People who enter politics often fit a certain type: they tend to be spineless and go with the flow. This aspect of their nature is never going to change. Same goes for Bukele. Instead of relying on politicians, people should focus on their own lives and stop waiting for a saviour. It’s more productive to care less about what a public corporation (government) does and take personal responsibility. The more we talk about them the more power they have over all of us.

As far as I understood, the system Strike currently uses for Bill Pay only supports USA-based bank payments. This presents a problem for those in the EU, where we primarily use card payments. As a result, you can’t simply connect to a bank API to manage your payments. Well, you could, with some banks, but the experience is horrible.

I think the best option would be phoenixd + cashu mint + any ecash wallet

This is so true and not a lot of people undestand this. People can't see past the hype. But there is one big example, Tesla started it's self driving program 2013 and they predicted full self driving around 2016, but after 13 years they still haven't achieved anything close to it, even with the massive amounts of data they have.

Why not use lightning only instead of both ln and on-chain? Lightning provides you with greater privacy also you could use bolt12. For example phoenixd + btcpay/lnbits/alby hub

People rarely think deeply about a topic. Instead, they only focus on the latest xyz token that’s pumping and the thought of that same token crashing does not cross their mind.

Bitcoin is much more than just some magical get rich quick "investment" where you wait for the magic "exit" price to fiat.

You are basically sticking tires on a spaceship and calling it a car, or like in the beginnings of the internet, they called it a “fancy fax machine”.

Try to use it daily, try to self host, try to send and recieve payments with your own infrastructure, play around with the different apps (lighting, ecash, etc.), try doing more and reading less, try not to listen much to all the "number go up" youtubers,

then you will most likely have the "aha" moment.

I wish this were possible in the EU. Unfortunately, direct bank app connections are not an option for us. After years of trying to push for new PSD2 regulations that would prompt banks to open up their APIs, they still show little interest.

So with NWC on LNBits, I can keep my node private and avoid exposing it to the public? For example, I can run LNbits with Phoenixd on my home node and connect to apps through NWC?

A new feature is supposedly to roll out on the Strike app this week. It will allow users to automatically pay their bills using Bitcoin.

You could use Ecash for that but also there is something easier, it's called nostr wallet connect NWC, look it up, super interesting solution.

You mean governments will force people to stop offering mint services? That didn’t work with torrents, and it won’t work with mints either. They tried and failed; every time they shut one down, three more pop up with better opsec technology.

"M-Pesa uses a centralized bank database and SMS technology to facilitate transactions. The service is operated by telecommunications companies like Safaricom and Vodacom."

Wow revolutionary.

While Signal is a step up in privacy it's no way near other apps like SimpleX, but I guess baby steps...

Bitcoin is much more than just the number going up. You are basically sticking tires on a spaceship and calling it a car, or like in the beginnings of the internet, they called it a “fancy fax machine”.

Same!

Some people overlook the fact that the Lightning Network is a far superior and faster solution than any L2 built on another inefficient blockchain. Furthermore, eCash is 10 times better than any crypto L2 but requires the same level of trust and has the same centralization problems– at least for now.

They just won't admit that blockchains don't scale.

Take a look at lightning pub and their solution for this.

Imagine a small Bitcoin community where every business has its own LN node, covering the entire supply chain from producers to consumers. In that world, traditional payment terms like net 15 or net 20 may become obsolete. Because the instant settlement nature of Bitcoin, enables immediate transactions.

The concept of “debt” changes significantly. Producers receive immediate payment when a business buys goods from them. Similarly, businesses get instant settlement from buyers. Paychecks can also be settled instantly, eliminating the need for employers to owe employees money for weeks or even a month.

A short payment term is also possible. For instance, a producer can have a smart contract with a business, receiving instant payment for every product sold. Part of the payment goes directly to the producer, part to the employee, part to business expenses, and the rest to the employer’s wallet.

In a Bitcoin world, you’re unlikely to receive a traditional paycheck once or twice a month. Instead, you’ll probably be "streamed" money daily or hourly. To save on fees, this could be done through a shared node or ecash. If you don't care about fees, directly to your own Bolt12 address.

Using nostr as a 3rd layer is not just for connecting apps, just check on lightning.pub, they implemented a bolt12 like feature without using the native bolt12 implementation but using nostr relays to act as a middleman to deal with it, very interesting combination of technologies.