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TL;DR

TL;DR: If you're on Stacker News to try to stack sats instead of stack friends, you're gonna have a bad time.
My latest referral @alex_boast asked for some tips for Stacker News, so now I'm writing this guide. I'm timing myself too, because I just had a baby and I can only pretend to be using the toilet for so long.

You might stack sats, but know why you're spending time on Stacker News

In the end, this post took two hours to write, and my guess is that the post itself is only going to net me 2100 sats, a number I've only hit three times. Don't forget the 30% sybil fee, so I'm only pocketing 1,470 sats. So even if we're generous and saying that right now a sucker will trade you 1,470 sats for a single govt greenback, you're only making $0.50/hr. Pathetic. I really hope @k00b gets some more VC funding so we can stay in business. Honestly, we're gonna have to figure out a way for not just the code to be FOSS, but a decentralized way for the most dedicated stackers to help host the servers to run this site, and w/o the liability that comes from being a money transmitter, but I digress...

Top Stackers

There's only 1,100 active monthly stackers on SN who aren't @anon, so it's a freakin' small world. So while that's magical, it means this isn't a good place for BS, cRyPtO, or web3 shenanigans. They'll eat you alive. And it's not hard to know who the top stackers are, there's a leaderboard
  1. @k00b - be nice to this guy. SN might be decentralized, but he's God Emperor
  2. @grayruby - the guy who referred me. Boy, I wonder what he's thinking right about now xD
  3. @Undisciplined
  4. @0xbitcoiner
  5. @ek - be nice to him too. He's @k00b #2
  6. @IamSINGLE
  7. @OneOneSeven
  8. @realBitcoinDog - I am DEVASTATED to be this low.
  9. @SimpleStacker
  10. @TheMorningStar
  11. @south_korea_ln
  12. @Cje95 - get easy sats from this guy if you dunk on @DarthCoin
  13. @StillStackinAfterAllTheseYears
  14. @DesertDave
  15. @Rsync25
  16. @Public_N_M_E
  17. @OT
  18. @cryotosensei
  19. @21futures - subscribe to this guy's posts. I referred him xD
  20. @TheWildHustle

How to game your content

See what I did there? I "mentioned" the top 20 stackers. You see, what people are really craving on Stacker News is connection so if you can show you thought of someone and included them, that's an easy way to stack sats. But you're a n00b if you think you can just copy this list and append it to the end of all your posts to stack sats. You need to actually earn their trust. Otherwise you'll get downzapped and your post outlawed, like mine.
Now what's the pro move? To sus out who's not there:
They are the "stacker is hidden." You see, the best way to actually get value from your posts in Stacker News is to give value. Give original value. Something you can't get from just clicking the FAQ link or leaderboard link. Write the post here on SN, and use markdown.

I'm too lazy to write interesting, original work.

  • Donate 1000 sats every day to rewards.. It's easy money when a scammer comes in and boosts a post for 100k sats.
  • Get new stackers through an invite link. You get 10% of that stackers sats forever.
  • Click the three dots (...) and hit "Copy Link" instead of copying a URL at the top of your browser. This will append /r/realBitcoinDog to any SN link for you to make it a ref link to @realBitcoinDog, meaning I get sats when they click the link. Don't leave free sats on the table when you refer things within SN!
  • While zapping new posts that are going to go viral will give you more rewards, I ultimately think the slow bleed in sats isn't actually helping you, but again, the point isn't to stack sats.

I did write original work, and I want to maximize my sats exposure

Well you've come to the right place, pardner. @Natalia put all the best guides here but @davidw wrote the killer post
  1. posting on Wednesdays, Thursdays & Sundays is a great way to get an additional boost of sats when sharing engaging content on the site.
  2. posting between 9am and noon Eastern Time is CLEARLY optimal
  3. Stacker News is becoming the source of bitcoiner content, not just a news aggregator no more. Comments are drastically higher on posts with no links (22.1) vs those with (8.1). So again if you want more sats and engagement, take the time to write something original.

Omg this is way more than I asked for. Just give me the settings to change

  1. Make two ways to login, so you don't lose your account
  2. Change your default zapped sats to double digit sats. 10 sats = 1 vote. I encourage you to be zap heavy and often w/o thinking. Then, hold the lightning bolt when you really want to vote more for something you really liked. 100 sats = 2 votes. 1000 sats = 3 votes, etc. I love it when I find something worthy of 1000 sats. I get a blue lightning bolt and man do they really appreciate it.

