Why this, why now
Hello everybody. My name is Gandlaf (short for gandlaf21). I am a software developer and Bitcoin Pleb. I have been exposed to Bitcoin pretty early on, in 2011 to be exact. Back then, a fellow developer friend enthusiastically showed me how he is mining Bitcoin on his gaming notebook. I still remember my dumb ass asking: “so what?“. I wasn’t ready. I didn’t care to learn about it. It took 5 more years and yet another coincidence to spark the ember. This time, I was ready.
I fell deep into the rabbit hole. I rode the highs and lows of the Bitcoin price charts. I educated friends and family on the subject. I dabbled in shitcoinery (embarrassingly). I found that shitcoinery is something a lot of Bitcoiners have to go through before we could finally realize, that there is only one true King.
As I’ve seen the Bitcoin community growing, I had many great discussions online as well as offline. I came to the realization, that Bitcoin is for everybody. Because in most of these conversations, there was major disagreement because Bitcoiners are very narrow minded (in a good and a maybe not-so-good sense).
In a good sense: We take no bullshit. We state our opinions, and we don’t shy back from disagreement. The rule is always: “Don’t trust, verify“. This makes it very hard to sway a Bitcoiner away from the path.
In a not-so-good sense: Don’t trust, verify… That’s good and all, but it’s a lot of work. Sometimes Bitcoiners are lazy, and we don’t feel like verifying. But since we can’t trust, we tend to just disagree. It’s harder to find common ground.
This is why I’m starting this Substack
As a Bitcoiner, I have my opinions. I try to base them in truth and transparency. This is not always straightforward, and it is sometimes not clear how the opinions came to be. So having a place to write about these opinions in a longer form, helps me to verify that I’m not bullshitting myself.
What content is gonna be on here
I will post my opinions about topics concerning the broader Bitcoin-, Lightning-, and Nostr-Ecosystem.
Since I’m a programmer, I might publish on stuff I am working on. I might publish guides. I might write about cryptography or programming.