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42 sats \ 1 reply \ @denzel 12 Jan 2024 \ on: Privacy Pub 1 - Buy a VPN with Bitcoin + Firewalls privacy
I wish there is some decentralized open-source VPN out there. Anyone can deploy it, it would only allow end-to-end encrypted access, and should allow routing traffic via a chain which a client can build.
Thinking more about it. It is already out there Tor, I2P, Freenet and Lokinet.
However, I feel if there was a paid alternative, more people would run it and there would be less abuse and better speed and less packet drops.
Ah! I didn't read the 1st of April joke part.
Apparently I always feel other people don't read and it is actually me who does not read.
So basically Pieter Wuille the author of BIP-0042 didn't properly understand Satoshi's intent. And wrote that BIP in 2014.
I think the line I copy pasted from the whitepaper, make it clear that Satoshi did propose that that in the whitepaper.
In the whitepaper
- Incentive ...Once a predetermined number of coins have entered circulation, the incentive can transition entirely to transaction fees and be completely inflation free.
23% fib
I don't fully understand Fibonacci retracement level and other tech analysis details. But in simple terms I understand that it is just small correction in a bigger picture.
I believe, such tree shaking is good, it shakes off people with paper hands which cannot hodl.
Thank you for sharing that. So simple and yet so powerful.
I wish the author includes a chart for 1 USD != 1 USD.
Also, the bitcoins lost forever should be mentioned which brings the value of bitcoin even more for the rest of bitcoins. Someone had done a nice post about this and had shared https://bitcoin-supply.com/ about the same.
All the companies in https://ten31.vc/home/#portfolio took investment and have obligations to provide good returns to their investors. The VCs take money from other investors and they have to do the best for their investors. So the question remains when it comes to privacy, opensource software, decentralization and freedom tech. How do people get good returns.Ten31 did not invest in Fedimint, they invested in Fedi. Fedi is a company that is expected to make returns for its invested (assumedly). Fedimint is a protocol that anyone can use.
You are right, Fedimint is only receiving donations including donation from Human Rights Foundation. Fedi Inc. is a different company, which got $4.2 million of investment.
So that is good. I also checked the 12 active contributors of Fedimint github, none of them seems directly related to Fedi Inc. So seems like Fedi Inc's Obi just made monetary donations to Fedimint.
Good take on the trade offs part, but you can run a fedimint without the bitcoin wallet, lightning, or ecash features. In this way you can do other interesting federated things like have a password manager. Or a nostr account with federated keys/signing.
Any solution that need custody will be as good as the protocol and the custodians/guardians. Yes there could be some good alternative non-bitcoin related use cases, I haven't explored them. I understand m of n digital signatures, I am not sure if m of n decryption is also a thing, but it should be doable, and may be that what it uses.
Fedimint seems to trade federate custody for low to no fees and privacy guarantees. I think low/no fees and privacy is the key benefit as of now. I think it may be short term, because at present I feel privacy is possible and Fedimint will be an important tool in that space for a while. In future, it will be very hard to have privacy.
What is it to you?
On Fedimint getting started page they have written: "If you are confident taking self custody of your bitcoin and running your own nodes, we highly recommend you do so." So it is hard for me to read beyond that point.
I believe self-custody is not that hard, people tell the otherwise to sell you something.
Write down some words and keep it safe where you keep your other valuable stuff safe.
At least, Fedimint is very open about this and they have well documented the risks:
https://fedimint.org/docs/TradeOffs/Trust-Trade-Offs and all the point they have documented in detail.
What does it enable for you? We all work with people we don't like, follow the law that we don't agree with. And there is use for everything. So for a short while Fedimint may be helpful for increasing privacy, and to minimize the fees.
It seems similar to Liquid Network, but probably more trustworthy.
How do you think other people will use it? People are stupid and greedy at different levels, they will just follow the trend. Smart people will find a way to benefit from Fedimint. Only a very rare few will be smart and have a motive to do something good for all as far as it does not hurt themselves.
So others (most) will see it as fast cheaper fees and will probably start using it and give away custody of their bitcoin.
All the companies in https://ten31.vc/home/#portfolio took investment and have obligations to provide good returns to their investors. The VCs take money from other investors and they have to do the best for their investors. So the question remains when it comes to privacy, opensource software, decentralization and freedom tech. How do people get good returns.
This would probably differentiate the likes of Wikipedia, Tor project, EFF who has to depend upon donations, vs the portfolio companies who may have given up equity or may have convertible notes.
However, we need to have hope in the world, good things does happen every once in a while. May be one of these projects will be a win-win for everyone.
"Us at the SEC did this to show the community how easily the market could be and is manipulated by fake information. There is a ton of fraud in the Bitcoin market, which we have now ourselves contributed to in order for you to understand why we cannot approve the ETF," Gensler said in a following tweet.
Where is this tweet? Or is this misleading news?
Thank you for the detailed explanation of the fundamental challenges.
Compared to our quick chat over Mutiny's Community chat, it makes more sense to me now.
Apart from additional op codes to improve Bitcoin, is there a possibility that lightning script can be updated to be able to handle some of these challenges?
Nice thought experiment.
A few points:
- iphone even after turning off, makes the device findable may by transmitting bluetooth signal periodically to "find my" network.
- I wonder, if getting KYC bitcoin first and then over tor swapping it for monero and then back to bitcoin and then doing a coinjoin would make it more untraceable and non-KYC.
- Long time ago when I had looked into it the bitcoin ATMs, fees were very high.
- Buying a new phone with cash from a small mom-pop shop may be more easier, that too with mask on, different gait, as it would not have trail of electronic communication if craig's list or something like that was used.
- After buying the phone you could leave it alone for 6 months or so, so any CCTV footage of purchase may get deleted. It would be interesting to find out policies of for example Best Buy to understand how long they keep the footage. May be employees would know.
- Getting prepaid sim seems easy, may be activation needs internet, starbucks, school or library internet could be used for that. They are usually not as tainted as tor or other VPNs.
- Driving to a crowded place seems good for now, but with increased surveillance and AI advancements of so called "smart cities" it will be harder to travel maintaining privacy as years go by.
The last section "Happy Ending" was funny, as all these things are may be useful for planning a happy ending massage as well.
GENESIS