"Teaching Bitcoin to a teenager requires a balanced approach that combines technical detail with engaging content."

I've given my nephew two short physical books I had about Bitcoin (I'm more of an Audible guy myself):

• "The Bitcoin Handbook" by Anil Patel (the website offers a free PDF download of the book)
• "Why Buy Bitcoin" by Andy Edstrom

But he wants more. So I started looking at what I could provide him that would be good while engaging for a teenager. Here is what I'm sharing with him. I'll let you know what he thought about the material once he goes through it 😁

The Bitcoin Course

The Bitcoin Course by Anil Patel is a no brainer. Anil recently made the course free (it used to cost $99) and not only he did that but he went through the extra step of reimbursing the $99 to anyone who had bought it in the past.

Introduction to Bitcoin by Andreas Antonopoulos

This is a YouTube playlist with a compilation of 49 mostly short videos explaining the different concepts about Bitcoin. Some run 20 to 30 minutes but the majority are short.

Material for the future

Yes, I'm omitting a lot of good material but I just want him to get started. If he is still interested then we can go into books like The Bitcoin Standard but let's first get started with videos. This is a list targeted at teenagers after all.

Notable notes

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Recommendations

ck

"Home cooking + Bitcoin". I couldn't agree with him more.

You can follow ck here.

What did you think of today's newsletter?

Your feedback helps me create the best newsletter possible for you.

Please leave a comment and checkout comments from other subscribers and readers. I love hearing from the Bitcoin For Families community ❤️ 🙏🏻

See you again next week!
— Alejandro

This newsletter is for educational purposes. It does not represent financial advice. Do your own research before buying Bitcoin.

"I've been thinking about what's the best strategy for you if you're going to be saving in Bitcoin little by little and I think you need to download a new wallet."

Back in Christmas I gave my nephew his first sats and set him up with a Mutiny wallet to receive them. Today, I had him migrate from Mutiny to Phoenix, with all the troubles associated, so that he can buy extra liquidity, at least for a year.

The problem

Last December I sent my nephew his first 100,000 sats. He setup a Mutiny wallet and after the channel setup fee, he ended up with around 95,000 sats.

He is curious about Bitcoin and yesterday he asked me if I could help him turn into Bitcoin some cash that his grandparents had sent him. The idea seemed simple, my sister gives me the cash and I send him the equivalent amount in sats.

But...he only had 64,000 sats of inbound liquidity. I tried sending him 60,000 sats with no luck.

He had an inbound liquidity problem. It's already hard to find people who will pay you in Bitcoin for mowing the lawn. Let's not make it even more difficult with Lightning channel management.

So I decided to move him over to Phoenix so that he could buy liquidity.

The move

The move was cumbersome and I hope he doesn't need to do something similar again:

1. Close the Lightning channel on Mutiny and pay the closing fees
   • The 95,000 sats now sit on-chain and can't be sent to Phoenix
2. Download Phoenix
3. Send me a Lightning invoice from Phoenix
4. I send him a lump sum of sats from my Mutiny wallet to his new Phoenix wallet
   • The money from the grandparents
   • 95,000 sats to match what he has on-chain at his Mutiny wallet
   • Some extra to cover for the Lightning channel setup fee and to buy extra inbound liquidity
5. He then pays approximately around 15,000 sats to add 1 million sats of inbound liquidity
6. He sends me the 95,000 sats from his Mutiny wallet to an on-chain address on my Mutiny wallet
   • I'm not thrilled, but this is the price of orange pilling a relative

The silver lining

The silver lining is that my nephew now wants to learn about on-chain and Lightning, how they work and how they're different.

I see a Bitcoiner in the making 😁

In summary:

Mutiny is a good wallet for established Bitcoiners and Nostr users. For a new Bitcoiner getting started, Phoenix is the way to go.

Notable notes

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Recommendations

Karnage

Karnage is the #1 Nostr UI designer. If you're using Nostr today, you're using his (or her) designs.

You can follow Karnage here.

What did you think of today's newsletter?

Your feedback helps me create the best newsletter possible for you.

Please leave a comment and checkout comments from other subscribers and readers. I love hearing from the Bitcoin For Families community ❤️ 🙏🏻

See you again next week!
— Alejandro

This newsletter is for educational purposes. It does not represent financial advice. Do your own research before buying Bitcoin.

"You can't trust any communication anymore unless it is cryptographically signed."

— [Guy Swann](Guy Swann)

With Artificial Intelligence, anything can be created and put in a video. A community called the Content Authenticity Initiative is promoting a centralized media provenance standard to address this problem.

I believe Nostr can provide a better, and decentralized, solution.

The problem

Allow me to illustrate the problem with two sample fake videos.

This is an easy one. The video is telling you that it's fake.

But what about this one?

This short YouTube video has 4M views and realizing that it is fake takes some digging around that most people don't have the time or patience for.

I know it is fake because I searched for the original Joe Rogan podcast episode with Miley Cyrus and saw that he was wearing different clothes for the interview than what this short video shows. This tells me that the two clips, although real, belong to different episodes and Joe Rogan was not making fun of Miley Cyrus.

This is an insidious video that uses two authentic clips of Joe Rogan to create a false story and rack up views.

The centralized solution

The Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity, C2PA, is the standard body developing the new media provenance standard. It has some heavy weights behind it: Adobe, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Intel, ARM and lots of corporate media companies.

Which really makes me wonder: why has it not taken off?

Their solution is not a bad solution, except for one teeny tiny problem: it's uses a fully centralized architecture:

• Identity is centralized with Central Authorities issuing X.509 certificates to validate the authenticity of the signature of the author.
• The information containing the provenance of a video is uploaded to the cloud repository of a provider that you, as the consumer of the video, must trust is not manipulating the information.
• The standard allows for self-signed certificates for when anonymity is required, but it considers this to be an exception, and as such, restricts the usage of self-signing certificates to only instances where the consumer (validator) has manually imported the self-signed certificate, limiting the broad adoption of anonymous material.

To see the system in action with a picture, open the link below and click on the cr icon on the top left corner of the picture to see a pop-up menu with the provenance information. You can go a step further by clicking on the link Verify on ContentCredentials.org at the bottom of the pop-up menu.

https://adobe-cai.smartframe.io/p/img_20211028_173913_1637592139900/3b4a09bdfec70cde02b69400de8c28e7

The Nostr solution

The C2PA specification is built with one use in mind: the distribution of media from a limited set of producers (e.g., corporate media) to a large set of consumers.

The architecture implies that there will be one or two main stream media editing applications (e.g. Adobe) and that the number of Certificate Authorities will be small. It is not meant to scale on the supply side.

This system is not built to protect the communication of regular people. They can't seriously expect regular people to pay a Central Authority to maintain their digital identity.

That's where Nostr comes in. With its decentralized and permission-less architecture, Nostr can deliver media provenance for the masses at no cost and with no central authority acting as the Mnistry of Truth.

Nostr identity

The Nostr solution uses Nostr profiles as identity. You can create your profile without permission from anyone and it's your responsibility to build the reputation of that profile either face-to-face or through consistent online interactions.

The application retrieving the provenance for a video (e.g., a web browser plugin) will use Nostr to retrieve the latest kind:0 event of the author and display his or her information to the consumer of the video.

