar and check that your vault (@codebase) index is complete. You can now chat with the LLM and ask it questions using your vault as a reference. ``` @codebase what are some common themes from this vault? ``` Continue provides a [docs page](https://docs.continue.dev/customize/deep-dives/codebase) that lists some types of questions that an LLM will be able to help with. Naturally, I asked the LLM to put these in the context of an Obsidian Vault and here is what it told me: ```md ### Useful Questions 1. **High-Level Questions About Your Notes:** - "What are the main themes in my notes on personal development?" - "How do I incorporate agile methodologies into my project management?" 2. **Specific Information:** - "What are the key points in my notes about productivity hacks?" - "Can you find any references to neuropsychology in my notes on cognitive science?" 3. **Generating Content:** - "Write a new note on the benefits of meditation, using the same structure as my other wellness notes." - "Draft a summary of my recent project retrospective, following the format of my previous summaries." 4. **Contextual Questions About a Specific Folder:** - "What is the main purpose of the 'Research' folder?" - "How do we use the concept of 'flow' in the 'Psychology' folder?" 5. **Relationships and Connections:** - "What are the connections between my notes on 'Time Management' and 'Goal Setting'?" - "How do my notes on 'Digital Marketing' relate to 'SEO'?" 6. **Task and Project Management:** - "What are the next steps I should take based on my notes for the 'Personal Finance' project?" - "Can you list the tasks I need to complete for my 'Career Development' plan?" 7. **Deep Dives and Analysis:** - "Can you provide a detailed explanation of the concept of 'reflective practice' found in my notes?" - "What insights can you derive from my notes on 'Project Management'?" 8. **Insight and Reflection:** - "What have I learned from my notes on 'Mindfulness'?" - "Can you help me reflect on my progress based on my notes for the 'Health and Wellness' topic?" ### Not Useful Questions 1. **Literal Review of All Files:** - "Find everywhere where the term 'mindfulness' is mentioned in my entire vault." - "Review all my notes and find any spelling mistakes." 2. **Comprehensive Tasks that Require Literal Access:** - "Add a new section to all notes that discuss 'productivity' and summarize the main points." - "Rewrite all my notes on 'Digital Marketing' to include the latest industry trends." 3. **Refactoring and Detailed Edits:** - "Update all references to 'Scrum' to 'Kanban' in my 'Agile' folder." - "Add a new parameter to the function `calculate_score` and update all usages in my 'Programming' notes." ### Summary - **Useful Questions**: Focus on high-level insights, specific information, generating new content, contextual questions about specific folders, and reflecting on your notes. - **Not Useful Questions**: Require the LLM to see and edit every file, perform comprehensive reviews, or make detailed edits across multiple notes. ``` ### Text Generation Continue also offers in-editor code generation with the hotkey `Ctrl+I` and an entered prompt. I have only tried a few things with this, but it was able to successfully review a set of meeting notes I had written and summarize all of the outstanding questions. I expect you could also use this to autogenerate backlinks on a note where a follow-up note might be helpful, or quickly generate templates to be used in Obsidian. I ended up editing this entire article by selecting sections and prompting the AI with the following: "You are a proficient writer. Please edit this text for style, typos, spelling, and grammar." ### Autocomplete Continue will also attempt to autocomplete unless you turn it off in the bottom right bar in VS Code. While writing this article, the autocomplete feature was somewhat helpful even though it is not code. Further configuration may optimize this even more. Keep in mind that autocomplete triggers frequently and will burn through a lot of tokens, so you will want to keep an eye on your usage. With the cheaper models I am using, I have only spent 10 cents over the past four days of moderate usage at work and at home. A bulk of that cost is due to autocomplete, and I sometimes turn it off to keep costs down. You may be able to limit these costs effectively by configuring the number of input tokens that can be sent to the API, but I am not sure how that will impact the results. ## Conclusion - Brought to You by Qwen 72B In conclusion, integrating AI tools like Continue into your Obsidian vault opens up a multitude of possibilities for enhancing your note-taking, information management, and productivity. By leveraging the chat window, text generation, and autocomplete features, you can create more comprehensive and accurate notes, generate summaries, and automate routine tasks. The integration of LLMs into your workflow not only streamlines your processes but also provides deeper insights and connections within your knowledge base. While there are initial setup steps and some considerations around cost and configuration, the benefits of AI-assisted note-taking in Obsidian are well worth the effort. As AI tools continue to evolve, the potential for further enhancements and optimizations is immense, making this an exciting and valuable addition to any knowledge management system.

# relay.tools quarterly report October, 2024 # Project Updates Milestone: Relay.tools is celebrating 1 year of OpenSats! Cheers to everyone that made this possible. Relays were very popular this quarter. Scaling efforts were prioritized! This is a good indicator for relay.tools as it means that it's healthily growing. Development was executed well, completing one project at a time across the whole stack. # Relay Discovery I've been working with @sandwich from nostr.watch on NIP66. NIP66 will be an ABSOLUTE GAMECHANGER for clients in finding of their relays. This was always a vision for relay.tools and I am honored to be working with @sandwich on what is a pretty amazing solution. We are now in a phase of client outreach, to gather client feedback and help them implement/understand the overall goal of the NIP. TLDR: the goal is to create a distributed version of the nostr.watch data, using nostr events. - [x] implemented NIP66 draft7 (the 'final' design) in monitorlizard - [x] started shipping events to the monitor relay(s) in collab with nostr.watch backends and relay.tools backends. - [x] fixed bugs and released new binaries for monitorlizard (a NIP66 data reporting tool) # Auth Proxy Rollout The NIP42 Auth Proxy project went really well this quarter. It's now serving tons of traffic and most bugs with clients have been squashed and the proxy hardened. This has become a very popular feature on the relays, as AUTH has many benefits beyond protecting of DMs. - [x] testing vs. NIP17 and bugs fixed - [x] cluster operations (multiple proxies) # UI/UX A huge milestone this quarter was the release of the settings wizard. This is a walkthrough for new (and current) users of all the available settings for different 'relay types'. A lot of work over the last year has gone into the culmination of these settings and the wizard was a major step forward to help users understand what their options are when running a relay. Another major UI change was the introduction of a relay feed to the landing page for a relay. This is called the relay explorer. The idea was to move to a single page app, and re-do navigation for easy relay browsing and discovery. - [x] settings wizard released - [x] relay explorer v2 # Installer The installer had lots of good effort put in by me and some nice contributors. We did a couple iterations on documentation and facilitated in the creation of 2-3 new relay hubs that are using this installer infrastructure. Some additions to the installer were: - [x] docs for building self-hosted machine images and installing on a VPS - [x] FULLY AUTOMATIC SSL certificate handling for multiple domains with certbot - [x] self-hosted influxDB (for relay metrics) - [x] fix bugs with auto-deploy upgrade # Billing/Invoicing/Support The billing system had some improvements this quarter and many invoices were sent. :) It now has better super-admin tools to notify users of past-due balances via nostr (With NDK). This took a few iterations of deciding the best way to contact users of nostr and figuring out why they don't respond to messages. It's a learning experience all the way around and the billing system will evolve over time in ways that are conducive to remaining 100% nostr for user communication and support. The support system also showed signs of life, and people were able to use it to contact me with their questions via the various help-desk methods that I've been rolling out. (A relay, a support npub, DMs, NIP17 DMs, simplex) # Scaling! Relay.tools successfully completed the first scale-out event. This is HUGE. Relays take more and more bandwidth and resources as they establish themselves, while at the same time needing a reasonable low-cost environment to grow in. To meet their demands the horizontal scaling is important. This will scale on commodity hardware or VPSs with ZERO vendor lock-in.  - [x] multi-server clustering with ZERO cloud vendor lock-in - [x] deployment pipeline and capacity planning - [x] HAproxy and additional AUTH proxies fronting all services - [x] internal/external network support

# relay.tools quarterly report January, 2024 ## Project updates ## UI design [Relay.tools](https://relay.tools) spent quite a bit of time working on UI design this quarter. Since UI is time intensive and there are many other aspects of the project that need work, I time-boxed this work to 3-4 weeks total. I engaged with @Daniel from #nostrdesign and a freelance UI developer @freecritter. We setup a penpot instance for relay.tools and practiced using that instead of closed-source figma. We learned that penpot is not as friendly as figma from a designers point of view, but is workable. From the perspective of a frontend engineer it is no different than figma and using penpot is a big opensource win. The following designs were implemented this quarter. There is still much to do in this area and some aspects have been brainstormed but put on hold due to other priorities. ### Relay branding and directory I wanted to give the relays personality and branding, here is a list of improvements in this area: - [x] The home page now prominently displays the public relays that have chosen to advertise. - [x] Relay 'Badges' were re-designed to have better contrast and fit.  - [x] Relays have a custom direct landing page at their domain. eg. [frogathon.nostr1.com](https://frogathon.nostr1.com) ### 'Paid relay' support Relays now support lightning payments to the relay.tools operator. This helps with combating spam and allowing the relay owners to subsidize their monthly cost.  ### Layout / theme The frontend code has been modified so that it is responsive on mobile/desktop using columns. The menu was re-designed to be responsive on mobile and shows user hints for login as well as additional links (explore, FAQ). Theme switcher bugs for light/dark modes have been fixed. (Nextjs bleeding edge workaround was required). ### Relay Explorer Alpha The Relay Explorer Alpha is a mini-client for interacting with a single relay. The following improvements were made: - [x] Moderation capabilities added: Mods can delete messages, block pubkeys, and delete+block directly from the explorer. - [x] Image and Link parsing / optional loading. - [x] Replies implemented. Example screenshot showing these features:  ## Installer Another main focus this quarter was to implement an installer for the relay.tools software so that anyone can easily self-host this on a generic VPS. The installer will be a simple shell script that asks the user a few questions (like their domain name) and then automatically installs the entire stack. A new code repository was created for this called [relay-tools-images](https://github.com/relaytools/relay-tools-images) - [x] Main architecture to match production (systemd and nspawn). - [x] Common Base OS image builds (Debian). - [x] Haproxy, Strfry, Relaycreator and Mysql image builds. - [x] Auto-updating of application code (including database migrations). This is still in-progress and will be part of next quarter's priorities to finish the first stage. (described in plans for next quarter) ## Lightning Node A decent amount of time was spent managing a Bitcoin+Lightning+LnBits node and building a second node for testing and standby purposes. I had some node issues this quarter and have been learning, re-building the node, upgrading, and aquiring more inbound liquidity to support relay operations. ## Relay Management / daily operations Relay.tools growth last quarter exceeded expectations and lots of work in the ladder part of this quarter went into daily operations. It grew so fast that I have paused any advertising so that I have time to implement some important growth related features (as described in the plans for next quarter). * number of relays currently running: 63 * number of unique admins/mods: 207 * events processed in last 30d: 5,091,724 * gigabytes sent/received in last 30d: 1,651GB / 175GB ### Monitoring Daily operations include checking in on the relay activity to get a feel for what's going on. I've implemented an InfluxDB integration for the strfry plugin, which helps with daily operations and in the future will provide owners, mods, and users with stats showing relay performance and event counts. This greatly improves visibility into the relays and is the backbone of data analysis for the platform. #### Events by Kind (7d)  #### Events by Relay (7d)  #### Data Explorer View (single relay, kind 3)  ### Moderation Daily operations time is also spent ensuring relays meet our TOS. That includes browsing the relays content for anything that does not meet the TOS and performing mitigation when necessary. This can be time consuming. I will be adding super-moderator capability so that others can assist as we grow (as described in the plans for next quarter). ### Training / Feedback / Community I promoted the use of event specific relays for nostr community events. Feedback was very positive and showed that people enjoy having event specific relays even if client support is minimal. * Nostrasia * Frogathon  ## Plans for next Quarter Finish the installer - [ ] SSL certificate management with certbot. - [ ] Nostr key generation for API credentials. - [ ] install.sh script for interactive -and- config file based one-shot installation. - [ ] Publish pre-built images and integrate their use with the installer. Re-Occuring Billing (+ tools for interacting with community of relay runners) - [ ] Implement re-occuring billing using a credits system and lightning payments. - [ ] Implement user notification(s) for billing cycle notifications. - [ ] Implement user feedback / support channel. Additional visibility and moderation tools - [ ] Implement super-moderator capability for TOS violations. - [ ] Engage with community to help support moderation

This post will be edited and refined over time. Eschatology is the study of Biblical prophecy pertaining to what is commonly referred to as the end times. Bitcoin is the transformation of Austrian school economics theory into an efficient and applicable method driven by natural incentives and free market consensus mechanisms. What happens when eschatology is viewed through a Bitcoin inspired world view? In this thesis I contend that it is possible and very probable that the consequences of what Satoshi Nakamoto created in Bitcoin and the prophecies surrounding Jesus Christ with regards to the second coming and a thousand year kingdom of peace and prosperity convalesce into a very compelling argument for Biblical prophecy fulfilment. ... No one would argue that modern major banks are today more powerful than kings of old and governments are mere puppets to the sway that the banking empires hold over them. In Biblical prophecy when kings and powers are mentioned people rarely think of banking but nothing is comparable to the immense scale of wealth, power and territory controlled directly or indirectly by banks. IMF, BIS, the FED and Blackrock are where the levers of power are pulled in the current dispensation. Governments restructure more frequently than these institutions whom endure and exercise unmerited influence over said governments and the public interests they claim to represent. An excerpt from the King James Bible, Daniel chapter 2 describes prophetically the ages of man and its rotations of power. Interesting to note that it is symbolically portrayed in monetary/industrial metals. All used as tokens for trade, symbols of wealth and manufacture. Gold, silver, bronze, iron and clay. Gold has been a dominant symbol of power and wealth through millennia. Silver, brass and iron ores are mainly industrial metals although they all had prominent turns as coinage. Due to the debasement and concentration of gold specifically. Clay on the other hand is only a symbol of power in construction and iron has never been used in construction to the extent it is in the 20th and 21st century. Skyscrapers are the symbols of money and power today, i.e. big bank and government buildings. Daniel Chapter 2:24–45 **24Therefore Daniel went to Arioch, whom the king had appointed to destroy the wise *men* of Babylon. He went and said thus to him: “Do not destroy the wise *men* of Babylon; take me before the king, and I will tell the king the interpretation.”** 25Then Arioch quickly brought Daniel before the king, and said thus to him, “I have found a man of the captives of Judah, who will make known to the king the interpretation.” 26The king answered and said to Daniel, whose name *was* Belteshazzar, “Are you able to make known to me the dream which I have seen, and its interpretation?” 27Daniel answered in the presence of the king, and said, “The secret which the king has demanded, the wise *men,* the astrologers, the magicians, and the soothsayers cannot declare to the king. 28But there is a God in heaven who reveals secrets, and He has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days. Your dream, and the visions of your head upon your bed, were these: 29As for you, O king, thoughts came *to* your *mind while* on your bed, *about* what would come to pass after this; and He who reveals secrets has made known to you what will be. 30But as for me, this secret has not been revealed to me because I have more wisdom than anyone living, but for *our* sakes who make known the interpretation to the king, and that you may know the thoughts of your heart. 31“You, O king, were watching; and behold, a great image! This great image, whose splendor *was* excellent, stood before you; and its form *was* awesome. 32This image’s head *was* of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, 33its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. 34You watched while a stone was cut out without hands, which struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. 35Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were crushed together, and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors; the wind carried them away so that no trace of them was found. And the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. 36“This *is* the dream. Now we will tell the interpretation of it before the king. 37You, O king, *are* a king of kings. For the God of heaven has given you a kingdom, power, strength, and glory; 38and wherever the children of men dwell, or the beasts of the field and the birds of the heaven, He has given *them* into your hand, and has made you ruler over them all — you *are* this head of gold. 39But after you shall arise another kingdom inferior to yours; then another, a third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all the earth. 40And the fourth kingdom shall be as strong as iron, inasmuch as iron breaks in pieces and shatters everything; and like iron that crushes, *that kingdom* will break in pieces and crush all the others. 41Whereas you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter’s clay and partly of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; yet the strength of the iron shall be in it, just as you saw the iron mixed with ceramic clay. 42And *as* the toes of the feet *were* partly of iron and partly of clay, *so* the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly fragile. 43As you saw iron mixed with ceramic clay, they will mingle with the seed of men; but they will not adhere to one another, just as iron does not mix with clay. 44And in the days of these kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people; it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever. 45Inasmuch as you saw that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold — the great God has made known to the king what will come to pass after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation is sure.” I speculate that the toes of iron and clay represent the world banking empire. Skyscrapers are constructed from iron and cement. Different forms of clay is a necessary cement ingredient. Architecture has always been used as a symbol of dominance by rulers especially true of systems who use awe as a means to cause feelings of insignificance in the individual thereby asserting their power at low cost. Ironically it never costs the ruler to create these structures, the cost is always carried by the people in time, resources and energy. Skyscrapers and large construction are the modern symbols of money and power. Not so much kings, palaces and temples. The stone breaking the power of the statue has to break something contemporary other than kings and palaces if it is to be eschatological prophecy fulfilled in our time. [**https://www.britannica.com/technology/cement-building-material/History-of-cement**](https://www.britannica.com/technology/cement-building-material/History-of-cement) The invention of [portland cement ](https://www.britannica.com/technology/portland-cement)usually is attributed to [Joseph Aspdin ](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joseph-Aspdin)of [Leeds](https://www.britannica.com/place/Leeds-England), [Yorkshire](https://www.britannica.com/place/Yorkshire-former-county-England), England, who in **1824** took out a patent for a material that was produced from a [synthetic ](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/synthetic)mixture of [limestone ](https://www.britannica.com/science/limestone)and [clay](https://www.britannica.com/science/clay-mineral). [**https://www.thoughtco.com/how-skyscrapers-became-possible-1991649**](https://www.thoughtco.com/how-skyscrapers-became-possible-1991649) Later, taller and taller buildings were made possible through a series of architectural and engineering innovations, including the invention of the first process to mass-produce steel. Construction of skyscrapers was made possible thanks to Englishman [Henry Bessemer](https://www.thoughtco.com/henry-bessemer-the-steel-man-4075538), (**1856 to 1950**) who invented the first process to mass-produce steel inexpensively. **You watched while a stone was cut out without hands,** No hands needed when the stone is an idea. As a thought experiment, imagine there was a base metal as scarce as gold but with the following properties:\ — boring grey in colour\ — not a good conductor of electricity\ — not particularly strong, but not ductile or easily malleable either\ — not useful for any practical or ornamental purpose\ \ and one special, magical property:\ — can be transported over a communications channel **Greshams Law illustrated in slow motion picture.** **1: The banks collapse. Being fundamentally weak because of zero reserve lending, any student of Austrian economics has been correctly predicting banking collapse, and have incorrectly been advocating gold as the solution to this collapse. Many of the big economies are valued through their housing market. Housing will be demonetised (Iron and clay economy) meaning shelter and property will become affordable to the average wage earner again. The large cement and iron structures become redundant. Everyone will work from home and a value to value economy will make banks seem like relics from an age of stupidity and evil.** **2: Industrial metal iron will not be for mega structures that contain speculators and bookkeepers who have fiat jobs slaving for fiat money. Iron will be used to improve the lives of individuals. Iron as coinage is already demonetised.** **3: Brass is demonetised as coinage and only valuable in industry. Ammunition, music, plumbing etcetera.** **4: Silver has been a terrible money throughout history and when the silver investors wake up to the fact that they are holding onto a redundant asset with zero monetary properties compared to the alternative they will dump their holdings, crashing the silver market and subsequently reducing the prices of producing -** solder and brazing alloys, batteries, dentistry, TV screens, smart phones microwave ovens, ad infinitum. To quote Jeff Booth. "Prices always fall to the marginal cost of production." **5: The final Rubicon is gold, people get excited about the Bitcoin exchange traded funds but it is nothing compared to the value proposition when gold pundits, large investment funds, governments pension funds and reserve banks finally realise that gold is worthless as money in this new dispensation.** **To illustrate the point more vividly.** **Ezekiel 7:19** **They shall cast their silver in the streets, and their gold shall be removed: their silver and their gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the LORD: they shall not satisfy their souls, neither fill their bowels: because it is the stumbling block of their iniquity.** **What we are witnessing is the biggest rug pull the world has ever seen. In this future metals will exclusively be used for industrial use cases after being stripped of their monetary premium.** This collapse is something that happens slowly over a long period of time. More or less one hour. Revelation 18 verse 11–19 (The fall of Babylon) And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more: The merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all thyine wood, and all manner vessels of ivory, and all manner vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble, And cinnamon, and odours, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men. And the fruits that thy soul lusted after are departed from thee, and all things which were dainty and goodly are departed from thee, and thou shalt find them no more at all. The merchants of these things, which were made rich by her, shall stand afar off for the fear of her torment, weeping and wailing, And saying, Alas, alas, that great city, that was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and decked with gold, and precious stones, and pearls! For in one hour so great riches is come to nought. And every shipmaster, and all the company in ships, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea, stood afar off, And cried when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, What *city is* like unto this great city! And they cast dust on their heads, and cried, weeping and wailing, saying, Alas, alas, that great city, wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness! for in **one hour** is she made desolate. TLDR - No more money printer go BRRR. means death to the bourgeoisie cantillionaire class.\*\* **Is it realistic to assume that all the worlds monetised industries collapse to fair value in one hour?** Coming back to eschatology, 2 Peter 3:8 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day *is* with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. Eschatology students use this verse to speculatively project the fulfilment of Biblical prophecies with regards to their predicted time of occurrence. Now let’s apply this to Babylon falling in one hour. 1000 (one day) divided by 24 (hours) equals 41,6 years (one hour) Since the first block was mined in January 2009 you add 41,6 years you get a completion date of 2050 a.d Remember, this stone (Bitcoin) becomes a great mountain and fills the whole earth. A kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people; it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever. The dream is certain, and its interpretation is sure. But contemporary sources must reflect this probability if it is a good theory. https://www.newsbtc.com/news/50-of-population-to-use-bitcoin-by-2043-if-crypto-follows-internet-adoption/ If the banking system is first to collapse we can give it +- 10 years and we are already 14 years in since (**Genesis Block**) the stone struck the feet. People are slow to see the reality of the world they are living in. If all this is accurate then the world banking system is doomed. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exK5yFEuBsk> Regards Echo Delta #bitbib

Just revisiting some quick tips for #newbies #pow #public #blockchain users only. if you just getting started with bitcoin or any pow crypto coins or been using or storing them for a while, you not must forget the roots and fundamentals. Hot Wallet — It gets connected to live internet at some point in time essentially to sign / send a tx i.e. spending transaction — exposes the private key of the address from in the process Cold Wallet — It never ever gets connected or online and can always keep receiving inbound amounts Paper wallets are best n cheapest form of cold wallet that can used once n thrown away. #Cold wallets need to either “import”ed or “sweep”ed in order to used or spend — https://coinsutra.com/private-key-import-vs-sweep-difference/  Any thin #wallet is always dependent on connectivity to live up2date node server where-as self-sufficient qt / cli wallet takes a while to sync up to latest block height in order to be usable. Beginners should always resist the attraction of quick and fast — thin n 3rd party wallets and always start a long learning journey of core wallets of any coin — either “qt” GUI wallet or command line “coin-cli” wallet Almost all #proofofwork #blockchains i.e. #POW has #node #wallet - everyone who use support he #public #blockchain secures own you coin value You can run fullnode either on clearnet or over onion 🧅 #BTC has >55% of nodes running in onion out of total 15000+ live fullnodes and 50000+ bitcoincore wallets around blockheight 777000 . Other notable pow chains are #LTC #RVN and rest are babychains for now ! Always delete hot wallet to test practice restoration before sending any large refunds to it to be safe. Large funds are always best to keep in self custody node wallets rare n occasional use Final word — Cannot see private key 🔑 or seed 🌱 in any wallet means not your coin. 😲 Use wallet which u learn or understand best only That’s all for now n Thank you 🙏 ! ⚡️ https://getalby.com/p/captjack ⚡️ Some Cold wallet nostr posts nostr:note1p6ke5wqshgxtfzj5de3u04hejl2c5ygj8xk8ex6fqdsg29jmt33qnx57y2 nostr:note1rse0l220quur6vfx0htje94ezecjj03y6j7lguwl09fmvmpt6g3q0cg7yw nostr:note1q5w8dyjuqc7sz7ygl97y0ztv6sal2hm4yrf5nmur2tkz9lq2wx9qcjw90q some nostr specific lightning ⚡️ Layer2 wallets with blockchain mainnet option nostr:naddr1qqsky6t5vdhkjm3qd35kw6r5de5kueeqf38zqampd3kx2apqdehhxarjqyv8wue69uhkummnw3e8qun00puju6t08genxven9uqkvamnwvaz7tmxd9k8getj9ehx7um5wgh8w6twv5hkuur4vgchgefsw4a8xdnkdgerjatddfshsmr3w93hgwpjdgu8zdnswpuk2enj0pcnqdnydpersepkwpm8wenpw3nkkut2d44xwams8a38ymmpv33kzum58468yat9qyt8wumn8ghj7un9d3shjtngv9kkuet59e5k7tczyqvq5m2zcltylrpetrvazrw45sgha24va288lxq8s8562vfkeatfxqcyqqq823ckqlhc8 related blog post nostr:naddr1qqxnzd3cxyenjv3c8qmr2v34qy88wumn8ghj7mn0wvhxcmmv9uq3zamnwvaz7tmwdaehgu3wwa5kuef0qydhwumn8ghj7mn0wd68ytn4wdjkcetnwdeks6t59e3k7tczyp6x5fz66g2wd9ffu4zwlzjzwek9t7mqk7w0qzksvsys2qm63k9ngqcyqqq823cpdfq87

