My dad killed himself today. He hanged himself in the morning.| dergigi.com
Bitcoin ist nun 14 Jahre alt, und wie fast alle Teenager ist die orange Münze meist un- und missverstanden. Bitcoin ist digitales Geld, Bitcoin ist elektronisches Gold, Bitcoin ist nur für Verbrecher, Bitcoin ist schlecht für die Umwelt, Bitcoin ist dies, Bitcoin ist jenes. Manche sind schon einen Schritt weiter. Sie haben akzeptiert, dass Bitcoin ist, und nun fragen sie sich, warum Bitcoin so ist, und nicht anders? Warum sind es 21 Millionen, und nicht 42? Warum 10 Minuten, und nicht eine...| dergigi.com
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. At least according to Philip K. Dick. But what if something unreal sticks around and lingers? Does it become real, or have you lost touch with reality? I’ve been away for a little while—a very short little while, actually—and yet it feels like a long stretch of time. The reason for that is, I believe, that reality was suspended for said little while. Time becomes strange when reality is suspended. A dream can feel ...| dergigi.com
Lethargy. A state of comatose torpor. Oh, what beautiful words. Oh, what a horrible condition of relentless agony. I’m not sure if there’s a way to do this right. I wanted to say what I’m going to say for a long while now, but I never mustered the courage to do so. Doing it Wrong “If you’re not having fun in the bitcoin space you’re doing it wrong,” is something I’ve said a long time ago. I used to have an incredible amount of fun while doing an incredible amount of work. It s...| dergigi.com
Als Bitcoiner haben wir das Argument rund um die Energieverschwendung schon zu genüge gehört: Bitcoin verbraucht mehr Energie als ein kleines Land, Bitcoin bringt die Ozeane zum Kochen, Bitcoin verdreckt und verschmutzt, macht unnötige—ja sogar sinnlose—Berechnungen, erzeugt Elektroschrott, und wird sowieso nur von Verbrechern und anderen bösen Menschen verwendet. Die Konklusio ist immer die gleiche: Bitcoin ist verschwenderisch oder sogar böswillig, Bitcoiner sind geldgierige Spekul...| dergigi.com
Bees are marvelous creatures. As are most creatures, I guess. Without bees, there wouldn’t be any flowers. Without flowers, there wouldn’t be any bees. I was walking along a beautiful path today, as I do most days. To think, enjoy, meander. An intense buzzing stopped me in my tracks. Bees. Hundreds of them. Possibly thousands. Busying themselves with the things that bees busy themselves. It was a sight to behold. The sound? Overwhelming. The older I get, the more I realize that we are mor...| dergigi.com
Writing, for some reason, is one of the most powerful things you can do. I wrote a personal mission statement a couple years ago. They say you should write things down. They say the pen is mightier than the sword. They say that the Logos is sacred. They say “ask, and you shall receive.” They are all right. Today, I received.1 I guess I’ll continue writing.2 --- 788,258 ↩ 6/21 ↩| dergigi.com
Not too long ago, I tried to paint a picture of what a vision for a value-enabled web could look like. Now, only a couple of months later, all this stuff is being built. On nostr, and on lightning. Orange and purple, a match made in heaven. It goes without saying that I’m beyond delighted. What a time to be alive! nostr Here’s the thing that nostr got right, and it’s the same thing that Bitcoin got right: information is easy to spread and hard to stifle.1 Information can be copied quick...| dergigi.com
Hesitancy tells you something. I’m not sure what it is, exactly, but it is something. If there wouldn’t be something there would be no hesitancy, all there would be is “fuck yes,” followed by immediate action. Sometimes—at the best of times—immediate action is all there is. That’s what surfers are after. That’s what everyone is after, really. Being on top of the wave, propelled by forces beyond you, without having to think about it. Some call it flow, which is by definition th...| dergigi.com
Yesterday was a good day. Today is not. It’s funny how this works, isn’t it? Nothing changed. Yet everything is different. Feels different, looks different, smells different. The rational mind tries to argue it away. But emotions say otherwise. No matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, you can’t go back. And even if you could, you would probably be stuck in a different kind of hell. Groundhog Day and all. Most people reminisce about the past. Everything was better, brighter, bi...| dergigi.com
Warning: This presentation contains example private keys. Do not import any sample keys or send bitcoins to any of the associated addresses; you will lose your money. Watch on YouTube This talk was originally given in Riga at #BH2022. --- --- Recording: YouTube, BitcoinTV Slides: PDF, PNGs Images: Here --- Act 1: TWELVE Knowledge is power. Francis Bacon code = speech “You shall not steal” bitcoin = bacon Strength in Numbers Act 2: TWENTYONE Bitcoin is a chain, yet it ends slavery. Ben Gun...| dergigi.com