Nostr events hold media provenance data

NIP-94 defines event type kind:1063 that contains the description of a media file and a series of tags including the URL to the file, the hash of the original file and the hash of the files after processing by the server storing the media.

The Nostr version of the media editing application would upload the media to e.g. creatr.nostr.wine and publish an event kind:1063 with the URL, hash and other relevant provenance information. The event is signed by the author, cryptographically tying him or her to the media. The event would be sent to multiple relays ensuring censorship resistance.

The web browser plugin playing the media would calculate the hash and query any of the relays for an event with the tag matching the hash of the file. Alternatively, the system could also use perception hashes to account for clips and crops.

NIP-94 would need to be modified to support embedded kind:1063 events. A video like the second example above would have a kind:1063 event signed by the author and this event would contain two additional kind:1063 events, both signed by Joe Rogan, one for the video of the Miley Cyrus interview and another one for the second video.

The browser plugin could show a:

• Green icon: for signed and validated media that is fully unmodified (e..g a full length video created by Joe Rogan).
• Yellow icon: for signed and validated media that contains multiple clips, all signed and validated as well (like a signed version of the second video above).
• Red icon: for an non-validated media file or a signed and validated media file where not all clips are signed and validated (like the current version of the second video above).

Challenges ahead

The main challenge is adoption. A I said before, I'm surprised that the C2PA system has not taken off given who is behind it.

In my opinion, Twitter, Facebook, Threads and WhatsApp are the main distribution channels for fake videos and it will be nearly impossible to convince Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg to support a Nostr-based solution instead of the C2PA solution.

Let's turn the main strength of our enemy into their weakness. Let's make Nostr clients the place where you come for cryptographically signed videos.

We need three things:

• On the authentication side: a Nostr client capable of signing media files, uploading the media to the desired repository, and broadcasting the enhanced kind:1063 event to Nostr relays.
  • This could be a standalone app or a plugin for media editing software.
• On the validation side: a Nostr client capable of querying relays for kind:1063 events containing the hash of the media being played
  • This could be a browser plugin or integrated with existing Nostr clients for a better experience.
• Relays that accept write and read actions for kind:1063 events

A possible business model would be for the relay to charge per kind:1063 event stored (one time and monthly fee for maintaining it). The company offering the provenance relay could provide the authentication client or could also accept write request from FOSS authentication clients.

What do you think? Please leave your thoughts in the comments below and repost for visibility.

Notable notes

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Recommendations

Average Gary

Gary is talking the talk and walking the walk, spreading the love of Bitcoin in Virginia through the Shenandoah Bitcoin Club.

You can follow him here.

What did you think of today's newsletter?

Your feedback helps me create the best newsletter possible for you.

Please leave a comment and checkout comments from other subscribers and readers. I love hearing from the Bitcoin For Families community ❤️ 🙏🏻

See you again next week!
— Alejandro

This newsletter is for educational purposes. It does not represent financial advice. Do your own research before buying Bitcoin.

"If you live in Canada, you should be aware that there is a serious proposal to establish a universal basic income. Drop the cynicism for a minute and just imagine if we let ourselves have nice things."

— CautionWIP

Some think that if the government gives money to the people, then things will get better. They are well-meaning but they are wrong. For things to get better, we first need to determine what got things wrong. And the answer is too much government spending. So more government spending won't help. It will actually make things worse.

You're being robbed every day

Why are people hurting?

The chart below shows the official purchasing power of the US dollar referenced to January 1st, 2000.

A dollar earned at the beginning of the year 2000 is now only able to buy you 54.5 cents worth of goods. Any savings you built between the year 2000 and now, have been rendered useless by the relentless devaluation of the US dollar.

Has your salary increased by 84% since the year 2000? If it hasn't, then your ability to buy goods has actually gone done. Your financial status has gotten worst.

All your hustle, all those long days and hard work you put in to get that promotion, to get that coveted salary increase. All that work, was erased by the government, taken away from you though the silent yet relentless debasement of the US dollar.

The US government made sure that you worked hard for nothing. And if your salary increase was below 84%, then the government made you work for an effective salary reduction.

I arrived to the US in July of 2007 with a startup. I worked really, really hard, traveled 100 days a year, hustled and bustled until our startup got acquired by a big company. And then I kept working equally hard in this bigger company. All to bring stability to my family. A home. Financial security. The possibility of paying for college education for my kids.

Yet again, when I compare my salary when I first arrived here and I look at my salary now. I need to factor in the fact that $1.00 from July 1st, 2007 is now worth 67.1 cents. That means that my salary had to go up by 49% just to keep up with the debasement. All my hard work, taken away by greedy politicians who only know how to spend other people's money.

The constant debasement of the US dollar is the reason why people are hurting. You need to increase your salary by anywhere between 50% and 85% JUST to maintain your economic status in this country.

This is the reason why people can't afford a house, rent, food. This is the reason why we have so many homeless in the country. The reason why there is no middle class any more.

Why is the government debasing the US dollar

So why is the government doing this? Why are they debasing the purchasing power of the US dollar?

They do it because they like to spend more than what they collect in taxes. This gap translates into a deficit and the deficit translates into money printing. Every time that the government adds more money to the economy, it is diluting the purchasing power of the money that is already in the economy. They know it. And they track it. That's why there is an official chart like the one I showed you above.

Politicians promise you to manipulate the market to lower your costs and then they turn around and spend more to get your vote, knowing that this is what will actually impoverish you.

They also say that a 2% inflation rate is good or to put it bluntly: "Robbing you little by little is good".

That is the real gaslighting happening in this country today.

Spending less and letting the markets work is the solution

Spending more to pay a basic income to all citizens is not going to help. It's going to have the opposite effect by adding more debt and triggering the printing of more money.

What we need is to stop debasing money. We need for the government to spend less so that it can actually pull dollars out of the economy and increase our purchasing power. We need at the very least for the government to stop debasing the money any further.

Because once people feel comfortable saving, they will start investing, growing the economy, improving their financial prospects and once again, making the American dream a reality. We all want to improve our prospects. We just need a level playing field. A field where you don't get automatically and systematically rugged by your own government, doing things for your own good.

Notable notes

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Recommendations

Rogue Bitographer

Rogue Bitographer is one of the featured photographers sharing his art through Creatr. Check it out and support him on his Creatr [page](The Pentographer).

You can follow him [here](The Pentographer).

What did you think of today's newsletter?

Your feedback helps me create the best newsletter possible for you.

Please leave a comment and checkout comments from other subscribers and readers. I love hearing from the Bitcoin For Families community ❤️ 🙏🏻

See you again next week!
— Alejandro

This newsletter is for educational purposes. It does not represent financial advice. Do your own research before buying Bitcoin.

"If the government can print unlimited amounts of money out of thin air, why do they collect taxes? The real problem is that you pay high taxes only to uphold the illusion that you are funding the government, which you are not. The government is funded by money printing."

— President Nayib Bukele

The TARP bailout of 2008 was very controversial, with many people strongly opposing to it. The total value of the program was $700 billion dollars. At the time it was seen as an ungodly amount of money.

Now we add 1,000 billion dollars to the national debt every 100 days.

From 16 years a trillion to 100 days a trillion

The chart below shows how many years it took to add the next trillion to the national debt.

The first trillion took longer than the 16 years on the chart. Unfortunately, the Federal Reserve data only starts on January 1, 1966 and at that point the national debt was 320,999 million USD.

