fnew

https://www.bitcoinpolicy.uk/

Word processor working on Bitcoin advocacy in the UK

Public Key

npub1wl39ydk5rpecvtrzhq67afl9ykn2ty2xdxdkfmyan0rss3f3ma5sndznlx

NIP-05 Address

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs80cjjxm2psuux933tsd0w5ljjtf49j9rxnxmyajweh3cgg5ca76gpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumn0wd68ytnzvuq3gamnwvaz7tmjv4kxz7fwv3sk6atn9e5k7guetuh

Publishing to

relay.nostr.bg

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1wl39ydk5rpecvtrzhq67afl9ykn2ty2xdxdkfmyan0rss3f3ma5sndznlx

Show more details

Last Notes

2025-05-17 10:01:48 UTC

- reply

I would very much like to - we spent most of this two hour session going into quite some detail about just how bad they were at virtually everything they did, whether stifling (instead of promoting) growth, or increasing (rather than reducing) the risk of customer harm.

2025-05-16 20:13:16 UTC

Likewise!!!
Tanktops, or regular shirts, WDYT?

2025-02-16 12:05:16 UTC

- reply

I was lucky enough to meet @npub1t8l…sf7p in Nashville last year. Have just finished her excellent book; highly recommend that everyone picks up a copy and reads it too.
Absolutely extraordinary account of incredible courage in the face of overwhelming odds, and the clearest insight I've ever read into the extraordinary North Korean regime. Kudos to her and all her family.
#note1pxk…qeu2
https://m.primal.net/Oyte.jpg

2025-02-06 10:29:58 UTC

Why can't you easily lend your Bitcoin in the UK without incurring a tax charge?
Largely because the current tax treatment of lending Bitcoin sees the transfer as a taxable event.
By contrast with stocks, shares and other securities, Bitcoin falls outside the scope of repurchase or “repo” legislation that enables the lending of securities to be tax neutral. This has to change.
There's a huge economic opportunity here, and the UK’s financial services sector needs to seize it; to capitalise on this £1 trillion-plus market, particularly by providing collateralised loans and other financial services that facilitate asset management.
Yesterday, @nprofile…6m0z were proud to collaborate in drafting and adding our name to a letter sent to Rachel Reeves, Emma Reynolds and James Murray, urging them to prioritise legislation to treat the lending of Bitcoin as a "no gain, no loss" transaction. This change would simply reflect economic reality and ensure that Bitcoin is treated in just the same way as securities currently are.
We're pleased to sign this letter alongside Coinbase, Greengage, Kraken Digital Asset Exchange, Recap and many others.
We keep hearing that 'growth' is a priority for this Government. Let's now see those words turned into actions. https://m.primal.net/OSts.png https://m.primal.net/OStt.png https://m.primal.net/OStu.png

2025-01-31 13:54:54 UTC

- reply

That's true for those who already know about Bitcoin. But in the UK only about 12 percent of people hold it. We need to be vocal in pushing back against state overreach whether it will affect us immediately or not.

2025-01-13 13:56:28 UTC

For our overseas friends, this is absolutely typical of the state of the UK and a perfect indicator of quite how massively shafted it currently is.
Only in the UK would the government manage to ensure there is no Wifi connection at the very event where you are pretending to launch a 'bold new AI strategy'.
https://m.primal.net/Nemq.png

2024-12-08 08:44:07 UTC

- reply

Even for old hands, this is a great read from our guest writer, Daniel Feather. Daniel is both a physisict and an economist (also includes a terrific debunk appendix and a suggested reading list for those new to Bitcoin)
#note16wh…ayt2

2024-09-05 12:56:10 UTC

- reply

many congratulations!!

2024-07-08 18:16:48 UTC

- reply

btw love the profile pic. Office Space?

