"This is the end of Lightning as a niche technology and the beginning of Lightning as a (ubiquitous) Service. In a few years, Lightning functionality will be so universal that nobody will even notice it any more, and it will be so useful that nobody will want to live without it. Like phones. Like shoes. Like concrete. Like the alphabet." - Roy Sheinfeld Today we dive into an incredible announcement that will change the way we think of and interact with lightning. Destroying the barriers to entry...
Feb 15, 2023•1 hr 7 min
"Furthermore, when Bitcoiners develop privacy and scaling technology for Bitcoin, we make it substantially more challenging for anti-coiners to make the case that a war on Bitcoin is winnable. When more of us demonstrate the unmatched power of Lightning Network payments in small nations, influential legislators and bankers in the U.S. take note and are far less likely to support an adversarial strategy towards Bitcoin." - Cory Klippsten For read 700 we take ourselves to the Swan Bitcoin blog wit...
Feb 13, 2023•57 min
One thing to make abundantly clear: Nostr is a protocol. It’s a set of rules that servers and clients use to communicate (just like Bitcoin, email or Bittorrent). Nostr is not an app nor a “platform” (like Twitter, Facebook, etc.), but many applications can be built on top of Nostr. In the words of Edward Snowden, “If a platform is a silo, a protocol is a river: no one owns it, and everyone is free to swim.” – Walker V. If you have been hearing about this Nostr thing, and wanted to know what it ...
Feb 11, 2023•46 min
In order to truly understand why Bitcoin works, we must understand a fundamental tool that operates at basically every level of the system. The hash function. And using the hash function, we can build one of the most important elements of the game theory that keeps the system honest, Proof of work. This is the second episode of the Bitcoin Basics series: Hashes & Proofs of Work To play around yourself with the hashing tools discussed you can: - open a Terminal window on your Mac or Linux com...
Feb 10, 2023•59 min
"But, I keep coming to the same conclusion: We are here for this movement. We are here to build a parallel economy that will eventually take over the old fiat system. I’m not a dev, I don’t have a large audience, I don’t have meetings with Jeff Bezos or presidents like Jack Ballers (no, that is not a typo). One day, I came to this realization: I’m not the only one struggling transporting people into the new world. Cough, cough... .01%. We are all struggling to unplug people from the matrix. Henc...
Feb 07, 2023•1 hr 7 min
"To wit, we have raised the debt limit 22 times from 1997 to 2022. Yep, we’ve raised the limit 22 times in 25 years. Let that sink in for a moment. OK, so now that we’re all on the same you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me-with-the-endless-and-reckless-spending-of-the-US-Government page, let’s dig into the mechanics a bit." – James Lavish We've hit the awful, shocking, totally unexpected debt ceiling again! OH MY! What ever will we do this time? Wait... I've got a brilliant plan. The Treasury can mint a ...
Feb 06, 2023•1 hr 11 min
Mathias and Paolo join us for a Twitter Spaces AMA to answer all of your questions about this cutting-edge technology. Plus, don't forget to check out KEET's mobile release! The app is available on both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. Tune in now for a thrilling Q&A on the future of privacy, secure communication, data sovereignty, & the nascent P2P economy. Everything to check out to dive into the P2P revolution: keet.io holepunch.to synonym.to slashtags.to Don't forget to lea...
Feb 02, 2023•2 hr
WEN MOBILE!? No more do we have to ask because Keet mobile has finally arrived! Download from the App Store or Google Play to check it out and join us in the P2P revolution. This is only the beginning, a foundation for an entirely new way to interact on the internet and we dive into all of it with many questions you sent to me to ask Mathias and Paolo who are breathing life into new P2P, fully encrypted applications. You don't want to miss it. Everything to check out to dive into the P2P revolut...
Jan 31, 2023•1 hr 36 min
"Today no money in the world fully performs all three services. National currencies are being used as means-of-payment and standard-of-value money, b u t none in this inflationary age is an assured store-of-value money. In fact, a foremost concern to voters and politicians everywhere is that so many currencies are so rapidly losing their value in terms of commodities and services. Commodities like gold and silver, which are being used as store-of-value money, are not being used as either means-o...
Jan 27, 2023•1 hr 5 min
Sure, everyone tells me that bitcoin is a new technology. That it's magic money for the internet and tokens you can buy and stick in an app that will probably be worth more later. But seriously... what the hell does all of that mean? I get that Bitcoin is a thing, but 'What is it?' Well let's get into it, with the first episode of Bitcoin Basics. Other episodes & works mentioned to dive deeper into these ideas are linked below: Guy's Take #44 - Bitcoin is Not What you Think it is Read_000 - ...
