Lady_B

AGORA

![](https://m.stacker.news/144483)

For sale is one Lealana 0.1BTC brass Buyer Funded coin. It has a low serial number of #396

PRICE: 0.004BTC

[SELL] Lealana 0.1BTC brass Buyer Funded coin - 0.004BTC

Design

bitcoin

### *The Bitcoin watch is an innovative concept that combines cryptocurrency with high-end watchmaking craftsmanship. Let's take a look at this Bitcoin watch:*

![PROMO](https://m.stacker.news/143483)

![BITCOIN ORIGINAL](https://m.stacker.news/143484)

![SILVER](https://m.stacker.news/143486)

**The ultimate luxury of the digital age: the Bitcoin "Genesis Block" cutout series**

Designed for pioneers and connoisseurs of digital assets, this watch perfectly blends the revolutionary spirit of Bitcoin with traditional watchmaking craftsmanship. The combination of a rectangular case and a skeletonized Roman numeral dial pays homage to classic geometric aesthetics while also symbolizing the transparency and rigor of blockchain technology.

**Rectangular casing in architectural aesthetics**

The watch features a rectangular stainless steel case with clean, sharp lines, symbolizing the unshakeable structure of blockchain technology. The edges of the case are meticulously finished with alternating brushed and polished textures, creating a multi-layered metallic sheen, much like the stability and brilliance of crypto assets in volatile markets.

**Skeletonized Roman numerals and Automatic movement**

Skeletonized Hourglass: The outer ring of the dial is adorned with striking rectangular skeletonized Roman numeral hour markers (IV, VIII, XII…). These markers appear to float above the dial, subtly revealing the case back, symbolizing the core value of blockchain: "openness and transparency."

Genesis Symbol: The skeletonized Roman numerals are not only time markers, but their geometric lines perfectly fit the rectangular case, forming a miniature network structure, symbolizing the network architecture of Bitcoin.

**Core design highlights**

Bitcoin symbol: The center of the dial features a Bitcoin pattern surrounded by geometric time markers, highlighting its central position.

![](https://m.stacker.news/143489)

![PINKGOLD](https://m.stacker.news/143485)

![](https://m.stacker.news/143493)

![](https://m.stacker.news/143490)

![](https://m.stacker.news/143491)

![](https://m.stacker.news/143492)

![](https://m.stacker.news/143494)

#### Model：BITCOIN ORIGINAL / PINKGOLD / SILVER

Movement： *Miyota 8215* Automatic
Case material：Stainless steel
Water resistance：5ATM
Size：45.5 X 40mm
Thick：13.5mm 
Glass：Sapphire

[SELL] HMC Watch : Automatic Bitcoin Watch now on KICKSTARTER

> *This article is a translation from an article I found in the first issue of* [*Esquire France*](https://www.esquirefrance.com) *magazine. I thought it would be good exercise to translate it and improve my frenchy skills. Enjoy!*

![](https://m.stacker.news/140191)

`TESTIMONY`

<sup>INTERVIEW CONDUCTED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF - ILLUSTRATIONS BY </sup>[<sup>TIBOR KÁRPÁTI</sup>](https://tiborkarpati.com)

WE ASKED A FINANCIER WHO MADE A FORTUNE IN BITCOIN TO TELL US HIS LIFE STORY UNDER THE COVER OF ANONYMITY. HERE IT IS. NEITHER A NAIVE ODE NOR A MANIFESTO, BUT A STORY OF MONEY, POLITICS, AND MORALS.

This text is a completely fictional account. Or almost. And if it isn't, no one is obliged to believe it. The author is approaching fifty, still with the energy of youth but already with the lower back of maturity. He has been an entrepreneur in tech for over twenty-five years.

## THE BET.

Macau is the gambling capital of the world. But above all, it is the capital of vice. The best place to celebrate the thirtieth birthday of a "habibi," a compulsive tech entrepreneur with good connections.
It is November 2012, that precise moment when the world still believes that finance is under control, that money has an identifiable form, and that central banks know what they are doing. We are nearly drunk.
It is at this moment that our Cuban friend pulls out his iPhone and tells us: *"Hombres, I have the thing in my phone that is going to turn our lives upside down."*
And there it is. The word drops. Brutal. Minimal.

## BITCOIN.

The vapors dissipate. Our compañero calmly explains that this is it, the takeoff is real; a gang of totally asocial geniuses has finally cracked the code for digital cash: decentralized, self-regulated, theoretically unbreakable.

