Is anyone else genuinely into Bitcoin for the tech? \ stacker news ~bitcoin

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Is anyone else genuinely into Bitcoin for the tech?

502 sats \ 51 comments \ @NordlysLN 29 Aug 2022 bitcoin

I honestly don’t really care what the price of Bitcoin is right now or tomorrow or yesterday. After reading the Bitcoin Standard I was immediately convinced of the value proposition anyway. However, after reading “Mastering Bitcoin” and grasping how the Bitcoin network actually functions I was blown away by the elegant application of asymmetric cryptography. Now I find I spend most of my free time reviewing and writing Bitcoin and Lightning Network related code while taking deep dives into various topics, growing more and more fascinated by every passing day and at this point I’m seriously considering giving up my job to work on Bitcoin and\or LN development full time.

If Bitcoin and the Lightning Network doesn’t end up revolutionizing finance the way the internet revolutionized communications I will eat my socks. It’s objectively better in pretty much every way!

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580 sats \ 1 reply \ @pi 29 Aug 2022

I'm into Bitcoin for the separation of money and State.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @DemandUtopia 29 Aug 2022

This. Bitcoin is not competing against PayPal, Visa, or Wells Fargo. Bitcoin is competing against the Federal Reserve, the IMF, and fiat money systems around the world.

I'm not excited about "revolutionizing finance". I'm excited about returning the global economy to a sound money standard. "Fix the money, fix the world."

1149 sats \ 11 replies \ @TheBTCManual 29 Aug 2022

I am into bitcoin so I no longer need to eat the bugs, Africans are tired of being poor my dude

0 sats \ 10 replies \ @mikhael 29 Aug 2022

Bitcoin may change someone’s fortunes on a micro-level, but at a macro-level, there are many more factors at play towards keeping countries and societies poor.

Bitcoin is just a payments API.

110 sats \ 8 replies \ @DeezSats 29 Aug 2022

@mikhael the internet is just a fax machine.

10 sats \ 7 replies \ @mikhael 30 Aug 2022

In many ways, that’s all it is.

0 sats \ 6 replies \ @DeezSats 30 Aug 2022

Troll confirmed.

10 sats \ 5 replies \ @mikhael 30 Aug 2022

If you knew anything about networking (HTTP, TCP, phone lines) you would understand the nuance of my comment.

0 sats \ 4 replies \ @DeezSats 30 Aug 2022

That's not nuance, it's a stupid analogy and you're a troll.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @mikhael 30 Aug 2022

I know you are, but what am I?

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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @TheBTCManual 30 Aug 2022

He is quoting paul Krugman

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888 sats \ 0 replies \ @TheBTCManual 29 Aug 2022

yea, i cant do anything about my country, but I can do something about my own fortunes

286 sats \ 2 replies \ @jimmysong 29 Aug 2022

Yes. Also, in case you're not aware, my programming book is on github:

https://github.com/jimmysong/programmingbitcoin

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @spraveenitpro 30 Aug 2022

Is there a way to do your book in JavaScript?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Wil 29 Aug 2022

Thanks Jimmy!

226 sats \ 10 replies \ @Coinosphere 29 Aug 2022

Few people get to see Bitcoin deeply in all three areas; "Number go up," "freedom go up," and "fintech go up."

I've always been in the freedom go up camp, and generally look down upon the vast unwashed masses who only recognize the NGU aspect to bitcoin.

The code/cryptography/fintech is mystifying though too. I know just enough code to appreciate it but have relied on Aantonop's videos to appreciate it further. Good for you to get that far on your own.

Sadly, many developers come to appreciate the fintech but don't see the freedom aspects at all, not until they've been here for a while. I see it all the time, in fact. Hacker news & Slashdot are full of these folks.

111 sats \ 9 replies \ @mikhael 29 Aug 2022

Lol what freedom do you get if everything is KYC’d?

Even then, what does freedom even mean? What do you want to use Bitcoin for, that you don’t want to use fiat for?

201 sats \ 5 replies \ @om 29 Aug 2022

inside the neural tissue of a three letter agent:

There should be no privacy because there are criminals:

Wake up fools - if you think your ‘privacy’ is more important than punishing crime, then you obviously have lived a quiet, spoiled life without any speed bumps whatsoever.
Freedom is impossible anyway because there's no privacy:

Lol what freedom do you get if everything is KYC’d?