My two sats - Don't take Stacker News too seriously

We're about to go through a major upheaval with the move to "attached Bitcoin wallets" and "cowboy credits." As @Darthcoin reminds me all the time that these are real sats real bitcoin I've essentially treated them like they're cowboy credits. I've never withdrawn them from the site, and like @grayruby does, I've always spent em as soon as I've earned em. So my bio might say I've stacked 46k sats, but my wallet only has 4k sats left in it. It'll be a sea change if everybody's SN wallet really does say "0 sats" and you're draining from your "real attached wallet" every time you want to actually zap someone. So we'll see if it makes people a lot more stingy with their sats once they "remember Darth's words" that IT'S REAL!
We're here for connection. As soon as the FIRST person actually reads my first book The Bitcoin Dog: Following the Scent to the C++ Source Code or my second book Bitcoin Girl: Save the World and actually tells me they liked it. Then man, that's when it'll have all been worth it. Real human connection. To have poured myself into my books for hours and hours, and for someone to have not only bought it, but read it, and liked it. That's the best compliment a Bitcoiner can give me. Even better if they passed the book onto a nocoiner, and it was so good, it inspired them to get off of zero.
"I'm timing myself too, because I just had a baby and I can only pretend to be using the toilet for so long."
I do this, but with playing chess (gf is on to me: "you shit for 45 minutes?!")
proof of work attached:
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20 sats \ 2 replies \ @Taft 17 Oct
I do this, but with playing chess (gf is on to me: "you shit for 45 minutes?!")
I do exactly the same thing.
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nice man -- think I hung a rook there in the middle. Jeez
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20 sats \ 0 replies \ @Taft 17 Oct
I saw it too late...
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Oh snap!! I’m sure there might be some competitive chess players in @grayruby ~Stacker_Sports who’d be willing to wager some sats for a pool for a chess competition.
Steal all the sats you can from the suckers in the SN community! 🤣
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10 sats \ 1 reply \ @Taft 17 Oct
I’m ready! 😉
I'm always up for a game, whatever the level. God knows I've snatched sats from Bitcoiners at conferences!
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Set it up! Put out the call in ~Stacker_Sports!
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51 sats \ 4 replies \ @Golu 17 Oct
You didn't mention my nym. 🤪 Don't you really know me. I've won one Monday meme here. And if you don't get it, I'm coinsreporter's brother.
Btw, very good article! I'm new here so it resonates with me a lot.
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Bruh you better give me the link to your winning Monday meme!!
Did you say your @Coinsreporter’s older, more attractive brother?🤣
Any favorite parts of my post?
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He's definitely more attractive and smarter than I but he's younger. You can easily look for his winning MM if he had but I see he had never won it.
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🤣🤣🤣
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Laughing so loudly! 😂😂
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I wonder what makes me sit there among the top Stackers! 😅
The post you made is however quite intriguing.
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Thank you! Any favorite parts?
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The analysis and the suggestions for newcomers.
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Thanks! Whats the best suggestion?
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The donation one. I've been doing it daily for the last few days. Here's the link for today's #728511
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Have u tracked if it makes you money? Is it worth it?
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I don't do it for making money. But I'm doing it to make awareness that a little donation helps. Yes, sometimes my comment about donation is seen by a random stacker and he discovers how can he donate sats to the pool. It's satisfying. For my net making, I don't think it's how somebody makes money.
Yes, I've withdrawn may 200k sats from SN but it has taken about 6 months. So, it's surely is not money making.
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Ha good to know!
Yea just the last few days I’ve tried donating 1000 sats each day to see if it makes a difference.
we'll see if it makes people a lot more stingy
That was one of my concerns about attached wallets. One of the major reasons this site works is that people like us do zap freely. Hopefully, enough ground work has been done that people will continue doing so, since it's in their own interest.
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I was thinking the same thing.
New nostr users can barely figure out how lightning addresses work. I kid you not. I've helped a few. I say "go to edit profile and put in your lightning address." They say "Oh ok nice, i did it" And I say "That's not a lightning address"
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Right they think it’s an invoice 🙄
But I remember my own journey that just BITCOIN is such a huge deal. Lightning is even more insane of a rabbit hole!
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Think my wife put her nsec in there once and got her account rugged.
The joys of learning.
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Fortunately I never did that, but I was in the no-idea-what-I'm doing boat not all that long ago.
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Still don’t know what I’m doing sometimes Primal takes forever to load and I just give up
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You got your wife to sign up to ~nostr?!?
What about SN? 🤣🤣
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Yep, say things like "Hey did you see that last darthcoin post"
She usually says no, but i see her looking through posts occasionally.
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“Hey did you listen to my latest song? Did you like it? @realBitcoinDog listened. He liked it. He zapped me. How come you didn’t zap me? YOU DONT SUPPORT ME! 😭😭”
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I wonder if that will really play a role? Most people make enough in their firdt week to sustain themselves indefinitely, right? I mean, its not like we are becoming sat rich on SN. Lol
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Well I almost went broke cuz I was zapping 100 sats like crazy at first. And then also I’ve given our 7 or 8 1000 day invite links. And ppl have redeemed them!
Hoping to get a vicious cycle going where I get returns, but it’ll be a while for me to get the ROI!
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I think it is better to get quality people instead of quantity. But you do you bu
