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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Scoresby OP 14m \ on: Lightspark CEO pays for coffee on Square terminal using stablecoin on Lightning? lol
I just realized that in my explanation I didn't have any role for Flashnet...
I suppose we could say that this is the model started by Satoshi and followed up by a whole bunch of great open source contributors.
It is something I find a little troubling though:
I've never once paid for bitcoin software. My node, my wallet software, lightning stuff...yet I benefit from it and need it to work, in fact it is a pretty major problem for me if it doesn't work. That doesn't seem balanced to me.
It has become especially apparent in the recent arguments about filtering and Core v30. Bitcoin Core is not necessarily a public good -- but neither is it a private enterprise. It gets messier because of FOSS stuff: if I write a software project and make it FOSS, it doesn't entitle anyone to demand what I should work on or how I change the project. Just that they are free to fork it. Yet somehow with Bitcoin Core we feel that it is more than just another FOSS project.
These aren't organized thoughts, just uncertainty I've had this year.
Figured I'd put my commentary here, rather than in the post:
Being pragmatically optimistic is the right disposition, and you have to hold on to that whenever you find yourself getting blackpilled about the crypto casino. The speculation and mania and extraction should be understood as an inevitable but unpleasant externality of a useful infrastructure buildout.
This is the most interesting point in the whole article. Bitcoin is permissionless -- the specific chain and set of rules we are using as well as the larger concept that crypto ripped off and that has produced 1000 shitcoins and scams. People are going to use it in many ways we dislike; they are going to do bad things with it; they are going to fight us, trick us, lie to us, and use it to try to take away our freedoms -- but if it cannot survive the open sea, it never was a ship to whose mast it was worth tying ourselves.
I sympathize with your feelings here, but my experience has been that many people do not want to do self-custody.
I have a number of experiences where I've tried to explain bitcoin to a friend or family member, and they've gotten to the point where they are curious about it -- but then they never come down the path of self-custody despite many offers to assist and explanations of why it is important.
Obviously, the most likely case here is that I'm not very good at convincing people to hold their own keys. But In a few cases, I'm pretty sure I've made a good case, but it's either too intimidating or too inconvenient for them to do.
These are people who are otherwise thoughtful, willing to investigate things deeply, and don't mind going against the general flow of society. Yet somehow, Bitcoin is really hard for them.
I wish I could crack the puzzle that turns a person from the kind of person who's willing to hold bitcoin etf shares into the kind of person who sees etf shares as a threat. But I don't know how to do it.
blockspace media has been doing some nice reporting lately. I don't remember them putting out stuff of this quality before (but maybe I just wasn't paying attention).
it's hard to prove a negative. I've only ever used social media under a nym. Never had a facebook account, nor instagram, x/twitter and others have only used nyms. I can see that I'm going to be spending a lot of time in secondary screening lines in the future...
I wonder what the housing situation in the US would look like if cities had been far less restrictive about building over the last two decades.
“Significant growth in stablecoins could cause retail deposit outflows, diminishing an important source of funding for banks and leaving them with more volatile funding overall,”
Last I checked banks are businesses. They make money doing what they do and are not a service provided out of charity. Why should we feel obligated to maintain their sources of profit?