Nostr notes by

A wrench attack runs on one assumption: that one person, under ...

2026-07-23T15:40:29+02:00

A wrench attack runs on one assumption: that one person, under enough pressure, can move everything.

Multisig takes that apart.

No single signer can send the funds, so no single person can be forced to. A time-locked key cannot sign yet, so there is nothing in it to take today.

None of this makes you less of a target, but it removes the single point they can break.

On July 29, we walk through building custody with no single point of coercion.

Gart Webinar: Multisig wallets and timelocks,

Held by the Sound Money Solutions team, led by Max (npub1klk…x3vt) Hillebrand.

July 29, 2:00 PM UTC. Limited seats.
Register: https://gart.io/event/gart-webinar-multi-signature-wallets-timelocks-12/register

What’s one habit you have that governments fear? My ...

2026-07-22T15:57:28+02:00

What’s one habit you have that governments fear?

My conversation with Max (nprofile…8p0e) is now live.

Recorded at btcplusplus (nprofile…5flv) in Vienna.

https://linktr.ee/allinbitcoin

https://fountain.fm/episode/iKDtY1KBcNh1q8aVnK9S

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnubrJ6Zv_4

https://podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/035-max-hillebrand-the-habit-governments-fear-i-all/id1792290510?i=1000777884874

https://open.spotify.com/episode/6HGnH76XXJcvkzqGbfG3Yf

@nprofile…8p0e sent you an e-mail, good sir. 🫡👍️

2026-07-22T02:13:33+02:00

Max (nprofile…8p0e) sent you an e-mail, good sir. 🫡👍️

One habit makes governments nervous. Tomorrow, @nprofile…8p0e ...

2026-07-21T15:31:45+02:00

One habit makes governments nervous.

Tomorrow, Max (nprofile…8p0e) and I explore why.

Less than 24 hours. ⚡

The latest project from @nprofile…4dda and @nprofile…en87 ...

2026-07-20T10:40:47+02:00

The latest project from Juraj (nprofile…4dda) and Max (nprofile…en87)
Impressed how productive these individuals are ❤

quoting
nevent1q…jkd2
Måske noget ?
Jake⚡️ (nprofile…q05u) ENOGTYVE (nprofile…nzgn) barekev (nprofile…yhtz)

Shoutout to my friends @npub1ahx…5ech @npub1s05…eyhe ...

2026-07-19T19:15:29+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…ej7y
_________________________

Shoutout to my friends Natalie (npub1ahx…5ech) Jeff Booth (npub1s05…eyhe) Mauricio (npub1gqe…zj23) letstalkaboutsats (nprofile…jvgp) BTCsessions (npub1rxy…hnp8) Susie (nprofile…rzxg) paulinthejungle (nprofile…t456) joenakamoto (nprofile…mtx5) v4btc (nprofile…9d7a) vexl (nprofile…a458) MADEX (nprofile…nflw) Max (nprofile…h0a7) giacomozucco (nprofile…ruj6) Mir (npub1ydx…rlcw)

Very cool ) idea itself is amazing, let’s see

2026-07-18T14:15:08+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…et96
_________________________

Very cool ) idea itself is amazing, let’s see

OMG scheme scripting? Been going through MIT's Wizard Book, I ...

2026-07-18T07:17:28+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…fy40
_________________________

OMG scheme scripting? Been going through MIT's Wizard Book, I may have to look at this.

Looking for @nprofile…th90's "Return Engagement" ...

2026-07-17T20:48:34+02:00

Looking for Paul Rosenberg (nprofile…th90)'s "Return Engagement" books (three books as far as I can see). I can only find them as Kindle books, and I just can't stand Amazon's DRM.
Anyone on #Nostr who can point me to a physical book or a DRM-free version?

Max (nprofile…en87)

Plenty and yes Tomek talks about this in depth in his episode.

2026-07-17T13:18:15+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…hza8
_________________________

Plenty and yes Tomek talks about this in depth in his episode.

@nprofile…yehr out of fifty one episodes did any of those free ...

2026-07-17T13:01:31+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…6nsg
_________________________

Timothy (nprofile…yehr) out of fifty one episodes did any of those free cities actually get merchants taking bitcoin day to day? TomekK (nprofile…084g) would know from prospera, everything i read about them is residency and capital flight rather than everyday spending.

