xmrk ₿ ⚡️

operator of lightning node xmrk (033878501f9a4ce97dba9a6bba4e540eca46cb129a322eb98ea1749ed18ab67735).

Public Key

npub1zues2p7qdajk9hv7xn5ldntj3pufzl3jwzwa4dhlavxdkj27g92q62qhzy

NIP-05 Address

xmrk@nodestrich.com

NIP-57 Address

xmrk2@stacker.news

Profile Code

nprofile1qqspwvc9qlqx7etzmk0rf60ke4egs7y30ce8p8w6kml7krxmf90yz4qpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsds65dk

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1zues2p7qdajk9hv7xn5ldntj3pufzl3jwzwa4dhlavxdkj27g92q62qhzy

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Last Notes

2024-06-26 19:16:58

Bitcoin is dead. It consumes all the electricity produced in the world. Schroedinger would be proud. Or Goebbels.

2024-06-26 17:34:48

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If you want to complain about Portuguese state-mafia: https://www.cada.pt/ . The police should have responded in 20 days, see art 16 of https://www.parlamento.pt/sites/EN/Parliament/Documents/Lei26_2016.en.pdf .
Another idea: habeas corpus, any Portuguese citizen can file it, art. 31 of Portuguese constitution, see https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Translation:Constitution_of_the_Portuguese_Republic_(1976)#TITLE_II_Rights,_liberties_and_guarantees . But this could be seen as abuse, they surely have perfect justification for the detention, they just don't feel like providing info. And petitioner can be fined for "manifestly unfounded" habeas corpus petition.
I suspect they have no obligation to communicate in English. If I was Portuguese police and wanted to withhold info with some plausibly-sounding justification, the language would be my first excuse.

2024-06-07 17:17:10

Seems bitcoin devs have to pay at least 7% of their costs caused by the serial liar Faketoshi. If it is a settlement, the devs agreed to this, I wonder why. Maybe it is faster? Litigation about costs also costs non-trivial amounts? They could get a court order of 100% of costs, but it would be difficult to enforce, Faketoshi could pull some tricks to avoid paying?
It is horrible if the devs have to suffer any financial loss because of this. As if the stress, uncertainty and waste of time they suffered wasn't sufficient.
https://nitter.poast.org/bitnorbert/status/1799094332282093963#m
https://m.primal.net/IcKr.png

2024-05-31 15:30:43

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In particular: https://www.provedor-jus.pt/en/national-preventive-machanism/the-ombusdman-as-national-preventive-mechanism/
They do visits of prisons, in theory to detect/prevent torture, but not sure if they would visit the prison just because of 1 person. And which prison?
So there is some relation between ombudsman's role and this case, not sure how strong.

2024-05-31 15:01:31

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perhaps try reporting to the Portuguese ombudsman: https://www.provedor-jus.pt/en/ . No idea how effective it is.

2024-05-15 19:32:56

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nice, apparently nix can run on top of another Linux distribution, there is package nix-binary in Debian 12. And unstable-channel contains the same newest version 2.9.2 of snowflake. So yes, it is easier and faster if you know that it exists.

2024-05-14 19:30:24

snowflake proxy in Debian 12 repositories is quite old. I wanted newer version, but compilation from source requires go-1.21, while Debian 12 has go-1.19 in standard repositories. I installed go-1.21 from bookworm-backports, this means adding
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-backports main contrib non-free
to your /etc/sources.list, doing "apt update" and "apt install golang-1.21/stable-backports". Then you can compile snowflake by "/usr/lib/go-1.21/bin/go build", and run by "nohup ./proxy".

2024-05-14 19:24:14

2 ways to protest the scandalous ruling against Alexey Pertsev.
1. run at least snowflake proxy (https://community.torproject.org/relay/setup/snowflake/standalone/), it should work even behind CGNAT. If you have public IPv4 address, run tor non-exit relay or bridge.
2. run joinmarket as a maker and set your fee to lower than default, perhaps even zero.
I wish I could do more...

2024-05-02 21:55:26

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ok, makes sense. You still reveal the fact that there is private channel between you and LSP, but with taproot channels good luck finding the channel UTXO.

2024-05-02 20:59:57

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But the sender (presumably who sells you btc) must know about your channel. If it is private, you will send him a routing hint.
This could be avoided if you open a parallel public channel to the same LSP.
Also, force closure may reveal that it is a channel. Not sure about the taproot channels in this context.
Finally, at least lnd (so Blixt too, not sure about other implementations) may happily sweep and combine various UTXOs after forced closure, this also leaks some information.

2024-05-01 11:12:17

Roger Ver may be screwed more than you think. If he stays more than 183 days in Spain, he becomes Spanish tax resident. (1) So he will to pay wealth tax, surely his net worth is more than 3M euros. Theoretically, if he stays more than 10 years, he will be subject to Spanish exit tax.
The tax rate is complicated, there is the old wealth tax set by regions and abolished in Comunidad de Madrid and Andalucia, and there is new, so called temporary solidarity tax:
- 0% for the first 3 million EUR NET worth
- 7% of NET worth between 3 million EUR and 5 million EUR
- 1% of NET worth between 5 million EUR and 10 million EUR
- 5% of NET worth in excess of 10 million EUR
But I still have doubts, because this creates some perverse incentives if true. Spanish authorities could just trump up charges on any millionaire on vacation in Spain, drag the process and be rewarded by the wealth tax. Yes, right to speedy trial, maybe they get slap on the wrist from European Court of Human Rights.
(1) I checked the law and there is no exemption for being arrested, waiting for trial, extradition or similar. The only exemption is some cultural collaboration, see https://www.boe.es/buscar/act.php?id=BOE-A-2006-20764#a9 (in Spanish).