2024-07-08 16:19:18 UTC

You may have seen the clip of Steve Baker
doing the rounds this weekend. You may have laughed or dismissed his comments, perhaps because you disagreed with him on Brexit. But if you did so, please listen again, because what he's saying is important:
"Your government rode an enormous credit boom within which the money supply tripled, leading to the global financial crisis…and a sense of injustice which has led to many of our subsequent troubles.”
Then read the article shared in the thread, on the $91 trillion debt burden that is currently facing nation states around the world.
There is an unpalatable truth here, which sooner or later we are going to have to acknowledge:
The only way to get rid of a $91 trillion dollar debt is to debase the currency to the point where a trillion dollars will only buy you a loaf of bread.
There’s no sensible way in which a debt of this magnitude can ever be repaid, either through growth or taxation. So what may be likely to happen in the coming years, as this vast web of obligations compounds and continues to grow at an accelerating rate? This is a problem currently confronting Rachel Reeves, our new Chancellor, and Labour, and with which they must engage.
Debt, and credit, are not necessarily bad things. Credit oils the wheels of commerce, and enables us to pull profits from the future to invest and to grow businesses today.
But the warnings of the Ancient Greeks and the Romans that we should do ‘nothing to excess’ were as true for them as they are for us (nihil nimius in Latin, meden agan in Greek – common sayings for each culture, but sadly forgotten by us). There is no sense in which government debts equal to the size of the entire global economy are not excessive and are not a gigantic problem almost beyond resolution.
There are ways out, but none of them palatable. Default, refinancing, or inflation – which will we choose? (Remember that inflation, the enemy du jour, is actually rather good for some people – especially those who owe large sums of money; like nation states).
In our credit-based system, money is nothing more than another person's liability (whether the liability of a central bank, or of a commercial bank). It is backed by absolutely nothing other than the belief that the liability will be repaid (to quote even more Latin, this is the origin of the word 'credit', which comes from the Latin credo credere, to believe).
If a person holding your liability money begins to believe that you're not good for the money, the entire edifice collapses.
Governments cannot allow this loss of faith to happen. Remember, modern money is backed by absolutely nothing other than faith and belief. So a voluntary default (a refusal to pay) is off the table.
Refinancing is possible - issuing new debt to pay the principal and coupon of the old. This is the route most governments that can still access the bond markets have taken to date. This works up to a point, much like taking out a new credit card to pay off a previous one.
This doesn't get rid of the debt – it merely moves it around and can make it easier to service, but ultimately adds to the debt burden in the long run and has the unfortunate effect of compounding it at the same time. If you’d like to see this in highly unpleasant action, just read up on how the IMF and the World Bank treat borrower nations in the global south. I would recommend the excellent book 'Hidden Repression' from Alex Gladstein (link in the thread).
Which leaves us with debasement through inflation.
Governments will almost never admit or articulate this, but the surest way to get rid of a trillion dollar government liability is to debase the currency to the point where the nominal value of their obligations is negligible when measured in a currency whose actual value they have destroyed.
The quote below is from ‘When Money Dies’, a seminal work on the Weimar inflation. Bondholders and mortgage holders might eventually have got repaid in nominal terms – but the amounts they received were meaningless in comparison to the actual value of the assets that the debtors held (such as houses).
This is a nation state problem, but the profligacy of nation states has also made it YOUR problem.
Governments are by their nature unproductive - their sources of income are typically either their citizens (through taxation) or accrued via issuing liabilities against their good name (which, in a circular fashion, is actually yours). In one sense, nation states levy taxes not because they need the money – they can usually print it, after all – but in order to reassure the potential purchasers of their government debt that they are good for the money (belief, once again).
The exceptions to this tend to be the states that are the net exporters of the fundamental currency that actually enables civilisation to exist, namely energy.
So how can you protect yourself, if the conclusion is that the only likely solution to this gigantic problem is strategic inflation and currency debasement?
One option is to save whatever you can in hard and finite assets that cannot be replicated or produced with zero cost. That is, don't think you can save in government liability money.
Unfortunately, this practice has already hugely contributed to housing inequality in the UK, where, whether they know it or not, the richest among us have figured this out and keep their money not in cash but in houses.
You too should have the right to protect yourself - but I'd also like to see an alternative to a 'flight to housing' that exacerbates other social issues. Perhaps find something else. Ideally something that the government cannot confiscate when the house of cards finally comes tumbling down.
You'll likely know what I would recommend. But this is something you'll need to decide for yourself, and on behalf of your children, who will unfortunately inherit the mess that our governments and central banks have made.

2024-04-24 18:37:47 UTC

- reply

Absolutely agree - two points here. 'Same risk, same regulation' approach only works when the risks ARE actually the same. The risk of Bitcoin is NOT the same as the risk of Dog Wife Hat coin. We hammer the point in all our comms, but as you say there is a huge and well funded lobby pushing the crypto narrative.
Secondly, there is an unfortunate new piece of regulation that will require banks to share the losses with victims of APP (authorized push payment) fraud - ie where someone authorizes a payment to a fraudster. It's easier for banks just to block all 'crypto' transactions to simply their processes and avoid risk from the get go.

2024-04-16 09:10:59 UTC

"Don't panic" is only one of many snippets of life advice from Douglas Adams in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but probably one of the best (besides the tip always to have a towel on hand).
If this is your first #Bitcoin cycle, this is absolutely essential to remember (hell, if it's your second or third as well). Never get too euphoric, or too scared either.
All you need to ask, in response to new FUD, or new panic in the wider world, or the endlessly manic news cycle, are two simple questions:
Does this increase #Bitcoin''s limited supply?
And does this make it easier for a small group to make changes to the code without rough consensus?
If the answer to each of these is no, then you can go for a walk and rest easy.
https://m.primal.net/Hvqs.jpg

