"The U.S. Government spends in a budgetary deficit, then issues treasuries to pay for the spending, then, at a bigger rate than anybody else, buys the treasuries to cover the loss. An unbelievable Ponzi scheme. The U.S. Government is the director of the Ponzi scheme, the old investor, and the new investor. A true masterclass." ~ Cole Walmsley Today we tackle the intricacies of fiscal irresponsibility through a Twitter thread by Cole Walmsley. As the U.S. government’s deficit spending spirals int...
May 17, 2024•59 min
Today we dive into an amazing chat around the complexities and shifts in law enforcement in a world with Bitcoin, as well as breaking down the nuances and difficulties in both the defense and prosecution of the Samourai Wallet case. Travis, previously a detective who found his speciality in cybercrime and fraud, requiring extensive knowledge and interaction with Bitcoin and blockchain analytics, presents a unique insight into how things may develop moving forward and where we should be wary to d...
May 16, 2024•2 hr
In our inaugural episode of The Pear Report, it only felt right to bring Mafintosh and dmc onto the show to explore the transformative potential of the Pear Stack and how it can reshape our digital interactions and the foundational layers of the internet! Delve into discussions on the role of the Pear Stack in enabling more decentralized, secure, and user-empowered digital environments. Do not sleep on what is happening, find out why in our first episode, "The Second Coming of the P2P Web." Link...
May 14, 2024•1 hr 47 min
"We're basically at a fork in the road. I think that there's a good chance we go the wrong way and you end up with a situation like China. We need to build these tools that serve Liberty and not tyranny. And we need to design these systems correctly. And then on top of that, I think, as I pointed out earlier, you know, we have an opportunity to build a better product than the tyrannical systems, you know, now before, before you're in too deep. So we need to do that so that people aren't, aren't ...
May 09, 2024•1 hr 26 min
"We have the fork wars, we have a culture that understands the importance of nodes and widespread enforcement of a protocol and its rules. Unlike shitcoins, which couldn't care less about it... So this node orientation in Bitcoin is is critical to it not being a shitcoin. So spam has come in and they start trashing the blockchain and exploding the UTXO set and making every block almost four megabytes, which was supposed to be a theoretical maximum we were never actually supposed to see because n...
May 08, 2024•2 hr 35 min
"This is a fancy way of saying that you need money to make markets, and you need decentralized, open, digital money to make decentralized, open, digital markets. Furthermore, higher layers require lower layers to exist, but lower layers benefit from the value created at higher layers. However valuable layer one Bitcoin can be as a new global money, it can become significantly more valuable if we recognize it as a crucial technical building block to building markets with the potential to disrupt ...
May 06, 2024•1 hr 36 min
"I think Americans are used to seeing people arrested for bullshit technicalities and thrown in jail for long periods of time. But in the rest of the world, it is quite uncommon. For a non-US Bitcoin entrepreneur, the US is a scary and dangerous place. American authorities seem resourceful, competent, and motivated to destroy your life just to prove a point. This line of thinking is not paranoia, nor is it cowardice." ~ Francis Pouliot We dive into a piece from Francis Pouliot, the CEO of Bull B...
May 04, 2024•1 hr 43 min
How close are we to realizing the dream of personal AI? Dive into the potential of small, efficient AI models that enhance our self-awareness and improve our lives without compromising our privacy. Could these advancements lead us to a future where we not only manage but truly own our data, understanding ourselves better than any corporation could? Join us as we explore the fascinating possibilities of personal AI. Links to check out Atomic Habits (Link: https://tinyurl.com/hjcajxc) Facebook's L...
May 03, 2024•1 hr 11 min
"The Samurai wallet developers have been arrested. The government has responded with their opposition to the motion of dismissal in the tornado cash case. Phoenix wallet has withdrawn from the United States. Does one need to have control over the funds to be a money transmitter? Is the lightning network, is Bitcoin, is even self-custody and your home node illegal? The past week or so in Bitcoin has seen a flood of new developments, unfortunate events and clarifications and demands from governmen...
May 01, 2024•1 hr 24 min
How can AI be harnessed to manage and enhance personal and professional digital interactions more effectively? In this episode of "AI Unchained," explore the essential tools and concepts needed to apply AI in self-hosted environments, navigate the intricacies of vector embeddings, and integrate AI seamlessly into your digital workspace. What modular approaches and AI skills are essential as coding becomes more automated? Dive into these questions and more with host Guy Swann. Links to check out ...
