Imagine you have two gold coins in front of you, in your possession. They are both the same size and weight, they both have the same denomination stamped on them (say $10 for the sake of argument). And they are both legal tender for $10.

Only, you know very well that one of them is pure gold and the other is gold plated tungsten.

Your government made it into law that your gold coins are both legal tender for $10.

Only, you know one has more gold than the other.

You will likely spend the gold plated one and save the pure solid good one.

This is known as Gretchen's law: bad monry chases out good money.

People will always save the money they consider valuable and spend the money they consider less valuable.

But based on your logic, gold plated tungsten is better money than gold because people don't use the good coin to buy stuff.

If I have a dollar and a Bitcoin in my pocket, I will spend the dollar and save the bitcojn. BecausecI know the dollar is worth less, it loses value the longer I hold it. But the bitcoin gains value the longer I hold it. I spend the bad currency, and I save the good currency.

But this Gretchen's law only works so long as you can find an idiot to take your gold plated tungsten and your paper dollar. Eventually, you will run out of suckers to pass the bad money to. And that is when we will all have to spend our BTC.

And at the rate inflation is going, suckers will get very difficult to find in 20 years from now.

Guys.
Here is my last transaction with 50sat/byte miner fee:
dc75034724813aac27dcce42a79bd71e06399be45577fa8795c509db0cafbe58

It confirmed in a single block. As expected after I manually estimated the miner fees based on this graph:
https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC,2h,count,40

But somehow my Electrum wallet (on both Windoze and Android) estimates 3x more miner fee at 150sat/byte for 2 blocks ETA.

And I looked on the net for other miner fee estimators. They all are claiming an estimated miner fee of 100sat/byte for two blocks ETA. See for yourself here:

This one claims 220sat/byte for two blocks confirmation:
https://btc.network/estimate

Same with this one:
buybitcoinworldwide.com/fee-calculator

And this one overshoots by 3x with 163sat/byte:
https://bitcoinfees.net

What is going on here? Why is everyone overestimating miner fees?

And where would I be able to find a reliable fee estimator?

I run software that trades on p2p exchange HodlHodl. I need a way to get reliable fee estimation for 2 blocks ETA. Any suggestions?

*bump

So nobody here is located in El Salvador?

OP is simply making the argument that money needs to have intrinsic value in order to be money. That the money needs to have some other purpose outside of being used as a means of exchange.

I strongly disagree.

I would argue that apples make a poor means of exchange. I don't want to dump 5 truckloads of apples at the dealership to buy my next car.

By far, in human history, the most popular money has been good and silver. And those basically have had no real purpose other than being money until recently. And I have to stress that wearing gold jewelry is completely useless unless you want to show of how much money you have.

Not to mention fiat which has absolutely no value outside if being money. Unless you run out of toilet paper, I suppose.

All it takes for something to be used as money is for you and me to agree it has value. If you sell your bike to me, and I offer you 100 units of whatever, if you don't recognize that my units have value, than there is no deal.

My Canadian $ is worthless in Honduras. Your US $ is worthless in Russia or North Korea. But Bitcoin has value anywhere you go in the world. If you don't think it has value, you get to keep your bike and I keep my Bitcoin. Simple as that.

In the end, I like choice. So you have the choice to use your fiat that constantly loses value over time, and basically controlled by someone else looking over your shoulder for every trabsaction.
Or, you have the choice to use Bitcoin and put on your big boy pants when you spend it.

It's up to you. Nobody's got a gun to your head forcing you to use Bitcoin.

In the past, you were forced to use the censorship surveillance money. You had no choice. Now you do.

Here is what you have to understand about money. Money is nothing more than a means of exchange.

You have a chicken, and I got a slab of bacon. I trade my bacon for your chicken. This is barter. The next step up is to use something we all agree has a value. Because if you are Jewish or Muslim, my bacon has no value to you. I can't buy your chicken with my bacon.

So money is the next step up. As long as everyone agrees it has a value, it can be used as a means of exchange. It can be money if we all agree it has a value.

Now, when I trade my bacon for your chicken, I can't turn around a week later and decide I want my bacon back. I can't reverse one side of the transaction just because I found out the chicken has stinky poop, or it might be sick, or something.

So if I trade my silver coins or my bitcoin for your chicken, why should I be able to reverse my side of the transaction a week later?

The only way a reversible payment makes sense is if you make a plea of stupidity. That you are so stupid with your money, that you need someone else to control your transactions and reverse them any time you get too stupid.

Until 40 years ago, almost everyone paid with cash, irreversible payment, since the dawn of times.

It's only in recent human history that this ridiculous notion of consumer protection emerged.

Consumer protection and reversible transactions are the arguments the banks make: trust us with your money. "We hold and control your money for you and we can reverse or block some transactions from ever occuring. And of course, we promise we will never abuse this power." Right?

When you buy a carpet for your house, the carpet store can't come in and take their carpet back a week later. So why should you be able to take your money back? Are you really that dumb, you can't be trusted to buy your own carpet like a grown up?

This idea of reversible payments stems from socialism. The idea that the merchant us evil and bent on robbing you of your money while you are just the innocent and pure consumer who needs to be protected against the evil merchant.

You need to consider that there is a HUGE cost and potential for abuse when we make it possible for you to buy my bacon and take your payment back a week later.

