HaveFunStayingPoor.com
2.25K subscribers
14 photos
2 videos
18 links
Receive periodical letters from poor bitcoiner Udi Wertheimer. Let’s strengthen our hands and end poverty together!
Download Telegram
Udi would've been disappointed 😢

We looked through the replies, and no one's telling Stephanie to have fun staying poor...

Click here to fix that. 😈
Udi died for our sins and now BTCUSD finally broke the 2019 highs.

@HaveFunStayingPoor, Udi!

Click to thank Udi for his ultimate sacrifice 💔
OK that’s enough pooring around...

I’ve been putting some thought into Twitter lately and how we use it in the bitcoin community; or does it use us? Hard to tell sometimes if we’re not getting the short end of the stick in this deal.

Twitter can be useful for extending your reach far and beyond your usual circles, and that’s very useful, whether you’re running a business or trying to spread the word of Satoshi to a larger audience.

But it can also give Twitter a lot of power over your voice. Just this week we’ve seen the NY Post being banned, bitcoin businesses forbidden to advertise, and multiple bitcoin personalities being suspended for various reasons. Twitter also controls your reach: having followers isn’t enough. You need to constantly play the engagement game.

So, many of us are playing that game, but are we playing it well? When the algorithms favor us, do we make the most of it? Or do we just collect ephemeral likes and @HaveFunStayingPoor?

Surely there’s a way us bitcoiners can leverage the reach we can get on twitter and spread our ideas, while also moving towards reducing twitter’s control?

I’d love to get your views while I continue thinking about this. What’s some great value you get from twitter, and in what ways do you think twitter is... keeping you poor?

Please let me know in the comments, and don’t forget to tell your friends to @HaveFunStayingPoor.
Some more thoughts on Twitter.

Today, Twitter seems to have restricted Pierre Rochard's account. This follows a week of unprecedented censorship of political tweets following the US elections, but also of multiple accounts and tweets related to bitcoin (and probably accounts and tweets many other communities and topics).

@HaveFunStayingPoor, Pierre! 😢

What many people seem to miss when discussing Twitter “censorship”, is that twitter’s main role isn’t as a place for you to store 280 characters of information. It’s about making your tweets discoverable by large audiences. Twitter doesn’t just make your content available.. it makes sure people see it.

When we build our bitcoin communities on Twitter, we let it have control over the discoverability of bitcoin content. With nocoiners getting sick of staying poor and becoming bitcoiners in this bull market, many of them will get all their bitcoin information from Twitter. That makes Twitter a great tool to learn about bitcoin, but also gives Twitter way too much power. At any point in the future, it can decide to censor any Bitcoin narratives that don’t play along with Twitter’s future interests!

When we use Twitter, we don’t have direct access to other bitcoiners. Even if they clicked the follow button, they will only see our tweets if Twitter lets them. Very often it doesn’t let them. Few understand!

Please leave a comment to help Poor Udi: how do you use Twitter as a tool for converting nocoiners to bitcoiners, while limiting Twitter’s control over the discussion? Or do you just give up and let Twitter do its thing?

Don’t forget to tell your friends on telegram to @HaveFunStayingPoor. You can forward this message if you liked it.

And please click here to tweet about it, Poor Udi can’t tweet 😭
Hey frens, quick question

What date should we set for the Ethereum Remembrance Day? I'm thinking July 20th to signify the DAO fork but open for suggestions

I think it's important that as nocoiners turn into fresh bitcoiners, they are told the story of Ethereum, the altcoin that once was, and pay respect to the fallen hodlers.

If we don't remember our history we might as well @HaveFunStayingPoor
Reach out to a loved one with 0 bitcoins today, and tell them to @HaveFunStayingPoor
These beautiful ETH thought leadership pieces were posted precisely at the ETH/BTC top late September.

It dropped 33% since then and still going...

Reach out to an ETH thought leader today and tell them to @HaveFunStayingPoor
Some ATH thoughts on giving bitcoin wallet recommendations to poor people (aka nocoiners):

This is a long post. If you don't like long posts, @HaveFunStayingPoor.

Since leaving Twitter, I don't actually have any idea what the Bitcoin price is*. The only way I even find out about price movements is because nocoiner friends call to ask me "how to buy bitcoin". Or... former-poor, hodling friends call to ask how to tell if the sats I helped them acquire ago are still safe.