Very cool!

2026-07-17T12:35:19+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…et96
_________________________

Very cool!

Does anyone have an idea about the Reticulum Network Stack? Does ...

2026-07-17T12:03:16+02:00

Does anyone have an idea about the Reticulum Network Stack?
Does it already work properly?
I know Max (nprofile…8p0e) is probably pretty busy, but I would also like to hear your stance on this project. Sovereign Network countering ISP providers, or just gimmiky?
I´m kinda tempted to try to build a small Network myself 🤔

@nprofile…m0ya

2026-07-17T10:55:45+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…6nsg
_________________________

SelfBankt (nprofile…m0ya)

@nprofile…m0ya Mate, I think that hash is messing up your ...

2026-07-17T10:54:39+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…6nsg
_________________________

SelfBankt (nprofile…m0ya) Mate, I think that hash is messing up your handle.

Fifty-one episodes about Bitcoin. That's one episode a week ...

2026-07-17T10:53:32+02:00

Fifty-one episodes about Bitcoin.

That's one episode a week for almost a year, if you're feeling ambitious.

Over three and a half years the Free Cities Podcast has been asking a different question: once you hold money the state can't debase, where do you actually live? What do you build?

The archive now has its own page:

On privacy: Max (nprofile…8p0e) on the praxeology of privacy, JeffG (nprofile…n0n6) on the architecture of freedom, @selfBankt on decentralised networks.

On the state: knutsvanholm (nprofile…3hw8) on why democracy drifts toward totalitarianism, Susie (nprofile…2zl8) on digital authoritarianism, efenigson (nprofile…8xhx) on CBDCs.

On exit: Danielprince (nprofile…3424) on choosing a parallel life, Nathan Day (nprofile…pe2j) on overlanding and self-sovereign identity, TomekK (nprofile…e5aa) on the Bitcoin Free City he actually lives in.

On the big picture: allen (nprofile…a8xg) the sovereign individual thesis, tuur (nprofile…s8g7) on fiat as the biggest addiction of all, Polycarp Nakamoto on decentralised mesh networks.

And on this protocol: Ben Arc (nprofile…8r4g) on Nostr and anarchy, Nick Malster (nprofile…27f2) on liberating creators from the attention economy.

Bitcoin fixes the money. These conversations are about what gets fixed next.

All 51, one page: https://www.freecities.fm/search?topic=podbitcoin

🥰🥰🥰

2026-07-17T10:21:04+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…sek6
_________________________

🥰🥰🥰

We made a thing. Organizing an event? Try something new... Thanks ...

2026-07-17T10:10:28+02:00

We made a thing. Organizing an event? Try something new...

Thanks to Max (nprofile…8p0e) for the idea.

Very alpha, but also very very cool.

quoting
naddr1qv…9ju3

Organizers spend months on the agenda, book the keynote speakers, print the schedule, and treat the hallway conversations as an afterthought. Then everyone shows up, sits through the talks, and does their actual networking in a rushed ten minutes by the coffee machine, chatting with whoever happens to be standing closest.

Nostrautica flips that. Many people don't come to conferences for slides, they come to warm themselves by other people. So build the fire first. Talks are just something to gather around while you're there.

An event app built on Nostr

Nostrautica is an event and networking app built on Nostr. Your Nostr key doesn't belong to Nostrautica. Make connections at one event, and your identity, your messages, and your contacts travel with you to the next one, and the one after that, on any app that speaks Nostr. Organizers can spin up an event without standing up servers or databases: pick approval-based access, invite codes, or open registration, and you're running.

Matchmaking that actually knows why

The AI matchmaking is where things get interesting. Instead of a directory of names and job titles, attendees record a short intro (video, audio, or just text) and Nostrautica reads that alongside their public Nostr activity. It comes back with a ranked list of people worth meeting and, importantly, a plain-language reason for each one. Not "here are 40 attendees," but "here's why you two should talk."

Everything runs on encrypted messaging, so you can reach out before you even arrive.

Talks are kindling, not the point

This is the part I like most. Nostrautica treats prerecorded talks as optional fuel for the conversation, not the main event. Watch them whenever, skip the ones that don't interest you, and show up already primed to talk about the ones that do. The schedule stops being the thing you sit through and starts being the thing that gives you something to say to the person next to you.

