lol ok I get it now. It is indeed a bit of a play on words.

…. There’s only 1 star in our solar system, the Sun.

I assume you meant the Milky Way galaxy, or perhaps the Universe?

EDIT: ah ok it’s a play on words a bit. Yes 2 > 1

Eastern Oregon and Washington would likely prefer to stay with the rest of the nation. They are already trying to join Idaho.

Why?!?! Don’t you like it here? You realize the quality degrades as more ppl arrive?

Dont be a traitor, keep your mouth shut.

keeping people guessing about your “status.”

Yeah I’m a fan of this. I dress like I never outgrew the 90’s, haven’t had a haircut since covid, and fly first class a lot. It really bugs some of the snobs up there in the front of the plane.

I’ve never been into fashion in the least. I’m a quiet software dev and don’t talk to people.

The US has used the financial system as a weapon for decades. Freedom of Money is the only way out.

Sure if we started the whole tax thing today we may do it different. But it’s culture created over time. Our sales taxes all started during and shortly after the Great Depression in the 1920s. I’m sure store owners likely preferred people realize what they were charging vs the govts take. This is why I like it now. It’s very clear what the govt is taking and what the store is charging. It doesn’t bug me at all to have it added on at the register. It’s all I’ve known for 40 years. Currently I even live in a state with no sales tax (recently moved here), but I’m in a small tourist town that implemented a “resort sales tax” of 1% to help pay for city services related to tourism.

Voyager has been great. No notifications is a plus. Haha

I budget and save for it.

If I have one? Of course I have one! Everyone does nowadays!

A TI-99/4. I need to find an old tv to hook it up

Cool I’m the reverse. I do admin shit, and generate the art. Haha

Hot take: No different than most everything nowadays. Look at clothing, furniture, blankets, toys, etc. all of it used to be handcrafted and the value of it was the work put in.

All those things today are nearly as good quality if not better, and mass produced with no blood sweat and tears anymore. Do you look at your clothes and think about how clothes used to mean something? They did. It used to be a big deal the work spent making good clothes.

Perhaps the next generation will look at graphic art the same way - just dime-a-dozen disposable decoration.

If everything is so simple what’s the point? To enjoy life however you like.

There’s many defenses around a $5 wrench attack. But in the end, no, crypto doesn’t fix crime.

I could be wrong. I’ve been wrong twice before…. I divorced them both tho.

Because information is power. They can use knowledge of another’s wrongdoings to buy support for things.

It’s not a benefit in the example that you provide. It’s a benefit to the seller for sure. For that type of transaction it benefits you with lower prices due to retailers not having fraudulent sales result in chargebacks. This is the reason you’ll see it adopted by merchants (not Bitcoin, but stablecoins on Solana or Eth L2s).

The benefits on the consumer side are around freedom of money - no seizures, no bank runs, no fraudulent cc charges (but added key management risk), no inflation (eh, but added volatility rn), instantaneous worldwide transfers (that’s where you see the remittance market buying in). Also new decentralized financial markets which bring better yield rates than banks.

It’s a little more gray on the consumer side and I would expect services built on top to add insurance, escrow, and custody (exchanges and banks) type features.

The other place it’s making waves is with larger amounts of money. Hedge funds, venture capital, and higher net worth individuals. It makes moving capital around much easier.

So in that realm we see growth with it making its way into traditional markets - like stocks and commodities. Instantaneous settlement in this world is huge. Stock transactions can take anywhere from a day to 3 days in the tradfi system. On-chain we make atomic, irreversible, censorship resistant transactions instantly.

You can already see companies launching stock backed tokens on chains now. Just a couple weeks ago StockX went live on Solana. Anyone can buy US stocks, anonymously, with no onboarding requirements. This disrupts global capital markets.

So in summary, the benefits down at the consumer level focus more around access to new, secure products for earning yield and availability of alternative inflation-free assets with instant availability.

Also, privacy. This world really re-enables us as consumers to have some financial privacy. That’s another whole rabbit hole tho and my thumbs are tired.

At its core, it represents an irreversible proof of digital existance. Blockchain is the only technology that can do this, and it makes it more valuable than you’d think.

Bitcoin itself has first mover advantage, and that keeps it on top. It’s hard to point to any particular feature of bitcoin that warrants this first place position, aside from pure decentralization of holdings.

The irreversibility of blockchain transactions is very underrated to most of us, but think about it… no bank or government, even with military involvement, can reverse a transaction or seize assets. For most of us in nations with sophisticated financial infrastructure and govt, this doesn’t sound like a big deal, but for the majority of the world, this is a huge deal.

It also represents freedom from fiat. Since the beginning of currency govts have used it as a means to extract wealth from the populace. Printing, confiscating, and controlling as it pleases them. We’ve historically used gold to hedge against this, and there’s even instances in history where govts have devalued and confiscated gold as a means of supporting itself. Bitcoin brings all the freedom of gold, with all the benefits of the digital world.

They added an option to pay the gestapo so you don’t have to take off your shoes. That’s the only change in the last decade.

The collapse of the US empire will be influenced by this red v blue battle, but that’s not the cause of the collapse. It’s the ponzi US Dollar finally collapsing that will destroy it. All that other drama is just side stage crap to let both sides point at each other.