There's an interesting dynamic there, that I think you only fully realize after going through a couple of bull runs. It turns out, that the wallet recommendation you make for starting out, might no longer make sense 3 years later when that person suddenly remembers they have some sats stored somewhere.

For example, these days I often recommend Blue Wallet for newcomers. It's relatively user friendly, It's bitcoin-only, so no flashy casino lights to separate your friends from there sats. And it offers an upgrade path to advanced features like hardware wallets, full nodes, multisig, and more.

But... is it a good choice for the long term? We'll get back to this soon.

—————

So lately, former nocoiners who I helped acquire sats in the previous cycle, reached out again, fearing that their scary bitcoin wallets might make them poor soon.

See, years ago, I used to recommend mycelium for android users and breadwallet for iOS users. They weren't amazing but they were good. Open-source, self-custody, bitcoin-only... you know, the good stuff.

Fast forward a few years, today mycelium is recovering from a failed ICO, pretty much abandonware, only ever updated to add more monetization schemes.

Breadwallet rebranded to BRD, ran an ICO, and became a shitcoin wallet.

BTW, if you want to make sure you stay poor, take a mortgage on your house and use the money to buy "wallet app coins". Quickest way to generational poverty!

So it's kind of difficult to trust these wallets now. And you might not realize it, but you do need to trust them:

Even though they're open source, you can't really tell if the version on the app store is identical to the source code on GitHub. The source code could be safe and secure, but the version on the app store could be built from another codebase!

For mobile wallets, you also have to trust the automatic updates. The app could be safe and secure today, but the devs can create an updated version that steals your keys whenever they want! The phone will update to that version, and you might not even know an update occurred.

So... Open source is great, self custody is great. But you still have to trust the wallet devs (or @HaveFunStayingPoor).

—————

So.. what should I recommend to nocoiners buying their first sats? I'll probably get a lot of hate for this, but... My new strategy is to only recommend a self-custody wallet** if I know the nocoiner is going to learn and stay on top of things.

Or, if I know a pro is going to help them out for years of hodling.

Why? I think that wallets like Blue Wallet and the teams behind them are great, but who knows what will happen in 5 years. Maybe they have to sell the company, and the new owners aren't as trustworthy?

I do recommend that people learn about Bitcoin before investing, but most won't. For those who won't, I usually recommend going for a custodian (Square/Swan/Gemini/Greyscale/etc). At least that way they won't call me years later to ask about their wallet... 🤭

💬 Please comment below to inform of me your hatred towards this blasphemous text. Or, alternatively, tell me how you get nocoiners to use a self-custody wallet safely, for the long term.

👥 And don't forget to tell your friends to
HaveFunStayingPoor.com!

* If you actually believed that I don't follow the price, let me know. I might have a bridge to sell you.

** If you're thinking "but sir, muh hardware wallet / multisig"... imo they're not a good fit for newcomers on day one. They have no idea what they're doing. If they stay committed to managing self-custody for a while, they can migrate to hww/multisig later.
Some Bitcoin news you should know about, or @HaveFunStayingPoor:

1️⃣ Make sure you tell your friends/family about this fantastic letter about bitcoin from James O'Beirne.

James is a contributor to open-source bitcoin projects, but his letter doesn't bog readers down with technicalities. It explains what they really want to know: why number go up?

I recommend sending an email to friends and family right now:

Email body: A link to James' letter.
Email subject: "Read this right now or have fun staying poor".

2️⃣ Earlier this week Brian Armstrong tweeted about rumors of new US regulations affecting withdrawals from US exchanges to self-custody wallets. I saw many misinterpretations.. First, this is a rumor. Second, the rumor is concerning exchanges, not developers of self-custody wallets.

We will see how this folds out (if at all), but if you're American, maybe get proficient with VPN and the Tor Browser. More on this later :)

💬Do you like the amazing new @HaveFunStayingPoor logo from Bitko? Comment below!
Janet Yellen, Former Chair of the Federal Reserve and nominee for US Secretary of the Treasury, just joined Twitter.

SHOCKINGLY, none of you told her to have fun staying poor.

