Dear Netizen,
Paying for immaterial stuff on the internet is a weird thing. Everyone got used to the fact that everything is available for free, all the time. I got used to that too, and I tend to close paywalls as fast and as subconsciously as I pull my hand away from a hot stove.

I believe, however, that there is something which could work for everyone involved. Something which has been working for hundreds, even thousands of years: supporting what you like, just because. Call it tipping, call it gratuity, call it busking.

Monetizing information is a hard problem. Information wants to be free, and I think we should not build cages - no matter how pretty - for the sake of imprisoning information. This is one of the reasons why I don’t intend to charge for bits and bytes.

There is Patreon, of course, which is a great start. However, it suffers from the same problem that all centralized platforms will inevitably suffer from: power and control, which has the habit of resulting in interference and censorship. I’m not a fan of interference. And I despise censorship.

Luckily, we now live in a world where Bitcoin exists. We can give directly, just like in the olden days, where buskers performed for everyone, and a handful of people were kind enough to pay a handful of coins to the artist, directly. I hope that our society will return to this way of giving, at least in some corners of the internet some of the time.

I don’t track views on this site, or clicks, or anything else. I don’t know how many people will read this, and I don’t want to know. Knowledge is power - and I have no interest in having this kind of power.

I believe that people should have the right to remain private. To speak privately, read privately, watch privately, transact privately. To privately consume and create any kind of information. After all, progress depends on having private thoughts and private conversations.

my.paynym.is/+gentlepond791:

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If you don’t have the means to give directly, or don’t want to, no worries. I understand that very well. I’m quite selective with my support too! However, if you have a couple of satoshis to spare, you will make my day, week, or even month. To everyone who decided to throw me some sats, thank you. You have no idea how much it means to me, and how motivating it is.

I finally found something that I love doing. My plan is to dedicate as much time as I can to contribute to the Bitcoin ecosystem. How the business models of the future will look like is anyone’s guess. Maybe we will see a renaissance of the old and proven methods developed in meatspace. Maybe we will see entirely new paradigms, things that are only possible in the strange world of cyberspace. Maybe we’ll see a little bit of both.

In any case, for the first time in my life, I’m both excited and optimistic about the future. I hope you are as well.

Sincerely,
Gigi

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