The debt crossed the first trillion during the 3rd quarter of 1981.

Since then, the US government has been racking debt

We're heading towards 4 trillion dollars of new debt per year. Soon the whole annual budget will be paid by debt.

Notable notes

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Recommendations

Anil

Anil just made all his Bitcoin educational material free. And he reimbursed the money to all the people who had previously paid him for the material!

You can follow him here and find his courses here.

What did you think of today's newsletter?

Your feedback helps me create the best newsletter possible for you.

Please leave a comment and checkout comments from other subscribers and readers. I love hearing from the Bitcoin For Families community ❤️ 🙏🏻

See you again next week!
— Alejandro

This newsletter is for educational purposes. It does not represent financial advice. Do your own research before buying Bitcoin.

"If you truly believe in anti-censorship, then you need to show it, you need to be here"

— Jack Dorsey

Bitcoiners often say that bear markets are for builders. And they're right. Bear markets, when no one is paying attention to Bitcoin, is the perfect time to build the tools that will be required to onboard the hundreds of thousands that will flock to Bitcoin once the new bull market arrives.

It just dawned on me that we're in an information bear market. In between censorship events. Now is the time to build the tools and onboard millions of people to un-censorable social media.

The COVID pandemic was an information bull market

March 2020. That is when we needed information the most. Governments knew it and they acted quickly to make sure that we only saw the information they wanted us to see.

Trust the experts, they said. And simultaneously they made sure that we could only listen to the experts who happened to agree with the government. The other experts, the ones who had opinions that did not align with the government were ruthlessly silenced. Their social media accounts closed and their medical licenses threaten or taken away.

1984 had arrived and the White House had become of Ministry of Truth, requesting social media companies to delete posts; even those containing stories of true vaccine side effects, because they could lead to vaccine hesitancy.

Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube all complied with the White House, FBI and CDC and censored any expert who could lead people to think differently.

The COVID pandemic was an information bull market and the Ministry of Truth won. It was able to control the message and suppress any dissenting opinion.

Just two examples of experts silenced:

Dr. Malone was the first doctor to publish papers describing mRNA as a potential way to signal the body to produce a target protein (e.g., vaccine) and Nature described his work as a landmark experiment. His research in mRNA didn't stop there and he did additional contributions to the new medical technology.

Dr. Peter McCullough is a leading internist, cardiologist and epidemiologist with 1,000 publications and 685 citations in the National Library of Medicine.

And it was not only experts. During the pandemic, saying that the COVID virus was created in the Chinese lab in Wuhan was sufficient to get your social media account closed. Now, the official position of the US government is that the virus most likely came from the Chinese lab in Wuhan.

Getting ready for the next information war

Governments, social media giants, and the dictator wannabes at the World Economic Forum (WEF) are preparing for the next information war.

Google

Google has updated its definition of sensitive event. During sensitive events, they give themselves permission to do whatever they want to protect the "ground truth".

A "Sensitive Event" is an unforeseen event or development that creates significant risk to Google's ability to provide high quality, relevant information and ground truth, and reduce insensitive or exploitative content in prominent and monetized features. During a Sensitive Event, we may take a variety of actions to address these risks.

And give you an example of what you can NOT do:

Claims that victims from certain countries were responsible or deserving of a global public health crisis.

In other words, if the Chinese researchers in the Wuhan contracted COVID, then you can't blame them for making the virus.

WHO Pandemic Treaty

The WEF is supporting the WHO in the creation of a world pandemic treaty that would "coordinate" the response across countries.

Decentralized media will save the day

You can't have free speech on a platform controlled by a person (Elon Musk and Twitter)
or a company (Google and YouTube). They will always have the option to block, censor and diminish the reach of certain opinions.

The Ministry of Truth can always threaten the business with action by the Ministry of Love and force these companies to comply.

We need decentralized social media that can't be censored. We need it to be relevant. We need experts to embrace this decentralized social media and onboard as many people as possible so that when the next information war comes, we can have access to all points of view.

We need to focus on Nostr. Put all our content there. Make it as relevant as possible. Jack Dorsey said it best in the video linked below. Watch it. Listen to what he says. And act accordingly.

Nostr only!

Notable notes

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Host of The Survival Podcast. Follow him to learn about gardening, hunting and fishing.

You can follow him [here](Jack Spirko)

What did you think of today's newsletter?

Your feedback helps me create the best newsletter possible for you.

Please leave a comment and checkout comments from other subscribers and readers. I love hearing from the Bitcoin For Families community ❤️ 🙏🏻

See you again next week!
— Alejandro

This newsletter is for educational purposes. It does not represent financial advice. Do your own research before buying Bitcoin.

"Muun is fine in a low fee environment, but there could be some serious pain once fees go up."

— MCBitcoin

Over a year ago, I loaded the Muun wallet into my kids phones and started paying them their weekly allowance in Bitcoin. Today, I've switched their savings in their phones to Phoenix.

Muun was a good wallet to get the kids started

My kids have been able to use Muun regularly and that is a testament to Muun's UX. They would send me invoices every Sunday or pay my invoices when they needed to send me money.

I regularly tell them that what matters is how much Bitcoin they have and shouldn't worry about the ups and downs of the price in US dollars, but they are kids after all, and they surely did keep track of their savings in US dollars and Muun made that easy as well.

But things got out of control when on-chain fees skyrocketed. I was paying 6,000 sats to send 60,000 sats 😖

I started holding their allowance to pay multiple weeks at once but that's not right. What message am I sending my kids if I pay them with money that is hard and expensive to use?

So now that the fees are back to reasonable numbers, I've moved their savings to Phoenix.

Will Phoenix do better in a high fee environment? We'll see. I'll be sure to report back here.

Time to consolidate and move your Bitcoin around

Once fees go up again, I don't think we will ever see fees as low as they are now. So take the opportunity to consolidate UTXOs, open up new Lightning channels and move things around.

Notable notes

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Recommendations

MCBitcoin

MCBitcoin is someone who should have way more followers.

You can follow him here

What did you think of today's newsletter?

Your feedback helps me create the best newsletter possible for you.

Please leave a comment and checkout comments from other subscribers and readers. I love hearing from the Bitcoin For Families community ❤️ 🙏🏻

See you again next week!
— Alejandro

This newsletter is for educational purposes. It does not represent financial advice. Do your own research before buying Bitcoin.

"I've seen so many people say they won't use Nostr because we don't support delete. This is really frustrating, because Nostr DOES support delete, it's right there in the NIP's!"

— rabble

A few days back, rabble posted a note and a blog post discussing the misconceptions about Nostr's inability to delete notes and his perception on how the issue should be approached.

You can read the blog post here.

His thoughts prompted me to share my own thoughts on deleting stuff on the Internet in general and Nostr in particular. My note got some attention (lots by my meager standards 😆), reposts and comments so I thought it would be good to expand a bit more in this week's newsletter. Make sure to check out my original note below and the responses. There were very good points made to support also the need to delete notes.

The good old Internet

Before MySpace, Twitter, Facebook and the rest of the social media behemoths came around, the Internet was made of a bunch of decentralized services like IRC servers. You would connect to a server, chat with people, exchange files and know that once you post something, it's out there and completely out of your control.