So we fixed it!

https://twitter.com/havefunstaypoor/status/1333516492902703111
🐷Some thoughts on the STABLE Act's goal of keeping Americans poor

Lots of talk in the last couple of days about the proposed STABLE Act bill. Coincenter has a (mostly) good summary if you need a refresher, but basically it means stablecoin issuers will need to acquire banking charters and be approved by the Federal Reserve otherwise they'll be banned.

Stablecoins are mostly used on Ethereum but they're a crucial part of the Bitcoin economy. BTC/USDT is possibly the trading pair with the most volume in the cryptocurrency market, and stablecoins are a huge component of Bitcoin's liquidity. If something like USDT is ever shut down, it would likely spell a major short- / mid-term crisis for Bitcoin.

As usual, crypto pundits mostly missed the point, and focused on a stupid tweet by a supporter of the bill, who implied that "decentralized" stablecoins like DAI can be stopped by... illegalizing running ethereum nodes (?!?!).

That's scary, objectionable, and wrong. But also unnecessary. No stablecoins are really "decentralized". DAI can be stopped in many simple ways, without going after Ethereum node operators: shutting down the centralized oracles, censoring the centralized USDC (which is heavily used to keep DAI stable), or prosecuting the handful of MKR shareholders that can stop DAI's system at any time.

So, long story short, if lawmakers want to go after stablecoins like DAI, they can target any of a handful of targets. No need to go after node operators. If they want to stop DAI, they can. Easily.

————

More importantly, what the response to this should have been, is not that enforcing this would be impossible (it won't be), but that this bill is just bad for Americans. You can ban stablecoins in the US, but you can't stop them from existing elsewhere.

You don't need a "decentralized" solution. You just need demand for stablecoins, and Bitcoin creates that demand. Someone will face the risks and create stablecoin supply for that demand, even if US lawmakers make it difficult. Because there's lots of money to be made in doing that.

If stablecoins as we know them are banned in the US, the shockwaves will be felt for a while for sure. But Bitcoin eventually finds a way. You can't put it back in the box.

————

In a statement announcing the proposed bill, congresswoman Tlaib says that "getting ahead of the curve on preventing cryptocurrency providers from repeating the crimes against low- and moderate-income residents of color that traditional big banks have is critically important".

But the truth is, that using poor people as an excuse for financial exclusion is, for a lack of a better word, evil.

If you want to make sure Americans @HaveFunStayingPoor, you should support the STABLE Act, as that's the only thing it would achieve. Stablecoins won't disappear, they will just become difficult to access for Americans, further limiting their access to Bitcoin and its poverty-ending properties.

————

🔁 If you liked this, please share! (you can forward the message, or tell your friends to HaveFunStayingPoor.com)

💬 If you didn't like this, tell me I'm a scammer or an idiot in the comments below!
Some thoughts on why altcoins are great. 🐽
(send this to your poor friends who ask about ALT SZN)

Altcoins (sometimes known as "shitcoins" among industry experts) are digital coins positioned as alternatives to bitcoin.

A naive examination of them may reveal similarities to bitcoin: altcoins use digital signatures, they have a chain of blocks, there are addresses, etc... just like bitcoin! But faster / smarter / better for dentists / etc

That’s why many of the world’s poor nocoiners see them as an opportunity to gain riches similar to those of ultra-early bitcoiners: if the alts are technically “better”, they are sure to win, right?

———

But the truth is, altcoins and bitcoins have almost nothing in common.

When a poor nocoiner first tries bitcoin, they usually don’t see it for what it really is. They get distracted by minor details, like “i can send it to my friends” or “i can hold my own keys” and then see those same properties elsewhere.

But the real value in bitcoin is its immutable monetary policy.

READ THAT AGAIN.

Bitcoin holds long-term value because its monetary policy is immutable.

In other words, it’s predictable. Dependable. Reliable.

All of the other features that Bitcoin has are really just implementation details to make the above possible.

Some poor people will say: “but bitcoin is mutable! You can change the code!”

No.

Bitcoin isn’t defined by software. Software exists to assist humans in verifying the rules they agreed on:
21 million coins.
Decreasing inflation.
No censorship.

If you changed the software, you didn’t change bitcoin. You just made software that no one wants.