2024-05-01 10:14:31

Joinmarket has a big flaw: it happily spends all your funds in a particular mixdepth when doing coinjoin as maker. This can reveal common ownership . An analyst can try all combination of inputs and try to match "change" outputs. Say there are several 1M sats outputs - analyst cannot link them to particular input(s). But if you contributed with 800k and 400k inputs, then you'll get a 200k change output. So if there is no other way to combine inputs to get 1.2M sats, then those 800k and 400k inputs are linked.
So if one input comes from Bisq purchase and another input comes from closing a channel of my node, then Bisq seller can deduce that I am the owner of one of the participating lighting nodes.
Even worse, joinmarket spends together coinjoined coins. If they can be linked , it partially nullifies the previous coinjoin.
Please tell me I misunderstood something. I vaguely remember that it sometimes creates 3 outputs (only for a taker perhaps?), this could save the day.

2024-04-30 20:11:54

wow, DOJ tracked Roger Ver's bitcoins. Probably some Chainanalysis random generator, although they only say "clustering analysis". I hope he challenges those, at last he would do something useful.
https://m.primal.net/IBmb.png
source: the indictment at https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1350116/dl?inline

2024-04-30 18:45:07

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Why do you think they are competent enough to find out? If it took them that long to even integrate lightning... OK, maybe I am too optimistic here, their procrastination on lightning could be more about not caring than pure incompetence.

2024-04-30 17:39:58

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Yes, it seems the defendant needs to pay premium (10-15%) which he loses even if found not guilty, and pledge a collateral (house in this case). See https://law.stackexchange.com/a/30216/44582 .
But note that even if you are finally acquitted, you have to pay your lawyer and nobody refunds you this cost. And you can defend yourself without a lawyer, but if facing 20 years in prison, you probably don't want to risk that you make some formal mistake and judge tells you "no, should have asked for that evidence earlier" or something similar.

2024-04-26 21:10:50

I observe crazy surge in joinmarket activity (I am running a join maker). Nothing for the past two weeks, and around 4 coinjoins just today. And they are paying crazy transaction fees, like 300 sats/vb.
This must be related to Samourai crackdown. Natural explanation is just people who would use Samourai. But I wonder if it is some sort of sting operation. Although not sure if the latter makes sense.

2024-04-26 14:47:12

I started a new lnd node, waiting for a weekend to catch lower fees and to open some channels tomorrow. First channels will be to those who returned me btc after penalty transactions.
I made some improvements to avoid another data loss:
- using Terramaster NAS and internal SSDs to store lnd data. So better cooling, and no half-functioning USB-to-SATA reductions. For example, one such reduction does not support TRIM, so who knows what it does with write caches.
- disabled write cache
- still using ZFS, but without encryption. There are several bugs related to encryption, Gentoo wiki warns against using encryption (https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/ZFS#Caveats). But those are mostly related to send/receive, still it should avoid one possible source of problems.
- of course using 1 redundant disk - zfs mirror

2024-04-25 17:35:38

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What are your thought on Liquid with Peerswap?
I still want to like Liquid, but even if it wasn't custodial (ok, federation, tiny bit better than average CEX), it is basically equivalent to doubling BTC block size. So if most people start using Liquid because BTC fees are too high, then shortly Liquid fees will be almost as high. Doesn't really help scaling in the long term.

2024-04-25 15:15:59

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It still uses mempool data, just combines it with historical data.
Another related concern is that some cartel of mining pools will create and have access to private "mempool" with better paying transactions than in the public mempool. So this cartel has an advantage, will grow bigger (more miners switch to them), so more centralization.
But OCEAN still exists, I may be wrong.

2024-04-25 15:00:59

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Exposing the miners - and then what? They are already exposed anyway, at least some of them, remember the 4Mb block.
And if successful, and degens are forced to submit their nonsense directly to miners (skipping the mempool), this could make mempool unreliable for fee estimates.
I am all for stopping the ordinals and runes nonsense, but this cure could be worse than disease.

2024-04-25 11:34:59

The Samourai indictment is ridiculous. If public keys of users are now known to FBI, then Samourai didn't even provide much privacy to those users. So what is their crime again? Maybe fraud would be more fitting, but the weaknesses were well known before.

2024-02-11 18:29:06

The bank did unblock tor relays, albeit I needed to file a second reclamation after they hadn't responded to the first one. So please don't just give up in similar situation, you can win.
I was preparing another complaint based on GDPR - the bank processes my IP without my consent and without other legitimate reason - I guess "we don't understand tor" is not a legitimate reason. Didn't need to go this way obviously.
I do not enjoy threatening anyone with violence (even indirectly and the violence would be carried out by the state), but we are talking about banks, privileged by the state. Especially in Spain, where you cannot pay more than 1000 euros in cash, so you almost have to use bank. End those privileges, and I don't care whether bank blocks connections from an IP address which contains 13, or any other stupid rule. Well, and the bank should inform in advance: "we consider 13 an unlucky number, we block anything related".
note1ka0frsrj6hk8td0s5ukwrftl5hsfxpxsrl0tmssvvq7mxl3gsfxqxzs2wf

2024-02-11 17:59:59

Using HDD for storage of bitcoin blockchain with some caching sounded like a good idea, no need for expensive SSDs. But now I need to rescan 300000 blocks to start lnd in recovery mode, and it takes around 4 days, literally. Already tried neutrino (which means leeching off someone's node) and it didn't seem faster.
Perhaps lnd could be smarter and just use bitcoind's wallet for on-chain funds...