110 sats \ 1 reply \ @tenuous 29 Aug 2022

LOL, I remember this post also. A post so bad and condescending as to be memorable, even on the internet. If it weren't for this great site we wouldn't get to witness such things together. Long live bitcoiners, eyes wide open!

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @mikhael 30 Aug 2022

Your eyes aren’t wide open. You aren’t enlightened. You are simply selectively ignorant.

And have not refuted my point. Go ask someone living in a war torn country if you care more about security or privacy. Go ask someone living in a sclerotic economy.

I’ll wait.

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @DeezSats 29 Aug 2022

SN needs to a blocking feature. If I wanted to hear to @mikhael's normie takes I'd go watch CNN.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @mikhael 30 Aug 2022

Yes that’s right, stay in your echo chamber.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @mikhael 30 Aug 2022

You are putting words in my mouth, taking statements to a logic extreme. Not very smart, and the kind of thinking that only works on the internet - not in real life.

1009 sats \ 2 replies \ @tenuous 29 Aug 2022

On the chance your question is genuine, I will provide one opinion:

Freedom is the ability to navigate life uninterrupted by rent-seeking middle men and authoritarian fetishists. Nosy neighbors. Karens. Cops. Feds. Regulators. Lawyers. Permits. Code enforcement. Taxation. Just to name a few- the list is much longer and specific to the individual.

Some people enjoy all those things- more power to them. They can live their life uninterrupted by me and my silly ideas.

Let me return a question to you. You only have so many hours on this earth. What is an appropriate amount of them to devote to paperwork and bureaucracy? At what point would you feel you were just being dicked around?

110 sats \ 0 replies \ @mikhael 30 Aug 2022

From my perspective, if you don’t want to be burdened by those things you mentioned, you should be able to opt-out if the system. If you don’t want to deal with taxation, or codes, or nosy neighbors - you should be able to forsake the public social and infrastructure benefits that come from the society you are opting out of, in exchange for not having to pay taxes to service those resources.

Sadly, the current nation state doesn’t allow people to opt out like that.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @mikhael 30 Aug 2022

You will never have freedom from authority so long as you live with humans. Authority in one way or another. Human nature.

120 sats \ 0 replies \ @kilianbuhn 29 Aug 2022

All people coming from the tech have a hard time imagining why/how people come from the finance

All the people coming from the finance have a hard time imagining why/how people come from the tech

110 sats \ 1 reply \ @DeezSats 29 Aug 2022

Being interested in the exchange rate of bitcoin is not just for number go up. Some people already live on bitcoin and seeing their purchasing power in the tank compared to a year ago hurts, because everything costs more bitcoin.

101 sats \ 0 replies \ @DemandUtopia 29 Aug 2022

And in order for Bitcoin to achieve the goals of defeating fiat currencies and becoming the world's reserve currency, it must go up in value. A market cap of $380 billion (~$20k BTC) is simply not enough to challenge the inflationary regime.

The price and market cap must go up 100x from here, and it's legitimate to be concerned and interested in the price movements (on a medium and long term time scale at least).

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @derekross 30 Aug 2022

I came for the tech, I stayed for the tech AND for the ability to change the world for the better.

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @faithandcredit 30 Aug 2022

Im in it for the magic :P

So things im currently excited about: Improvements to LN. Im a big LN skeptic but i think i see a way for it to become mainstream :)

And heating with hashrate is also exciting :)

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @lv99_slacker 29 Aug 2022

You spend enough time watching the developments in this space, you can't help but appreciate the technology itself, and the various freedoms it enables. "Money go up" brought me to bitcoin, but the prospect of separating money and state is why I'm staying.

40 sats \ 8 replies \ @moneroshill 29 Aug 2022

I only notice the price crash when I start to see these cope comments about how bitcoiners only care about the tech, price doesn't matter etc.

I care about the bitcoin tech and not the price. Guess what? I don't own any bitcoin. I barely own any monero (just enough to allow me to run my services). It's not an investment, it's a tool.

50 sats \ 7 replies \ @Coinosphere 29 Aug 2022

MAN are you going to be kicking yourself hard when fiat money goes away!

