One mitigation I have adopted for this is to only trade with sellers who are online. Not 100% fool proof but I started doing this a while ago and it seems to have helped.

I had a similar instance of this (not with a gift card though) last year on Robosats and it made me aware that you can potentially be scammed by a seller. In my instance I had sent the fiat but the seller claimed I hadn't so we opened a dispute. The coordinator adjudicated and ruled in my favour, as I had clear evidence of the fiat being sent and I got my sats. But it made me realize that if the coordinator and seller collaborate they could scam you, so we're really relying on the coordinator. Although you can't recognize a seller by their bot identity, you can identify them by their Wise or Revolut tag if you're using those payment methods. After this incident I was in another trade with the same coordinator and when I got to the send Fiat stage the Revolut tag was the same as the seller who tried to scam me previously so I cancelled the trade and forfeited my bond. Robosats is still me preferred P2P method (especially now as no one in my community wants to sell sats P2P right now for some reason!) but since this happened I limit the size of my buys and be mindful of who I am trading with (coordinators and sellers). It's a jungle out there :)

Are you on the premium version? I don't see the option to take the seller's wife on my interface? Would change the incentives a little so I'd like to find out more.

We had a similar article in MSM here in New Zealand a few months ago, to which we wrote and published a response here: Same old arguments but we responded to each one and invited the author to meetups but he didn't respond. https://kiwibitcoinguide.org/articles-and-guides/bitcoin-has-failed-in-its-central-task-a-response/

If you are serious about running a node I would recommend learning some command line tools. It's not that hard and there are a lot of good resources out there to help. I started running a node 3 years ago and had no command line experience at all but have learnt as I go. Command line is not really programming, it's just commands entered in a way that the OS reads them logically. Some of the issues you explain below can be easily diagnozed yourself in command line, like the bitcoin-cli getnetworkinfo command noted below. Editing the bitcoin.conf file was really intimidating at first, but once you practice and understand what you're doing it's pretty easy. I use this YouTube channel as my go to source for Node and command line tools: https://www.youtube.com/@MinistryofNodes You can even setup one on one sessions with Ketan to help you further if you need. 3 years on, I feel a lot more confident running my node (I now run two). Good luck.

I have been running a LN node for 1 year now and the answers to your question do depend on what type of node you run and what you're using it for. My goal was to learn Lightning, self hosting and also be able to make my own LN payments in a sovereign way through my own node.

The initial investment of time was to research the different options available for running a node and decide on which was for me. As my goal is learning I went the hands on method of purchasing a server, setting up Ubuntu on it them running both Bitcoin Core and LND on that. Cost was about USD$350 for a used Dell Optiplex. I followed the Ministry of Nodes guides on YouTube for that. There was quite a bit of time required to go through and set it all up, say up to 10 hours or so.

Once it was running the other costs have only been to fund the channel and as my purpose was to host my own payments, I did this with people I know personally who already run nodes. They helped my out by opening channels to me, then we rebalanced.

A year into this the main costs in time are to update the software packages when required, which only happens every few months.

Monetary costs required have been minimal, just funding or rebalancing channels when I run out of liquidity on my side. This costs as much as you need to spend, usually I keep a couple of hundred thousand sats in liquidity on my side of channels so I can spend as I need.

It does depend on what your goals are, if there's someone you know who's running a node they can be a great help so I would recommend hooking up with someone in your community if you can.

Hope this helps and good luck.

You are right, the easiest way to buy Bitcoin is from another person directly, peer to peer. That is what money is for, trading with other people, and it happens all the time at Bitcoin meetups every week all over the world. Just put the word out in your community and you will be surprised at the results. But be sure to respect privacy and don't ask any annoying questions and everything will work just fine. I wrote an article 18 months ago on some of the other way to buy KYC free sats too: #219309

Thanks. I'd REALLY like to know why the coordinators were removed in the recent update but haven't been able to find out. I thought @QnA might know.

This is a great guide, thank you. After researching the different options I've been using Robosats for about 2 years now and it's my preferred no KYC option (behind Peer to Peer in person of course). A few months ago I actually went through the disputes process on a Robosats purchase, as the seller claimed I didn't send the fiat but I had. In the end the coordinator ruled in my favour, but it made me aware of the vulnerability here if the coordinator and the seller were working against you. I see a few coordinators were removed in a recent update and I would like to know why, as one of them was the coordinator during my disputed trade. Robosats is the best P2P platform in my opinion too. I wrote an article 18 months ago to summarize the main options here: #219309

Thank you. We'd love to see you down for a visit, but make sure you time it to line up with a Bitkiwi event. Whenever we have international visitors at Bitkiwi they always tell us they're the best meetups they've ever been to!

Thank you. It's been a great year, imagine what we'll be talking about in 12 months from now! Don Brash as RBNZ governor and Roger Douglas as Finance Minister were the stewards of the 3% inflation target and we were the first country in the world to adopt it.

I didn't know she started competing actually.

This is a great resource, thanks. I've followed Ketan's guide and am running my node now and noticed the updates to Core coming. Is this the same process to follow for updating other services on the node such as the Fulcrum server? I have to update this now also and have been wondering how to do it. Thanks.

This is how John Steinbeck's book, The Grapes of Wrath, ends. A young woman who recently lost a baby breast feeds a starving old man.

My experience from running two nodes now for 2 years, one I bought pre built and the second I built myself on a reused computer.

Here's the very same NZ Central Banker, he actually says here "it's a great business to be in, Central Banking, you print money and people believe it". Followed by laughter in the room. No shit, watch the video for yourself: https://x.com/CoinsureNZ/status/1757287586144616585?s=20

Don't worry, we got this on the ground here in NZ: #291444

Thank goodness, I was starting to worry. Now I know everything will be alright!

There are some good options for KYC free Bitcoin and they're not that hard. I wrote this article last year on this very subject: #219309 There are some new ones to add and it seems like Robosats is going through some changes with their coordinators which add to decentralization. A lot of Bitcoiners in my community moan when the banks stop them buying Bitcoin so I thought we all need to know how to buy KYC free and outside of the fiat rails. I've been KYC free for 1 year now, it's just a mindset and not that hard. Take a read and try one out, my favourite was Robosats, so quick and easy. Other option is getting to know someone who mines, that's cool too. Hope this helps.

My holiday project is to build a sovereign node stack from the ground up, doing it all myself and not using a prebuilt package like Umbrel or Raspiblitz. I am not an software engineer, the first time i ever used command line was on my first Bitcoin node. I've installed the server version of Ubuntu on a Del Optiplex, downloaded and verified Bitcoin Core and am now in the middle of IBD. I'm following @k3tan Ministry of Nodes Ubuntu video series guide. My goal is to learn some new skills, set up a Lightning node and learn first hand now all the core tools and applications of Bitcoin work. So far so good!