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20 sats \ 0 replies \ @Athena_Alpha 9 Feb 2024 \ parent \ on: satsymbol.org | The ₿est symbol for sats. Always has been. bitcoin
We said they were capable of understanding dollars and cents and thus, also understanding bitcoin and sats. Not that regular Joe has heard of sats. We know very few people have heard of / know about sats, but that'll change as adoption increases. People didn't know what the @ symbol was in 1999... but that changed
That's your code base that's obviously not super complex or old. Many are old / complex or simply just not updated or maintained as well. Then there's all the books, the written articles (like the dozens on our site) endless podcasts, YouTube videos etc etc etc.
Yup this is just stupid. We get it, not many people (yet) understand or even know what a sat is but we already have:
- bitcoin the token
- Bitcoin the network
- Bitcoin the Blockchain
Having Bitcoin (for sats) just makes this EVEN worse
It's not even a problem that needs fixing! People aren't stupid. They are capable of understanding dollars and cents, bitcoin and sats
So there's a different symbol for sats vs bitcoin, there's a different symbol for cents too: ¢ or ₵ or (mostly) c. C'est la vie. Pretty sure there's more important things to do than change a 15 year old standard that creates horrendous confusion and requires all software/hardware builders to redo millions of lines of code 🙄
The more time and effort you put into learning about the Lightning Network, how routing of payments work, which nodes need new channels or more liquidity and then enabling those things, the more payments you’ll route and the more revenue you’ll bring in and the more likely you’ll be profitable.
Running a Lightning Node can absolutely be done profitably. There’s many forum posts or videos from fantastic node runners that are already turning a profit right now not to mention huge companies doing the same thing. That being said, we’re not going to sugar coat it as it’s a hard slug to get to where they are now. Just like with Bitcoin, it takes Work. Here’s an excellent post outlining someone who’s done a ton of work and still is having troubles returning a profit.
Our recommendation is that you should think hard about whether you’re willing to put in the many months of learning and experimentation required to (hopefully) turn a profit one day. Maybe your skills are better suited to something else which is OK. Maybe your Internet connection goes down all the time and so it’ll just never work no matter how much you try. Maybe you don’t have enough Bitcoin to fund enough channels. Or maybe you don’t care about being profitable as you want to just learn.
Whichever way you go, just know that it takes lots of work and know this going in. This is especially true right now as the mempool is more full and has higher fees together with a higher Bitcoin price in general. The best time to start running a Lighting Node was 2019, the second best time is now.
We've gone into more detail (6 pages or so) in this piece: Bitcoin Lightning Node Profitability: ROI & What To Know Before Investing
All great suggestions and basically what we recommend too
We have full reviews on a number of them here as well as plenty of other resources, guides, how tos and heaps more :)
Wikipedia and the general IT / Security industry would beg to differ:
An air-gapped computer or network is one that has no network interfaces, either wired or wireless, connected to outside networks.
While we're big fans of SeedQR, we don't know of any HWWs that can use QR codes to upgrade their firmware. Only microSD cards really allow this and it's what the SeedSigner uses too. We also consider SeedSigner to be fully air gapped.
This (along with articles that also have no clue about Bitcoin) is the literal reason we founded Athena Alpha.
All we study and write on is Bitcoin. To educate as many as possible with the highest quality material and resources.
We also have professional backgrounds on networking, engineering, science, programming and accounting/investing.
If we're wrong, tell us, with evidence and we'll fully investigate it and amend our information if required. Screw people who pretend they know everything and mislead others
Interesting question. We knew that Sparrow used Argon2 (and that it's OWASP recommended) but beyond that it's an interesting thing to verify.
We've reached out to @SparrowWallet on Twitter to see if they can come on in here and help clear things up 🙂
FWIW, we wouldn't ever consider giving Sparrow (or any other software based wallet) access to your Private Keys. Instead they should be stored on a well vetted Hardware Wallet if we're talking about any amount of funds you don't want to lose. That way even if an attacker breaks your password, all they'll get is the wallet file. They'll be able to see your coins... but not spend / steal them.
We must be on the same wavelength! We released this more fun styled piece that looks into exactly this!
A Bullish Bitcoin Price Prediction For 2024
- Bitcoin’s Price Right Now
- Bitcoin’s Historical Price Performance
- What’s Historically Affected The Price Of Bitcoin
- Bullish Signs For 2024
- Bearish Signs For 2024
- Is Bitcoin A Safe Long Term Investment Decision?
- The Bitcoin Singularity
- Bitcoin Price Prediction
But in short: it looks insane.
In the investing world, the way these ETFs are being setup is very common as to how REITs, shares, index funds etc are all setup and have operated for decades. You buy shares in this Bitcoin ETF and they'll buy real bitcoin and (in most cases) have Coinbase custody those real bitcoins for you. They won't loan them out or do anything else with them as far as we can tell (dodgy illegal stuff they or Coinbase might do not withstanding).
While this is a far cry from taking full self custody of your own bitcoin, it's the norm in the investing world and opens up a lot of new institutional investors to quickly and easily buy bitcoin whereas before they couldn't.
Is an ETF still and IOU? Absolutely. But at least now with bitcoin these companies or individuals CAN go and take full self custody if they so chose to. Try doing that with $1,000 worth of Apple shares or a government bond and see how far you get...
This OPTION to self custody should hopefully also mean that it keeps things in check as if BlackRock etc do screw around everyone should theoretically just transition to self custody to take them out of the picture. Heck, even if they perform fine this still might happen over time as everyone realizes that paying them 1-2% p.a. is ridiculous when they can just self custody themselves and save a bomb.
y no Fairphone?
