aiiixiii

We stand on the edge of a transformation that very few are examining with the depth it requires.
Everyone is looking at Artificial Intelligence: 
more powerful models, autonomous agents, new digital economies...yet the most uncomfortable question is avoided (or ignored):

𝗶𝗻 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺 𝗼𝗳 𝘃𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗮 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱 𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗰 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗻𝗼 𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗿 𝗯𝗲 𝗼𝗻𝗹𝘆 𝗵𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻?

Look at what’s emerging: 
instant micropayments to access data or APIs; agents that sell output (code, analysis, content) and get paid per request; devices bargaining with each other (machine-to-machine) for energy, bandwidth, or updates; adaptive paywalls.
It’s a software-native economy.  

The problem is that we still rely on financial infrastructures built on anthropocentric assumptions:
bank accounts tied to jurisdictions, credit cards tied to personal identity, regulators imposing borders.
But AI has no passports: an agent operating in Germany won’t wait for business hours, weekdays, currency conversions, and the approval of 9 banking intermediaries to interact with an agent in Australia.  
We need a currency native to cyberspace.
Credit cards don’t scale between machines; national currencies don’t scale in a nationless economy.  

**Bitcoin, with Lightning, does**.  

And this isn’t speculation: 
MCP servers already exist that allow agents to control Lightning wallets: AIs can own, spend, and earn.
The real question is whether we are culturally ready for a world where value flows between non-human intelligences without asking for permission.
If AI is the new actor in history, Bitcoin is the tool that will allow it to participate in the economy. 

**Not understanding Bitcoin today means not understanding the grammar of the future**.

AI, Value, and the End of Anthropocentric Finance

bitcoin

An important part of being a Bitcoiner should be “spreading the word,” talking to others, and building communities.  
As I’ve mentioned several times, whenever I make in-person purchases I always ask the merchants if they accept Bitcoin. 
Unfortunately, the vast majority of the time I get puzzled or judgmental looks, but sometimes there’s interest. 
Once, while talking to a young business owner, I even ended up helping him set up a Bitcoin PoS. Sadly, where I live, Bitcoin culture is very limited and you often feel alone (thanks God places like SN exist!) 
What do you do to connect with other Bitcoiners in your city/region/country? 
How are you working toward building a community and a circular economy based on Bitcoin?

What do you do to build a community?

I come from a strong technical background, yet I have never encountered a technology that pushed me to explore and dive so deeply into fields that seem so unrelated to one another:  
from economics to philosophy, history, mathematics, game theory, and more.  

And the fact that anyone can take part in the network by running their own node, and even join the mining process with a tiny Bitaxe and receive daily sats over Lightning...that for a tech nerd like myself feels like pure magic.

Thanks you Satoshi 🧡

What I love about Bitcoin.

nostr

A friend of mine has developed [this tool](https://github.com/r3drun3/nostrdm) to implement a **1-1 instant private chat** leveraging **Nostr**.  

I had the chance to test it, and it seems quite interesting, although still in an early stage. 
However, wasn’t Dorsey also working on something similar? 🤣
Nostr has great potential as an infrastrutture layer! 

NostrDM: a 1 to 1 instant private chat via Nostr

Hey Bircoiners, I’ve got to ask:
what did it for you?  

What was the “aha!” moment that finally made you take the orange pill and never look back?  

Was it a meme? A book? A transaction that clicked?
Share your story, always curious to hear what finally flips the switch! ⚡️

What orange pilled you? 💊

lightning

If you’re reading this, you’re probably curious about the Lightning Network and how to get hands-on building or using it: with this post I want to list the minimum set of resources that have been invaluable for me in my own jourey toward mastering Lightning.  

> ⚠️ Warning
This post is intended for those who want to get their hands dirty: not just use a custodial wallet, but run and manage their own Lightning node.

Before diving in, a quick heads-up on **prerequisites**:

- A minimum technical familiarity: you should be comfortable running services, using command line/shell, reading docs, configuring things.

- An understanding of how Bitcoin works at a protocol level (UTXOs, blocks, keys, addresses). The Lightning Network is a Layer-2 built on Bitcoin, so the stronger your base, the better.


If you have those, you’re ready to go !!


---

🔧 Key Resources

1. Book: Mastering the Lightning Network (Antonopoulos, Osuntokun & Pickhardt)
This is one of the most comprehensive deep-dives into Lightning: how it works, channel architecture, routing, wiring, security, etc. 
The draft/manuscript is [available for free on GitHub](https://github.com/lnbook/lnbook).  


2. Builder’s Guide by Lightning Labs.
Their [Builder’s Guide to the LND Galaxy](https://docs.lightning.engineering/ ) covers core Lightning Network topics (payment channels, routing, invoices, liquidity) and how to build with their stack (LND, Lightning Terminal, Loop, Pool, Taproot Assets).


3. Practice!
Once you’re familiar with the core concepts covered in the resources above, it’s time to get your hands dirty!
A tutorial I personally found very useful is [Lightning Network the Hard Way](  https://github.com/stackzoo/lightning-network-the-hard-way).
It walks you step by step through the initial node setup and basic transactions, all on the testnet so you wont lose anything if you Fup!



---

✅ Next steps for you

Pick one resource from above and schedule time this week to explore (e.g., read Chapter 1 of the book, or set up a local LND via the sample app).

Set up a test environment (regtest or testnet) and experiment: open a channel, send an invoice, route a payment.

Share your findings or questions here in the comments and feel free to post additional resources you discover so we can all learn together!