We are now given a choice of digital freedom #nostr . Creativity for every nostrich is now unleashed from the cage of bigtech censorship , rules and algo. But freedom comes with responsibility so pick right one(s). I will try share here some learning experience both technical and also from fundamental point of view. Just wanted kick start this article n fill as we go like living reference document. Nostr itself is an application layer protocol that can used beyond just social media mirco or long blogging. Each nostr client heavily dependent on back-end servers call nostr "Relay servers" or in short "rs" or "relays" Relays can hosted anywhere in clearnet internet, onion net , vpn , i2p , nym Relays are controlled by their respective admins based NIP specs that they select to implement according to own decisions. Relays can have certain ToS (Terms of Service) Rules to adhered too. New users can choose and pick client or app (ios / android/ windows) with preset of relays in the simplest form , but other advanced users need to do a regular manual relay management. Relay management is an active regular task based on where when n how you are using. Relay list are saved within you npub profile backup file which can edited and broadcast anytime. Relay management is an active regular task based on where when and how you are using. Relay list always need to be updated time to time as and when needed. 2 Users MUST a common RELAY between them even if one only need to follow another. Occasionally you may notice certain npub accounts you are following already but cannot see frequent notes publish by them – one of cause maybe you not sharing a common relay Most nostr client applications has SETTINGS where user choose add/remove relays Also user choose which function to enable - READ or WRITE Relay list for your account is always saved within you npub profile backup file which can edited and broadcast anytime. Hence any app or browser when u login with you npub the same relay list will be enforced. There could valid reasons why u need have list for if you trying to save bandwidth and traveling. Functions in app.getcurrent.io and primal.net app for mobile apple or android are ideal for user traveling abroad and wanted to save bandwidth since relay management is done the providers in backend and saves hassle for basic usage. Remember if someone is selecting relay on your behalf then you may not be necessarily able to pull and get some specific and special content that you may need. Such providers like coracle and nostrid also give option to override the default relays they selected. Relay types: They can be categorized by various features or policy or technologies. FREE PUBLIC Relays vs PAID PUBLIC Relays PAID relays provide unrestricted access / write / filtering options than FREE relays but both are public clearnet relays. Just subscribing to PAID relays will not solve all problems unless you choose the relays properly and enable settings correctly. Private Replay or Tor Relays – normally not easily visible until unless someone tell you. You can also host own private relay not opened to internet of archive and back of your own notes. The technical landscape in nostr can be fast changing as more NIPs get proposed or updated. Relays admin can choose implement certain NIPs or not based on policy or technical limitations. Example NIP33 defines “long notes” aka blogs as you now reading this in habla site which #1 UI and site for "Editable" long notes – some relays donot implement or allow this. NIP07 is used for client authentication like nos2x and is implemented by all relays in fact. Nostr is so fasting changing-hence many links many broken Pushing long note again. To be continued again ... reference pics will added later also Hope this help you understand "why when what" to tune and maintain active set of proper relays. Relay Proxy, Relay aggregator or Relay multiplexer – Paid, Public, Free, Private, Event, Relays That’s all for now n more later ... Thank you 🙏 ! ⚡️ https://getalby.com/p/captjack ⚡️ PV 💜 🤙 References: https://habla.news/relays https://relay.exchange/ https://relays.vercel.app/ https://nostr.info/relays/ https://nostrudel.ninja/#/relays Related Articles: https://thebitcoinmanual.com/articles/types-nostr-relays/ nostr:naddr1qqd5c6t8dp6xu6twvukkvctnwss92jfqvehhygzwdaehguszyrtp7w79k045gq80mtnpdxjuzl9t7vjxk52rv80f888y5xsd5mh55qcyqqq823cf39s98 https://habla.news/u/current@getcurrent.io/1694434022411

# An opinionated guide to Sauna. By NVK [🌐](https://primal.net/nvk) [🐦](https://twitter.com/nvk) ## Introduction Updated from the Sauna, October 7th 2024 After years of experimenting with different sauna types, I’ve developed strong opinions on the subject. The purpose of this article is to share these opinions with anyone who is interested in them and, hopefully, help others get more out of their sauna experience. I’m certain my opinions will offend some, including all the people who (in my view) are doing it wrong. I know that saunas are important to many cultures around the world and that my strongly held opinions may offend some of those cultures. Mind you, although I grew up in South America, I do have a fair amount of slavic blood in me. When I was a child, my grandfather regularly took me with him to the shvitz. One of my fondest memories from this time was the “Scottish Bath”, which involves standing against the sauna wall, execution-style, so that someone can spray you with freezing water from a high pressure hose. I’ve never heard of this outside of South American and can’t attest to whether it has any real Scottish origins. The various health claims about using a sauna are beyond the scope of this article. All I have to say is that, like many things in my life, like Bitcoin, the meat/keto diet, and fasting, I find sauna to be yet another cheat code to life: it’s a simple thing that just makes life a lot better. If you want a good primer on scientific health benefits of sauna, I recommend starting with [this article by Rhonda Patric](https://www.foundmyfitness.com/topics/sauna). She goes in depth. To be clear, it should go without saying that I am not a medical expert or professional. None of the opinions below are, or should be interpreted as, medical advice. There are many people for whom sauna use is not recommended. It would be prudent for any sauna user to consult with his or her doctor before entering a sauna. _Thanks to S. for taking the time to do a very helpful first review of this article. And thanks to The Wife for helping make my words legible and helping me make time to sauna–I don’t know which sacrifice was bigger._ ## Banya or Nothing When I talk about saunas, I’m talking about a sauna with a stove, either wood or electric, that allows for steam. I call this “Banya style”. To be clear, I’m distinguishing between saunas and steam baths. Steam baths have their own place, but they aren’t my thing and I don’t consider them saunas. A breakdown of the main types of saunas may be helpful, so you know which to avoid: 1. Wet saunas, which are typically cedar rooms with wood burning or electric stoves onto which you throw liquid to create steam (I call this “Banya style”); 2. Dry saunas, which are typically cedar rooms with wood burning or electric stoves without added steam (like Korean style saunas); and 3. Infrared saunas, which, unlike traditional saunas, don’t heat the surrounding air. Instead, they use infrared panels to warm your body directly. In my opinion, it’s Banya style or nothing. I’m not a huge fan of dry saunas, and I don’t even bother with infrared saunas. Infrared is a fiat-shitcoin. I want steam! ## How to Sauna ### Sauna Etiquette If you read no other part of this already-too-long-article, read this. Saunas are social places. There are proper ways of being in a sauna with others, and there are ways to do it wrong. You don’t want to be the person who ruins it for everyone. Here are some important etiquette tips: **Silence vs. Chatting:** It’s not a question of whether you have to stay silent in a sauna or if it’s ok to talk. It depends on the circumstances and who else is around. If you’re using a sauna that isn’t your own, ask the staff about the preferred custom. The noise level in a sauna differs depending on the group in the sauna at a particular time. If you do want to chat with others, there’s nothing wrong with that. But, pay attention to whether there are others in the sauna who'd prefer it quiet. And definitely do NOT be obnoxiously loud – yes, I’m looking at you bachelor(ette) group who just discovered the Russian Banya. **Coming and Going:** People rotate in and out of the sauna at different paces, so there will be people coming and going during your shvitz. But there are ways to come and go that are considerate and proper. Keep the f-ing door closed (which was the working title of this article). Once you leave, don’t come back inside moments later. Doing so disturbs your fellow sauna users, lets out the all-important steam, and prevents the sauna from reaching an appropriate temperature. If you’re in the sauna with a group of friends, try to coordinate your comings and goings so you’re all on the same cycle. If you can only last 5 min at a sauna, don’t go in too often at the risk of ruining it for others (assuming it’s not your own private sauna). Be fast when closing the sauna door when you come or leave. Otherwise, you will get dirty looks from others and may even hear mumbles of “quick quick, fast fast” from a Gray Beard. And you will deserve it. Never open the door right after someone puts water on the stove to make steam. It’s all about the steam. Don’t waste it. **Controlling the heat:** if you can’t handle the heat in the sauna, don’t just turn the heat down, because it ruins it for others. Instead, go to a lower bench or get out and take your break. Saunas are meant to be hot. That’s the whole point. **Personal Hygiene:** Shower before you go into the sauna. Don’t wear perfume, smelly deodorant, or fragrant lotions. Smells get amplified in a sauna. Have a towel under you, don't leave your drippings behind. Best yet, make a Z with your towel, this covers your butt and down under your feet. **Clothing:** sauna is not a place for wearing clothing. It is a place to get back to nature. If you are shy, just wrap a towel around yourself. People ask if I don't feel awkward, the answer is no. Who cares, humans naked is not novel. In many countries, it is strictly forbidden to wear clothing or bring anything but a towel into the sauna. It's understandable that may not be possible in North American public saunas on mix gender "family" days. If you have to wear something, then wear something 100% cotton or marino wool. You don't want plastic being backed into your genitals. One more thing, leave the watch out as it gets hot and will burn you. Also, flip-flops/sandals, stay outside. Some saunas sell body scrubs and masks for you to apply before or in the sauna. Note that once in the heat, these can get goopy and drippy and may melt into your eyes and mouth. So (in this opinionated guides’ wife’s opinion), they are better in theory than reality. **Adding Oils and scents:** As discussed below, it can be nice to add certain oils and other scents to the steam. But if there are others in the sauna, ask first before you do. **Where and how to sit:** Hot air rises. So, the higher benches are hotter and the lower benches are cooler. If you are a newbie, pick a lower bench so you don’t have to leave as quickly and open the door unnecessarily. It’s great to lay down in the sauna, but if it gets crowded, sit up to make room for others. When moving around to find your seat, don’t walk on the benches in your sandals. Leave your sandals outside the sauna or on the sauna floor. ### Sauna Temperature In most proper Russian style Banyas you will find temperatures of 80-95 degrees celsius, which, in my opinion, is the best range. Thats near your body. "Offical" on the dial will he 100-120C. But sometimes you want to take it a little easier or last a little longer in the sauna. In these cases, 65-85 at body, dial at 80-100. degrees celsius will do. However, if your sauna is below 85 degrees celsius on the dial, you might as well just go hide under your bed sheets and not waste your time. At some saunas in hotels, gyms, or spas, you may not be allowed to set the sauna as high as you’d like (see below). There are many tricks to circumvent these frustrating restrictions, but my legal counsel has advised me not to go into any details here. ### Sauna Duration The amount of time you spend in the sauna is a matter of personal preference and depends on the number of cycles you do (more on cycles, below). For your first round, my opinion is that most people should try to last 15 minutes in the sauna. If a sauna is at the proper temperature, most people will struggle to stay inside any longer. If you can stay inside for 20-30 minutes, your sauna is probably too cold and/or there is not enough steam. Many saunas have hourglasses inside to keep time, and I’ve never seen a sauna hourglass with more than 15 minutes, which should be a good hint. My preferred is; Cold Plunge => Sauna 15 min => Cold Plunge => Hydrate with Salt & Water, Rest 5-10min => Sauna 15min => Cold Plunge => Hydrate with Salt & Water, Rest 5-10min => Sauna 15min => Cold Plunge => Hydrate with Salt & Water, Rest if you can rest in the sun even better (no sunscreen poison please). You can add alcohol drinks to the hydration if you feel comfortable with that. But only add food after the last cycle. For subsequent rounds, hydration starts to play a bigger role in how long you stay inside. Most people seem to last longer on their first round than on their second or third. If you can do 15 minutes on your second round, great. But 5-10 minutes is also fine. ### Sauna Cycles The traditional Russian Banya method (and in this writer’s opinion, the best method) is to do sauna cycles. Go into the sauna and just stay as long as you can take it (up to 15 minutes or so). Then take a cold shower and/or cold plunge (see below). Then robe-up and go relax with water, tea or beer. Once you start feeling “normal” again, repeat. For me, three cycles is the sweet spot. I’ll do more cycles if I’m spending the day at the Banya facility. If I’m at home, where I often sauna every other day, I find just one or two cycles does the trick. Sometimes I add a cycle or two on the weekend. Occasionally, I like to go into the sauna as it’s warming up and before it reaches optimum heat (i.e. at around 60 degree celsius). This way, I can stay longer in the sauna for my first round (about 30-40 minutes). If I take this approach, I generally only do one more short round after my cold plunge. ### Cold showers and plunges In my experience, you want to take a cold shower or a cold plunge (or both, plunge is better) after the sauna cycle.After you come out of the sauna, immediately jump into cold plunge for a bit, i don't like to stay too long. Some Banya facilities will have a bucket filled with cold water that you can pull with a string to let the water pour over you, pull a couple times. The banyas may also have a cold pool of water into which you can plunge for a bit.  If I’m at my country place, after I get out of the sauna I jump into the cold lake. If it’s winter, I like to roll in the snow, which is satisfying. Some cultures would say that it’s not a real sauna experience unless you roll in at least one foot of snow. After your cold shower or plunge, put on a warm robe and go relax before going back into the sauna. I like to relax for 5-20 minutes, depending on how much time I have. This allows the body’s temperature to decrease slowly. I do not recommend going directly back into the sauna after your cold plunge. If you don’t give yourself enough time after the cold plunge, you will overheat and won’t last very long when you return to the sauna. ### Position There really are no rules here. The way you position yourself in the sauna depends on your mood and preference, and there are many options. For example, you can sauna seated with your legs hanging down or with your knees up. You can lie down if there’s room. My favorite position is to lie down on my back with my legs up against the wall and, assuming the ceiling is low enough, with my feet stretched against the ceiling. This is a great way to stretch the hamstrings (check out stretching under “Sauna Activities”, below). Choosing whether to sit on a higher bencher or lower bench is the best way to control the temperature you experience without adjusting the room temperature itself. You will notice the heat in the sauna increases exponentially every inch you go up. If you are struggling to stay in the sauna but don’t want to get out just yet, try moving down to a lower bench to last a little longer. Lying on the floor is the coolest spot and a great place for kids to start getting exposed to saunas. - - - #### There is no shame in going to lower benches or even the floor, there is only shame in opening the door before 15min - - - ### Getting Steamy Without steam, the sauna would just be a sad, hot oven (I’m looking at you, infrared sauna). The steam in the sauna has many benefits but most importantly it increases the thermal coupling of your body to the air and it feels great. The amount of steam in the sauna is a matter of personal taste. You don’t want to make it into a steam room (remember, steam rooms are NOT saunas). But, you do want the sauna to be very moist. I find that two to four ladles of water in a mid-size sauna every five to seven minutes does the trick. Keep it between 50-60% humidity. I keep a bucket of water in the sauna at all times so that I can continue to ladle water as I shvitz. Make sure to get a wood bucket and a metal ladle with a wooden handle. Wood ladles will crack, and if the handle is metal, it’ll burn you when you grab it. If, when you enter the sauna, it’s already been on for a while, the wood is likely to already be wet and the sauna full of steam, so you may not need to add too much water. However, if you’ve just turned on the sauna and the wood walls are dry, you will need to ladle more water to make the air moist enough. If the sauna is too moist for comfort, open the door and let it dry out a bit (obviously, only do this in a private sauna). Essential oils and even beer can all be added to the water to create scented steam. I recommend starting your sauna with just water, and add the scent as you get going. You can try all sorts of different essential oils. I’ve tried everything from oak and cedar to tangerine and cinnamon (gag) essential oil. In the end, there are really only two oils that are worth it, in my opinion. The first is eucalyptus. I’ve experimented with different types of eucalyptus oil, and the variety you use makes a difference. My favorite is eucalyptus globulus. I also like diluted pine tar oil. When you settle on your essential oil, add a healthy dose of the oil to the ladle filled with water. Never put the oil onto the oven directly. It’ll just burn. In a few Russian facilities, I’ve seen Gray Beards pour Russian beer onto the oven and it was actually quite nice. It’s almost like being in a cozy bakery while you sweat Some people like to place a salt brick or compressed solid blocks in their sauna from time to time. Put the salt block on the stove and pour water over it. The steam takes on a saltiness that feels nice. If a salt block is not available, you can get a cast iron teapot, fill it up with salt water, and place it on top of the stove. And for my most important steam tip, I recommend using the “towel spin”. This is an effective and underrated technique to help circulate steam in the sauna. After creating steam, take your towel above your head and spin it around hard, like a ceiling fan. This movement works like a convection oven and spreads and equalizes the heat and steam throughout the room. It might make the folks sitting lower down in the sauna a little hotter, but that's what they’re there for, isn’t it? ### Hydration Being hydrated is important to having a positive sauna experience. You will lose a lot of your body’s water in the sauna. Ideally, start to hydrate well up to an hour before your sauna. I like to add a pinch of salt to my water to encourage water retention. Do not bring any drinks into the sauna (the exception being a dedicated steam-beer, see above). Have your water or beverage when you’re outside the sauna, resting. If you find you need to drink water inside the sauna in order to cool yourself down, then it’s time for you to get out and allow your body a cool-down. When you’re outside the sauna, don’t immediately down a glass of super cold water because you will cool down your internal body too fast. Personally, I like to drink warm tea after my first two cycles. After my second cycle, I enjoy a beer (pre-keto days), soup, or vodka drink. When non-keto, I do enjoy adult drinks in the cycles. If you are doing a sauna while on a multi-day fast, you need to have water and salt, at a minimum. Otherwise, you will deplete your natural reserve of electrolytes and not be able to think straight. ### Sauna Frequency When it comes to frequency, if you are not in the equatorial heat do it every day. I now do mornings and end of day if I can. so 2x 2-3x cycles. In the summer, living in a hot & humid location, I sauna a lot less frequently. My desire to sauna is greatly diminished because I spend a lot of time in the sun and heat. ### What to wear **Sauna Hat:** I highly recommend wearing a Russian/Finish style wool hat when you’re inside the sauna. It may seem counterintuitive, but wearing a hat keeps your head cooler. An overheated head is not good for your brain. Wearing the hat stops you from overheating and lets you stay longer in the sauna. The temperature in a sauna is significantly hotter the higher in the room you are, and one’s head is at the top of the body (for most people). So protect your brain in style with a felt sauna hat. If you don’t have a felt sauna hat, buy one. They are easily found online. But in the meantime, you can wrap a dry towel around your head. Don’t forget to take your sauna hat off as you relax between cycles so your head can cool down.  **Clothing:** These days, many public saunas will have family days, men-only days, and women-only days. For obvious reasons, you’re only allowed to sauna naked if you’re attending one of the single-sex days. If you’re at home, there’s no good reason to wear shorts or a bathing suit. Sauna naked. It's a lot more pleasant. If you do wear clothing in the sauna, be careful with items with materials like metal or plastic attached. Things like pins, buttons, or string-ends will get very hot and probably burn you. Remember to take off any heat-conductive jewelry and leave your smart watch outside, as the heat will ruin its battery. Don’t wear your robe inside the sauna. A robe is what you wear outside when relaxing or eating. If you wear it inside, you’ll overheat (and look like an idiot). Go ahead and sweat out that body shame robe-free. You can bring a towel into the sauna to sit on, if you want. Shoes or sandals are highly recommended in public facilities. I mean, there are many people walking around wet. Ew. But keep your sandals outside the sauna itself, or on the sauna floor. ### Sauna activities. Don’t overthink it. Sitting in a sauna is activity enough, in my opinion. But there are some sauna activities you can do: **Veniks/Viht beating:** these are bundles of leaves (commonly birch, oak, or eucalyptus) that are pre-soaked in hot water. Someone with both strength and capacity to exert themselves in the heat will beat your whole body with the leaves. This exfoliates your skin and also gets the plant oils to permeate your skin. And it’s very relaxing. If you’re at a sauna facility, don’t just grab any bundle you see lying around - that belongs to someone else and veniks aren’t shared. You have to bring your own or buy them at the front desk. **Stretching:** this is a great activity to do in the sauna, but make sure to go very easy. Your muscles will be super warm and you don’t want to overdo it and hurt yourself. **Exercise or Sex:** your heart better be in good shape if you try out these high intensity activities in the sauna. If you engage in the latter, you better be in your own home sauna. With respect to the former, I think doing some leg-ups can be very satisfying. **Phone use:** If you’re at home, it’s nice to use your sauna time to shit-post on Twitter or read an article, if you feel like it. Just keep your phone close to the colder, lower parts near the floor or it’ll overheat and shut down. You can also place the phone outside of the air vent and play a [podcast! The Bitcoin.review is great ;)](https://bitcoin.review) **Napping:** I don’t recommend this. If you fall asleep or pass out, you will probably die due to overheating or dehydration. **Chatting:** Saunas are great places for conversations (subject to the caveats I address above). Note that nowadays, microphone modules are both very tiny and can withstand high temperatures, so it’s no longer recommended to reenact mafia movie sauna scenes. **Eating and Drinking:** As discussed above, never have food or drink inside the sauna. But when you finish your sauna, take advantage of whatever snacks the facility offers. For Russian joints, the soups, fish roe and dry salty fish snacks are great. Again, don’t eat before your sauna; wait until you’re done. Some places will have bottled salty-ish lake water, and beer seems to be a good source of salts and re-hydration. Vodka drinks are nice sometimes, too. My favorites are vodka with beet juice and horseradish, vodka with pickle juice, or just a chilled shot of Zubrowka (vodka infused with bison grass). Teas are also very enjoyable post-sauna. I prefer non-caffeinated berry teas. Some Banyas even offer free tea to patrons.  ## Ready to Sweat It Out? Thanks to this fantastic guide to sauna, you’re now feeling confident and excited to seek out a solid sauna. So where do you go? ## Where to Find a Sauna **Spas:** Spas are not the best place to have an optimal sauna experience. Saunas at spas are typically not hot enough and spas have annoying staff whose job it is to enforce idiotic rules and practices that prevent you from having a real sauna experience. **Gyms & Hotels:** These are some of the worst places to sauna. For liability reasons, these saunas tend to be too cold and there are often mechanisms that prevent you from raising the temperature. Here, you’ll often see saunas with glass doors, which may look chic, but are inefficient and stupid because they don’t seal properly and leak steam. Gyms and hotels are high traffic areas, so people who don’t know what they are doing are constantly coming and going from the sauna, which, as we discussed, is a sauna no-no. If you still want to try the sauna at your gym or hotel, I recommend going in naked. It’ll deter people from joining you and ruining the little steam you managed to get going. **Traditional bath houses (Banyas):** These usually offer a great experience because they deliver a super hot sauna, good cold baths and plunges, delicious food and drinks, and knowledgeable staff. **Home:** Yes, you can build a great sauna in your own home! You can create a small space in your basement, turn a closet or cold room into a sauna, or just add an outdoor hut or barrel sauna in your backyard. This is the best way for you to control the whole experience and do it often. As with anything, the easier it is to access, the more you will do it. _Build it. They will Come_ Many people have asked me for details about sauna building. If you’re ready to build your own personal home sauna, here are some important considerations. #### Materials Saunas are insulated rooms, most commonly finished with cedar tung and groove slats. Cedar is used because it doesn’t rot with moisture. You don’t want treated wood as it will release all the bad stuff that keeps the wood from rotting into the air when heated. Cedar interior is often placed over a vapor barrier, followed by insulation and then the outer wall. Many outdoor saunas are not insulated. They simply have a single layer of cedar 2x6 planks functioning as both the interior and exterior. Non-insulated saunas need much more heating power in the winter. #### Structure For indoor saunas, you may want to find a bricklayer to build something for you. Traditional facilities often have brick-lined rooms and very large wood-burning stoves. You can buy prefab outdoor saunas, which are often sheds or barrels. After experimenting with both, I’ve concluded that barrel saunas are inferior, even though that’s what I have at my country property. This is because barrels have concave ceilings and inner walls. This means the benches are lower and the curve makes the topmost part of the ceiling (and the hottest part) the furthest from you, or inaccessible. The spinning towel trick really helps in the barrel. When it comes to buying a sauna, go with the most traditional structure possible. They are based on thousands of years of evolution and knowledge. Portable tent saunas are fun, but impractical because you have to set them up before each use. Bench height inside the sauna is important. I think the top-most bench should be very near the ceiling. This way, when you’re lying down, you can use the ceiling to stretch the hamstrings. As a rule of thumb, bench length should allow you to lie down completely. It is also nice to have at least one lower bench for visitors or less intense sauna days.  #### Sauna Ovens There are two main types of sauna ovens: wood burning and electrical (with gas heating being available, but not common). If the location you are building allows for it, go with electrical. It’s practical and easy to get going quickly. This means you will use it more often. Wood burning saunas are romantic and smell great, but it is a lot more work to get a fire going, especially in the winter. Opt for oven sizes that are recommended or above recommended for the size of the sauna. A larger oven means more thermic inertia, more rocks for steam, and therefore less time to warm up the room. Bigger is better. The Scandinavians make the best quality ovens. #### Oven controllers There are two types of temperature control devices: the analog cooking-style or the digital type. I think, due to liability and safety, all ovens have a timer that max out at one hour. The digital oven controllers are fantastic and I have one in the city in my basement sauna. However, you have to consider your environment. For me, temperatures in the winter can reach below -30C and in the summer, over 40C. This massive range can take a toll on outdoor equipment and materials. For this reason, I opted for an analog controller for my outdoor sauna in the country, since the weather will likely ruin the electronics of the digital controller. I would avoid ovens with analog pre-heat timers. They are great in theory, but the implementation is utter garbage. The timer won’t be precise and it’ll just lead to frustration, for example, when you thought you set the oven to start in three hours, but it actually started in two hours and already turned off. #### Important Sauna Gear Windows are nice to have, especially if you have a view to enjoy. Opt for at least a cedar door with a little window. Do not go with modern glass door styles. They are crap. They have gaps, no insulation, and let in too much light. Saunas need thermometers and hygrometers (to measure humidity). The thermometers should be rated for saunas and be visible inside. This is both for safety and bragging rights. I think having an hourglass inside your sauna is a must. Being able to know for sure how long you’ve been inside is important, since your sense of timing inside the sauna may be off depending on the state of your mind and body on a given day. You shouldn’t wear a watch inside the sauna, since it’ll overheat or break. Having a clock visible from the inside is also a good idea, especially if you sauna often and have a wife and kids who you don’t want to leave you. Air circulation is an often-overlooked but important part of a sauna design. Saunas should not have stale air. The best sauna design creates natural “real convection” by placing an air intake under the oven wall and another at the top opposite wall. This allows fresh air to enter the sauna while in use. Be sure to add regulators, since you don’t want to cool the sauna or expel all steam. Without regulators you may get too much or too little air in. With too much air, you may cool the sauna down too much and/or lose too much steam. #### Nice Things to Have Lights are optional but welcome additions. It can be unpleasant to have no lighting at all, especially in an outdoor sauna on a cold, dark night. Lights should be warm-temperature and low power. I recommend an oven light, since they don’t sweat the heat (get it?) and are often low power. Put a baking tray under your oven–thank me later. Wood “pillows” for your head are nice and don’t get sweat-stained and stinky, like a fabric pillow. Keep some extra felt hats near your sauna so when you or your guests forget their hat, you still have easy access to one. I like to keep a couple of essential oils on the floor of the sauna, for easy access. If you keep the oils too high in the sauna, they’ll get too hot and spoil. I place some duck boards over floor tiles in the sauna to prevent cold feet. I also like to keep a small, natural broom inside the sauna to sweep up any dirt or leaves that come into the sauna on people’s feet. ## Final words As you can tell, I have some strong opinions when it comes to the proper way to enjoy a sauna. My hope is that my musings will help you to maximize your own sauna experience.. If you follow this guide, I’m certain you will benefit from and enjoy the sauna as much as I do and, just maybe, you too will develop your own strongly held opinions that will most definitely offend me. ### Thanks for reading, please close the F-ing door. ps, you can get a Bitcoin Honey Badger Sauna Hat [here](https://store.coinkite.com/store/ht-sauna) - EOF