2024-02-07 22:02:46

Hall of fame - list of node operators who returned or at least attempted to return my funds after their node published penalty transaction. In other words, those nodes have already shown that they are unlikely to steal from you, so I recommend to open a channel with them.
https://gist.github.com/xmrk-btc/f21fd8649dcd573679f043836e3ef05f?permalink_comment_id=4882235#gistcomment-4882235

2024-02-07 20:19:18

My lightning node is closing down:
https://stacker.news/items/414232

2023-10-13 12:56:41

Punished for running tor relay again, this time by my bank, cannot connect even to their main webpage. But my position could be a bit stronger than in the case of Comcast, because I am their customer. Thinking about filing a complaint with them, although it feels like fighting windmills. Still, at least they have to respond and invent some excuse.
Tried few other Spanish banks - Abanca, BBVA and Santander. All of them let me to login page.
The bank is obsessed with ESG. Running tor relay helps people in Russia and Iran circumvent censorship - does this not belong to S in ESG? Ah, I forgot, the ESG is just a show.

2023-10-09 19:04:39

@npub1pfe…elvf, any suggestions what should I do about the broken fee estimator / empty mempool problem you keep complaining about? Referring to those: https://nitter.net/wtogami/status/1708517076480975174#m
https://nitter.net/wtogami/status/1699484964721492016#m
However, I was told you can configure CLN to be more tolerant to differing fee estimates.
Anyway, relevant lines of my bitcoin.conf:
maxorphantx=200
txindex=1
dbcache=500M
maxmempool=300M
maxconnections=40
maxuploadtarget=20G
maxreceivebuffer=400
maxsendbuffer=400
minrelaytxfee=0.000010
mempoolminfee=0.000010
par=0
mempoolfullrbf=1
permitbaremultisig=1 # changed from 0 around 09-12-2023
lnd.conf:
bitcoin.node=bitcoind
bitcoind.estimatemode=ECONOMICAL
coop-close-target-confs=24
max-commit-fee-rate-anchors=40

2023-10-09 17:25:43

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well, on Linux it is only half of RAM by default, and configurable. And not sure what is wrong with that either. After all, Linux without ZFS also fills whole free RAM with cached data.
Perhaps you are misled by output of "free" - ZFS caches count as "used", while other caches count, more logically, as "buff/cache".
Devil could be in details - if you have much more non-ZFS data than ZFS data, you probably don't want to give ZFS cache half of your RAM. And I am not sure how nicely ZFS plays when kernel needs to evict something.

2023-10-09 17:10:35

Another idea: even with everything on ZFS you can fine-tune caching. I would put .bitcoin/blocks (historical data) on a separate ZFS dataset and allow only metadata caching on that dataset:
zfs set primarycache=metadata $YOUR_DATASET
Indexes like txindex probably deserve data caching, not sure.
note1gxfn050dgsx45w0dyylsnts5548st8k3az6898l8yz6y7l4p4e8spfhd0m

2023-10-08 11:09:48

I put .bitcoin/chainstate directory on ZFS, and quite satisfied with the result.
Before, processing a block could take 4 minutes, lightning complained about failed healtcheck 10 times a day. After 23 hours with ZFS, I observe just 1 healtcheck failure, and block processing is < 30s.
I also set /sys/module/zfs/parameters/zfs_arc_min and zfs_arc_max to 5.5 GB and 7 GB respectively. This is a laptop with 8 GB RAM and 2 HDDs, running just bitcoind, lnd is on another laptop. Just moving the chainstate to the other HDD did not help that much.
In theory, this should keep most of chainstate in cache, even when peers do a lot of historical queries. (The rest of .bitcoin is NOT on ZFS, but on Btrfs.)
Not the most elegant solution - ZFS help mostly because it has separate cache. But even if everything was on ZFS, I think ZFS's caching algo would notice that chainstate is read much more frequently than the rest, and keep most of it in cache - but I haven't tested this.

2023-10-02 19:08:24

So I was wrong, you do need 2 txs for peerswap - (https://github.com/ElementsProject/peerswap/blob/master/docs/usage.md#swaps). Only makes sense to use it with Liquid then.
note1s37ty5pufvy5m7jtjj2s67qr80hpy3umyvrmltenj5sysu2cq4fsma3eg5

2023-10-01 21:02:18

yay, I am famous, and in a positive way: https://nitter.net/notgrubles/status/1707916466626928733#m
Not the best time to criticize PeerSwap, right?
1. No way to set on-chain fees. I ended up paying 24 sats/vB when 10 would be sufficient. So if you think you can save on fees, by doing 1 tx instead of 2 (closing channel and opening new one) - yes, you use less space, but you overpay on sats/vB.
2. Cannot choose UTXO to spend. Would be perfect for privacy. Now I am using private channels, but because of channel reserve, I cannot get rid of KYC coins completely, I am left with 1% of original coin when I later close the channel. This could be solved with peerswap. Also would need an option to spend the whole UTXO on swap-in.
Still, both are fixable. Unfulfilled potential... yet.

2023-07-22 22:26:40

Thinking about gold mining - is Greenpeace USA planning some campaign against hoarding gold by central banks? OK, mining of other metals can devastate the environment, too - but at least other metals can be useful. Gold mining devastates the environment just to have more gold siting idly in vaults.
And there is no good reason for hoarding gold, it is just a "tradition": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Dj9v9s9buk .
What about "change the (reserve) asset, not the landscape"? Or "change the asset instead of changing river into poison" - referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Baia_Mare_cyanide_spill .
I guess my slogans are lame, and surely this is the only reason such campaign will not take place.

