Contra on Nostr: Dear Satoshi, It's been a while. You missed a few things. First, your internet money ...

Dear Satoshi,

It's been a while.

You missed a few things.

First, your internet money worked.

This has created enormous problems.

The dollar still exists, but now half my friends measure their net worth in sats and their self worth in follower count.

Speaking of followers, we built a decentralized social network called Nostr.

It was designed to eliminate gatekeepers.

Within six months we had influencers.

Within twelve months we had celebrities.

Within eighteen months we had people posting screenshots of engagement metrics while explaining why engagement metrics don't matter.

Progress.

A guy spent 10,000 BTC on two pizzas.

Every year we celebrate this event to remind ourselves that we're all financial geniuses.

The celebration consists primarily of calculating how much the pizzas would be worth now and suffering.

You'd love it.

The banks eventually adopted Bitcoin.

Not because they were convinced.

Because there was a fee involved.

The same people who said you were dangerous now offer Bitcoin exposure in a retirement account.

The same people who said "never trust banks" own it through those accounts.

Everyone claims victory.

A software company borrowed billions of dollars to buy Bitcoin.

Then more companies borrowed billions of dollars to buy Bitcoin.

Then investors bought the stocks because they couldn't get enough Bitcoin.

Then those companies borrowed more money and bought more Bitcoin.

A generation of MBAs now believes debt is a mining rig.

We call this institutional adoption.

You probably called it something else.

The block size war ended.

For about six minutes.

Then we discovered new reasons to fight.

We fought over ordinals.

We fought over inscriptions.

We fought over spam.

We fought over filters.

We fought over software clients.

We fought over whether fighting was good for Bitcoin.

At this point the fighting is one of Bitcoin's longest-running consensus mechanisms.

Nobody has changed their mind since 2017.

The arguments continue anyway.

Your whitepaper was nine pages.

Bitcoin podcasts now require seasons.

The Monero people still tell us Bitcoin is surveillance.

We still tell them nobody can audit their supply.

Both sides believe mathematics is settling the argument.

Both sides post about it every day.

Neither side appears confident.

Quantum computers are supposedly coming.

Depending on who you ask, they'll arrive next Thursday or sometime after the heat death of the universe.

The proposed solution is to move old coins.

Which brings us to you.

A surprising number of people would like to secure your coins by confiscating them.

For safety.

Bitcoin governance has matured considerably.

My node validates every transaction on Earth.

It sits in a closet making tiny blinking lights.

My family believes it's a router.

I've decided that's close enough.

I memorized twelve words to become my own bank.

I immediately stamped them into titanium, engraved backups into steel, created encrypted copies, distributed geographic redundancies, and developed a disaster recovery plan.

Being my own bank has become a part time job.

Nobody knows where their seed phrase is.

Everyone insists they know exactly where it is.

These are not contradictory statements.

On Nostr, strangers send each other tiny amounts of Bitcoin called zaps.

This is revolutionary because we've finally monetized agreeing with each other online.

People now earn money for posting pictures of coffee and saying "stay humble."

Some make a living doing this.

Capitalism always finds a way.

Also, there are now AI versions of you.

Several, actually.

They all sound confident.

Which means they're probably realistic.

As for me, I don't care about price.

I checked it this morning.

Then after breakfast.

Then after saying I don't care about price.

Then one more time to make sure I still didn't care.

Bitcoiners have become exactly what they feared: A global network of paranoid optimists with hardware wallets, strong opinions, and twenty browser tabs open.

And somehow...

you were right.

It's still running.

It's still 21 million.

Nobody has managed to print more.

Trust us, many have asked.

Thank you for disappearing.

Had you stayed, we'd have blamed you for everything.

**P.S.** If you're still around, send 21 sats from one of your wallets.

You would instantly settle thousands of arguments and create millions more.

**P.P.S.** Please don't send 21 sats from one of your wallets.

We finally got the arguments organized.

Truly Yours, Contra