## 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

In the early days of Nostr, developers often competed to see who could implement the most NIPs. Although all were optional (except NIP-01), it became a point of pride and vital for the ecosystem's growth. Back then, there were only a few dozen relatively simple NIPs to implement. Fast forward to today, with nearly 100 NIPs, maintaining and implementing everything has become nearly impossible. Yet, the drive among developers to "code all things Nostr" remains as strong as ever. nostr:nprofile1qqsrhuxx8l9ex335q7he0f09aej04zpazpl0ne2cgukyawd24mayt8gprfmhxue69uhhq7tjv9kkjepwve5kzar2v9nzucm0d5hszxmhwden5te0wfjkccte9emk2um5v4exucn5vvhxxmmd9uq3xamnwvaz7tmhda6zuat50phjummwv5hsx7c9z9 raised the point that everyone, even I, agrees: nostr:nevent1qqsqqqp2zrs7836tyjlsfe7aj9c4d97zrxxqyayagkdwlcur96t4laspzemhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0wd68ytnsw43z7q3q80cvv07tjdrrgpa0j7j7tmnyl2yr6yr7l8j4s3evf6u64th6gkwsxpqqqqqqzgcrrrp But how big is too big? How can we better understand the range of options available for devs out there? I went out for a hunt in my own brain to figure out how to clarify the situation. I came up with the following 4 categories for Nostr Clients: - **Super Clients**: These apps merge vastly different domains into a single application, offering basic support for reading, writing, configuration, and data management for each use case within each domains. An example would be an app that combines a Marketplace and Live Streams under one roof. - **Clients**: These apps provide comprehensive support for a single domain, handling all its use cases in a single home. They manage the complete set of reading, writing, configuration, and long-term data management within that domain. An example is a marketplace app that helps users manage product catalogs, process orders, collect payments, and handle fulfillment and reports. - **Mini Clients**: These apps focus on read and write functionality for a single use case, including configuration management and any actions related to that specific task. For example, a fulfillment app that helps users view orders placed from another client to then pack and ship them. - **Micro Clients**: These apps have a single interface and perform one specific action. Viewing and creating a record is handled by separate micro apps. An example is an app that simply scans an order's QR code and marks it as shipped. Based on my made-up categories described at the end, this is how I would split our most known apps. **Super Clients** - [amethyst](https://amethyst.social) - [nostrudel](https://nostrudel.ninja) - [coracle](https://coracle.social) **Clients** - [damus](https://damus.io) - twitter - [primal](https://primal.net) - twitter - [snort](https://snort.social) - twitter - [gossip](https://github.com/mikedilger/gossip) - twitter - [lume](https://lume.nu) - twitter - [ditto](https://soapbox.pub/ditto/) - twitter - [rabbit](https://rabbit.syusui.net) - twitter - [freefrom](https://freefrom.space) - twitter - [nos](https://nos.social) - twitter - [flycat](https://flycat.club) - twitter - [straylight](https://straylight.cafe) - twitter - [nostter](https://nostter.app) - twitter - [iris](https://iris.to) - twitter - [nostur](https://nostur.com) - twitter - [nostrmo](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/nostrmo/id6447441761) - twitter - [yana](https://yana.do) - twitter - [openvibe](https://openvibe.social) - twitter - [freerse](https://freerse.com) - twitter - [0xchat](https://0xchat.com) - chats - [cornychat](https://cornychat.com) - chats - [coop](https://github.com/lumehq/coop) - chats - [nostrchat](https://nostrchat.io) - chats - [blowater](https://blowater.deno.dev) - chats - [habla](https://habla.news) - blogs - [yakihonne](https://yakihonne.com) - blogs - [highlighter](https://highlighter.com) - blogs - [blogstack](https://blogstack.io) - blogs - [stemstr](https://stemstr.app) - music - [wavlake](https://wavlake.com) - music - [fountain](https://fountain.fm) - podcasts - [zap.stream](https://zap.stream) - live streaming - [shopstr](https://shopstr.store) - marketplace - [plebeian.market](https://plebeian.market) - marketplace - [flotilla](https://flotilla.coracle.social) - communities - [satellite](https://satellite.earth) - communities - [zapddit](https://zapddit.com) - communities - [nostr.kiwi](https://nostr.kiwi) - communities - [hivetalk](https://hivetalk.org) - video calls - [flare](https://flare.pub) - long-form videos - [nostrnests](https://nostrnests.com) - audio spaces - [wherostr](https://wherostr.social) - location - [yondar](https://go.yondar.me) - location - [stacker.news](https://stacker.news) - news - [flockstr](https://flockstr.com) - events - [nostrocket](https://nostrocket.org) - issue tracker - [docstr](https://docstr.app) - docs - [satshoot](https://satshoot.com) - freelance - [wikifreedia](https://wikifreedia.xyz) - wiki - [formstr](https://formstr.app) - forms - [chesstr](https://chesstr.pages.dev) - chess - [memestr](https://memestr.app) - meme feed - [npub.cash](https://npub.cash) - wallet - [npub.pro](https://npub.pro) - websites - [gitworkshop](https://gitworkshop.dev) - dev tools - [onosendai](https://onosendai.tech) - metaverse - [degmods](https://degmods.com) - games - [turdsoup](https://turdsoup.com) - prompts **Mini Clients** - [amber](https://github.com/greenart7c3/Amber) - signer - [alby](https://getalby.com) - signer - [nos2x](https://github.com/fiatjaf/nos2x) - signer - [nsec.app](https://nsec.app) - signer - [keys.band](https://keys.band) - signer - [nostrame](https://github.com/Anderson-Juhasc/nostrame) - signer - [nokakoi](https://nokakoi.com) - anon - [zap.cooking](https://zap.cooking) - recipes - [anonostr](https://anonostr.com) - anon - [getwired](https://getwired.app) - anon - [lowent](https://lowent.xyz) - anon - [creatr](https://creatr.nostr.wine) - exclusive content - [lightning.video](https://lightning.video) - exclusive content - [zaplinks](https://zaplinks.lol/slides) - slides - [listr](https://listr.lol) - lists - [zap.store](https://zap.store) - app store - [badges.page](https://badges.page) - badges - [oddbean](https://oddbean.com) - news - [dtan](https://dtan.xyz) - torrents - [nosta](https://nosta.me) - user pages - [pinstr](https://pinstr.app) - pinterest - [pollerama](https://pollerama.fun) - polls - [swarmstr](https://swarmstr.com) - trending - [nostrapp](https://nostrapp.link) - apps manager - [noogle](https://noogle.lol) - search - [ostrich.work](https://ostrich.work) - job postings - [emojito](https://emojito.meme) - emoji manager - [nostree](https://nostree.me) - links - [citrine](https://github.com/greenart7c3/citrine) - local relay - [joinstr](https://joinstr.xyz) - coinjoins - [heya](https://heya.fund) - crowdfunding - [zapplepay](https://zapplepay.com) - zaps - [nosbin](https://nosbin.com) - clipboard - [shipyard](https://shipyard.pub) - scheduler - [tunestr](https://tunestr.io) - live streams - [filestr](https://filestr.vercel.app) - files - [nostrcheck.me](https://nostrcheck.me/) - media hosting - [sheetstr](https://sheetstr.amethyst.social) - spreadsheets - [crafters](https://crafters.amethyst.social) - curriculum vitae **Micro Clients** - [w3](https://w3.do) - url shortener - [nosdrive](https://nosdrive.app) - backups - [zaplife](https://zaplife.lol) - zaps dashboard - [zapper.fun](https://zapper.fun) - payments - [nostrends](https://nostrends.vercel.app) - trends - [zephyr](https://zephyr.coracle.social) - trends - [wavman](https://wavman.app) - music player - [nostrrr](https://nostrrr.com) - relay info - [nosdump](https://github.com/jiftechnify/nosdump) - relay info - [notestack](https://notestack.com) - blogs - [nostr.build](https://nostr.build) - media hosting - [nostr.watch](https://nostr.watch) - relay info - [nostr hours](https://snowcait.github.io/nostr-hours/) - use reports - [lazereyes](https://lazereyes.nosfabrica.com) - vision prescriptions - [snakestr](https://satoshipuzzles.github.io/Snakestr) - games - [deletestr](https://zaplinks.lol/deletestr) - deletion requests - [2048str](https://zaplinks.lol/2048str) - games - [nostrqr](https://zaplinks.lol/nostrqr) - qr generator - [notanostrclient](https://zaplinks.lol/notanostrclient) - anon Super apps will try to do everything, but can't really do most things super well. Regular-sized Clients will try to manage most of a given domain but are likely to centralize users on themselves, an unwanted effect inside of Nostr. If we want Nostr to grow in a decentralized fashion, we have to start betting on and using more **Mini** and **Micro** clients.

### Tldr - Nostr identities can be linked to a third-party service - You can set up that verification at your own domain, and - You can also set up your own Lightning Address at your own domain - These both require files in the .well-known directory on your domain - You can set these up together, quickly and for free, with Sveltekit and Vercel - Now I am identified and can receive payments with my username "rb" at my own domain "rodbishop.nz" ### Getting .Well-Known ##### For your npub The first step in setting up a Nostr profile is to get your keys. I wrote about it in this article, [Mining Your Vanity Pubkey](nostr:naddr1qvzqqqr4gupzqx760c0h894a5tg7lxgr8k506twrv2qs0yxln0nz7kgs8zae03xeqqsy66twd9hxwtteda6hyt2kv9hxjare94g82cntv4uj6drfw4cxyesvp3njy). These keys represent your identity and are issued by you, not a third-party issuer. This is good for personal ownership, but creates an issue around identification. If you have an ID issued by an issuer, I can ask the issuer to confirm that you are who you say you are. But with a Nostr npub, which has no issuer, how do I confirm that an npub which claims to be yours, is in fact yours? Nostr allows you to link your npub to a username and to a third-party service of your choice to help in confirming that your npub is really yours (It is [documented in NIP-05](https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/05.md)). Normal users can use a service like nostrplebs.com and to set up a username very quickly and easily. However, it is also possible to set up your own identification that relates your username to your npub using any domain you own. In my view having your username tied to your own domain is better branding, and more self-ownership, and so that's what I'll set up using my domain rodbishop.nz. ##### For your lightning address Nostr has integrated payments which allow people to send you Bitcoin over the Lightning network the same way they would send you an email. I wrote about it in [Setting up Payments on Nostr](nostr:naddr1qvzqqqr4gupzqx760c0h894a5tg7lxgr8k506twrv2qs0yxln0nz7kgs8zae03xeqq34xet5w35kueedw4cz65rp09kk2mn5wvkk7m3dfehhxarj95mk7dnvwvmscnxk5d). The path I took in setting up my lightning address was to use Alby, and with an Alby Account you automatically get a Lightning Address at getalby.com. Normal users can use that Lightning Address just fine. However, it is also possible to set up your own Lightning Address which will forward payments to your Lightning Wallet using any domain you own. Similar to with NIP-05, my view is having your Lightning Address tied to your own domain is better branding, and so again that's what I'll set up. Both of these tasks use the .well-known folder on your web server. ### Preparing .Well-Known with Sveltekit There are many ways to do this. NVK published a very simple method using Github pages which is free and which you can [read about on his blog](https://nvk.org/n00b-nip5). For me, I will set up .well-known using Sveltekit and Vercel. I have been learning Sveltekit and Nostr together, thanks to fantastic tutorials by [Jeff G on his Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwjWOu_QJCjusHKlOo9_52w). Using Sveltekit and Vercel to set up Nostr NIP-05 and Lightning URLs on your own domain is easy and free. ##### Create a new project To start, create a new Sveltekit project with NodeJS and Node Package Manager using the code documented on the [Sveltekit website](https://kit.svelte.dev/). ``` npm create svelte@latest my-app cd my-app npm install npm run dev -- --open ``` Sveltekit contains many convenient short-cuts for web hosting, and one of them is the file structure. The structure contains an `/src` folder to contain javascript files to build complex applications, and a `/static` folder to contain other simple static files which need to be hosted at the domain. It is this `/static` folder you'll be using for now. ##### NIP-05 identification with nostr.json For your NIP-05 identification, you need to create the folder and file for /.well-known/nostr.json as follows– ``` static └── .well-known └── nostr.json ``` In that file, you will use some JSON to link a username to a hex-format public key, which will enable Nostr apps to confirm that the username relates to the key. In my case, I create a link between the username "rb" and the public key formatted in hex format "1bda7e1..."– ``` { "names": { "rb": "1bda7e1f7396bda2d1ef99033da8fd2dc362810790df9be62f591038bb97c4d9" } } ``` That's it! ##### Lightning Address forwarding with lnurlp For your Lightning Address, you need to create the folder and file for /.well-known/lnurlp/your-username as follows, replacing the "your-username" text with your username (in my case, "rb") – ``` static └── .well-known └── lnurlp └── your-username ``` In that file, you create a link between the username on your domain, and the provider of your Lightning service (in my case, Alby). Alby provides a helpful guide on how to do this, which you can [read on the Alby site](https://guides.getalby.com/user-guide/alby-account-and-browser-extension/alby-account/use-your-lightning-address/own-domain). - Visit the Alby page for your Lightning Address which Alby hosts - Copy that text across to the new file you have created That's it! These files are now ready and can be hosted anywhere. ### Hosting .well-known with Vercel I chose Vercel to host with because it was very easy to use, and provides all the hosting I need for free. To deploy, you first create a Github repository for my Sveltekit project, and then you set up Vercel to deploy every push by default. At a high level – 1. Set up a Github repository 2. Push your project to Github 3. Sign up for Vercel 4. Link your Vercel to your Github, and Vercel will then show all your Git repositories 5. Import your project from Github, and Vercel will deploy it to a Vercel.com domain Once your project has deployed to Vercel, you will be given a deployment URL, and you can test to see that your static .well-known files are successfully online. - E.g. I was given https://rodbishop-mw64m8ylx-rods-projects-c9b67f57.vercel.app - I can add /.well-known/nostr.json or /.well-known/lnurlp/rb to the domain and view my files Now that the files are deployed, you need to link them to your domain. At a high level – 1. Get your domain (buy one if you need to) 2. In Vercel, navigate to your project’s settings and add your domain. Vercel will provide DNS records for you to add to your domain registrar 3. In your domain's DNS settings add those records as an A record to your root domain Your .well-known files are now hosted in Vercel and pointed at your domain. ##### Setting up CORS in Vercel You need to tell Vercel to allow third-party applications to access those files, by enabling CORS ("Cross-Origin Resource Sharing"). Vercel has good [CORS documentation on their website](https://vercel.com/guides/how-to-enable-cors). To set this up, return to your project, and in the root folder create a new file named vercel.json. This file will tell Vercel to allow third-party applications to access your nostr.json file. Add the following to it ``` { "headers": [ { "source": "/.well-known/nostr.json", "headers": [ { "key": "Access-Control-Allow-Origin", "value": "*" }, { "key": "Access-Control-Allow-Methods", "value": "GET, OPTIONS" }, { "key": "Access-Control-Allow-Headers", "value": "Content-Type" } ] } ] } ``` Then– - Push to Github - Vercel will deploy the push automatically by default That's it. Your .well-known files are able to be reached by every Nostr app. ##### Testing it with your Nostr profile Now that this is hosted at your domain, you can connect your Nostr profile. In any Nostr client, visit your profile page and edit, then update your NIP-05 and Lightning Address fields. Once your client has refreshed, give it a test - Your NIP-05 identity should show a "success" type icon, rather than a "fail" type icon (what icons depends on the client you're using, but think "green tick" rather than "red cross") - Your Lightning Address should simply work–get someone to send you a payment to your new Address and it should go through successfully and appear in your wallet. ### Things I Did Wrong Initially, my NIP-05 verification didn't work. I had done two things wrong. ##### Wrong form of pubkey The first mistake I made was in the NIP-05 nostr.json file I used the wrong format of public key. The public key that you mostly use in clients is your "npub" which starts with "npub1..." However, the public key this file needs is formatted in hex and starts with "1...". If you don't have your hex formatted pubkey, you can use a site like https://nostrtool.com/ –enter your pubkey in npub format, and it will return it in hex format. ##### Redirects caused CORS issues The second mistake was caused by a URL redirect. Your .well known files need to be served at the root of your domain, not at a www prefix (e.g. for me https://rodbishop.nz, not https://www.rodishop.nz). For this to work, you need to ensure that requests to your root domain aren’t redirected to www. In Vercel domain configuration, you can configure your redirects. By default, it will redirect traffic to www, and this is wrong for our purposes. To correct it, visit your domain settings, click "Edit" and look for "Redirect to". The correct setting is "No Redirect". The issue is caused because when applications go looking for your nostr.json, they need to receive a clean "Success" (200) response from your server prior to accessing the file. If you are redirecting to www, then the server gives a "Redirect" (300) response instead. In case you think your CORS is failing, take a look at the server http response code to see if there is a redirect. I used as follows– ``` curl -X OPTIONS -i [https://rodbishop.nz/.well-known/nostr.json](https://rodbishop.nz/.well-known/nostr.json) \ -H "Origin: [https://anotherdomain.com](https://anotherdomain.com/)" \ -H "Access-Control-Request-Method: GET" ``` - Initially the response was "HTTP/2 308" which means a redirect was in place (and so the process was failing) - Once I resolved the redirect issue at Vercel, the response was "HTTP/2 204" which means success, and from that point, Nostr apps recognised the NIP-05 successfully ### What's Next Over the last three blogs I have - Mined a Nostr pubkey and backed up the mnemonic - Set up Nostr payments with a Lightning wallet plus all the bells and whistles - Set up NIP-05 and Lighting Address at my own domain At this point I am up and running with a great Nostr profile and able to fully engage with the network. But there are still many rabbit holes to explore. The next place I will explore deeply is running my own relay, and if I have some success I will be back to blog about it soon. I'm looking forward to sharing what I learn as I explore what’s possible on Nostr.

**Tldr** - Your Nostr identity may be the first ID you every own - You can create one that easier to backup using a 12-word mnemonic, and - You can create one that has a bit of branding to it, called a “vanity npub” - Many tools exist which you can use - I tried a few and settled on Rana by Negrunch - Now I am npub1**r0d8**... **The first ID you’ll ever own** The first step in setting up a Nostr profile is to get your keys. These keys are your identity. For almost everyone, this is the first ID you’ll have that you truly own. That is, this ID is yours because *you* say it is. That’s different from almost every other ID, which was issued to you by someone else, and is yours because *they* say it is. Not only is it yours. It’s portable. You can use this ID to be yourself in any app that supports Nostr. Consider the legacy internet—every app requires a separate account. That’s a separate login and password to remember. And worse than that, it’s a separate set of content you have to generate, and a separate following you have to create. Every time a new platform launches, you need to encourage your followers to join you on the new platform. At any time, any platform can deplatform you. If they do, you lose your content and your following, with no recourse. On Nostr, it’s different. All your content and all your following is linked to your identity, and you take it with you everywhere. You build your content once, and it appears with you everywhere. You build one following once, and they follow you everywhere. If a platform deplatforms you, you don’t lose your following or content, you just take it all to another platform. This may be the first ID you ever own, and if Nostr keeps on growing, it may be the last ID you’ll ever need. **Getting branded with a “vanity” npub** Every nostr user has an identity like this, and every user can be found and known by their public key, their “npub” or “pubkey”. By default, most people go by a pubkey that is completely random, like npub1asdfgh…. My view is, if you’re going to create your first-ever ID that is truly yours, you might as well make it special. It’s possible to create a pubkey that has a bit of branding to it. The technical name for these is a “vanity npub”. You could call it a branded npub. There are some good examples: - Snowden at npub1**sn0wden...** - Negrunch at npub1**qqqqqqq**... These pubkeys have specific characters at the start (or at the end). It is better branding. It’s also helpful for defeating spammers who might choose to imitate you, as only you have the vanity npub. Keys are generated at random. To get one with your specific branding on it, you need to set up your computer to generate keys at random until it finds one that suits your needs. Once set up your computer will generate keys by the millions–checking and discarding each one until it creates the one with your characters. The more characters you want, the longer this process will take. Nostrogen provides a helpful table for that: - 1 character = usually less than a 0.1 seconds - 2 characters = usually less than a 1 second - 3 characters = usually less than a 30 seconds - 4 characters = usually less than a 10 minutes - 5 characters = usually less than a 1 hour - 6+ characters = keep fire extinguisher handy The good news is, for your npub to have nice branding, you don’t need a lot of characters. For myself I only needed four “**r0d8**”. **Getting a mnemonic, for backup, and for lightning** Once you have your ID, you will want to use it different places and back it up securely. The problem with writing down your ID as an nsec is that it’s long and complicated to write, and too easy to misread and enter the wrong characters when you type it back into your device. A better alternative exists. You can generate a 12-word mnemonic, and then use that to derive your nsec (documented in [NIP-06](https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/06.md)). The mnemonic is much easier to read, easier to type into new apps, and easier to backup correctly. If you generate your keys directly as npub and nsec you can never go “backward” to generate a mnemonic. But if you generate a mnemonic first, you can always generate an npub and nsec from it. Furthermore if you generate a mnemonic, you can (optionally) use that same mnemonic to generate your lightning wallet for making payments with. For these reasons, my view is that using an identity with a mnemonic is best. Once we have our 12-word mnemonic, we generate our keys (npub and nsec), and we’re ready to use anything in the Nostr ecosystem. - Where the app supports mnemonics you can use that - For everywhere else you can use your nsec - In either case you’ll be recognised everywhere you go by your vanity npub **How to mine a 12-word mnemonic with a branded vanity npub** You’ll need an application for mining. There are very many to choose from, which you can see on this [awesome Nostr list](https://github.com/aljazceru/awesome-nostr?tab=readme-ov-file) by [Aljaz](nostr:npub1aljazgxlpnpfp7n5sunlk3dvfp72456x6nezjw4sd850q879rxqsthg9jp) Some work in your web browser, like [nostr.rest](http://nostr.rest). Many others you can find on github and install. I tried many including nostr-pubminer, and nostr_vanity_npub, before settling on [Rana](https://github.com/grunch/rana). To run these requires basic command line knowledge. I didn’t have that, so I fed the GitHub readme page to ChatGPT, and it walked me through getting everything set up. **Failing many times** Here’s what I did wrong so you don’t have to make the same mistakes. - You can only use bech32 characters in your npub, and may not be every character you want! The allowed character set is only 023456789acdefghjklmnpqrstuvwxyz. Importantly for me there is no “o” “b” or “i” which makes it impossible to generate “rod” or “bishop”! Only “r0d” and “8lsh0p” are possible. - Not every vanity npub miner tell you if you’re using valid characters. [Nostr.rest](http://Nostr.rest) and nostr-pubminer happily sat for hours using my CPU to look for a key that started with “rod” and failed to find one, as they must, because “rod” is not possible (only ”r0d” is possible). - Some miners will ask you “how many threads” would you like to use. It’s a question that relates to how much processor power you want to spend on the task. I didn't know the "correct" answer but found it didn’t matter at all what number I entered. - Some miners will generate npubs just fine, but can not generate the mnemonic. For my needs I needed one that could do both. **Success with Rana** In the end I succeed using Rana by [Negrunch](nostr:npub1qqqqqqqx2tj99mng5qgc07cgezv5jm95dj636x4qsq7svwkwmwnse3rfkq) You can find [Rana here on Github](https://github.com/grunch/rana) with a very helpful readme. In short the process is: - Install Rust (the programming language) and install Rana (the mining application) - Run a command to generate your npub. - For me that command was: “cargo run —release — -n=r0d8 -g 12” That command breaks down as: - “cargo run” telling Rust to run the application - “-n=r0d8” look for an npub with a prefix of “r0d8”, and - “-g 12” including a 12 word mnemonic And the outcome is: - A 12 word mnemonic - Private and public keys derived from that mnemonic - My branded vanity npub starting with npub1**r0d8**... **In summary** The first step in setting up a Nostr profile is to get your identity. While it’s easy to get an identity made with random keys, if we think our Nostr IDs are going to mean something important in the future, then we may as well set ourselves up with keys that are easy to use, and branded. *That means* - 12-word mnemonic backups (feature NIP-06) - Branded vanity npub The mnemonic is easier to backup and also can be used to create a lightning wallet. The branding helps people know your npub is really you *To do this* - You need an application for mining a vanity npub - There are many, and I had success with Rana which provided both the mnemonic and the vanity prefix, in one command line instruction. **Next** - Please let me know if this kind of post is helpful or anything you’d like me to improve or expand upon! - For my next post I’ll show how to set up a self-custody lightning wallet to make payments on Nostr with Phoenixd and Albyhub

**Tldr** - I’m Rod - I’m going down the Nostr rabbit hole - I’m a startup founder, former listco CEO, NED, Bitcoin Miner, New Zealander, Dad - I value community - I was white-pilled by the free and interoperable internet and am ready to chip in **Nice to meet you** Today I am getting started creating a profile for my real self on Nostr. I am going to share what I learn. Your average new Nostr user probably shouldn’t follow my lead here. The “main flow” onboarding for Nostr is becoming very smooth. Download [Damus](nostr:npub18m76awca3y37hkvuneavuw6pjj4525fw90necxmadrvjg0sdy6qsngq955) or [Primal](nostr:npub12vkcxr0luzwp8e673v29eqjhrr7p9vqq8asav85swaepclllj09sylpugg) or [Amethyst](nostr:npub142gywvjkq0dv6nupggyn2euhx4nduwc7yz5f24ah9rpmunr2s39se3xrj0), then click “create account,” and be up and running in seconds. For me though, I want to go off-road. I think Nostr is a fundamental reimagining of the internet where power resides with users rather than platforms. I want to work on it and with it. I think it has a chance to bring back the internet of my youth where people could be "internet" users rather than "corporate internet brandname" users. So I plan to go on a tour of the weird and wonderful side quests that Nostr can offer—in order to really have some fun with it and write about it as I go. I hope the writing will add some value. Nostr is being driven forward by passionate and prolific devs who are creating wild new proofs of concept everywhere. These primatives are amazing, and also for a regular pleb, sometimes inaccessible and confusing. I think I can add value by highlighting some of the “why” of fun and useful Nostr rabbit holes. If I can document what I do as a user, what I managed to make work, how I made it work, and why it was important, then I may encourage others to join and have a go. Not a how to guide. Rather a “what I did and how and why” journal of sorts. **I can do a better intro than that** My name is Rod, and I am non-technical startup founder, former listco CEO, and company director. Foremost in recent times, I am the founder of Jayride Group, which is a travel e-commerce marketplace that helps travelers to find and book rides around the world. I launched Jayride in January 2012 and grew it for six years to public listing on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX:JAY) in January 2018, then ran it as a public company for six more years before stepping back from Managing Director to the role of Non-Exec Director around August 2023. I am also a Non-Exec Director of Fishburners, Australia’s foremost technology startup founder community (and co-working space). Fishburners helps startup founders to get started. I was an early Fishburners resident, and being involved in that community was instrumental to my early startup success. I have been flirting with Bitcoin mining since 697532 or thereabouts with 3.5Ph of hash rate, which was briefly about 1/100,000th of the network. I’m a Nostr pleb, happily married, rational optimist, expat New Zealander living in Australia, and dad. I will post about all of these things too. **Two key lessons led me to Nostr today** *I learned the importance of community from Fishburners.* In the early days of a startup, you don’t know what you don’t know. Community helps you to learn those things simply by being amongst it. And when you find something specific which you know you need to know, community is there for you then too. The more time I spend on Nostr, the more aware I am that this is a an awesome community of builders with the potential to add some real and lasting value to the internet and world. I want to do whatever small things I can to help and be part of that. *I learned the importance of resilience from the world's reaction to COVID.* Travel businesses and co-working businesses were smashed by lockdowns. To chart the path through it all, it became my full-time job to study the disaster of fake narratives and regulatory capture and bad policy responses, in order to try to navigate it. I learned that if you pay attention long enough then you can see behind the curtain–and it’s not a good look. On Nostr, I find myself gradually returning to a rationally optimistic outlook. No amount of propaganda and greed and bureaucracy will ever be as fast and powerful and resilient as a free and interoperable internet. We can build systems which leverage these strengths. If built, these systems will naturally outcompete and win on their merits, because they will be faster, freer, more powerful marketplaces for ideas and capital, more resistant to capture, and more resilient to external shocks. Better systems means better aligned and fairer outcomes for everyone. These systems are a must-have and need to succeed. So I’m going to chip in. I’m not sure exactly how yet! But I’m up for it. **In summary** Hi. It’s nice to meet you all, and I hope to share something of value! Because: - Nostr is becoming an incredible community of builders that will make its mark on the world, and - Nostr can become a true reimagining of the internet and contribute to a powerful, free and resilient world. **Up next** To start, I've learned a few things about setting up a new profile and I can share what I learned in future posts: - Mining a branded vanity pubkey with Rana - Setting up a self-custody lightning wallet to make zaps on Nostr with Phoenixd and Albyhub - Setting up Nostr and lightning addresses at your own domain with Sveltekit and Vercel Looking forward to it.