Getting people onto Nostr without the headache

Nostr's biggest hurdle has always been onboarding. Key management, relays, the whole vocabulary is a wall for a first-timer. And of course - who to follow?

Nostrautica handles that quietly in the background and adds something to it: someone can sign up for an event without knowing what a relay is, and by the time they leave they've got a working, portable identity they can carry to the next thing, whether that's another Nostrautica event or a completely different app in the ecosystem. And the best part - they already follow people they've met on the event, they can continue chatting with them, etc. No "how do I contact you" - the contact is already there. You can start communicating through the event app, but then your conversation can continue on Nostr. Because no one keeps the event app after the event and checks it for messages, right?

Anyway, even on Bitcoin events, people who have Nostr are probably <10%. Nostrautica quietly onboards people coming to the event.

The pitch

Stop treating networking like a lucky accident that happens between sessions, and build the room around it instead. Nostrautica hands organizers the tools to do that and gives attendees a reason to actually talk to the person next to them, not just sit and wait for the next speaker.

From the kitchen

This idea came from Max (npub1klk…x3vt) during our conversation (I am Juraj (npub1m2m…r8p9) ). We vibe coded the entire thing. Event itself runs on Nostr. There's a coordinator process, which does AI matchmaking and manages the experimental Marmot group (the event's main chat). You can run without coordinator just on relays.

Most parts are event-encrypted. Each event has its own shared private key. User settings (like "who to meet") are encrypted to the user.

Learn more

Follow the project on Nostr, check out the website or go straight to the app and organize an event (21-meetup is a good place to start). And tell us what you think.

I you use any normal smartphone OS rather than say grapheneos ...

2026-07-16T21:26:54+02:00

In reply to naddr1qq…kpmz
_________________________

I you use any normal smartphone OS rather than say grapheneos then your location is tracked continously even if you turn off location tracking at user interface level and will be uploaded to Apple and/or Google periodically. Another less precise trail is gathered by cell towers. And this quite regardless of whether you use Google maps or some other map/navigation product.

Who cares if the nsec isn't all that secure in Nostr ...

2026-07-16T21:24:06+02:00

In reply to naddr1qq…4hvz
_________________________

Who cares if the nsec isn't all that secure in Nostr architecture and common practice among clients and apps?

cc @npub10xv…g437 @npub1l5s…gx9z @npub1klk…x3vt

2026-07-16T17:25:59+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…kmnr
_________________________

cc EricFJ (npub10xv…g437) Silberengel (npub1l5s…gx9z) Max (npub1klk…x3vt)

Finished the second reading of this amazing book about a month ...

2026-07-15T07:42:18+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…k7g7
_________________________

Finished the second reading of this amazing book about a month ago, but your summary made me move it back onto my stack of books to read this summer ...

Thank you!

2026-07-14T23:46:48+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…ahnu
_________________________

Thank you!

Let me know if you run into issues or have your agent send me ...

2026-07-15T01:36:20+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…qegz
_________________________

Let me know if you run into issues or have your agent send me feedback after you finish. I'm always looking to improve the libraries

@nprofile…g2cl knows his shit. If anyone could solve the ...

2026-07-15T21:50:30+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…xn5l
_________________________

Max (nprofile…g2cl) knows his shit. If anyone could solve the decentralized shipping problem, he could.

If we put him and Shadrach (nprofile…u4tp) in a room for an hour, we'd have a decentralized shipping solution run on nostr and bitcoin.

GANGBANGER !

2026-07-14T16:58:12+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…clrn
_________________________

GANGBANGER !

@npub1m2m…r8p9 applesauce has a very flexible remote signer ...

2026-07-14T16:50:05+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…6dg9
_________________________

Juraj (npub1m2m…r8p9) applesauce has a very flexible remote signer client https://applesauce.build/creating/signers/nostr-connect.html

There is also a full multi-signer account system if you need that for your app as well https://applesauce.build/apps/accounts/manager.html

So true, we have to make it super seamless to send money from ...

2026-07-14T16:44:26+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…w8j6
_________________________

So true, we have to make it super seamless to send money from users to devs.