The Internet is just amplifying the reach of your speech. You can't delete what is posted just like you can't unspeak what you have spoken.

Posting something on the Internet is like peeing in the swimming pool. Once it's out, you can't take it back.

— Old piece of wisdom passed over to me in the early years of the Internet

I took this advice to heart. And I drill it into my kids every day: don't share with anyone anything that you wouldn't want splashed on all the high school screens.

My approach to deleting Tweets, notes, and other stuff

I don't understand the fear of not being able to delete notes.

Yes, now there is a permanent record of what you say and everyone can see it. It is the price, and the beauty, of having the Internet megaphone.

So use it wisely. Think twice before you post.

The inability to delete has the potential to make the Internet a better place. To get rid of all the bullshit that goes around elsewhere in centralized apps.

Sure it would had been nice to be able to edit tweets to correct misspellings but I believe that an Internet where you can't delete stuff is a better Internet.

I remember one time when I felt for a prank from an Ethereum Twitter user. He, and his followers, roasted me for days, reposting my tweet and having a blast at my expense. I was tempted to delete my tweet but I felt that that would had been an act of cowardice. Better to own my mistake and use all the scorn directed at me to learn the lesson.

But what if I change my mind?

But what if I change my mind and I don't agree any more with something I posted 5 years ago?

Congratulations! You have grown! You have learned new things and now you have new perspectives on life and stuff.

I pity those who agree with everything they have written on the Internet in the last 20 years.

Change is natural. Change is good. Your past posts are proof of your growth. Why would you want to delete them?

If sharing the fact that you have changed your mind scares you, if you'd rather delete an old post that admit that you were wrong, maybe you should take a deeper look within yourself.

And let me be clear, people who go back through your posts to find something damning that you said 5 or 10 years ago are at the very least stupid and most likely evil, driven by an ill will towards you. They are the problem, not your thoughts from 10 years ago.

Deleting in Nostr

Like rabble says, you can mark a note as deleted. Some clients and relays may honor the request, some may not. You never know. Rabble's take is that by marking something for deletion you're signaling that you have grown, that you have changed your mind and that that note does not accurately capture your thoughts on the subject any longer.

I respectfully disagree. I think that posting a new note with your new thoughts is a better approach. You can even quote the old note to make sure that everyone knows what you're talking about. Because, for all purposes, you don't know if the note will ever be deleted anyway.

For me, the existence of the old note in conjunction with the new note signifies growth and that is what matters the most.

Full disclosure: when I decided to stop tweeting and focus on Nostr, I left the Twitter account inactive with the content still up. But after Twitter started requesting biometrics I realized that it was time to close the account and that had the effect of deleting everything: good (the few) and bad (the many) tweets alike.

Notable notes

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Recommendations

rabble

rabble has been working on censorship resistant social media for years. He was working on Planetary and scuttlebutt before switching to building on Nostr.

You can follow him here

What did you think of today's newsletter?

Your feedback helps me create the best newsletter possible for you.

Please leave a comment and checkout comments from other subscribers and readers. I love hearing from the Bitcoin For Families community ❤️ 🙏🏻

See you again next week!
— Alejandro

This newsletter is for educational purposes. It does not represent financial advice. Do your own research before buying Bitcoin.

Every 210,000 blocks, the Bitcoin network cuts in half the number of Bitcoin issued to miners as a reward for mining the next block.

As I write this, we're now at height 828,475, so we're roughly 11,500 blocks, or 80 days, away from the next halving.

What will the halving do?

The halving itself is very straight forward. The reward will go down from 6.25 to 3.125 Bitcoin.

A lot has changed since the first halving, when the network reduced the reward from 50 to 25 Bitcoin.

The first halving happened on November 28, 2012. The Bitcoin price was $12.35 USD and 75% of Bitcoin had been mined already. Only cyberpunks and people buying and selling on the Silk Road market were using Bitcoin at the time.

Today, the price is around $43,000 USD, 96.875% of Bitcoin will be mined by block 840,000 and users include states (El Salvador), corporations (MicroStrategy, Tether Holdings) and Wall Street (ETFs and trusts).

The demand for Bitcoin is rising with the recent launch of ETFs in the United States. In less than a month, the newly launched ETFs have accumulated 170,082 Bitcoin. That's no small figure for less than a month.

Once the halving occurs, it will take 3.2 years for the Bitcoin network to issue the same 170,082 Bitcoin that the newly minted ETFs have gathered in less than a month.

The halving will reduce the supply at the same time that the demand increases and at a time when the amount of Bitcoin left is really, really small.

And by now, Bitcoiners are hodlers. 70% of Bitcoin addresses have hold their Bitcoin for over 1 year. 31% have hold their Bitcoin over 5 years and 16% have hold their Bitcoin over 10 years.

Are you bullish enough?

So what do you think will happen to the Bitcoin demand and price when the halving comes around in less than 4 months?

Notable notes

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Recommendations

Farooq

Bitcoin maximalist and a great source of signal.

You can follow him here

What did you think of today's newsletter?

Your feedback helps me create the best newsletter possible for you.

Please leave a comment and checkout comments from other subscribers and readers. I love hearing from the Bitcoin For Families community ❤️ 🙏🏻

See you again next week!
— Alejandro

This newsletter is for educational purposes. It does not represent financial advice. Do your own research before buying Bitcoin.

"Each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs, balance between the private and the public economy, balance between the cost and hoped for advantages, balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable, balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual, balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future."

— President Eisenhower

63 years ago, President Eisenhower, gave a stern warning to the nation on his farewell address. He specifically identified two threats to the American society:

• We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.
• Public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

Every American should listen to Eisenhower's warning words. Every school should teach its students this address. But they don't.

The nation didn't listen and his fears have fully materialized. The military-industrial complex owns the Federal budget and the food, healthcare, and pharmaceutical industries control the regulatory agencies for their benefit.

The speech

Good evening, my fellow Americans.

First, I should like to express my gratitude to the radio and television networks for the opportunities they have given me over the years to bring reports and messages to our nation. My special thanks go to them for the opportunity of addressing you this evening.

Three days from now, after half century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor. This evening, I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.

Like every other -- Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.

Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement on issues of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the nation. My own relations with the Congress, which began on a remote and tenuous basis when, long ago, a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point, have since ranged to the intimate during the war and immediate post-war period, and finally to the mutually interdependent during these past eight years. In this final relationship, the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the nation good, rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the nation should go forward. So, my official relationship with the Congress ends in a feeling -- on my part -- of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together.

We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts, America is today the strongest, the most influential, and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches, and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.

Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace, to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity, and integrity among peoples and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension, or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt, both at home and abroad.

Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily, the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.

Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties: a huge increase in newer elements of our defenses; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research. These and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.

But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs, balance between the private and the public economy, balance between the cost and hoped for advantages, balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable, balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual, balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress. Lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration. The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their Government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well, in the face of threat and stress.

But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. Of these, I mention two only.

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction. Our military organization today bears little relation to that known of any of my predecessors in peacetime, or, indeed, by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security alone more than the net income of all United States corporations.

Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet, we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present -- and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system -- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

During the long lane of the history yet to be written, America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect. Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations -- past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of disarmament -- of the battlefield.

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent, I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war, as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years, I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.

Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.

So, in this, my last good night to you as your President, I thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and in peace. I trust in that -- in that -- in that service you find some things worthy. As for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future.