2023-07-22 21:59:06

Cannot believe those Greenpeace USA clowns keep attacking bitcoin: https://nitter.net/lopp/status/1681750013724983296#m
"Bitcoin causes x tons of CO2 emissions." So without bitcoin, there would be x tons less CO2 emissions, right? Sure, if you assume that people who buy bitcoin would instead never spend those funds. In other words, money have alternative uses, so if people cannot spend money on bitcoin, they would spend money on other stuff. And this other stuff will probably consume energy and cause CO2 emissions. The alternatives may cause less CO2, so destroying bitcoin may prevent some CO2, but not the whole x tons. And given that btc mining consumes much higher percentage of renewables than the average consumer, btc mining should cause less CO2 than alternatives. BTC mining freezes the oceans!
There are some complications. We are only interested in net inflow of funds to bitcoin, which should be equal to the cost of electricity used for mining. We only need to stop spending those funds in the world without bitcoin. So if someone bought some btc for $100, sold that btc for $600, we have an outflow of $500, which must proceed from someone buying btc, but this buyer may freely spend his $500 in the alternative world without bitcoin. Meanwhile, look at a miner selling his mined btc for say $100 - buyer of those btc must not spend those $100 in the alternative world without bitcoin . Still a laughable assumption.
And yes, instead of buying btc people may spend those funds planting trees. See - now we cut CO2 emissions by more than x tons. But this is unfair argument, basically assuming best-case scenario, you would need some good evidence to claim this.
Much more likely destination of those funds is gold. So without bitcoin we probably have more gold mining, which is not particularly environmentally-friendly process.
Of course there are millions other arguments - flaring, grid balancing, lowering time preference.... I just never saw this particular argument.

2023-07-04 09:25:07

#BanksSuck Like a good obedient sheep, I wanted to inform N26 of my postal address change. I was able to change "shipping address" without problems. But to change my "legal address" I have to talk to some stupid chatbot. OK, but you are trying my patience already. And then the chatbot says no, not without proof of address. I want to give them info and they make me jump 2 hoops already?
Scan or photo of utility bill or residence certificate? So it must be a paper version, right? Third hoop, going to file a reclamation probably.

2023-07-01 19:44:46

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Well, but how do you distinguish between terrorists and law-obedient serfs of other governments? French or Japanese serfs have no US tax ID. A coordinated attack by FATF? Any country which doesn't implement registration ends up on a black list? Or it doesn't matter much, because bitcoin is used mostly for hodling, and no one cares about a few angry foreign weirdos who cannot pay by BTC in US, or few importers/exporters?
Then there is Lightning: the recipient has no was of knowing the origin of the funds. You would need to be drastic here, cutting the network in two. An US entity is only allowed to have channels with other US entities, and all the funding of those channels must come from registered wallets. Again, FATF or some other international cooperation could help a lot, so the walled garden includes say whole OECD, not just USA.

2023-07-01 17:38:11

Unpopular opinion: I found 2 cases where bitcoin investment funds *may* be useful, even for an individual (not just some pension funds who have to invest in regulated things). Note that by investment funds I mean both ETFs and mutual funds
Case 1: you have already invested in an investment fund. Then, you pay less taxes if you move your investment to a bitcoin fund than if you sell / redeem your old fund and buy btc. I am sure this is the case for mutual funds (seems fidelity has something like that, see https://marketrealist.com/p/crypto-mutual-fund-fidelity/), not sure about ETFs. Moving between funds is generally not taxed, only the final redemption is.
Case 2: You have some old cheap KYC btc, and your beloved county applies FIFO to compute capital gains tax. (Spain does, USA also.) You want to buy more btc, expect the price to rise sharply and plan to sell in 1-2 years. If you buy real BTC, you have to sell your cheap old BTC in those 1-2 years because of FIFO (well, at least you have to declare it so for tax purposes). If you instead buy a derivative now (such as an ETF) and sell it later, you are selling that derivative, not your precious old btc.
You could buy and sell the new stack non-kyc - additionally you should sell for cash or another untracable method - you do not need ETF then.
So those paper BTC may be worth it in some limited circumstances, and if you carefully weight the risks.
Wonder if the state will use some tax advantages to lure people into paper BTC ... and then rugpull. Can you redeem your paper BTC before the rugpull?

2023-06-27 10:08:23

I was about to shill for N26, as they offer 2 month free trial of "N26 Smart Account": https://support.n26.com/en-es/memberships-and-account-types/premium-accounts/2-months-smart-free-trial . It seemed to include free SEPA Instant transfers, which would be handy to buy sats at Robosats
Except the linked document does not mention instant SEPA. And I did sign up for this trial and then did a test payment of 1 euro to another my account which does support instant SEPA, and no, neither N26 gave option to pay instantly, nor it arrived instantly.
And was browsing their FAQ, where they mention some gambling fee, and the German court says they "feigned consent" by introducing it: https://support.n26.com/en-eu/account-and-personal-details/miscellaneous/what-does-bgh-xi-zr-26-20-mean-for-n26-customers . Sounds rather shady to me.
Only keep in bank what you can afford to lose, I guess...

2023-06-26 19:16:26

#BanksSuck I called to this bank a week ago about my blocked internet banking. Still not resolved today, called today and just heard some promises: we'll look into it, we need to talk to our security team, we'll call you. And they told me that they didn't try to call me. A WEEK without any feedback from them.
It is great they are doing this PR for Bitcoin, but I don't need any convincing. Well, perhaps I do, I am still holding non-trivial amount of fiat in some investment fund managed by this bank. Not for much longer of course.
note1pk7jth3xkzh3mulrmq5gf9naxa8s62nmk9hw4rauw6dwadmfgd4qa8rrly

2023-06-22 09:48:18

And now for something slightly different.
#WarOnSomeDrugs is a tyranny of majority. "Drug are bad, we have to ban them. Wait, I didn't mean OUR favourite drug - alcohol." It is rather difficult to ban majority's drug. Not impossible, USA actually tried it 1921-33. But just compare to the current war on some drugs - it lasts at least from 1971, so 52 years vs. 12 years. There can be some rationalizations - "of course it would be good to ban even alcohol, but it is not really possible, it would cause eiher revolt, be repealed in the next election or be massively ignored. So instead we do what is possible, and ban only some drugs." Or: "alcohol is already causing huge problems (remember, people have no agency, and alcohol has), and some lunatics want to allow more drugs?"
I guess just talking about principles doesn't help here. Principles are nice and all, but if you feel threatened, if you believe drugs are causing a catastrophe, you ignore those abstract principles. "What is more important, saving lifes or your funny princiles?" the brainwashed hypocrite asks. "Grow up, you naive child." he adds.
Wish I knew how to effectively counter this thinking. To me it is obvious that the catastrophe can be easily invented, or a little problem can be blown out of proportions. "But the catastrophe is absolutely real this time. And even if it is not, why risk it?" Guess I give up... for now.

