Bitcoin

Curious to hear people's stories

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/16448198

Globally, people are losing faith in our institutions. Our financial institutions, our governments, our media, our medical systems, even democracy as a concept in many cases. And for sound reasons. Proposed upgrades to Bitcoin's protocol would enable use of the chain (and L2s) for things aside from just money. On the world's most secure document: the bitcoin ledger. It will change everything and here's why.

The root problem is that we are building systems which rely on trust and time and time again, that trust has been broken. We have to trust that the people elected or appointed to those positions will do their jobs faithfully. But, of course, like us, they are humans and fallible. Subject to stupidity, greed, misdirection, and error whether through malice or accident. Take money, for example. Money has to be trust-able, so it is entrusted, for all its faults, to the most stable and neutral institutions humanity has ever created: the state. And yet, the state often abuses that authority to print money they shouldn't leading to inflation and hyperinflation, particularly for unpopular wars of conquest. Every failed state ends in hyperinflation, because it's a tool in the state's toolbox and they will use it when they have no other options. They'll turn on that money printer if they need to. And time after time, they have. There are ways to create trustless systems, where we do not have to trust individual actors to administer them faithfully, only for them to be mostly rational actors subject to the same laws of math and physics as the rest of us. Instead, the system administers itself according to some form of protocol. Bitcoin did this for money 15 years ago, it was created by Satoshi in the wake of the nearly total collapse of the global financial system (2008 financial crisis) to create a system which could not suffer the same fate. We all had to bail the banks out because they were "too big to fail", which was true, Bernanke won a nobel prize in economics for his analysis of this and the bailouts likely prevented the worst economic period since the great depression had the entire banking system be allowed to fail. You may not know who Bernenke is, but if you were alive during this time period, you know his face, he was the guy who had to sell the bailouts to the world as an idea. The reality is, fractional reserve banking is a ponzi scheme, and had the banks failed and people realized it, it would have stopped functioning. Our debt-based world order would have collapsed. No credit could be issued to build roads or fund schools or do anything because there would be no money in the banks to use as collateral and nobody would trust it. Just like in the US great depression. You can argue it's a sneakily beautiful ponzi scheme which drives the engine of human progress if you are a die-hard capitalist, but you can't argue it's not a ponzi scheme.

The crazy thing is, Bitcoin worked. It has kept every promise it made. For 15 years, it has faithfully administered a financial system with a known, transparent, limited supply of 21 million coins which can be transferred across the globe in seconds for pennies in fees. And it has continued to grow no matter which metric you measure it by. Through pandemics, wars, international conflict, attempted bans by major world powers, tick tock, next block, the blockchain continued to function. Not a single hour of downtime, not a single bank holiday, not a single hack or breach of security or protocol. Now, it has a market cap of over 1 trillion USD, which is bigger than the GDP of Israel, the Netherlands, Turkey, or Switzerland, countries with tens of millions of people. It's been consistently over 800 billion for a while now. It moves hundreds of millions of dollars of value on the regular. I can send a transaction to anybody on the planet with a cell phone and halfway reliable internet for under a cent in under a second.

Nobody can make Bitcoin print money it's not supposed to print. Nobody can transfer money without the private key of that coin. Nobody can force the network to do anything outside of its protocol, even if they bought every Bitcoin in existence. Even if they had a trillion dollars and 1,000 people with AKs ready to die for it. It's mathematically, computationally, financially, and logistically infeasible. I think the question is, long-term, how can be we build political and social systems which are equally trustless where we don't have to put people in positions of power. Just like democracy did to monarchy in spreading power around and reducing the damage one corrupted individual could do, we can now do that again in an order of magnitude greater in the same direction towards greater democratization. Whether you're a capitalist, a communist, or a member of the federation of planets, this tech has serious promise for making your ideal global vision come true. It's a matter of setting up the system correctly and getting adoption of it. It can be used for voting systems, for the collection of taxes, for the administration of public funds, goods, and markets. It can be used for a lot more than just money. With smart contract functionality, Bitcoin will be the ledger upon which all this is built.

I'm excited to be here with all of you. We are early. Most people I know don't own any crypto. The future is coming. Thank you Satoshi for your gift to the world.

Hello everyone!

I made a site where you can make bets online with an electrum multisig wallet (p2wsh). I made the UX easy as possible for onboarding and I'd like to hear your feedback about it. The website is currently live on BTC testnet3. I made a cheesy tutorial as well!

The site is: https://olivetitan.com

You can get testnet coins from https://cryptopump.info, https://bitcoinfaucet.uo1.net/ and many others.

I think this is the safest way to bet online currently. BTW you get proof, that you lost :)

No one can cheat.

