Damus
Marco Barulli profile picture
Marco Barulli
@mbarulli

Progressive bitcoiner.
Building and using decentralized tools that matter.
Working on Bitcoin-backed loans at Firefish.io.

Relays (5)
  • wss://relay.nostr.band/ – read & write
  • wss://eden.nostr.land/ – read & write
  • wss://offchain.pub/ – read & write
  • wss://wfx36iktgqimnmjmyzvreoffipg7bja2dlznpunpfkpvge722hk54jad.local/ – read & write
  • wss://relay.nostrcheck.me/ – read & write

Recent Notes

mbarulli profile picture
Firefish just released a new video explaining how their Bitcoin-backed loans work.
Firefish is built by bitcoiners, for bitcoiners, and it stays true to fundamental values:
- open source code (check it on Github: https://github.com/Firefish-io/firefish-protocol)
- P2P interactions (between borrowers and lenders)
- self-custody at every step (no re-hypothecation)

(30% of your first loan if you register with the referral code “marco” or from this link: https://firefish.io?ref=marco)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6mw8hw-NZg
mbarulli profile picture
Nature just published a paper about a study conducted on the Milan metro. Researchers observed the behavior of passengers when confronted with an everyday social need.

- Baseline Condition: When a woman who appeared to be pregnant entered a train car under normal circumstances, 37.6% of the seated passengers offered her a seat.
- Experimental Condition: When an individual dressed as Batman entered the same train car at the same time, the percentage of passengers who offered their seat to the pregnant woman significantly increased to 67.2%.

Researchers attributed this stark difference to the effect of unexpected stimuli. The sudden appearance of an unusual figure (Batman) served as a strong distraction or alerting event.
When confronted with something highly unexpected, people are forced to break their routine and become more alert to their immediate surroundings. This heightened state of awareness causes them to notice the needs of others, such as the pregnant woman, more readily than they would in their normal, inattentive state. (e.g. staring into mobile phones)

We definitely need more fake Batmans to make the world a kinder place.


(Here the link to the paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s44184-025-00171-5)
mbarulli profile picture
MY SAZMINING EXPERIENCE:
A CAUTIONARY TALE OF MINING EXPECTATIONS

About one year ago, I decided to try mining. After assessing the various options, from solo mining to cloud mining, I selected @nprofile1q... since I liked the interest alignment between the company and its customers.

If you're not familiar with Sazmining (https://www.sazmining.com), it's a company that offers hosted mining services. Here's how it works:

1. You purchase a mining rig from Sazmining, which gets shipped and deployed at one of their farms (located in Paraguay or Norway).
2. You pay a monthly hosting fee that covers energy and basic maintenance costs.
3. The hashrate of your rig is directed to the Luxor mining pool.
4. You earn sats, with Sazmining taking a 15% fee on your earnings.

In this scheme, Sazmining has all the incentives to keep your rig running constantly and efficiently.

Sazmining claims that mining with them will allow you to acquire Bitcoin at a much lower price than the market price. As of today, they claim on their homepage that you can get 1 BTC for $58K, which would be almost a 50% discount.

However, my personal experience tells a different story. I'd like to share my numbers with you. I purchased a Bitmain S21 for $5K and had it shipped to the Paraguay farm where the energy costs (0.047$/KWh) are covered by the hosting subscription ($120/month). Note that your monthly fee may vary slightly due to factors like local energy curtailments or overconsumption by your rig.

When I purchased my mining rig from Sazmining, they estimated that I could reach break-even within 15 months (by May 2025). At that time, their website featured a useful simulator that allowed me to experiment with different scenarios and estimate my potential returns. Unfortunately, this simulator is no longer available.

However, I've had to revise that forecast significantly. Today, my optimistic estimate suggests that it will take around 27 months (until July 2026) for me to reach break-even. Notably, this change isn't of course due to any decrease in Bitcoin's price.

So far, I’ve earned 3.4M sats, but the pace of payouts to my wallet is getting slower: from 340K every 3 weeks at the start, to 340K every 6 weeks now. Quite likely this is due to the significant increase in the global hashrate.

Combining both upfront hardware expenses ($5K) along accumulated hosting fees ($1300), I’ve paid a 110K USD/BTC price for my 3.4M sats!

After one year I’m still pretty far from enjoying the advertised discount and, of course, if I had opted for DCA purchases, I would have enjoyed much better results.

Hopefully, my return on investment will improve in the coming months, but there are no certainties, since global hashpower keeps growing.

I have the feeling that any other strategy (e.g. DCA) would have performed much better over the past year.


mbarulli profile picture
Today is a good day to relaunch what #Ross posted on Medium almost 4 years ago: a proposal for a new decentralized architecture for social media, a proposal that will appear quite familiar to all Nostr users. A truly remarkable document that could potentially serve as a roadmap for Nostr development.

Some of Ross's design goals have already been achieved by Nostr. Others still require further work. Some may not be well-received by the community or may be technically challenging to implement within the protocol.

I am skeptical about the role of advertisers being as central as Ross envisions. In his vision, advertisers are considered an essential pillar, alongside users, content servers, and interface providers.

Nonetheless, it’s something I recommend reading to everyone.
And the handmade diagrams are just so cute! <3



https://rossulbricht.medium.com/decentralize-social-media-cc47dcfd4f99
#freeross #socialmedia