## 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.

I saw this post, and it seems the Electoral College debate has reared its ugly head again. I was frustrated with the quality of the discussion, so I wanted to get my thoughts down somewhere. [https://x.com/jimmy\_dore/status/1843375525030703141](https://x.com/jimmy_dore/status/1843375525030703141) Sometimes, it even shocks me how civically illiterate those with big audiences can be. I'm unfortunately not surprised at the other 58%. **The Constitution is a contract between sovereign states** Sovereign is the keyword here. The state you reside in is actually your primary form of government. You have a relationship with the federal government, sure, but it is only _through_ the state you live in. Electoral votes are decided by how many members in Congress represent your state. This means that the _minimum_ would be three, as each state always gets two senators and then one House of Representative district. This decision was a compromise at our country's founding to entice smaller states to join the Union. If you join and agree to the rules, you get a two-electoral vote starter pack representing the state's representatives in the Senate. Without it, smaller states would have little incentive to join. It would essentially be "sign up and get ruled over." To illustrate this, let's take a book club hypothetical. Imagine a book club that includes members from four different neighborhoods, all meeting as separate chapters: - Maple Street: 50 members - Oak Street: 30 members - Pine Street: 15 members - Cedar Lane: 5 members Each neighborhood is diverse and different in its tastes but tends to align within its neighborhood. The book club leader loves the diverse representation of all neighborhoods and wants that participation to grow and add as much value as it can to everyone. The leader wants to institute a new "democratic" way of choosing a new book. She thought of two ways to institute it. First, she tried a direct popular vote. In this process, every member casts one vote for the book they want to read, and the book with the most votes wins. The leader tried this briefly, but the same thing kept happening. Because Maple Street has the most members, their preference almost always prevailed, leading to its dominance. As a result, members from Pine Street and Cedar Lane rarely saw their book choices selected. Over time, these members from smaller neighborhoods felt their opinions didn't matter and stopped participating. They concluded that they had better search for another book club or run a smaller one themselves. To mitigate this, the leader tried something new: weighted voting. With this new method, each neighborhood receives a certain number of votes that are not strictly based on the number of members, giving smaller streets proportionally more influence. For example: - Maple Street: 7 votes - Oak Street: 5 votes - Pine Street: 4 votes - Cedar Lane: 3 votes This arrangement means that even though Maple Street has the most members, they cannot solely determine the outcome, leading to a balanced influence among all neighborhoods. Moreover, each neighborhood has agency on how to split or cast their votes. Smaller streets like Pine Street and Cedar Lane now have meaningful input in the selection. As a result, the book choices became more varied, reflecting the interests of the entire club, and members from all streets felt valued and continued to participate equally. Ultimately, the book club leader chose the trade-off with higher participation. Either Cedar Lane and Pine Street are part of the book club, or it's a book club governed by Maple Street, which inevitably will become a book club of _only_ Maple Street. **To that end, weighting the votes actually _increased_ decentralization.** There are never easy answers when making big decisions like this; there are always trade-offs. Here, the trade-off is one person, one vote, potentially leading to centralization or weighting votes unequally to incentivize decentralization and minority participation. The choice of enticing smaller, non-populous states is the choice our founders made. They agreed that this choice preserved our federalism and decentralization and best avoided centralization to a single state or tyrannical rule. Similar to the book club, our presidential elections operate this way. In this, your state throws its choice in the ring for who will lead over this Union of the states, not you. The Constitution stipulates that your state gets to decide how they cast this vote; it just so happens they all choose the majority vote today. Each state gets to decide how they divvy up their electoral votes. Places like California say all go to the candidate that wins, while Maine decides to split them up, giving more agency to the district level. This process can be changed or amended via the state legislature. If you change this, you fundamentally disrupt the relationship between the states, the federal government, and its citizens. You are a resident of your state, which is sovereign and has its own Constitution. You might think: _Well, we've evolved as a country, why can't we change it now?_ There are many reasons this is impossible, but here is what I find the most limiting: Throughout our history, states have controlled their rules for governing federal elections. The electorate controls this process through the state legislatures, where all election laws are supposed to originate. _Quick aside — one reason the 2020 election was controversial for many (including myself) is that many laws were changed by governors using Executive Orders under the pretense of COVID-19 emergency measures—but I'll leave that alone for now._ A state like mine — Florida — decides how it defines, rules, and judges who are constitutionally qualified to vote. I need to take steps to prove my citizenship, as well as slight differences in how they host primaries, party affiliation, etc. A state like California says screw all that, it's _illegal_ to even ask for an ID. So yes, they also get to decide who is constitutionally qualified to vote in federal elections based on legislation passed in their state legislature. As a Florida resident, I — justifiably — have no vote or say in how California's state legislature legislates this issue. I only have recourse in my state. If you removed the Electoral College, you would then need to pass federal election laws that would apply to every state _removing their sovereignty_ to decide this for themselves. _Also, good luck getting anyone to agree or applying those laws._ Smaller states would have no incentive to stay. Or it may even incentivize them to join forces with other small states to get on the same footing as larger ones. Either choice would centralize to larger forms of government instead of smaller, more dispersed, local forms of government. I, for one, think the Electoral College is a great thing and an ingenious invention. Without it, we have the tyranny of the majority and an even more centralizing force to a larger government than we have today. In a country as wide-ranging and diverse as the United States, having to build coalitions across _every_ state is a concept we must preserve and fight for. States across our country are looked at as equals in a union. The Senate itself is a testament to that. Breaking it dissolves the very foundation of the equality that a federally elected official must view each state. If this bothers you because it makes votes unequal, you must consider the alternatives and their consequences. Living in California or New York, to achieve what you want, your best option is to convince Wyoming to secede. That would get you closer to this "one person, one vote" rallying cry you hear when the Electoral College and popular vote don't match. However, if you like the benefits of Wyoming in the Union, this is the compromise you must make. **If you remove the Electoral College, states will secede, and honestly, I don't blame them.** In this, you cannot eat your cake and have it too. Either you want less populous states in the Union, or you don't. That is your choice. You cannot remove the last vestige of equality they have toward representation to the federal government. That's the trade-off. It's a compromise, not a perfect solution.

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.

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.

## 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.

**Tldr** - Nostr comes with integrated Bitcoin payments called zaps - It’s possible to set up a self-custodial wallet that you host yourself, plus - Add all kinds of bells and whistles, like phone app and browser plugin - The software I’m using is Albyhub and Phoenixd, deployed with Docker to a cheap VPS - I can now receive payments to my Lightning Address rodbishop@getalby.com **Payments on Nostr** One of the great features of Nostr is integrated payments. This feature integrates financial transactions directly into the social network, as a seamless part of using the network. You can get paid by and pay anyone on the network, to or from anywhere in the world, and for any reason, in a way that is instant and nearly free. The payments get to be instant and global and free because they are made in Bitcoin, using the Bitcoin payments network called The Lightning Network. Per Bitcoin, payments are denominated in satoshis (sats). A sat is a one-hundred-millionth of a Bitcoin– US$1 is about 1,700 sats at the time of writing. Making a payment like this on Nostr is called a “zap” and usually indicated with a lightning bolt symbol (you are getting “zapped by lightning”). You might say to your friend ”I'll zap you 1,700 sats”. This unlocks all kinds of interesting things that are not possible with other social networks, like - “value for value”–A publisher publishes something of value and you can tip them if you like it - Payments between friends–Nostr can do everything that Cash App and Venmo can do, right down to splitting payments to multiple recipients - Payments for creators–you can sell or pay to access premium content similar to any kind of paywall site like Patreon or Substack - Payments to AIs–you can pay for automated AI-based services including for translation, image generation, or creating custom curated social media feeds - All other kinds of ecommerce–you can sell or buy anything you want similar to Gumtree or Facebook marketplace Every Nostr user can have this set up. It's free or nearly free to set up, nearly free to make payments, and some apps like Primal will even set it up for you by default. Moreover it's useful and it's fun. - When you help someone out to receive a little tip for doing so, or - When you get some great advice to show your appreciation in a more meaningful way than a like **Ways to set up lightning for zaps on Nostr** You can get paid in Bitcoin to a lightning address. This looks exactly like an email address except you can make a payment to it from a lightning wallet. Anyone can publish their lightning address on Nostr so that you can pay them. And you can also get your own lightning address on your own Nostr profile so that people can pay you. The lightning address links to a server that’s always active and ready to credit your balance whenever you receive payments. To make that happen at a high level there are two options, either: - Open an account with a custodial lightning provider who will keep an always on server with your wallet on it, live and ready to receive payments for you. Primal does this automatically for you in their Nostr client, or you can use any one of the other popular custodial wallets like Wallet of Satoshi, Zeus, Coinos, or many others - Set up your own self-custodial lightning server that runs on an always-on computer or server, which you can administer yourself Generally using a custodial service will be easier, but comes with the need to trust that third party custodian, and may limit you to pay within their app. For myself I'm going to self host using Albyhub by npub1getal6ykt05fsz5nqu4uld09nfj3y3qxmv8crys4aeut53unfvlqr80nfm, and Phoenixd by Acinq. **Hosting your own lightning server with Albyhub and Phoenixd** Anyone who's experimented with self-sovereign setups for Bitcoin know that historically there's been quite a bit of heavy lifting. My number one favourite feature of what Albyhub and Phoenixd have done together is to create a nearly instant set up with no heavy lifting. I was stunned. For anyone who's used to jumping through hoops with this, it was like magic. You can use Albyhub with any lightning wallet backend, but in my view none are as automatic, and magic, as Phoenixd. Compare the traditional set up with the Albyhub and Phoenixd setup. Traditional– - Set up a Bitcoin core node - Download the entire Bitcoin blockchain (wait several days for it to download) - Set up a Bitcoin lightning node - Purchase payment liquidity to enable payments to the network - On an ongoing basis continue to keep your blockchain in sync with the network - On an ongoing basis manage your inbound and outbound liquidity to your network peers Vs Albyhub and Phoenixd– - No Bitcoin core - No initial block download - Phoenixd provides liquidity for you automatically and by default - Nothing to keep in sync with the network - No liquidity to manage For any normal non-technical user, self-hosting your own lightning node just went from being too hard, to very achievable. **Unpacking the parts** There are a few parts to this set up and there’s a bit of assumed knowledge here, so let’s quickly unpack it - Bitcoin–money for the internet, which enables payments to and from anywhere - Lightning–the main payments network that sits on top of Bitcoin, which makes transactions instantly and with very low fees - Phoenixd–a lightning wallet back-end with special methods for managing liquidity that makes it almost no-touch to set up and manage - Albyhub–a lightning front-end with an easy to-use wallet, and a feature called “Nostr Wallet Connect” (NWC) which connects the wallet to Nostr - AlbyGo–a phone app so you can make payments on your phone - Alby Plugin–a web browser plugin so you can make payments on your browser, and also log into Nostr from your browser (using NIP-07) - NWC–a method for connecting your wallet directly to Nostr apps so that you can spend from your wallet balance without even leaving the app - Lightning Address–an address like an email address where you can receive payments (using LNURLp; Lightning Network URL) I'm going to plug it all together, so that I can pay for anything in any way I like (from NWC, Alby Plugin or Alby Go), and receive payment from anyone (to our Lightning Address), with all funds managed on my own server (hosting Albyhub and Phoenixd). **How to set up Albyhub and Phoenixd** To set this up requires basic command line knowledge, and some experience with Docker. I didn’t have that experience, so I gave ChatGPT the docs on each of Albyhub and Phoenixd and it walked me through the setup. To start with, I got myself a cheap VPS, and installed Docker. Docker then allowed me to deploy Albyhub and Phoenixd as a container. The Albyhub Github contains very helpful readme, here <https://github.com/getAlby/hub> And Phoenixds own docs here <https://phoenix.acinq.co/server> and here <https://github.com/ACINQ/phoenixd> Alby also has a dedicated section to working with Albyhub with Phoenixd backend, here <https://github.com/getAlby/hub/blob/master/scripts/linux-x86_64/phoenixd/README.md> First, install Docker and make sure it is running. Then working with the code on the Albyhub with Phoenixd page– - Get the docker-compose.yml file which will instruct Docker to create the relevant containers, - Create the directories for the files to be stored in - Launch the containers That’s it. Docker will proceed to create the application for you running on port 8080 You can then log in in a web browser and start the setup– - There’s a helpful step-by-step guide to walk you through the set up including to set up a password for your hub - It will ask you to connect your Alby account. I skipped that step as I didn’t have one at the time, I only created one later - If you used the default lightning back-end, Alby will then ask you to buy your first liquidity to enable you to make payments. Or, if you are using Phoenixd, then the step is automatic and you can go right ahead to transfer in some initial funds **Setting up the bells and whistles** That's the hard part done. The next step is add all the little extra pieces that make for a great Nostr experience. Alby Browser Plugin– - Download the Alby Browser Plugin to your web browser and create an account - It will give you a new Nostr and Lightning account by default, and you can replace it - For me I had my own keys already saved with a mnemonic backup, and I wanted to use these. I went to Settings and clicked “Remove Master Key”, then entered the mnemonic backup of my own keys. I also went to Nostr Settings and clicked “Derive from Master Key” to replace the one it generated by default. - Visit Albyhub, and connect the Alby Account - This completes the set up to login and zap with Nostr on any Nostr site Alby Go App - Download the Alby Go App to your phone from your phone’s app store - Vist Albyhub, go to the Alby App Store, and click Alby Go - It will help you to create a connection between your Albyhub and Alby Go Nostr Wallet Connect - You can use the Alby App Store to connect any Nostr app in the same way - Vist Albyhub, go to the Alby App Store, and click on any Nostr App - I used Amethyst, and I was able to create a connection between Amethyst Nostr app and Albyhub, so that when I click the “zap” icon in Amethyst it can automatically spend from my Albyhub wallet without any further clicks Your own Lightning Address - Your Alby Account in your Alby Browser Plugin gives you a Lightning Address by default. It is generated randomly to start with, and you can replace it. - Open the Alby Browser Plugin and visit Settings - Click “Change on [getalby.com](http://getalby.com)” and change it to something that suits you - I changed mine to rodbishop@getalby.com That completes the set up. **Backups** Now that everything is set up, it’s time to make a backup. I already had my Nostr keys as a mnemonic backup from my last article, and I’m using these keys for my Alby Account, so there is nothing new to back up there. But we still need backups for the Albyhub login credentials, and the Phoenixd wallet. When started for the first time, Phoenixd will generate a 12-word mnemonic of its own, which it will use to restore your wallet balance in case of any issue. This recovery phrase is stored in the phoenix folder you created, at \~/.phoenixd/seed.dat. In total, your backups will contain: - Your 12 word mnemonic backup of your Nostr keys, that is also the same master 12 word mnemonic for your Alby account - Your 12 word mnemonic backup for your Phoenixd wallet, that is created by the daemon when it first runs at \~/.phoenixd/seed.dat - Three passwords: 1) Your password for your Alby account, 2) Your password for your Alby Hub, 3) Your password for your Phoenixd (that is hardcoded into the docker-compose.yml) Once these are backed up somewhere safely, you can fully recover your set up if ever anything goes wrong. **Things I did wrong in set up so that you don’t have to** Initially I had some trouble with user permissions. I was able to resolve it by changing the user configuration in the docker-compose.yml. I also had some trouble with the initial funds transfer. In order to test everything without risking significant funds, I made an initial transfer to the hub of 10 satoshis. - The transfer was received immediately, but - The available balance stayed at zero, and - I couldn’t make any payments (insufficient funds) I thought this was a bug in my set up, but it turns out this is a feature of Phoenixd auto-liquidity, that it keeps some initial sats as a payment credit to buy the required lightning channel liquidity. The total cost amounts to on average 1% charge, but it is also front-loaded, and because my payment was so very tiny (10 satoshis worth a fraction of a cent) the payment was entirely front-loaded. I diagnosed this by accessing Phoenixd directly in the cli, and by doing so, I was able to see the balance present, as a fee credit. To check, run– - docker-compose exec albyhub-phoenixd /phoenix/bin/phoenix-cli --http-password=&lt;your-password-here&gt; getbalance And receive a response like this, which shows the credit on the account – - { "balanceSat": 0, "feeCreditSat": 10 } The above command– - accesses the albyhub-phoenixd container “docker-compose exec albyhub-phoenixd”, - then accesses the phoenix-cli application at “/phoenix/bin/phoenix-cli” - and asks the application to “getbalance” Helpful docs– - Phoenixd talks about that fee credit behaviour quite clearly at their own site, here <https://phoenix.acinq.co/server> - They also provide docs on their cli to interact directly with their daemon (rather than using Alby), which you can read here <https://phoenix.acinq.co/server/get-started> I wondered what the total initial amount would be that would be captured as fee credit. Your mileage might vary, but for me: - I transferred in 2,100 sats (about $1.20) - I received a working balance of 775 sats, so I paid 1,325 sats in fees - I then transferred in another 2,100 sats - I received all 2,100 sats (paid no fees at all on the second transaction) All up only a few cents to get started with initial liquidity. **In summary** Nostr has integrated payments that are instant and nearly free, using Satoshis on the Lightning Network. Some Nostr clients come with a wallet set up automatically, and it is quite easy to set up your own self-custody wallet, with all the bells and whistles. I wanted to set up my own self-custody wallet so that I could test and learn the full set up of the system. For this I used Albyhub and Phoenixd, and I deployed it to a cheap VPS using Docker. Once set up, I added all the extra bits so that now– - I can login to Nostr from my web browser with the Alby Browser Plugin - I can make payments from there too, or from the AlbyGo App, or from any Nostr app I like - I can receive payments to my Lightning Address [rodbishop@getalby.com](mailto:rodbishop@getalby.com) And in doing this– - I don’t rely on any third-party custodian to take care of my funds - I had no hard work to install this setup, and expect no ongoing admin to keep it running - With everything set up, the system simply works (so far!) For anyone interested in Nostr or Bitcoin software or technologies, I recommend to go through a set up like this as it really covers the full gamut or the Nostr–Lightning–Bitcoin stack. It’s clear how far this technology has come and how powerful it can get from here. **Up next** - Please let me know if this kind of post is helpful or anything you’d like me to improve or expand upon - For my next post I’ll show how I set up Nostr and lightning addresses at your own domain with Sveltekit and Vercel

## Chef's notes This recipe originates from Meat Church BBQ. It's simple to make and tastes great if you like spicy food. While this recipe is for chicken, I feel that it would be just as good on skirt steak or other poultry. ## Details - ⏲️ Prep time: 25 minutes - 🍳 Cook time: 20 minutes - 🍽️ Servings: 8-10 ## Ingredients - 8-10 Chicken Thighs ( Boneless Skinless) - 26 oz Can Pickled Jalapeno Peppers (La Costena Brand Whole Jalapenos Recommended) - 1 Stick Unsalted Butter - 8oz Bottle Cholula Hot Sauce - Fajita Seasoning (Meat Church Dai De La Fajita Seasoning Recommended) - 8 Slices of Cheese (Cheddar, Pepper Jack, Whatever You Like... recommend Colby PepperJack) ## Directions 1. Combine boneless skinless chicken thighs in a ziplock back with the entire can of pickled jalapeno peppers. Marinate for up to 24 hours based on desired spicyness. 2. Once marinate time has ended, remove chicken thighs and pat dry. Season both sides of chicken with the fajita seasoning and allow 15 minutes to adhere. Save the jalapeno peppers for grilling. 3. While the meat rests, melt one stick of unsalted butter and mix with the 8oz of Cholula Hot Sauce. 4. Cook the chicken on a hot grill, turning and basting the chicken regularly. This will insure a good char and ensure they chicken cooks evenly. Cook the chicken until the internal tempurature reaches 165. 5. Place cheese over each piece of chicken and melt thoroughly. Remove chicken and grilled jalapenos from the grill. 6. This dish pairs well with a toasted bun and mayo if desired, or as a stand alone main dish.

giving habla a test

¿Alguna vez has querido regalarle sats a alguien en forma física? Con una billetera LNbits, puedes crear fácilmente una tarjeta de regalo NFC. Esto funciona escribiendo un enlace LNURLw en la tarjeta NFC, desde el cual el destinatario puede retirar sus sats con una billetera compatible con LNURL. ## ¿Qué necesitas? - Billetera LNbits - Teléfono Android - Tarjeta NFC con capacidades de al menos NTAG2*, por ejemplo, NTAG216. Consulta la nostr:naddr1qqxnzd3e8qcr2wfn8qcrgwf4qyg8wumn8ghj7mn0wd68ytnhd9hx2q3qtx0k0a7lw62vvqax6p3ku90tccgdka7ul4radews2wrdsg0m865sxpqqqp65whwqrr5 para saber dónde comprar las tarjetas. 💡 Las tarjetas NTAG2* te permiten escribir **un** enlace en ellas. Por ejemplo, pueden funcionar como una tarjeta de presentación que contiene la URL del sitio web de la empresa. Las tarjetas NTAG424 no solo tienen más memoria, sino que también cuentan con un parámetro SUN que permite la autenticación del servidor web, lo cual añade más seguridad a tus pagos. Este último tipo de tarjetas también se pueden convertir en [BoltCards](https://boltcard.org/). ## 1. Activa la extensión Abre tu billetera LNbits. Activa la extensión LNURLw desde la barra de herramientas y entra en la extensión. ## 2. Crea un enlace de retiro - En la página de la extensión LNURLw, elige `Advanced Withdraw Link(s)` ("Enlace(s) de retiro avanzado"). - Selecciona la billetera desde la cual se retirarán los sats. Probablemente quieras separar esto de tu billetera principal de LNbits. Para hacerlo, puedes crear primero una nueva billetera LNbits yendo a la barra de herramientas y seleccionando `+ Agregar nueva billetera`, luego depositando algunos sats en la billetera recién creada.  - Asigna un título al enlace de retiro. - Establece los montos mínimo y máximo que se pueden canjear. - Establece el número de veces que se puede utilizar el enlace y el tiempo entre intentos de retiro. - Opcionalmente, puedes añadir una imagen personalizada marcando la casilla `Use a custom voucher design` ("Usar un diseño de cupón personalizado") e ingresando la URL de una imagen en formato .png. - No marques la casilla de usar un codigo QR único. Cuando estés satisfecho con la configuración, procede a crear el enlace de retiro. ## 3. Escribe el enlace en la tarjeta NFC En tu enlace de retiro recién creado, haz clic en `view LNURL` ("ver LNURL"). Haz clic en el botón `Write to NFC` ("Escribir en NFC") y acerca tu tarjeta NFC a tu teléfono para que se pueda escribir en ella.  ✔️ HECHO 💡 Informa al destinatario de la tarjeta sobre el saldo de sats que tiene para que no pierda tiempo intentando obtener hasta el último satoshi. 💡 Una vez que el destinatario haya retirado sus sats de la tarjeta de regalo, puede volver a escribir en ella su propia billetera y reutilizarla. ¡Dos pájaros de un tiro! Si la tarjeta que le diste es NTAG424, puede convertirla en una "tarjeta de débito" de Lightning como describimos en la nostr:naddr1qqxnzd3e8qcr2wfn8qcrgwf4qyg8wumn8ghj7mn0wd68ytnhd9hx2q3qtx0k0a7lw62vvqax6p3ku90tccgdka7ul4radews2wrdsg0m865sxpqqqp65whwqrr5. Si la tarjeta es solo NTAG2*, entonces solo puede convertirla en otra tarjeta de regalo.

