70 - Back in Belfast
🇬🇧 This week V and I are back in Belfast for a bit - so say "hello" if you are nearby!
The travel from Palma was OK, if a bit longer than we really wanted. Taxi to the airport, fly to Dublin, bus to Belfast (it is always a challenge to coordinate with flights) and then still one more taxi.
It is quite a bit cooler here - reminds me of when we arrived here in April from Bangkok. This weekend we will be around town and visiting family. For sure we will do a visit to St George's Market and Belfast Bap. To be seen how much further afield we will go in the coming weeks. If you have ideas or suggestions, do say.
I had hoped there would be a Bitcoin meeting in Belfast in early July but it seems to have been cancelled due to "12th holiday" arrangements. They will be back in August so I will go along then - maybe see you there? Meanwhile I am happy to meet up with any Bitcoiners in or around Belfast - just contact me.
It is interesting to look back to where I was and what I was thinking a year ago. I am indeed one year on from that fresh start - how about you - how satisfied are you with what you have done and achieved/progressed in the last year? Click here if in any doubt!
Video of the week
I have got to recommend Ivor's interview this week. Together with Dr. Jacob Nordangard and with plenty of supporting data and published references they explain how the current situation has come about. Do watch and listen and there is a download link so that you can have your own copy in case the censors object.
Among other things you will learn how two families (Rockefeller and Carnegie) became immensely wealthy through their control of the oil and steel industries and how they manipulated society by selectively ("philanthropically") investing in education and medical institutions on condition that they adopt a particular political stance. This has resulted in the capture of the education system (schools and university), capture of the medical system with all traditional medical skills being vilified in favour of ones that require expensive and ongoing payments.
The press and media too have also been captured - Ivor and Jacob recount an interesting story as to how and when this happened exactly ensuring that the population could be continually controlled through managed messages and propaganda. Politicians too are captured - they fund both/all sides and require their puppet-politicians to adopt and support their views - see the toy steering wheel discussion below.
All of the above became possible through proximity to (and eventually control of) the money creation process and the Cantillion effect that gives the elite few (aka parasites) access to money before anyone else and this enables them to steal money from everyone else through inflation. Inflation is Theft. Eye-opening explainer and background on this is in The Creature from Jekyll Island and Eustace Mullins' Secrets of the Federal Reserve. This absolute corruption has been (tens of) decades in the making and has required numerous wars (recall Report from Iron Mountain) and other techniques (eg Bretton Woods) to get there. It negatively affects every one of us and it is time to reject it.
Remember:
Book of the week
With all the packing and travelling this week, I wanted to have a good book to read. This one is a classic. It is by no means an easy read due to the writing style and language from early 1900's but it is fascinating. “By damned,” Charles Fort explains, “I mean the excluded. We shall have a procession of the data that Science has excluded.”
You can easily obtain the book for free as PDF and I recommend reading while listening to one of the many audio-book copies that you can freely download.
"The Book of the Damned" is a provocative work that challenges the (then and still now) prevailing scientific orthodoxy by presenting a collection of strange and inexplicable events, urging readers to question the limitations of human understanding and to explore the mysteries of the world.
Fort's approach in the book is skeptical and critical of the scientific establishment, suggesting that there is a vast amount of unexplained and unacknowledged data that doesn't fit into existing scientific paradigms. He argues that these "damned" phenomena should be taken seriously and studied more rigorously.
By compiling a wealth of reports and observations from different sources, Fort challenges you to question the limits of human knowledge and the boundaries of what is considered possible. His intention is to provoke thought and encourage open-mindedness towards unexplained phenomena.
More in this issue
- Photo memories from our last week in Palma for a while
- Project Updates - Nostr, Lightning and eCash
- Plenty of useful links - don't say nobody told you!
- Closing out - 180 degrees - Unlearn the lies you have been taught
🛠️ Project Updates
There really is so much happening in Bitcoin these days that it is full-time job even to try to keep up with it. Below are a few links to help you.
Nostr Review
Big thank you to NVK and his guests on bitcoin.review. They have recently branched out and have a separate stream for Nostr:
Lightning
As you know, lightning is one of the main scaling mechanisms for Bitcoin. With Lightning channels established you can make almost free transactions with other Lightning users instantly anywhere in the world. It is great there there is so much development going on to address the challenges we know.
