{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","title":"Contra wrote","author_name":"Contra (npub14h…xjjzu)","author_url":"https://yabu.me/npub14hq5lgadtyy9dhvtszq46dnl0s0xwdddqr7e32rdqqhma8a4xhsspxjjzu","provider_name":"njump","provider_url":"https://yabu.me","html":"Dear Satoshi,\n\nIt's been a while.\n\nYou missed a few things.\n\nFirst, your internet money worked.\n\nThis has created enormous problems.\n\nThe dollar still exists, but now half my friends measure their net worth in sats and their self worth in follower count.\n\nSpeaking of followers, we built a decentralized social network called Nostr.\n\nIt was designed to eliminate gatekeepers.\n\nWithin six months we had influencers.\n\nWithin twelve months we had celebrities.\n\nWithin eighteen months we had people posting screenshots of engagement metrics while explaining why engagement metrics don't matter.\n\nProgress.\n\nA guy spent 10,000 BTC on two pizzas.\n\nEvery year we celebrate this event to remind ourselves that we're all financial geniuses.\n\nThe celebration consists primarily of calculating how much the pizzas would be worth now and suffering.\n\nYou'd love it.\n\nThe banks eventually adopted Bitcoin.\n\nNot because they were convinced.\n\nBecause there was a fee involved.\n\nThe same people who said you were dangerous now offer Bitcoin exposure in a retirement account.\n\nThe same people who said \"never trust banks\" own it through those accounts.\n\nEveryone claims victory.\n\nA software company borrowed billions of dollars to buy Bitcoin.\n\nThen more companies borrowed billions of dollars to buy Bitcoin.\n\nThen investors bought the stocks because they couldn't get enough Bitcoin.\n\nThen those companies borrowed more money and bought more Bitcoin.\n\nA generation of MBAs now believes debt is a mining rig.\n\nWe call this institutional adoption.\n\nYou probably called it something else.\n\nThe block size war ended.\n\nFor about six minutes.\n\nThen we discovered new reasons to fight.\n\nWe fought over ordinals.\n\nWe fought over inscriptions.\n\nWe fought over spam.\n\nWe fought over filters.\n\nWe fought over software clients.\n\nWe fought over whether fighting was good for Bitcoin.\n\nAt this point the fighting is one of Bitcoin's longest-running consensus mechanisms.\n\nNobody has changed their mind since 2017.\n\nThe arguments continue anyway.\n\nYour whitepaper was nine pages.\n\nBitcoin podcasts now require seasons.\n\nThe Monero people still tell us Bitcoin is surveillance.\n\nWe still tell them nobody can audit their supply.\n\nBoth sides believe mathematics is settling the argument.\n\nBoth sides post about it every day.\n\nNeither side appears confident.\n\nQuantum computers are supposedly coming.\n\nDepending on who you ask, they'll arrive next Thursday or sometime after the heat death of the universe.\n\nThe proposed solution is to move old coins.\n\nWhich brings us to you.\n\nA surprising number of people would like to secure your coins by confiscating them.\n\nFor safety.\n\nBitcoin governance has matured considerably.\n\nMy node validates every transaction on Earth.\n\nIt sits in a closet making tiny blinking lights.\n\nMy family believes it's a router.\n\nI've decided that's close enough.\n\nI memorized twelve words to become my own bank.\n\nI immediately stamped them into titanium, engraved backups into steel, created encrypted copies, distributed geographic redundancies, and developed a disaster recovery plan.\n\nBeing my own bank has become a part time job.\n\nNobody knows where their seed phrase is.\n\nEveryone insists they know exactly where it is.\n\nThese are not contradictory statements.\n\nOn Nostr, strangers send each other tiny amounts of Bitcoin called zaps.\n\nThis is revolutionary because we've finally monetized agreeing with each other online.\n\nPeople now earn money for posting pictures of coffee and saying \"stay humble.\"\n\nSome make a living doing this.\n\nCapitalism always finds a way.\n\nAlso, there are now AI versions of you.\n\nSeveral, actually.\n\nThey all sound confident.\n\nWhich means they're probably realistic.\n\nAs for me, I don't care about price.\n\nI checked it this morning.\n\nThen after breakfast.\n\nThen after saying I don't care about price.\n\nThen one more time to make sure I still didn't care.\n\nBitcoiners have become exactly what they feared: A global network of paranoid optimists with hardware wallets, strong opinions, and twenty browser tabs open.\n\nAnd somehow...\n\nyou were right.\n\nIt's still running.\n\nIt's still 21 million.\n\nNobody has managed to print more.\n\nTrust us, many have asked.\n\nThank you for disappearing.\n\nHad you stayed, we'd have blamed you for everything.\n\n**P.S.** If you're still around, send 21 sats from one of your wallets.\n\nYou would instantly settle thousands of arguments and create millions more.\n\n**P.P.S.** Please don't send 21 sats from one of your wallets.\n\nWe finally got the arguments organized.\n\nTruly Yours, Contra \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"}