## AND WE LISTEN.

Because the guy has already done what many fantasize about: starting a startup on the other side of the Atlantic at 25 and exiting with several hundred million dollars.
The next day, around 3:00 PM, at breakfast, we take action. We ask him how to get some. *"Amigos, it's simple. For the initiated, mining. For the lazy, MtGox."*
Everyone looks at each other. I leave the hotel, text my Habibi to find out how much friend Ernesto bought, and I decide to put in 10% of his stake. My buddies are still hesitating. Me, I am very proud of my bold project. Did one have to grow up in the land of the Castro brothers to learn courage? I had been so bottle-fed on the precautionary principle that I felt a bit weak-kneed...

## THE EDUCATION.

Several months pass. Nothing happens. MtGox, the only vaguely credible entry point at the time for the lazy people we were, is overwhelmed by an influx of transactions—a digital gold rush.
I wire the funds to an account in Poland, and then nothing. No bitcoins. 60 days without news. I start to wonder. A scam? The premeditated disappearance of a genius who was a bit too sure of himself?
I eventually find the Twitter account of Mark Karpelès, the high priest of MtGox. I write to him in a private message. Against all odds, he replies. He promises to do what is necessary. And a few days later, an electronic miracle: the bitcoins finally appear in my account.
A few hundred BTC, acquired at an average price of about 50 euros.
In the meantime, since Macau, the price has started to skyrocket. In that typically crypto, hysterical way, giving the impression that the market is run by a bunch of poker players on amphetamines. I immediately warn Habibi—let's call him Preppy, it'll annoy him—who replies bluntly: *"Watch out, things stink around MtGox, move everything to a self-custody wallet, install Bitstamp, and above all, hurry up."*
At the time, there was no clever chatbot to calmly explain the stakes to a worried entrepreneur. I read, I dig, I get frustrated, I start over. I install the application. I create my first wallet. I sign my first online transaction, discovering in the process the austere beauty of PKI architectures—that wonderful idea that trust can be mathematically formalized without going through a well-intentioned third party.
And then, suddenly, I understand. The private key. The one that opens all doors or condemns you to wander for eternity in digital Gehenna. The private key is the key to heaven, but also the key to hell. It is a symbol of total responsibility. No more customer service. No more toll-free numbers. Only you, your choices, and their consequences.
Then begins a long period of incubation. Three years. Bitcoin stops being an exotic anecdote and becomes an object of daily reflection. I regularly reread the Bitcoin White Paper by Satoshi Nakamoto, because it poses a fundamental question: what happens when you strip money of its political dimension and hand it over to code?
I frequent the early crypto forums. I meet the future nouveau riche.
And then I experience the dizzying highs, the brutal crashes, the first scams, the first scandals, the first arrests.
All this racket could be discouraging. But behind this cacophony, a background signal remains. An infrastructure is being put in place. A new economic language is being invented. Decentralized finance is no longer a fantasy of caffeinated geeks.

![](https://m.stacker.news/140192)

> ### A NEW ECONOMIC
>
> ### LANGUAGE IS BEING INVENTED.
>
> ### DECENTRALIZED FINANCE
>
> ### IS NO LONGER A FANTASY
>
> ### OF CAFFEINATED GEEKS

Welcome to distributed consensus, proof of work, smart contracts, and tokenomics. "Code is the Law" becomes the new credo, not out of ideology, but out of pragmatism.
Meanwhile, in Paris, London, and Beirut, it's another world. Another circle. There is the clan of financiers and bankers. They are triumphant. It is their golden age. Money is easy, liquidity is abundant, the party seems destined to last forever.
And then there is the other clan. The entrepreneurs. Not the captains of industry. No. The scrappers. The ones who tinker. Me, coding apps to find the best deals. Alone against the establishment.
I haven't yet reached that stage where a simple nod of the chin is enough to command silence. There is still too much distance between "token value" and "taken value." And yet, I preach. My friends, my brothers, a new time is coming. Switch to code. The Croesuses of tomorrow will have beards and tattoos. The time of digital gold has come. Mine. Buy. Dive into the meanders of the blockchain.