---

⚡ Stay charged!

Getting started with the Lightning network ⚡ - A resource Dive

Are you able to live on a Bitcoin standard? 2025 edition

>A gov doesn't give a shit about your BTC .

 
Agree to heavily disagree on this one.  
First of all, all governments are equally parasitic, though they employ different strategies.
Maybe your government doesn’t care how many BTC you hold (which is highly unlikely), but in my country they’ve become a tool for unhetically taxing profits (even if you did not sold them for fiat), and the level of scrutiny has increased dramatically.   
I’ve even received notices for transactions I made six years ago (**before** I stopped using KYC services) and now I’m required to pay substantial taxes on them.
You don’t hold the absolute truth, and you don’t live everywhere.
Have a nice day sir.

Using a govID does not automatically translate in my gov knowing how much BTC I have.

I disagree on this. 
My gov is becoming more and more authoritarian in wanting to trace/control/tax Bitcoin.  
**I dont want my gov knowing how much BTC I have.**

Bitwage is heavily KYC. 
I stopped using those kind of services years ago.

I am strongly convinced that we must keep the use of Bitcoin as a medium of exchange alive.  

Unfortunately, even though the situation has improved significantly, there are still few real use cases (mainly due to demand/knowledge). 
I have always been a committed HODLer, but recently I’ve started spending Bitcoin.  

**Do you have any advice on how to move increasingly toward a personal Bitcoin standard**?   
Where I live (Southern Europe), it’s practically impossible to get paid in Bitcoin, especially as an employee. 
What I currently do is use services like [*BTC Map*](https://btcmap.org/) to find merchants and businesses that accept it, and online platforms such as [*Bitrefill*](    https://www.bitrefill.com/) to purchase vouchers for various services, etc. In addition, I use platforms like [*SN*](https://stacker.news/) and [*Nostr*](https://nostr.com/).  

**What about you? How do you live fully on the Bitcoin standard in 2025?**

Memes

When your SN post gets 21 sats

bitcoin_Mining

Ocean Lightning payout frequency

Latest payout (with error): **2025-10-29 12:55**. 
Unpaid Earnings: **0.0000097 BTC**. 
Only today Ocean found 3 blocks but no new payout attempted 🙈

I’m experiencing several issues with Lightning payouts on Ocean.
Initially, I generated a BOLT12 invoice using my Core Lightning node, but the payment kept failing (it seemed unable to find a route), even though my node was fully operational and I could send and receive funds through various mobile wallets.  


Following some advice, I regenerated the BOLT12 invoice using Coinos, but after more than 28 hours, no payments have been processed (not failed, simply not issued) despite Ocean having found 3 blocks.  

Is anyone else encountering similar problems? Also, what is the actual frequency of Lightning payouts? The documentation is vague and doesn’t specify this.
In some forums, I read that about 30 blocks must pass after one mined by the pool before a payout occurs, but that hasn’t been my experience.
So far, I’d describe my experience with Ocean as suboptimal.

What node are you running?

Time for the **Unofficial Stacker News Census™**.
Let’s find out what kind of Bitcoiner you really are!!   No lies, no KYC, just pure self-reporting on-chain truth (and no, I am no Fed).  

Pick your tier 👇

🧮 Stacker Census 2025: What Kind of Bitcoiner Are You?

Bitcoin node runners, what node implementation are you currently running and why?

💼 When My Financial Advisor Told Me Bitcoin Was a Scam

I dont anymore :)
Was very stupid and naive back then.

I started stacking Bitcoin ~5 years ago.
Too bad I didn’t start earlier but in my defense, I was too busy living my carefree teenage life, blissfully unaware of how the fiat system or inflation actually worked.  

At first, I bought through exchanges, paying with my bank account.
Back then, I also had some “traditional” investments: mostly *super safe™* **BlackRock funds** my advisor had sold me with great enthusiasm.  

A few months after my first Coinbase purchases, my advisor calls me:

> *“We’ve noticed you made some transactions to buy Bitcoin. It’s my duty to inform you those are all scams.”*

Aside from the mild horror of realizing they monitor everything we buy with our own money, that was the moment I started to realize I wanted as little to do with banks as possible.  

Fast forward three years.  
I closed my BlackRock investment, down about 10% after 3 years 💩.
Had to talk to my advisor again, so I said:

> *“Good thing my Bitcoin gains more than made up for the dumpster fire you sold me.”*

He didn’t laugh.
I did.
In sats. 😎

Diversification is mostly a fiat scam:  
why dilute pure water with radioactive swamp juice, mud punch, expired pool water, sewer water, or that weird glowing water in the corner of the fridge?

bitcoin_beginners

I’ve been running a full node for five years, and for about a year I also operated a Lightning node (which I later discontinued).   
Recently, I’ve started doing some lottery mining as well.
Whenever I shop somewhere, I always ask if they accept Bitcoin, and I talk about it whenever I get the chance...but I still feel like it’s not enough.  

I’m fortunate to have a strong technical background thanks to my profession, but I realize that for many people Bitcoin poses a significant technical challenge, both in terms of understanding and adoption, even though there are obviously different levels of each.  

That’s why I’d like to start a discussion specifically with beginners: what are the things you’d most like to have? What are the biggest obstacles you face when it comes to adopting Bitcoin? What do you wish existed that you haven’t yet found?  
What keeps you skeptical?

I want to do more.

Started mining with Bitaxe

Not so much but I don't care, I don't do this for the money, I am okay even "losing" dozen of dollars/year 