Nostr, like many freedom technologies, is a gift often born out of need. It shapes solutions to protect and empower the individual. To become an early adopter, it often takes a mixture of a visionary builder to recognize the principles at its core and the nemesis it is trying to avoid. Knowing that, it is simple to embrace it early on, regardless of the bugs and issues. As time passes, the development reaches a point where it seeks to go up a level, especially when it comes to user experience, but the journey to increased adoption becomes unclear. Nostr's adoption is at such a place, with an is-it-the-chicken-or-the-egg problem. Insiders understand and value the principles behind its protocol. They want to welcome others by improving nostr features based on feedback. The outside, however, is not coming in to give it, at least based on real world nostr testing. To an outsider with a large audience in a platform, nostr needs to have their audience in order for them to consider moving here, but their audience is not going to move here before they do. The possibility is large that a good margin of their audience will stay back. They will also need to help their audience through the nostr adoption process. Hence, many don't make the move. We might feel like this loop is never ending. Time and time again, we hear that people do not care about decentralization and censorship resistance, at least until they're censored. It is the censored who are more likely to move here, but they also need education in the matter. If they do not understand why nostr is the stronger solution for what they need, then they may fall for something giving the illusion of being decentralized and censorship resistant, as has often happened. People have tried to escape to Bluesky or Mastodon, yet unknowingly walk into systems built with similar principles to those platforms who have failed to protect their voices. Outside of censorship, it is easy to blame the absence of increased adoption to a lack of features and people running into more bugs or issues compared to platforms. Nostr is not a grouping of copied features, it is a new paradigm, and that is always difficult to grasp. We all have our personal stories of how we got into freedom tech, as unique and varied as the stars in the sky. I am an artist/designer, growing up in a culture of believing you need to protect your work. I used to be concerned about copyright, watermarks, branding, and the possibility of someone "stealing" my work. I placed considerable effort on walling off and protecting something that should have been free. Now, I release my work into the public domain. The journey of arriving at today's mindset has been deeply personal. It did not sprout out of nowhere. It came with an understanding of the why behind freedom tech. If you were speaking to my earlier self, I wish you would be careful with how you took my feedback. We can recognize the needs and wants of possible nostr users, digging deeper into their whys, but we need to avoid recreating the past, as happened with the internet as it moved toward centralization. Right now, the focus may be in what is not working in comparison to platforms, yet we should also consider that the principles behind nostr make it not only resilient but allow us to reimagine how so much of the digital world works in ways that platforms cannot do. The same limitations platforms place on the individual, limit their own flexibility on what and how to build. One way to adoption is through people running into a pain point like censorship, another is to encounter something so interesting that the alternative falls short no matter how you see it. Today, it can feel confusing to learn of a universe of apps you can use, because we are getting to the point of uncharted user experience. Can you imagine a time when discovery of the nostr network is fun and simple to do? A platform does not concern itself on how to connect different apps built by independent development efforts. They are walled gardens and silos. A platform does not have to figure out how to share a myriad of choices and tools to its users, because they control what their users can use and see, making the choices for them. A platform does not build for its people with its people, it builds for its advertisers. Nature, like nostr, is not a silo. From small ecosystems to entire galaxies, everything is connected. Technology has managed to create artificial silos where control gets built in, but not control as individual choice, instead control of everyone who joins. The beauty of nostr is in shaping the opposite. It is a space where network effects, like in nature, reach you regardless of where you are on nostr. There is no single path, yet we all walk together. Nostr is unique in how it can build what is imagined. You cannot go to YouTube or Facebook and have developers consider shaping and reshaping their products for a different feature just from a random conversation with you. If it happens, it is an outlier, and you are unlikely to know the developers, designers, or contributors who made it happen. However, in my time here, nostr is a connected community, forging stronger bonds not only online but IRL. What gets talked about gets built, tested, reshaped. Independent projects can work with one another supporting both the protocol and their products. Everyone can unmarket their products and their nostr. I love the "unmarketing" term, coined by Vanessa, vrod@damus.io nostr:npub1h50pnxqw9jg7dhr906fvy4mze2yzawf895jhnc3p7qmljdugm6gsrurqev, because it encompasses the imagining beyond what we know. The marketing without the "un" may have had us advertising on Google or Facebook. If you find that silly, then you understand how that goes against many principles of nostr, from avoiding making people a product, to avoiding sharing nostr with people as an advertisement to an audience we don't know nor understand on a deeper human level. The pull to go back to what seems to work for platforms may be there, but the path of nostr comes from an organic movement where speed and popularity are not the goals. The goal comes from building something meaningful that cares about empowering and protecting the individual using nostr. The greatest nostr strength has always been its people. From the beginning, nostr has been a testing ground. We are getting deeper into the user experience. We may get impatient, hoping more people will come in, but this is the perfect time to imagine, build, and test. Instead of waiting for people to join and attempting to recreate the old in order to bring them in, we can choose to walk an unmarketing path, becoming both the ostrich and the egg. In a world that seems intent on removing those very qualities where nostr shines, we can walk forward, guided by the principles we value, to imagine and build the nostr we wish to inhabit. As we come to a point where we need to move forward on uncharted paths, perhaps the best remedy is an openness of ideas, issues, and efforts. You are welcome to join the experimental nostr community [freedomweaver.club](https://freedomweaver.club) built with ditto. It is a space to share what's happening in different areas of nostr for a more holistic perspective, hoping to step outside of the bubble of each independent development effort and into mutual collaboration across different spheres.

## Previous updates - Check them all out here: <https://highlighter.com/jeffg.fyi> ## Progress this week It was a busy one. I've been focused on the critical path of getting the full end-to-end MLS messaging flow built into White Noise. Unfortunately, or fortunately for those that will come after, this has necessitated writing quite a bit of library code and figuring out how clients should think about storing the necessary group state and secrets. Today I released the highly creatively named [openmls-sled-storage](https://github.com/erskingardner/openmls-sled-storage). This is a storage adapter for Sled DB, an embedded database written in Rust. This allows clients to simply give their clients a file path where they want to store the data and the library will take care of the rest with regards to MLS storage. Another bit of library code is a customer MLS extension called NostrGroupData (again with a wildly creative title - check it out in the WN repo [here](https://github.com/erskingardner/whitenoise/blob/master/src-tauri/src/nostr_mls/nostr_group_data.rs)). This is a standardized way of storing the necessary metadata about a group that will allow it to function properly with Nostr conventions as well as basic data like Group name, description, etc. This, in specific, is the source of quite a few updates to the NIP, but overall it's going to give clients implementing MLS groups assurances that the data required is not only formatted the same, but cryptographically guaranteed to be there and respected by each group member, or the group will fork. ## White Noise The client currently supports multiple accounts, including generating new Nostr identities on the fly. It's also loading user's contact lists, and NIP-04 DMs at the moment as well. This week I managed to build out nearly the entire group creation flow. This includes publishing and fetching key packages (kind: 443 events), inviting another user to create a group, sending welcome messages (kind: 444 events), and I've started working on both parsing those welcome messages and how to represent the groups in the UI in a way that makes reasonable sense to users. ## No showstoppers I know this might sound insane after working on this project for several months already but I'm genuinely surprised that I've not run into any big unknown unknowns yet. Everything is coming together well and, while it's taking me some time to build it right and think carefully about where and how data is being stored and passed around, I'm very confident the client is going to be up and running in a few weeks (famous last words). ## The NIP As I mentioned before, I've left the NIP dormant while I'm working on implementing the entire messaging flow. Once I've got the flow fully built out, I'll know all the details that need to change and I'll update the NIP. If anyone out there wants to chat about the changes I already know are coming, let me know. ## Feedback & contributions always welcome Thoughts? Questions? Want to contribute? Hit me up. ## P.S. The plant in the cover image is Asparagus Officinalis. My grandfather was the only person I knew growing up that grew it and, as a result, I also grow it at home. The interesting thing about Asparagus (other than making your pee smell funny) is that it takes several years before it starts bearing edible veggies. It's a low time preference plant and further proof that good things take time.

* Worked on the async requests with a pool for handling the request concurrent * This is a full working example where a request (to fetch Nostr events) is made to ~10 relays [https://gist.github.com/Sebastix/b4493018020d1d2b74e68016720ea70c](https://gist.github.com/Sebastix/b4493018020d1d2b74e68016720ea70c)  * Updated the following [nostr-php.dev](http://nostr-php.dev) guide pages: * Generate keys * Publish an event * Verify event

Stopped having fluoride in my toothpaste this year. What happened? Short backstory, I never had any bad teeth, no cavities. Instead I always had a lot of plack build up. With time I stopped going to the dentist and instead went to a dental hygienist who clean away my plack twice or trice per year. No matter the amount of flossing (and I do use an electric toothbrush), the plack always built up. So I stopped using toothpaste with #fluoride and replaced with non-fluoride #toothpaste and a once-per-week home made recipe containing baking soda, coconut oil, active charcoal, sea salt and a few drops of mint. Not sure if it's the lack of fluoride or this new weekly routine, but my plack is gone! I still floss sometimes, but the build up is removed when I do it. It doesn't get stuck as hard as it did before. Here's the recipe, if you want join another controversy: ## Plaque Removal & Whitening Mix the ingredients as a paste in a glass jar: - 2 tbsp coconut oil (heat a little until liquid) - 1 tbsp baking soda - 1 tsp active charcoal powder or crushed tablet (add with stirring so it doesn't clump) - 1 pinch Celtic salt (or other sea salt) - 5-10 drops of peppermint essential oil After it hardens again, pick up a good dab with your toothbrush and brush for 4-5 minutes. ## How it works Baking soda and salt help break down plaque, while coconut oil has antimicrobial properties. Activated charcoal removes stains and whitens your teeth, from coffee and wine. Activated charcoal's porous nature means it binds to substances, including surface stains on your teeth. When you brush with the homemade toothpaste, the activated charcoal works to lift and absorb stains, promoting a brighter smile over time. Baking soda contributes to the abrasive quality of the paste and helps remove plaque and further surface discoloration. ## How often? Use once a week, preferably every Sunday evening. Then you use a toothpaste, ***without*** [[Fluoride]] is recommended, for the rest of the week. #alternativeHealth

If you only clicked on the post to tell me crypto sucks let me disappoint - crypto in this case stands for cryptography, as it is for a long time before shitcoins came into existence. Many of you might have read Paul Rosenberg's amazing [A lodging of wayfaring men](https://freemansperspective.com/product/a-lodging-of-wayfaring-men/). Some of you might even know that npub1klkk3vrzme455yh9rl2jshq7rc8dpegj3ndf82c3ks2sk40dxt7qulx3vt recently created [an audiobook version of it](https://freemansperspective.com/audiobook-a-lodging-of-wayfaring-men/). But there is a story that predates that book, a real story that probably served as an inspiration for A lodging of wayfaring men. That story is called [The Untold Story of the Greatest Crypto Project Ever](https://freemansperspective.com/product/the-untold-story-of-the-greatest-crypto-project-ever-e-book/). If you are too cheap to buy it (you should support Paul, he is a legend!) there is a way to read it free as it was published as blog posts. It took a bit to dig them up since the originals on his blog are not available anymore but I think the story is too inspiring not to be shared. [Introduction](https://web.archive.org/web/20221006080808/https://freemansperspective.com/untold-story-greatest-crypto-project-ever-introduction/) [Part 1](https://www.freedomsphoenix.com/Article/254699-2019-01-17-the-untold-story-of-the-greatest-crypto-project-ever-part.htm) [Part 2](https://www.freedomsphoenix.com/Article/255038-2019-01-24-the-untold-story-of-the-greatest-crypto-project-ever-part.htm) [Part 3]( https://www.freedomsphoenix.com/Article/255408-2019-01-31-the-untold-story-of-the-greatest-crypto-project-ever-part.htm) [Part 4](https://www.freedomsphoenix.com/Article/255758-2019-02-07-the-untold-story-of-the-greatest-crypto-project-ever-part.htm) [Part 5](https://www.freedomsphoenix.com/Article/256127-2019-02-14-the-untold-story-of-the-greatest-crypto-project-ever-part.htm) [Part 6](https://www.freedomsphoenix.com/Article/256562-2019-02-22-the-untold-story-of-the-greatest-crypto-project-ever-part.htm) This story is a great starting point to dig further into people involved and their cypherpunk and anarhocapitalist ideas from the 90s. Maybe more on that in another post.

A escolha de algo implica abdicar de uma outra coisa. Quando investimos num determinado item vamos ter custos associados a essa decisão, no entanto a melhor forma de pensar nesses custos não será apenas dinheiro que possamos estar a investir mas em todas as possibilidades de que abdicamos para que possamos investir nesse item. Suponhamos o seguinte cenário, um milionário decide dar uma esmola a um mendigo no valor de 10€, nesse mesmo dia um pobre passa no mesmo local onde está o mendigo e tendo apenas 10 € na carteira decide dar tudo ao mendigo. Apesar de em termos nominais se tratar da mesma quantia facilmente percebemos que o custo de oportunidade é significativamente diferente para o pobre e para o milionário. Esta aferição do custo de oportunidade superior coloca-nos interessantes questões no que diz respeito às razões particulares que levaram a pessoa a tomar a decisão. É lógico esperar que aquele que incorre no maior custo de oportunidade tem uma forte razão para tomar determinada decisão. Importante também é esta ideia de que priorizamos umas coisas em detrimento de outras, o pobre pode ter ficado sem almoço ao dar todo o dinheiro que lhe restava, caso fosse assim ele de facto priorizou o donativo ao alimentar-se naquela circunstância. Quando temos 100€ e temos de escolher entre dois produtos de igual preço (100€ cada um), em condições normais vamos escolher o mais importante para nós, isto é o mais valioso. Estas decisões acontecem partindo do pressuposto que o nosso objetivo é maximizar o valor (aqui entendido subjetivamente). Este tipo de decisões têm ainda um outro fator chave, determinante na priorização das decisões: o tempo. Sendo um recurso escasso, o tempo cria um incentivo natural para a tomada de decisão dado que não podemos diferir a decisão eternamente. Pensando no exemplo concreto da escolha entre dos produtos referidos sabemos que os produtos não estarão sempre disponíveis, dado que a loja pode fechar e além disso a disponibilidade dos produtos poderá estar condicionada caso o produto seja arrebatado por outra pessoa. Este aspecto implica na nossa decisão na medida em que, quando conscientes disto, temos que tomar uma decisão. Os [estoicos ](https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoicismo)e os religiosos repetem muitas vezes a expressão, [*memento mori*](https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_mori)*,* que significa: “lembra-te que morrerás”. Esta frase pungente serve como um despertador existencial, que nos recorda que este tempo acabará. O facto de lembrarmos da morte acorda-nos para aquilo que devemos priorizar, algo frequente ver-se por exemplo em pessoas que vivem situações traumáticas. Quando ultrapassadas as situações traumáticas, o resultado muitas vezes orienta as pessoas para uma redefinição das prioridades de vida, chamamos a isto o crescimento pós-traumático. > “Nos ossos que aqui estamos pelos vossos esperamos” Inscrição numa das portas da Igreja de São Francisco em Évora (Capela dos ossos) Além deste aspeto o tempo influi também de numa outra questão, na preferência temporal. Este conceito diz respeito à nossa capacidade ou incapacidade em diferir a nossa gratificação, ou seja, se somos propensos à gratificação imediata dos nossos desejos ou se sacrificamos o presente com o intuito de obter uma recompensa maior no futuro. Este conceito ficou bem ilustrado no famoso [teste marshmallow](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKNu1qjgXaA) em que um grupo de crianças escolhidas por psicólogos tinham de escolher entre comer um marshmallow no imediato, ou esperar cinco minutos numa sala, tendo o marshmallow à sua frente sem o comer e assim receber o segundo. No caso das crianças que esperaram podemos concluir uma preferência temporal baixa, ao passo que os que decidiram comer de imediato o marshmallow revelam uma elevada preferência temporal. Para concluir esta ideia de que a preferência temporal influencia na toma de decisão diga-se, as crianças com mais baixa preferência temporal revelam: melhores competências sociais, melhor resposta ao stress, menor probabilidade de obesidade; tendo sido isto concluído em [estudos feitos à posteriori ](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3367285/)neste grupo. Olhando para estes exemplos podemos ver o quão determinantes estas questões são na forma como tomamos as decisões e estruturamos a nossa hierarquia de valor para que possamos aferir de forma mais exata qual a estratégia que nos permite maximizar este valor. Daqui penso que podemos facilmente perceber que a preferência temporal baixa e o custo de oportunidade elevado são marcadores importantes de que nos podemos estar a mover mais em direção a algo que valorizamos e é importante para nós. Atrevo-me a dizer que se não arriscamos nada, talvez aquilo que temos entre mãos não seja assim tão valioso. A maximização do risco é também a maximização do benefício, contudo isto deve sempre ser temperado pela baixa preferência temporal porque a decisão deve sustentar-se ao teste do tempo, idealmente ser algo que resiste mais à erosão que o tempo impõe àquilo que foi objeto da nossa decisão. Estes aspetos podem estar presentes quer nas decisões mais triviais como referia, decisões de consumo de bens mas também estão presentes noutras decisões como por exemplo: que tipo de relações procuramos com os outros, se mantemos ou não uma prática religiosa, se somos capazes ou não de negar as nossas vontades e impor a disciplina de procurar a excelência nas virtudes. Tudo isto será influenciado por estes aspetos e sendo conscientes destes mecanismos podemos então traçar um perfil mais ajustado à maximização do valor, não só no presente como no futuro. 

Nostr (Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays) is an open protocol designed to create a censorship-resistant global social network. It achieves this by shifting away from the traditional internet model of "dumb client/smart server" to a "smart client/dumb server" architecture. This means that instead of relying on centralized servers, Nostr uses a network of "relays" to store and distribute data. Here's a breakdown of key features of Nostr: - **Decentralized Network**: Nostr doesn't rely on any trusted central server, making it resilient to censorship. Users can publish their notes (content) to multiple relays of their choice, and followers can retrieve these notes by connecting to these relays. - **Cryptographic Security**: Nostr prioritizes security by using cryptographic keys and signatures for user authentication and content integrity. Every note is signed with the user's private key, allowing clients to verify the authenticity of messages and ensuring tamper-proof communication. - **User Control and Data Ownership**: Users have complete control over their data and choose which relays to interact with. This allows for more flexibility and customization compared to traditional social media platforms. - **Open Protocol and Diverse Ecosystem**: Nostr is an open standard, similar to protocols like HTTP or TCP-IP. This enables anyone to build clients, relays, or other applications on top of it, fostering a diverse ecosystem of software. - **Simplicity and Ease of Use**: Nostr is designed to be simple to understand and implement, with a focus on lightweight JSON data structures and straightforward communication protocols. This makes it easier for developers to contribute to the Nostr ecosystem and for users to get started. Nostr is gaining traction within cryptocurrency communities, particularly among Bitcoin users. Even Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, has shown support for Nostr's development through financial contributions. Some use Nostr through clients like Damus, a microblogging app. While Nostr offers a promising alternative to centralized social media, challenges remain. The decentralized nature of Nostr necessitates new solutions to issues like spam prevention and content discovery. Developers are actively exploring various approaches, including proof-of-work systems, paid relay options, and reputation-based mechanisms like "orange checks" to address these challenges.

## Merchant Comments I extracted about 900 valuable comments from our verification reports and I exposed them via BTC Map sync API. Comments turned out to be extremely valuable since they often add important context to certain Bitcoin merchants. The next steps are client app support and automating new comments. ## Feed Reader Support Some people are only interested in new places or comments in their areas, so they don’t want to install our apps and check them all the time. BTC Map data is open, and we never intended to lock users in, that’s why I created a few experimental Atom data feeds. Let’s say you want to get notified of new places and comments in the Netherlands, so now you can just add the following feeds to your feed reader of choice: [https://api.btcmap.org/feeds/new-places/nl](https://api.btcmap.org/feeds/new-places/nl) [https://api.btcmap.org/feeds/new-comments/nl](https://api.btcmap.org/feeds/new-comments/nl) Of course, you can mix and match any number of BTC Map areas, communities and countries alike. Web feed links are always available on our website, in area activity section. ## RPC Interface Most of our administrative tasks are now centralized, which means that processing new change requests might take a long time, depending on how busy we are. This model can’t scale, that’s why we’re building an admin API, alongside GUI and CLI tools which can be used to simplify access to many local administrative tasks. There is no ETA on that, but I think we’ll be able to delegate most tasks to local community managers pretty soon. ## Trending Countries 1. [Netherlands](https://btcmap.org/country/nl) - 190 events and comments 2. [Italy](https://btcmap.org/country/it) - 173 events and comments 3. [Germany](https://btcmap.org/country/de) - 169 events and comments 4. [Spain](https://btcmap.org/country/es) - 101 events and comments 5. [Portugal](https://btcmap.org/country/pt) - 98 events and comments 6. [El Salvador](https://btcmap.org/country/sv) - 95 events and comments 7. [United Kingdom](https://btcmap.org/country/gb) - 83 events and comments 8. [Brazil](https://btcmap.org/country/br) - 78 events and comments 9. [Switzerland](https://btcmap.org/country/ch) - 77 events and comments 10. [Czechia](https://btcmap.org/country/cz) - 74 events and comments Many merchants in the Netherlands were re-verified by [Comino](https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Comino), which shows that a single maintainer can keep the whole country up to date. Having a single maintainer per country would allow us to keep the whole world up to date, so if your country has some old and outdated merchants, we need your help! Italian re-verification effort can mostly be attributed to [mpbin](https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/mpbin). This user not only re-verified many existing places but also added some missing general tags such as contact details and so on. Those tags are extremely valuable, so even if your area is up-to-date, you might want to check if you have enough contact details for every merchant. This account apparently belongs to [Bitcoin Italia Network](https://bitcoinitalianetwork.com/), and it looks like they’re taking ownership over the whole region. Germany’s data was enhanced by many different accounts, but 65% of German locations are still outdated, so this country needs more love from local editors. Spain continues to be in a good shape, thanks to [descubrebitcoin](https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/descubrebitcoin) efforts, and Portugal data quality continues to improve, thanks to [Sxajne](https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Sxajne). Big thanks to [Rockedf](https://btcmap.org/tagger/7522075) for contributing to almost every region! ## Trending Communities 1. [Satoshi Spritz](https://btcmap.org/community/satoshi-spritz) - 176 events and comments 2. [Einundzwanzig Deutschlan](https://btcmap.org/community/einundzwanzig-deutschland) - 169 events and comments 3. [Einundzwanzig Portugal](https://btcmap.org/community/einundzwanzig-portugal) - 98 events and comments 4. [Einundzwanzig Schweiz](https://btcmap.org/community/einundzwanzig-schweiz) - 78 events and comments 5. [Bitcoin Association Switzerland](https://btcmap.org/community/bitcoin-association-switzerland) - 77 events and comments 6. [Dezentralschweiz](https://btcmap.org/community/dezentralschweiz) - 77 events and comments 7. [Bitcoin Berlin - El Salvador](https://btcmap.org/community/bitcoin-berlin) - 60 events and comments 8. [Free Madeira](https://btcmap.org/community/free-madeira) - 51 events and comments 9. [Berlin 2140](https://btcmap.org/community/berlin-2140) - 48 events and comments 10. [Einundzwanzig Berlin](https://btcmap.org/community/einundzwanzig-berlin) - 48 events and comments ## Global Metrics The number of verified merchants has dropped from 6,867 to 6,734 (-2%), which means that we’re struggling to keep more than 5-7 thousands of places up-to-date, and we need more contributors who can re-verify outdated merchants. The total number of merchants has increased from 11,685 to 11,833 (+1.3%), which is in line with our long-term trend. The stream of new merchants has no signs of tapering, we’re just struggling to maintain the old ones in certain regions. The average number of days since the last verification has increased from 323 to 340 (+5.3%), which means that our data is now significantly less reliable than it was a month ago. This is yet another confirmation that our main bottleneck is the lack of local maintainers. ## Conclusion Our main issue is growing number of outdated locations, and getting more maintainers can take some time. It’s not the only way to improve BTC Map though, so we can focus on highlighting the best quality merchants, which I’m intending to be busy with during October. I have a few ideas on using different quality signals, and it might make sense to simply mark or hide outdated or unreliable merchants. The best way to help us is to re-verify some outdated locations in your area, if you have any: [https://btcmap.org/map?outdated](https://btcmap.org/map?outdated)

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.

Testing new note with Comet

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.

