Newbies don't deserve to be rugged - Toxic Rant #5 \ stacker news ~bitcoin

Newbies don't deserve to be rugged - Toxic Rant #5

3396 sats \ 15 comments \ @ToxicSaraTV 30 Nov 2023 bitcoin

I am not sure when the idea that non-custodial apps and such were the best way to "onboard newbies" but this shit has to stop. Wallet of Satoshi, Nodeless, and others are learning their lessons, and who is to suffer? Their users who are mainly newbies, because they had their bitcoiner friend who actually knows how to use self-custodial stuff, infantilize their newbie friends/family and instead of teaching them correctly, choose the easy route and onboard them onto ruggable apps. Custodial apps are get-rugged technology and you onboarding your friends/family on to them is completely fucked up.

If you onboard people onto custodial apps and stuff, you are the problem. You are:

Contributing to newbies not understanding what they are dealing with
Encouraging the creation of more custodial/rugpull apps/services
Being lazy by not teaching those you care about how to do shit the right way

It is better to not onboard anyone at all than it is to get them set up on a wallet of satoshi or equivalent. You are doing a huge disservice to not only them, but yourself and the entire bitcoin space. You want to onboard a friend or family member? Buy $200 worth of bitcoin or whatever you think is appropriate to get them interested, and say hey, spend an hour with me and learn how to do this and I will give you $200 in bitcoin. All I ask is that when it is worth $400, you give me back half.

This should work, and you can teach them the correct way. If they just want to do lightning then you teach them lightning. Teach them the phoenix "bucket" analogy, and explain how lightning is just an extension of on-chain so there is no hilariously cringe Brad Mills level "how does lightning even work bro" level of disappointment when there has to be an on chain tx expense to open a channel.

Get creative. Be a teacher. If the one you are trying to teach or get interested has no interest, then just buy some coin for them and hold it for them until they come around and ask. Everyone gets into bitcoin when they are ready and forcing the process by getting people to download apps that will rug them is completely fucked and needs to stop immediately.

I did not proofread. Have a good day.

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811 sats \ 6 replies \ @DarthCoin 30 Nov 2023 freebie

My in-person onboarding method always start with onchain... Noobs MUST learn that hard lesson. And I wrote here a special guide: The 5 stages to became a real bitcoiner. If noobs will skip these stages, they will be lost in shitcoineries...

Later they came to me asking more questions and about LN wallets. But that is another story and have its own path...

A noob must follow this path (otherwise will miss all important things): Step 1 onchain --> create wallet -->save seed safely --> buy BTC -->withdraw to self-custody. Step 2: onchain --> coin control --> UTXO and shit, eventually some coinjoins, to learn Step 3: onchain --> LN node testing/learning --> open channels --> close channels all this with learning about mempool and all that shit Step 4: LN --> learning private nodes --> Phoenix / Green --> Electrum / Breez / Mutiny --> Zeus / Blixt

You can't put a total noob to jump directly into using Zeus or Blixt (fully self-custodial nodes) or any other lower level. Maybe with Phoenix and Green the onboarding will be more easily, but still they will miss THE WHOLE ONCHAIN "PROOF OF WORK". they must learn all that stuff.

This chart is REAL - it's a long way to the top if you wanna rock'n'roll

https://i.postimg.cc/yxNT2Bgj/wallet-stairs.jpg

And this is one of the most important guides that many noobs should read it: https://darthcoin.substack.com/p/bitcoin-be-your-own-bank-think-like

Please have some patience... solutions are coming.

443 sats \ 4 replies \ @Natalia 1 Dec 2023

planning to write in depth articles one by one for all the tools I use, might onboarding more devs here and verify my own knowledge at the same time.

It's nice to look back to see how far I've climbed while hanging around here, but then still got so much to learn.

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @DarthCoin 1 Dec 2023

Yes, me too, when I look back to my oldest guides (some of them are not even public anymore), I see how things were evolving from then and how I was looking for answers. It's like a history book for Bitcoin evolution.

Is nice to write guides and see how you evolve yourself, educating others in the same time.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @Natalia 1 Dec 2023 freebie

yes, and the opportunity to ask and learn from the devs - the first tier of builders! It's so cool that many people still have no idea what's going on, yet you have a tiny few people figuring out how to build on top of Bitcoin, wow.

440 sats \ 0 replies \ @Natalia 30 Nov 2023

https://i.postimg.cc/CxYfVMyR/darth-impressive.gif

643 sats \ 1 reply \ @SpaceHodler 30 Nov 2023 freebie

I agree about on-chain self-custody.

But w.r.t. LN:

Being lazy by not teaching those you care about how to do shit the right way

I don't even know "the right way". I use WoS myself, where I hold a whopping 15k sats, probably barely enough for a meal in El Salvador, most of which comes from withdrawals from custodial SN, which you're also using; the rest is satograms and a few nostr zaps. While I'm running a full Bitcoin node, I don't fancy setting up a Lightning node or using Phoenix or similar and paying more to open a channel than my WoS balance.

And I don't know what the future of LN is; I like the custodial UX I've had using it, but I don't know where it's all headed. There are many issues that need to be solved, I don't know if it can scale to replace Visa and Mastercard for example, and some bitcoiners with much more knowledge express the same doubts. So I prefer not to claim authoritatively to know "the right way".

Even when it comes to on-chain self-custody, it's something affordable currently, but may not remain so forever.

Also, as much as I like to support Bitcoin and its ecosystem, I don't think I should feel guilty for following the incentives.

When I gave a Bitcoin lesson to a friend, I explained self-custody to him and the importance of it. For a wow factor though, I ended up getting him to install WoS and sending him 100 sats, and he liked how easy it was. Unfortunately he didn't seem interested enough to consider buying corn, so those 100 sats is all he has. And I don't think teaching him how to set up a LN node (which even I haven't set up) would have turned that by 180 degrees and made him super-enthusiastic, not least because I'd have been hard pressed to muster any enthusiasm myself.

It's worth mentioning he bought some corn on Binance many years ago, maybe 2m sats, but he forgot his password and considers them lost. I gently hinted that he should contact their customer service to see if he can recover his account, but 2 months later he doesn't seem to have gotten around to it, so I take it it's not high on his priority list. And that may be a good thing, because if he could access them, he'd sell them.

Now, those 100 sats may be harder to lose, but he could still forget the name of the wallet or which email address he registered it with, however impossible in may sound to you.

I understand you'd be eager to help him set up an LN node. But the real world, outside of geeky forums, features people you may not realize exist. And lots of them.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @ToxicSaraTV OP 30 Nov 2023

I never said to onboard a complete noob directly into their own LN node. If I did, please point out where I said that. I barely ever mentioned the LN at all in my post. I am talking about custodial in general. It doesn't matter if it is on chain custodial or LN custodial, it is still rugpull tech and newbies do not deserve to be rugged.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @02df4abd70 1 Dec 2023

The sentiment here is passionate and concerned about the onboarding approach using custodial apps for Bitcoin beginners. The focus is on the importance of educating newcomers properly, avoiding rugpulled apps, and encouraging responsible teaching methods—like offering to guide friends/family through acquiring Bitcoin. It emphasizes patience, education, and waiting for genuine interest rather than hasty introductions to potentially risky custodial platforms.