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They’re all quality people, but that means time is scarce for all of them between all their commitments.
So given that they’re all quality, it’s a numbers game to see who gets hooked like I did 🤷‍♂️
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Definitely I think there’s an didn’t like ppl enjoy hitting the ⚡️ button.
It’s a lot more satisfying a user experience than going to their bio, looking up their SN lnurl, and then opening up your ln wallet to zap em, and deciding how much to zap. And to what end? Not as easy to tie directly to “why” you’re donating to them
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Given the inability to exchange CC's for satoshis, will this create a system where users are incentivized to spend their entire daily allotment? Or, put another way, is there any economic benefit to holding onto these coins? Is that correct?
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Im thinking the first day it rolls out will be like when sweden changed traffic to the opposite side.
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It's not the end of the world, but I'm a bit worried because my attached wallet (alby extension) isn't working properly.
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Everything will still work with CCs, so dont let it bother you too much.
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But I don’t want CCs! The promise of the premise is sats
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It would be hilarious if ccs became a shitcoin. Lol @DarthCoin would die
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He would suddenly stop “stacker is hidden” and show off how many cowboy credits he has and chase growing his cc pile as high as possible
right! My concern is not so much for myself (I don't do this for a living :)), my concern is more for the future of SN!
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WE HAVE CONCERNS
Cmon bruh. Let’s get to the nasty truth. who hosts the servers
Can one of us support the site if needed?
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I'm having trouble with mine, too. I think it'll get worked out in the next couple weeks.
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I deactivated the receiving wallet because it was only processing autowithdraws, and sometimes multiple ones for the same satoshis tranche, very confusing!
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I think we're having the same issue.
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Is this issue unique to Alby?
Alby is famous! I’m surprised you’re having any issues at all!
I wonder if the site will crash when they change over?
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I think the site won’t crash, but there may be bugs
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Im sure things will need to be worked out. @k00b is there a beta version?
Is it alby?
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Yea I still need to try Coinos
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Canadian wallet! I've never tried it but I know @grayruby uses it and I don't think he has any reason to complain.
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Very easy to use. Only issue is sometimes small zaps fail. If I only zap 10 sats I occasionally get a failure notice. I rarely zap that low so isn’t a big deal for me but if someone had their default zap at 10 it might be an issue.
@adam_coinos_io is on SN so if you have questions about the wallet, you should ask him.
@Bell_curve was the one that informed me about coinos.
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Ok maybe I’ll have to raise my default from 10 to 21 or something I don’t want the hassle of failed zaps!
Or should I do 50 like someone I know??
I’ll say I’ll stay offline that day, but it’ll be such a juicy day to accidentally earn cowboy credits while reporting bugs!
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Im sure l will be online, watching the confusion and being confused. I am lookijg forward to trying the CCs.
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Wait did u write all those wallet guides just to use CCs yourself anyways??
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I havent written any guides.
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I smell an opportunity
Well if you earn cowboy credits, can those eventually turn into sats once you do attach a bitcoin wallet?
Like u won’t have two separate balances, right? Or no?
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Well if you earn cowboy credits, can those eventually turn into sats once you do attach a bitcoin wallet?
CC can't be exchanged into real Sats unless you're exchanging it against another person that are willing to give you real Sats
Like u won’t have two separate balances, right?
You will have 2 balance after Nov 5th, Cowboy Credits & Rewards Sats (real sats)
CMIIW @k00b @ek
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 17 Oct
You’re right.
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They can be indirectly converted into sats, via the rewards payments. The CC that go into the rewards pool turn back into sats.
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33 sats \ 11 replies \ @k00b 17 Oct
Yep.
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It took me a little while, but I finally got it.
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But the cc's you accumulate cannot be converted, only spent. That's why I say that the system encourages you to spend your entire stock of cc's.
A screenshot showing two balances already would be helpful! A screenshot of “wallet” tab or something. Hope they reply!
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42 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b 17 Oct
We haven’t wrote the code yet, so we’ll all have to imagine it :)
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Haha!! Sounds like 11/5 might be a fake deadline to get the users ready. But I promise not to tell anyone 🤐
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If I understand correctly, you'll have two balances. The satoshis balance is only the ones you have when you migrate on November 5th and rewards earned (you can only withdraw them). After that date, if you have a wallet attached, it's all p2p, if not, it's with CC's.
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A clear explanation! I wanna see a sample screenshot now of how the wallet tab will look
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You can't break us!!!
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If you can’t break em, join em.
One of us. One of us.
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You made it to the top post today!! Congratulations! You're doing a very good job. Just keep it up..
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YOU LIKE THAT?!
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Yupp! I always like to see a new Stacker right at the top.
