IMO, it's a matter of time preference. When you realize that you may not live to see the full potential of bitcoin, you can then understand what bitcoin truly is. It is wrestling the power of preserving wealth back to the people and eliminating central banks/human intervention in monetary value structure. There will be only one measuring stick that is applicable to all humans and is truly decentralized. All other crypto projects "taking the bitcoin idea into other directions, expanding on it, improving it and trying to make the world decentralized" will neither expand on it, improve it, nor be decentralized, as these projects are led by high time preference individuals trying to enshrine their name/leave a legacy. Truth is, they will die and be forgotten, even if their project has any sort of success in the short term. All things they claim to be doing will be possible with/on bitcoin in the long term. I think Parker Lewis' "Bitcoin Obsoletes All Other Money" explains this topic best. Just my 2 sats on becoming altcoin-adverse.

Good on ya! I'm working on doing this around my town as well. One business is soooooo close, yet they are still a little hesitant. I'll get em before the halving

I've had the flu twice in the past 6 weeks, it was terrible. What I felt worked was citrus tea with half a lemon squeezed in, 1 tbs of raw honey, and a couple shakes of Turmeric. Took that twice a day for the first two days and was feeling better on day 3 (both times)

I have 2-3 friends that also swear on the onions in your socks when you sleep, but no personal experience there.

Yes! 15+ blown leads this season, special teams flipping PK for PP (compared to last season)...it was time

We'll see what happens. If they can put together a run like last season after they got Horvat, we're lookin good!

Hoping for a Dougie Weight type transition this season!!

Huge move by Lou, can't wait to see how fiery he can get in Montreal on Thursday

Yeah, I had no idea all those companies were involved. I still am confused on how each of those member companies interacts with Liquid

Apparently I am not a Liquid expert either. Thanks for correcting me. Can you elaborate who controls the federation in terms of Liquid? Who determines who can peg in or peg out of liquid?

This is misleading, being that GBTC had ~630k BTC and just converted....Good on Tether for adding tho

Fedimints add a multi-signature aspect to federated custody. Liquid is a sole federation member (Blockstream) that can rug you, leaving little to no recourse. Fedimints would require, depending on your chosen federation's set up, multiple key holders in the multi-signature model to collude to rug all users (including the other key holders), resulting in reputational damage, public ridicule and in some cases physical harm.

The best analogy in fiat world I can think of is the choice between a bank and a credit union. Banks have shareholders outside the institution that influence decisions made within the bank procedures. Credit unions are a bit more personal. You normally need to know someone in the CU to become a member and then the reputation of the credit union is based on how they serve the members, not some arbitrary shareholders (the members ARE the shareholders). It comes down to a social contract, where those who will choose to use fedimints will choose mints where they either know one or multiple of the federation key holders, or they live close enough to them where they can go exact revenge if a rug pull occurs (as NVK likes to call this: Proof of Punch).

The benefit to most who trade-off this collaborative custody model will be privacy, via UTXO obfuscation (once the sats go in the mint, they can be pooled and sent out with little to no fee to the user of the mint). In this scenario, you do not have to trust a single mixing coordinator, since most ecash tokens will be interchangeable between mints.

I am by no means a fedimint expert, but like most things in bitcoin, tradeoffs are in the eye of the coin-holder.

I partially agree with you here, but until some sort of covenant proposal (CTV or CTV+OP_VAULT) is adopted by bitcoin, it seems like the current ways of hacking a vault together for your self custody set up is risky.

I think the article does a good job exploring all the possible pros/cons of each set up. I believe the collaborative custody inheritance model is probably best for most people, since it doesn't require the beneficiary to understand the technical aspects of self custody (although they'd be best to learn as much as they can shortly after inheriting any sizable amount of BTC). I know companies like Unchained offer a package that gives pretty detailed instructions to a beneficiary on how to recover the inheritance, even if Unchained goes out of business (they offer the config file to reconstruct the vault set up with original owner's seed + beneficiary seed).

To each their own though.

Don't forget Thunder Games!! https://www.thndr.games/

I have not used the Stonewall(X2) feature personally. From what I understand, most users who mix using whirlpool will mix directly into cold storage. Stonewall(X2) would be more a tool when going to spend the mixed UTXO from the post-mix wallet. It seems that a bitcoiner using Stonewall would also not volunteer this info online or promote it openly (to maintain their privacy/operational security). These are just some of my thoughts, would love to hear what others think.

RIP Buddy

What a humble individual, thanks for sharing this story

Fedimint is a solution for people who aren't comfortable with the idea of "being your own bank". These people realize the stakes are too high if they mismanage their own keys. They understand that the current banking system enables rehypothication and financial fuckery (and they want out). They are ok with the idea of being able to hold their wealth with a 'bank' that is run by a group of 'CEOs' they either personally know/trust or they know hold similar values/beliefs as them. They simply would want a solution that allows them to transfer value, without knowing how the infrastructure works, but knowing their money will still be there when needed. These people may know what self sovereignty is, but it is lower on their hierarchy of needs compared to simply preserving their wealth/purchasing power. As time progresses, they may become interested in increasing their self sovereignty, so they will exit the Fedimint system and secure their sats on their own (in addition to spinning up their own node). Or, they may even become a federation themselves, to help those in their own, more condensed circle.

I see Fedimints to be akin to modern day credit unions. They are institutions correlated around a commonality, a membership. You must be referred by someone already a member. Certainly credit unions have slightly better benefits than banks when it comes to managing member's money. They are more personal and aren't beholden to shareholders. The members are the shareholders.

I intend to hold my MSTR until it becomes worth $0. Just for the story. Bought in 2020. The tale will go something like this "....and in the end, there truly was no second best. The End."

RIOT IREN BITF & HUT

I'm listening right now, very interesting discussion! The discussion of payment/settlement as it pertains to money is something I think many fail to address when dismissing bitcoin as money

Interesting thread from Caitlin Long about low fees for ETFs: https://x.com/CaitlinLong_/status/1744336024845578539?s=20

Yes, relative to the total value (density), it is much more palatable. You're future self will be elated with paying 90 sat/vB haha