Seriously, people have already committed suicide over missed gains in BTC. You're going to be feeling that times 1000 one day without any stash. :(

21 sats \ 2 replies \ @moneroshill 29 Aug 2022

yeah maybe, but I doubt it. I am not the type of investor that FOMOs or gets too emotional about my losses. When I was a young adult, I considered buying it at around 3k, but I couldn't figure it out because I didn't have a credit card or bank account. Even if I bought then and sold at the peak of 60k, I would have made like 20x gains which is not really impressive for the few hundred I would have been willing to invest.

A lot of the 10000x "rags to riches" stories you hear about bitcoin are from people who were there around or before the first bullrun in 2013.

I suppose earning a million dollars would be cool. But if I had to choose between having a million dollars or living in a world where cryptocurrency has mass adoption, I would always pick the latter.

And realistically I don't think anyone is going to "make it" with bitcoin anymore. It's way too late for that. The price is already so high- the entire cryptocurrency market is overvalued. I think the most you can hope for is like 8x gains, and that is being really optimistic.

I'd say that there is a low (<30%) chance that I become a millionare in the next decade just based off of the monero I keep as liquidity for my business, assuming that monero's market cap survives the next crash and displaces a major player like etherium or bitcoin.

110 sats \ 0 replies \ @tenuous 29 Aug 2022

Don't fully agree with you but appreciate the opinion.

Isn't it possible that bitcoin (or crypto broadly) will simply scale along with human progress? Looking at things in terms of 1x-8x-100x really seems a bit nihilistic. Which is fine- but I'm not in bitcoin for nihilism, I am in it for hope and optimism.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Coinosphere 29 Aug 2022

realistically I don't think anyone is going to "make it" with bitcoin anymore

Wow, what low expectations you have. I don't think it ever occurred to me that bitcoin could fail to reach valuations of billions of dollars per coin... There are just too few of them to represent so much wealth out there. Literally Quadrillions of today's dollars worth of wealth... Or did you think the 21m limit could be broken somehow?

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @mikhael 29 Aug 2022

Fiat money going away? Yeah, and the Atlanta Falcons are winning the Super Bowl 43-0 next year.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @Coinosphere 29 Aug 2022

Man, we didn't even need bitcoin to watch this happen! It's been inevitable since 1971.

Go learn some monetary history.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @mikhael 30 Aug 2022

While history is a valuable guide, it is by no means a guide to the future.

You couldn’t use history to predict the internet in 1800.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @mikhael 30 Aug 2022

How is it inevitable? Please, explain.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @BitDaya 29 Aug 2022

Nice! Hope youll contribute much to LN.

I am into it first for the freedom it allows personally and mostly where its really needed.

But honestly I am falling into the rabbit hole of heating with asics more than anything else at the moment

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @toofasteddie 1 Sep 2022

In my opinion, technology is not the most important thing, but the discovery of BITCOIN as a tool to stop being slaves to a system that does not work and that is getting worse every day.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @EnormousPony 30 Aug 2022

For me bitcoin is "fuck you I do whatever I want" tech. If i want to buy a racoon on the dark web I can pay it in bitcoin. Bitcoin gives back power to the people, that's the only thing that matters

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @benthecarman 29 Aug 2022

The thing is if you're just in it for the tech, things like eth, solana, or nano can be just as interesting if not more. The reason bitcoin will win is because how it's tech relates to economics and how its tech is unchanging and immutable

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @BeardedSaintRef 29 Aug 2022

IMO, the two are inseparable. Tech and Monetary currency! That’s what makes Bitcoin so special.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @ken 29 Aug 2022

I think most are in it for Bitcoin's patented Number Go Up™ technology.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kilianbuhn 29 Aug 2022

Number stays constant technology ☝🏻

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @mikhael 29 Aug 2022

Most people in the Bitcoin space are just bitter about life and society, so they gravitate towards Bitcoin as a way of showing their dissatisfaction. Virtue signaling, really. Don’t believe me? Look at Ron Paul’s supporters, and look at how many have leaned heavily into Bitcoin.

The small minority, like yours truly, is actually interested in the technology and works in software. But that is the minority - the overwhelming majority here have never even purchased anything substantial with Bitcoin, like hiring someone for freelance work.