#TheWholeGrain - #September2024 To start the second year of Bread and Toast off strong the September of 2024 includes five Sunday Singles, and the newest piece of cover art for a comic from Toast's Comic Collection includes a touch of color. Some bonus pieces of content were included this September. This includes one of the Political posts we all take so seriously, and a promotional piece for the upcoming npub10hj9rg5gds5x2gk0z0s2jlqnq04jg7g30aj2t5pqzdaaztfactgsnze5ny event coming up in October. The Concept Art released this month is an early design of a possible website logo. This month's Bitcoin Art stars End-Piece who is well informed on what money really is and asks the question, "Do you?" **September Sunday Singles** 2024-09-01 | Sunday Single 055 Jump Rope https://i.nostr.build/ESlb23xVmTQLw7sw.png 2024-09-08 | Sunday Single 056 Trampoline https://i.nostr.build/1HNutqYQUjsA1JaG.png 2024-09-15 | Sunday Single 057 Hippity Hop https://i.nostr.build/5dTyLA0FJdK2rNol.png 2024-09-22 | Sunday Single 058 Jumping on the Bed https://i.nostr.build/PWaHDMroMjjfPmWS.png 2024-09-29 | Sunday Single 059 Shades https://i.nostr.build/pWeIZrttOjpcXAtz.png **Other Content Released in September 2024** 2024-09-04 | Toast's Comic Collection Teenage Mutant Ninja Bread #5 Four brothers trained in ninjutsu live underneath the city and come up to the surface in order to save it! https://i.nostr.build/WPSB1qn2lMRlbdwJ.png 2024-09-10 | Politics Debate Night The first official debate between the candidates for Selection2024. https://i.nostr.build/wppFU8U3NJCww6U0.png 2024-09-11 | Concept Art Early Website Logo Design This is an early concept for a logo. It was never used. https://i.nostr.build/hxhzvtS4fCe0imNh.png 2024-09-18 | Bitcoin Art On Top of It End-Piece knows what money is. Do you? https://i.nostr.build/6TCWK5d1ynPhrteA.png 2024-09-27 | Nostr Valley Nostr Valley 001 Bread is getting prepared for NostrValley! Hope to see you there! https://i.nostr.build/nQqsPGmJ8hjvxROK.png **September Additions to The Bakery in 2024** 2024-09-05 | npub1895dg7n47ldxxq8hyqj9h4xa3xwwxzpnn8lm7hydag4tck6cfj3qcmc4f0 https://m.primal.net/KgDW.jpg 2024-09-26 | npub1hcusg0xp9maamlh9vnv4mf635uwldsfeut00ghzrrjk7kjjh8j3sf9049l https://image.nostr.build/a0a64d709376b3650ebde0f3de5076748d69a999aef9e5fbd882574d5e64cf88.jpg We hope you enjoyed this first issue of The Whole Grain. The Whole Grain will be released on the first of every month and will cover all of the content released by npub1ew4qeq576v3vz4gukeseknqghx3x4jtlld8ftys9amrca6f3xfzsrm8jpd in the previous month. Thanks for checking it out, Bread, Toast, and End-Piece #BreadandToast #SundaySingle #ToastsComicCollection #ConceptArt #BitcoinArt #TheBakery #Bread #Toast #EndPiece #Art #Artstr #DigitalArt #Comic #Manga #NostrValley #NostrOnly #🖼️

I applaud anybody who manages to leave legacy social media behind and embrace NOSTR only. I, however won’t be doing that. I have many IRL friends who post on these platforms and I often communicate through these platforms with them. I do also post, not excessively, and primarily on Facebook, where most of my IRL friends hangout. But I also have a couple of IRL friends on Instagram and Xitter. I watch their lives and message them frequently. One has a hotel / restaurant / wine room and the other runs a social media agency. My restaurant friend is a semi professional relationship and I would not be able to maintain contact with them easily without remaining on Xitter and my social media agency friend has her entire life on Instagram and TikTok. I follow her often and communicate via WhatsApp gradually purple pilling her towards NOSTR. She is curious, but I am honest in saying she cannot get a significant revenue stream from NOSTR yet. She employs around 8 staff and has some large brands she works with. They are part of NOSTR’s future, but we are not ready yet. I also use legacy social media, primarily Xitter to stay in touch with events in the real world. The recent OCEAN mining pool outage was only posted on Xitter and so I acted as a bridge and cross posted to NOSTR. I have also been following the fortunes of Roger Ver, Calvin Ayre, CZ and Craig Wright as well as following events in FTX’s life and that of Caroline Ellison. Also, the latest events in OpenAI have been unfolding dramatically on Xitter and seeing what Elon is doing with Xitter as well as cars and rockets I feel is very important. I tend not to judge or critique directly, I prefer to keep my opinions private, but it is much more important to talk to people you disagree with or dislike than to communicate with people you agree with and like. The later makes you feel good, but is an enclosed echo chamber, which generally achieves little. The former allows you to understand your enemies and your opposition, in what ever arena that may be. This gives you an advantage and is another type of cheat code. In short, I listen and talk to everybody, my enemies and opposition more than my friends and colleagues because I need to understand the whole world, not just the part I occupy. I am not an influencer, but I have been more successful in my own field than you may imagine and operate in ways that would feel alien to most. To distinguish who to pay attention to, you can gauge the same signals with wealth as you can with success. The richest are those you never hear or see, the less well off are people in the public eye that drive the Lambos we all joke about. So it is with wealth and success, some cannot avoid being in the public domain, but most are hidden. Be aware of this when you see the illusions people portray, it is rarely real. I am explaining this because I am of an older generation and am now in the second act of my life. I feel obliged to offer this advice to anybody who wishes to listen as we Bitcoiners tend to pride ourselves on our ability to think individually, yet pervading evidence tells me this is less frequent than we portray. Don’t follow the crowd, don’t focus on swelling the echo chamber. You don’t need to tell people you disagree or have a different opinion, but keep hold of your own thoughts and reasoning and keep testing to see if it’s valid. Be your own person. In the words of one now departed, “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish”

**CI/CD pipelines are great tools for the development cycle of an application, however, they're also very much centralized on platforms like GitHub and GitLab. In this blog I'm exploring the idea of decentralizing these tools using Nostr, and how I think DVM's will be the way forward. But first, let's explore the problem itself...** ## Current situation  Let's establish a baseline first. The average CI/CD pipeline looks something like this, where the first part represents the CI part and the green ones the CD part. ### CI (⚫) Pretty much any build starts with a commit being made on a project. That triggers the code to be pulled by a [build agent](##Definitions). That code then gets fed to a [Runner](##Definitions) that will build your code and produce some kind of [artifact](##Definitions) as an output. That artifact is then pushed to a repository appropriate for the kind of project. Meaning a docker container might be pushed to [Docker Hub](https://hub.docker.com/), a library in TypeScript might be pushed to [NPM](https://www.npmjs.com/search?q=nostr-dev-kit) and so on. That concludes the CI part of the pipeline. ### CD (🟢) While the CI part of CI/CD is often executed for every commit, the CD part is not. Most likely the CD part is only done when you want to release a new version of your software, either manually or automatically when you push to the `main` branch. Here the pipeline will take whatever artifact has been produced from the artifact store, such as Docker Hub and download it. It will also fetch some configuration necessary to boot the application. And lastly the Artifact is booted with that configuration. CD pipelines tend to be much more customized to the needs of the person/organization running the artifact. ### 📜 Facts & Assumptions - This system works regardless of wether or not the maintainer is online. - You need authorization to push to most artifact stores - You trust the entity (company) that runs the build agents to: - keep login credentials safe. - not be compromised and inject malicious code or push malicious artifacts in your name. - not deplatform your project for political reasons. - Each step in the process is executed by the same agent, or at least -in case of multiple- they share state. - You trust the artifact store to store your build output and not alter the contents. - The person pulling the artifact for deployment trusts the artifact store to give them the correct file. ## ⚠️ The problem Most people like the convenience of automated CI/CD pipelines to they don't have to build, package and distribute every version of their software manually. But when dealing with sensitive software like BTC wallets or privacy tools, entrusting centralized entities with the building and distribution of that software can pose a big risk. Moving into the future, this risk will only increase overtime. Even if the entity is friendly towards these projects it can be forced to take action against any project. The alternative is to build software manually anyway, or self-host these automation tools which can be cumbersome and not transparent when collaborating on a project. Also, this approach heavily relies on the presence of a project owner/maintainer. At the same time, the machines of targeted developers also risk being compromised and therefore risk distributing malicious software as well. ## 🌖 The goal What if we can achieve the convenience and transparency of automated CI/CD pipelines, but without the risks of centralized entities? I think Nostr gives us a framework to help us achieve that and even reduce risks of supply-chain attacks in the process. So the goal is to: - Run automated software builds without risk of compromised build agents or developer computers. - Store the output artifacts of builds in immutable, verifyable, decentralized storage. - Sign and distribute software to users without chokepoints. ## 🧩 What to work on? So there are 4 steps on the way from code to a running application. Each of these aspects need to be accounted for to achieve the goal: 1. Source code collaboration 2. Build/test processes 3. Storage of artifacts 4. Discovery of artifacts (artifact/app stores) Let's get into them: 1) This is already covered by other Nostr projects that implement [# NIP-34 (git stuff)](https://nips.nostr.com/34) so we won't focus on that. 2) The build and test process has no [solution](##Definitions) (known to me), so that needs most work. 3) Storage of artifacts is covered by [Blossom](##Definitions) which gives us decentralized, hash-based file storage, but I don't yet know when and by whom (npub) during the build process the file(s) should be uploaded. There also seems to be no current projects that act as artifact stores over Nostr for Docker images, NPM packages, etc... 4) This is already being worked on with projects like [zap.store](https://zap.store), so we won't focus on that either. That means I'm focussing on number 2 and 3. ## 🧭 Possible approaches Up until now I have mostly described the problem and where we want to go, but haven't gone into the HOW yet. The following are my initial ideas on how to approach this problem and reach our goal. Please share your feedback, questions and ideas with me so we can discuss them. ### Use of DVM's First and foremost, I believe Data Vending Machines (DVM) as defined in [NIP-90](https://nips.nostr.com/90) are to play a very important role in providing the compute for these decentralized pipelines. The open market of DVM's should be embraced and there should be many DVM vendors offering to execute specific tasks within a pipeline in the best way possible. There should be DVM's that are competing on the fastest build times, the cheapest builds, or any other metric deemed important to the customer. Utilizing a variety of vendors offering competing DVM's can also be used to enhance security in the process. > [!NOTE] > Whatever implementation of these pipelines is developed should not impose strict requirements on DVMs specialized in a certain task. ### 1) The Naive approach  The easiest and most straight-forward solution is to have each DVM is tasked with requesting the next DVM in line when it's done performing its task, all the way to the end of the flow. This will probably be fine for low-stakes scenario's like running unit-tests or running some (AI) code analysis. | ✅***Pro's*** | ❌***Cons*** | | ----------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | Easy to implement | You need to trust every DVM in the chain to select trustworthy DVM for the next step | | Good fit for low-stakes tasks (running unit-tests/analysis) | Compromised DVM can gain full control over the rest of the process. | ### 2) Using a 'router' DVM  Credits for this idea go to nostr:npub1mgvwnpsqgrem7jfcwm7pdvdfz2h95mm04r23t8pau2uzxwsdnpgs0gpdjc To prevent any arbitrary DVM in the chain from making bad decisions on which next DVM to run, we can task one DVM for overseeing the process instead. We give it a mandate to execute all the steps of the pipeline. That way you don't have to put full trust in every DVM you might use for your pipeline. | ✅***Pro's*** | ❌***Cons*** | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------- | | Relatively easy to implement | The router DVM becomes the weak link. | | Reduce trust to one DVM instead of having to fully trust the whole chain. | Compromised router can gain full control over the process. | | | | ### 3a) Spreading the mandate  The previous [solution](##Definitions)s still leave us with the risk of one single DVM being compromised and produce malicious output or execute the next step on another compromised DVM. What if we counter that by adding more 'eyes' to the task. Instead of having one DVM perform a task, we choose 3 or more unrelated DVM's that can execute the same task and have the human(oid) give each of them a piece of a [multisig](##Definitions) Nostr nsec. Then, when all three DVM's produce an output, they have to check each other's work and together sign the request for the next DVM in the chain to execute. That way, if one of the selected DVM's goes rogue, it cannot make any decisions on its own because it doesn't have full access to the nsec. This checking mechanism can be especially useful for verifying that the artifact of a build step is identical across several DVM's. That way you know that your build hasn't been tampered with. In practice this setup will mean there has to be some back and forth between the DVM's to reach an agreement, which can be tricky to implement. > [!NOTE] > For the sake of simplicity, I drew the Build & Deployment DVM steps as a single DVM. Ideally you would also run this one multiple times in parallel, just like the GIT Watcher. | ✅***Pro's*** | ❌***Cons*** | | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------ | | Single Compromised DVM cannot influence process. | Complex, hard to implement | | Instead of trusting a single DVM, you trust a group of DVM's to not be fully compromised. | Requires each DVM to know how to handle the consensus logic. | | Can also be used to send Cashu funds down the chain to pay for DVM requests. | | ### 3b) Spreading the mandate + abstract complexity  A big issue with the previous setup is that the DVM's that execute the specialized task, like running the build now also have to deal with all this consensus logic. This would be a big burden on the people developing DVM's and would probably result in less DVM's being built compatible with these pipelines. To get around this, a wrapper DVM could be added that will handle the multisig and perhaps do some alterations with the in and output to make it work with the underlying DVM. This could however introduce some new trust challenges but they can probably be contained within the logic around the wrappers. | ✅***Pro's*** | ❌***Cons*** | | --------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------- | | Specialized DVM's don't have to implement consensus logic | Complex to design/build wrapper dvm logic | | | Wrapper DVM introduces new trust challenges | ## 💥 Other Challenges ### Software signing / Manual approvals There will be scenario's where somewhere during a pipeline the approval of a human is required. This is the case for signing an APK and likely too for uploading artifacts to an artifact store. This process will require the author/maintainer to sign some messages. ### On Web of Trust & Policies I think WoT will eventually become an integral part of curating which DVM's can execute certain parts of your pipelines. Depending on the project and risks associated with that (are you building a BTC wallet a Flappy Bird clone?) you might want to change your strategy of selecting DVM's. Some format of selection criteria for DVM's to run could be created by the human and passed down the chain. I have no clear idea yet on how this would work in practice. Some example criteria: - Most trusted DVM operators - Good uptime metrics - Cheapest - Fastest ## Definitions | ***Term*** | ***Explanation*** | ***Links*** | | ------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------- | | Solution | Mystical response to a problem which only exists in the human mind. Often used by people actually talking about a good trade-off. | [Source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ) | | CI | Continuous Integration, the test and build stages of an application. | | | CD | Continuous Delivery, the deployment process of an application. Often involving configuring and booting an application on a server. | | | Build Agent | A (virtual) machine tasked with executing steps of a CI/CD pipeline. | | | Runner | Piece of software that executes jobs in a CI/CD pipeline | [GitLab Runner](https://docs.gitlab.com/runner/) | | Blossom | File storage/distribution protocol. Essentially Nostr, but for file storage. Allows accessing files based on a file's fingerprint (hash), rather than it's location. | | | Multisig key | A private key being divided into multiple private keys, where a certain threshold of keys have to sign a message for it to be valid. For example 3/5 keys need to sign a Nostr event before it can be published. | |

**NOTE:** *I get my inspiration from different events and studies in my life. I'm always worried that I will run out of inspiration, but never seem to do that. I always find something new and interesting to write about. If you have a question you want answered, please let me know and I will try to research and answer your question about the Bible.* The Bible tells us about the role of a wife and a husband in marriage. It also uses the analogy of a bride and a groom to explain the church’s relationship to Jesus. When I started looking at these two descriptions, I found that what the Bible says about woman & man, wife & husband, and marriage, tells us a lot about the relationship of the church to Jesus. In the same way, the description of the church and Jesus informs us about the role of the wife and the husband. There is a lot we can learn. One of the key verses relating to these roles and analogies is Ephesians 5: > **Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord**. For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything. > ****Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her**, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless. So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, because we are members of His body. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. **This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church**. Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband. (Ephesians 5:22-33) {emphasis mine} The sister verses are Colossians 3:18-22. Many people, especially women, really have a hard time with Ephesians 5:22-23 that states, “*Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body*.” Why does God say that wives should be subject to their husbands? God is a god of order. In any group of people, things work best when there is someone to lead because when there is disagreement, there has to be a final authority. Christ is the head of the church and He has placed the husband as head of the wife (family). This does not mean that the husband makes all decisions without considering the wife’s feelings, knowledge, or interests. A wise leader always uses the skills and knowledge of his followers and, unlike Jesus, the husband doesn’t know everything and can’t do everything himself. We’ll see more about why God chose these positions below. ## Definition of Marriage Marriage was created from the very beginning so man could have a unity with another in following the pattern of the trinity of God. The trinity works together towards unified goals. They have fellowship. They have love towards one another. > but for Adam **there was not found a helper suitable for him. So the Lord God caused** a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place. The Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man. The man said, > > “This is now bone of my bones,\ > And flesh of my flesh;\ > She shall be called Woman,\ > Because she was taken out of Man.” > > For this reason **a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh**. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. (Genesis 2:20b-25) {emphasis mine} Man and woman are made one flesh just like the the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one God. Husband and wife each have their own position and responsibilities, just like the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit each have their own positions and responsibilities. Jesus dying for our sins and we repenting of our sins and believing in Him causes us to become one with Him in a similar way to a husband and wife, although the church won’t have full unity until we have been given our new, sinless bodies for eternity. ## A Proverbs 31 Church The most well known verse relating to what a Godly wife looks like is Proverbs 31. I will go through the verses and look at what each qualification is and how these qualifications can be applied to the church. > An excellent wife, who can find?\ > For her worth is far above jewels. The church has a value far above jewels. It is the crowning jewel in God’s creation. > \ > The heart of her husband trusts in her,\ > And he will have no lack of gain. The church should always be faithful to Jesus and always be available to be used by God to fulfill His will. > She does him good and not evil\ > All the days of her life. The church should always be faithful to Jesus. It should obey His commands to do good and not evil, so it is always honoring what He did for them. The church is Jesus’s representatives on Earth. > She looks for wool and flax\ > And works with her hands in delight. The church is not supposed to just sit around. The church is meant to work for God and to do His will. We are to look for what He is doing and join Him. It is to find joy in doing His will. > She is like merchant ships;\ > She brings her food from afar. The church should share the Gospel with those near and far through direct sharing of the Gospel and supporting others who work full time in the ministry. > She rises also while it is still night\ > And gives food to her household\ > And portions to her maidens. The church should always look out for the needs, especially spiritual needs, of others and should be willing to work, night and day, weekday and weekend, in this good work. Whether this is coming to the need of a friend in need, or waking at God’s call and praying in the middle of the night when we’d rather be sleeping, we need to always be open to the calling of God. > She considers a field and buys it;\ > From her earnings she plants a vineyard. The church is to act with an eternal purpose. We can’t just act on the moment, but we need to prepare for the future so we will always have the means to provide for needs physical and spiritual. Sometimes this planting is providing physically for one’s family, friends, and acquaintances. Sometimes this planting is planting spiritual seeds into the life of others through the gospel message and meeting the physical needs of others so that they will listen to the gospel message. > She girds herself with strength\ > And makes her arms strong. God calls the church to be strong and prepared, but our battles are not primarily physical battles, but spiritual battles, so our preparations are different. Ephesians 6:10-20 talks about the armor of God. The most important tool is probably the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. If we don’t know God’s word, we are not strengthened for the work of God. > She senses that her gain is good;\ > Her lamp does not go out at night. The church should live lives that are productive. Lives won and lives changed should be a fruit of their actions. Even when hard times hit, the church should continue to shine for Jesus in His work. Our lives should be so different than our culture that we shine for Jesus like a light on a hill. > She stretches out her hands to the distaff,\ > And her hands grasp the spindle. The church is called to do its part in the work of the tapestry of life. It reminds me of the analogy given by Corrie Ten Boom of the tapestry of our lives. On one side, it looks messy. There are knots and strings and such and the pattern cannot be seen, but when the tapestry is turned over, there is a beautiful picture made in the stitches of the cloth. God has a design and we have to follow the design he has given us like a paint by numbers. We may not see the picture, but he does. We are just called to do the work He has assigned us. > She extends her hand to the poor,\ > And she stretches out her hands to the needy. God cares about the poor and calls the church to take care of the poor, especially those like widows and orphans that can’t provide for themselves. God wants us to live lives where we can both meet the physical needs of the poor and supply their spiritual needs as well. If we don’t build up a certain level of physical and spiritual wealth, then we can’t meet the needs of others. > She is not afraid of the snow for her household,\ > For all her household are clothed with scarlet. The church should support its members physically and spiritually so they do not need to worry when hard times come. There should be such a spiritual difference that their lives stand out as different than the culture around them. Their spiritual difference should be so positive that it draws others to them. > She makes coverings for herself;\ > Her clothing is fine linen and purple. The church’s clothing is not fancy clothes and jewelry, but it should be the godly works done in love that makes them stand out in a world of sin. > Her husband is known in the gates,\ > When he sits among the elders of the land. If the church is doing its job, everyone arounds should hear the gospel message of Jesus Christ. We should never hear the words, “Oh, I didn’t realize you were a Christian.” We should be different than the world so we hear, “Oh, that’s why you are different.” > She makes linen garments and sells them,\ > And supplies belts to the tradesmen. The church should be known for getting things done. This may being known as the employee that stays late, fills in, or does the thing that needs to be done, but isn’t really their job. It may mean they run a household that is loving and meets the physical, spiritual, and emotional needs of all its members. It may mean that the church meets the needs of each other and unbelievers. > Strength and dignity are her clothing,\ > And she smiles at the future. The church should not be afraid. Hard times are coming (and to a certain extent are here). We should never fear the future because we know God is in charge and in control. We know our eternity is assured, so illness, persecution, economic hardship, etc., should not cause fear. We should say like James, “*Consider it **all joy**, my brethren, when you encounter various trials*.” (James 1:2) {emphasis mine} > She opens her mouth in wisdom,\ > And the teaching of kindness is on her tongue. The church should always tell the truth, but tell it in a loving manner as stated in Ephesians 4:15a “*but speaking the truth in love*.” Of course, to tell the truth, it is necessary to know the truth, so we must study the Bible to know the truth. Other areas of expertise are nice and we should always seek excellence in everything we do, but Biblical truth is key. > She looks well to the ways of her household,\ > And does not eat the bread of idleness. The church is to provide for each member’s personal family and the the greater Christian family. Christians should never be considered lazy. We not only have to work to provide for our families, but we have the extra responsibilities given to us by God to share the Bible and to provide for those in need. > Her children rise up and bless her; The church should be fruitful and reproduce. We should be constantly sharing the gospel with others, so we can say like Paul in 1 Corinthians 9:22b, “I have become all things to all men, so that I may by all means save some.” (Only God can save, but He includes us in His miraculous works.) These people that we have led to the Lord will rise up and bless us before the Father. > Her husband also, and he praises her, saying:\ > “Many daughters have done nobly,\ > But you excel them all.” The church should act in such a way that we face Jesus at the marriage supper of Christ where He will say, “… ‘Well done, good and faithful slave…’” (Matthew 25:23) > Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain,\ > But a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised. The church should be faithful to God and not seek to attract followers by sinful means like those of the worldly culture. Too often the church uses music, comedy, entertainment, pop-psychology, etc., to try to draw people to Christ instead of the gospel as shared by Jesus. We don’t want butts in seats; we want born-again disciples of Christ. > Give her the product of her hands,\ > And let her works praise her in the gates. (Proverbs 31:10-31) If the church finishes strongly, it will be rewarded. **“so** that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ;” (1 Peter 1:7) Just as Proverbs 31 describes a godly woman in detail, it also describes a godly church that is the bride of Christ. ## God’s Organizational Chart > for God is not a God of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints. (1 Corinthians 14:33) God is not a God of confusion. All organizations of more than one person require a differentiation in authority and responsibility in order for everyone to work together towards a common goal. Because of this, God has designed an organizational chart for both marriage and the church. > Likewise, I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly garments, but rather by means of good works, as is proper for women making a claim to godliness. A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. **For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve. And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression.** But women will be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint. (1 Timothy 2:9-15) {emphasis mine} This passage has lots of descriptions about how a Godly woman should adorn herself and live her life, but one of the interesting points in this passage is why God chose the husband as the head and commanded women to submit to their husbands. 1. The first reason is that Adam was created first and then Eve. Practically, the first person around was put in charge of the Garden of Eden and then became the head of the marriage and family. 2. The other reason is because it was the woman who was deceived. Eve was the original person to be tempted by Satan and to fall into temptation and disobey God. In the same way: 1. Jesus is head of the church because he existed from the very beginning being involved in creation and before time existed. He was first, so He is head of the church. 2. Jesus is also head of the church because He lived a perfect life completely without sin. On the other hand we, the church, sin daily. The parallels are many: - Woman are called to “*adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly*.” In the same way the church is called in Luke 12 to “*do not worry about … your body, as to what you will put on. … Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; but I tell you, not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass in the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, how much more will He clothe you? You men of little faith*!” Neither a woman or the church should focus on clothing or physical appearance. - Women are called to “*adorn themselves … rather by means of good works, as is proper for women making a claim to godliness*.” In the same way the church should be known by its good works and not for pure attention seeking or complying with the culture. - “*A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness*.” In the same way the church should submit to the instruction of Jesus as given through the Bible. The church should never pick how it will act based on personal feelings/preferences or because of any leading of man contrary to God’s word. - Related to the previous statement 1 Corinthians 14:35 says, “*If they (wives) desire to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is improper for a woman to speak in church*.” In the same way the church shouldn’t question the commands of Jesus, but should obey knowing that Jesus knows best. The church especially shouldn’t air its disagreements or misunderstandings before unbelievers, just as 1 Corinthians 6:1,4-6 says “*Does any one of you, when he has a case against his neighbor, dare to go to law before the unrighteous and not before the saints? … So if you have law courts dealing with matters of this life, do you appoint them as judges who are of no account in the church? I say this to your shame. Is it so, that there is not among you one wise man who will be able to decide between his brethren, but brother goes to law with brother, and that before unbelievers?*” - The most inspiring analogy between the commands to a wife and what is expected of the church is this, “*But women will be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint*.” The church should bear children. We are called to share the Gospel with unbelievers and to lead them to our Savior where they can become children of God. No member of the church can make a person a child of God, but we are called to do everything in our power towards that goal and leave the rest to God. We are to “*continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint*.” This is true of all women, wives, and the church. The fact that “*faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint*” is mentioned with “*bearing of children*” suggests that our faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint can help lead people to Jesus. Also, since a mother is called to “*Train up a child in the way he should go, Even when he is old he will not depart from it*” (Proverbs 22:6), the church should disciple new Christians in the way of Christ, so when they are old, they will not depart from it and will join Jesus in paradise for the marriage supper of Christ. I may do a part 2 comparing husbands to Christ, but this article is getting long and I think I covered the part that is more applicable to more people. [Trust Jesus](https://trustjesus.substack.com/).\ \ your sister in Christ, Christy Bible verses are NASB (New American Standard Bible) 1995 edition unless otherwise stated For more articles and to make sure you don't miss any posts check out the [Trust Jesus Substack](https://trustjesus.substack.com/) and click the subscribe button on any substack post.

