Implementing ENS would be nice - but that would ideally require a separate NIP, because through NIP-05 it would be dependent on one centralized gateway like eth.xyz. A custom NIP would allow you to use your own Ethereum node or have several of those gateways set up for redundancy at least

NIP-05 is weird... It's supposed to be a mapping to a DNS identifier, so it sounds logical to use DNS for that - but no, you have to use HTTP/S and a well-known file. I guess I understand that it's more universal through well-known, but it still seems weird to me Or am I missing something?

Satoshi wrote: "I'm sure that in 20 years (2030) there will either be very large transaction volume or no volume." We're 15 years in. Fees cover 0.5-1% of security budget. That's "no volume" territory. 5 years left. How exactly do we get from "no volume" to "very large transaction volume" on Bitcoin L1? Because Lightning Network, , and every off-chain solution is actively reducing on-chain volume - the exact opposite of what Satoshi said we need. Please explain it to me 🤔 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=48.msg329#msg329

The Security Budget issue and how the Bitcoin community approaches it is a mystery to me. When I started with Bitcoin, whenever I didn't understand something, there was always some logical explanation. I just had to re-read the whitepaper, study the code, understand the Austrian school of economics, etc. Bitcoin taught me that "code is law" and predictability is its greatest strength. But then I came across this Security Budget problem. Bitcoin's security costs billions annually, paid through block subsidy. The code says this subsidy goes to zero. The plan is fees will replace it. But after 15 years, fees cover only 0.5-1% of the security budget. I went looking for the explanation. I re-read the whitepaper - nothing. I studied the economics - the math doesn't work. I asked the community - and encountered something I'd never seen before: pure cognitive dissonance and zero logical answers. "You're spreading FUD." "Security budget doesn't exist." "Miners aren't CREATING coins, they're RELEASING them." "That's not a problem at all." This was the first really serious cognitive dissonance I encountered in the Bitcoin community. It forced me to think: do I want to stay in a community where identity matters more than truth?

That "smooth transition to fee-based security"? It's not happening. After 15 years, fees still only cover 0.5-1% of the security budget. Nobody actually wants to use Bitcoin blockspace. The transition isn't smooth, it's imaginary. Isn't this a beautiful irony? A system designed to eliminate trust in institutions requires you to trust that future Bitcoin users will somehow solve a problem that current Bitcoin users refuse to acknowledge.

The uncomfortable truth: Bitcoin surviving only thanks to inflation of its money supply Without printing new bitcoins, it would have no security

You, as one of the authors of Paralelní Polis, had a unique opportunity to build a culture in the Bitcoin community - to explore how we coordinate together across differences, to demonstrate what freedom actually looks like in practice. Build bridges. Instead, we have tribalism and ideological gatekeeping. And people which supported authoritarians like Roman and embraced cronyism. Simply put, there is no morality or culture.

few understand this

I see it as natural and inevitable. Every truly open and unregulated market is initially abused by bad actors before the ecosystem ossifies, creates self-regulatory mechanisms, and people understand the nuances.

Sixteen years of Bitcoin. Imagine what we could have built by now—a whole generation raised thinking about decentralized finance, cooperative economics, tools for human flourishing outside state and corporate control. Instead we got another religion. Another in-group/out-group dynamic. Another vehicle for greed wearing the costume of revolution. The promise died somewhere between "be your own bank" and "have fun staying poor"

If you think people will suddenly care about censorship-resistance when they arrive on Nostr, you're delusional. They don't care now, they won't care then, and the protocol can't make them care. Culture eats architecture for breakfast.

