I am noticing a growing rift between bitcoiners who believe in the revolution, the cypherpunk ethos, and self-sovereignty and the bitcoiners who believe in compliance, number go up, and voting for politicians. I think this rift has been forming for a few years now but really kicked off once Saylor became mainstream. There are bitcoiners who would sacrifice all of the beauty of bitcoin for NGU. They are everywhere, and they are the parasites of the ecosystem. I worry more about them than I do banks or governments, honestly.
I was just on ex-birdapp and there was a legit discussion about how coinjoin/collaborative transactions make you vulnerable. It's hilarious and sad, but these people will sell you out at the nearest opportunity. As soon as the government says hey if you know someone who is doing coinjoins, report them and you will get some extra UBI in your CBDC app, they will do it. Because they don't care about the purpose of bitcoin. They only care about the investment thesis.
This is a problem, and we should not accept it. These people need called out often and called out directly. Privacy is the right to choose when to disclose information. It is a fundamental right that if taken away, means that we are slaves. We all have to choose for ourselves whether or not we are going to live on our knees or die on our feet, but at the same time, we also have a duty to spread the bitcoin and cypherpunk ethos. Bitcoin is for anyone, but it is certainly not for everyone.
Collaborative transaction as much as possible. The KYC scum may blacklist you but if that is what you are afraid of, you should take a long look in the mirror and ask yourself why you're even here to begin with. This rift is likely only going to get wider, and it's important to define for yourself where you stand.
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bitcoin is for anyone. if someone wants to buy kyc coins because they think they will increase in fiat value, that's their prerogative. if they want to avoid mixing coins to make it easier to sell on centralized exchanges, more power to them. their reasons don't have to align with mine.
...this is a problem and we should not accept it. these people need to be called out often and called out directly
i disagree. and i understand that is probably an unpopular opinion around here, but calling out people for wrongthink is a dick move, and rarely has the desired effect. it's not your job to police other people's motivations or beliefs. all you can do is try to educate, and move on. to quote someone much smarter than me, "if you don't believe me or don't get it, i don't have time to try to convince you, sorry."
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I agree with this. You're free to do as you want, and others decisions don't affect yours. Is there really a dangerous rift, or is OP just being overly dramatic?
Why care if others are here just to trade it or store it on exchanges as a speculator. It's not my problem and I don't see how it could ever be my problem. We need everyone.
As a bitcoiner you can even swing both ways at the same time. Why not have a small KYC stack going on an exchange, and your super private 'fuck you' stack elsewhere.
You could also care deeply about NGU against fiat money printing, and still care about extreme privacy. They don't exclude each other.
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Its interesting to me this idea that the state is going to cut off the exchanges. I mean, they are going to. So what? Do we just give up? Do you not get bitcoin and how it works? It will be interesting to watch this unfold. Stay humble and stack sats plebs.
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Exactly. Many people are only DCA and bitching about buying with KYC, non-KYC but very few are really creating the bitcoin circular economies: earn, spend, hold in BTC and fuck all fiat system.
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I don't think people get how screwed we would be if bitcoin failed. I say this because when the slightest bit of pressure is applied they seem to freak out. Guys, they confiscated gold in the US. We better be ready.
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Imagine the explosion of non-kyc tech if kyc exchanges disappeared. It would be glorious.
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Why would we need exchanges at all? Why not being paid directly in bitcoin (as I am from 2017)? why people still earn the fucking fiat?
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A fool and his sats are soon parted
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People are lazy. People have to learn the hard way. They will learn or die.
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They're the ones who are afraid of us
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They are...
When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say.
~ George R.R. Martin
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This is fiat thinking, in academia there are single answer to a test question. this is unlike anything we witness/think/do. any time I feel like there's 2 sides to every story, I remember that one of them is a liar.
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Bitcoin exposes our deeply held world views.
We will soon see who believes the state is an inevitability and who doesn't.
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I really enjoyed that topic. Please bring more like that.