@npub1klk…x3vt

2026-07-14T13:12:37+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…xs26
_________________________

Max (npub1klk…x3vt)

🤔 #nevent1q…43yg

2026-07-14T00:05:24+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…sp4f
_________________________

🤔

quoting
nevent1q…43yg
Beautiful and inspiring addition to #40hpw. Much resonance with Oshi (npub1uzt…qtrh) approach to following curiosity and flow to discover what wants to be born. This convo was also helpful in clarifying my vision for soundcoffee (npub186p…d0rk) ‘s web experience. Thanks to all.

https://fountain.fm/episode/f5lD7WmvM552SCe3tZJi

nevent1q…5khp

🤔 #nevent1q…sp4f

2026-07-14T00:04:52+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…43yg
_________________________

🤔

quoting
nevent1q…sp4f
Can confirm. An essential part of the #40HPW
note1827…fvnf

I definitely didn't mean Sven. I meant @nprofile…3kna Not ...

2026-07-13T20:51:09+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…04r9
_________________________

I definitely didn't mean Sven. I meant Alekandar Svetski (nprofile…3kna) Not sure how that happened. Sorry Sven.

A Russian restaurant owner in Uluwatu, Bali was taken on the ...

2026-07-13T19:24:15+02:00

A Russian restaurant owner in Uluwatu, Bali was taken on the night of July 2 as he rode home from his own restaurant.

Two masked men blocked his motorcycle, cuffed him with plastic restraints, covered his head, and drove him to a two-story building.

He was punched and kicked for close to 30 hours until he gave up the password to his crypto account.

The stop happened at a junction on that route, around 9:35 PM, on a deserted stretch with almost no camera coverage.

They took his Xiaomi phone at the roadside. His villa key was sitting on the motorcycle's dashboard, so they used it to walk into his villa and take a second phone, the one he used to reach his crypto funds.

No arrests so far.

An estimated $4.9M to $5M was taken. They let him out in front of Udayana University Hospital in Jimbaran at 4 AM on July 4.

Full report: https://stats.gart.io/#attack-460

If you handed over everything you can reach right now, what would you still own tomorrow?

Session 4 of our webinar series on digital security covers what makes backups durable, and who can reach your assets when you no longer can.

Gart Webinar: Backup & Inheritance Strategies. Presented by Max (npub1klk…x3vt) Hillebrand from the Sound Money Solutions team.

Wednesday, July 15.
Limited seats.

https://gart.io/event/gart-webinar-backup-inheritance-strategies-11/register

A public business and a fixed route are the two cheapest pieces ...

2026-07-13T19:16:47+02:00

A public business and a fixed route are the two cheapest pieces of intelligence an attacker can get.

A Russian restaurant owner in Uluwatu, Bali was taken on the night of July 2 as he rode home from his own restaurant.

Two masked men in blocked his motorcycle, cuffed him with plastic restraints, covered his head, and drove him to a two-story building.

He was punched and kicked for close to 30 hours until he gave up the password to his crypto account. An estimated $4.9M to $5M was taken. They let him out in front of Udayana University Hospital in Jimbaran at 4 AM on July 4.

The stop happened at a junction on that route, around 9:35 PM, on a deserted stretch with almost no camera coverage.

No arrests so far.

They took his Xiaomi phone at the roadside. His villa key was sitting on the motorcycle's dashboard, so they used it to walk into his villa and take a second phone, the one he used to reach his crypto funds.

His villa CCTV was dead from a short circuit and had been before the night they came.

Full report: https://stats.gart.io/#attack-460

If you handed over everything you can reach right now, what would you still own tomorrow?

Session 4 of our webinar series on digital security covers what makes backups durable, and who can reach your assets when you no longer can.

Gart Webinar: Backup & Inheritance Strategies. Presented by Max (npub1klk…x3vt) Hillebrand from the Sound Money Solutions team.

Wednesday, July 15.
16:00 Prague.
Limited seats.

https://gart.io/event/gart-webinar-backup-inheritance-strategies-11/register

I saw the discussion in your recent episode where you mentioned ...

