"But if technological civilizations are more common, then we must resolve the Fermi Paradox in a different way. We know that any “solution” is really an a reflection in the mirror of universality, an interpretation of humanity’s future based on what one believes about the present. With this understanding, and with many speculations about the Laws of Bitcoin Astronomy and alien blockchains behind us, we propose a new solution to the Fermi Paradox (a member of the “they’re waiting for our signal” ...
Oct 18, 2022•1 hr 1 min
"Astrobiologists increasingly believe that conditions are frequently right for life. Hydrogen, oxygen, carbon and the life-sustaining molecules they form are the most common substances in the universe and we know there are millions, potentially billions, of rocky planets just like Earth orbiting stars just like our Sun in our galaxy alone." - Dhruv Bansal Today we dive into an often requested series that I have been waiting to get back into for some time, the Bitcoin Astronomy Series! Today we h...
Oct 15, 2022•53 min
Today we explore a highly earned Guy's Take for Dergigi's "Bitcoin is Digital Scarcity" as well as using a core part of his framing to make sense of a few fundamental ideas behind Bitcoin. Recently as well I continue to run into the question, what is Bitcoin backed by? And I think this misses the entire point of why our virtual monies today need to be "backed" by something else, and why Bitcoin is different. So let's dive in... Don't forget to check out the episodes and reads mentioned in this G...
Oct 14, 2022•57 min
"The power of prices is the process of dynamic discovery that underpins their emergence, not the fleeting consensus of a specific moment in time. The price is never right, but prices are as right as can be hoped for at that moment. Attempts to coerce prices without the ability to change the reality they communicate are, therefore, bound to run into trouble. And yet we do not seem capable of accepting the truth of prices whenever it is inconvenient. To ensure that consensus can arrive at valid so...
Oct 12, 2022•44 min
"Today, it’s a trucker protest. What if it’s a women’s rights protest next? A protest against abuses by a country you’re allied with? Who decides? Bitcoin sure as heck doesn’t. Bitcoin doesn’t care about the color of your skin, your political affiliation, the country you’re in, what videos you watch on YouTube, etc. If you play by the same rules that everyone else plays by, you can use bitcoin." - Trent Dudenhoeffer Another Bitcoin Magazine article to start off the week, this one by first time (...
Oct 11, 2022•1 hr 11 min
We dive into the chaotic world of 2022 with the insanity of the financial markets, the bond markets cracking apart, the political sphere going nuclear, & the steady tick tock next block of Bitcoin as a totem of reliability & sanity in an insane world. Greg Foss and I joined Clint Russell on his excellent podcast Liberty Lockdown to dive into it all in a 2 hour rampage on the sate of the world today. Don't miss this one! Check out Clint and his podcast, Liberty Lockdown if you haven't. It...
Oct 07, 2022•2 hr 52 min
"The difference between the Linden Dollar, World of Warcraft Gold, Fortnite V-Bucks, the Euro, and the U.S. dollar is in scale, not in nature. While V-Bucks are created and controlled by Epic Games (the company that created Fortnite), the U.S. dollar is created and controlled by the Fed. One impacts millions of people, the other billions. The mechanism that keeps these monies in check—the rules of the game, if you will—is the same in both cases: central decree." - DerGigi You don't want to miss ...
Oct 05, 2022•1 hr 16 min
"Lighting Network adoption is scaling Bitcoin around the world. And it will be key to protecting our freedoms in the digital age as well." - Paolo Ardoino Today we hit another awesome Bitcoin Magazine article on how Bitcoin is separating monetary value from the state, but that it is ultimately Lightning and its ability to fulfill the vision of P2P payments and entirely unique monetization systems that will protect the freedom of speech and allow global adoption of sound, neutral money. A great l...
Oct 04, 2022•44 min
"Bitcoin is ripe for a massive disruption of systems like SWIFT, and at the rate the world is becoming both politically and economically unstable, I think that time is going to come sooner rather than later." - Shinobi In the vision of consumers using Bitcoin to buy everyday goods and services, have we lost sight of the most valuable use of Bitcoin as a broad, global settlement system? Have we been distracted from the most valuable and even crucial utility of the Bitcoin system in a politically ...
Sep 29, 2022•35 min
"Given two competing views of the world, the state will always promote the one that increases its power to extract wealth from its citizens. The choice between inflation and deflation is an easy one. Deflation empowers the citizen by allowing her modest savings to purchase more goods over time. Calling for inflation empowers the state by allowing it to print more money and by reducing the size of its enormous debts in real terms. It should be no surprise that state-funded academic institutions p...