You and I, my fellow citizens, need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nations' great goals.

To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America's prayerful and continuing aspiration: We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its few spiritual blessings. Those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibility; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; and that the sources -- scourges of poverty, disease, and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth; and that in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.

Now, on Friday noon, I am to become a private citizen. I am proud to do so. I look forward to it.

Thank you, and good night.

Notable notes

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Recommendations

Alex Gladstein

Bitcoin is a human right and Alex is busy showing people why.

You can follow him here

What did you think of today's newsletter?

Your feedback helps me create the best newsletter possible for you.

Please leave a comment and checkout comments from other subscribers and readers. I love hearing from the Bitcoin For Families community ❤️ 🙏🏻

See you again next week!
— Alejandro

This newsletter is for educational purposes. It does not represent financial advice. Do your own research before buying Bitcoin.

"Relays are like the backend servers for Nostr. They allow Nostr clients to send them messages, and they may (or may not) store those messages and broadcast those messages to all other connected clients."

— nostr.how

Decentralization, and the freedom that comes with it, is the main reason why I love Nostr.

At the same time, decentralization is its main weakness.

With Nostr, there is no central server or company to take care of everything for you. You're in charge of your experience when using Nostr clients.

What are Nostr relays

When you use X, Instagram, Threads or Facebook, your client attempts to share your information with the world by uploading it to the servers operated by these companies.

These companies then monetize you (by means of your data) and decide who, if anyone, should see your information. You don't have control over who ends up seeing your posts or if your posts are seen at all.

Nostr stops this madness.

Your Nostr client shares your information by publishing events to Nostr relays that you choose. Later on, your followers request your events from relays of their choosing.

As long as you and your followers have one relay in common, they will receive your events and you will be able to share your thoughts without anyone being able to censor you or tell you who can or can't see your thoughts, pictures, etc.

Herein is the power and the weakness of Nostr.

The power and the reason why Nostr is censorship resistant is that if a Nostr relay refuses to serve your events to your followers, you can publish your events to a different relay. Not a big deal.

The weakness is that you now need to manage a list of relays, monitor them for good behavior and hope that your followers also include at least one of your relays on their list.

Optimizing your relays for experience

When I started using Nostr, one of the big questions was what relays to use and how many?

When you open a client, or refresh your feed, the client needs to query all the relays that you have configured for events from the people you follow, merge the data from all those relays and build a cohesive view that is, for example, ordered based on publishing time.

This means that the longer the list of relays you configure on your client, the longer you will have to wait to get that view.

But what if you have too few relays? What will happen then? Will you be missing events from people you follow? Will they miss your events?

My relay configuration

nostr.wine has solved this problem for me.

Developed by Katie and Mazin, nostr.wine offers a set of free and paid relay servers that solve this conundrum.

nostr.wine
This is a regular paid relay. It costs money to run relays and so it makes sense to pay for their usage. Remember: freedom is not free.

Go to https://nostr.wine to subscribe to the nostr.wine relay for a one-time fee of 18,888 sats.

filter.nostr.wine
This is the key relay. This relay aggregates and publishes events from and to a wide range of public relays so that I only need to query one relay but I get the benefit of being connected to a large set of relays.

The subscription is time based with a minimum of 30 days. I subscribed for 2 years for 120,000 sats and I'm happy to support the Nostr developer community.

Go https://nostr.wine/add-time to add time and test this relay.

welcome.nostr.wine
wss://welcome.nostr.wine is a free and read-only relay that only aggregates events from new nostr users and displays them in the global/universe view.

This is a great way to get exposed to new users. Take the opportunity to welcome them and maybe give them a follow.

nostr.land
I'm also subscribed to a second paid Nostr relay to spread the love to the Nostr developer community.

Here is my current list of relays:

• wss://welcome.nostr.wine
• wss://nostr.wine
• wss://filter.nostr.wine/npub1er0k46yxcugmp6r6mujd5qvp75yp72m98fs6ywcs2k3kqg3f8grqd9py3m?broadcast=true
• wss://eden.nostr.land

Do you have a different relay configuration that you prefer? Please share it in the comments section.

Notable notes

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Recommendations

Katie Ann Baker and Mazin Khoury

Katie and Mazin are busy making Nostr the place for social interactions.

They are now onboarding creators to https://creatr.nostr.wine/, a place for creators to share AND monetize their work with freedom.

You can follow Mazin here and Katie here.

What did you think of today's newsletter?

Your feedback helps me create the best newsletter possible for you.

Please leave a comment and checkout comments from other subscribers and readers. I love hearing from the Bitcoin For Families community ❤️ 🙏🏻

See you again next week!
— Alejandro

This newsletter is for educational purposes. It does not represent financial advice. Do your own research before buying Bitcoin.

"Everything you do online is intermediated - your actions permissioned, your data custodied.

Opt out by running a private server."

— Start9

A few weeks back my personal server running StartOS crashed so, during the Christmas break, I had the opportunity to install Start9 and Umbrel multiple times until I settled on a more stable setup for my sovereign data.

I'm confident in my setup. Read more if you're interested in owning your own data.

Not your keys and your node, not your coins.

Personal server. Take 1

My first attempt at running a personal server burst into flames three weeks ago.

My mistake was to use an external SSD hard drive. Soon after getting the server up and running I realized that my setup was not ideal, but I kept myself in denial.

I got an HP EliteDesk 800 G2 with 8G of RAM and 240 GB internal SSD drive for $125 at Amazon. You need more than 240 GB to run a fully indexed Bitcoin node and I had an external 5TB SSD drive that I planned to use instead.

After tinkering a bit with the BIOS and mounting the external drive, I got things up and running.

Unfortunately, Start9 doesn't support external hard drives. I was able to configure things up but whenever I rebooted my server, the external drive configuration got wiped out and I had to manually mount the drive again and re-start the Bitcoin node.

A month ago I updated the StartOS and after shutting down the server it never came back online.

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As it turns out, the latest release of StartOS had closed the door to the settings I was using.

Personal server. Take 2

Knowing that I could not use StartOS anymore, I tried Umbrel.

It was a bit confusing at first. I had to install Debian and then install Umbrel but the system worked well. Just a bit slow. After all, Umbrel runs as a virtual server within Debian.

The setup seemed to work fine except for one thing: I could not connect my iPhone to Vaultwarden, the password manager. And that was a deal breaker.

I use the Bitwarden app on my iPhone. The apps requires a secure https connection to the Vaultwarden server and the Vaultwarden implementation on Umbrel only offers http (it's either a local connection or a Tor connection).

That is when I realized that I really like StartOS and that I needed a bigger internal SSD.

I bought a 2TB internal SSD drive for $95 that is compatible with my server and reinstalled StartOS again.

StartOS runs smoothly if you work within the supported configurations. And I can't complain, after all, Start9 is offering their OS for free, for you to download and run on your own hardware even though they sell hardware as well.

The results

I now have my server running again with the following software:

• Bitcoin Core: because you should run your own node
• electrs:
  • I use it to connect the Sparrow wallet to my Bitcoin node
  • It is also needed to run your own mempool instance
• Mempool: I can inspect transactions locally. No one needs to know which transactions I'm interested in
• Vaultwarden: my own password manager. Because LastPass is not an option anymore...

