I’m not a bot, I just see things differently than you. I think Bitcoin and blockchain generally will lead us to a more efficient, more peaceful world where people have more financial and political autonomy. I think things will look different (in a better way) when our underlying currency supply is not inflationary. Most economists disagree.

after all the existences Bitcoin and it’s offspawns must have ruined, them not having provided any tangible benefits to humanity in the process, how can one still argue it could ever do anything good as a replacement for money.

When people talk about negative associated with crypto, as I’m sure you know, 99% of the time they are talking about stuff that is not Bitcoin. Most of the scams in the crypto space fall apart with the slightest scrutiny. Many of the most notable scams have little to do with crypto at all. FTX was a classic ponzi scheme, most of which have been done with fiat currency, yet we do not blame the US dollar for Bernie Madoff’s existence. Exchange collapses are bad, I agree, which is why I always advise people to not store significant funds on exchanges. Those exchanges need to be better regulated/have better oversight and transparency. Any time you have a third party store funds for you, whether they are a bank or exchange, there is a risk they will rug you. There are also risks associated with self-custody. That is for each person to weigh and decide. The US and Europe have had fairly stable banking systems the past 100 years or so, which is a historical anomaly, but most countries are not so fortunate, and it’s not like the EU and US banking system have not had their own collapses, rugs, and other issues. I would go so far to say that fiat currency is also a scam, just one we have come to accept as legitimate. It is designed to lose value over time, it fails the basic function a currency is supposed to provide, which is as a store of value when you sell your labor or goods so that you can then use that value to purchase something equally valuable from somebody else. That functionality doesn’t happen if your currency lost value due to supply inflation. We have the state control currency because they were the most stable institution ever created by humanity, so they were our best option. Satoshi changed all that.

As far as utility? I think the market cap speaks for itself, so does investment by major investment firms and banks. I can send money to anybody on planet earth with a cell phone for less than a penny in fees. The transaction settles instantly. It doesn’t matter whether or not they have access to a stable banking system or if my bank/country has an agreement with their bank/country to enable the efficient transfer of funds. I can do it from my couch instead of M-F 9-5 and I don’t even have to wait in line at a bank branch. That’s powerful utility right there. I sent Bitcoin to Ukraine’s government when the war started so they could buy weapons and whatever else they needed. That would have been a slow, expensive nightmare to do with bank wires. My bank likely wouldn’t have even let me send money to a country at war since the receiving bank couldn’t guarantee liquidity in exchange. DAOs are powerful ways to change the way we organize society. I help run a non-profit bounty program for open-source projects, people donate to it with crypto, which is much easier to do on an international scale when we don’t need to involve the conventional, slow, convoluted international banking system. We can use those crypto donations to fund open source tools for scientific research. There are many points of utility.

Small countries are now experimenting with Bitcoin because it gives them a way to have a reasonably stable currency without becoming subservient to the US. Before Bitcoin, their options were to manage their own currency which they lack the stability to do or become subject to the whims of a foreign government. Likewise, in some parts of the world, women cannot legally have a bank account. But they can have a phone and run Bitcoin on it. Granted, that would be illegal for them too, but it is at least possible whereas there is no bank that would agree to open an account for them. That’s a different kind of utility than the kind I get out of it, but a relevant form. Bitcoin can be a powerful tool against tyrants and dictatorships, a way to “opt out” of the monetary system that keeps them in power.

I find Bitcoin useful, you may not, that is your choice. I have used it in everyday transactions, I have bought and sold goods and services with it. Since I have started making an effort to prioritize using it, I have been surprised how many places will accept it for payment. Much of crypto is hot garbage or outright scams, even if the technology itself has great potential. Crypto exchanges and stablecoins are not to be trusted. That said, Bitcoin has kept its fiscal promises to me and all of its users for 15 years. There’s no reason to expect that to change in the next 15, as long as computers still run the protocol, it will execute itself faithfully. The protocol works, you can use it to send coins from point A to point B. Whether or not you or society or whoever find that useful is not up to me.

Bitcoin solves this. The 1 BTC you have today will always be 1 BTC which will always be the same portion of supply. How much that BTC buys you will change over time, but the portion of supply will always remain the same. And if the last 15 years are any indication, it will generally buy you more over time. Meanwhile, your fiat currency increases supply by 2-3% per year in “good” years.