Apr 30, 2024•1 hr 10 min
"The internet assumed NOTHING and it won because it had the basic, robust, open building blocks upon which all the innovation actually occurred. The same thing has happened with Bitcoin over the last 15 years and is now starting to happen with Nostr. And it’s right on time, because the gateways to the internet have centralized to such a degree that the very topography of the web is changing. Access to this open bazaar is being threatened because the applications who were once gateways, have star...
Apr 29, 2024•1 hr 7 min
"As we discussed in Entering the Bitcoin Renaissance, our last edition, Lightning Labs CEO and Co-Founder Elizabeth Stark told The Block, “a major narrative of the next cycle will be the bitcoin renaissance, and it has already begun in full swing.” Only a few months later, and that is proving to be quite prescient!" ~Ryan Gentry Today we dive into a piece from Lightning Labs, "The Bitcoin Renaissance: How Lightning Will Connect Everything" that details out the major advances in the ecosystem of ...
Apr 27, 2024•1 hr 5 min
"What are we actually about? It's to an extent an open question. It's not like the Cypherpunks knew at all. It's part of our job to continue to try and figure it out. In a way we've been given this Arthurian sword or something. This very powerful thing. And so it's like, what are we going to do with it? I think that's a big part of our homework." ~ Tuur Demeester Tuur Demeester joins us to day as we dig into Bitcoin's past halvings and market cycles and how they compare to today. With 12 years o...
Apr 24, 2024•1 hr 23 min
"I'm a Bitcoin skeptic. I'm not buying Bitcoin in 2024, even if it goes back to its recent all-time highs, or higher. Here's why." ~ Ben Gran Ben breaks down his view of Bitcoin and why he cannot see or understand any reason it would go higher. Why he doesn't invest in things that don't produce anything, because this is antithetical to investment. Why he doesn't see how something that has no purpose could possibly continue increasing in value. And how something that people claim will be the most...
Apr 23, 2024•1 hr 31 min
"If you care about your...country, read Ludwig von Mises and the six lessons of the Austrian economic school." ~ Renato Moicano With a surge in interest thanks the UFC fighter Renato Moicano, Mises's Six Lessons is suddenly in the popular lexicon. After knocking out his opponent he took to the mic to share his love of freedom, and the critical importance in understanding Austrian economics. Is the tide of freedom and the culture of common sense turning? And what are Mises's six lessons, and what...
Apr 20, 2024•46 min
Many people make the serious miscalculation, that if the CPI isn't too high, then printing money isn't a problem and doesn't really cost them anything. This couldn't be further from the truth. All it means is that the cost is just that much harder to see. But if you want to look at something that is truly dominated by the fiat culture and incentives of the money, there is no better example, than finance. This is where the money printing begins, and so all of the disastrous effects of monetary in...
Apr 18, 2024•1 hr 15 min
In today's episode of AI Unchained we dive into a plethora of new developments in Ai tailored hardware, the scope of what leaps in performance and capacity we may see in the next year, what it means for open source, how to access your local run Ai from anywhere with the Pear Stack, and yet another major tool in generative Ai that will take story telling to a new level? Join Guy Swan as he unpacks the latest and their profound implications for both developers and users alike. Links to check out N...
Apr 18, 2024•1 hr 2 min
"That dogma was necessary — without it the people who have built this ecosystem into what it is today wouldn’t have had the motivation to do so. Without that dogma, those people would not have had customers and users to build anything for in the first place. It was the foundation of everything we have around us today. Now the inevitable is happening: the foundation is cracking." ~ Shinobi Guy Swan delves into an article by Shinobi from Bitcoin Magazine, exploring the complexities of ideological ...
Apr 16, 2024•1 hr 3 min
"On the face of it, Bitcoin’s existence seems to violate Mises’s theorem, unless a preceding non-monetary use can be demonstrated. That is, Bitcoin would have to be first valued for its direct utility before it could hold indirect exchange value. So have the criteria been met, or does Bitcoin violate the theorem?" - Emile Phaneuf You've inevitably come across the argument that Bitcoin violates Mises's Regression Theorem if you've been in bitcoin long enough, but is this really true? And with the...
Apr 15, 2024•59 min
"Hedgehog uses relative time locks. So that if they don't have to worry about closing that channel with a relative time lock, it's whenever you do close the channel, now you've got 2016 blocks to sweep the money using the pre-image. Otherwise I can sweep it after those 2016 blocks go by... And because it only uses relative time locks, it's much more delay tolerant... In the Lightning Network today, you've got hours to settle these things. And often if someone sends a zap to somebody and then the...