2026-07-13T16:29:29+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…ram3
_________________________

I saw the discussion in your recent episode where you mentioned receiving a DM from “someone from XmrBazaar.” Just to clarify: I have never contacted you, and as far as I know, no one from the XmrBazaar team has either. If the person who messaged you is not me or Douglas Tuman, then it's an impersonator with unclear purposes. Please be cautious with any future messages claiming to be from XmrBazaar. I recommend verifying the source directly before engaging.

Currently reading Daemon. Its great. Any other fiction ...

2026-07-13T15:26:43+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…04r9
_________________________

Currently reading Daemon. Its great. Any other fiction reccomendations?

I assume you've read Lyn Alden's books already (if not, ...

2026-07-13T13:17:20+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…e370
_________________________

I assume you've read Lyn Alden's books already (if not, that seems to be the obvious choice).

Most anything by Daniel Suarez I think is required reading for Bitcoiners -- particularly Daemon and Freedom given how much they relate to decentralized autonomous technology in an economic light. He's not on Nostr (yet), but perhaps I'll go remind him we're still here (he's on Twitter).

I haven't read it yet but have it on my shelf, Max (nprofile…g2cl) published Praxaeology of Privacy entirely on Nostr for free; you can find it in his long form content or on his site. It is of course available for hardcopy purchase. Definitely non-fiction.

And then I particularly like sven-fielitz (nprofile…lscy) He can be a little polarizing and I'm sure he won't mind my saying so (he wrote an article called "Why you should sell your Bitcoin," after all), but I enjoyed Bushido of Bitcoin anyway. He's got plenty of shorter stuff on substack if you're not familiar (or sure if you're interested in committing to long form). Wondering what it's gonna take to get him to follow up on the fiction story he began at the end of Bushido given his sabbatical from the Internet.

Episode 12 with @nprofile…u8g0 , super great to have him on to ...

2026-07-12T20:47:28+02:00

Episode 12 with Max (nprofile…u8g0) , super great to have him on to talk about shipping with proxy merchants and private messaging protocol development. A lot to dive into too 🍿🎧

https://fountain.fm/episode/43qDqdSlsrzbWlNmltAZ

Yea @nprofile…en87 proposed something afair

2026-07-11T20:24:05+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…2qm8
_________________________

Yea Max (nprofile…en87) proposed something afair

And just like that by word of mouth the message spreads, ...

2026-07-11T15:04:28+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…wpy2
_________________________

And just like that by word of mouth the message spreads, following and listening to OpenMarketsPod (npub1000…asew) now!

Can confirm. An essential part of the #40HPW #note1827…fvnf

2026-07-11T14:50:36+02:00

Can confirm. An essential part of the #40HPW

quoting
note1827…fvnf
Just found OpenMarketsPod (nprofile…yt86) and I'm sad I didnt know of them before, awesome Nostr pod!

@nprofile…fy9u @nprofile…m449 @nprofile…asrt ...

2026-07-10T13:17:56+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…suqm
_________________________

dppz (nprofile…fy9u) deeznuts (nprofile…m449) Greeny (nprofile…asrt) Max (npub1klk…x3vt)

The FOSS community is very fragile. First and foremost, this is ...

2026-07-10T12:47:37+02:00

The FOSS community is very fragile.

First and foremost, this is because many FOSS developers have a mental block about making money from their projects.

Another group of FOSS developers either fears cryptocurrencies or despises them for religious/political reasons.

As a result, we have great FOSS that survives on a bowl of rice (without butter - that's for the bourgeoisie) and a slice of 3 days old bread.

In my lifetime, I've paid more for FOSS than some people have paid for proprietary apps. I'm not complaining. I'm proud of it.

But, it's not always easy… I have to go to GitHub, open an issue, and directly ask them to add a Monero and/or Bitcoin wallet - and offer to make the first donation myself…

And how pleased I was (and at the same time surprised) to see that some of the FOSS developers whose work I use were happy to receive a ~200 USD donation via XMR!

So, if you're a FOSS developer for Linux/Android, please don't make me waste my time asking you to accept a donation from me!

First things first, publish your FOSS on Zapstore (nprofile…tdq0) and be sure to add your Monero wallet address to the README - trust me, people will donate to you!

A colorful meme that sums up most of the FOSS community (unfortunately).

p.s. Thanks Max (nprofile…g2cl) for shilling to me ZapStore. I'll keep shilling it to others.

@nprofile…nurr @nprofile…67yl @nprofile…2qz5 ...

