There is a rather common misconception that all open-source software is considered freedom software.

When people speak of "open-source" software, they are referring to a computer program's source code being "open" to the public. This means that anyone is able to review the code that the program is executing on the machine.

While it is important that our software is open-source, it is important to know the difference between "open-source" and "freedom software". The open-source movement aim's to achieve one thing, while the freedom software movement aims to achieve another.

One very important distinction: All freedom software is completely open-source, but not all open-source software is completely free.

When we speak of "freedom software", we mean free as in 'freedom', not free as in 'free food'.

In order for a piece of software to be considered free (as in freedom) it needs to give users the 4 essential freedoms:

• Freedom 0: The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose.
• Freedom 1: The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish. (Access to the source code is a precondition for this.)
• Freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others.
• Freedom 3: The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others. By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. (Access to the source code is a precondition for this.)

If just one of these freedoms is not met, the piece of software in question is not truly free. Instead, it is considered to be restricted, non-free, proprietary software.


As many of you have probably gathered, our decentralized protocol is made entirely of free (as in freedom) software. Every line of bitcoin's code is completely and totally free. All users are allotted the four freedoms mentioned above. Everyone is free to run the program as they wish (freedom 0), everyone is free to study how the code works and change it so that it operates as you wish (freedom 1), everyone has the freedom to redistribute copies of the code (freedom 2), and everyone has the freedom to distribute their modified copies of the bitcoin core software (freedom 3).

Proprietary software severely limits users and what they are able to do with any given program. This is why we need to advocate free (as in freedom) software beyond our use/advocation of bitcoin.

Instead of just freeing our money, let's aim to free our digital lives as well.


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For more information on the goals of freedom software, visit fsf dot org.

No its literally an April Fools joke my man. He does this every year!

I had more than half a bitcoin sitting in a wallet before realizing that I had it last year. I had it from back in 2015 trying to purchase a fake IDs.

I think this is a bit of an emotional post. Let us not forget the platform he helped put crypto on last year.

Many people aren't happy about the billionaire tax. The 20% proposed by Biden is quite extreme. While yes that have an absurd amount of money, it doesn't entirely mean they have to agree with giving it away.

Most times just tinker with freedom software. I'm always trying to build my own versions of different tools.

It seems like it starts you off at 100 and works your way from there. I think I may have missed my first questions but not sure.

The IQ system is kinda funny though.

Forum software please

That is sort of the big issue. The issue isn't their ability to initiate a bitcoin transaction, the issue is exchanging that bitcoin into fiat. Most of the off/on ramps are exchanges that use SWIFT to send customers their funds in the form of fiat currency.

Needless to say, completely evading these sanctions will not be an easy task for Russia. However, I have a feeling they will find a way.

People just don't understand how bad it could get if Satoshi were to actually be identified. People don't understand the media sh*t-storm that would ensue from such an event. Were this to happen, we would see an attack on bitcoin like nothing we have ever seen. And now.. they would have a face to attach to it.

Regardless of our internal curiosities, we have to understand this is not a can of worms we want to open. Let Satoshi remain a legend.

I've posted this before and I'll post it again.

It would be great news to see another country adopt bitcoin as legal tender. As long as they are transparent about what they are doing. The people need to have a choice in this matter. As many have expressed in the past, the way El Salvador processed it's groundbreaking legal tender law was shady to some degree. I think had the people been aware of this move and by extension given a choice, El Salvador would never have drawn this criticism.

Either way, it would be incredible news to know another country is treating bitcoin as legal tender.

I have a strong feeling many governments will do their best to keep bitcoin from being the primary medium of exchange. Their efforts will be in the name of their future CBDC. They can't have a successful digital currency when bitcoin and its LN is processing the majority of the transactions.

I think that bitcoin remains a strong store of value for the foreseeable future. However, I am not sure how long it will take for the 'medium of exchange' use case to truly take hold.

If I recall correctly, VanityGen still hasn't updated its prices in the past few years. It used to be relatively cheap to use this service. However, until they update their bitcoin price to match what the market price is..you could be paying several hundred dollars for your vanity address.

I also messaged the generator's creator asking about adjusting the prices, but he/she didn't seem too interested in this.

While my journey with bitcoin started back in late 2014, I recently surpassed one year of being part of this forum.

Needless to say, the many contributors to this forum were successful in changing some of my viewpoints with life and with currency.

When I had joined this forum, my wallet was stuffed with loads of ‘promising’ altcoins. Not on the level of my btc holdings, but enough that my present self wouldn’t be too pleased. Reading the various discussions of what currency is and why bitcoin IS what it is, enabled me to see through the VCapitalist garbage that is permeating the web.

This forum also gave me the blessing of perspective; What’s considered a lot to one person, could certainly be considered nothing to another, and vice versa.

I hate to namedrop, but if I had to list some of my favorite personalities on the forum, I would say: mk4, BlackHatCoiner, franky1, pooya87, LoyceV, Welsh, and NeuroticFish. All these accounts have added a considerable amount of value to my experience here.

I look forward to the following years to see what other great discussions unfold.

Thanks for a killer first year!

I donated a small amount of bitcoin to Ukraine when the disaster first started taking place.

Luckily, I was not one of the folks that donated to the scam address under the guise of being a way to donate to them.

If they are going to implement their law in the same fashion as El Salvador did, I will not be a huge fan.

Let me be clear; I love what El Salvador is trying to do, but what they did was clearly not in regard to the people's interests. In El Salvador, this was a bill that was passed in the dead of night, without the people of El Salvador knowing what was really going on.

If Malaysia intends on making bitcoin legal tender, I hope they do it in a more open and transparent way.

In some ways he is correct. I think the statement is a bit dramatic, but in essence, he is stating that banning bitcoin would be a huge blow to technological advancement. While I do agree with this, I don't think that bitcoin's impact on the world will be quite like the internet.

The internet enables people from across the world to share information in an instant. Bitcoin is a decentralized monetary network that serves to take the middle man out of fiscal exchanges.

Two different things imo.

Any errors in your send address will result in your bitcoin(s) being inaccessible.

This is why it is good practice to double check your address you pasted by looking at the first 5 and the last 5 characters in the address.

I can't stress it to you enough that any error in the send address will result in you losing your bitcoin.

Comparing these two is like comparing apples to elevators.

Bitcoin is a distributed ledger intended on providing fast, cheap, and transparent transactions.

Ethereum is a smart-contract platform that has completely different principles, goals, and tokenomics.

The issue is that ethereum is trying to solve issues that can be solved in a much more efficient way without the use of ANY blockchain. Bitcoin's only issue to solve was the double spending problem and taking the governments power to control/manipulate the native currency.

Ethereum is completely and totally theoretical and has not been shown to provide any real use as of today.

I have to say, it has become quite impressive how well some of these fakes have been crafted.

It's funny though, if your understand anything about how wallets/exchanges work, you would have never fell for it in the first place. Good thing wallet devs/exchanges do a decent job warning people about these threats.