Jan 26, 2023•1 hr 2 min
"All of this is important because there has been a resurrection of Burns-type positions in the current debate about the cause of higher inflation rates. Senator Elizabeth Warren blames the rising inflation on greedy corporations raising their prices. Others have blamed rising prices on the greater prevalence of monopolies. Antitrust is apparently an anti-inflation tool. Make no mistake, these ideas are wrong. A belief that greed is responsible for inflation requires a belief that firms waited 40...
Jan 24, 2023•59 min
"Last night, lightning struck our house and burned it down. I escaped wearing only my nightclothes. In an instant, everything was vaporised. Laptop? Cinders. Phone? Ashes. Home server? A smouldering wreck. Yubikey? A charred chunk of gristle. This presents something of a problem." – Edent Today we read a story told from the perspective of someone who's entire life changed by the strike of lightning, and suddenly they were locked out of everything. A great short read to start thinking about the f...
Jan 24, 2023•1 hr 4 min
"But as with all new technology, it can be incredibly hard to explain what’s actually happening, without getting too complex. This got me thinking about Bitcoin education and how to ELI5 (Explain Like I’m 5) with Bitcoin Lightning, enter… Bitcoin Lightning: The Airport Analogy" - Danny Scott Today we hit a short piece but a really great analogy in order to make sense of the lightning network. Since I've recently had a few people ask me about this and a fellow audionaut made a great suggestion fo...
Jan 19, 2023•31 min
Today we break into the racket that is the IMF and World Bank monetary imperialism. Piggy backing off Gladstein's remarkable piece detailing the horrific consequences of this system and the clear intent and disregard for human life and basic freedoms, we discuss the fundamental principles of sound money that would be a basis to prevent this, how the fiat system gets around this balancing forces and corrupts the incentives, and how Bitcoin and a global neutral standard may finally bring about its...
Jan 19, 2023•1 hr 16 min
Bad forgeries, fake signatures, backdated emails, more money than your country, & a lawsuit for everyone! This is the story of Faketoshi, explored through the extensive investigations of Arthur Van Pelt on the Craig Wrong debacle. He will have the biggest footnote in the Bitcoin history books under "people who pretended to be Satoshi." An achievement to be celebrated! Follow Arthur Van Pelt on twitter to stay in the Faketoshi loop & explore his many great articles and breakdowns of the e...
Jan 18, 2023•55 min
"Bitcoin is paradoxical. It is simple yet complicated, ever-changing yet unchangeable. A novel machine without any novel parts; a technological innovation that isn't really about technology. You can't touch it, yet it is hard money. You can't see it, yet it will show you a vision of the future. You can't possess it, yet thousands of people seem to be possessed by it." - Dergigi In the spirit of getting back to some of the basics, I want to open up a series of hitting basic concepts around bitcoi...
Jan 17, 2023•30 min
The problem today is that we have companies who own both the protocol and discovery of content. Which ultimately puts one person in charge of what’s available and seen, or not. This is by definition a single point of failure, no matter how great the person, and over time will fracture the public conversation, and may lead to more control by governments and corporations around the world." - Jack Dorsey Jack Dorsey makes the case for a native social media protocol in this short, but important piec...
Jan 13, 2023•1 hr 15 min
Bringing back one of my favorites today that I mention often but we haven't covered in a very long time. This is an essential piece diving into the complexities and profound depth in the market establishment of a price. And why the very notion of the price being "wrong" or fixing it, is self-evidently impossible, as the only information we have to make a comparison, is given to us by emerging prices in the market. Hayek takes us on a journey in this incredible piece that is not to be skipped. Th...
Jan 11, 2023•45 min
How much economic ignorance can you fit into 1 minute and 54 seconds? Well apparently its quite a lot. Peter Zeihan confidently embarrassed himself on Joe Rogan's podcast recently by going on a short rip regarding Bitcoin's negative value and how a reliable, fixed money causes economic disaster but the inflated, debt drowned political currency is more valuable. And how counterfeiters have rightfully earned the wealth they steal, but savers gaining some purchasing power as the economy grows is "u...
Jan 10, 2023•1 hr 25 min
"Bitcoin is not a hedge against inflation; it is the permanent solution to inflation, and those are two very different things." - Parker Lewis Parker Lewis is back in action with the 18th installment of the Gradually, Then Suddenly series on its way to becoming a phenomenal book. Check out the many other articles in this series at the link below, but you don't want to miss this one. Bitcoin isn't a hedge against inflation, its the solution to it. Find the article and Parker's other works, plus s...