2023-06-21 20:12:06

Got reminded of the criminals in the Iranian goverment. Which in turn reminded me of #ComcastPunishesTorRelays . Not sure if tor bandwidth is the biggest worry of those millions of hostages, but it could be important to get the info both into and out of Iran. So Comcast indirectly helps those criminals, even though it is just Comcast's incompetence and unwillingnes to understand there are non-exit relays. (At least I have no proof of Comcast malevolence, so not going to throw baseless accusations.) Still, not nice from Comcast, to put it mildly.
So I am running a bridge instead of non-exit relay on my fixed connection, and began running a snowflake bridge on mobile connection intermittently.
https://twitter.com/NazaninBoniadi/status/1671178090373058561?cxt=HHwWgsDQkc7nm7EuAAAA

2023-06-20 21:44:46

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I don't know if I would have patience with John, when he says "what's wrong with cash?" and "who is Satoshi Nakamoto?". A bit disappointed Marty did not explain these, could be two sentences - "cash is hard to move, so favors custodians and fractional reseve", and "great minds care about ideas, not about people" ((c) Giacommo Zucco).
But good to see John at least open to the idea. And we need to understand what keeps people from bitcoin, so if this is the goal, it is good idea to not interfere and not try to convince.

2023-06-20 20:11:16

When ranting about my blocked internet banking, I forgot to mention: In Soviet Spain, you cannot pay more than 1000 euros in cash. And the trend is lowering this threshold, both in nominal terms (it was 3000 euros a few years ago I think) and of course in real terms by printing money. And just last month, another innovation about real estate : rent has to be always paid "electronically", whatever that means. ("a través de medios electrónicos" is the literal expression used in the law in Spanish. Already ranted about this at https://stacker.news/items/189501 .) Yes, overlords were kind enough to grant an exception for those who don't have a bank account. But the trend seems clear: You will own nothing but IOUs and your will be happy.
So in the brave new cashless world, when your bank screws up and locks you out of your account, you are going to have serious problems. How do you pay for food, rent, utilities if the bank does not resolve the issue quickly? Will it even be legal if your friends pay for you, wouldn't that be almost money laundering? Maybe you are paying back those friends with bitcoin, and only a terrorist would do that. And I am now talking about a mere accident, honest mistake committed by the bank. If they really target you, you are really screwed.
And cash is sort of competitor to banks, keeps them in check. Eliminate competitor, and they have slightly less incentive to solve your problem.
In other words, even today banks commit mistakes. And yet some psychopaths want to restrict or eliminate cash and make us totally dependent on banks?

2023-06-20 14:25:33

My bank - Abanca in Spain - felt the need to remind me to not trust the banks. It is just slight inconvenience for now, but could have easily been a major headache in just slightly worse circumstances.
Details: My internet banking access was blocked immediately after I tried sending HalCash to my own mobile phone number. (HalCash is a system which send you a code by SMS to withdraw cash at ATM, using that code and no card needed.) The same mobile phone number which I use for "second" factor authentication. Schroedinger's security - my phone number is safe to authenticate 1000 euros bank transfer, and at the safe time totally unsafe, so a mere *attempt* to send HalCash to that number justifies the drastic measure of cutting my access. Note that to withdraw the money by HalCash, one needs a code received by SMS, and a one-time password set by the sender. So my phone number (or ability to receive SMS on that number) is only one of two factors in both cases (bank transfer and HalCash), yet they treat those cases totally differently.
Made various attempts to call them. The automaton tells me to tell or dial my identification number. Dial? Very funny, because as a foreigner, I have a letter in my identification "number" (NIE), how do I dial that? Anyway, computer says no, it does not understand - even when I dial just the digits of my id number. Why inform me that it cannot be solved by the automaton and that I need to speak to human, when they can make me try again and waste my time? I thought that John Cleese's "How to irritate people" was a comedy, not a guide.
Speaking to a human, he just told me that he opened an incident and that they will call back. This was yesterday and still received no call as of 16:00 today. Maybe because the made a spam call about a year ago and I marked their phone number as spam.
To be fair, my debit card works fine, both payments and withdrawals, so not going to die of hunger because of this. Just hugely complicates my buying of Bitcoin.

2023-06-19 21:52:51

https://nostr.build/i/a4ba1000d5c25a9e60239ba602af83f77aef4a788c994c47e7dca4daa8fe7b17.jpg
Quite enraging, although when thinking about details, the meme is perhaps only 90% accurate . OK, SBF is really at house arrest, so not exactly free - but it is still million times better than detained. SBF has given up his passport - great, but was Roman even given opportunity to do the same? (I don't know, but I doubt it, if they cite 4 passports as evidence for being flight risk) Not sure about SBF's money - are they frozen like Roman's, making his defense much more difficult? Maybe irrelevant, SBF can probably count on parents for funds.
Trial date: 14 Sep 2023 for Roman, so he had to spend more than 2 years in detention. 1 Oct 2023 for SBF, so less than a year in house arrest. If the system wanted some appearance of fairness, it would give priority to those with harsher pre-trial conditions. I know, different courts, but still, such difference in their workload? And Roman's case seems quite simple - little if any evidence against Roman, so what takes so long? There can be devil in the details, hypothetically it could be Roman's defense filing many motions and slowing things down. Perhaps this is not that relevant, and Roman should not even have been arrested, let alone put to trial.
I think the major reason for this treatment of Roman is that "his" crime (let's pretend the accusation is true, just to formulate the idea) is against the state, its control, its authority. Millions defrauded customers? Who cares? Providing privacy? How dares he (or whoever founded Bitcoin Fog)?
#FreeRoman #JailChainalysisCEO