Bitcoin allowed us to set the rules once, then move on to create value elsewhere.

We don’t keep “innovating” on the rules of the game. Bitcoin remains stable.

This is how money should work.

Altcoins are the opposite of that.

————————

Altcoins are completely different.

Instead of a shared monetary system that allows value creation elsewhere, altcoiners seek to extract value by repeatedly changing the rules.

The altcoin issuer gets to learn the new rules before anyone else for their own benefit. They even get to design the rules for their own benefit, to play on their own strengths.

For example, “defi coins”, where new ones are released daily, each with intentionally obscure rules, like having the number of units you own change due to external events, or allowing one smart contract to empty coins in another, and so on.

Obscure rules mean issuers and friends have some time to attract attention and extract value, before others manage to put the pieces together and understand how to extract value as well... at which point the thing usually collapses.

Which is their sign to issue a new coin, and change the rules once more.

So, altcoins are the opposite of bitcoin. Short-term attempts to change the rules to extract value. To evade stability, avoid dependability, and prevent reliability.

————————

The one thing altcoins do have in common with bitcoin, is that they share the same infrastructure. Mostly for historical reasons, you can find XRP and ETH in the same exchanges and wallets as bitcoin, even though they have nothing in common. This will likely change with time (eg XRP getting delisted).

This does create fluctuation where liquidity moves from bitcoin to altcoins and back.

So yes, it is possible to buy altcoins and make money. Those who tell you that it’s impossible are poor, or losers, or both.

What twitter influencers won’t tell you however, is that you have to understand the dynamics of changing rules and hype cycles to make it. If you understand this and think you can win this short-term game: maybe you can. Go ahead.

But if you’re going into this thinking altcoins are improved bitcoins, you’re going to have a bad time. I hope that later you can at least have fun staying poor.

🔔 Join @HaveFunStayingPoor for more posts like this!

👥 Liked this post? Tell your friends! You can forward this message, or tell them to HaveFunStayingPoor.com

💬 Hated this post? Tell me I’m poor in the comments below!
🚨Poverty alert!! Don’t miss this!!

Have fun with Nic Carter!
🤓

(Update: it’s over)

I want to make sure everyone is having fun while staying perpetually poor, so..

Telegram has a new “Voice Chat” feature, and forever-poor bitcoiner Nic Carter will drop in the voice chat today, me (poor Udi Wertheimer) and him will have a chat about current events, and you poors will be able to join the discussion as well.

We’ll talk about the fall of Ripple, thee rise of Bitcoin, and what's coming next year.

We start in just under 6 hours: 3pm ET / 12pm PT (or click here to view in your own timezone).

You can join in on Telegram!

Make sure you join @HaveFunStayingPoor and have notifications on 🛎, I’ll send a message when we start.

Update: it’s over :) You should join @HaveFunStayingPoor for future updates!

👥 Share this with your poor friends! You can forward the message in telegram, or tell them to HaveFunStayingPoor.com

💬 Any topics you want us to cover? Tell me in the comments below
🎤Have Fun Staying Poor LIVE with Nic Carter starts now! (Update: it’s over)

👀 this HFSP LIVE is over but if you’re here, check out my post above about altcoins vs. bitcoin!

—————

Nic Carter is joining Udi Wertheimer for an end-of-year interview to celebrate the end of Ripple and new beginnings of Bitcoin!

During the interview you'll get the chance to jump on the mic too, if you want. If you're muted, just wait for when we open the mics.

—————

Update: The voice chat is over but you should join @HaveFunStayingPoor to get notified of future talks!

👥 Share this with your poor friends! You can forward the message in telegram, or tell them to HaveFunStayingPoor.com
You failed your friends. 🐽
(read this, and then forward to your poor loved ones, who are too weak to buy the dip)

Scrolling through Twitter today, I see many bitcoiners telling a similar story about conversations with nocoiners yesterday and today.

Chad bitcoiner: Here’s the 20% dip you were hoping for! Are you buying?

Poverty-struck friend: No Chad, this was a bubble. I’m glad I didn’t buy the top. I will wait for $3k / buy ramen instead

Chad bitcoiner: REEEEE but you don’t understand / this is normal / you wanted it when it was 40k but not when it’s 32k / just a weekend dump / bla bla bla

See what happened there? Chad bitcoiner turned into Crybaby bitcoiner.