It can’t be said often enough: Bitcoin is confusing. However, it’s not complicated like a Rube Goldberg machine is complicated. It’s just very foreign and thus very misunderstood—it is a completely new thing. “There’s nothing to relate it to,” as Satoshi put it in one of his posts. Because there is nothing to relate it to, we are all having a hard time wrapping our heads around the various aspects of it. We need to use words if we want to talk about it in a meaningful way, and w...| dergigi.com
The internet has a problem. Few people know that this problem exists, but hey, that's the nature of serious, non-obvious problems: they are invisible until they aren't. The problem with the internet is that information wants to be free. And if something wants to be free as in freedom, given enough time, it will also be free as in beer. Let me explain. Poisoning the Air We consume untold amounts of data every day. Every second of every minute, bits and bytes are streaming through the series of...| dergigi.com
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Arthur C. Clarke Technology is a marvelous thing. We are so quick to accept things as they stand, rarely taking the time to reflect on how magical these modern miracles are in actuality. Much of what we take for granted today would be indistinguishable from magic to anyone living just a couple of generations ago. Take a smartphone, for example. A pocket-sized piece of glass that can retrieve any piece of information at any ...| dergigi.com
People are the most wonderful thing. Full of potential, full of joy, full of wonder. Whenever I see people, I see dancers, artists, musicians, builders, gardeners, plumbers, and poets. Unique human beings, with hearts and souls, and mothers and fathers, and wishes and dreams. Every time I meet new people, I am amazed by their stories. I am fascinated by their past as well as by their potential future. They will share all of this with you, right here, in the present, as long as you are present...| dergigi.com
Dare to be different. Dare to try something new. Dare to struggle, dare to fail, dare to start anew. Dare to go out into this world, dare to dream, dare to give it your all. Dare to go out on a limb, even if you might fall. There are seasons, in human affairs, of inward and outward revolution, when new depths seem to be broken up in the soul, when new wants are unfolded in multitudes, and a new and undefined good is thirsted for. There are periods when…to dare, is the highest wisdom. Willia...| dergigi.com
As I have argued previously, Bitcoin is a living organism. But where does this organism live, exactly? As with many questions in the world of Bitcoin, exact answers are hard to come by. Living things have fuzzy edges: beginnings and endings are hard to pin-point, differentiation is more-or-less arbitrary, and what was classified as a wolf today might evolve to be a dog tomorrow. Bitcoin has no rigid specification, no absolute finality, no fixed development team, no final security guarantees, ...| dergigi.com
Bitcoin works. No matter what other opinions you hold about this strange phenomenon, it undoubtedly works, marches on, or, as I (and others) have previously argued, is alive. Even if most of the world would grind to a halt, the Bitcoin network would continue to produce valid blocks every 10 minutes or so. Bitcoin works because of many things: game theory, economic incentives, cryptography, ingenious engineering, resilience on a network level, and so on and so forth. Killing Bitcoin is hard. R...| dergigi.com
José is a bitcoiner. Like many others, he discovered bitcoin a couple of years ago and is fascinated by the technology. Unlike many others, however, José lives in a country where the traditional financial system ceased to work: Venezuela. “It’s almost as if Venezuela was what Satoshi had in mind when he invented bitcoin over a decade ago,” José mused when I talked to him. “A laboratory to test his ideas, if you will.” A lot of people in Venezuela, as elsewhere, dismiss bitcoin as...| dergigi.com
It is with words as with sunbeams. The more they are condensed, the deeper they burn. Robert Southey| dergigi.com
What a strange thing is man! And what a stranger is woman! What a whirlwind is her head, and what a whirlpool full of depth and danger is all the rest about her. Lord Byron Women are more powerful than they think. A mother’s warmth is the essence of motivation. If we could liquefy the encouragement, care and compassion we deliver to our children it would surely fill an expanse greater than the Pacific Louise Burfitt-Dons Next to God, we are indebted to women, first for life itself, and then...| dergigi.com
