Tootfinder

Prem ghinde thinks that Alan is killing bitcoin.
Alan is paid in government money, and saves in bitcoin. He's an imaginary straw man.
Alan doesn't plan to spend his bitcoin though. Just stack it until he sells it. And this doesn't build the bitcoin network.
Without transitions, when the block rewards run out, there will be no money for miners. Miners will need fees, which means transactions.
Since he's paying in bank money, he's funding bankers instead of miners. He's encouraging retail to accept bank money instead of miners and lightning liquidity providers.
Unlike Alan, Prem lives on the bitcoin standard. All in. Spending sats because he has no bank money to spend. It can be done, he insists. Today. Mostly by using gift vouchers bought with bitcoin.
He's sad that people here are buying drinks from the hotel with bank cards instead of lightning.
Stop watching the price, he says, it's only a measure of government money's collapse. Change your yardstick. Account in bitcoin. Dollars aren't even money, they are currency. If you must measure, do it against gold.
Since moving to el Salvador he had learned Spanish, until he even dreams in Spanish. Try to dream in bitcoin.
Every transaction is a vote, so stop voting for bank money.
I think the main trouble with this is that tax event in every purchase, and the fact my employer won't set a wage in bitcoin even if they would convert to bitcoin to pay me.
#bitcoin #bitfest

A panel on bitcoin treasury companies.
Because investment law makes it hard for institutions to buy bitcoin in their funds. You can't own BTC in you tax free ISA. So some companies that do hold bitcoin, notably microstrategy, became proxy investments. If you can't hold BTC you could maybe own a company that owns BTC instead.
Microstrategy started because it's ceo realized it's dollar treasury was being debased by dollar printing. So tried buying BTC instead, with fantastic success.
Copycat companies proliferated. They boomed and then busted. One panelist calls that a grift. A way to memeticly pump share price.
A line can be drawn between profitable companies just storing their profit in bitcoin Vs those raising debt to buy without having a profitable business.
Imagine a world transiting from using seashells for money to using gold coins. A company gathers seashells from investors to buy gold coins, which will do better than sea shells. Trouble is the next step where the company pays back it's investors with... More seashells.
If you own shares in the company, you do not own bitcoin. You'll just get more old fashioned bank money.
Still. It's worked as marketing, more people being convinced BTC has value.
If you do buy a treasury company, check it's bitcoin not "digital assets" including shitcoins.
#bitfest #bitcoin #bitcoinTreasuryCompanies

Day two introduced again by Mad bitcoins .
Then the history of art on bitcoin includes satoshi and his original logo, ASCII art in the Blockchain, Cassius coins with scratch off keys, these pictured images of fake satoshi and 200 logos.
Exploded from there, trading cards, the rare Pepe's.
What makes it bitcoin art?
Symbology. The logo. Religious symbology. Is it a cult?
Memes. Memes catch and go in a fashion which is unpredictable and fits the whole history to a timeline.
Art builds culture and heros proliferate bitcoin culture for all.
Art traditionally goes up in value but none of it seems to outpace bitcoin itself.
Some is for sale in the gallery but it'll unlikely be a better but then 30 percent discount bitcoin today 😆
#bitfest #art #bitcoin

Despite much opinion to the contrary, the government money we use is crappy.
I'm at bitfest in Manchester to find out if Bitcoin could be a better money.
It could hardly be worse.
The mood is still good, people are joking about recent devaluation rather than crying. Those who aren't all in are trying to buy more at the discount.
After an introduction by Mad Bitcoins, Joe Bryan explains the problem with government money.
He imagines an island on which two types of money are tried, with a dividing wall between them.
When economic problems hit, government can just print more money on the fiat side. Everyone now using money which is worth less. Distorting prices, inflating asset prices, making the rich (who hold assets) richer and the poor (who have to pay inflated prices) poorer. Driving wealth inequality.
On the hard money side, government must tax properly. Take in more from the rich rather than inflating to take it from the poor. Reducing wealth inequality.
On the government money side, the wealthy monitize houses, stocks, resources. Saving in money is impossible, its inflated away. So they save in assets and hording resources. Capital is misallocated. The youth can't afford houses. Poverty traps are caused. The only way out is printing more for benefits. Making it all worse. More economic crises, more printing. More government debt.
Eventually, the wall is broken. Government money people can save in the hard money instead. It reduces the value of government money further. More printing. More inflation.
Eventually, war. Funded by printed money.
The dollar is the best of a bad bunch all other government money is falling in value even faster.
I wonder, is bitcoin really this better money though? It's limited, hard, and can't be printed without energy investment.
I'm still unsure that fixing money fixes the world.
--
Note: "crypto" is mostly more like government money than bitcoin. It can be printed indefinitely by it's makers, does not cost it's makers to print. Crypto is usually just a scam people to get more bitcoin. Bitcoin is not crypto.
#bitfest #bitcoin

Britain is broken, in various ways. Could adopting bitcoin help it bounce back?
Renegade Investor thinks so.
Central banks printing money causes government debt and artificially low interest rates. Their monetary policy is political and done for bankers not for people.
Bitcoin monitory policy is fixed.
Lockdown during pandemic was funded by money printing, and caused a big inflation pump and government debt increase. It caused the current cost of living crisis.
Lockdown could have been impossible under a bitcoin standard.
In pounds the cost of living has gone up lots over the last decade. But in bitcoin it's gone down massively.
He thinks wealth redistribution is taking money from productive people and giving it to those who aren't increasing the country wealth. Here I disagree entirely. Wealth is reality being taken from the workers and given to the capital owners. We are redistributing wealth towards the rich currently. Taking the wealth created by workers to give to idle owners.
I also wonder, would limited government power be good? Did the lockdown save lives? Would it do do under a worse pandemic? Limited government power may be double edged.
Not sure why he thinks immigration is funded by government, rather than immigrants increasing the country wealth. Seems to think bitcoin could reduce immigration, which I find unbelievable and undesirable.
This talk I disagree with quite a lot.
#bitcoin #bitfest #britain

Mandleduck from zbd has a presentation on the history of gaming in bitcoin.
Original bitcoin nodes had a half built poker game built in, though removed later.
SatoshiDice was an early betting game, just betting on random numbers from the hash nonce.
7 years ago Mandleduck made saru tobi, an iOS game with bitcoin rewards which was initially accepted but the decision reverted by apple. 1 cent transactions on chain was never going to scale anyway.
Collectable gaming cards on chain were a fashion for a while.
The early things failed in 2018 when transaction fees spiked, and fees became more than gaming rewards could be. Most games moved to ETH, till it to became expensive.
Lightning network is more suitable than on chain transactions but solana and dedicated chains still rule really.
Still today gamers mostly reject bitcoin as a scam and of course app stores don't allow payments outside their own system. So things remain tricky.
#bitcoin #bitfest

One room at the conference center is dedicated to an art gallery, showing pictures and images inspired by satoshi and bitcoin. Some are impressive and colourful, but some I find myself ideology opposed to their point of view.
Bitcoiners as a group tend libertarian and capitalist. Is there common cause between them and me, a more anarchist and socialist tending individual?
I think we can agree that the government money system is broken, disagree about the aims of a replacement system, and disagree on the actual effects of a bitcoin based system.
Some say bitcoin is money for enemies. We do need to transact with people without having to agree with them.
#bitfest #bitcoin #art