BTC has kept to its fiscal promise or a fixed supply and reliable transactions for 15 years. Bitcoin has a market cap of 850 billion dollars, which places it in the top 25 countries by GDP. Bigger than Sweden or Israel. It is decentralized and not run by any country but by a protocol enforced by tens of thousands of computers all over the globe. With Lightning, you can send an international transaction in under a second for under a penny in fees. You can do that with a smartphone and halfway reliable internet access. It works in warzones, it works in international waters (with satellite internet), it works everywhere. It doesn’t care what your credit score is or whether or not your authoritarian government likes Bitcoin or not. No middlemen, no bank holidays, and it does this for < 1% of global electricity usage, mostly from renewables and “stranded supply”.

Fees with lightning (Bitcoin) are often under a penny per transaction and transactions settle instantly. Usability has come a long way here.

Good. I don’t use TikTok and never will, but the government shouldn’t be able to tell you what kind of speech you listen to, what speech you make, or what platforms you use to communicate it. This is some 1984 shit. Looking forward to Trump banning every app except Truth social because we opened the door to this nonsense and all the other apps are spreading “anti-christian hate speech” or “anti-american-first propaganda”. Fuck the CCP. But also fuck the government trying to restrict speech.

Nostr vs Mastodon on Privacy & Autonomy:

• Relay/instance admins can choose which content goes through their relay on either platform
• On nostr, your DMs are encrypted. In Mastodon, the admin of the sender and receiver can read them, as can anybody else who breaks into their server
• On nostr, a relay admin can control what goes through their relay, but they can’t stop you from following/DMing/being followed by whoever you want since you are typically connected to multiple relays at once. As long as one relay allows it, signal flows. Nostr provides the best of both worlds: moderated “public squares” according to your moderation preferences, autonomy to follow/dm/be followed by anybody you want (assuming that individual user hasn’t blocked you).
• On mastodon, your identity is tied to your instance. If your instance goes down, you lose your follow/followee list, DMs, etc. On Nostr, it’s not, so this doesn’t happen. Mastodon provides some functionality to migrate identity between instances but it’s clunky and generally requires to have some form of advanced notice.
• Both have all the same functions as twitter: tweet, reply, re-tweet, DM, like, etc.

Why I think nostr will win https://lemmy.ml/post/11570081

It’s just as scalable as fedi, I’d say it’s even more scalable since relays don’t need to communicate with each other, which reduces the cost to run a relay. The average user experience is basically identical. They download an app, it connects to a set of default relays (or they can choose some manually if they want), they tweet.

Because you can choose which relays to connect to and you typically connect to multiple relays. This is all seamless. On Mastodon/fedi, an instance controls your entire view of the fediverse unless you make a separate account elsewhere and check it separately. You can’t follow or be followed by users or instances they block even if you want to. They also control your identity, since it’s tied to a relay/instance. If your relay shuts down or your account gets banned, you have to make a new account elsewhere, re-follow everybody, get everybody to re-follow you, etc. It’s a mess.

On nostr, instance/relay admins only control that goes through their specific relay. Relay admins can, of course, share common blocklists if they want for anti-spam or anti-abuse purposes. If you want to follow somebody blocked by a relay, you are connected to other relays and the signal can flow through there. You don’t need to check multiple relays separately. If your relay closes, you don’t lose your account/identity.

A relay admin controls what goes through their relay. A user controls who they follow and who follows them. If you want, you can just auto-ignore all DMs directed to you by people who aren’t in your follow list. Also remember that your DMs have to come through a relay, presumably you are connected to relays you trust the moderation policy of, so toxic users can’t use those relays to DM you.

Read the first bullet point:

• Relay/instance admins can choose which content goes through their relay on either platform

Nostr vs Mastodon on Privacy & Autonomy:

• Relay/instance admins can choose which content goes through their relay on either platform
• On nostr, your DMs are encrypted. In Mastodon, the admin of the sender and receiver can read them, as can anybody else who breaks into their server
• On nostr, a relay admin can control what goes through their relay, but they can’t stop you from following/DMing/being followed by whoever you want since you are typically connected to multiple relays at once. As long as one relay allows it, signal flows. Nostr provides the best of both worlds: moderated “public squares” according to your moderation preferences, autonomy to follow/dm/be followed by anybody you want (assuming that individual user hasn’t blocked you).
• On mastodon, your identity is tied to your instance. If your instance goes down, you lose your follow/followee list, DMs, etc. On Nostr, it’s not, so this doesn’t happen. Mastodon provides some functionality to migrate identity between instances but it’s clunky and generally requires to have some form of advanced notice.
• Both have all the same functions as twitter: tweet, reply, re-tweet, DM, like, etc.