Callings are a very strange thing, and I sometimes find myself in a pickle trying to explain phenomena like these rationally. There are certain things you have to do, but you can’t really explain it. You just know this is something you need to be doing right now. Sometimes it’s things you always wanted to do, but never had the courage; sometimes it’s things you don’t want to do at all. Peculiar things, those callings. Seventy-three men sailed in, from the San Francisco Bay, Rolled off...| dergigi.com
We have been told that all paths lead to truth — you have your path as a Hindu and someone else has his path as a Christian and another as a Muslim, and they all meet at the same door — which is, when you look at it, so obviously absurd. Truth has no path, and that is the beauty of truth, it is living. A dead thing has a path to it because it is static, but when you see that truth is something living, moving, which has no resting place, which is in no temple, mosque or church, which no re...| dergigi.com
“Where are we heading?” “Upstream.” “Why? We will just drift down again, ending up right where we started.” “Exactly.”| dergigi.com
There are people who love birds so much they free them. There are others who love them so much they cage them. Gene Wolfe| dergigi.com
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Brian Eno| dergigi.com
Speaking freely is more important than ever, offline and online.| dergigi.com
What follows is an elaborate, in-depth, and practical step-by-step guide on how to kill the beast which is Bitcoin. Bitcoin is remarkably resilient. As Rep. Patrick McHenry famously said: governments can not stop this innovation. And those that have tried, have already failed.| dergigi.com
Nichts kann rarer sein als Bitcoin. Nichts kann schneller sein als Lightning.| dergigi.com
It's time we clear up a common misconception.| dergigi.com
Not only does the line between good and evil run through everyone’s heart, but the line between fiat and bitcoin runs through everyone’s heart too.| dergigi.com
Most eggs are still closed. We don't know if they will ever open up.| dergigi.com
(without writing any code)| dergigi.com
Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the technology.| dergigi.com
We forgot what money is. Bitcoin makes us remember.| dergigi.com
Without the luxury of private keys, we can't use cryptography to construct a shield in cyberspace. We have to use computation directly.| dergigi.com
...ein Kind, das den Menschen die gestohlene Zeit zurückbringt.| dergigi.com
The coin is dead, long live the coin!| dergigi.com
The solution to improving online privacy was not to create a 2nd internet.| dergigi.com
If speech and the free exercise thereof is sacred, then Bitcoin is sacred, because all that Bitcoin requires of you is to think and to speak.| dergigi.com
Bitcoin is the constant, the signal for rebirth, the egg of the phoenix.| dergigi.com
Step by step, Bitcoin marches towards a circular economy.| dergigi.com
Bitcoin is numbers. Bitcoin is math. Bitcoin is thought. Bitcoin is speech.| dergigi.com
Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come.| dergigi.com
Not only the moon is programmed in, but responsibility too.| dergigi.com
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy.| dergigi.com
Keeping track of things in the informational realm requires keeping track of time.| dergigi.com
I imagine that right now, you're feeling a bit like Alice. Hmm?| dergigi.com
What is the most important thing in the world you could be working on right now?| dergigi.com
Start stacking sats, today.| dergigi.com
Bullish on bitcoiners. We got this.| dergigi.com
Decentralized and private payments are a necessary innovation for a digital future where we retain our civil liberties and personal freedoms.| dergigi.com
Life is like fire, not water; it is a process, not a pure substance. The simplest, but not the only, proof of life is to find something that is alive.| dergigi.com
The world that Satoshi Nakamoto — author of the Bitcoin whitepaper — envisioned, and others are building, is an unstoppable force. We should not attempt to deter this innovation. And governments can not stop this innovation. And those that have tried, have already failed.| dergigi.com
People have coins, but coins also have people.| dergigi.com
Part three of 21 lessons learned from Bitcoin.| dergigi.com
Part two of 21 lessons learned from Bitcoin.| dergigi.com
Part one of 21 lessons learned from Bitcoin.| dergigi.com
Thoughts on the nature of information, free speech, and how strong cryptography changes everything.| dergigi.com
Why the energy expenditure of Bitcoin's network is not as bad as you might think.| dergigi.com