2026-07-08T23:06:17+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…jdw0
_________________________

AZA_21m (nprofile…nurr) bleepsignal (nprofile…67yl) Contra (nprofile…2qz5) defunct (nprofile…caex) Max (nprofile…g2cl) GLACA (nprofile…rdgy) Andrew Gomez (nprofile…9ugp) AmplifiedTunes (nprofile…56l3) 600000000000 (nprofile…7qft) heatherlarson (nprofile…pa8a) TimechainArtMag (nprofile…auvt) ᴄʏʙᴇʀɢᴜʏ 👽 (nprofile…zpzg) nprofile1qqs09gzhr4xm84xnc90q228qtahc234490675hawlh58qgmhrdjmf6stjwgmz (nprofile…wgmz) calle (nprofile…v72v) Ben Arc (nprofile…2e5q) 2140.wtf (nprofile…mpnv) Kudzai Kutukwa (nprofile…uc8g) uno (nprofile…pqm0) AviBurra (nprofile…dxpg) SEAisMEDICINE (nprofile…3uyd)

@npub1klk…x3vt wrote a wonderful review of this book for the ...

2026-07-08T15:08:31+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…k7g7
_________________________

Max (npub1klk…x3vt) wrote a wonderful review of this book for the btc_insider__ (npub1z6d…f7n9)

quoting
naddr1qv…wg08

There are five or six books that every serious cypherpunk ends up reading. A Lodging of Wayfaring Men is one of them. For two decades it lived as a quiet inheritance, copied as a PDF between people who built Tor relays, ran early e-gold accounts, traded on Liberty Reserve, wrote the Bitcoin patches that mattered, and shipped the privacy tools we use today. A new illustrated hardcover edition has been edited and republished. The timing is good, because the world the book describes is the world we are now living in.

Paul Rosenberg wrote the manuscript in the late 1990s while running the arbitration system at a project called Laissez Faire City. The project shipped a working encrypted financial system in 2001, complete with anonymous bearer certificates, a stock exchange, a futures market, encrypted webmail, and a distributed forum, all seven years before the Bitcoin white paper. Rosenberg sat across the table from the project’s principals, audited the books when one of them went bad, couriered gold coins on settled disputes, and oversaw the investigation that closed the project out. As the man who maintained the donor list of every founder who put money in, he kept it as long as the work required and burned it once the work was done.

He wrote the novel to tell the story without naming the people. The fiction was a courtesy to the donors, who needed to stay out of court. The story is theirs, lightly disguised. For the first decade it circulated by email and on private mailing lists, photocopied, forwarded, passed quietly from one builder to the next. People who held copies treated them like contraband, because in spirit they were. Every serious cypherpunk who read it walked away understanding two things at once: that the cypherpunks had already done it before Bitcoin existed, and that the work had only just begun.

What the novel does is make the cypherpunk argument as a story. Before the white paper, before Tor was a usable network, before Lightning, before Nostr, Rosenberg wrote a small group of mathematicians, ex-ministers, financiers, and Silicon Valley programmers into a story about shipping fully encrypted electronic cash from a series of safe houses across three continents. The NSA briefer in the book reads a January 1995 Treasury memo describing money the agency cannot read or trace, money whose addresses do not follow the standard protocols, money whose messages leave no record of origin or destination. The memo is fictional. Everything it describes is now operational in your pocket. Reading it in 2026 is a strange and pleasant kind of vertigo.

I should say where I am standing before going further. I met Paul years ago, and shortly afterward I sat down with the manuscript. The conversations and the reading were one continuous education. The book convinced me the work was possible and worth doing, and I went on to work on Wasabi. Years later, when the powers that be increased their pressure and attacks against us exponentially, zkSNACKs the company and its coordinator were pushed into closing. Rosenberg’s strategic logic landed in the real world exactly as he had written it. The state went after the company because the company was the named target it could reach. The wallet code had been FOSS from day one. New coordinators came online within days. FOSS is unstoppable, and Rosenberg saw the architecture twenty-five years before any of us shipped it. I am one of dozens of builders whose work is downstream of this book.