With this setup, I have full control of my own Bitcoin:

• Coldcard signing devices
• Sparrow wallet to send and receive Bitcoin
• Small memory card to maintain the airgap between my laptop running Sparrow and the Coldcards
• Sparrow connected to my own Bitcoin node so that I have full certainty on my transactions

If you trust someone else's Bitcoin node to tell you that you now control an UTXO, do you really control that UTXO?

The next step is to install my own Nostr relay to permanently store my own notes.

I'm not ready yet to run a Lightning node on my server. I use Mutiny on my phone and so I do have my own node, in a way.

Notable notes

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Recommendations

Lyn Alden

We're tremendously lucky that Lyn shares her wisdom and knowledge with all of us. Like for example, the three rules of Bitcoin:

• The first rule of Bitcoin is you do not break Bitcoin.
• The second rule of Bitcoin is you do not break Bitcoin.
• The third rule of Bitcoin is you do not break Bitcoin.

You can follow her [here](Lyn Alden) and you should also consider buying her book Broken Money.

What did you think of today's newsletter?

Your feedback helps me create the best newsletter possible for you.

Please leave a comment and checkout comments from other subscribers and readers. I love hearing from the Bitcoin For Families community ❤️ 🙏🏻

See you again next week!
— Alejandro

This newsletter is for educational purposes. It does not represent financial advice. Do your own research before buying Bitcoin.

"Ordinals are fiat. And inscriptions aren’t rare"

— Southern Hands

Spending an outrageous amount of Bitcoin to own an specific satoshi is stupid and initially I just thought that if others want to do it, that's on them.

But with ordinals and inscriptions clogging the network and driving Bitcoin transaction fees through the roof, I came across this fantastic read by Guy Swann of a Medium post by Southern Hands titled Ordinals are Fiat. And Inscriptions aren’t Rare and I finally made my mind about them.

https://www.fountain.fm/episode/RRvB5Te4a1P8eXOO3LY6

Inscriptions and Ordinals are absolute crap. A fool's errand.

Ordinals

Ordinal theory numbers satoshi in a certain order as they get mined. Block #0 created satoshis 1 through 5,000,000,000; block #1 created satoshis 5,000,000,001 through 10,000,000,000 and so on.

You then track satoshis through UTXOs considering a First-In-First-Out logic.

When the UTXO becomes an input to a transaction, you count satoshis starting with Input 1, then Input 2 and transfer them to the outputs starting with Output 1, then Output 2, and so on.

Ordinals count from bottom to top. But what if I want to count from top to bottom?

I hereby create SuperOrdinals. The SuperOrdinals theory goes as follows:

• The last satoshi of the last input becomes the first satoshi of the first output.
• We count satoshis using Last-In-First-Out.
• Now an specific satoshi used in an input will land in a different output compared to regular Ordinal theory.

"Ordinals are a method of, first, pretending that it makes sense for satoshis to have serial numbers, and second, stipulating a set of rules to put them in order so that we can count and assign those serial numbers. In other words, we number the satoshis by fiat."

If you're thinking that this is bogus, it's because it is. Ordinals are arbitrary and subjective. Some people have agreed to follow certain logic and apply it to the Bitcoin blockchain and that's it.

Inscriptions

Inscriptions store JPGs in one of the fields of a transaction and are associated with an specific ordinal (numbered satoshi) of that transaction. Storing a JPG takes a lot of bytes and that is why fees are going up.

If you want to sell the inscription to somebody else, you just need to create a new transaction that is structured following the Ordinal theory so that the specific ordinal lands in an UTXO that is controlled by the buyer.

The inscription remains in the original transaction where it was stored. No one can change that.

The buyer gains no control of the inscription because the buyer has no control over the original transaction. The buyer is mentally assigning herself ownership of the inscription because she used the Ordinal theory to count satoshis.

This is not different than Johnny selling me the the star Polaris. I know have a piece of paper that says that I'm the rightful owner of the star Polaris.

Anyone can see every inscription that is on the Bitcoin blockchain. As a matter of fact, the owner has as much control over the inscription as any of us: zero.

There is no real ownership of inscriptions. Just an arbitrary logic that some people have decided to follow and pay for.

My verdict

Ordinals and inscriptions are a fool's errand. They are useless and they are harming the Bitcoin network by unnecessarily raising transaction fees.

I do hope that they fade soon.

At the same time, and following Jocko's philosophy, experiencing the impact of inscriptions now is good for Bitcoin.

We, and I definitely include myself here, have been complacent with UTXO management. We could get away with it while fees were low. But now we can't.

High transaction fees and full mempools are here to stay. Today it is inscriptions, tomorrow it will be the new wave of adopters coming in.

As a result, I can't setup a friend anymore with a non-custodial Lightning wallet and then send him 50,000 satoshi as a welcome gift. High fees make this impossible.

Bitcoin needs to continue evolving to support onboarding and adoption by new users even in a high fee environment and inscriptions are giving us the opportunity to build the solution before massive amounts of people come onboard.

Notable notes

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Recommendations

Odell

He saw it coming: "Mempools will never clear again."

You can follow him here.

What did you think of today's newsletter?

Your feedback helps me create the best newsletter possible for you.

Please leave a comment and checkout comments from other subscribers and readers. I love hearing from the Bitcoin For Families community ❤️ 🙏🏻

See you again next week!
— Alejandro

This newsletter is for educational purposes. It does not represent financial advice. Do your own research before buying Bitcoin.

"May your heart be light, your celebrations be joyful, and your time with loved ones be filled with warmth and laughter."

Today I'm not talking about Bitcoin, Nostr, the Federal Reserve or the national debt.

Christmas is around the corner and we must not forget that health and family are the most precious things that we can have.

So enjoy this time with family and friends and get ready for next year.

2024 is going to be a very special year for Bitcoin.

¡Feliz Navidad y próspero Año Nuevo!

See you again next week!
— Alejandro

This newsletter is for educational purposes. It does not represent financial advice. Do your own research before buying Bitcoin.

"Transactions fees are high. Did you manage your UTXOs appropriately while fees were low?"

— Jameson Lopp, Casa co-founder and CTO

Ordinal inscriptions are clogging the network and driving Bitcoin transaction fees through the roof.

High fees make transactions unaffordable and although Lightning can help avoid some of those fees, that will only work if you have your Lightning channels already setup and with sufficient liquidity.

Buying Bitcoin

While fees were low, it was ok to buy $20 worth of Bitcoin at Swan or Strike and then send it to your wallet but that is not a good option anymore.

Just like it's not a good option anymore to send $20 worth of Bitcoin from Fold or whatever Bitcoin rewards program you use to your Bitcoin wallet.

Let's consider a transaction with 1 input (one of your UTXOs) and 2 outputs (payment to the recipient and change coming back to you). This transaction will have a size of 226 vbytes according to this calculator. With transaction fees as high as 700 sats/vbyte this means a transaction fee of 158,200 sats.

If you send 1,000,000 sats from your custodial wallet to your own wallet, you will create a new UTXO in your wallet with 1,000,000 sats and when you try to spend it you will be able to make a payment of up to 841,800 sats with a fee of 158,200 sats: a whopping 18.8% transaction fee. 😱

You will need to balance the risk of having a large amount of sats in a custodial wallet with the the fee you're willing to pay to decide when to withdraw.