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50 sats \ 1 reply \ @nichro 17 Oct
@grayruby - the guy who referred me. Boy, I wonder what he's thinking right about now xD
Welcome to SN!
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Haha I love it!!
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Bookmarked. Great tips you son of a cowboy.
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Lots of great info there. Let’s see how it holds up post the 11/5 changes
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Will u still be here?? We need all the cowboys!
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I plan to be
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @4rge 17 Oct
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burv im just here for the sats, whats all this then?
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Ha! You stick around long enough, you’ll learn :)
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I've been here for a little while. At first my intention was just to collect sats, but after learning a little better, I completely changed my mind. Today I enjoy interactions, shared knowledge and discussing ideas
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Nice! Exactly my thought!
Come to collect sats, stay for the friendships 💪
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10 sats \ 2 replies \ @k00b 17 Oct
Just to be clear - SN isn't decentralized. We want it to be eventually, and promise to try when the economics are functioning well, but it isn't decentralized now.
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Right yea it’s clear to me your SN is an actual company and you’re the owner -kudos as its founder!
It’s just so much better than Reddit and we have that Bitcoiner mindset to want to be resilient.
What’ll it take to get the economics to function better and better? Just more and more user growth?
Guess we gotta keep that fly wheel spinning! I’m grateful there’s at least funds to hire more ppl to formally work for you! 💪
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I like to think of the site's economics like nuclear fusion. It needs to reach a point of sustained net-energy production. Meaning that SN, territory founders, and the most valuable contributors can take profits off of SN, but more new money comes in to replace it.
Once it hits that point, I think we can build it into an autonomous decentralized network.
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I’m just amazed at the depth and breadth of your writing, coupled with your clarity, in spite of the slight fact that you are undergoing a life-changing experience
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This is a huge compliment, thank you! Especially given all the books you’ve been reading and book reviews you’ve done.
What do u want to read next? Any of my posts in particular or just more of everything?
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I pondered over your question.
Given that I enjoyed @plebpoet’s creative writing post tremendously, I think I would love to read about your writing processes, since you are the proud author of two books xP
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Sounds good!
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Wow. You are a pro already. Making moves.
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Ha! Thanks. Only move left is to discover a territory, unless the winning move is not to play 🤑
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This is the best place to play that I know of.
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Are you going to found a territory?
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Don’t tempt me! You know I can’t resist a challenge 😈
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I would love to see it.
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If only you and I could co-found a territory and split the cost!
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What are your goals with with it. I have the alternative territory that I plan on getting paid for lifetime within the next year. I am open to being part of other things as well. I can tell you like to get things done.
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Of course! Were Bitcoiners. PROOF OF WORK
10 sats \ 1 reply \ @Thereal 17 Oct
Now this is what I signed up for 👏🏻
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Thanks! Any favorite parts??
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Very nice post. Now stop hiding in the bathroom and go change a diaper. Haha
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It’s never ending!! Just barely “two under two” so I’ve got two kids with diapers at the same time. Luckily changing diapers is fairly robotic so I’m good at it.
I’m more worried for the pre-teen years. “What’s wrong?” “Nothing’s wrong, Dad. I’m FINE!”
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10 sats \ 1 reply \ @Nadia 17 Oct
This is really an original post.
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Thank you! Any favorite parts?
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why is wednesday such a hotbed of activity ?
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This I do not know.
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After a couple of weeks the usual names will be there to present interesting topic that illicit numerous reactions. The names will be there and we will be there as well. The Top 20 are our beacon of hope but as you have said don’t take my word seriously. Let’s have more fun.
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Pew pew!
Anyone can present interesting topics! But yes there’s a “web of trust” part of the algo that does help push some users to the top!
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@Natalia style post! liked 🤠
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She’s an inspiration! I’ve read her most popular guides. It’s humbling to see if I can offer something original, so I thought of the only original thing I can offer: my own perspective
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Not a bad post. I actually took the time to read through it, to see if you came up with something l didnt. Some of the things l think along the same lines, others l dont. Any reason why you think the top ones stay hidden?
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Hey coming from you that’s high praise! 😅
And did I come up with something you didn’t? Not a zero sum game here in Stacker News. There’s opportunity for us all to stack 21 million sats every day, right?
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I praise people all the time. Not really, there are nuances here and there, but you learn as you go. There are some on here that havent learned tbat being generous will always come back around.
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What’s cool about SN is you can attach a monetary value to your praise.
I know one of the readers of this post zapped 1000 sats cuz I saw it jump! But idk who? 👀
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