I had an idea for an article but not really the ambition to write a long article right now, so I gave the idea to an LLM. What it returned was not to my liking and I felt a clear shift in the bias to what I had given it. Next I gave the same input to probably the most advanced LLM which in my opinion produced the same bias. Last I tried a smaller provider which promises to not put in such bias and it picked up on what I had in mind ... or was it just filling in the gaps with its own, now different bias? ## The Input In each of the three LLMs, my input was: > I have this stub of a post. Please help me expand it to be inspiring and engaging: > > Agency, money and men dealing in favors. > > Money gives agency but men with high agency also have no problem earning money. And then there is politicians that want to socially engineer society. Being able to tell millions how to live their lives is probably the peak of agency. The feeling of power these men perceive from passing laws? And the governed also feel how they just lost a little bit of agency. ## ChatGPT o1-preview > **The Power of Agency: Beyond Money and Influence** > > In a world driven by transactions and favors, it's easy to equate money with agency—the ability to make choices and enact change. Indeed, wealth can open doors, provide opportunities, and offer a semblance of freedom. Yet, there exists a breed of individuals who, regardless of their financial standing, exude a remarkable sense of agency. These are the men and women who move through life with purpose, resilience, and an unwavering belief in their ability to shape their destiny. > > **Money as a Tool, Not the Master** > > Money undeniably provides a platform for agency. It grants access to education, resources, and networks that can amplify one's influence. However, those with high personal agency understand that money is a tool, not the master. They recognize that true power comes from within—from their skills, knowledge, and the value they bring to others. This internal agency propels them to earn money not as an end but as a byproduct of their passion and hard work. > > **The Dance of Favors and Influence** > > In the intricate dance of society, favors become the currency of influence. Men and women dealing in favors weave networks of reciprocity, building bridges that money alone cannot construct. These relationships, founded on mutual respect and trust, often lead to opportunities that transcend monetary transactions. It's a reminder that agency is also about the connections we forge and the impact we have on others. > > **The Allure of Power and Social Engineering** > > At the pinnacle of perceived agency are those who shape societies—politicians and leaders who craft policies and laws. The power to influence millions is intoxicating. For some, it's a noble pursuit to improve lives; for others, it might be a means to consolidate control. The enactment of laws and policies can dramatically alter the course of a nation, showcasing the immense agency these individuals hold. Yet, with great power comes great responsibility. > > **The Balance Between Governance and Personal Agency** > > When new laws are passed, the governed may feel a subtle shift—a slight loss of personal agency as external rules dictate aspects of their lives. It's a delicate balance between the needs of society and individual freedoms. However, this doesn't mean that personal agency is diminished entirely. Citizens have the power to engage, voice their opinions, and influence future policies. Democracy thrives when individuals exercise their agency collectively. > > **Cultivating Personal Agency in Every Sphere** > > Regardless of where we stand—in halls of power or in everyday life—we each possess the capacity for agency. It's in the choices we make, the challenges we embrace, and the way we respond to circumstances beyond our control. Cultivating agency involves self-awareness, continuous learning, and the courage to take action. It's about being the author of our story, not a passive participant. > > **Empowerment Through Action** > > - **Educate Yourself**: Knowledge is a powerful catalyst for agency. Stay informed about the world around you, understand your rights, and learn new skills. > > - **Build Relationships**: Surround yourself with people who inspire and challenge you. Strong networks can amplify your impact. > > - **Engage in Your Community**: Participate in local initiatives, vote, and make your voice heard. Collective agency can drive significant change. > > - **Embrace Resilience**: Obstacles are inevitable. Use them as stepping stones rather than stumbling blocks. > > - **Lead with Integrity**: Whether in small groups or large organizations, lead by example. Influence others positively through your actions. > > **Conclusion** > > Agency is more than the accumulation of wealth or the wielding of power over others. It's the intrinsic ability to navigate life's complexities with intention and purpose. While money and influence can enhance one's reach, true agency stems from within. By embracing our individual power to make choices, we not only transform our own lives but also contribute to the betterment of society. Let's strive to be agents of positive change, recognizing that every action we take resonates beyond ourselves. This was a bit lengthy so I asked "Reduce this to about 300 words, please." which gave me: > **The Power of Agency: Beyond Money and Influence** > > In a world driven by transactions and favors, money often appears synonymous with agency—the ability to make choices and effect change. While wealth can provide opportunities and a sense of freedom, there are individuals who, regardless of financial status, possess a remarkable sense of agency. These people move through life with purpose and resilience, shaping their own destinies. > > **Money as a Tool, Not the Master** > > Money grants access to resources and networks that can amplify influence. However, those with high personal agency view money as a tool rather than an end goal. Their true power comes from within—their skills, knowledge, and the value they bring to others. For them, money is a byproduct of passion and hard work, not the driving force. > > **The Dance of Favors and Influence** > > Favors act as a currency of influence in society. Individuals dealing in favors build networks of reciprocity that money alone cannot forge. These relationships, based on mutual respect and trust, open doors to opportunities beyond monetary transactions. This underscores that agency also stems from the connections we make and the impact we have on others. > > **The Allure of Power and Social Engineering** > > At the pinnacle of perceived agency are politicians and leaders who craft policies and laws, shaping societies. The power to influence millions is intoxicating. While some pursue this path to improve lives, others may seek to consolidate control. The enactment of laws can dramatically alter a nation's course, highlighting the immense agency these individuals hold—and the great responsibility that comes with it. > > **Conclusion** > > Agency transcends wealth and the wielding of power over others. It's the intrinsic ability to navigate life's complexities with intention and purpose. By embracing our power to make choices, we not only transform our own lives but also contribute to the betterment of society. Let's strive to be agents of positive change, recognizing that every action we take resonates beyond ourselves. ## Claude 3.5 Sonnet Claude also gave me a long reply: > Here's an expanded and more engaging version of your post: > > The Intricate Dance of Power: Agency, Money, and Social Engineering > > In the grand theater of life, three actors take center stage: agency, money, and the men who deal in favors. Their performance is a complex interplay that shapes our world in ways both subtle and profound. > > Agency: The Power to Act > > At its core, agency is the ability to make meaningful choices and effect change in one's life and surroundings. It's the fire that fuels ambition, the spark that ignites innovation, and the force that propels individuals to overcome obstacles. But in our modern world, agency is not distributed equally. > > Money: The Great Enabler > > Enter money – the universal lubricant of human interactions. It's often said that money can't buy happiness, but it certainly can purchase options. A well-lined wallet opens doors, creates opportunities, and expands the realm of possible actions. In this sense, money amplifies agency, allowing individuals to transform their will into reality with greater ease. > > Yet, there's a chicken-and-egg quality to this relationship. Those blessed with high agency – the driven, the clever, the relentless – often find themselves naturally adept at accumulating wealth. Their enhanced ability to navigate complex systems and seize opportunities translates directly into financial success. This creates a self-reinforcing cycle: more money leads to greater agency, which in turn facilitates further wealth accumulation. > > The Political Arena: Where Agency Meets Scale > > But what about those who seek agency not just for themselves, but over the lives of millions? Enter the realm of politics and social engineering. Here, we find individuals driven by a potent mix of idealism, ambition, and the intoxicating allure of power. > > Imagine the rush a politician feels when signing a bill into law. With a simple stroke of a pen, they've just altered the fabric of society. Thousands, perhaps millions, will have their daily lives shaped by this decision. It's agency writ large, the ability to mold the world according to one's vision. > > This power to legislate, to "socially engineer" on a massive scale, represents perhaps the ultimate expression of agency. It's a heady brew, one that has led both to humanity's greatest triumphs and its darkest hours. > > The Ripple Effect: When Agency is Constrained > > Yet, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. As lawmakers expand their sphere of influence, those governed often feel the ground shift beneath their feet. Each new regulation, each policy change, can feel like a small theft of personal autonomy. The factory worker whose job disappears due to new environmental regulations, the small business owner navigating an increasingly complex tax code – they experience the flip side of political agency. > > This tension – between the agency of the few to shape society and the desire of the many to maintain personal freedom – lies at the heart of many of our most heated political debates. > > A Delicate Balance > > So where does this leave us? In a world where agency, money, and power are so intimately intertwined, how do we strike a balance? How do we create a society that fosters individual empowerment while also addressing collective needs? > > Perhaps the answer lies in transparency, in robust democratic systems that hold the powerful accountable. Or maybe it's about education, equipping every citizen with the tools to navigate an increasingly complex world. It could be that technology will be the great equalizer, democratizing access to information and opportunities. > > Whatever the solution, one thing is clear: understanding this dance of agency, money, and power is crucial. For in that understanding lies the key to shaping a future where personal freedom and collective progress can coexist harmoniously. > > As we move forward, let us be mindful of our own agency, how we use it, and how our actions impact the agency of others. For in the end, the most inspiring use of power might just be empowering others to reach their full potential. Again, I asked to shorten it to about 300 words: > Here's a condensed version of the post in about 300 words: > > The Interplay of Agency, Money, and Power > > Agency – the ability to make choices and effect change – is a fundamental human desire. In our modern world, it's intricately linked with money and power, creating a complex dynamic that shapes society. > > Money acts as an amplifier of agency. It opens doors, creates opportunities, and expands possibilities. Those with financial resources can more easily transform their will into reality. Interestingly, individuals with high agency often excel at accumulating wealth, creating a self-reinforcing cycle. > > However, some seek agency not just for themselves, but over the lives of many. Politicians and social engineers enter this arena, driven by a mix of idealism, ambition, and the allure of power. The ability to shape society through legislation represents perhaps the ultimate expression of agency. With a single decision, they can alter the lives of millions. > > Yet, this expansion of political agency often comes at the cost of individual autonomy. Each new law or regulation can feel like a small theft of personal freedom to those governed. This tension – between the power to shape society and the desire for individual liberty – fuels many of our most heated political debates. > > Balancing these competing forces is a central challenge of our time. How do we create a society that fosters individual empowerment while addressing collective needs? Solutions may lie in transparent governance, robust democratic systems, improved education, or technological advancements that democratize opportunities. > > Understanding this intricate dance of agency, money, and power is crucial for shaping a future where personal freedom and collective progress coexist. As we navigate this complex landscape, we must remain mindful of our own agency and how our actions impact others. Perhaps the most inspiring use of power is in empowering others to reach their full potential. ## Venice Venice gave me an answer of about 300 words right away: > Here is an expanded version of your post that aims to be more inspiring and engaging: > > Agency, Money and Men Dealing in Favors: A Dance for Dominance > > In a world driven by ambition, few things grant us more agency than money and influence. Money provides the means to achieve our dreams, while men with high agency have no problem earning it. But what happens when politicians enter the fray, seeking to reshape society to their whims? > > These power-hungry individuals, drunk on the feeling of control that comes with passing laws, exert their agency over millions of lives. They believe they know best how to live, love, work and play. And the governed? They feel a subtle tug, a loss of autonomy, as their freedoms are incrementally chipped away. > > In this high-stakes game of dominance, favors are traded like currency. Men in positions of power grant concessions to their friends and allies, further consolidating their grip on society. It's a delicate dance, where the slightest misstep can lead to political ruin or societal upheaval. > > But in the end, who really holds the reins? Is it the politicians, the wealthy, or the masses who ultimately have the power to shape their own destinies? The answer lies in the interplay of agency, money, and favors - a complex web of influence that will continue to shape our world for generations to come. ## Conclusion Today, content production is more and more supported if not outright done by LLMs and the makers of these put their thumbs on the scale in a very subtle way. I'm not a linguist researcher to break the results down sentence by sentence to illustrate the bias but to me it is clear the first two were a big edge more left leaning than the third LLM.

In a world driven by ambition, few things grant us more agency than money and influence. Money provides the means to achieve our dreams, while men with high agency have no problem earning it. But what happens when politicians enter the fray, seeking to reshape society to their whims? These power-hungry individuals, drunk on the feeling of control that comes with passing laws, exert their agency over millions of lives. They believe they know best how to live, love, work and play. And the governed? They feel a subtle tug, a loss of autonomy, as their freedoms are incrementally chipped away. In this high-stakes game of dominance, favors are traded like currency. Men in positions of power grant concessions to their friends and allies, further consolidating their grip on society. It's a delicate dance, where the slightest misstep can lead to political ruin or societal upheaval. But in the end, who really holds the reins? Is it the politicians, the wealthy, or the masses who ultimately have the power to shape their own destinies? The answer lies in the interplay of agency, money, and favors - a complex web of influence that will continue to shape our world for generations to come.

We are Streaming the Dance Battle Festival Auditons October 3rd 2024 6pm EST Stream on [TUNESTR](https://tunestr.io/) Zap: dancebattlefestival@geyser.fund Mark your calendars, because October 3rd, 2024, is set to be a date to remember! 🎉 This is when Bitcoin, Nostr, and the art of dance collide in an electrifying celebration at the Dance Battle Festival Auditions. **The Dance Battle Festival Auditions: A Glimpse of Magic** Back in August, the vibrant city of Arusha, Tanzania, came alive as we held the Dance Battle Festival auditions. We captured all the energy and excitement on film, and we can’t wait to share it with you! Our vision? To showcase these incredible dancers on Tunestr, creating a whole new dynamic for the event. Why This Matters? By sharing their performances on Tunestr, these talented dancers can expand their networks and even receive Bitcoin for their artistry. Value for Value | v4v ** Support from POWA: Empowering Artists** We’re thrilled to announce that POWA will be providing ongoing support to the dancers, helping them navigate the world of Bitcoin and Nostr. This isn’t just about technology; it’s about empowering artists and enriching their creative journey. **Join Us!** So, we invite you to tune in and witness some phenomenal performances that showcase the spirit of the dance community in Arusha. Your support can help these dancers thrive through the innovative power of Bitcoin and Nostr. Man Like Who? Man Like Kweks! #Bitcoin #Nostr #DanceBattleFestival #DBFS2

**Moving into Norway the nice, almost-alpine landscapes greeted me. Slowly however the mountains numbed down and fjords started appearing. I was nearing Trondheim, the most northern city in Norway that has something that resembles a high-way. Anything further north and you’re bound to 80km/h roads. Which isn’t a bad thing at all, given the views.** | | | | | --- | --- | --- | | | | | | | | --- | |  | | On the road to Trondheim | I went pretty much straight to Trondheim because I got in touch with Lucas through an ex-colleague of mine (Thanks Niek ;)). I texted Lucas about a week before we met to see if he’d be up to go hiking somewhere in the Trondheim area. He said he was thinking about going North, waaaay North, in order to see the midnight sun and he wanted to do this the next weekend. This was around June 21st, the longest day of the year. I said it’d be cool to experience that and so that is just what we did. For those of you who don’t know, on June 21st the sun is right at the ‘Tropic of Cancer’ (‘Kreeftskeerkring’ in Dutch), the most northern position of the sun after which the summer slowly turns into winter again. In the period around this moment, the sun will NOT go below the horizon at all when you are above the arctic circle. | | | | | --- | --- | --- | | | | | I’m glad Lucas has an electric car, because the round-trip would’ve cost me (whith my thirsty van) €333,-. Instead we spent less than €60,- for this 1200km round-trip. What a difference! So we left for the 9 hr drive on Friday-evening and camped out besides a lake next to the E6 highway, which runs all the way from the south to the north, which is over 3000(!) kilometers long. | | | | | --- | --- | --- | | We found this seemingly abandoned bus, what a beauty! | | Woke up to this view! | | | Time for a charging break in Mosjøen | |  Because of a tunnel-closure we had to take this mountain-pass, not complaining here… We moved on the next morning and had perfect weather, too perfect for Norway because it was just below 30 degrees Celsius. This hot weather reached well into the arctic circle, where we’d be hiking up a mountain to find a camp-spot with a view to the north. We parked the car and started to hike up the steep hill, we found a route online, but soon found out we missed the path shown on the map. We figured we would not backtrack but instead walk around the same height on the mountain to get back at that path. Long story short, that path didn’t exist (anymore). So we tried to get back at it but just couldn’t find it. Eventually we just followed the trail that was actually set out using red ‘T’-s that were painted on the rocks every 50-100 meters. It was quite a walk and the heat didn’t make it any easier.  A beginner mountaineer realizing he climbed the wrong mountain | | | | | --- | --- | --- | | After a near-death experience with mosquito’s, the Deet really saved us | | | | | | Finally we reached our intended camp-spot |  After draining most of our energy we finally arrived at the place we wanted to camp for the night day, which was in front of a small lake and a bigger one which lied a bit lower. I don’t think I need to say much more about the beauty of the place when you can just look at the pictures below:   | | | | --- | --- | | |  | The ‘next’ day we hiked back, and tried to return using the ‘official’ path we wanted to hike in the first place, all in vain. It led us to hike some strange, steep and almost treacherous paths after which we decided it would be wise to just backtrack a little bit and get back to the (red) marked trail. We got back to the car safely after which we drove to the river that was just below the car park to take a refreshing dive before heading back south. We found a (safe) spot to take the dive in the river that was now raging because of the heavy snow-melt due to the extremely high temperatures. Lucas later told me that in some regions electricity was even free due to the surplus of hydro-electricity. | | | | --- | --- | |  We had to walk over this |  | We made a car-recharge stop at Mosjøen where we had a quick pizza-dinner. Just after leaving the parking-lot we saw a couple hitch-hikers who wanted to go to Trondheim just like us. We pulled over and took them with us, they were a couple from different south-eastern European countries and were touring around Europe and soon also the world. They shared some cool stories and told about their plans. When we got to Trondheim we dropped them off near their camping-spot and drove back to Lucas’s house. Quite tired I jumped back in my own bed in my own home. How nice is it to have your house with you (almost) everywhere… 🙂 I camped in front of his house for a couple days. To be honest I didn’t do much those days as I was pretty much drained from experiencing all kinds of different things back-to-back for over a month now. I used this time to work a bit on the official stuff for my own freelance IT company which I started, I finally got a bank-account approved after 3 weeks of waiting, which allowed me to manage some of the essential setup-things and book-keeping. After these formalities I took a bit of time to head into the city-center, of course using my folding bike like a real Dutchie. And since Trondheim is a hilly city, biking downhill from Lucas’s house was a blast but going back up was quite the struggle with these tiny wheels, but it all worked out… That same night a thunderstorm was rolling in and sitting on top of a hill in a campervan, with lightning striking the ground at less than 100 meters away from the van was a new thing for me. I guess this too is part of the ‘living closer to nature’ thing… I’m very thankful for the experiences and the hospitality of the people I meet along the way. It was very much fun to make this trip together! It’s the people that make the journey… | | | | | --- | --- | --- | | | | | | | | | --- | --- | | | |

**After a small detour I entered the Jotunheimen National Park area and decided I would walk the Bessegen Ridge, A famous -you guessed it- ridge hike that runs all the way along a large lake.**  It was a beautiful sunny day, blue skies and barely any wind. Quite rare conditions for Norway. So I thought that was a perfect moment to spend a couple hours video calling with my brother and his girlfriend. So in the late afternoon I decided to drive up to the trail-head and have some dinner before starting my hike. At the trail-head there is a parking lot for both cars and campers for which they charge 250NOK (25EUR) per day! Since I was planning on hiking 2-3 days I decided I am too Dutch for this and drove on to the first free parking spot available, just ~1km further up the hill. So loaded up with a beefy backpack and my folding bike I sailed down to the parking lot and locked my bike to a tree. I just saved myself 50+ euros. ## Day 1  Most people take the ferry at the trail-head first. After these delays I was ready to start the hike somewhere between 18:00 and 19:00. “Why so late, are you nuts!?”. Well, it’s not like there’s much of a difference between day and night there, remember. So I didn’t have to worry about a loss of daylight whilst up there. The only danger left was probably bears trying to eat me. Contrary to what most people do I started to walk first and take the ferry back from **Gjendesheim** the last (of 2) stops. Most people take the ferry to the first stop which is **Memurubu** and then walk back to the trail-head. So while walking I would mostly come across batches of humans that came from the same ferry moving the opposite direction as me. Once they passed I’d be pretty much alone again.  Just above the trail-head. After a steep start moving uphill I reached the ‘top’ of the ridge and from there on the walk was pretty flat until right before **Memurubu**. After a few hours of hiking and taking a moment here and there, and there, and there to take in the amazing views. As I arrived at the highest point overlooking two lakes I thought to myself: “Why not stay here?”. So that’s just what I did because the weather forecasts were good, no rain and barely any wind and good temperatures. | | | | --- | --- | | I had to secure the tent to the ground with rocks | At around the darkest moment of the ‘night’ | | My initial idea was to camp right down there between the two lakes. (the right one is much higher than the left) | Coffee? | This place has been hands down the best view I’ve ever slept with. It was so quiet and felt deeply peaceful. Just being there, cooking a meal, prepping a coffee and slowly winding down to sleep. I walked roughly 7km with 700m in elevation gain. | | | | | --- | --- | --- | |  |  |  | |  |  |  | |  |  |  | |  |  |  | | | | | --- | --- | |  |  | ## Day 2  Gooooooooooooodmorning! After quite a relaxed night in my tent I woke up around 9 and slowly got up and made myself some breakfast: oats with raisins and cinnamon and of course water. I was in no rush as I had until 5pm the next day to get to the end of the lake, which is about 17km of hiking left and 1500m-ish in elevation changes. I made my way to in-between those lakes in the pictures above. I was chatting with an old colleague (Yay, 4G!) and we even had a call over an IT problem. You can’t lock me inside an office because most of what I need is already in my head anyways ;). Moving on I entered the true wilderness where few men (and even fewer IT-people) dare to walk: places without cell-signal. But I can tell you I survived, seemingly unharmed.  Also a good time to fill up my camelback with fresh water. Filtering takes ~5-10min. After a couple hours I reached Murumburu (I know, this placename sounds a bit like trying to pronounce a city while eating a sandwich to fast). There’s a cabin/hotel there that also sells some great coffee which is a warm welcome after a hike of 14km and 1700m elevation gain and loss. After enjoying this coffee I walked to the lake where there was a pebble beach that was part part of a riverbed. I decided to go in to freshen up. And fresh it it, because most of the water is fresh melting-water from nearby glaciers. It gets better after the tingling feeling of the whole body fades a bit. Then when you get out, you feel GREAT!  The water was probably well under 5 degrees Celsius I still had plenty of time left so most of the afternoon I enjoyed the sun on my face lying on the grass. Not complaining…  | | | | --- | --- | |  Yup, that’s where we’re going… | This is a pretty good summary of Norway | |  Looking back at Merumburu |  Next to my campsite for the night | I basically walked until I would find a suiting spot that was somewhat protected from the elements and ended up next to a small lake that seemed to house more mosquitos than water. But it was a pretty place nonetheless. Surrounded by glaciated peaks and lots of snow.  Goodnight. ## Day 3 Last stretch! On to **Gjendebu**, where I would catch my ferry back to the trail-head. Just before starting my descent down from the platform I met the last of the very few signs, as 99% of the trail is just following the red T’s. This descend was very much as steep as it looks in the picture down below. I didn’t have much of a chance to take pictures as I needed all my focus not to slide down the bare rock when descending using several chains. Maybe without a backpack it wouldn’t have been too bad but keeping your stability with 10-15kg on your back takes a bit more effort.  Here, naive me was still thinking this path would just move parallel to the ridge. When I made it down and stepped foot in **Gjendebu** it started to rain, so it was a perfect moment to go inside and rest for a bit. I asked my inner voice if I deserved a beer. I did, because I saved so much money on parking and did a good job hiking. So this 9 Euro costing beer was enjoyed to the fullest.  Okay, actually 2 of them… The ferry was still an hour wait and to kill the time I went outside to sit down at a (covered) picnic table and made some soup. I wasn’t alone as a Norwegian family with kids aged ~1 and ~5 was also there prepping some food. We talked a bit and then the oldest girl -in her best English- offered me one of the pancakes they were making. Of course I couldn’t say no to that. I really appreciate how they as a young family take the extra effort to bring out their kids to places like this while they could’ve just done the ‘made for kids’ activities in the area. | | | | --- | --- | |  So I climbed almost straight down on this part… |  Thank you for your natural beauty! | Sorry this was a bit of a long one. Writing these blogs isn’t always as easy and can be a bit intimidating at times. But it’s worth the effort, thank you for reading 😉

