Derek Ross calls Nostr “the foundation of a more open internet.” For him, Bitcoiners who aren’t using Nostr are missing the point. Looking at his feed, you get early 2010s Twitter vibes — “microblogging” was the word used back then. But what Ross sees in the future for this revolutionary communication platform goes well beyond food images, travel updates and “good morning” messages. He’s the co-founder of the Grow Nostr Initiative, does developer relations for Soapbox.pub and is one of the most prolific posters (and zappers!) on the social media.
There’s a quip about Nostr and Bitcoin — the orange pill and the purple pill — I’ve seen him invoke, live on stage and on Nostr, many times; “The purple pill helps the orange pill go down.”
In the aftermath of the BTCHel Bitcoin conference in Helsinki, Finland, we sat down over breakfast, post-conference musings to the max. Ross’ passion for Nostr is shining over, the passion for purple perfectly complementing orange. (On the very same breakfast table, Ross had just convinced Samuel Kullman, MP of the Swiss Canton Bern, to come back to Nostr.) Indeed, on the panel he had moderated the day before, he asked Martii Malmi, the Finnish developer who was one of the first who have had direct correspondence with Satoshi, a trick question about Bitcoin and Nostr, knowing full well what Malmi would answer:
“Bitcoin is freedom of money; Nostr is freedom of everything else.”
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JB: “The purple pill helps the orange pill go down.” Tell me about this statement and why you say it so often.
Derek Ross: I think I got it from Cameri back in the days, but everyone says it now. I posted it the first time on February 24, 2023, and I’ve repeated it many times since.
The idea is that Nostr, the purple pill, is the ideal companion to Bitcoin, the orange pill. I asked Martii yesterday on stage, knowing that he would answer that. And it’s true: You can’t even have freedom money if you don’t have freedom of communication. Just think about it — if I can’t freely communicate with you, then how am I supposed to pay you? Nostr is the natural complement to Bitcoin.
JB: If you’re right, shouldn’t the Venn diagrams of Nostr and Bitcoin be completely overlapping… or at least all Bitcoiners be on Nostr? Why isn’t Nostr bigger than it is?
Derek Ross: Well, it’s still a little buggy and difficult to manage sometimes — but the many excellent apps with a great user interface make it so much easier.
But yes, every Bitcoiner should be on Nostr. People will hate me for saying this, but it means that not everyone in Bitcoin is here for the right reasons. They don’t have the right ethos. They’re here for number-go-up, for green candles, for personal vanity and riches… and not for freedom. Because if you understand decentralized money, then why wouldn’t you get decentralized communication?
One reason why Twitter or other platforms keep people around is that you’ve built up this massive audience and crowd over there. On Nostr, there isn’t an algorithm to help you (or capture you); now you have to re-learn how to get engagement from your audience. But so what? We Bitcoiners are all about proof of work; you built that audience once, you can do it again.
But I get it: It’s hard for some people to just walk away from that.
JB: You can also do both, though… like Lyn Alden does.
Derek Ross: Lyn is a fantastic example! She sometimes publishes very different things on Twitter and Nostr, and Nostr-Lyn is much more personal and reflective. On Twitter, she shares macroeconomic stuff and she’s all professional and so on, but on Nostr she’s often personal, posts memes and shitposts. It’s a beautiful combination.
Another reason why Nostr feels so slow and zaps are stagnant etc — even though the technology is there now — is that Bitcoin is in a bull market. In a bull market, everyone wants to be on Bitcoin Twitter. Maybe Nostr and bitcoin are opposites here: Nostr is in a bear market when bitcoin is in a bull market — and next time bitcoin is in a bear, Nostr will be in a bull!
JB: Tell me about your background, how did you get into Nostr?
I’m not really a programmer… well, to the average person, I am, but I think I’m only a systems administrator: I manage systems and applications — I don’t create full-blown applications. Though now, thanks to vibe coding, I am: I have some hack-shit-together skills, and I always wanted to build on Bitcoin. Creating Nostr Plebs, the first Nostr business, allowed me to fulfill the dream of building with Bitcoin. was the first to build a Nostr business and I can put things together.
I first learned about Nostr from Jack Dorsey’s tweet in December 2022, and the call-out to developers for how to fix social media.
I kept posting and zapping and building, and somehow I was invited to Baltic Honey Badger in 2023; I used Nostr to crowdfund my trip expenses. Basically, if the community wants me to go and speak about Nostr, zap this post. I had never been to Europe but always wanted to go, so that was exciting. (The title of that talk? You guessed it: “The purple pill helps the orange pill go down.”)
Nostr has changed my use of social media completely: Amethyst is the first app I open in the morning.
JB: Does it worry you that Jack Dorsey is bankrolling developers and providing most of the funding for this space? A centralization problem?
No, Jack understands the importance of what Nostr is doing. In time, once it’s going to be big enough and there are maybe other ways to finance and monetize, and then maybe funding dries up.
But if you think about it, it’s a good use for Jack’s money.