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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @alt 20h \ parent \ on: 14 Days Without a Smartphone = Brain Minus 10 Years. But Can You Handle It? HealthAndFitness
I have some things that I need my smartphone for at the moment. I'm working on converting away from it, but I have things like 2FA that I can't just abandon without some effort.
The long term goal is to be smartphone free.
I'm sure most of this is to do with fashion, and the rest to do with the camera technology.
Get somebody today, dress them up like it's the 80s, re-style their hair and makeup, and photograph them with a 40-year-old camera. I bet they'll look older too.
I have two phones now, a smart phone and a dumb Nokia phone which only does calls and SMS. I have one SIM card which I swap between the phones, so people can reach me via the same number no matter which phone I use.
I mainly use the dumbphone, only putting the SIM in the smartphone when I need it. Without internet access away from home, there's no need to bring the smartphone out, so I often don't take it out with me.
Weirdly, I don't miss the smartphone when I don't have access to it. It's only when I put the SIM back in and start using it again, do I find myself avoiding swapping back to the dumbphone. For example the SIM is in the smartphone today, since last weekend when I used it for Google maps. This post has reminded me to swap back to the dumbphone when I get home.
People often disregard Trezor because they aren't 100% Bitcoin-only, but they are a good option.
They have a long history in bitcoin (pretty sure they created the BIP39 standard), they are more affordable than ColdCard, and they seem much more privacy-focused than ledger.
You can also get their latest devices with Bitcoin-only firmware if you wish.
Yes, it would still be fair. To me, it's fair because the key principles haven't changed: the supply and issuance are still fixed, the system is open and no participant is intrinsically privileged over another.
Even with halvings every 2100 blocks, anybody could come in and start mining at any time. This is fundamentally different to a pre-mine, where even if you wanted to, you can't start mining until a privileged group allow it, which is actually unfair.
Fair doesn't mean equal outcomes. Just because most people didn't know about the network doesn't make it unfair, because the information was still published openly on the internet for anybody to seek out.
Wonder if he might do a secret audit first. If Knox is empty, nothing happens, but if it turns out they are holding all the gold they claim to hold, he could win big brownie points by doing an open audit and showing that America still has real wealth.
I'm talking about the Soviet government. They had their own space program with lunar satellites. They had the capability to track Apollo 11 and to independently verify the landing, with every incentive to call out a fakery.
It's my go-to counterpoint to moon landing conspiracy theorists because there is no reasonable argument against it. The physical evidence and data itself is undeniable, but it is hard to explain succinctly. The fact that the Soviets didn't try to deny the US landing though, there's no real explanation for that other than "it actually happened".
If it was all faked, why didn't the Soviet Union deny it? They had their own space program with lunar satellites, they were tracking the Apollo 11 flight, and if the Americans didn't land there then the Soviets had every incentive to call them out for faking it.
Norway was very fortunate in the past to find itself atop vast natural resources, and they took great advantage of that fortune.
Today, they find themselves in yet another fortunate position to use Bitcoin mining to solve a problem, but it looks like they're going to squander the opportunity instead.
The question itself sounds fallacious the way OP has phrased it.
By definition owners who keep holding it aren’t spending it,
This makes sense, you can't invest and save the same unit of money simultaneously.
...meaning there is no investment elsewhere.
This doesn't follow from the first clause. The fact that savers don't invest doesn't preclude the existence of investors, and in fact somebody can be both a saver and an investor.
Therefore OPs question:
Wouldn’t it be bad if we didn’t invest in other things?
is seemingly irrelevant. Yes it would be bad if nobody invested in anything, but there's no reason to suspect that investment would cease entirely on a Bitcoin standard.
The reason people tend not to invest their Bitcoin today is because there are no investments that can generate a positive return in Bitcoin. It is always more profitable to simply save the Bitcoin. Once the whole world is on a Bitcoin standard, it is very likely that Bitcoin's value will stabilise, making it possible for shrewd investors to invest it profitably.
All good points. To be fair, I don't think there is any way you can launch something like bitcoin and have it be truly "fair", because there will always be some degree of information asymmetry - cypherpunks and cryptographers knew about it and understood it before most other people, and could benefit from getting in early.
Is that unfair? It depends what you mean by unfair. There are always going to be some people who, by pure circumstance, find themselves at the right place and time to profit from new technology.
The key things with bitcoin that I believe make it fair:
- Fixed supply from the start. The max number of Bitcoins was set in stone from day one, as was the supply issuance schedule.
- No pre-mine. The developer did not mine anything until the network was active and open to all participants. They had a knowledge advantage, but they played by the same set of rules as everybody else.
- Open protocol. Anybody could access the network as an equal participant from day one. Anybody could have spun up 1000 machines to mine bitcoin as soon as the genesis block was broadcast, if they wanted.
- Protocol was described before the software implementation. This is quite important - Satoshi released the whitepaper before releasing the software implementation. It would have been possible for another person to read the whitepaper and launch their own Bitcoin network before Satoshi did.
Purely through the broader changes that such freedom would create in society. A freer society ends up being a happier, healthier, richer society, with a greater incentive to cooperate and trade peacefully.
How does KYC prevent funding terrorism in the first place? It's not like the terrorists sign up for a bank account stating "occupation: islamic extremist".
There have been ways to funnel money and resources to illegitimate causes since the advent of money, and the presence of KYC/AML regulations hasn't stopped it.
I don't have any stats, but I would wager that removing KYC/AML and allowing total financial freedom for individuals would do more to reduce terrorism than the KYC/AML regulations achieve on their own.
Much needed message for a lot of modern parents. I was fortunate to have a decent upbringing. Many of my peers did not. My other half and I are planning children and we have a mindset like yours, hopefully our children can have teachers like you too.
It's a testament to the huge growth of Bitcoin really. If gold goes up 3% a year, well it will probably do that next year, so John Smith with his $1000 to invest only missed out on $30 by not investing a year ago.
But with Bitcoin, John sees the price going up by factors of ten or more, and thinks how unfair it is that he didn't put his $1000 in a few years ago. Surely now, he thinks, it cannot continue, he has missed the boat and the hype is over, so the opportunity is no longer available to him.
You didn't get the gains just for being born earlier though. You picked up an a quieter signal, researched when there were fewer resources, and risked time and money on something with less of an established history. Anybody at the time could have done what you did, but they didn't.
These are great charts.
Ignore Darth, if you want to get somebody interested in bitcoin the best place to start isn't with notions of liberty and freedom, because normies don't care about that.
People are struggling because their money is dogshit and their purchasing power is being stolen. Showing them the hard truth of that can be an eye-opener, it will at least pique their interest. If they start adopting bitcoin they will arrive at the idea of liberty in their own time.
It doesn't have to be either-or, Darth. For most people it is impossible for them to live totally on Bitcoin today. They either use fiat, or they stop buying groceries, fuel, etc.
You can encourage adoption, build circular economies, and pay with Bitcoin where possible while simultaneously using fiat for those things that require it, and if you're going to be using fiat, why not use a fiat card that rewards sats?
It can even be a way of steering the conversation toward bitcoin without making yourself look like preacher.