Shouldn’t we let the merchant decide what they what they do with the bitcoin we sell them? Unless you police them and prevent them from selling bitcoin back to fiat…

Getting merchants to accept bitcoin directly should be first goal…using gift cards or things like does not encourage adoption, I agree.

That’s a great article.

When you finally convinced the vendor to accept bitcoin, do you monitor them to make sure they do not sell any of it back to fiat? Probably not because it is their choice to do whatever they want with those sats.

Maybe they’ll go to another store and spend some sats buying food at another place that you onboarded into bitcoin. Eventually they won’t need to convert back into fiat at all because a circular economy will exist by that point.

Having a vendor accept bitcoin directly (regardless of what they do with it afterwards) is much better than me using my bitcoin to purchase a Visa debit card or gift card….that is the fiat mindset that we need to do away with mentioned in your article.

I think I read that Coinos is an option (if you are okay with temporarily keeping it custodial) since they support bolt12 as well.

In an ideal world (and the coming future), a circular economy would be preferred but it isn’t necessary to have a 100% circular economy or nothing, if those are the two choices.

IMO being able to pay someone in bitcoin for a good or service is a good start, even if they want the ability to convert back to fiat. Money works as a nonconsumable thing that has no other use than the ability to facilitate trade between two parties. While not ideal, if a vendor accepts bitcoin, then bitcoin is serving its purpose as a means to facilitate the exchange of value regardless of what they choose to do with the bitcoin they receive.

Since I am willing to give up some of my sats for the good or service they provide, I value that product more than my sats at that time. If they choose to keep the sats, great, but if they choose to sell them, then they just value fiat more than those sats. They’ll HFSP and those sats will get distributed back to the bitcoiners that understand it.

The ability or need to convert to fiat? Is that what is dumb? I don’t disagree with you there. I’d personally rather interact peer to peer with bitcoin. But if the vendor wants to convert to whatever currency they want, what’s to stop them? Maybe they have a fiat bill to pay? If they choose to immediately sell it for fiat, I think that would be an unwise move that they’ll eventually understand. Everyone gets Bitcoin at the price they deserve.

This is awesome! We need something like this in the States too!! Maybe adoption will pick up if taxes aren’t a concern on it any longer.

Was this written before or after the EO that established bitcoin as only asset to be held as a reserve and for more to be bought with additional purchasing of crypto tokens.

Trump says a lot of stuff in social media that you can’t really trust. Especially when it comes to things which he does not understand, like bitcoin.

The comments are what is the most fascinating, not the actual editorial piece. It shows how extremely early we are still.

I agree with a lot on the skepticism of the crypto side. It was refreshing to see the government distinguish crypto from bitcoin as we all know it should be. But the generally public equates the two.

I think we are quite a ways away from hyperbitcoinization, but are headed that direction. Need to get people to start buying it to hold bitcoin not just number go up.

They have Strike Bill Pay now where you get a routing and account number just like a regular checking account. You give this information to the places that bill you, like mortgages, loans, utilities, credit cards, etc, and then as bills come in, the bitcoin that you keep on Strike is sold and dollars are sent to pay the bill.

It is pretty slick and allows me to hold almost no dollars.

I pay for all bills with bitcoin (through Strike) but use bitcoin directly for VPN (Mullvad and Obscura). I also pay for a lunanode vps with bitcoin. Nostr and Stacker.news. Art work and t-shirts from Proof of Ink.

I would love to use it at local grocery store, farmer’s markets, etc.

Barber is interested in it but not willing to commit because of tax issues with his business.

I can only use Lightning with Bitkit when on vpn outside of US. When will that be changing?

Awesome. Love xcancel.com. I'd have posted nostr link but I don't think he's on there.

I think the big thing is a recognized distinction between bitcoin and everything else. That is now clarified in the EO. Nic Carter had a recent Tweet where he summarized it well: "So the government made all these L1 founders come to DC to kiss the ring and the night before published the news that they're not actually buying their bags after all." https://x.com/nic__carter/status/1897830035244867633

I've been following Anders on X. His house most likely has been affected too.

Start9 is alpha testing a version that will allow much better clearnet support. However, at the moment I have albyhub running on my Start9, which allows very easy access to my LND node. See here: #682275

I can also access my LND node via LNC on Zeus. Zeus also works with Albyhub

I have started closing my public channels and taking the route of opening private channels per Darth's recommendations. Since I don't have time to devote to the running of the nodes, I have lost sats due to channel closures (again probably due to my node being on Tor only at the moment). The upcoming clearnet support will definitely improve things from Tor only connectivity.

I still highly recommend start9!

I'm wondering about the hydro generator. Building from scratch or something purchased commercially? My uncle has been entirely on solar panels for about the last 10 years or so. That and wood heater.

Very cool. Maybe there will be some capability for LoRa for your communication needs.

Awesome! Thanks for sharing. There is some true proof of work going on there. Mind sharing how you will stay on the grid? It looks pretty remote. Cellular, satellite?

A long, long time ago, I had a small amount of Eth that was not doubled like the website said it would be. Now I don't participate in the scam of even just holding altcoins. Bitcoin only.

Wow, Robbie K is an idiot.

I tried to comment on the article, but it looks like you need an account.

Robbie K, what is a waste of resources? Do you mean the bitcoin mining being the thing that is wasting resources? If so, you don't understand how bitcoin mining works. It is exactly the thing that incentivizes the creation of power plants like these in areas where it would otherwise be uneconomic to build them. The communities in the story above benefit by finally being able to get cheap electricity and the companies that place the power plants get bitcoin in return. It is a win-win.

The people of that village get electricity for the first time in their lives too. So that is not a waste of resources either.

While you might think that bitcoin is completely speculative or worthless, that doesn't matter. At the present time, each bitcoin is worth roughly $60k USD. A company is willing to spend real resources to construct these power plants so the reward of getting bitcoin must be worth something to them.

You seem to think that the energy these power plants are producing should be put to better use than mining bitcoin.

Maybe you think the power should go 100% to the local community? What you seem like you don't understand is that these power plants only exist because of the mining for bitcoin. When a power plant generates electricity, it has to go somewhere. It must be either be consumed or stored. Companies would have no incentive to build power plants in these remote areas because there would be such little demand for the electricity and no place for the excess energy to go. Bitcoin mining finally makes it economical to build these power plants, basically give the electricity away for free to the community that it is in, and then use the large amount of excess power to mine bitcoin.

I have never used Bitrefill because of the promotion of crypto. I have used Fold and Bitcoin Co. Am I missing out on anything with Bitrefill that I can't get with the other more bitcoin-focused ones?

Your post brings up a few questions for me too. I just closed a couple of channels in RTL and it didn't let me set the fee rate. I can find the transaction on mempool.space. It gives me the option there to use their new accelerator to speed them up. It doesn't look like they have the RBF tag on them, so that's really my only way to ensure they get picked up, right?