Sep 27, 2022•40 min
"The whole tokenize-everything-thing so far is one fast hype train. It is exciting not for the technical efficiencies it may provide but for the exact opposite: rent seekers seeking rent. Actually, between the lines, some projects seem to suggest to everyone: “You, too, can be a rent seeker.” - Niko Jilch Wouldn't you want to own 1/1000th of a London apartment? Or maybe a famous work of art? Wouldn't this make ownership of these things far more efficient and be a major shift in the access of the...
Sep 23, 2022•33 min
"Everyone loves a good origin story. Some are true, some made-up, and some a mix of the two. The true origin story of Bitcoin’s appearance in the world is one of the most fascinating mysteries ever told. Yet these events all took place in the 21st century, a time when everything is recorded, and can be recalled, investigated — and verified." - Tomer Strolight Bitcoin isn't merely a tool, but something so unique and fundamental, that it challenges widely held beliefs of the world & inspires q...
Sep 22, 2022•58 min
"Bitcoin is not merely a network, it's a foundation for an anti-authoritarian political movement in an increasingly authoritarian world. If you're looking for why so many people are deeply passionate about Bitcoin & nothing else, start there." - Guy Swann Today I decide to rant about what Bitcoin maximalism means to me, why I am totally and completely focused on Bitcoin and nothing else, and why I think "crypto" has lost the plot. Crypto is interested in building a bunch of toys to be accept...
Sep 19, 2022•1 hr 21 min
"This brings us to our fourth principle behind PoS, which is that **PoS relies on subjective truth**. There is simply no objective way to pick between two competing blockchains, and any new nodes to the network must ultimately trust some existing source of truth to resolve any ambiguity. This contrasts significantly with Bitcoin, where the “true” chain is always the one with the most work. It doesn’t matter if a thousand nodes are telling you chain X, if a single node broadcasts chain Y and it c...
Sep 16, 2022•1 hr 13 min
"That misinformation in the form of money wouldn’t just create polarization. Because money connects value between people and nations, it would drive a tremendous misallocation of capital and resources as individual actors in the system all made the system worse with their actions to make enough money to escape the system." - Jeff Booth Today we take another brief pause from the Maximalism discussion to hit an awesome "back to the fundamentals" piece from Jeff Booth that dropped just last week. H...
Sep 13, 2022•1 hr 15 min
"I’m going to clear things up here because most of the people piling on were deeply confused about me, my firm, and what I do. And yes, I’m including some choice words for the self-described Bitcoin maximalists. You asked for it. You got it." - Nic Carter Nic takes to his medium page to denounce Bitcoin maximalism after getting bombarded over an investment by his VC fund. Was there a grain of truth to the criticism, is Bitcoin maximalism to blame, and what's the difference between the Bitcoin ma...
Sep 09, 2022•1 hr 17 min
"I believe Africa represents the most elegant use case for a Bitcoin standard in existence. In the paragraphs that follow I will explain why." - Charlene Fadirepo Africa is a hugely under-appreciated, yet massive part of the Bitcoin universe that is growing into its own, due to multiple factors, the case for a Bitcoin standard in Africa holds incredible potential. With a young vibrant demographic, political variety, entrepreneurial spirit, & a constant state of monetary pain, there are few p...
Sep 08, 2022•50 min
"Cryptocurrency market-isms are built on claims about the economic and computer science advances Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies have achieved, and thus have a direct relationship to those claims. While some are the product entirely of fandom, others are more complex, attempting to both define a scientific position, and then encourage beliefs and conduct based on those claims." - Pete Rizzo Today we start a dive into Bitcoin Maximalism that we will expand on during this week. What is maximalism, is...
Sep 06, 2022•1 hr 8 min
"Many aspects of the Bitcoin mining industry are poorly understood and often misrepresented. But one practice in this sector stands apart for the misunderstandings and under-appreciation that surround it: intermittent mining." - Zack Voell One of the most under appreciated aspects of Bitcoin mining is its ability to be interrupted. As a buyer of last resort for energy that is curtailed or produced when it can't be consumed, and also able to turn off without losing its purchaser (i.e. the Bitcoin...
Sep 03, 2022•27 min
"A study of the hill tribes of Southeast Asia titled “The Art Of Not Being Governed” provided a fresh take. The author, James C. Scott, posits that the hill tribes were not “left behind” by the valley states but instead composed of refugees from the negative consequences of state-making down in the valleys: bondage, tribute, slavery, war epidemics and more. The rough terrain in the hills served as a natural impediment to absorption by the state." - Captain Sidd Today's article brings a unique pe...