All those manufacturers have made it pretty clear they're now in the "no longer innovate, just bleed the customer dry" phase. For example the Pixel 6 Pro is virtually identical to the Pixel 8 Pro, except it's literally hundreds of dollars more expensive. Sure money printing is partly responsible for that price increase, but screw Google.
If we're going to pay good money for a phone, it should be one that's built with well paid workers and designed to be upgraded and repaired long term. Bitcoiners often lament "new" things not being as good quality as "old" things (eg. a house or furniture). Put your money where your mouth is and buy something that will last a decade or more of daily use
Hardware Wallet or learn a painful lesson the hard way. We're very sorry for Rick but the world is hostile and it's what we live in
All great points! Allow us to add a few... mainly our epic huge guide that itself involves about a dozen more other guides inside it.
Umbrel: Ultimate Quick Start Guide For Beginners
We also have our How To Build A Sexy Umbrel Node For $300 guide that uses our considerable IT building experience to recommend targeted upgrades to the default suggested parts list from Umbrel.
These upgrades will make your node more stable, last loner and most importantly, sexier. Finally, as Umbrel heavily encourages "being your own cloud", we'll also point out these two important issues:
Privacy & Security
When you first use Umbrel you’ll quickly notice that it doesn’t use encryption. The URL will read like “http” not “https”. This means that anything you send, including passwords, files and more will be sent in clear text for anyone to read.
Even across the Tor network, it doesn’t fully secure your data as the Tor exit node (which can be run by anyone) is what decrypts the Tor data and forwards it onto your node. That exit node can thus see anything that’s in clear text which is again, any password or files you send.
Tor also doesn’t provide data integrity or confidentiality meaning someone in the middle can alter your data and perform man-in-the-middle attacks. Full, end to end TLS 1.3 encryption solves all this which is why you normally see sites using “HTTPS” in their URL.
While Umbrel doesn’t try to hide this security issue (they state it in their security.md file), it’s a big issues uses should be well aware of going in.
No Data Backup Or Redundancy
Another major blind spot is the complete lack of any and all data backup and redundancy. A huge part of self hosting your own data is ensuring that it’s properly backed up and secured from things like a failing drive, someone accidentally deleting something, stuffing up a configuration change or even worse, a ransomware attack.
These sorts of critical files will normally be stored on a NAS which by default provides data redundancy through RAID. This allows for 1 or more disks to fail and still have your data be safe. With Umbrel, you only have 1 drive… so if it fails then poof. All your photos and files are gone. Not great and again, something users should consider seriously before they self host certain apps.
Remember too that 80% of learning is doing. No one properly understands Bitcoin (or anything) until the actually use it
One of the top rules of computer security is: Don't role your own
Don't try and come up with some super smart, custom made, super stealthy way to "totally outsmart everyone" with. You will screw it up. You will forget your passwords. It won't work how you think it will. It will have huge security holes in it. No one else will be able to help you fix it. It will end badly.
This is particularly pertinent when it comes to full computers with full operating systems. They have huge attack surface areas, even when off line.
Instead, use the heavily battle tested industry standard of a Hardware Wallet and a well respected software wallet like Sparrow Wallet and ensure it's fully backed by your own Full Bitcoin Node.
We'd also point out that Trezor isn't that great either (although their Safe 3 is a step up). There are far better options and you can view, filter/sort and compare all hardware wallet options here. Tap the "i" button to see full specs and ratings. Our top rated ones are the BitBox02 and Foundation Passport.
For other specific reading try these :
- A Beginners Guide To Bitcoin Security - this gives a broad, detailed guide for increasing your security
- How To Protect Your Bitcoin Private Key - this details numerous terrible ways to protect your Bitcoin
- How To Protect Your Bitcoin - this gives a full best practices example at the end
Finally, welcome to saving your time and energy in Bitcoin. You won't be disappointment 🙂
You are not investing in bitcoin. Bitcoin is not an investment.
To OP if you're confused by this, we can confirm that @DarthCoin speaks the truth. The key is understanding the difference between investing and savings.
To save money is to put it away, in a safe place, with the goal of using it in the future. You are not giving it to anyone such as a company (shares) or government (bonds). It's not exposed to the risk of loss and it produces no returns. If you save $100 under your mattress a year later the same $100 bill will be there, it won't have turned into $110.
Investing, by comparison, is putting money to work for a period of time in some sort of project or undertaking in order to generate positive returns. For example, investing in a company and receiving their income as a "return". In involves the risk of loss as that same $100 could go to $1m or $0. The more risk, the more return (usually).
Bitcoin is not investing because it doesn't generate any yield or return. You store 1 BTC in a UTXO and 100 years later the same 1 BTC will be there. It is savings.
True savings is something most modern day people have long since forgotten the true meaning of as it's now been conflated with "investing" due to the fact that one cannot "save" in fiat anymore. Inflation will rob your savings and when you come back in 100 years there will be nothing left. Sure, the physical $100 bill might be there, but it will be worthless.
While some might say @DarthCoin is being silly in that both words essentially mean the same thing these days, it's very beneficial for people to fully understand that there is still a difference. The ability to simply save is one of the core things Bitcoin gives back to all humanity. Freeing us from the endless debasement of central bankers.
While possible, the thieves now MUST allow you to go to a bank grade security level place.
Now you have the ability to (hopefully covertly) alert the authorities and have your house surrounded by police. Will you and your family end up 100% safe? Unsure. But safety is never 100% in real life and TLM wallets now mean it's significantly harder and more riskier for the thieves to get away with it. Now there's a serious possibility that they're going to have armed men and women surround them, before there was virtually zero chance of that.