A note inspired by 's latest newsletter: Dear Bitcoin evangalists, If you want to be effective, don't preach to the choir. When it **is relevant**, casually mention why you are excited about it to people in other areas of your life. Maybe that's your mountain biker crew where you're splitting the check at lunch. Perhaps you hear a friend gripe about prices going up. It does suck, and don't act like it doesn't affect you just because you save it bitcoin. Be humble. Acknowledge that. Bitcoin helps, but it could help a lot more if people accepted it more widely. Or maybe it's at a meeting of environmentalists who are concerns about the electricity usage of AI generating straining the grid, and the demand gas peaker plants that results. Or the rollout of solar being not as fast as needed/desired. If you are in any groups who are anti-fascist and sending money to others comes up, warn them that PayPal, Venmo and all the others might be watched by their county's leader. Advise sending cash in the mail, or bitcoin if it's a large amount or you want to get it there faster. If you know people who are anti-capitalist, find common ground. They don't like getting fleeced by the top 1%, and I bet you don't either. Undermining bankers ability to use your money for their personal gain is a common goal. Bottom line is to be humble. Only mention it if it happens to come up, don't act like it'll 100% solve every problem, and make it easy for them to ask questions. Try it and see if you don't have more genuine conversations. If I'm wrong, you can always go back to the hard sell.

This year, I'm automating self-hosting. My goal is to have all the services we use done by the end of the year. Nextcloud, jitsi, gitlab, matrix, element, bind, djbdns, the PKI/CA server... all of it. Sone of the things I've done have already starting to get reused. It's getting easier One I've got that rock solid foundation, it'll be time to rip. 🔥

How do you make your case to people that freedom tech is important if they don't already get it? I'm talking about the people who aren't having transactions blocked by financial institutions, the people who aren't getting kicked off platforms for theit opinions. How do you reach those individuals?

Yeah, it's the graphs that get me. The bitcoin one has the same spike in 2023 as the USD, but before and after that it's pretty solidly around 4K. The USD graph has that spike, and them comes back down and then goes up again, even higher, and now it's starting to come back down. The volitility looks lower on the bitcoin side, which is exactly the opposite of what they were trying to illustrate. And in 2023, with less than 2 years worth of data, they were reasonably convincing. When in doubt, zoom out.

This blog post has not aged well, or it has, depending on your perspective. https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2022/06/buying-eggs-with-bitcoins/

Well, Plebeian market is dead. Can't say the word "password" on there, no replies to my bug request, no comments on my merge request, no notifications when someone makes a purchase, other than some JSON that goes to the store npub instead of my personal one. Too bad too. It LOOKS nice, but not being functional ia a dealbreaker for me.

I gotta say, having a heat index of 43°C really does slow me down when working outside. Many breaks to come in to cool off and stay hydrated. Be careful out there, fam. Heat exhaustion/stoke is no joke. And one you get it once, you're much more likely to get it again.

I find it frustrating that people make guides on self-hosting that say to use a 3rd party service instead of self hosting that same service. For example, this one doesn't even mention that there is a choice. It's just like go to this webaite and set up a lightning address. https://community.start9.com/t/how-to-set-up-your-start9-lightning-node-via-lnbits-with-an-lightning-address-from-lnaddress-com/507 Re:

Are you Y2Q compliant? Will is happen by April 14, 2030?

GD mates. I'll try to fill that time between you GM and GN posts with this lovely picture I snapped today. Or is it AI generated? Can you even tell?

AFAIK, BTCPay is just payment processing. It doesn't have product listing, shoppping cart, order placement, tracking, etc. I'm not familiar with ZeusPah, but I know Zeus is just a wallet. Fine for selling things at a swap meet, but not for online orders. I'm not familiar with Zaprite, so I'll put that on my list of things to research

Thanks. It had been unstable andnow it looks like it's now gone from unstable to completely non-operational. ☹️ I've been trying to find an alternative and ruled out magic web store, superstore, goodstr, plebeian market, and cypher space. Next one up is shopstr.store. If that doesn't pan out, I guess I'll just have people email me for an invoice until conduit market is released. I'll re-double my efforts. 🫡

Agreed. Most of the products I see posted are even more than the most expensive products in the store. Presumably people are willing to pay those prices more than once to try it. I sell devices for slightly less in Bitcoin than fiat, and that pays me far less than minimum wage. I'm not in it for profit though. I'm in it primarially because I want the devices and secondarially so other people can have nice things too.

Not exactly. They said "they came to know that some of the bitcoin moving through the service was derived from criminal activity, and they kept marketing and operating the service anyway." [1] The core issue of the case is that they were helping criminals commit crimes. If they just made a wallet and didn't know how people were using it, that's a different situation. FinCEN said they did not require a license, so it seems pretty clear that this is a plea deal. Plead guilty to the lesser charge, even if you are innocent, and end the stress of not knowing your fate. The prosecuters get a basically guaranteed win, the defendents probably get the prosecution to recommend some prison sentence less than the maximum and the judge decides whether to respect that recommendation or not. I'm not saying I am happy about the outcome, or that I agree that they are in fact guilty of the particular charge they are pleading guilty to; I'm just explaining the case and what developers in the US can learn from this case. If you are considering making wallet software, please get a lawyer, no matter what country you are in, whether you have control of the funds or not, are offer privacy features, etc. The whole thing is a lightning rod of controversy, seemingly unclear laws, and far too many jurisdictions. Or don't get a lawyer. I'm not the boss of you. 😄 [1] https://bitcoinmagazine.com/news/samourai-wallet-developers-plead-guilty