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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @leo OP 24 Feb \ parent \ on: Trip Report: Rovigo culture
You can calculate a statistical confidence interval. If you randomly draw 21 from a group of 30, and zero accept sats, what are the chances that any of the remaining 9 do?
In fairness, I wasnt able to talk to people at the venues that were temporarily closed, but there was also no indication they would accept sats.
I reached out to the community, talked to the supertagger and others of the BTCMap team. If any of these venues really were to miraculously take Bitcoin, it would be easy to add them. If the bar to add venues is so low, the bar to remove them has to be as well.
The city centre of Rovigo. I expected a fair share of Bitcoin merchants here.
This is what you'll see before entering town from the train station. Not exactly a beautiful city, but Italy's standards are high.
I mainly find buyers for my sats through mutual friends and Bitcoin telegram groups. As a seller, it's super easy, there are far more people that want to buy sats than sell. I dont charge or expect to pay a fee for such transactions. And I've never been in an uncomfortable situation, either.
I've used non-KYC cards, but they are a total mess and I'm giving up on them. The KYC cards are more reliable, the fees they charge are mainly foreign currency fees.
I stopped using my bank account in early 2021. Since then I've been paid in Bitcoin, and it's been quite the journey. I knew that eventually my bank accounts would fail me as I travelled the world and moved countries, and eventually in late 2022 I got locked out. Not a big deal, I closed both accounts I had shortly after.
I'm getting paid in sats, I'm trying to pay as many expenses as I can in sats, but it's been getting more difficult. There are fewer services now that let me book hotels and flights with Bitcoin than in 2021. I would sell Bitcoin for cash peer to peer, which would help me cover a big portion of my expenses and even tax payments. I also use gift cards a lot.
In 2023 I got a Bitcoin debit card, which made my life a bit easier, and I think this year I'm going to take another step back away from Bitcoin, using a virtual bank account that I can fund over Lightning, attached to a debit card, to cover regular expenses.
I fear there are way too few of us, the "buy and hodl" meme is too strong and Bitcoin is failing as a currency. I don't think Bitcoin can do well as "digital gold", mainly because I think gold is an absolute failure, too. I would love to use Bitcoin more, but at times I feel a bit alone in that struggle.
The historic Tooting Market entrance
View inside the market
Signage at Boom Bap Burger
Fresh juice from the juice bar
Super cool, this motivated me to finally connect my Stacker News account to my own node via LNC. Seems to work smoothly! I think it will change my zapping behavior a bit, as now every zap is a real lightning payment. Fewer, but bigger zaps.
I didn't get a chance to, but maybe somebody can show them the "pos" function in WoS? That would make things easier for them, I believe
The few locals i talked to were mainly excited to have a football club that's winning and has an ambitious vision. The game was well attended!
- Get an old laptop or desktop computer, with a new SSD
- Install Ubuntu on it
- Run Bitcoind and Litd (which includes LND). This is a handy guide: https://www.nodeacademy.org/
- Start with one or two channels, set your routing fees high and regularly use the node
- Connect to it from Zeus on your phone via LNC
yeah, that's what this is about. proposals for a "strategic bitcoin reserve" come out of a desire to burn down the dollar. It's not a strategy meant to serve the US government, citizens, country or the dollar
That seems like a silly plan to me:
- Print US dollars (or would you prefer heavy taxation?)
- Buy Bitcoin
- Devalue the US dollar, wait a bit for Bitcoin to go up
- Repay the dollars with Bitcoin -> The US dollar is now worth significantly more, there's been years of heavy inflation (or taxation), and the US government will still have to borrow more than it earns. With or without Bitcoin, the above plan is akin to declaring bankruptcy, but with one extra Bitcoin step.
People lend the US government dollars because they believe they will get it back through taxes, not because the US government has assets. Will these entities still lend out dollars if they see these dollars being used in a speculative attack against the dollar, devaluing the claims of US treasuries?
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But you're conflating monetary and fiscal reserves. Fiscal reserves is money used to pay for government spending, and typical governments have none or little fiscal reserves. The US has none. Monetary reserves are used to stabilize exchange rates, as the article explains. Is the goal to stabilize the USD/BTC exchange rate? Then the US should buy when the price dips, and sell when it increases rapidly.
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Bitcoin doesn't make sense as a reserve currency, because you can just use Bitcoin directly, as a currency. No need for a central bank to hold it in reserves and issue fiat on top of it.