One of the book’s anchor scenes plays out like this. A coordinator named Michael Anderson counts three hundred sealed envelopes onto a table in front of a Marine survivalist friend. Each envelope contains the source code for the underground marketplace. Each carries instructions to mail it out if anything happens to him. “By distributing the code openly we make ourselves replaceable,” he says. “A thousand markets will spring up in a thousand different flavors.” This was written in the late 1990s. When zkSNACKs went down, the Wasabi code kept running and new coordinators kept the wallet alive because the architecture Paul Rosenberg describes is the architecture freedom tech has shipped ever since.

In a second scene, a Los Angeles defense attorney named Anthony Bari walks into a US Attorney’s office and forces a treason charge down to misdemeanor computer fraud by threatening to take the indictment paperwork to every newspaper that will read it. “You cannot have a public trial because everyone would learn your secret.” Around Bari orbits a veteran FBI field agent named Max Kaminski, who runs an establishment frequented by other agents and quietly feeds intelligence back through a young agent who finally defects. Max says it more than once, in different rooms, to different agents who are not yet ready to hear it. “Law enforcement is a cheap substitute for justice. Half-justice at best, and frequently much less.” Read it twice and notice the small word in the middle. Max says it is a *substitute*, the way margarine is a substitute for butter: a cheaper good produced by industrial process and sold to people who can no longer find or afford the original. Margarine is what you get when the original is taken off the shelf. Justice is what the cypherpunk defense bar is now putting back on it, one courtroom at a time.

Halfway through the book, the argument widens. The title of the book comes from Jeremiah 9: ”Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging of wayfaring men, that I might leave my people and go from them.” A character quotes it in a Vancouver hotel lobby late in the book, and it lands as the structural key to everything that came before. A lodging is not a building. It is a portable, self-replicating refuge culture for people who want to live separately from a system that has no intention of leaving them alone. The back half of the novel dramatizes the lodging in three countries within two chapters, and once you see the pattern you cannot unsee it.

Bitcoin Twitter has the citadel meme, and Rosenberg has the lodging, and the two ideas point in opposite directions. Citadels are walled, defensive, finite, often paranoid, expressed in the language of survival under siege. Lodgings are hospitable, portable, self-replicating, and explicitly take in any nice person you know. A citadel ends with you and your stack and a perimeter. A lodging looks like physicists teaching geometry to children on an Italian beach, parents trading nights of childcare, Nobel laureates running ad-hoc seminars, landlords competing to keep the same off-season tenants the following year. Citadels are last fortresses before the end. Lodgings are first houses of the next civilization. Bitcoin culture has spent twenty years arguing about the technical layer and almost no time on the cultural layer, and Rosenberg’s late chapters are the cleanest available blueprint for the layer above the protocol.

The closest modern Free Souls houses are sovereignengineering.io and the Bitcoin++ conferences. Sovereign Engineering gathers freedom-tech builders into in-person residency cohorts to ship together. Bitcoin++ pulls protocol engineers into the same room to prototype and ship across a single shared agenda. The Italian beach in the novel, the SEC residency in the present, and a Bitcoin++ event are the same architecture under different names. Builders who would otherwise be working alone gather in physical proximity, sit at the same table, trade ideas across disciplines, eat together, build together, and walk away with friendships that hold under pressure. A lodging proves itself every time a small group of competent people gather to build something the surrounding system would prefer they did not. The lodging is already being built, and the novel gave it a name.

This hardcover edition includes the full Appendix, a body of essays attributed to the character Prester John. Appendix A is a wonderful history of religious thought, written with the directness of someone who has lived inside the material for forty years and decided to skip the academic throat-clearing. It treats the Hebrew prophets, the Gospels, the institutional priesthood, and the modern intelligentsia as a single continuous problem: human beings handing their judgment over to a class of people who claim the authority to think for them. Read on its own, Appendix A would be a respected short book. Embedded inside the novel, it is the philosophical scaffolding that makes the lodging make sense.

Whether Satoshi sat at one of those tables or read the same pages is the question Rosenberg has left open on purpose. Either he was at the table and lived the project, or he read the manuscript and ran with the lesson. Either answer is electric. Rosenberg himself has said that he would love to see whether his favorite Satoshi candidates were on the donor list, and then he reminded everyone that he burned the list on principle the day the work was done, smashing the hard drive that held it. So the names are gone, and the lineage is written into every Bitcoin block since genesis, and the only people who could close the loop are the ones with a stake in keeping it open. What we get instead is the thing the receipts hand us. The cypherpunks shipped the financial cryptography seven years before the white paper. The white paper inherited the strategic logic of the book, and the book is now sitting on the shelf where the rest of the inheritance is waiting. Read it for the technical retrospective.