Listen to this great interview by Stephan Livera Podcast: SLP488 Future Visions of Lightning, Greenlight & Breez SDK with Christian Decker and Roy Sheinfeld
Greenlight
Greenlight is the new service being developed by Blockstream (also the developer of Liquid). It was fascinating to hear how they decompose a lightning node into services that can be distributed and optimised for performance, sovereignty and scalability.
Breez
Breez has long been the "wallet of choice" for businesses needing a Point-of-Sale (PoS) terminal but their ambitions are much greater. Listen and you will understand how easily and effectively bitcoin companies can collaborate and leverage the fantastic open-source platform that we build on.
Chaumian eCash
Calle is doing great work that will benefit not only Cashu but all systems that wish to use eCash. As he points out, federated systems like Fedi and Liquid do offer some beneficial controls but there is a risk that (as governments do today with their currencies) a bad mint could issue more eCash than it holds reserves for. His solution is surprisingly simple and well explained in his paper (click here or below).
You will recall how (we discussed last week) Bitcoin can eliminate traditional auditing and accounting through "triple entry accounting" as something that can be automated and integrated into the payment infrastructure. Calle takes this forward:
In essence the Proof of Liabilities is solved by publishing a list of assets received and encashed as well as those converted back. To prevent the lists growing indefinitely he introduces the concept of Epoch (eg one month) in which new (derived) keys are used and all new transactions take place in the current epoch, migrating assets from older ones to the current Epoch. Older Epochs may expire after (say 24 months). Fascinating and likely workable - WDYT?
Boltz
We have talked before about Liquid - a federated sidechain of Bitcoin. I am rather excited about the possibilities that it brings for scaling and lower cost transactions. It will certainly not replace on-chain for finality and large amounts but consider how much it simplifies things for day-to-day transactions and I expect it to be one of the tools that will simplify moving into and out of lightning (another one being ARK).
🔗 Links for your edification
The following are links from my NetNewswire feeds - learn, enjoy and share.
Toy steering wheels
Caitlin explains how the Empire confuses and pacifies the masses. If you have not worked it out yet - the empire has "captured" politicians from all of the main political parties - they are all corrupt(ed) and the empire bets on all horses in the race; this is an exorbitant privilege that is possible due to fiat money and the Cantillion Effect. They are spending your money to tighten the screws on you and your family no matter who you vote for.
We have discussed before that the likely best way that we each can tackle this is to work locally with people and local politicians who have no affiliation whatsoever with anything to do with Net Zero, ESG or whatever other global "crisis" is currently in favour. Exit the system - do not consent, do not give your energy or funding for any of their nonsense.
Meanwhile in the UK
Joe's analyses are always worth a watch - for sure there is trouble ahead (soon) - being imposed on the UK population by the unelected and unaccountable politicians. To me, it would seem to be time to speak up and push back:
Cyprus, Canada and Lebanon - coming to you soon
And Peter is also pretty clear on what is coming down the pipe - if you have tried recently to take money out of your bank you will understand that they are planning to "lock the doors" soon. This is why you likely should consider holding assets "outside the system".
Seriously?
The craziest one so far. Listen carefully to the discussion on Ukraine - it does fully support the analysis and conclusions we discussed last week. I do rather agree with Guy's conclusions. He explains rather clearly the lunacy of ESG.
And Guy's latest observations on AI developments - pay attention!
Blatantly obvious - can you see it yet?
WAKE UP: 'MOST' Private CAR Ownership To Be Phased Out By 2030 (95% Reduction Target) - is that what you want and support?
Master or slave?
Richard asks some rather pertinent questions and he shares the experiences of people who have given up their mobile phone and feel better for it. We have discussed this before and you will know a half-way step can be to use a de-googled phone (eg CalyxOS).
🤔 Closing Thoughts
You may have been under the impression that "things are not quite right" these days. Feargus explains that things are in fact the opposite of what you have been told. Listen to his recent talk to an audience in England, UK.
You can get his book here via Amazon on-demand printing:
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No one can be told what The Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.
- Morpheus to Neo in The Matrix
Interesting find of the last few weeks is the screenplay of the Matrix - this is a fascinating document that outlines every scene in the movie with the instructions that were given for filming it.
And that leads on to this - also an interesting and thought-provoking watch.
You have to see it for yourself.
Any questions or anything else? Feel free to comment below!
You can also email me at: LetterFrom@rogerprice.me
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