Jan 07, 2023•1 hr 56 min
"If your money requires permission to be spent, it is not your money. If your money has counterparty risk, it is not money—but credit. If your money steals from you, it is not your money—but a control and financing mechanism of your government. If your money requires identity, it is not money but a social credit score system." - Dergigi Today we dive into a short but excellent piece by Gigi in his new collection of recent articles and works around his new book, 21 Ways. Don't miss the original 2...
Jan 05, 2023•32 min
"So they fire out digital chaff frantically in every direction, they play whack-a-mole with high-engagement nodes that are or could be threats. The enemy is now reactively defending themselves, not proactively steering the course. This is the Titanic and we are the iceberg." - Aristophanes We start the year off with a very interesting piece about the state of the ideological world and how the speed and connectivity of our ideas and information has massively changed the world already and fundamen...
Jan 04, 2023•1 hr 23 min
"This is the root of our cultural concern for crypto DeFi. The cultural, and arguably even structural, commitment to financialization is extremely difficult to reconcile with this core purpose of securities. In a sense, none of this is surprising given the foundations of crypto DeFi. If you jump straight to “decentralized securities” without first nailing down decentralized money and peer-to-peer technology, the urge to financialize is obvious, because what other value or utility can you even at...
Jan 03, 2023•1 hr 58 min
This is the full, unabridged reading of Alex Gladstein's work, "STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENT: HOW THE IMF AND WORLD BANK REPRESS POOR COUNTRIES AND FUNNEL THEIR RESOURCES TO RICH ONES" published with Bitcoin Magazine. Link to the original read for the plethora of links and references to dig further into this incredible story. https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/imf-world-bank-repress-poor-countries Don't forget to check out our amazing sponsors: • Dive into the Bitcoin only wallet, the cypherpunk calcu...
Dec 31, 2022•2 hr 55 min
"Research from Mexico — a typical country in terms of consistent involvement historically from the Bank and Fund — shows that for every 2% decrease in GDP, the mortality rate increased by 1%. Now consider that as a result of structural adjustment, the GDP of dozens of countries in the Third World between the 1960s and 1990s suffered double-digit contractions. Despite massive population growth, many of these economies stagnated or shrank over 15-25 year periods. Meaning: the Bank and the Fund’s p...
Dec 30, 2022•1 hr 9 min
"The “generosity” of the West enabled unaccountable leaders to plunge their nations into debt deeper than ever before. The system was, as Payer writes in “Lent And Lost,” a straightforward Ponzi scheme: the new loans went straight to paying for the old loans. The system needed to grow to avoid collapse." - Alex Gladstein WERE BACK! We've got a bit of a lengthy introduction today while I mostly apologize and ramble about why I missed more than a weeks worth of episodes, but we are getting back in...
Dec 28, 2022•1 hr 11 min
"Far from playing the role of good samaritan, the Fund does not even follow the timeless human tradition, established more than 4,000 years ago by Hammurabi in ancient Babylon, of forgiving interest after natural disasters. In 1985, a devastating earthquake hit Mexico City, killing more than 5,000 people and causing $5 billion of damage. Fund staff — who claim to be saviors, helping to end poverty and save countries in crisis — arrived a few days later, demanding to be repaid." - Alex Gladstein ...
Dec 20, 2022•39 min
"To give an example of what this might look like in a given year, in 2012 developing countries received $1.3 trillion, including all income, aid and investment. But that same year, more than $3.3 trillion flowed out. In other words, according to anthropologist Jason Hickel, “developing countries sent $2 trillion more to the rest of the world than they received.” When all the flows were added up from 1960 to 2017, a grim truth emerged: $62 trillion was drained out of the developing world" - Alex ...
Dec 15, 2022•1 hr 3 min
"A 2014 analysis showed that the IMF had attached, on average, 20 conditions to each loan it gave out in the previous two years, a historic increase. Countries like Jamaica, Greece and Cyprus have borrowed in recent years with an average of 35 conditions each. It is worth noting that Bank and Fund conditions have never included protections on free speech or human rights, or restrictions on military spending or police violence." - Alex Gladstein Today we dive into the first part of another incred...
Dec 13, 2022•1 hr
There are about a million claims out there as to what blockchains are going to fix, and how NFTs are going to be used to unlock your house, and how DAOs will be used to enforce and decide laws, but what truth is there to this really? And more importantly, does a blockchain really solve these problems? What are the inherent trust issues, and where are the vulnerabilities? Today we dive into this concept and cover many of the most touted "use cases" for blockchain and talk about what could be need...
Dec 09, 2022•2 hr 22 min