## AN EPIPHANY.

Then, almost without warning, in 2016, an unexpected event occurs.
One of the biggest money changers calls me to say that one of his clients is starting to talk to him about bitcoin and blockchain using the same words as me. He is an engineer, a graduate of the best American universities, which, for him, is a guarantee of seriousness.
We meet a few weeks later. We then really get into the thick of it. Not the business plan. Not the numbers. But the paradigm shift.
My friend is smart. He listens. He asks the right questions. And above all, he understands quickly. And once he has understood, he executes even faster.
In less than six months, he sets up one of the very first crypto brokers for institutional investors. For the real big players.
He has grasped it: technology will eventually supplant regulation, not out of ideology, but out of efficiency. And when the authorities realize it—which they will do ten years late—they will adopt regulations that open the door to the world's great financiers.
He tells me very simply: "Forget digital gold. The real subject is money."
In the meantime, bitcoin has crossed the symbolic 5,000 euro mark. It continues to yo-yo. But above all, since 2014 and the arrival of that brilliant kid Vitalik, we have discovered smart contracts. We have witnessed the first ICOs, mostly grotesque, sometimes visionary. We observe certain states—Israel, Singapore, Malta, Luxembourg, Switzerland—committing themselves to attracting the boldest entrepreneurs.
My Cuban friend is now courted from all sides.
In the midst of these great geopolitical and financial maneuvers, however, remain small, much more intimate stories. Among my friends, there is one. A brother for life. I have him buy a client's car. No luck, the car got hit. Off to the frame machine. I settle the repair bill, and since he is fiercely hostile to cryptos, almost ideologically allergic, I tell him very calmly: *"Man, no other option. I'll pay, but in bitcoin only. You're going to have to dip your toe in. And with a bit of luck, you'll end up walking on water."*
How can I put it. That repair cost me, in the long run, several times the price of the car. But since then, the potential for teasing is limitless. And for that alone, objectively, it was the best investment in the world.
What was once just a personal conviction is starting to become a shared certainty. Bitcoin is no longer just a bet against the system. It is becoming a serious alternative.
And that is always when the real stories begin.

## THE NEW GENERATION.

The years pass. Certainties shift. Skeptics become cautious converts, converts become enthusiastic apostles, apostles become reasonable investors, and the guardians of the temple—the very ones who yesterday denounced the libertarian irresponsibility of cryptos—transform into inspired chanters of the currency *incognita*. After the turbulence of youth, the signal, long blurred, is becoming clearer and clearer. And then Covid happens. It is in this strange moment that many realize, sometimes with dread, sometimes with nonchalance, that nearly 30% of the money in circulation in the world did not exist five years earlier. The limited quantity of bitcoins stops being a whim of paranoid geeks and becomes, in the eyes of many, the last rampart against the great contemporary Satan: inflation. We have all aged ten years. Ten years of experiences, successes, failures, and nights that were too short. The American friend of my money-changer buddy made a fortune, then bet everything on artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, the savings of European dowagers melted like snow in the sun. The libertarian privateers, for their part, settled in Puerto Rico, transforming fiscal utopia into a tropical combat sport. And the president of the new world, Donald, to not name him, raided the digital stash by launching NFTs, tokens, and his own stablecoin. We, meanwhile, are still traveling just as much. For my buddy Preppy's 50th birthday, we planned a trek in Mount Lebanon. A way to glimpse better days for, ironically, "the Switzerland of the Middle East." That's when I really realize. What had started as "bitcoin and me" has become "bitcoin and us." And like it or not, it is now that word, bitcoin, that most often comes to mind when it comes to naming the upheavals of our time.

## ALL THE WAY UP.

It all started with 50 dollars. 50 dollars to buy a bitcoin at the beginning of 2013, which, at the time, already seemed excessive for an immaterial object backed by a mathematical promise.
And then the numbers followed their own trajectory. One day it might take 1.5 million dollars to buy one bitcoin. Or maybe not. What is truly dizzying is not so much the increase in the value of bitcoin as the slow, inexorable depreciation of everything else. King Dollar is wobbling. Queen Euro is winded. Prince Yuan is uncertain. And we continue, out of habit or fatigue, to call stability what is often just a slow crumbling.

The collective error consists in believing that value is created by decree. Wherever political power grants itself a monopoly over a public good, that good eventually loses its value. And there is no monopoly more dangerous than that of money.
The spectacular increase in the price of bitcoin is, at heart, just a somewhat brutal mirror held up to our fiat currencies. It doesn't say so much that bitcoin is worth more. But that they are worth less. Thank you to Satoshi Nakamoto for inflicting this lesson on our elected officials, our central bankers, and all those who confused authority with legitimacy.
For us Lebanese, this story is nothing abstract. We know better than anyone what it means to see a currency die. We know what political irresponsibility costs when combined with economic cynicism. In this context, bitcoin is not a speculative whim. It is perhaps an exit door. One of the few. An imperfect, risky, but real chance to rebuild a country, an economy, and perhaps even a bit of financial dignity.

There is still a long way to go between "In God We Trust" and "In Code We Trust." A path strewn with illusions, bubbles, scandals, and excesses. But at least, this time, we have stopped waiting for someone to lead us there.

We have started walking.