# 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.  

Best viewed on [Habla](https://habla.news/u/nathan@btcmap.org/2uBWmmKOqd-09vQVMH8X0), [YakiHonne](nostr:naddr1qvzqqqr4gupzp384u7n44r8rdq74988lqcmggww998jjg0rtzfd6dpufrxy9djk8qq2nya2z2akk6j60w9jz6vpeweg4vn2g8pvrq6c73gs) or [Highlighter](nostr:naddr1qvzqqqr4gupzp384u7n44r8rdq74988lqcmggww998jjg0rtzfd6dpufrxy9djk8qythwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnswf5k6ctv9ehx2ap0qq2nya2z2akk6j60w9jz6vpeweg4vn2g8pvrqzwws2x). # TL;DR This article explores the links between public, community-driven data sources (such as [OpenStreetMap](https://www.openstreetmap.org)) and private, cryptographically-owned data found on networks such as [Nostr](https://nostr.org/). The following concepts are explored: 1. **Attestations**: Users signalling to their social graph that they believe something to be true by publishing Attestations. These social proofs act as a decentralised verification system that leverages your [web-of-trust](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_of_trust). 2. **Proof of Place**: An oracle-based system where physical letters are sent to real-world locations, confirming the corresponding digital ownership via cryptographic proofs. This binds physical locations in [meatspace](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/meatspace) with their digital representations in the Nostrverse. 3. **Check-ins**: Foursquare-style check-ins that can be verified using attestations from place owners, ensuring authenticity. This approach uses web-of-trust to validate check-ins and location ownership over time. The goal is to leverage cryptographic ownership where necessary while preserving the open, collaborative nature of public data systems. [Open Data](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_data) in a public commons has a place and should not be thrown out with the Web 2.0 bathwater. # Cognitive Dissonance Ever since discovering [Nostr](https://nostr.org/) in August of 2022 I've been grappling with how [BTC Map](https://btcmap.org/) \- a project that helps bitcoiners find places to spend sats \- should most appropriately use this new protocol. I am assuming, dear reader, that you are somewhat familiar with Nostr \- a relatively new protocol for decentralised identity and communication. If you don’t know your nsec from your npub, please take some time to read these excellent posts: [Nostr is Identity for the Internet](https://hivemind.vc/identity/) and [The Power of Nostr](https://www.lynalden.com/the-power-of-nostr/) by [@max](nostr:npub18lzls4f6h46n43revlzvg6x06z8geww7uudhncfdttdtypduqnfsagugm3) and [@lyn](nostr:npub1a2cww4kn9wqte4ry70vyfwqyqvpswksna27rtxd8vty6c74era8sdcw83a), respectively. Nostr is so much more than a short-form social media replacement. The social features (check-ins, reviews, etc.) that Nostr unlocks for BTC Map are clear and exciting \- all your silos are indeed broken \- however, something fundamental has been bothering me for a while and I think it comes down to data ownership. For those unfamiliar, BTC Map uses [OpenStreetMap (OSM)](https://www.openstreetmap.org) as its main geographic database. OSM is centred on the concept of a commons of objectively verifiable data that is maintained by a global community of volunteer editors; a Wikipedia for maps. There is no data ownership; the data is free (as in freedom) and anyone can edit anything. It is the data equivalent of FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) \- FOSD if you will, but more commonly referred to as [Open Data](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_data). In contrast, Notes and Other Stuff on Nostr ([Places](https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/pull/927) in this cartographic context) are explicitly owned by the controller of the private key. These notes are free to propagate, but they are owned. How do we reconcile the decentralised nature of Nostr, where data is cryptographically owned by individuals, with the community-managed data commons of OpenStreetMap, where no one owns the data? # Self-sovereign Identity Before I address this coexistence question, I want to talk a little about identity as it pertains to ownership. If something is to be owned, it has to be owned by someone or something \- an identity. All identities that are not self-sovereign are, by definition, leased to you by a 3rd party. You rent your Facebook identity from Meta in exchange for your data. You rent your web domain from your DNS provider in exchange for your money. Taken to the extreme, you rent your passport from your Government in exchange for your compliance. You are you at the pleasure of others. Where Bitcoin separates money from the state; Nostr separates identity from the state. Or, as [@nvk](nostr:npub1az9xj85cmxv8e9j9y80lvqp97crsqdu2fpu3srwthd99qfu9qsgstam8y8) said recently: ["Don't build your house on someone else's land."](nostr:nevent1qqsf493dryeqzrsfjq938hpjg3jf3yd8cv70a9ggzlts5p29tasawkqpz9mhxue69uhkummnw3ezuamfdejj7q3qaz9xj85cmxv8e9j9y80lvqp97crsqdu2fpu3srwthd99qfu9qsgsxpqqqqqqzajen2k). https://i.nostr.build/xpcCSkDg3uVw0yku.png While we’ve had the tools for self-sovereign digital identity for decades (think PGP keys or WebAuthN), we haven't had the necessary social use cases nor the corresponding social graph to elevate these identities to the mainstream. Nostr fixes this. Nostr is PGP for the masses and will take cryptographic identities mainstream. # Full NOSTARD? Returning to the coexistence question: the data on OpenStreetMap isn’t directly owned by anyone, even though the physical entities the data represents might be privately owned. OSM is a data commons. We can objectively agree on the location of a tree or a fire hydrant without needing permission to observe and record it. Sure, you could place a tree ‘on Nostr’, but why should you? Just because something can be ‘on Nostr’ doesn’t mean it should be. https://i.nostr.build/s3So2JVAqoY4E1dI.png There might be a dystopian future where we can't agree on what a tree is nor where it's located, but I hope we never get there. It's at this point we'll need a [Wikifreedia](https://wikifreedia.xyz/) variant of OpenStreetMap. While integrating Nostr identities into OpenStreetMap would be valuable, the current OSM infrastructure, tools, and community already provide substantial benefits in managing this data commons without needing to go NOSTR-native \- there's no need to go [Full NOSTARD](https://fountain.fm/clip/48noGYA7bRXNP96dqsOP). H/T to [@princeySOV](nostr:npub1hghnjjpnvkz8t6gkszuf37d7puwc2qtxc65rnklqsngzv6kkug9qhhfyz2) for the [original meme](nostr:nevent1qqst7609zyuy92q655mzls5trdv8u6h8d4v7myjc3t6gvxs68qrtp6cpr9mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuam9d3kx7unyv4ezumn9wszka25g). https://i.nostr.build/ot9jtM5cZtDHNKWc.png So, how do we appropriately blend cryptographically owned data with the commons? If a location is owned in meatspace *and* it's useful to signal that ownership, it should also be owned in cyberspace. Our efforts should therefore focus on entities like businesses, while allowing the commons to manage public data for as long as it can successfully mitigate the [tragedy of the commons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons). The remainder of this article explores how we can: 1. Verify ownership of a physical place in the real world; 2. Link that ownership to the corresponding digital place in cyberspace. As a side note, I don't see private key custodianship \- or, even worse, permissioned use of Places signed by another identity's key \- as any more viable than the rented identities of Web 2.0. And as we all know, the Second Law of Infodynamics (no citation\!) states that: > "The total amount of sensitive information leaked will always increase over time." This especially holds true if that data is centralised. Not your keys, not your notes. Not your keys, not your identity. # Places and Web-of-Trust [@Arkinox](nostr:npub1arkn0xxxll4llgy9qxkrncn3vc4l69s0dz8ef3zadykcwe7ax3dqrrh43w) has been leading the charge on the [Places NIP](https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/pull/927), introducing Nostr notes (kind 37515\) that represent physical locations. The draft is well-crafted, with bonus points for linking back to OSM (and other location repositories) via [NIP-73 \- External Content IDs](https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/744bce8fcae0aca07b936b6662db635c8b4253dd/73.md) (championed by [@oscar](nostr:npub1unmftuzmkpdjxyj4en8r63cm34uuvjn9hnxqz3nz6fls7l5jzzfqtvd0j2) of [@fountain](nostr:npub1v5ufyh4lkeslgxxcclg8f0hzazhaw7rsrhvfquxzm2fk64c72hps45n0v5)). However, as Nostr is permissionless, authenticity poses a challenge. Just because someone claims to own a physical location on the Internet doesn’t necessarily mean they have ownership or control of that location in the real world. Ultimately, this problem can only be solved in a decentralised way by using [Web-of-Trust](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_of_trust) \- using your social graph and the perspectives of trusted peers to inform your own perspective. In the context of Places, this requires your network to form a view on which digital identity (public key / npub) is truly the owner of a physical place like your local coffee shop. This requires users to: 1. Verify the owner of a Place in cyberspace is the owner of a place in [meatspace](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/meatspace). 2. Signal this verification to their social graph. Let's look at the latter idea first with the concept of Attestations ... # Attestations A way to signal to your social graph that you believe something to be true (or false for that matter) would be by publishing an Attestation note. An Attestation note would signify to your social graph that you think something is either true or false. Imagine you're a regular at a local coffee shop. You publish an Attestation that says the shop is real and the owner behind the Nostr public key is who they claim to be. Your friends trust you, so they start trusting the shop's digital identity too. However, attestations applied to Places are just a single use case. The attestation concept could be more widely applied across Nostr in a variety of ways (key rotation, identity linking, etc). Here is a [recent example](nostr:nevent1qqsx8qu64xpnqaqkcqtrm4ly4l6xdqk9g2wkcaxxm3hzcc2p3hcz2ugzyr4tpe6k6v4cp0x5vneas39cqspsxp66z04tcdve5a3vntr6hy057y5k93z) from [@lyn](nostr:npub1a2cww4kn9wqte4ry70vyfwqyqvpswksna27rtxd8vty6c74era8sdcw83a) that would carry more signal if it were an Attestation: https://i.nostr.build/lZAXOEwvRIghgFY4.png Parallels can be drawn between Attestations and transaction confirmations on the Bitcoin timechain; however, their importance to you would be weighted by clients and/or [Data Vending Machines](https://www.data-vending-machines.org/) in accordance with: 1. Your social graph; 2. The type or subject of the content being attested and by whom; 3. Your personal preferences. They could also have a validity duration to be temporally bound, which would be particularly useful in the case of Places. [NIP-25 (Reactions)](https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/25.md) do allow for users to up/downvote notes with optional content (e.g., emojis) and *could* work for Attestations, but I think we need something less ambiguous and more definitive. **‘This is true’** resonates more strongly than **‘I like this.’**. https://i.nostr.build/s8NIG2kXzUCLcoax.jpg There are similar concepts in the Web 3 / Web 5 world such as [Verified Credentials](https://developer.tbd.website/docs/web5/verifiable-credentials/what-are-vcs) by [tdb](nostr:npub10ckt8dne8lahkwxwevtxf3rlvgttf2lvqrqc4rg7h8mdhsx6rcpqsg7muq). However, Nostr is the Web 3 now and so wen Attestation NIP? https://i.nostr.build/Cb047NWyHdJ7h5Ka.jpg That said, I have seen [@utxo](nostr:npub1utx00neqgqln72j22kej3ux7803c2k986henvvha4thuwfkper4s7r50e8) has been [exploring ‘smart contracts’ on nostr](nostr:nevent1qqswm26c4s4h56zwkk47w40mhsqqn66jk6lfas8r07w67h69474kkfgpzemhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuurjd9kkzmpwdejhgqg5waehxw309aex2mrp0yhxgctdw4eju6t0qgsw9n8heusyq0el9f99tveg7r0rhcu9tznatuekxt764m78ymqu36c0kd565) and Attestations *may* just be a relatively ‘dumb’ subset of the wider concept Nostr-native scripting combined with web-of-trust. # Proof of Place Attestations handle the signalling of your truth, but what about the initial verification itself? We already covered how this ultimately has to be derived from your social graph, but what if there was a way to help bootstrap this web-of-trust through the use of oracles? For those unfamiliar with oracles in the digital realm, they are simply trusted purveyors of truth. Introducing *Proof of Place*, an out–of-band process where an oracle (such as [BTC Map](https://btcmap.org/)\) would mail \- yes physically mail\- a shared secret to the address of the location being claimed in cyberspace. This shared secret would be locked to the public key (npub) making the claim, which, if unlocked, would prove that the associated private key (nsec) has physical access to the location in meatspace. One way of doing this would be to mint a 1 sat [cashu](https://github.com/cashubtc) ecash token locked to the npub of the claimant and mail it to them. If they are able to redeem the token then they have cryptographically proven that they have physical access to the location. Proof of Place is really nothing more than a weighted Attestation. In a web-of-trust Nostrverse, an oracle is simply a npub (say BTC Map) that you weigh heavily for its opinion on a given topic (say Places). In the Bitcoin world, Proof of Work anchors digital scarcity in cyberspace to physical scarcity (energy and time) in meatspace and as [@Gigi](nostr:npub1dergggklka99wwrs92yz8wdjs952h2ux2ha2ed598ngwu9w7a6fsh9xzpc) says in [PoW is Essential](https://dergigi.com/threads/pow-is-essential): > "A failure to understand Proof of Work, is a failure to understand Bitcoin." In the Nostrverse, Proof of Place helps bridge the digital and physical worlds. [@Gigi](nostr:npub1dergggklka99wwrs92yz8wdjs952h2ux2ha2ed598ngwu9w7a6fsh9xzpc) also observes in [Memes vs The World](https://dergigi.com/threads/memes-vs-the-world) that: > "In Bitcoin, the map is the territory. We can infer everything we care about by looking at the map alone." https://i.nostr.build/dOnpxfI4u7EL2v4e.png This isn’t true for Nostr. In the Nostrverse, the map IS NOT the territory. However, Proof of Place enables us to send cryptographic drones down into the physical territory to help us interpret our digital maps. 🤯 # Check-ins Although not a draft NIP yet, [@Arkinox](nostr:npub1arkn0xxxll4llgy9qxkrncn3vc4l69s0dz8ef3zadykcwe7ax3dqrrh43w) has also been exploring the familiar concept of [Foursquare](https://foursquare.com/)\-style [Check-ins on Nostr](nostr:naddr1qvzqqqr4gupzp68dx7vvdlltl7sg2qdv8838ze3tl5tq76y0jnz966fdsana6dz6qqxnzde3xqungv3jxq6ngvp52f3mja) (with kind 13811 notes). For the uninitiated, Check-ins are simply notes that signal the publisher is at a given location. These locations could be Places (in the Nostr sense) or any other given digital representation of a location for that matter (such as [OSM elements](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Elements)) if [NIP-73 \- External Content IDs](https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/744bce8fcae0aca07b936b6662db635c8b4253dd/73.md) are used. Of course, not everyone will be a Check-in enjoyooor as the concept will not sit well with some people’s threat models and OpSec practices. Bringing Check-ins to Nostr is possible (as [@sebastix](nostr:npub1qe3e5wrvnsgpggtkytxteaqfprz0rgxr8c3l34kk3a9t7e2l3acslezefe) capably [shows here](nostr:note1wjf6x9a5xehzr3z0hm8fgdyenznf6hxlmswldhmhsgk7fc9e86cscmsnve)), but they suffer the same authenticity issues as Places. Just because I say I'm at a given location doesn't mean that I am. Back in the Web 2.0 days, Foursquare mitigated this by relying on the GPS position of the phone running their app, but this is of course spoofable. How should we approach Check-in verifiability in the Nostrverse? Well, just like with Places, we can use Attestations and WoT. In the context of Check-ins, an Attestation from the identity (npub) of the Place being checked-in to would be a particularly strong signal. An NFC device could be placed in a coffee shop and attest to check-ins without requiring the owner to manually intervene \- I’m sure [@blackcoffee](nostr:npub1dqepr0g4t3ahvnjtnxazvws4rkqjpxl854n29wcew8wph0fmw90qlsmmgt) and [@Ben Arc](nostr:npub1c878wu04lfqcl5avfy3p5x83ndpvedaxv0dg7pxthakq3jqdyzcs2n8avm) could hack something together over a weekend\! Check-ins could also be used as a signal for bonafide Place ownership over time. # Summary: Trust Your Bros So, to recap, we have: **Places**: Digital representations of physical locations on Nostr. **Check-ins**: Users signalling their presence at a location. **Attestations**: Verifiable social proofs used to confirm ownership or the truth of a claim. You can visualise how these three concepts combine in the diagram below: https://i.nostr.build/Uv2Jhx5BBfA51y0K.jpg And, as always, top right trumps bottom left\! We have: **Level 0 \- Trust Me Bro:** Anyone can check-in anywhere. The Place might not exist or might be impersonating the real place in meatspace. The person behind the npub may not have even been there at all. **Level 1 \- Definitely Maybe Somewhere:** This category covers the middle-ground of ‘Maybe at a Place’ and ‘Definitely Somewhere’. In these examples, you are either self-certifying that you have checked-in at an Attested Place or you are having others attest that you have checked-in at a Place that might not even exist IRL. **Level 2 \- Trust Your Bros:** An Attested Check-in at an Attested Place. Your individual level of trust would be a function of the number of Attestations and how you weigh them within your own social graph. https://i.nostr.build/HtLAiJH1uQSTmdxf.jpg Perhaps the gold standard (or should that be the Bitcoin standard?) would be a Check-in attested by the owner of the Place, which in itself was attested by BTC Map? Or perhaps not. Ultimately, it’s the users responsibility to determine what they trust by forming their own perspective within the Nostrverse powered by web-of-trust algorithms they control. ‘Trust Me Bro’ or ‘Trust Your Bros’ \- you decide. As we navigate the frontier of cryptographic ownership and decentralised data, it’s up to us to find the balance between preserving the Open Data commons and embracing self-sovereign digital identities. # Thanks With thanks to [Arkinox](nostr:npub1arkn0xxxll4llgy9qxkrncn3vc4l69s0dz8ef3zadykcwe7ax3dqrrh43w), [Avi](nostr:npub1hqaz3dlyuhfqhktqchawke39l92jj9nt30dsgh2zvd9z7dv3j3gqpkt56s), [Ben Gunn](nostr:npub1lt8nn8aaa6qa63wjwj8gz2djf5nlhg3zfd0v6l45v8zhvuyh0p3s5zzt5y), [Kieran](nostr:npub1v0lxxxxutpvrelsksy8cdhgfux9l6a42hsj2qzquu2zk7vc9qnkszrqj49), [Blackcoffee](nostr:npub1dqepr0g4t3ahvnjtnxazvws4rkqjpxl854n29wcew8wph0fmw90qlsmmgt), [Sebastix](nostr:npub1qe3e5wrvnsgpggtkytxteaqfprz0rgxr8c3l34kk3a9t7e2l3acslezefe), [Tomek](nostr:npub1t30xvk4f3h86lhxazadwx6f2namer9yzgl70kfljfhr556g7su0qwg0lmp), [Calle](nostr:npub12rv5lskctqxxs2c8rf2zlzc7xx3qpvzs3w4etgemauy9thegr43sf485vg), [Short Fiat](nostr:npub1md39ua3h2s7204a7v5p9sdxmxx9qc7m4kr3r6naeuwfznad6d7nsxpctp9), [Ben Weeks](nostr:npub1jutptdc2m8kgjmudtws095qk2tcale0eemvp4j2xnjnl4nh6669slrf04x) and [Bitcoms](nostr:npub18s6axkw94d57sg438rp7pzf94vn8la4axyvd5f6wnjrgudtw54ps53eqxk) for helping shape my thoughts and refine content, whether you know it or not\!

# 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.

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. 

If you’re thinking of buying a Bitaxe, here is some information about pools vs solo mining. Firstly, although the terms are clear “pool mining”, “solo mining” there is nuance in these definitions, so I want to explain these terms fully. Solo mining pools exist, such as: https://solo.ckpool.org/ It is called a pool, because you are using their credentials to mine, but you keep all the rewards if you win a block. Despite the name, this is not a pool. You then have a pool such as https://ocean.xyz/ who are a pool, you use their credentials to mine, and you earn a share of their income relative to your contribution in hash power. There has been some publicity about a solo miner winning a pool recently, there were about 12 blocks won in 2023 by solo miners. However a winning solo miner is likely to be a server farm with hundreds or even thousands of S19’s or S21’s sharing the same payout wallet address. The image of a home miner with a Bitaxe winning a block is extremely unlikely. A solo miner is defined as a group of miners that share a payout wallet address, so for example you could have 10 Bitaxe’s at home all configured with the same BTC wallet address, this is considered a single solo miner. And so it is with mid tier mining farms, often privately owned, who have a number of machines set to the same payout address. Most of the time, they share earnings for a more reliable income, but the owner may decide to gamble on winning a block and so choose to solo (lottery) mine. So far, my Bitaxe, which has been running for 4 days now and is part of the Ocean pool. It is earning about 50 Sats a day. If I were to wait for an on-chain payout, it would take around 60 years to receive one. I can, however, setup a BOLT12 lightning payout address and earn this tiny income through Lightning. So here’s my recommendation. Currently, there are two pools that control more than 50% of mining, Foundry USA and AntPool. This is a dangerous position and in fact Bitmain, who provide around 90% of all mining hardware actually invest and have stakes in these and several other pools. This is centralising mining and could potentially allow a 51% attack, which could compromise Bitcoin. Jack Dorsey is currently developing competing mining hardware chipset, through his company Block and Ocean are attempting to decentralise the pools by building a truly independent option for miners to join. If you buy a Bitaxe, the best way you can help alleviate the dominance of Bitmain is to join a true pool like Ocean to slowly move control away from the dominant pools. Bear in mind that many of the other smaller pools are still controlled by Bitmain. If you're still interested in lottery mining, here are your chances of winning a block: Represented as Hash rates of different miners: Nerdminer: 20 KH/s = 20,000 H/s Bitaxe: 750 GH/s = 750,000,000,000 H/s Bitmain Antminer S9: 13.5 TH/s = 13,500,000,000,000 H/s Bitmain Antminer S19: 110TH/s = 110,000,000,000,000 H/s Bitmain Antminer S21: 200TH/s = 200,000,000,000,000 H/s Current Global Hash rate 628EH/s (Sept 2024) = 628,000,000,000,000,000,000 If you're running a Bitaxe, your percentage chance of winning a block is: 0.000000119426751592357% Over a year, your chances increase to: 0.00627707006369428% Your chances of winning the UK national lottery (assuming 20M tickets sold and you buy one): 0.000005% Over a year, your chances increase to: 0.00026% Like in all things in Bitcoin, I don’t ask you to trust me. If you want to verify, here are the references I used in making my conclusions: https://protos.com/chart-when-solo-miners-found-a-bitcoin-block/ https://investors.block.xyz/investor-news/news-details/2024/Blocks-New-Bitcoin-Mining-Chip-to-Be-Part-of-an-Ongoing-Project-With-Core-Scientific-to-Decentralize-Mining-Hardware/default.aspx https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wo91DWvZRs8 https://i.nostr.build/9rQ9Plv6XQYtt6xd.jpg

## 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.)

## 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.

I wanted to share this PDF on Nostr. Original post: Block ~862,844 September 25th, 2024 [Original link](https://nydig.com/research/bitcoins-protection-under-the-first-amendment) [Original PDF](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/614e11536f66309636c98688/66f41c9c55e13361ed5d3dce_BitcoinProtectionFirstAmendment-Sept-25.pdf) 👇Click the link below to view as original PDF on YakiHonne or Satellite.Earth👇  [Bitcoin's Protection Under the First Amendment ](https://cdn.satellite.earth/d7597d8c49dbc87d9a1fa430013313f0f845c489f9e158b4518bcacc529a5e91.pdf)

## Chef's notes Last time I made this I subbed the tomato puréed with some blistered cherry tomatoes. Don't think I'll be using the purée going forward. I prefer thighs so that's what I use for this but use whatever you want. Adjust spices based on the size of your onions. If all you have is two massive onions maybe use one and a half onion or just up the amount of spices a little. ## Details - ⏲️ Prep time: ~10 min - 🍳 Cook time: ~40 ish min - 🍽️ Servings: 4 ## Ingredients - 2 Onions - 2 tbsp tomato purée - 1/3 cup cashews - 1.5 tsp Garam Masala - 2 ish cloves of crushed garlic - 1 tsp chili powder - 1 tbsp lemon juice - 1/4 tsb ground turmeric - 1 tsb salt - 1 tbsp plain yogurt - 2 tbsp of your cooking oil or fat - 1 tbsp Coriander (Cilantro) plus extra for garnish - 1 tbsp sultanas (golden raisins) - 1 lb of chicken cubed - 6 oz of white button mushrooms ## Directions 1. Quarter the onions and put them in a food possessor for about a minute 2. Add the tomatoes, nuts, garlic, Garam masala, chili powder, lemon juice, turmeric, salt, yogurt and blend for another minute tell its well mixed in. 3. In a wok or a large pan heat your cooking oil and add the onion and spice mix in. Fry gently for around 2-ish minutes, stir frequently. 4. Add the chicken, coriander, and raisins to the pan. Stir-fry for another minute or so. 5. Add mushrooms and water. Bring to simmer and cover the pan cook for 10 min or until the chicken is 100% cooked through. 6. Serve with plain rice and enjoy!

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

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

### **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

Dear G***, If you've heard me say that I'm getting slower, you've probably believed me. Now, you know it. I've approximately hit the speed of molasses running uphill in January (January here in USA not January in Brazil). Speaking of that reminds me of this are you having a glorious spring? Our fall has been lovely, warm sunny days, leaves are not producing the beautiful display as they usually do, but they are pretty nonetheless. It's the kind of weather that makes you want to go for long walks, watch for the last flower, the first wooly worm (they're liars anyway!), pull off your jacket, put on your jacket, sweat in the sun, shiver in the breeze, and rejoice when you find a little, nondescript apple out in the wilds. It's the first time you've seen this tree, so you're honor bound, not wanting to appear ungrateful for what nature has shown you, and you eat it. It's sour as wheelerkers. (I don't know how to spell that word, but I tried. I'll bet you don't know how to spell it either), and, in short enjoy what you are being exposed to, because winter is coming! One thing I do enjoy watching: the flocking of the birds to come your way and all points west. The menagerie you described sounds wonderful. It's too bad they, the animals, liked your food so well they fought their way in through the guests to partake of it, but I'm sure it just made things more interesting. The turtle sounds terrific. Is it a usual thing there?, or did the turtle just take a liking for you and your housemates? And then, twenty-five-years old! He is probably the senior member of your group. Don't rob your "young brain" of its vast importance. It's probably more astute, more accurate than tired old, warped old brains which have been around long enough to be "compromised" in the truths that at one time would have been very evident to them. Let me give you a little anecdote here. When your grandfather and I lost our sons, one by one, to the mighty Halls of Knowledge (college), we did all right until the last one left. When Darin was gone we did all right for a few hours, and then we became so depressed with the being by ourselves, the younger generation no longer to harass, to harangue, and to bring life on another plane to the forefront, we were miserable! So, the Heavenly Father, being a God of Mercy, brought young guys from all directions to our house. They couldn't converse (well, argue actually) as well as our three, but they were wonderful substitutes, and we were helped. Know what? We needed the fresh, young outlook that a young person could bring. You are most needed, very appreciated by us oldsters. Never forget that! I agree with you that life is to be lived, and not avoided. In fact, it is impossible to avoid. We can't evade it either. But, remember, Jesus said He came to give us Life and Life more abundant. If we live to our fullest capacity, we will enjoy to the fullest the creation of God, whether it be in the USA, Brazil, France, England, India, Argentina, and anywhere else you have had occasion to wander. We know that there are some things we will not enjoy. We can't enjoy prejudice, sickness (mental, physical, emotional, or spiritual), injustice, and all the other things we encounter which are Darkness. But if we didn't see and be aware of Darkness, how could we be thankful for Light? Your Mind (Soul, if you will) is a part of Creation as much as the birds that migrate! It's beautiful! Feed it! Thank you for your map of where you live. If I came looking for you, I would know where to find you. You'd be on that delightful hill, the A-frame house, the nearby old church and you on your bike on the uphill road. I did intend to tell you about life on the farm, but I've run-on so much about other things, I'll do the "farm bit" another time. Things are pretty much the same cows, the mule, dogs, hills, rocks (and I can't collect then all), trees being blown on the fences continually as Mother Nature prunes her forests. You can see it's still much the same. enjoy living! Every day is a gift, and I Thank you for writing, Grant! Your letter was a breath of fresh air! Remember what I said about the "young" input? Love, Grandma

If you have your own domain and optionally run a node, then you can consolidate your email address, NIP-05 and Lightning address to yourname@yourdomain Here’s how to do it. First NIP-05 Want your NIP-5 to be: yourname@yourdomain Copy this nostr.json file from here: https://mikehardcastle.com/.well-known/nostr.json Replace the "mike" with your own name. Replace the string to the right with the hex of your npub. You can obtain the hex of your npub here: https://nostrcheck.me/converter/ Also replace the string at the top of the relay list with your hex npub. Then replace the relays at the bottom with your primary relays (just 3 or 4 primary relays are needed). Be careful not to change commas, quotes, brackets etc.... Upload the "nostr.json" file to your web server, making sure it is in the directory: /.well-known at the root of your HTML content Then your NIP-05 will be: yourname@yourdomain Lightning Address, optionally routing to your own node: If you have your own domain, have an Alby account and want your Lightning payment address to be yourname@yourdomain then follow this guide: https://guides.getalby.com/user-guide/v/alby-account-and-browser-extension/alby-account/use-your-lightning-address/own-domain If you run your own lightning node, or have always wanted to self sovereign your own Sats, then follow this guide: https://guides.getalby.com/user-guide/v/alby-account-and-browser-extension/alby-hub/getting-started If you run an Umbrel or Start9, you can run Alby Hub directly from your node: https://guides.getalby.com/user-guide/v/alby-account-and-browser-extension/alby-hub/alby-hub-flavors/umbrel-start9-etc

**Hey Freaks!** Hustle recently stumbled upon an article titled "Top Ten Ways to Stack More Bitcoin." Of course, Hustle clicked on the article... but after skimming through, he didn't see anything he hadn't already come across before. He sat back in his chair and pondered an interesting thought: ### Our Primary Focus Shouldn't Be on Accumulation If you think you need 3 BTC to retire and have obtained it, how much of your corn would you give to Coinbase for yield? Hustle remembers running a lightning node to get "routing yield." He attended a bitcoin meetup and saw the irrational exuberance of new stackers, the eager and crazed eyes of someone who has recently discovered the fountain of eternal youth. **A Key Realization** Everyone reading this already has an immense advantage in accumulating life-changing wealth before the rest of the world figures this stuff out. And in a deflationary world, **the deflation is the yield**. ### A Shift in Focus I'm thinking it would be more constructive to focus on... ### 1. **Properly Secure Your Stack** Don't trust third-party custodians like JP Morgan with your Bitcoin. Take control of your assets and secure them properly. ### 2. **Bitcoin Usability** Ensure you can easily spend and use your Bitcoin without relying on intermediaries. Improve your Lightning setup and explore alternative payment methods. ### 3. **V4V** Engage with like-minded individuals and support online V4V community through platforms like SN and Nostr, where you can earn thousands of sats while learning and contributing to the constructive conversation. ### 4. **Meatspace Communities** Connect with local Bitcoin enthusiasts and explore Bitcoin-friendly jurisdictions. This will help you stay sane and build strong relationships with others who share your ethics and morals. ### 5. **Switching Your Unit of Account** Abandon fiat currency units and adopt Bitcoin as your standard unit of account. This will help you make clearer economic decisions and avoid the pitfalls of inflationary yield ridden thinking. ### 6. **Finding Work that Pays in Bitcoin** Seek out opportunities that pay in Bitcoin or explore alternative income streams that are denominated in sats. This will help you build wealth more efficiently and avoid the risks of being associated with fiat currency. ### 7. **Preparing Your Uncle Jim Setup** Be ready to assist and onboard the laggards, they wont know whats happening to the world around them or where to turn, you'll have sub accounts, spending and saving wallets ready for them. ### 8. **Curating an Environment that is in Total Contrast to Fiat** Create a community or environment that rejects the values and morals of fiat culture. Focus on building and growing in a new thriving ecosystem while disregarding the system that is doomed to fail (to the best of your ability). ### 9. **Health** Prioritize your mental health. Be ready to properly Sheppard your generational wealth. Face melting god candles have a way of shaking up your resolve or distracting you from your mission. (whatever you mission may be). ### 10. **Node Running and Solo Mining** Contribute to the decentralization of the Bitcoin network by running a node and using open source mining solutions like the Bitaxe. ** We run the Network** Bitcoin dies if we don't. **Conclusion** ---------- Prepare for a future where Bitcoin is widely acknowledged as the global world reserve currency. Prioritize your preparedness, security, health, and community involvement. Run bitcoin like Hal Finney and don't give your bitcoin to JP (Freaking) Morgan for 5% yield. originally posted at https://stacker.news/items/695607