During my travels to Paris this week, I had the pleasure of meeting up with the team building Nodl; a plug-and-play node that brings monetary liberty to the palm of your hands. The team plans to ship the first batch of their nodes in the coming weeks and will begin iterating and taking more orders once they have more feedback from the first users. Regardless of how the first batch performs, it is extremely encouraging to see teams forging ahead with consumer hardware products. As I've said many times in this here rag, if Bitcoin is to be sufficiently decentralized in the long run, consumer plug-and-play products like the Nodl or Casa nodes need to go mainstream.

These are the teams you freaks should be focusing on, not the teams trying to bamboozle you with token scams that market themselves as "the next Bitcoin". Those projects are pure noise IMO. The signal is found where people are trying to leverage Bitcoin to increase individual liberty. And from what I can glean after a lengthy conversation, the team at Nodl is deadset on making it so individuals can secure their wealth and transact in an extremely private matter. I envision a future in which people cast away their Alexas and Google Homes, devices that send your search history and voice recording back to Amazon and Google's servers, for Nodl nodes or others like it, which allow you to keep your data in your possession while leveraging it at your own accord.

The functionalities are probably rough around the edges right now, but the fact that these devices are coming to market just under a decade into Bitcoin's existence is very encouraging. Imagine where these devices will be in another decade. People love to complain about Bitcoin's UX. Nodl has a three-click setup at the moment. Nothing too arduous. I have a feeling that as more companies enter the race to provide this type of hardware to consumers, the UX will begin to improve dramatically and at a breakneck pace. We are not as far away from the cypherpunk future than you would expect. It is closer than you can imagine.

While bear markets aren't too much fun or nerve-settling, they afford teams like Nodl to put their heads down and get good shit done. We may reemerge from this downturn with a suite of hardware products that make it extremely easy for individuals to secure their digital and monetary sovereignty. This is a very good development. Don't ever let anyone tell you that the people working on Bitcoin aren't innovative. They are some of the most clever, dedicated, and pure people I have ever met in my life. Onward!

Final thought...

Beef Bourguignon is so much better in France.