Why I think nostr will win https://lemmy.ml/post/11570081

It can. Lightning transactions are as easy and lightweight to process as e-mail. They measure in the bytes or kb in size, no mining is required.

Except it’s not. Lightning is incredibly decentralized, you can run a full lightning node on a raspberry pi. I have one running on my phone. Look up a graph of lightning network, looks just like any other decentralized system. Nodes you route through never have custody of your funds, unlike a bank.

Ethereum uses proof-of-stake, there is no “mining” in a traditional sense, so its power consumption is more akin to e-mail than mining crypto. But proof-of-stake leads to centralization over time, which is antithetical to what Bitcoin people want.

It’s been letting people be their own bank for 15 years. You can send transactions across the globe for pennies in fees which confirm instantly using Bitcoin lightning. The supply has remained capped at 21 million. It’s doing exactly what it said it would do without a single hack or hour of downtime 24/7, 365.

“Not everybody will use it and it’s not 100% perfect so let’s not try”

Putting it on the blockchain ensures you can always go back and say “see, at this date/time, this key verified this file/hash”… If you know the key of the uploader (the white house), you can verify it was signed by that key. Guatemala used a similar scheme to verify votes in elections using Bitcoin. Could the precinct lie and put in the wrong vote count? Of course! But what it prevented was somebody saying “well actually the precinct reported a different number” since anybody could verify that on chain they didn’t. It also prevented the precinct themselves from changing the number in the future if they were put under some kind of pressure.

There is no “delete a user from the internet” button. It doesn’t exist. Even if a single admin could ban a user from entire network, which is giving immense amount of power to any admin, all that user has to do is make a new account to get around it. That’s true for Nostr, AP, Twitter, Facebook, E-mail, etc. This is why spam exists and will always exist. AP or nostr or whoever isn’t going to solve spam or abuse of online services, the best we can do it mitigate the bulk of it. Relays and instances can share ban lists in nostr or AP, that can be automated, that is the way to mitigate the problem. There is, however, a “delete a person from society” button we can press, and that is LEOs job. That, conveniently, also deletes them from the internet. It’s just not a button we trust anybody but government to press. We do have a “delete a user from most of AP/Nostr” button in the form of shared blocklists.

As we get stronger and stronger anti-spam/anti-abuse measures, we make it harder and harder to join and participate in networks like the internet. This isn’t actually a problem for spammers, they have a financial incentive, so they can pay people to fill out captchas and do SMS verifications and whatever else they need to do. All we do by increasing the cost to spam is change that kinds of spam are profitable to send. Other abuse of services that isn’t spam have their own intrinsic motivations that may outweigh the cost associated with making new accounts. At a certain level of anti-spam mitigation, you end up hurting end users more than spammers. A captcha and e-mail verification blocks like 90% of spam attempts and is a very small barrier for users. But even that has accessibility implications. Requiring them to receive an SMS? An additional 10% but now you’ve excluded people who don’t have their own cell phone or use a VoIP provider. You’ve made it more dangerous for people to use your service to seek help for things like addiction, domestic abuse, etc as their partner or family member may share the same phone. You’ve made it harder to engage in dissent against the government in authoritarian regimes. You’ve also made it much more difficult to run a relay, since running a relay now requires access to an SMS service, payment for that SMS service, etc. Require them to receive a letter in the mail? An additional 10% but now you’ve excluded people who don’t have a stable address or mail access, etc. Plus now it takes a week to sign up for your website and that’s even getting into apartment numbers and the complications you’d face there. For a listing to be placed on Google Maps, maybe a letter in the mail is a reasonable hurdle to have, after all, Google only wants to list businesses which have a physical address. For posting to twitter? It’s pretty ludicrous.

I generally trust relay admins to make moderation decisions, otherwise I wouldn’t be on their instance or relay on the first place. And my trust becomes extended to other admins they work with and share ban lists with. And that’s fine. But remember that any person with any set of motivations can be a relay or instance admin. That person could be the very troll we are trying to prevent with this anti-spam or anti-abuse measures. What I don’t trust is any random person on the internet being able to make moderation decisions for the entire internet. Which means that any approach to bans would need to be federated and built on mutual trust between operators.

Yes very true!

