European nations that want to have a chance at remaining sovereign need to exit the E.U. Before it’s too late.

So apparently #Claude desktop silently installs a bridge on you machine between all Chromium based browsers. So if you using something like Brave to not share your data with Google, you probably shouldn’t use Claude desktop. #privacy

Because we want to protect the children living in Utah we need to verify the identity of every Utah resident, then because we want to protect the children of Utah who now use a VPN, we need to verify the identity of anyone regardless of where they live across the globe. #Privacy #AgeVerification #DigitalID https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/04/utahs-new-law-regulating-vpns-goes-effect-next-week

So websites either will need to verify every visitor identity (not just those living in Utah) or block all known VPNs.

And this after the experimental Covid-19 shots were mandated on US troops. Who is steering the US ship?

Unfortunately mass-adoption is unlikely to happen in this timeframe. Once the surveillance grid will be in place the only alternative left to acquire #Monero will be great OpSec + decentralized P2P marketplace + anonymized crypto or other goods and services as a mean of exchange. The barrier to entry will be high and only motivated and capable people will able to acquire it. Enforcement of the surveillance grid will impact current holders as well. The utility of #XMR is greatly dependent on growing the user base (people using it to buy and sell things) which will be constrained by this grid. This is the crypto/Monero dilemma for its use as a medium of exchange. To get a critical mass of users interested in using Monero for payment we need fiat currencies to become restrictive enough to entice people in seeking alternatives, however alternatives are harder to adopt in an environment in which the usage for fiat currencies is restricted. Hence, the only way to break this loop is to tie the economic system to a decentralized currency.

I see, but prediction markets are not so different from direct democracy, at least it relies on the same mechanism of relying on collective intelligence for decision making. The only difference is the addition of a direct financial incentive. Although we can argue that the financial incentive is already built in the price of Bitcoin so people would try to make decisions that benefit their vested interest in Bitcoin.

« Futarchy is a form of government proposed by economist Robin Hanson, in which elected officials define measures of national wellbeing » « Elected officials » - unless you have a different definition, futarchy certainly has a component of representative democracy. Powarchy seems like the current status.

No it wouldn’t, but I think mining centralization is acceptable as long as transactions cannot be censored. But when it becomes to governance, delegating this power to centralized mining is a dead end. Initially, mining wasn’t supposed to become so centralized. Bitcoin needs to upgrade to proof-of-human-work for governance only.

It seems that what you’re proposing here is to implement a representative democracy on Bitcoin. I would be more in favor of a direct democracy that is well suited to decide the future of a public good such as Bitcoin. Elective democracy is more prone to corruption and while I agree that the plebs is not all knowing in all matters, collective intelligence is often superior to the intelligence of one corruptible committee of men. Open debates between experts would certainly be an important component to maintain. Participating in a process of direct democracy is optional and would require active participation from the node runners so it’s not everybody that would show up to have their voice heard, only those with a honest interest in improving the protocol.

I’m not sure I understand your point. Governance in #Bitcoin is stuck because the mining power is too centralized and miners don’t really care about politics, they just want to make money for securing the network. Now imagine that governance would be decided by node runners and that to an eligible node runner you just need to prove that you are a unique human to prevent Sybil attacks. Would it be a bad way to govern the protocol?