Bitcoiners are an opinionated bunch, and we’re not afraid to say it like it is without much of a filter. Naturally, this approach can rub people the wrong way or be misunderstood as toxicity and aggression. We see it all the time, especially from shitcoiner and scammers; bitcoiners are toxic, bitcoiners chase away community engagement, this reputation can be used to limit or silence bitcoin voices on social media and be a pain for those looking to genuinely help and orange pill others.
It’s pretty commonplace for bitcoiners to be de-platformed from centralised social media sites or shadowbanned, which makes it harder to get your message out and reach the audience you otherwise would be reaching.
The way big tech is moving, it will only trend towards more censorship and more support for shitcoin narratives. We see Twitter messing about with NFTs and Reddit thinking about using tokens, so don’t expect these sites to be bitcoin-friendly.
Bitcoiners always talk about creating citadels, and creating digital citadels should be one of the first on our list. A place where anyone can gain access to bitcoin information and engage in discussions. There are already projects working towards this, such as Zion, a lightning-based social media application and Sphinx chat, a lightning-based chat app.
Now there’s a new kid on the block in Stacker News, A Reddit type forum for bitcoiners.
How did stacker news get started?
Stacker News is the brainchild of k00bideh, who, after leaving the second Austin Bit Devs, began asking myself, “why can’t I find this productive of a Bitcoin community online?”
Meetups are great, but they are infrequent and not exactly practical for everyone. Why can’t there be mini meetups online or a platform to build a community that leads to meat space meetups.
While many of us have been orange-pilled by sifting through the noise and finding the signal on social media sites, it’s not as effective a funnel as we need it to be if we want to get more people into bitcoin. There simply aren’t platforms that are bitcoin-friendly and that have not either become crypto-phobic Hacker News or a cesspool for shitcoining and scam artists.
To speak to something bigger, what’s absent online are natural communities², and k00bideh believes it’s because of their community’s incentives.
Behaviour in human communities develops as a result of the incentives humans in the community are given, and existing online communities influence behaviour by format, pseudo-reputation, gamification, and moderation. Basically, their communities develop as a result of expression limits, rewards backed by nothing, and centralised control.
k00bideh’s assumption with Stacker News is that Bitcoin fixes this by having users stake something other than pseudo-reputation, Bitcoin, and earn rewards that are worth something in the external world, Bitcoin.
In Bitcoin, we say “Bitcoin fixes this” because we believe Bitcoin changes the incentives humans have in any inheriting system. We believe Bitcoin encourages people to think long term and that this seemingly small yet fundamental change is utterly transformative for the better. This is why I started Stacker News. I think Bitcoin will help us build natural communities like Bit Devs online.
- Sharing an interest in Bitcoin with people isn’t sharing a simple kind of value. Monetary systems are meta-value systems. Sharing Bitcoin with people is something more powerful.
- I’m loading the term natural communities with what I think makes in-person communities productive, incentives imparted by nature. For me, what primarily distinguishes in-person communities from online ones is that you’re sacrificing something real when you participate, social reputation, and earn something real when you participate well, social reputation, meaningful favours, and friendship.
Is stacker news free?
Yes, the site is free to sign up for, and you can engage with the site for free in the beginning, and you may earn some satoshis in the process. After your first few posts, however, you will be charged one satoshi per comment or post, which is nearly insignificant in terms of value right now.
If you want to use the site regularly, it would be best if you funded it with a few thousand satoshis; at today’s prices, $1 of bitcoin should be more than enough to get you enough satoshis to use the site for a long time.
What do I need to get started using stacker news?
All you need is an email address, Twitter account or lightning wallet; you can use any of these three methods to sign up with and create an account. Additionally, you will need a lightning network-enabled wallet to fund or withdraw satoshis from your Stacker news account.
How to earn sats on stacker news?
Content creation and engagement is key to earning satoshis on stacker news. It is, of course, a social media site and lives on the fact that new content is added to the platform for everyone to engage and discuss. When creating a post on Stacker News, each post will have a lightning bolt icon next to it.
Clicking the icon will automatically tip the creator of the post or comment, and that’s how you earn sats. The more people you engage with and the more interesting your content, the more likely you are to attract bitcoiners attention and receive more tips.
How to withdraw sats on stacker news
So you’ve been engaging with posts on the site, and you’ve been posting regularly, and you’ve built up a certain amount of satoshis that you feel you’d like to cash in. To take custody of your funds, head over to your profile link at the top and select the menu.
From the menu, select wallet and select the withdraw button; select how many sats you want to withdraw and the method you want to withdraw in, either using a lightning invoice or a QR code.
- If you chose the invoice option, copy the invoice from the site and paste it into your wallet and click receive.
- If you select the QR code option, hold your phone up to the code using your wallet app and scan the code to receive the funds.
Funds are transferred via the lightning network, so your request for payment should be settled instantly.
How to get more views on stacker news
If you’re a content creator and you’re looking to drive traffic to your blog, social media accounts or Youtube channel, you can get extra eyeballs on your posts by boosting them. Stacker news allows you to set a fee in sats to boost your post so it sits higher in the rankings on feeds which can translate to more views and click through to your link.
If you’re looking to attract a bitcoin-only audience to your content, then boosting your posts on Stacker News can be a viable option.
Happy stacking
If you’re looking for a curated bitcoin feed, looking to engage with fellow bitcoiners, or you create bitcoin related content, then stacker news could become a part of your daily online diet. The site is still fairly new and does not have that many contributors at this time, and needs more bitcoiners to fill it up with posts to help build an orange pill rabbit hole; we can send more people to help their journey of self-discovery.Â
