Community Is The Ultimate Hedge
Inverting Vulnerability with the Help of the Bitcoin and Nostr Communities
When I started this newsletter five years ago, I had to think about whether I should write under my real name or a nym.
I knew that on a number of levels I might become a target if I chose to write under my real name, but I opted to do so anyway for two main reasons:
My background includes working with vulnerable communities around the globe, and I wanted this dimension of what I’ve done with my life to be associated with Bitcoin.
I believed that if I was ever targeted that the Bitcoin community would have my back, especially if I’d been honest and done good work in educating people about what Bitcoin is and how it can help the human race.
In short, I took a bet that who I am and what I’ve done would be good for how Bitcoin is perceived and that if I brought right energy to my work in this space, I’d always have the community to fall back on.
This week, the latter part of that bet paid off.
On Tuesday evening, someone notified me that my private Nostr key had been compromised. (I consider Nostr to be Bitcoin-adjacent technology, or freedom tech that complements Bitcoin.)
Once this happens, a Nostr account is basically unusable, because anyone with the private key can access it. (I mean, you can use it, but so can anyone with the key, so it’s not really “your” account anymore.)
Nostr isn’t like traditional social media or online identity platforms (it’s actually not a platform; it’s a protocol) in that you can’t just reset your password when you learn that someone has gained access to your account.
It works much like the way accessing your bitcoin on the Bitcoin blockchain works.
With Nostr and Bitcoin, you have a private key and a public key. The public key is what people use to find you on Nostr, just as it’s what people use to send you bitcoin on Bitcoin.
Your Nostr private key is what you use to access your account via Nostr clients (e.g., Primal, Damus), while your private Bitcoin key is what you need to access your bitcoin and to sign transactions.
If your Nostr private key has been discovered, anyone can access your account via any Nostr client. If your Bitcoin private key has been discovered, anyone can access your bitcoin stack.
If either of these keys are compromised, it’s best to set up a new public-private key pair immediately and begin migrating info/funds ASAP.
Needless to say, managing these private keys well is very important.
Turns out, I had used my Nostr private key somewhere I shouldn’t have (likely to test out a new Nostr client) and a bot found it and exposed it, along with 18,000 other private Nostr keys. (I still don’t know exactly how the key was discovered.)
Finding out that my account had been compromised wasn’t a great feeling, to put it mildly. I’d spent about three years building it, and the last thing I wanted to do was to start from scratch building a new one.
Plus, I was anxious that someone might start posting malicious content through my compromised account. (Luckily, that didn’t happen/hasn’t happened.)
So, when I learned that the account had been compromised, I just wanted to ignore it. I wanted to pretend it wasn’t true.
I also wanted to curse Nostr and never use it again.
Deep down, though, I believed/believe that Nostr is the future of digital identity (or at least it’s the best we’ve got right now), and I knew I’d have to deal with this situation.
Luckily, I didn’t have to deal with it alone.
The Nostr community came to my aid in a big way.
Below is the post I wrote about how things played out:
(Note: Miljan, someone mentioned in the post below, is the creator of the popular Nostr client, Primal, while Daniel is a prolific Nostr community member as well as a friend IRL.)
(Here’s a link to that Harlem Bitcoin piece, if you’d like to check it out: Community Spotlight: Harlem Bitcoin.)
I’d like to think that the community came to my aid because I’d done my best to bring attention to Nostr when I had the opportunity to while I was at Bitcoin Magazine (and even here in this newsletter).
Examples of such coverage below:
I’d also like to believe that that Nostriches and Bitcoiners that helped me out did so because they trusted me and valued my contributions to the Nostr and Bitcoin spaces.
Whatever it was, I got the first taste of what it was like to have the Bitcoin/Nostr/Freedom Tech community help me out when I found myself in a shitty situation, and it felt quite good.
In just a few days, I got about 20% of my followers back (that percentage is higher if you subtract all the bots that followed my old account) and even got boosted with about $16 worth of zaps (bitcoin sent over the Lightning Network via Nostr) as I got the new account up and running.
In the midst of all this happening, someone quote posted my post above with the following message:
This was the moment that my frustration dissipated and some tears even came to my eyes.
Community truly is the ultimate hedge.
And when you combine community with Bitcoin and other freedom tech, you get something very, very special.
So, thank you to the Bitcoiners and Nostriches that validated my choice to lean into the Bitcoin community five years ago.
I’ve never felt more empowered by this tech nor more inspired by those involved with building it and helping to expanding its reach.
I’m forever in your debt.
Bitcoin, Nostr, and Bitchat as “Emergency Tech” in Jamaica
If the account above didn’t make you believe in the power of the Bitcoin and freedom tech community, the interview below will.
It’s my conversation with Dread, founder of Flash, a Bitcoin app that was used to put the $15,000 worth of Bitcoin donated by members of the global Bitcoin community to work in effort to get aid to those in need in Jamaica in the wake of the storm the island faced this past November.
Listen and watch on Fountain.
Dread has actually yet to stop working with his team as well as a number of other teams and communities in Jamaica to help people in the wake of the hurricane. (He’s an absolutely remarkable human being.)
In our conversation, he shared stories about how people came together to deliver aid as well as how, when the banking and communication infrastructure went down in the wake of the hurricane, people relied Bitcoin (largely via Flash) to move funds and apps like Bitchat to communicate.
Dread is now working with his team to use the aforementioned tech as well as Nostr as part of a plan to prep Jamaica for the next time a storm hits the island.
In the process, he and his team have created a new way for us to conceptualize Bitcoin and freedom tech: “Emergency Tech”
This technology may not be able to stop mother nature from doing what it does in Jamaica, but it can help people to communicate, coordinate, and distribute funds more readily next time the island endures an act of God.
When you combine this tech with someone like Dread and the people in the communities with which he works, you truly get a sense of hope that we can weather all sorts of storms (pun intended) together.
No “Markets” section this week, because I can bring myself to talk about Bitcoin’s price after sharing how it’s so much more than that in this edition of the newsletter.
That said, I will repeat what I often say in this newsletter, and that is that I know money is tight for many right now. So, if you’re looking to stack some sats without spending your hard-earned fiat on it, I highly recommend using the Fold app and the Gemini credit card to do so if you live in the United States.
You can use the Fold app to get free sats every day and to get sats back on gift card purchases. You can use my referral link to sign up.
And you can use the Gemini credit card to get up to 4% back in sats on everyday purchases. Again, you can use my referral link to sign up.
On a final note, please consider joining a Bitcoin/Freedom Tech community if you’re not already a part of one. I’m a part of a few of them, from Bitcoin Dada to PubKey to the broader Nostr community, and I’ve met so many incredible people through each of them.
In being a part of these communities, you not only get some relief from the chaos in the world, but you get a sense of hope that the future is going to be better.
These communities also provide a notable reminder that we are more powerful when we work together than we are when we work alone.
So, on that note, let us continue to proceed together apace.
Best,
Frank