I'm also looking into bitVM and exploring how that can help. Still learning!

Thank you for reading and hope you have a great time! ♥

NOTE: Do not use LTC, it asks for real LTC, not testnet

I stopped coming back to Lemmy 6 months ago after seeing there was not enough traction. Is there any good community for Bitcoin or just Crypto that is active with daily users?

The mod for this community (lemmy.ml) seems to have disappeared long ago (no posts, no comments, and I reached out to them many months ago and they have never got back to me)

The main mod for lemmy.world/c/bitcoin is just a squatter, who specifically mentioned to me that they are there to hand it over to the Reddit Bitcoin mods if they ever appear.

discuss.tchncs.de/c/bitcoin seems to have the most active mod, although I haven't checked the other bitcoin communities recently. I think it would be good to move activity over there, unless people think there is a better sub.

Where can I buy $500 gift cards for amazon.com with cryptocurrency?

When bitcoin topped $70,000 recently, I went to a few gift card outlet websites. But when I actually went to add a $500 gift card for amazon.com to my cart, they said it was "currently unavailable".

Did amazon.com stop selling gift cards to third parties? Or was this a temporary supply problem during the ATH?

Where can I currently buy a few $500 gift cards for amazon.com using cryptocurrency?

$500,000 to 14 projects targeting global education, Lightning Network innovation, decentralized communication, and easing access to financial freedom tools for nonprofits

🌍🌏🌎🎁

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/human-rights-foundation-grants-500000-to-14-bitcoin-projects-worldwide

Grant #1: USD E-Cash by Dr. Calle, leveraging the Cashu protocol for a secure USD-based Chaumian e-cash system that respects your privacy. Funding will support the full development of this project 🔒💸

Grant #2: BTC Pay Server provides free open source software for organizations that rely on Bitcoin, it is a critical tool for nonprofits operating in challenging environments. Funding will support enhancing the platform's user experience and extend its capabilities 🌐

Grant #3: BOB Space, for its Builders Residency Program in Thailand. Funding will help launch a new cohort, to be dedicated to identifying weak spots in Bitcoin’s decentralization, and making those into strengths 🌱 📡

Grant #4: YiBao, a non-profit that advocates for democracy and human rights within the Chinese-speaking world. Funding will enable translating key Bitcoin educational materials into Chinese and promoting financial freedom inside the world’s biggest Communist country 🇨🇳

Grant #5: The Bitcoin Innovation Hub, led by Noble Nyangoma in Uganda, offers a range of vocational training and financial literacy to women and men, centered around using and earning Bitcoin. Funding will support the addition of classes such as carpentry, baking, and valuable digital skills.

Grant #6: Bitcoin Dada, founded by Lorraine Marcel, is on a mission to empower African women with Bitcoin knowledge. Funds will support expansion across Africa, the creation of multilingual educational resources, and promote women-led businesses adopting Bitcoin 💪

The grants in this round to both Bitcoin Dada and The Bitcoin Innovation Hub are generously supported by Strike’s nonprofit initiative. Big shout out to Strike and everyone else that makes our work possible! ⚡

Grant #7: The Bitcoin Design Foundation contributes essential user research, aiding Bitcoin wallets and companies in enhancing UX to guarantee Bitcoin's accessibility for all 🎨📲

Grant #8: Bitcoin Optech is a vital resource for the Bitcoin developer community, offering insights into the most important Bitcoin technical conversations. Funds will be allocated towards operational expenses and growth strategies.

Grant #9: Damus, the first #NOSTR client on iOS, is expanding to Android! Funding enables this critical initiative which makes this open source client available to millions of new users in authoritarian countries and the developing world.

Grant #10: Bitcoin Core Developer Pablo Martin's contributions help maintain Bitcoin as a secure digital currency, pivotal for activists and individuals in high-risk environments. HRF is proud to support Pablo! 🛡👨‍💻

Grant #11: LNbits aims to decentralize custodianship and provides users with a robust suite of Bitcoin tools they can run for themselves. Funding will support the core contributors’ salaries, bounties, and educational outreach efforts through workshops and video tutorials ⚡

Grant #12: The Bitcoin Policy Summit 2024, organized by Bitcoin Policy Institute, is a critical platform for discussing how Bitcoin can play a role in protecting human rights. Funding will support event logistics, speaker travel, and attendance by human rights advocates 🏛️🗣️

Grant #13: Video series "Bitcoin for Billions" by #Bitcoin educator Paco de la India, is making Bitcoin accessible to millions in India, in a variety of local languages. Funding will be used for research, content creation, translation, and promotion 🎥🇮🇳

