I'm not 100% sure if we need it or not, that's part of the discussion. I am immensely curious what reasons you would offer against it, besides not wanting to change Bitcoin unnecessarily.

As for my reasoning, it is widespread knowledge that the seasons are connected to economic activity, which seems to be a pretty strong justification (i.e. economic incentive) for the alignment. For a counter-example, what business accounting office would ever want to adopt something like the Muslim calendar that rolls through the tropical year? Q4 would never have it's proper meaning in such a calendar.

Besides the economic incentive, we humans have a natural seasonal "sense" for time, and it will always be more natural to earthlings to do their scheduling and accounting accordingly.

I know I'm playing a game of point of view. But isn't that the point? Bitcoin will NEVER be stable in fiat terms. Bitcoin adoption is the process of shifting perspective. You need to stand on the solid ground and watch the fiat ship get tossed up and down on the waves of the sea instead of gripping the taffrail of the sinking ship and watching the land go up and down.

Bitcoin is already stable. It's fiat that goes up and down.

I'm no expert, but I have to speak up because I don't see commentary on one of the scariest parts of this. People think it's an unsustainable fad, but what if it is a SUSTAINABLE fad? What if all those unsustainable miner fees are routed by the handful of big mining pools back into the pockets of the fadsters so they can keep on going indefinitely? Do you honestly think any mining company seeking a profit isn't also participating in ways to leverage their block-templating weight to increase their revenue? The high fees of the fadsters force average users to pay more, but the average users don't get back the under-the-table reward like the fadsters do. It's old fashioned shill bidding. This is the single biggest ($1B/week!) argument in support of Ocean & co's goals of putting transaction selection and other critical aspects of mining back into the hands of the workers. I would love it if someone would debunk this hypothesis of corruption among mining pools, so that I can sleep again at night with the assurance that miners are my protectors and not my predators.

Where would FOSS go, as an alternative?

Yeah, anonymity was where I was going with that title.

Interesting thread with a variety of answers.

Alright, in that sense. In other words, some people will choose greed even if they don't need to and aren't incentivized to do so.

Is this really true? I think it is clear that the characteristics of money absolutely do change people's behavior through incentives. And consistent changes in behavior become habits, which in turn form character. Isn't that the same sense in which you refer to a change in "human nature"?

💪

Thanks & no worries. I am (and will remain) online working on SN today.

In Australia, "FedNow" would have just closed "BitcoinMagazine's" bank account. No joke: https://sputnikglobe.com/20230905/australia-compromised-by-national-bank-rule-closing-accounts-for-speech-violations-1113137309.html

Opt-in to have your withdrawal bolt11s scrubbed after 7 days... more details here and here

Incremental privacy improvement for SN withdrawal invoices

Thanks... there's more planned too, for finer control!

Still in review, sorry!

Lol! At least no complaints about not having it 😄

Bitcoin = just Bitcoin. We need people to start realizing that Bitcoin is much bigger. It is a whole world of its own, including cash options, privacy options, and much more, and that this separation of concerns is a feature, not a bug. For example, I don't like to say Bitcoin has a "scaling problem," because I don't see it as a problem but a feature. Bitcoin has payment via Lightning by design; I consider Lightning to be part of Bitcoin (and NOT wanting to compile it into Bitcoin Core). The same logic applies to privacy options and many other things. But for many, the level of comprehension is like this: "Bitcoin Lightning has about as much to do with Bitcoin as gold to [fiat]." (an actual quote from somebody)

From the very beginning, I always saw the Lightning layer as a replacement for the bank layer in the fiat system. Banks can and should have selected, trusted relationships with each other. Operating a Lightning node, I have always been frustrated with the assumption that a node operator wants to network willy nilly in a trustless world. I want to choose my channels wisely, not entirely trustlessly, and in my opinion the tooling for that is poor at present, (although admittedly I haven't spent enough time trying all available tools).

Some argue this semi-trust tends toward centralization, but the counterargument is that anyone can start up a Lightning node to fill in the gap anytime one feels like centralization is getting out of control. We still have complete freedom.