***

## GLOSSARY

* BITCOIN: cryptocurrency (symbol BTC or XBT).
* BITSTAMP: payment and exchange platform for crypto-assets.
* BLOCKCHAIN: "chain of blocks" allowing the storage and transmission of encrypted information without an intermediary.
* CRYPTOCURRENCY: Dematerialized means of payment or exchange having no legal tender.
* ICO: Initial Coin Offering. Financing operation for a project using crypto-assets.
* MINING: conversion of electricity into crypto-assets by making one's computer available to validate transactions one by one in a "block" and/or secure the network constituted by the relevant blockchain. This activity can be compensated by a small portion of cryptocurrency.
* MTGOX: main exchange platform (buying and selling) for bitcoins from 2009 until its bankruptcy in 2014.
* PKI: Public Key Infrastructure. Encryption system using crypto keys and digital certificates, used for secure emails, online banking services, cloud platforms...
* SATOSHI: smallest unit of account available in the bitcoin system (100 million satoshis = 1 bitcoin). Named after the pseudonym of the bitcoin designer, Satoshi Nakamoto.

My Life Inside the Bitcoin

I have a business and the margins are negative to breakeven. part of this is the rate people are scamming using services and chargebacks. It is small but it happens.

Basically, you order custom, we make custom and you pick up. There is zero chance of you not getting the custom order. But we do not have zero chargebacks.

I see maps of services much smaller than us even though we still are small potatoes in our industry, that accept bitcoin payments and all over the map these are square app enabled lightning network payments. no chargebacks and most importantly over that no interchange fees. How can I start taking bitcoin payments? Is my business too big? Is it only service businesses being allowed since they do not charge sales tax? I would make all inclusive pricing if sales tax were the issue. Both interchange and chargebacks are drowning me. There is often no money to pay myself when these people steal this way. It took three months of working a second job to finally be back to cashflow positive. Except quarterly sales tax is due in weeks so we may actually still be negative on that aspect.

I just want to get paid for the service and goods we provide. I dont want to educate people how to make things harder on the little guy so I wont elaborate. People pay once they have the goods and services provided in person. We dont know a better way to combat the ways people are scamming the system but taking bitcoin payments would be a step in that direction.

I want to take payments using Bitcoin.

Christmas greeting card v3 [100x gift inside]

030e0dca83

Wish you all find what you are looking for, achieve your goals and find love.

Stacker Saloon

saloon

People get bored with **`0sats/vB`**
![](https://m.stacker.news/85743)

just visited, it maybe useful as some point

**Bitcoin Central**
_Buy / Sell in Person For Cash_
Las Vegas, San Diego, Los Angeles
https://bitcoincentral.vegas/

Christmas greeting card v2 [100x gift inside]

I wish people will wake up from the dream we are living in, I wish for peace and harmony, I wish for abundance to everyone that is in fear and distress.

I wish stackers to give, unconditionally, because there's no receiving otherwise

I wish you @030e0dca83 all the best ;)


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[Curious Problems #005 - BUYING BUNS](https://stacker.news/items/789731/r/Lady_B)


food_and_drinks

Buns were being sold at three prices: one for a penny, two for a penny, and three for a penny. Some children (there were as many boys as girls) were given seven pennies to spend on these buns, each child to receive exactly the same value in buns. 

Assuming that all buns remained whole, how many buns, and of what types, did each child receive?

[previous](https://stacker.news/items/787358/r/Lady_B)

Curious Problems #005 - BUYING BUNS

[Curious Problems #004 - GENEROUS GIFTS](https://stacker.news/items/787358/r/Lady_B)

bitcoin_beginners

A generous man set aside a certain sum of bitcoin for equal distribution weekly to the needy of his acquaintance. One day he remarked, _"If there are five fewer applicants next week, you will each receive two sats more."_ 

Unfortunately, instead of there being fewer there were actually four more persons applying for the gift.

_"This means," he pointed out, "that you will each receive one sats less."_

How much did each person receive at that last distribution?

[previous](https://stacker.news/items/785953/r/Lady_B)

Curious Problems #004 - GENEROUS GIFTS

econ

Curious Problems #003 - LOOSE CASH

[Curious Problems #003 - LOOSE CASH](https://stacker.news/items/785953/r/Lady_B)

What is the largest sum of money-all in current coins and no silver dollars-that I could have in my pocket without being able to give change for a dollar, half dollar, quarter, dime, or nickel?

[previous](https://stacker.news/items/784588/r/Lady_B)

Education

Curious Problems #002 - DOLLARS AND CENTS

Curious Problems #001 - CONCERNING A CHECK

# Curious Problems #002 - DOLLARS AND CENTS

A man entered a store and spent one-half of the money that was in his pocket.

When he came out he found that he had just as many cents as he had dollars when he went in and half as many dollars as he had cents when he went in.

How much money did he have on him when he entered?

[previous](https://stacker.news/items/783295/r/Lady_B)

Curious Problems #002 - DOLLARS AND CENTSCurious Problems #002 - DOLLARS AND CENTS