Sep 02, 2022•51 min
We have got a great episode of Shitcoin Insider today, we bring the Insider himself back to the show today to discuss what Bitcoin maximalism even means, is it a "dying breed?" Is it just a bunch of meanies on Twitter? Or have we found ourselves fighting over a caricature that's equated to the lowest common denominator of the Twitterverse, while ignoring the actual set of principles behind the Bitcoin-only philosophy and what it truly means? You don't want to miss today's excellent conversation ...
Aug 31, 2022•1 hr 44 min
"The answer that matters depends on the context. The context you need to have is that cryptocurrency, i.e. Bitcoin, was invented/discovered initially to allow a money by the people that cannot be shut down by government. In that context, the most important element to be decentralized is the network of Nodes. -- If the nodes are not decentralized, nothing else decentralized matters. -- If the nodes are decentralized, then the other things kind of matter, but not as much." - Arman the Parman Today...
Aug 30, 2022•40 min
"I think too many people in those early years interpreted “e-cash” to mean quick-and-easy payments for everyday goods using the base layer, when a better way to think of cash today is as a private censorship-resistant final settlement transaction method. Physical cash, after all, is not necessarily the easiest payment type, or a medium of exchange that we need to use for everything, but it’s the most private and the hardest to prevent from occurring." - Lyn Alden The full, uninterrupted reading ...
Aug 30, 2022•2 hr 20 min
Tearing down the fallacies of the collective, and digging through the principles of liberty and personal responsibility with the one and only Aleks Svetski and co-author Mark Moss. My brother also joins us today to dig into this topic with a really fun chat on the powerful, but ultimately broken ideas of communism, and why Moss and Svetski's book, The UnCommunist Manifesto, is a short, succinct breakdown of the principles that align us with truth and personal responsibility. You don't want to mi...
Aug 27, 2022•1 hr 27 min
"Back when the iPhone was introduced in 2007, few people thought, “wow this could really disrupt the taxi industry a decade from now.” A few technologies had converged by that the point to where everyday people could have a pocket supercomputer with a big touchscreen and a high-bandwidth mobile internet connection, and this served as a set of building blocks that could exponentially eat into many other industries, including allowing Uber to come along and change how we move across cities. All ma...
Aug 24, 2022•1 hr 36 min
"But more broadly, one must ask, “at what point would someone want to permanently exchange their self-custodial scarce money (bitcoin) that has a 1.8% annual supply inflation rate that is exponentially shrinking, for a soft money (fiat currency) that typically has a 7% annual supply inflation rate or higher?” The answer for many people, is never, as long as the Bitcoin network is still working." - Lyn Alden What is up we are digging into Part 2 of Lyn Alden's amazing piece "A Look at the Lightni...
Aug 22, 2022•2 hr 3 min
"Simple “bubbles” don’t survive through several 70%+ drawdowns over a period lasting thirteen years and counting; it looks more like Metcalfe’s law of network adoption at this point. That doesn’t mean it is without risks, but it means it should be studied and understood rather than dismissed, to see what it is about this network that allows it to keep growing through resistance." - Lyn Alden After about 20 requests we are finally diving into Lyn Alden's incredible piece on Bitcoin's evolution fr...
Aug 19, 2022•1 hr 33 min
"Today, people use inflation to refer to two separate things, and whenever you hear someone saying inflation it’s not always clear which definition they are referring to. One definition is “the prices of consumer goods increasing” and the other is “dilution of the money supply”. So which is it?" - Steven Lubka Steven brings an excellent piece today from the Swan Bitcoin Blog about the nature of Bitcoin as an inflation hedge. Does that mean Bitcoin will stay perfectly in line with the general pri...
Aug 18, 2022•55 min
WE ARE BACK! Were you wondering about everything that happened in the collapse of TerraUSD, the algorithmic stablecoin that got algonniahilated? And how exactly did one project's failure create such a cascading shitstorm of Defi defaulting? Cory Klippsten, CEO of SwanBitcoin, and outspoken critic who warned everyone of these projects long before they collapsed, breaks down what he saw in these [rojects and companies that brought them to their inevitable conclusion. Follow Cory here . (Link: http...
Aug 18, 2022•1 hr 1 min
"I think there are some important economic errors in the stories I see people telling about crypto, on Twitter and elsewhere — errors that have important implications for how we should think about the value of Bitcoin and other blockchain assets." - Noahpinion Unfortunately I think there are quite the few economic errors in Noahpinion's article titled, "Economic misconceptions of the crypto world." While he may actually have some fundamental points to add around much of the "crypto" space and th...
Aug 13, 2022•1 hr 57 min
