I've commented about this at length on X and on stage at the Vegas conference.

The comparison to Bank of America is also FUD. What is the Bank of America equivalent of using your own Electrum server and Emergency Exit Kit?

It may be the case surveying average bitcoiners would have them think this, which is why I like to call out the FUD so people aren't tricked.

I've never seen a definition of vendor lock-in that speaks to whether "sending a bitcoin payment" is lock-in.

Vendor lock-in typically means a high barrier to exit from a vendor. In the common case with Bitkey, it is not a high barrier - you literally just make a normal payment. In an extreme case where you become economically sanctioned at the government forcibly requires Bitkey to stop serving you, then the costs rise as you need to either use your own Electrum server or the emergency exit kit, but you still can escape. Matt Odell already tested this out and reported that it wasn't too hard to do.

As for restoring a wallet under normal operation, yes you must use the Bitkey app and server, as no one else supports all of the innovation the Bitkey team has done with recovery. Perhaps some day a standard protocol will emerge for all of these sophisticated recovery mechanisms and multiple vendors support it. But even with the current situation of only one vendor supporting these recovery mechanisms, it is not true the customer is locked in to the product. If they no longer want to or can use the product, they can switch to another product, albeit with inferior recovery mechanisms.

If a user is at high risk of US sanctions, then maybe Bitkey isn't the right product for them. But again, even if such a user buys Bitkey, they are not screwed if sanctions come, because they have the emergency exit kit.

There are MANY users in the world who are ill-prepared to handle private key material directly, so seedless designs are a better solution for them. Bitcoiners should rejoice that we have more options on the market.

And again, please stop with the FUD / outright lie of vendor lock-in. I still haven't seen you provide an example.

If you use your own Electrum server and sign with your mobile app and Bitkey device why do you need Bitkey's server?

And again, in the scenario where the US sanctions a country, the emergency exit kit exists.

You said vendor lock-in. Please support such a claim.

The Photon project hasn't changed. It has always been about backing up your seed.

The emergency kit is only needed if the mobile app is forcibly removed from your phone. That's an extreme case.

Otherwise just send your funds using the app to move to a new wallet.

Vendor lock-in is made up FUD come on.

Mining centralization

Only in a very abstract long-term way. In some cases, bitcoin doesn't fix everything.

Thanks for the kind words.

I think the bitcoin ecosystem could use more proactive engagement on forward-looking design. Fast-forwarding to a future with a billion people using bitcoin as everyday money and what that could look like. Then working backwards from that vision and promoting design best practices to help us get there.

It was very successful in Vegas. I believe Square announced availability later this year at the conference. I too look forward to using it in SF!

My view:

The fees are public. Let's say the fees are 1 basis point. How many ₿X payments per year would a node need to forward to generate a 10% return on ₿X capital?

I'm a supporter of nostr. I'd call myself mildly bullish. I'm definitely glad it exists and that there is energy devoted to it. I view its prospects more positively when viewed as a permissionless content protocol and as a development tool vs. viewing it as a "Twitter clone."

Spiral doesn't provide direct support for nostr but that is solely a focus reason not an opinion on its value.

LN payment volume continues grows 15-20% per month. Block earns 10% return on capital - in bitcoin terms - with their LN node. And LN has already won the rails race between all the different systems wallets use and will use to reach users (Cashu, Fedimint, Ark, Spark, Liquid, etc. all require LN to make payments).

If I may, I'll speak to 2:

For 1, we're in a pretty bad state right now with 3 entities controlling nearly 90% of the hash rate, and 1 entity potentially flirting with 50% of the hash rate. We desperately need adoption of Stratum v2 to allow miners to select their own transactions. Longer term, I think the Braidpool project is promising. While still in the R&D stage, if it is successfully built, it can address the centralization risk that the FPPS mining pool payout method introduces.

As for making bitcoin everyday money, it is why I have worked in the space the past 7 years, and why I continue to work on it. While I fully embrace bitcoin as a store of value, I think that has already pretty much won. There isn't a lot of software and design improvements for it to succeed. Whereas, using bitcoin as everyday money has lots of software, design, and product work to be done. I think it is important because using bitcoin as everday money unlocks even more value for society and I think it strengthens bitcoin as a store of value as well.

Most of Spiral's focus is on solving these 2 issues.

We cannot take it as a foregone conclusion that bitcoin will always remain decentralized and that it won't be captured by a powerful person, company, or state.

I'd recommend having a look at the bitcoin consensus analysis project, or BCAP, for a framework on how to evaluate the complexity of what prevents the bitcoin protocol from changing as well as how it can change. https://bitcoin-cap.github.io/bcap/

Dollars and cents are 2 orders of magnitude apart which is very different than 100,000,000x difference. There will be no products priced in both bitcoin and sats, so it is nothing like dollars and cents. Products will only be priced in the base unit of bitcoin.

Well this isn't Spiral, but I am also a board member of COPA (open patent alliance that defeated Craig Wright). We received some pretty wild claims by people purporting to be Satoshi.

Love SN! Disclaimer: I'm an investor in it.

I find it to be a very different experience than using Primal or Damus. I enjoy both.

I like the territory vision for SN and empowering territory owners to grow their territory. As with any social media product, the quality of people engaging is extremely important, so I think that's what SN needs to continue to cultivate.