Grant #14: Scalar School in Brazil, established by Luciana, is nurturing a new wave of Bitcoin and Lightning developers across South America. The grant will go towards teachers’ salaries, training workshops, and university outreach 🌎🇧🇷

The Bitcoin Development Fund is committed to facilitating $2 million of grants in 2024, aiming to bolster innovative technical, educational, and community-driven Bitcoin initiatives worldwide

Submit your application at hrf.org/bdfapply

Until today Bitcoin has only been briefly above $69k. Today marks the first day it has been at that level without a rapid retrace. Congratulations to those holding strong.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/11793765

Most of these transactions took a few minutes and around $1 in fees. Bitcoin lightning is pennies in fees, but the account shown is on main chain.

If you know somebody who wants to contribute to Ukraine but doesn't want to deal with the hassle, cost, or availability of international bank wires, this is a great way. Most major cities have several Bitcoin ATMs and in many countries you can buy Bitcoin online easily.

Transaction list: https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/addresses/btc/357a3So9CbsNfBBgFYACGvxxS6tMaDoa1P

Proof this address is really owned by the Ukraine govt: https://twitter.com/Ukraine/status/1497594592438497282

After looking for a way to sell event tickets via Bitcoin lighting network, I have given up on finding a solution built for tickets. Is there another solution I can re-purpose? #shopstr seems interesting, I can list a bunch of items aka tickets and people can see them by clicking on my profile, but it requires a cashu wallet not a regular lightning wallet.

#flockstr seems great but their ticket functionality doesn't work yet.

I know lnbits has a ticketing extension but I'd rather not have to run my own node, BTCPay server, etc.

Anything else out there?

Where can I signup for a bitcoin debit card without a phone?

There are a number of "bitcoin debit card" providers -- services that issue you a traditional visa/mastercard/etc debit card that allows you to pay for purchases in fiat, but where the balance of the card is automatically converted from your cryptocurrency balance stored on their custodial wallet.

Note that a "bitcoin debit card" is distinct from gift cards in that the balance lives in an account below the debit card, not on the card itself. This is important because otherwise you may end-up with tons of different cards with low balances. It's important for my business that I can pay invoices with a single card, and if that card expires then the balance can simply be spent on the card's replacement.

Unfortunately, I've been unable to find any providers that do not require a phone to be linked to the account.

For security reasons, I do not mix insecure devices like my phone with high-risk accounts like financial services. Therefore, it's important that I find financial services that don't require a phone number to be linked to the account (shudder at the thought of implementing 2FA over SMS) or an app.

Coinsbank requires a phone number. Wirex requires a phone number. Cryptopay requires an app (which grants access to the account to a phone). Unbanked (Ternio) is dead.

Where can I get a "bitcoin debit card" without a phone?

Is this a real bull run that will take us over $50k or just another pump and dump.

People I know I'm creating low effort posts, but I can't find any active Bitcoin community in Lemmy to follow and I refuse to go back to Reddit. So we need to f*** start somewhere.

After a very long time Bitcoin is back to $31k. Is this the right time to sell or to buy more?

BTC is above $30K again, gained $3k in just 5 days. What do you think the price will be in 2 weeks and why?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/3690905

Looking for store indexes and core patches in particular, theres a lack of info on the available patches out there (other than ordisrespector).

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/5626873

This is a day created to make representatives more aware that their constituents care about crypto and want to assert their freedom to use it. Pro-crypto lobbying group is asking people to ask their reps to support the The Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act which pretty much everybody in crypto agrees is a good bill for removing legislative ambiguity around crypto.

#Microsoft #Xbox Series X Refresh System may Support #Crypto Wallets

https://www.kitco.com/news/2023-09-25/Microsoft-crypto-plans-leaked-documents-reveal-plans-for-an-Xbox-crypto-wallet.html

#gaming #videogames #cryptocurrency #bitcoin #lfg @gaming @bitcoin

@coinbase To Implement @bitcoin Lightning Network For Faster Transactions Amid Growing Competition
https://cryptonews.com/news/coinbase-implement-bitcoin-lightning-network-for-faster-transactions-amid-growing-competition.htm

#Bitcoin #mining aided #Texas's #electrical grid, when the #bitcoinMining company #RiotPlatforms reduced its power usage amid the summer heatwave.

https://news.bitcoin.com/riot-showcases-demand-response-strategy-bitcoin-minings-role-in-strengthening-texas-energy-grid/

> only a handful of business operations can effectively implement significant demand response systems, and #cryptoMining might be the most optimal at shedding load.

#crypto #btc #cryptocurrency #electricity @crypto @bitcoin

Not sure how serious the post. Anyone know more?