Instead of bravely leading his friend to financial freedom, Chad started making up excuses. This is not how you treat your friends.

——————

I won’t lie, I’m a bit disappointed. I tried to prepare you for this moment. We are now equipped with 4 magic words that fix this issue and empower the poors to save themselves. Have a look at this alternative conversation:

Chad bitcoiner: Here’s the 20% dip you were hoping for! Are you buying?

Poverty-struck friend: No Chad, this was a bubble. I’m glad I didn’t buy the top. I will wait for $3k

Chad bitcoiner: HAVE FUN STAYING POOR

Poverty-struck friend: *typing…* / pause / *typing…* / pause / *typing…* / sends screenshot of purchased sats

Boom. No more explaining. No more entertaining or cultivating your friend’s lack of confidence. Ruthlessly crush it, because that’s what a good friend does.

Think I’m joking? I’m not. Here’s why HFSP will save your friends.

——————

I’ve been trying to figure out for a while: what separates chad bitcoiners with strong hands, from weak-handed poors? Are the chads just smarter? Were they able to reach deep, confident understating of Bitcoin thanks to their superior galaxy brain?

No.

The difference is that strong-handed bitcoiners have a strong support network.

Hodling bitcoins for years is really hard. Not selling dips is crazy hard. Buying dips is insanely hard. Even the strongest hands know this. That’s why they surround themselves with degenerate raging bulls. The bitcoin degens help them store value.

Why is it that Twitter accounts who repeatedly tweet out short bullish posts become successful, while people posting long intelligent analysis are often reduced to obscurity?

Because we all understand the theory. We don’t need more lectures. It’s simple enough. But when fear strikes, many people need a support network to get over it and do the right thing.

——————

None of us can predict the future. Maybe your friend buys a 20% dip and then price continues to dip 20% lower. But they’re still much more likely to hold for the long term in that case, than if they would’ve bought the top.

Be that support network for your loved ones. Be a good friend. There’s time for learning and research, and you can definitely help there. But when the real opportunity shows up, and decisions must be made in face of total fear, that’s no time for lectures. Be ruthless. Use the four words.

Have.

Fun.

Staying.

Poor.

Tough love. Your friends will thank you for it later.

🔔 Join @HaveFunStayingPoor for more posts like this!

👥 Liked this post? Tell your friends! You can forward this message, or tell them to HaveFunStayingPoor.com

🐦Angry at Twitter? You can follow me on Mastodon!

💬 Hated this post? Tell me I’m a Ponzi scheme shill in the comments below!
🐽 BREAKING: SCIENTIST CREATES GOLD OUT OF A HUMAN TURD

Bitcoin FUD everywhere!

It's the same recycled debunked FUD we've seen for years, but we’re approaching it incorrectly...

——

Imagine Bitcoin didn’t exist and gold would've gotten all the attention that Bitcoin is getting.

What do you do if you don’t like this and want to FUD gold?

Publish a story on how scientists created fake gold made of human feces 💩 and managed to sell it to a grandma in Finland who thought was real. Gold is doomed!

So how can we tackle this?

Get a chemist to write a long boring article about how you can’t turn actual shit into gold atoms?

No.

Investors don't need a chemistry lesson. They’re just scared and confused because HODLING IS HARD.

So remind them why they hodl in the first place. It’s not for their love of chemistry! It’s because fiat failed them.

Just say: KINDLY HAVE FUN STAYING POOR.

❤️ CLICK HERE to see how I handle FUD. Like and retweet, please!

🔔 Join @HaveFunStayingPoor for more posts like this!
Media is too big
VIEW IN TELEGRAM
🎵 While we drink up some more, of your nocoiner tears 🐽

Do you have nocoiner friends? Send them this song!

You might have seen this before, but this is the full version. I think you'll like it :)
Click the video to play the full "Have Fun Staying Poor" shanty by BTCMinstrel!

🔔 Join @HaveFunStayingPoor for more posts like this!

👥 Share with your friends! You can forward this message, or tell them to HaveFunStayingPoor.com

🐦 Liked this sea shanty? Follow creator BTCMinstrel on twitter!