2023-06-19 06:12:12

https://nostr.build/i/0de0c42bec0c4480f7cdd8822c631706c4cb03ee6975991d70001069eaf52f27.jpg

2023-06-18 12:27:46

#ComcastTorBlock Turns out that Comcast probably just does not understand tor - specifically, the difference between exit and non-exit relays. See lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2023-June/021208.html . And not enough evidence that Comcast really blocks connections to tor relays, just ALL connections *from* tor relays.
So raising awareness about that difference could be a way to go. Perhaps we should bug EFF that they do/join such awareness campaign? Repost / retweet. And help me with short-enough slogan or hashtag, because #TorNonExitRelayIsNotAThreat seems too long to me. But "relay" can refer to an exit relay, and those could be a threat, so mentioning "non-exit" seems inevitable.
(4th edit of this, sorry for spam, deleted the old versions.)

2023-06-18 11:57:45

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All this while Roman Sterlingov remains in pre-trial detention. #FreeRoman and jail chainalysis people.

2023-06-14 18:02:35

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yes, and got just 1-2 inbound connections when I checked, which is nothing. I had tens of inbound connections as normal (public, middle, non-exit) relay.
And running in bridge mode does not solve the problem of Comcast misrepresenting tor relays as threat.

2023-06-13 22:47:42

Comcast tor saga continues. Found out that the blocking is probably implemented by router/modem provided by Comcast. And can be turned off if one is determined enough, and doesn't mind scary warning pop-ups and weekly mail reminders. It is included in their "Advanced Security" feature. Because if random IP address connects to your computer, it is ok, but if a tor relay does, it is automatically a security threat, so should not connect to your computer. At least Comcast geniuses think so. Less evil because of possible opt-out, but still evil, because it has little to do with security and discourages people from running tor relays.
(Sources: 2 Comcast customers contacted me and told me, and we did some tests.)

2023-06-13 08:22:03

Comcast censorship: People on tor mailing list raised some doubts, so testing again. Started tor relay again (public, not just bridge), and sure, 9 hours after appearing as online at metrics.tor.org, I cannot connect to my Comcast peer. I was able to connect up to that moment, I was testing by socat every 5 minutes.
Now turned off relaying, and trying to see whether and when I am able to connect to that Comcast peer again. I guess they must lift the block after some time, otherwise they would eventually end up blocking all IPs of any ISP which assigns IPs dynamically to its customers.

2023-06-12 18:07:09

Finally people are starting to notice the Comcast tor blocking: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2023-June/021186.html
Any Comcast hostages^W customers out there? You may want to do some tests and help find out the exact scope of the blocking.

2023-06-12 17:48:01

Unlike tor, Comcast doesn't block i2p relays. More than 24h since my i2p relay was started, and I can still connect to my Comcast peer.
Wonder whether the reason is just i2p's obscurity.

2023-06-11 16:33:31

So Comcast says I should not run tor relay. OK, instead I'll run tor obfs4 bridge and i2pd "relay" (not sure about terminology). Thanks for the motivation, Scumcast!
But TBH, my bridge is basically inactive, it gets 1-2 connections now. Suprising given ongoing blocks in Russia and elsewhere, I would expect more demand for bridges. Maybe snowflake is more used than obfs4?

2023-06-11 10:56:13

Using Tor or encryption? Or, God forbid, de-googled your phone using /e/OS, LineageOS or F-Droid? You are a terrorist! At least in Soviet France. But I remember hearing similar arguments in some prosecution in Spain. To be fair, this is "only" used to justify pre-trial detention. Still, sickening and sad.
https://www.laquadrature.net/en/2023/06/05/criminalization-of-encryption-the-8-december-case/

2023-06-07 17:57:40

Comcast blocks all traffic to tor relays. Not just tor-related traffic, but ALL traffic. Have a lightning node and want to pay back your usage of tor by running a tor relay? Forget it, Comcast customers will not be able to connect to your lightning node. This is how I learnt about such blocking. But not just lightning: any self-hosted website is effectively prohibited from running tor relay.
Just use another IPv4 address, right? They are so abundant after all /s. And seems Comcast hasn't yet heard of IPv6.

2023-05-29 17:07:07

Statists often use public goods as an argument. "Who would build the roads?" Great, I am convinced. Except... who would finance public goods like defence of Roman Sterlingov and of bitcoin devs? And who attacks them, making the defence necessary?
But I am afraid statists could justify some world government...
Perhaps I am cherry-picking, and, as a result of zealous US prosecutors, there are 1000 real criminals punished for every Roman Sterlingov. But it seems they have no good evidence against Roman, yet the case is going to trial. Zeal? More like indifference, if not outright abuse of power for personal gain, see the reports of revolving doors between Chainalysis and DoJ. And then there are feudal priviledges (aka qualified immunity) of police and prosecutors. So what motivates them to not abuse their power? Why should I believe this is an exception, and not a rule?