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Words every Bitcoiner should keep in mind to win this war are:- Privacy 🔏 Security 🔐 Decentralization 🗺 Self Custody 👨 Non KYC 🚱
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you are missing an important one: PAY ME IN BITCOIN
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CJ & LN for me.
Can't wait for joinstr, ark & pay join too
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This is the way. CJ + LN is a match made in heaven.
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Self Custody should be a must for every bitcoiner
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I couldn't care less about the NGU bitcoiners, but you do you.
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Look around the world. One asset probably can’t serve every single person in the world in the same way. How can we expect everyone to share the very same mentality and outlook? The protocol and the network doesn’t care.
Don’t trust, but also don’t vilify. People will be people. The network will be just fine.
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Both KYC and coinjoin are possible because the design of the protocol allows them to exist.
That's the real "beauty of BTC", its highly extensible. It can be private, and it can be used to surveil. It can be used to settle enormous value in a few bytes, or it can be used to store JPEGs. It can be used in a sovereign way and it can be used in a cucked way.
Maybe what you view as a "rift" or "civil war" is actually what adoption looks like. Maybe everyone who gives a crap about sovereignty is already here and the next 99% don't care if they are cucked.
As long as the protocol allows soverign usage, and the people who seek it can attain, we are winning.
IMO BTC has not yet had its "HTTPS moment". Like early internet, everything was sent unencrypted. It wasn't until decades, after much pain, that everyone decided that SSL should be enforced by default.
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Couldn't agree more.
At some point, resistance will need to show up to the ever-encroaching regulatory front that tramples over the margins of our dwindling privacy. The longer there is no resistance, the tighter the noose becomes on everyone, not just privacy advocates. We will continue to be the scapegoat of the state, as the unvaccinated were somehow always the reason COVID spread in whatever way the devil box on the wall said that week.
I look for Sara daily toxic rants.
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do you follow him on zap.stream ?
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"I was just on ex-birdapp and there was a legit discussion about how coinjoin/collaborative transactions make you vulnerable. It's hilarious and sad, but these people will sell you out at the nearest opportunity"
it's ultimately a question of time preference that will enforce and resolve itself as individuals deserve. if you are stupid enough to think you can reach some kind of compromise with the state, you deserve to get rugged, and you will. on the other hand, if you coinjoin the shit out of your stack and either don't plan to access it for 50+ years or are aiming to interact in and contribute to a circular economy, you will win because this iteration of the state will have collapsed by then, to which your opting out will marginally contribute, plus you will probably have escaped with 12 words in your head.
but yes, in the meantime, mock these people mercilessly. they are going to lose everything anyway so may as well front-run it while they are still in a good mood.
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"I was just on ex-birdapp and there was a legit discussion about how coinjoin/collaborative transactions make you vulnerable."
I'll be devil's advocate and state that I get this argument somewhat; if you compare it to browser fingerprinting, the more you stand out protecting your privacy (since the majority don't), the easier it is to track you.
In theory, that makes sense. In actuality, however, that argument is rendered moot when you use an extension like CanvasBlocker on top of your privacy-preserving ones to change the fingerprint every session.
Same goes for CoinJoin and collaborative transactions; if you use them a lot, or all the time, you'll never be tracked if you combine that with good wallet transaction practices.
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That's why you never trust anyone, they are all scammers in my opinion. Run your own node, don't trust.
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Yup. it's the rift between bitcoin maxi's and Bitcoin maxi's. There is a difference, and this could have interesting results long term in terms of where the network goes. Both have different priorities. They usually overlap, but can sometimes not.
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Very good rant!
As soon as the government says hey if you know someone who is doing coinjoins, report them and you will get some extra UBI in your CBDC app, they will do it.
There are bitcoiners who would sacrifice all of the beauty of bitcoin for NGU. They are everywhere, and they are the parasites of the ecosystem. I worry more about them than I do banks or governments, honestly.
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I was thinking the same thing recently. New "influencers" like British Hodl on YT are taking up more space in the conversation. The only way out I can see is education and, as you say, calling them out.
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Should this war come through, I'm rooting against the NGU section of the war
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Middle finger to Bitcoin KYC platforms and all going for a better UX
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