Read it again for the lodging. Pair it with Rosenberg’s Untold Story of the Greatest Crypto Project Ever, which serves as the author’s quiet commentary track on his own fiction.

We are inside one of the great adventures of human history. Cryptographic primitives are sufficient, capital is in place, legal infrastructure is being built in real courtrooms by people who took Bari’s playbook seriously, and the lodgings are forming. Bitcoin is the money, Nostr is the social layer, FOSS is the strategic logic, and the lodging is the architecture we live inside while we build. What remains is for each of us to find our seat at the table, ship the next brick, and welcome the next nice person we know.

Rosenberg wrote the book to tell a story whose principals could not be named. Two decades later the principals’ work is on every laptop, in every wallet, in every courtroom where a privacy-tool defendant is finding out he has a defense bar. The donor list is gone. The donors are everywhere. Read the book, and then go find your seat at the table.

Any news on the Marmot TypeScript SDK @nprofile…u8g0 ...

2026-07-07T20:27:43+02:00

Any news on the Marmot TypeScript SDK Max (nprofile…u8g0) White Noise (nprofile…sp3z) ? Wouod love to build this into LightningPiggy (nprofile…fhxk) mobile app.

Picture the person you'd leave your coins to trying to reach ...

2026-07-07T17:42:54+02:00

Picture the person you'd leave your coins to trying to reach them without you in the room.

They don't know if the seed is on paper or steel, whether it's whole or split, or which drawer even holds the right device.

Everything you did to keep it safe from a stranger now works against the one person you meant to have it.

Session 4 of our free Digital Security Webinar Series works through it: Backup & Inheritance Strategies

In partnership with and hosted by the
Sound Money Solutions team, led by Max (npub1klk…x3vt) Hillebrand.

What we'll cover:
- Redundancy that adds copies without adding single points of failure
- Where backups live, and who can reach them
- An inheritance path that triggers without exposing keys early
- Recovery that holds up

July 15th.
Limited seats.

Register:
https://gart.io/event/gart-webinar-backup-inheritance-strategies-11/register

Yes, they are. We have another one coming up next week about ...

2026-07-06T19:31:11+02:00

In reply to nevent1q…grl4
_________________________

Yes, they are. We have another one coming up next week about Backup & Inheritance Strategies

https://gart.io/event/gart-webinar-backup-inheritance-strategies-11/register

Nostr event nevent1qqswzj399vfsm8ld7sgmzs6ewkg5mgk9ekkfa3jfy8yv2d49ajp8ysspy3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuar0washyernd35kyetjw3ujucm0d5hkjmnzdauqygx2ukm75dy2lm7ycyptk7cjt3yj3ug5wwdz0wrhc670hed8j2qrss7u3dzp

2026-07-05T09:01:00+02:00

#6

1. Bitcoin, Nostr, and the Quantum Problem

Contra (npub14hq…jjzu)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeSnyrSUQ_Y

2. How RSS, Lightning, and Nostr Power Value‑for‑Value Music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vk1-9tckVN0

3. Nostr Evangelism with Derek Ross

QnA (npub15c8…ssvx), Derek Ross (npub18am…p424), Max (npub1klk…x3vt), Seth For Privacy (npub1tr4…2y5g)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ronku3Y3rqk

#media_nostr_recap

Pseudonymous trusted reputation systems are very much needed. We ...

2026-07-03T19:34:05+02:00

In reply to naddr1qq…64hc
_________________________

Pseudonymous trusted reputation systems are very much needed. We can use blockchain tech to build such. They already exist but in more ad hoc ways. We also need ability to roll keys including Nostr keys and provably knows in it is the same underlying reputation bearing entity. Nost keys as they are are not very secure and definitely not a basis for knowing you are dealing with same trusted entity.

The interesting hard part is crossing from digital to physical space. For modern parallel economy it seems to me we can be limited to what was historically proven only as the scale is not there.