2024-01-29 21:00:27 UTC

When I was a junior lawyer at a Big Law firm, my peers and I often used to wonder how the partners could treat us as they did. Sometimes, I’d arrive at the office on Monday, and not leave the building till Thursday, sleeping one or two hours a night on the floor under my desk, or not at all. We had people in our team fainting in the corridors, and falling downstairs from exhaustion, cracking ribs. Once, I worked for 48 hours without a break, and with no sleep at all. I would have done anything, and told anyone whatever they wanted to hear, if they'd just told me I could go to bed.
We used to think the partners couldn’t possibly treat us like this if they thought we were human; and of course, we were right. We were looking at the question entirely the wrong way round. To the partners, we were not human; we were revenue-generating assets with a fixed cost base (our salaries), and we generated that revenue with our time. So the more revenue they got us to generate over time, the better for them. Only once we came to this realisation did it all make sense.
In the same way, we tend to look at journalism the wrong way round. If we are labouring under the misconception that journalism is a search for truth, then articles like this from Jemima Kelly in the Financial Times can be hard to comprehend. But when we realise that journalism is, fundamentally, no longer a search for truth, but for attention, then it becomes much easier to understand. We have also been looking at this question the wrong way round. Jemima is certainly winning attention for the FT ; witness this post. QED!
Jemima does ask “Is it time for the likes of me to admit we were wrong” about #Bitcoin   . Although you can probably guess my answer to this, I actually wanted to address her conclusion, which is that in relation to #Bitcoin, “there is still no there there.”
In her defence, Jemima has, like many of us, grown up in a world where digital scarcity is an oxymoron. Our whole lives, up to the invention of Bitcoin, have been filled with digital abundance, where anything digital can be endlessly replicated without cost. In such a world, it might be forgivable to think that everything digital or intangible behaves in the same way. Most intangible things do – if I send you an email, we both have the same copy, and other copies exist on servers across the internet. If I tell you an idea, we both have the same idea afterwards.
But Bitcoin is not like this.
If I have a Bitcoin, and send it to you, I cannot reverse that transaction, and I lose control of that Bitcoin forever. It cannot be replicated, and it cannot be copied. It is utterly unique, and in sending it, I have lost it.
This is a poor analogy, but Bitcoin can be thought of as an email I can only send once, and a copy of which I cannot retain once sent. It is an idea that vanishes forever from my mind once I tell it to someone else. It is the discovery of digital scarcity in a world of endlessly copiable digital abundance, and we have never seen anything like it before.
If your job, in any sense, involves the pursuit of truth and the exploration of new ideas, then you should seize the chance to explore and understand something like this with both hands. You should not let the chance slip away, or go on repeating the same facile points for more than a decade after the facts have proven you comprehensively and thoroughly wrong.
https://www.ft.com/content/c4fd2c69-c69a-49e4-9e93-d687aa801e87?sharetype=blocked
https://image.nostr.build/7860b8520047d742c387b9a3ab0f517f2c45db8a1efe0245c7c570afe524bcf3.jpg#m=image%2Fjpeg&dim=1080x664&blurhash=rAMbGYpJH%3Dx%5Eo%7EZ%7EyYMc%25h.TDNyEMws%3Ax%5ER3tnMdDi%25iIAtSf%2BROtSROt8%25NRjofWAj%3Foef%2Bo0bINGaJo%7EWAjFo%23emg4V%3F.9SiV%40ozWVjEX8nhbc&x=b48893738dcb8b98e462ca6881143c8b7ac4cac71195ddbca872dc317dc6f5bc

2023-11-01 17:43:06 UTC

- reply

https://image.nostr.build/f2da2f1ca093c4ffe96cafced2360854b6cbedcf6031b6a37b69219260f65997.jpg

2023-10-05 08:42:18 UTC

I hear Chinese censors are blocking the image below because of a potential link to the date of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Let's do our bit to help and keep an eye out for these pics so we can protect those sensitive CCP eyes!
https://image.nostr.build/da9e214ddba9105411808f4b6561a0387b9ec12d799dfbef8e5a34d77828bc51.jpg
https://image.nostr.build/419667741333359f5059bd456506c5d01dda533e6efdd89c74d9415fab684261.jpg

2023-07-06 06:30:21 UTC

- reply

Trying my best
https://nostr.build/i/3bd0fa46368ddf3f05971874246f7c8f1beec3c8369b7aea89e6caf52894ea9e.jpg

2023-07-05 19:47:15 UTC

- reply

Thanks! Just zapped you back (I'm on Android, so I still can)

2023-06-19 11:22:34 UTC

- reply

@npub1hxd…arwt how's this?

2023-04-20 16:28:51 UTC

- reply

I tried to ping you back the same number of days but I'm now set up with one touch zaps, I'm so sorry. You got my auto zap of 21!

2023-04-20 16:22:57 UTC

- reply

There is no way in hell I could do that, and no way anyone could read my handwriting. I'm going home alone to a night of solitary onanism.

2023-03-29 13:10:10 UTC

- reply

I don't often confess this in public, but I am a contract lawyer....
There will be a time element to this; my understanding is that ChatGPT works from a copy of the internet that's two years out of date (this the info will be out of date also). Secondly, if the data is scrapable that suggests it's not paywalled or in a walled garden; if freely available it's likely to be in public domain. If not public domain per se, but registered as a patent for example, then the idea may be public, but protected legally by patent law. Trade secrets already have very strong extra legal protection in most jurisdictions.
Short answer is that I don't think anyone will have begun thinking about this in enough detail and we probably need some case law to set precedents, where people start suing GPT and Sam for plagiarism!