//Bitcoin Culture is Dead: How Institutional Capture Killed the Revolution I discovered Bitcoin in 2013, and it felt like witnessing the birth of something genuinely revolutionary. Here was a tool that could enable truly free markets, permissionless exchange, and economic sovereignty outside state control. The promise wasn't just digital gold—it was the foundation for an entire ecosystem of voluntary exchange. By the time I registered with BitShares and later MakerDAO in 2017, I saw the natural evolution: programmable money, decentralized stablecoins, synthetic assets—all the financial instruments people actually need to participate in global markets. These weren't betrayals of Bitcoin's vision; they were its fulfillment. They offered people practical tools for economic freedom, not just a store of value to HODL. //The Betrayal But Bitcoin culture chose a different path. Instead of celebrating these innovations as expansions of unregulated markets, the community turned hostile. Those who once championed permissionless innovation began gatekeeping what counted as "real" cryptocurrency. They built walls where there should have been bridges. I watched this transformation personally within the Czech crypto community between 2020-22. The pretense of caring about broader crypto culture evaporated. What emerged was pure tribalism—Bitcoin good, everything else scam. The community finally stopped pretending they cared about freedom and went full orthodoxy. //The Philosophical Failure Bitcoiners had the opportunity to be moral and cultural guides—to help people navigate new financial tools while maintaining principles of sovereignty and decentralization. They could have been amplifiers of unregulated markets, celebrating every innovation that gave people more tools for economic freedom. Instead, they chose the path of the ostrich. Heads buried in sand, fingers in ears, chanting "Bitcoin fixes this" at every challenge. When DeFi offered people access to financial instruments previously gatekept by traditional finance, Bitcoiners called it a scam. When stablecoins gave people in unstable economies a practical tool for daily use, Bitcoiners dismissed them as shitcoins. They stopped asking what people actually need. They stopped caring whether their solutions addressed real problems. The only question became: "Does it serve Bitcoin?" Everything else—utility, adoption, solving actual use cases—became secondary to narrative maintenance and price performance. The irony cuts deep: a community that once embodied cypherpunk principles of individual sovereignty now demands ideological conformity. A movement built on questioning authority now has its own orthodoxy, complete with heresy trials for anyone who builds on other protocols. //What Remains Bitcoin the technology may continue. Bitcoin the cultural movement—the one that inspired me in 2013, that promised liberation through technology—that's dead. It died when curiosity became heresy, when innovation became competition, and when serving people became less important than serving the protocol's price. Yes, philosophical depth still exists in Bitcoin—there are still cypherpunks in the margins asking hard questions and building for freedom rather than number-go-up. But here's the tragedy: when those people need visibility, funding, conference stages, or development resources, they have to interface with the institutions that actually control Bitcoin's trajectory. And those institutions—the conferences, the media platforms, the development funding—are completely captured by the commercial/institutional layer. Money and power concentrate around figures who explicitly represent institutional capture, people like Saylor who literally advocate for Bitcoin's integration into the existing power structure. So you get this bifurcation: rich philosophical discourse happening in the margins while the money and power concentrate around institutional capture. What remains is a cargo cult, worshipping the form while abandoning the substance. Then when it's time to "represent Bitcoin" to the world, which layer gets amplified? The Longreads philosophers or the BTC Prague conference keynotes? The answer reveals everything. The revolution didn't fail—it was captured. The cypherpunks are still there, but they're not the ones with the megaphone. And most Bitcoiners can't tell the difference.

"A society committed to the institutionalization of values identifies the production of goods and services with the demand for such. Education which makes you need the product is included in the price of the product. School is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the society as it is. In such a society marginal value has become constantly self-transcendent. It forces the few largest consumers to compete for the power to deplete the earth, to fill their own swelling bellies, to discipline smaller consumers, and to deactivate those who still find satisfaction in making do with what they have. The ethos of nonsatiety is thus at the root of physical depredation, social polarization, and psychological passivity." - Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society, 1970 https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ivan-illich-deschooling-society

I hope someone is already working on this :)

Sure! Love all of these shadow libraries Now that Spotify is backed up, I hope someone will create a music streaming player with a modern user interface... 20 years ago spotify started thanks to P2P, so we could go back and do it again and better, the technology is much further :)

Z-Library is awesome project. All ebooks you want, simple UI, decentralized frontend, IPFS, resisting governments around the world... I recommend! #ebooks #piracy https://z-lib.fm / https://z-library.sk/ / https://1lib.sk/ "Your gateway to knowledge and culture. Accessible for everyone."

This was fun collab https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberland

this is a very bluesky vibe, making lists of "uncomfortable" people. be careful with this

When Živel was created in 1995, I was still very young - I wouldn't discover it for a few more years. But I often find myself imagining what those early '90s must have felt like for adults. People were discovering new freedoms after the fall of communism, beginning to explore the world beyond what they'd known. Somehow, all that energy found its way into Živel. It became a gathering point, concentrating everyone in our small country who was hungry for this kind of discovery.

You're right! :) It was a direct reaction to Mondo 2000 (with Ray Gun graphics), a mixup of the best form and content of the 90s

https://resonantcomputing.org/

One of the main elements that shaped my view of culture and aesthetics was the Czech cyberculture zine "Živel" Crazy typography, hacking, raves, futurism, porn, psychedelics, occultism.. Gave zero fucks about readability, periodicity, or profit. Basically a DIY utopia for post-communist kids.