2023-05-07 13:23:07

Who the hell does a consolidation tx at 299 vB/sat???
https://mempool.space/tx/17ee8e0810f3d83f57c1717d0b8c9a203fc67a88773b724cf74a13c9c634ed45
And notice the last input - smaller (12377 sats) than additional fee needed to include it (68 * 299 = 20332 sats). Either this entity is dumb, or this is needed for some ordinals or similar. Actually, both alternatives are almost equivalent. 😁

2023-04-26 18:17:46

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Could you explain what is wrong with JoinMarket, please? I would expect that the fidelity bonds they use are an incentive to not do Sybil attack, to use just one identity. I see a problem if a taker does not care and takes offers with no or insufficient bonds. Or perhaps chainalysis and friends have enough money to put in the bonds, so it is not a real obstacle for them?

2023-04-16 17:31:40

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1. One block per 10 minutes means 6 blocks per hour, 24*6 blocks per day (on average). So 5000*6*24 = 720000 .
2. but to use directly lightning, you need to open a channel to your node, so you need to do one onchain transaction for every real, direct user of lightning. Otherwise you are not using lightning, you are using someone's service (for example walletofsatoshi's) and this someone maybe uses lightning. Custodial and easy to confiscate if the state feels threatened enough. Fedimint could be an interesting middle ground between custody and self-custody.
3. I rarely get replies, got kind of bored with nostr and did not check my account.

2023-04-16 17:14:02

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After listening to the whole thing: f*ck Chainalysis and similar state agencies masked as private companies. Avoid KYC like plague - this both protects you and messes up with Chainalysis "business model". Coinjoin and payjoin like crazy. And perhaps donate your doxxic change to Roman's defence at https://www.torekeland.com/roman-sterlingov/ . Sadly they use a static bitcoin address for donations.

2023-04-15 07:46:02

CD100: Disturbing Chainalysis Led Prosecution of Roman Sterlingov
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8jTkWzvbcw
To add insult to injury, the defendant must pay his lawyers and is not reimbursed by the state/prosecution even if he is found not guilty. Even if he wins, he loses at least money. And not sure how he is in pre-trial detention for more than 2 years. (But didn't listen the whole episode yet.)
And I know those are the lawyers speaking - the people paid to say good things about the defendant. But this happens in a jurisdiction where civil asset forfeiture is a thing, and where cases like Sklyarov, von NotHaus and Snowden took place (just some cases off the top of my head), so some doubt about prosecution's case is warranted.

2023-03-25 15:20:48

Greenpeace convinced me, I changed the code - applied semisol's ordisrespector patch on my node. Hope they are happy. 😁
#changethecode #ordisrecpector

2023-03-20 21:36:00

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Cheaper to just buy bitcoin, no? Unless you have access to super-cheap electricity, or are heating with electricity anyway.

2023-03-20 21:01:33

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re: judges have to prove jurisdiction - and if they refuse to do so? Who is going to compel them? Isn't it much easier for them to say "law says so, shut up"?
Can you cite one case where judge said "oh, you are right, no contract, no jurisdiction"? Because I've seen the opposite: rulings which ridicule those theories.
Basically, you are saying there is a big hole in the system. Why would they allow it? It would be such a precedent that the whole system would come down, and this consequence is obvious, so no judge is going to do it even if it was right thing to do.
Now, you may be absolutely right from moral point of view. But pragmatic POV says no way.

2023-03-20 20:22:05

People seem to think that hyperbitcoinization is near, but is bitcoin prepared for that? With 200 vB per channel opening, we get 1 vMB/200 = 5000 new channels / block, 720 000 new channels per day. More than a year to onboard just USA, and we already sacrifice on-chain JPEGs in this scenario. That would force people into custodial solutions, because transfer to self-custody would be too expensive or slow. This could even be exploited by governments: "look how expensive it is to open a channel, use a bitcoin bank" - which can do fractional reserve just like in the good old days.
Batch opening? If we go crazy with 100 channels per tx and just 1 input, we can get 28835 channels per block. More than 5x better, onboarding USA takes just 72 days - so some people have to wait 72 days for their paycheck. Still not good enough.
Channel factories to the rescue? Sure, once they are implemented...
TLDR: careful what you wish

2023-03-16 17:24:24

Proudly participating in #bankrun . And it reminded me of a campaing in Spanish newspapers back in July 2022. They claimed you may have to justify your cash withdrawal of more than 1000 euros, and have to justify it if more than 3000 euros. For example (google translated to english): https://www-lasprovincias-es.translate.goog/economia/banca/nuevo-limite-dinero-efectivo-hacienda-20220712204039-nt.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp .
If true*, it sounds outrageous in current situation. I am forced to suffer a counterparty risk at least in some conditions, like having more than 3000 eur in bank. And what justification is acceptable? If I may just say "I don't trust banks", then the whole justification thing is pointless. And if I may not? Ah, I have to risk and hope that banks do not fail or are bailed out. Well, I may also buy bitcoin, no limit AFAIK, so perhaps the tax agency is really trying to foster bitcoin adoption. 😀
* I have some doubts, none of the articles mentions concrete part of a law or regulation, and I found nothing concrete in the most obvious candidates (law on money laundering, some tax laws).

2023-03-13 19:17:45

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ok, I am confused, the linked note is about Strike

2023-03-13 19:16:03

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not everyone is happy with cashapp, and neither you would if your account was frozen for at least 4 days without good reason and with no customer support: https://iris.to/note1c0pd2w3v5wr09frvuy9hnmalmpz0nx2aq7ah50tuwl2nmm9h5yssr965ds
I do not want to argue, and I can see that btc from cashapp with all kyc and risk of random blocking is better than no btc. But robosats or bisq is even better.