Apr 10, 2024•1 hr 27 min
"It's going up forever, Laura." ~ Michael Saylor I know to many people that sounds crazy, and I can still see in my mind why it sounds crazy. Today, I'm going to make the argument for why it isn't crazy, but both natural and intuitive. Also, why it *doesn't* mean what you are probably picturing in your head. I'm going to make the case today, and I hope that you walk away realizing that this isn't unrealistic at all, but is the way it's *supposed to work,* that Bitcoin is, in fact, going up forev...
Apr 09, 2024•1 hr 12 min
"People that are in the Western world and specifically in the United States, what they're realizing, whether they can say it this way or not, is you're watching the end of an empire. I said this for a long time, and it's not the empire is going to collapse. The empire is collapsing right now. We are in the midst of, and people say economic collapse, it's empire collapse, which means economic is part of it." ~ Jack Spirko In this episode I interview Jack Spirko, host of The Survival Podcast, delv...
Apr 09, 2024•1 hr 31 min
"As I see it, humanity is at a turning point where we must either embrace a small handful of totalitarian super intelligences or move AI to the edge, allowing a wide diversity of machine intelligences to flourish in cooperation with an equally diverse set of human intelligences, forming a truly decentralized hivemind. Fortunately, there’s mounting evidence that open source models will be the ultimate winners." ~Hivemind Ventures Our read from HiveMind Ventures today argues that the future of AI ...
Apr 05, 2024•1 hr 25 min
"We know the law is unconstitutional. FinCEN knows the law is unconstitutional. FinCEN knows we know the law is unconstitutional. And yet we're supposed to pretend like nothing happened and comply with an illegal law." ~ Jameson Lopp What do we do when a regulatory agency continues to enforce an illegal law against a judicial verdict? Jameson Lopp explores the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA), revealing how it mandates extensive reporting to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, compromising...
Apr 01, 2024•53 min
"You have to decide how to move forward. You have to decide what game you want to play; how much responsibility you are willing to shoulder. Do you want to stay stuck in the machine? A machine that uses and abuses you? A machine that feeds itself by extracting and devouring your time, attention, and value ? Or do you have the courage to take control of your wealth, health, thoughts, and speech ?" ~ DerGigi Free speech is a non-negotiable foundation for society and human progress, as the open exc...
Mar 30, 2024•49 min
Today we delve into the leadership upheaval at Stability AI, Apple finally putting their cards on the table, the breadth of tools available for image and video generation, more ways to use LLMs to build micro apps, the release of numerous new models, and highlighting broader trends in the AI industry that may be rising to the surface. What might recent developments in the space reveal about the future of open source and centralized Ai? Are we headed toward a brighter, or much darker future? Find...
Mar 29, 2024•1 hr 25 min
Guy Swann and Preston Pysh explore the dramatic shifts in global finance and the pivotal role of Bitcoin amidst rising inflation and the banking sector's vulnerabilities. They discuss how Bitcoin's growing influence could recalibrate financial power dynamics, offering a stark contrast to traditional economic mechanisms prone to manipulation and control. How might Bitcoin's ascent challenge the existing financial order and catalyze a shift towards more decentralized, resilient economic structures...
Mar 27, 2024•1 hr 27 min
Fiat money has a collection of malincentives and consequences for the degrading and rotting of society. As we covered in the first part of this series, it leads to mindless consumerism and a more materialist culture. As we continue, I want to cover something else that it does by stealing the value of our savings which is our bet on the future health and capacity of society to provide for us. What happens when we are forced to bet against the future. As well as artificially lowering the price to ...
Mar 25, 2024•58 min
"The mechanisms enforcing this modern censorship are not confined to private sectors or individual platforms but are significantly directed and influenced by the U.S. government itself. This intertwining of state powers with censorship activities marks a troubling departure from traditional American values, where free speech has been held sacred." ~ Dr. Joseph Mercola The troubling and dangerous emergence of a modern censorship system has taken hold in the west. A partnership of the governments,...
Mar 22, 2024•1 hr 5 min
"All around the nation there are toddlers plunked down in front of iPads being subjected to synthetic runoff, deprived of human contact _even in the media they consume. There’s no other word but dystopian." ~ Mike Hoel What happens when the internet is so overrun with awful ai generated content, that it becomes too overwhelming to even find anything of value? And this is happening now, not in the future. What happens to a generation of toddlers who are watching incoherent, plotless, inhuman vide...
Mar 21, 2024•1 hr 20 min