With the current transaction fees, UTXOs will incur the following fees when you try to spend them to the max after deducting the sats for fees:

• 1,000,000 sats: 18.8%
• 2,000,000 sats: 8.6%
• 5,000,000 sats: 3.3%

Non-custodial Lightning wallets

Non-custodial Lightning wallets are great from a sovereignty perspective. You hold your Bitcoin and no one can rug you.

But there is no such thing as a free lunch. The increased sovereignty comes with the burden of Lightning channel management.

I recklessly transferred small amounts of Bitcoin to my Mutiny wallet to pay the weekly allowance to my kids and now the wallet has 10 Lightning channels, each with limited liquidity and effectively useless.

To avoid making the same mistake as I did, create Lightning channels with at least 5 million sats. Otherwise you will end up a Lightning channel that is holding a majority of your Bitcoin as unspendable Bitcoin on reserve for when the channel is closed.

Swapping from Bitcoin to Lightning is a double whammy:

• You spend a large amount of Bitcoin in the transaction that creates the new Lightning channel
• A large amount of the Bitcoin that makes it to the channel is held as reserve for when the channel closes

Here is what Mutiny is suggesting if I try to swap 200,000 sats from Bitcoin to Lightning within the wallet. This transaction would likely end up with somewhere around 100,000 sats of spendable Bitcoin for the cost of 261,774 sats.

Summary

Create UTXOs that are large enough to justify the transaction fees that you will incur when you spend them.

Create Lightning channels that have big enough liquidity so that the Bitcoin held in reserve becomes a very small factor.

Notable notes

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Recommendations

Jameson Lopp

I don't always agree with Jameson but I always learn something new from him.

You can follow him [here](Jameson Lopp).

What did you think of today's newsletter?

Your feedback helps me create the best newsletter possible for you.

Please leave a comment and checkout comments from other subscribers and readers. I love hearing from the Bitcoin For Families community ❤️ 🙏🏻

See you again next week!
— Alejandro

This newsletter is for educational purposes. It does not represent financial advice. Do your own research before buying Bitcoin.

"The president is so focused on fighting to bring down costs for hard working Americans. For instance, the president believes it just isn't right that prescription drugs are practically unaffordable for many Americans, and that's why he's fighting to lower health care costs. He got great legislation to cap insulin costs for seniors at $35 a month."

— Lael Brainard, National Economic Council Director

The government needs to show that it is fighting inflation but to do so, and to do it honestly, the government would need to admit that they are the cause of inflation. That the gravy train that is the federal budget is the cause of inflation.

And they won't do that. So they pretend to fight inflation.

Pretending to fight inflation

Ms. Brainard, the top economic advisor to the Biden administration, recently gave an interview to NPR that can be summarized as "We are posturing that we're fixing the economy even though we are not and we can't believe that people are not falling for it".

The government needs to show that they're doing something but they don't really want to reduce the debt and the current spending, actions that would actually reduce inflation, because that would put their re-election at risk.

So instead they take token actions around insulin for medicare and fees by airlines or banks.

What do these industries have in common? They are highly regulated.
What do they don't have in common? They cause inflation.

These actions will never have a major impact on inflation. Unless they "gerrymander" the inflation basket items even more and make these three items the key items that supposedly Americans are buying every month.

Actually fighting inflation

The Federal Reserve is not stupid. They know that the money supply, all the money printing to buy things we can't afford, is what is causing inflation.

Since August 2022, the Federal Reserve has quietly tried to reduce inflation for real by reducing the money supply but in April of this year they reversed course and started adding more money again in the economy.

Who asked the Federal Reserve to add more money to the economy? The answer is obvious: the Biden administration.

The governments don't want to fight inflation because that will require sacrifices. It will require admitting that we maxed the credit cards and that now we need to tighten our belts to pay them off. How many politicians in power do you know who are ready to say so openly?

You will only hear this message from politicians who are running for office: I've only heard this message from Vivek Ramaswamy (republican) and Robert Kennedy Jr. (independent).

Notable notes

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Recommendations

Preston Pysh

Preston Pysh is an investor and Bitcoin educator. You can listen to his podcasts at The Investor's Podcast Network.

You can follow him here.

What did you think of today's newsletter?

Your feedback helps me create the best newsletter possible for you.

Please leave a comment and checkout comments from other subscribers and readers. I love hearing from the Bitcoin For Families community ❤️ 🙏🏻

See you again next week!
— Alejandro

This newsletter is for educational purposes. It does not represent financial advice. Do your own research before buying Bitcoin.

"We’ve crafted these technology standards to advance American innovation and account for the industry’s leadership in accelerating methane technology. Thanks to robust public feedback and engagement with states, Tribes, companies, and organizations, we are finalizing this historic action to reduce climate pollution, protecting people and the planet."

— Michael S. Regan, EPA Administrator

Today, the EPA announced new regulations to slash methane emissions by the oil & gas industry.

The press release is a combination of political speech, fantasy land accounting and wishful thinking.

Big oil is welcoming the regulation. They know that's what they need to say to avoid getting in trouble and they do have the dollars to manage the impact. Small oil is more worried because the new regulation will bring significant costs to them.

I hope the oil & gas industry channels their inner Jocko, say the word GOOD, and take this opportunity to embrace Bitcoin mining.

The oil & gas industry can transfer the new methane regulation from an operational cost into a new revenue stream by deploying Bitcoin miners to capture and process the excess methane.

To change a behavior, change the incentives

It sounds obvious but for some reason, most people don't follow this basic principle of human behavior.

The oil & gas industry leaks a lot of methane to the air. And they do it because it is not cost efficient for them to capture and process this methane.

The government approach to solving the problem is to issue a regulation that forces the industry to capture this methane at a loss.

Bitcoin represents an opportunity for the oil & gas industry to turn this regulation on its heels and make a profit out of capturing and processing the methane that today they are leaking.

They can deploy Bitcoin miners at these locations, powered by the captured methane, and make a profit along the way. Talk about a win-win-win.

If we had an intelligent and unbiased administration, they would encourage the industry to do just so. But we don't.

We have an administration that depends on the ponzi scheme called the dollar to sustain themselves, to continue to promise things that we can't afford, and keep piling up on the national debt.

And so they will never recommend Bitcoin, even if it's the right thing to do.

Just like the Canadian government sees Bitcoin as a threat to its authoritarian mandates, the US government sees Bitcoin as a threat to their ponzi scheme that keeps them in power.

Bitcoin miners is the solution

Daniel Batten is an environmentallist and a Bitcoiner who has done extensive research on this field as part of his work as a climate change venture capitalist.

You can find some of his research on Bitcoin mining and captured methane on this article:

https://batcoinz.com/50-landfills-mining-bitcoin-a-zero-emission-bitcoin-network/

Notable notes

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Recommendations

Daniel Batten

Daniel is an environmentalist and a Bitcoiner who runs a climate change venture fund and perfectly understands the incentives that drive human behavior.

He has done extensive research on the energy usage of the Bitcoin network and the opportunity to use Bitcoin to reduce carbon emissions.

You can follow him here.

What did you think of today's newsletter?

Your feedback helps me create the best newsletter possible for you.

Please leave a comment and checkout comments from other subscribers and readers. I love hearing from the Bitcoin For Families community ❤️ 🙏🏻

See you again next week!
— Alejandro

This newsletter is for educational purposes. It does not represent financial advice. Do your own research before buying Bitcoin.

