Episode 25: @Talej (Michael of VoltPay.app) discusses his bitcoin journey, becoming a developer, developing VoltPay, community market gardens, regenerative farming, dog sledding, and psychology.

Thanks to our guest: https://twitter.com/talej (of https://voltpay.app)

Host: https://twitter.com/mission_bitcoin

Sponsored by HardBlock - Australia's first and oldest bitcoin-only exchange: https://www.hardblock.com.au

Notes
- VoltPay.app a Lightning Network Point-of-Sale User-friendly Merchant Wallet

- Michael's bitcoin journey and becoming a developer

- Being counter-culture and mistrusting the media helped to discover and learn about bitcoin

- Understanding Austrian economics and Libertarian perspectives helped to grok bitcoin

- The importance of building an economy (especially a circular economy) that people can't be excluded from

- The reaction of colleagues, friends, and family when moving into bitcoin development work

- Build the tools and the circular economy will come!

- VoltPay current features: customisable inventory (including set prices for products, along with custom categories and units/groupings of products), customisable amounts if no product has been set up yet, multiple currency options, deposit and withdrawal features, dark mode, Wallet of Satoshi for liquidity

- VoltPay future features: LNURL function so users can setup their own name@VoltPay address, ability to plug into own LDN or C-Lightning node, semi-offline mode, ability to have static QR codes for individual products, NFC functionality for contactless payments

- Running a community market garden to establish shorter supply chains and make better quality food available to neighbours (versus them relying on inefficient global supply chains and fiat farming practices which are generally unhealthy for the land and the food consumer)

- Collaborative competition in community farming, similar to an open source project / network (or bitcoin mining)

- Australan Tax Law "Personal Use" exemption - brief discussion and strategies, including the "spend and replace" model

- Bitcoin needs a "Fiverr" equivalent, maybe a SatsSer?

- Regenerative farming with goats, cattle, and other livestock - focus on building the soil and the great vegetables will be a natural byproduct

- Issues with traditional ("classical") farming through monocropping and excessive (and escalating) fertilizer use

- Sled dogging in Australia

- Huskies and Malamutes can be hard dogs to train

- How does someone get started in bitcoin app development or development more generally?

- Things to be bullish about with bitcoin: there's so much educational tangent topics from bitcoin, e.g., psychology, philosophy, economics

- Bitcoiners are abnormally exceptional

- Bitcoin risks: regulatory capture and general regulatory risks

- Cypherpunks Write Code documentary - encryption and anti-encryption regulation has been and will continue to be a cat-and-mouse game

- Orange pill techniques: focus on the money, especially the problems with it (including the fractional reserve banking and inflation)

- A tangent into psychology: living a life of meaning and value is hard work, but it's important to find that meaning to remain on track; your mind is like a garden, so be sure to prioritise the plants that you want - don't always focus on the weeds; the mind is naturally more negative too, so get used to rolling with that; and once you find your meaning - get started, and don't get paralysed by analysis!

Resources
Cypherpunks Write Code
https://youtu.be/9vM0oIEhMag