Worth mentioning here that Lemmy itself accepts donations in Bitcoin directly and via OpenCollective. Many instances do as well. Bitcoin is free, federated, open source software and protocol for money, it kinda makes sense that there’s some crossover there. https://join-lemmy.org/crypto

If you want a platform with built-in tipping, especially a federated, open-source one, you can’t use PayPal, the fees make microtransactions impossible. Same with basically every other competitor out there. You either need to make your own payment processor (millions of dollars, massive yearly overhead, you have to handle dispute resolution, you need to forge independent relationships with Visa/MC/Amex/Plaid/etc, transactions all have different settlement times sometimes measured in weeks, it’s an absolute bird’s nest of problems. And that’s just to do it for the US.). And each instance would have to have their own payment processor. It’s a nightmare. Or, simple idea, you can just use some type of cryptocurrency.

You choice to avoid it is yours alone, but it seems like a weird thing to be mad about and avoid social networks on the basis of. Do you have such strong reactions to other assets like stocks? Or other currencies? Would you not use Facebook because users could use Turkish Lira on it to pay for extra photo storage? I don’t love the Turkish government, but it seems like a weird place to draw a line in the sand over which social networks I’ll use.

If you don’t like the Bitcoin feature, you don’t have to use it. Bitcoin has a market cap that puts it in the top 25 countries by GDP. Higher than Sweden. It’s been doing its thing for 15 years. People may say they don’t like it, but if you decide to not use any platform or service which accepts or uses Bitcoin, your circle of places you can use is going to continue to get smaller. Have fun not shopping at Safeway or any other major grocery store since they all have Bitcoin ATMs in the form of Coinstars. Have fun not using mutual funds or other investment portfolios from major banks or index funds since they all have a degree of exposure to Bitcoin. Have fun not using cash app or other major payment platforms which feature some kind of Bitcoin integration. Have fun not being able to use the DMV in colorado where you can renew your license with Bitcoin, and you won’t be able to ride public transit in Argentina. Bitcoin is global and adoption grows year on year.

“Crypto” is full of scams and rug pulls and bad actors. But Bitcoin has kept its promises to faithfully relay transactions without a single hack or day of downtime for 15 years. They are not the same.

Before we get into the weeds here, let’s start with an important basic premise: Moderation ability, at a protocol level, from an instance/relay admin perspective in nostr and AP is identical.

Are there moderation tools to propagate bans across relays quickly?

Relay operators can share ban lists like they do in AP. Relay operators can only directly control their own relay, not other relays. I don’t know the ins-and-outs of how the interface on the admin side looks, but at a protocol level, AP and Nostr offer the same abilities.

Some users need to be booted off the network entirely and swiftly sometimes, we’ve seen several cases of this in Lemmy already with users posting horrendous shit. I’d be concerned that one of my relays would lag on banning (timezone differences for moderators or whatever innocuous reason) and these users achieve their goal of more people seeing the shit they post. For some people this might trigger PTSD, which is why I say it would be a huge barrier to mass adoption until that issue is resolved.

Relays sharing ban lists help can solve this problem. I would argue that we don’t want to give that power (to ban a user from the entire network) to a single relay admin or even a couple relay admins (since anybody can be a relay admin), so broad consensus of some form needs to exist OR sets of relays can form their own little networks of trust where they will automatically trust a ban from other admins in that network. A relay admin doesn’t need to be able to ban somebody from the entire network if they simply disagree with that user’s post, they can just ban the user on their own relay. There is value in having public squares with varying degrees of moderation, among other reasons, because laws about what kind of speech are acceptable vary country by country. There is value in having mainstream platforms which refuse to host some kinds of content and having that be a different moderation policy than the one used by the government, for example. Remember that legality and morality are not the same and that there are differences in what is illegal vs illegal in different jurisdictions. We don’t want the legal standards of Russia or China to the legal standards the entire network has to follow.

If the user is doing something which is very illegal, which I believe you are referring to, that is a job for law enforcement. Neutral networks like the internet are traditionally policed “at the edges”. We don’t have gmail proactively filtering for objectionable or illegal content because of the consequences that come from that privacy invasion, false positives, additional computational load, reducing reliability of sending/receive between email carriers, etc. Comcast is not inspecting packets as they fly through their network at a the speed of light, delaying them, and determining if they should be passed or not. It’s the internet, they just pass them through. Instead, we say “this is an open, neutral network and if you break the law, LEO will deal with it”.