Thread by @jurbed

1/20 Twitter is all of a flutter because of FTX. It was an interesting episode, but there are other things happening recently that we should notice (besides other things such as war that are not recent news).

And let's take them for a positive spin.

A 🧵

2/20 The surveillance apparatus is growing. Internet platforms have to report people in EU to their tax offices (in some countries even if they do not finish a trade) and they have to register and ask for permission. In some countries even if selling their old used phone.

3/20 EU is a great bureaucracy with fetish for central registries. After Germany introduced registry of packaging materials that everyone who ships to Germany has fill (which made me seriously laugh - and forced others remove Germany from shipping destinations)...

4/20 ...they have now a registry of payment recipients, to be operational since 2024. All payment processors have to send recipients of cross-border (but also in-EU) transactions that exceed 25 tx/quarter to some central database. The aim is to avoid tax fraud.

5/20 If you are a heavy user of services such as bisq and hodlhodl, beware that you will most likely be reported and later possibly questioned.

If you want to trade, do it real peer to peer.

juraj.bednar.io/en/blog-en/202…

6/20 A start-up to look forward to is @vexl. It is a non-profit to faciliate real peer to peer trades with group reputation (similar to what I described in the blog in prev tweet). If you don't live in🇨🇿/🇸🇰, you cannot test it now, but watch this video.

7/20 EU also tries to ban trading of cryptocurrencies that provide privacy. Although this is impossible (Law of cryptocurrency isomorphism), this could hinder also things like Bitcoin over⚡️
juraj.bednar.io/en/blog-en/202…

8/20 Outside of EU, things don't look so bad right now, but the trend of taking the 'good' out of EU and implementing it elsewhere is accelerating. Some states in the US implementing their privacy laws, clearly inspired by GDPR.

9/20 My 🇺🇸 based friends seem to be reluctant to get their Bitcoin outside of 🇺🇸 regulated exchanges. That fear is unfounded, you can get your Bitcoin from friends. Use ⚡️ if you do not want to worry about chain analysis.

10/20 All this does not affect parallel economy much, so we can just ignore the politicians. It makes it more difficult to do legal business and many people will be pushed out to parallel/grey/black markets. #lunarpunk

11/20 For those that will not go to parallel economy, it might mean less voluntary transactions happen. Will you sell your old phone if you need to register to tax office and fill a form? Or will you just throw it in the drawer to "deal with it later"?

12/20 Voluntary transactions increase the wealth of society. Every single one that does not happen makes us poorer. And we don't want to be poor, it is enough that central banks mess with money.

13/20 What to do? Invite people over to the parallel economy. Show them the power and beauty of non-custodial cryptocurrency self-ownership, for example using Lightning. Go with @PhoenixWallet or @Breez_Tech.

juraj.bednar.io/en/blog-en/202…

14/20 If you want to accept lightning payments, do it the right way. Be an inviting business, do not consider it a burden.

juraj.bednar.io/en/blog-en/202…

15/20 If you want more great tips at navigating parallel economy and how to participate in order to improve your day to day life, check out my new book that is packed with tips and experience of nine years of running life and businesses on crypto.

hackyourself.io/product/crypto…

16/20 (Or you can get it on Amazon, if you are not yet bitcoin/monero enabled: amazon.com/dp/8057043482?… )

17/20 Let's show people how participating in parallel economy and using hard money can help them improve their lives. How does cryptoanarchy help in this transformation?
Money is only one part of this shift, but it won't work alone.

18/20 We need to show people that these interactions in parallel economy make more voluntary transactions possible and they kick out third parties. Many of them (public and private) have become insane, controlling and greedy. Let's opt out of them.

19/20 "The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity but the one that removes the awareness of other possibilities, that makes it seem inconceivable that other ways are viable, that removes the sense that there is an outside.” — Allan Bloom.

20/20 We are the outside.

We open the door to the outside.

The door outside of tyrannies.

Come over to take a look. And if you already crossed, helped others.

❤️