SATOSHI CIDERS / BRISTOL FREEDOM TECH on Sunday June 21st from 6.15pm at Prince of Wales Pub & Beer Garden on Gloucester Rd. Ask any questions, chat with Bristol Bitcoiners interested in growing sound money & local circular economies. BS7 8AA
Here is a great interactive chart of Bitcoin's power law. The website was created by an independent researcher and a member of our community. The current annual growth of the power law floor is 37%.
https://t.co/1nDbychKtR
Martti Malmi, one of Bitcoin's earliest developers, just released a new version of Nostr VPN, an open-source mesh VPN that replaces the entire trust model of traditional VPN services.
Traditional VPNs route all your traffic through a central server operated by a company you have to trust. They see your data. They require your email. They can log your activity. They can be subpoenaed, hacked, or shut down. Even modern mesh VPNs like Tailscale, which improved on this by sending data peer-to-peer, still require you to authenticate through a centralized coordination server using third-party accounts like Google or Microsoft.
Nostr VPN eliminates the central server entirely. Your identity is a Nostr keypair, a self-generated cryptographic key pair with no registration, no email, no third-party account. The underlying transport layer is FIPS (Free Internetworking Peering System), a self-organizing encrypted mesh network where nodes authenticate each other, route traffic for each other, and establish connections without any central authority or global topology knowledge. Each node's Nostr public key (npub) serves as its network address.
The architecture uses two layers of encryption: hop-by-hop encryption between peers and independent end-to-end encryption between mesh endpoints with periodic rekeying for forward secrecy. When direct connections fail due to NAT issues, the system falls back to Nostr-based multihop routing through other FIPS nodes rather than relying on company-operated relay servers. Peer discovery and NAT traversal happen through public Nostr relays using encrypted gift-wrapped messages.
The new release adds native desktop apps for macOS, Linux, and Windows, an Android app, Nostr-based multihop routing for when NAT holepunching fails, and improved network management. It supports UDP, TCP, Ethernet, Tor, and Bluetooth transports simultaneously on a single mesh.
This is what happens when you apply Bitcoin's design philosophy, permissionless, self-sovereign, no trusted third parties, to networking infrastructure. Built by one of the people who helped Satoshi build Bitcoin in 2009.
The UK government has successfully weaponised the
'child safety' narrative to execute one of the most significant power grabs in the history of the British internet.
By stripping away a massive slice of online privacy for every adult, politicians are laying the final bricks of a Digital Panopticon that few are willing to acknowledge.
Back in my August 2023 CityAM article, I warned that the Online Safety Bill was a digital double edged sword. Sold as a shield for the vulnerable, but destined to cut through encryption and open innovation.
Today, that prediction is playing out exactly as foreseen. Lawmakers are pushing social media restrictions for under 16s as the ultimate 'Trojan Horse' for mandatory Digital ID and state surveillance.
The fundamental flaw is that Whitehall believes it can dictate the shape of the internet at a glacial pace through endless committees. At the same time, the cutting edge of technology is racing at lightspeed toward decentralised networks like Nostr and federated platforms which are immune to these government mandates.
Centralised platforms will eventually buckle. The open, user controlled web will route around these rules, as it always has.
Our digital freedoms are being eroded in the shadows of safety rhetoric. The only viable answer is to build decentralised alternatives faster than they can regulate the old ones.
Britain is on the verge of losing its digital sovereignty forever unless we wake up to the trap.
And yes ... this is another Bitcoin advert.
It's time to separate money from the state and make government smaller.
Reminder - this is how civilisations typically collapse.
There's usually no dramatic 'fall of Rome' or cataclysmic event.
Just a slow grind downwards as you gradually notice potholes aren't filled in, roads collapse and are washed away, you can never see a doctor or a dentist and eventually muddle on with a missing tooth or held together with painkillers and tubigrips...
Where casual petty theft becomes normalised and is unpunished, and everything goes up and in price (except your wages, so you can't keep up). Where an asset-owning elite is largely immune to all this, but gradually retreats behind walls, gates and private security.
Next step might be rolling blackouts, which you'll get used to as well, as your children do their homework by paraffin lamps and candlelight.
And you suddenly realise quite how far we have fallen.
SATOSHI CIDERS Thurs May 21st from 6.15pm. Escape inflation & sup £3 pints with local Bitcoiners @MardykeBristol - legendary value 1865 Freehouse in Hotwells. Ask any questions, find like-minded rebels, join circular economies. BS8 4UB
Berkshire Bitcoiners next meet up on Tuesday 19th May at 7pm, located at the @VolunteerTheale, Church St, Theale, Reading RG7 5BX.
Informal food and drinks at a Bitcoin accepting venue with local or visiting Bitcoiners or anyone looking to find out more.
A new iPhone software update is changing how millions of people in the UK access the internet.
Most concerningly, the majority of users don’t yet realise what’s happened — largely because Apple has not informed them.
Big Brother Watch (BBW) has said: “With the release of iOS 26.4, Apple has introduced mandatory age and identity checks at the operating system level.
The only other countries where Apple has imposed similar demands are South Korea and Singapore – countries without a fully free internet.
BBW went on to add: “This is a serious and unprecedented step – one that risks undermining privacy, freedom of expression and equal access to information.”
Read more below 👇
⚡️Our next Southampton Bitcoin meet-up⚡️
📅 Friday 24th April
⏲️ 7pm until late
📍 Maritimo Lounge, Ocean Village, Soton SO14 3LG
April 23rd was the silence of Satoshi. April 24th is the voice of the community....come join us!
@BitcoinEventsUK@btc_portsmouth@BtcBeachBmouth
The new Meetup Breakdown is out now - Issue 89! 🗞️
🔸 14 Bitcoin meetups
🔸 1 new bitcoin-accepting business
🔸 5 upcoming events
🇬🇧 Your weekly update on the UK Bitcoin scene.
Subscribe for free and don't miss a thing.
https://t.co/3uEkjsXzzM
Just to keep at the forefront of everyone's mind. Next Bitcoin Nottingham meetup, Mon 27th April, 18:30 at @CTFC1904 . see https://t.co/4qDMnLd8Ee for details.
I was truly inspired after my latest deep conversation with John Burnett, so I summarized the 8 lessons I learnt from it, including books, films, free courses and other recommendations.
Let me know what you thought in the comments!
New, from the Adam Smith Institute:
A FREE SPEECH BILL FOR THE UNITED KINGDOM.
A legislative vision for getting the British state out of the business of censoring opinions, forever.
https://t.co/nmivFwutz6
I just wrote the complete guide on how I told Keir Stalin’s police state to fuck off and restored Apple Advanced Data Protection on my iCloud.
No more complying with their idiotic Online Safety Act
Step-by-step if you want to opt out too:
https://t.co/xMPWZa4qav