2023-03-13 18:27:18

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subject: Criminal complaint against Binance and CZ admitted in Spain
(not visible in iris, so copying it here)

2023-03-13 18:25:18

https://www-eldiario-es.translate.goog/tecnologia/binance-sigue-lupa-justicia-juzgado-investiga-apropiacion-indebida-gigante-criptomonedas_1_10022967.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp
Note that this is a private criminal prosecution, it is clear from wording in original. The victim could have relied on public prosecution, and would not have to hire and pay his own lawyer then. Those fee may be reimbruised, but only if someone is convicted. So either the victim is pretty sure he will obtain coviction and be able to collect, or he is desperate and does not trust public prosecution.
The final paragraph of the article is revealing: Binance unblocked the funds after the criminal complaint, so basically admitted they had no good reason to have blocked it. I could say you should not send a cent to such scammers, but I would be preaching to the choir very probably.

2023-03-12 14:14:40

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I will not withdraw ... from bisq 😀.
But agree with your point.

2023-03-12 00:57:26

https://twitter.com/FrogNews/status/1634520800693821443?cxt=HHwWhoC99cKA_q4tAAAA

2023-03-11 23:56:01

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How can you say he was wrong? He said "probably". 😀

2023-03-11 20:56:34

Paid for groceries with btc, tomorrow I am going to make a perpetum mobile. Both things are equally impossible according to some people.
Now caveats. Didn't use btc directly, but bought a Carrefour gift card at Bitrefill. And paid around 3% extra - 25 eur gift card costs 25.83 euros. It used to be without this extra 3%, and they even used to give 1% reward, only spendable on Bitrefill - no longer. This depends on country and concrete shop, for example hotels.com seems to have 6% discount and 1% reward (didn't try that). And I also have some negative experience: Uber Eats gift cards just did not work, and I was too lazy to ask for refund. (Bitrefill has some refund policy, so theoretically should have been possible, but only 3 months after buying gift card.)
In the unlikely case someone wants to zap me, perhaps use me referral link instead: https://www.bitrefill.com/signup?code=1kpck6ja .

2023-03-10 08:42:28

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it means you should sell all your coins .... and buy them back non-kyc :)

2023-03-10 08:40:15

Great... LOOP coop-closed channel with me because most of sats had gone to their side and they could not wait mere 3 hours until I would start rebalancing it. I would not care and rant if this wasn't in such high-fee environment. I guess they do it automatically, and their script does not take into account the current on-chain fee.
At least some justice: the closing tx is still unconfirmed, perhaps even expulsed from mempool (becasue the channel tx output appears unspent). So they did not gain anything.

2023-03-09 13:28:12

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I have been using vim for a few years, mostly because I don't know how to exit it.

2023-03-09 12:22:10

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I thought this was a joke, especially after clicking the link and not seeing more, like en empty list of advantages of CBDCs . :)

2023-03-09 12:16:59

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I meant ordinary people in Germany.

2023-03-09 12:16:12

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Interesting, and quite surprising to me. I remember some video including a poll where ordinary people spoke how they dislike cards, prefer cash, citing privacy concerns. Blew my mind then. So until now I thought Germany would be the last (at least in Europe) to ban cash, not so sure now.

2023-03-09 09:38:38

Someone is testing Nostr's censorship resistance: @NostrFlix

2023-03-08 19:52:47

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the best reply in the same thread:
https://nostr.build/i/nostr.build_24b3cbcfac432a8ef59901fbe1d10ac9552d0120897dc436114dc8b76d427bff.png

2023-03-08 18:12:08

https://nostr.build/i/nostr.build_6f7b142f7f42bb31dc974455a12437ee82ba7d1b8af0caf7c23f0d8255ed9a80.jpg
Upper half inspired by https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2023/03/03/domino-effect-as-more-eu-institutions-move-to-ban-tiktok-on-work-devices .
Lower half should be obvious - all the talk about unhosted wallets, travel rule, KYC, ...
https://nostr.build/i/nostr.build_6f7b142f7f42bb31dc974455a12437ee82ba7d1b8af0caf7c23f0d8255ed9a80.jpg

2023-03-02 22:12:35

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I hate to ruin the party, but wallet of satoshi? A custodial solution? Could have done better with Phoenix or Breeze. I think it may cost you 1% of the received amount - you pay for the inbound channel - but should be worth it in the long run.
I am not using either mentioned wallet, but those 2 are recommended by Juraj Bednar himself: https://juraj.bednar.io/en/blog-en/2022/10/27/test-of-bitcoin-lightning-wallets/ .

2023-03-02 15:29:42

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But does this have anything to do with wabisabi coinjoin plugin? The video tells us just about some software (probably wasabi wallet) which in 2019 screwed up, reused addresses and joined multiple mixed outputs. Or it could have been the user himself who screwed up.
It does not mean that *another* implementation will share the same flaws. (I did not look, it could reuse code, but the video does not claim nor imply that.)

2023-03-02 14:28:32

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wow, in my case (several Spanish banks) I never had similar problem sending money, receiving money is what usually bothers them. I am talking here about trading on localbitcoins and later bisq.

2023-03-02 13:26:59

Putin is often portrayed as out of touch with reality (e.g. "3-day" special military operation), yet he gives relatively competent answer about cryptocurrencies. Guess he is just too busy reading Mastering Bitcoin and similar. :)
https://twitter.com/corybates1895/status/1627923172510126083?cxt=HHwWhsC-sYLgxZctAAAA

2023-03-01 19:20:38

Replacing Twitter is so boring. Let's replace stackexchange.com!(I was inspired by answering a question and receiving a zap for it. Needless to say, that would not be possible on stackexchange.) Anyone working on it? Guess not much is missing, just some tags/topics. And perhaps bounties with real money put in escrow, but could be overkill, would need some arbitrator to decide who gets it.

2023-02-28 22:07:55

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Can you deduct zaps you sent? 😀

2023-02-26 14:04:07

Spun up a new relay at wss://nostr.xmrk.mooo.com . The machine is a hosted one with 512 MB RAM, and using nostr-relay written in python and sqlite db. But I do not expect much interest, so should be enough for now.