Just tell the fudster to buy USD or Doge. They both have unlimited issuance. He's be happy with that.
Better yet, make sand beach the new currency. Enough of that to work as a currency where I am

Her guys. I'm looking to move out of Canada and into El Salvador to start a Bitcoin business. Or rather to greatly expand the one I have here in Canada.
One problem I have is I am not able to find a fast and affordable source of Bitcoin inside El Salvador.
I would need a supplier of Bitcoin in large quantities. Probably around 50k per week to start, and more as the business grows.
Fast turn around is important. I need to turn fiat into BTC inside 2-3 days, or faster. The faster the better. I can't really be sending out 10 days long bank wires to US exchanges.

And a low margin is also vital. Preferably below 1% margin above spot.

Is anyone here inside El Salvador and able to tell me where I could get such a supplier?

I hear I could get my Bitcoin from Strike as they are now located in El Salvador. But for the life of me, I have been unable to contact Strike on this matter.

Any help from someone inside El Salvador would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers, PepeLapiu

And if the only way to get both inbound and outboard liquidity opening a channel where both sides commit BTC, where can I find someone to connect with me?

The way I understand it is I can open a channel with a well connected node and commit 10 BTC to it while not asking the other side to commit any coin.

Once I have sold my 10 BTC, I can go to my supplier and buy more coin and have it sent to my LN node. I imagine if all my 10 BTC are sold, I can top up with 10 more BTC. Is this accurate?

Hey guys. I am a p2p trader. I automated my trades on HodlHodl and I am now the top trader on there.
https://hodlhodl.com/users/PepeLapiu

I am now looking to expand to Robosats. But I don't know much about Lightning.
I just opened an account with Voltage to run my own node in the cloud.
Now a question about liquidity.

Say I open a channel with Bob. And I commit 10 BTC to the channel and Bob commits none.
I understand this way, I can only send BTC, not receive any.
But say I send 6_BTC out of the 10 BTC I commited. Does that give me a 6 BTC space in my channel where I can now receive 6 BTC?
Or is the only way to receive Bitcoin to find someone to commit coin to our channel?

Hey guys. I have designed a script to automate my trades on a p2p platform. So that buyers can buy from me at a low price without any input from me. So far it's been really successful. It's growing faster than I had imagined. Here is my profile and offers on HodlHodl:
https://hodlhodl.com/users/PepeLapiu

With rising miner fees likely due to these new NFTs on the BTC blockchain, it's becoming obvious to me I should spread my wings to RobotSats so I can do p2p trading on LN. I think LN will grow a lot with fees going up.

But I have some problems and limitations, and some questions. Here they are:

1) My understanding is that LN is better suited for smaller tx, not so much for larger ones. Would it be a problem to send and receive 0.1 BTC on LN? What can I do to push back against those restrictions?

2) I believe if you are not running your own node, your LN sats are all custodial. And my living situation doesn't allow me to run my own node. Is there a safe way to use someone else's node for a lot of coin coming in and out? Like 0.3 BTC per day, and 2 BTC per week?

Hey guys. On my Win10 Electrum wallet, when I click the green circle at the bottom left to bring up the balance. If I close that balance window, it makes a sound. A window closing sound, I guess.

Any way to turn that off? Because I built a bot with AHK and Python to do some trades for me. The bot checks my wallet balance every minute or so. And so I keep hearing that sound all day long every minute.
How so I turn off that window closing sound?

Message forwarded. But since I can't understand it or compile anything, she probably will be as lost as I am.

Okay, that doesn't help much. How can she optain the server IP?

Okay guys. Here is what she told me:
Is there a way I can show her how to obtain her IP address and port number? Keep in mind she is no expert at this stuff, and I am not a whole lot ahead of her in that regard.

Hey guys.
A good friend got herself a full node together with an LN node.
She offered me to connect my wallet (Electrum on Win10) to her node.
How do I do that?

Not interested in LN for now, but how I do I connect to her BTC on chain node?

What gives Bitcoin it's valuebis the blockchain. If you take it off the blockchain all you have is a worthless random bunch of code.
Who you gonna trust to back a physical coin with a Bitcoin? What are you going to do with the physical coin when you put the bitcoin back online?
And why do you think there would be a use case for a physical bitcoin? You plan on trading it on a dessert island with no internet?
If you want anonimity with your coin, use the Lightning network for total privacy.
There is a reason why the IRS is offering private contractors a ton of money to break the privacy features of Monero and LN.
Asking for a physical Bitcoin to use in the physical world is like asking for a Japanese Yen to be used in Congo.
We already have enough of those bitcoin derivatives, we don't need an other one to keep down the price of Bitcoin.

The way I look at it is every country has it's own money and central bank. Now the internet has it's own money and central bank: Bitcoin.
You want to buy a cup of Joe in your town with Bitcoin?
In my book that's like trying to buy a New York hot dog with Japanese Yen. The Yen was not designed to do that, neither was Bitcoin

In think we should focus on Bitcoin's use case and design purpose: internet money. Not Japanese or American money, internet money.

Asking Bitcoin to become physical is like asking PornHub actresses to kiss you through your screen. Neither were designee to do that.

You want money you can touch, but you already have that. Let it be the money you can touch. Biitcoin finds you creepy with your grubby hands trying to grope it.

Maybe at some point Bitcoin will be 'street money' you can use at your coffee shop. But I think we are getting ahead of ourselves here. We are at the very early stages of adoption. Let Bitcoin be internet money and keep your greasy fingers in your pocket. Bitcoin doesn't like to be fondled like that.
 

Sooooo.....it's not a valid offer anymore?
I can't send him a pizza for 10,000 BTC anymore?
What a scam! Lol

Lazslo wrote the following soon after:


You think the offer is still valid? I'll even throw in extra cheese and stuffed crust.