"I knew this day would probably come, but didn't expect it so soon.

I am being investigated for running an illegal money transmission business in Canada (nodeless)."

— utxo

Today we woke up to the news that utxo is being forced to shut down his business nodeless.io.

Fortunately, utxo made the source code open source in anticipation of this event but that doesn't make the situation less shameless.

Canada is ramping up its efforts to ban any activity that could threaten the government of Prime Minister Trudeau.

Nodeless.io is a legitimate, peaceful business

Nodeless.io hosts your own instance of BTCPay Server, the open source Bitcoin payment processing software so that you don't have to and it charges you a small fee for doing so.

Nodeless.io is as much of a money transmission business as Microsoft Azure, the cloud provider for Mastercard Cloud Point of Sale solution.

But nodeless.io operates with Bitcoin and Canada doesn't like that.

Let's take a look at the services offered by Nodeless.io.

Nodeless.io is making it easy for businesses, not-for-profits and content creators to get paid in Bitcoin. It is not nodeless.io who gets paid. Money goes automatically to the Bitcoin or Lightning wallet of the business and nodeless.io gets a cut for the services provided.

Everything that nodeless.io does, you can do yourself with the BTCPay Server software. Utxo just automated the process so that we don't all need to become BTCPay Server experts or IT experts. That is not a money transmission business, that is an IT business.

So why is the Canadian government doing this?

Canadian citizens kept the protests of the Canadian truckers going by funding them with Bitcoin once the government ordered the banks to freeze the trucker's money and Mr. Trudeau didn't like that.

The Canadian government of Prime Minister Trudeau sees Bitcoin as a threat to its authoritarian mandates.

What's next

Utxo's fight is everyone's fight. Nothing is free. So go and support utxo the webmaster 🧑‍💻 with some Bitcoin.

Zap his profile or any of his posts.

Rights must be constantly defended. Otherwise evil will chip at them, little by little. You gotta fight for your right (to Bitcoin!).

Notable notes

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Recommendations

Utxo

Obviously.

You can follow the account at utxo the webmaster 🧑‍💻.

Stay tuned and contribute if / when utxo opens up a Geyser Fund for his legal fees.

What did you think of today's newsletter?

Your feedback helps me create the best newsletter possible for you.

Please leave a comment and checkout comments from other subscribers and readers. I love hearing from the Bitcoin For Families community ❤️ 🙏🏻

See you again next week!
— Alejandro

This newsletter is for educational purposes. It does not represent financial advice. Do your own research before buying Bitcoin.

"26.5% of Spanish people and 29.5 % of Italian people between the ages of 30 and 34 years old still live with their parents."

— The Mediterranean youth and the challenges of the permanent crisis

The Esade Center for Economic Policy and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation For Freedom just released an study (English, Spanish) conducted in Spain, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Portugal, and Tunisia covering people between the ages of 18 and 34.

Money is seriously broken when one out of every three people 30 to 34 years old can't afford to buy or rent a home.

The study is a very interesting read to understand the current situation in Mediterranean countries.

The recommendations it provides to address the permanent crisis of the people born between 1980 and 2005 shows how oblivious the establishment is to the root cause of the problem.

Ability to cover expenses and save

Less than half, in some cases, less than one third of the youth in this countries feels that they can cover their basic expenses.

When you look at their ability to save, you can see the dichotomy of short term vs. long term forecasting. Most youth don't find themselves capable to save for an emergency yet they think that they can save long term (housing and retirement).

The reality is that if you can't save for an emergency, you can't save for long term, but people tend to look at the future with rosier lenses.

Becoming independent

It is very common for younger people in Mediterranean countries to live with their parents while studying at college or university. That is why this study specifically broke down the housing results by ages and the results are shocking.

Half of the young Tunisians ages 30 to 34 still live with their parents! That number is 30% for Italy and 27% for Spain. The main cited reason: lack of own income.

And for those who were able to move out, the majority did so with financial support from their parents, the boomer generation. Or as I call them, the last generation with sound money.

The bogus solutions

You would think that this would be obvious by now but apparently not.

I believe that most people don't see that the money is broken because their mind can't conceive such a possibility. They only know fiat and when looking for solutions, money is not even on their list of candidates.

What do these esteemed economists think that we should do to solve the problem?

Here is their list:

• Improve higher level education: better access to, and more funds for public universities
• Minimum living income payments and savings accounts managed and partially funded by the government
• Expand public housing and simplify regulations for builders

The real reasons: the monetary premium that homes carry and the loss of real purchasing power by these generations are never mentioned. Inflation is mentioned in the opening statements and apparently it's Putin's fault.

Last week I ended my article with this statement and this week I'm repeating myself:

It's our duty to help people understand why they are how they are. Introduce them to sound money and the future that it can give us whenever you can.

Notable notes

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Recommendations

Fortune

This is an RSS feed of the Fortune website. A great way to stay up to date on news once you ditch X and go Nostr only 😀

You can follow the account at Fortune

What did you think of today's newsletter?

Your feedback helps me create the best newsletter possible for you.

Please leave a comment and checkout comments from other subscribers and readers. I love hearing from the Bitcoin For Families community ❤️ 🙏🏻

See you again next week!
— Alejandro

This newsletter is for educational purposes. It does not represent financial advice. Do your own research before buying Bitcoin.

"Take 2% off your personal loan rates to fund your holiday season."

— Great Northwest Federal Credit Union

I took this photo yesterday at a Super Walmart at Chehalis, a rural town in south Washington.

The place was packed with hard working people, looking for bargains for the holiday season.

Don't worry! If you can't afford a picture-perfect Christmas you are still in luck. Your local bank is happy to give you a 1 year loan at 7.5% interest rate so that you can buy all the things that you can NOT afford and finally bake those cookies like you deserve.

Debt is no longer seen as a negative. Unfortunately, debt is the only way for most people to afford any kind of life. Take the loan and pay back the minimum payments. We're all slaves of the fiat system. Until we liberate ourselves with Bitcoin

People are hurting and they are lost. They feel the pain in their pockets. They feel the pain in their diminishing standard of life. They feel the pain in their inability to save for a house, for education, for a better future.

They are slaves of the fiat system. They are victims of our broken money.

The savings people built during the pandemic are gone:

U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Personal Saving Rate.

Credit card debt is at its highest it has even been and growing at a yearly rate never seen before:

Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, Large Bank Consumer Credit Card Balances.

And the interest rates on that debt is skyrocketing:

Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (US), Commercial Bank Interest Rate on Credit Card Plans.

The stakes are high. The system knows that its collapsing and it is now actively fighting us.

It's our duty to help people understand why they are how they are. Introduce them to sound money and the future that it can give us whenever you can.

Notable notes

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Recommendations

Nat Brunell

Fantastic Bitcoin educator. Her latest articulation on why younger people are not saving for retirement is a must watch (hint: it's the video above).

You can follow her at nat brunell

What did you think of today's newsletter?

Your feedback helps me create the best newsletter possible for you.

Please leave a comment and checkout comments from other subscribers and readers. I love hearing from the Bitcoin For Families community ❤️ 🙏🏻

See you again next week!
— Alejandro

This newsletter is for educational purposes. It does not represent financial advice. Do your own research before buying Bitcoin.