Alex Gladstein of HRF rejoins me on the show to chat about: 
  • Attending Africa Bitcoin Conference
  • How the World Bank and IMF keep poorer countries in a debt trap
  • The 'strings' attached to debt
  • Odious debt
  • Cash crops 
  • How does this resolve? 
  • Will Bitcoin help fix this? 
Links:

On Mastodon / Pleroma (Fediverse), follow: @stephanlivera@bitcoinhackers.org
reply
This might be the worst steelman of Fedimint yet. They didn't raise millions in dark capital to give Stacker News more private updoots.
The whole ECash push is a psyop, readying us for the new EDollar. It's a Bitcoin affinity scam that sadly too many Bitcoiners aren't yet awake enough to see.
On privacy, it's an attack, not an improvement. It creates surveillance chokepoints at the Mint (large banks, US Treasury, etc) where users request swaps into BTC.
Wake up. Look up the ECash act.
reply
As I mentioned in the show, it's definitely not my preferred method for advancing Bitcoin. I will preferably drive people towards self-custodial bitcoin and lightning apps.
But I thought it was worth discussing, what do we do when it's not so easy for everyone to have their own UTXO? There'll have to be some way of 'sharing' them, and of course I'd prefer to see stuff like lightning multi party channels or perhaps coinpools. But perhaps there is a role for this kind of chaumian ecash thing at a later date.
I also did point out that pushing this all now could be arguably 'premature optimisation'
reply
That's all well and fair, I didn't mean to imply you were shilling it. Using the term steelman was the right way to put it.
My comment was to the reader in general, to not assume that just because alleged Bitcoiners push for an alleged Bitcoin solution, that it is what it's purported to be. This should be a very obvious example of attacks on Bitcoin having evolved, and Bitcoiners must adapt to the fog of war. Stay toxic, take up space, never giving an inch.
There's no replacement for work, and today that means boots on the ground Lightning Maximalism. Every day, you need to help someone set up a node, lend them liquidity, or at least be their Uncle Jim until they're ready for the next phase.
If we don't, the shitcoiners and spooks will.
reply
Fair enough, point taken
reply