Good Morning Everyone, I got reminded recently of a powerful analogy I heard from Michael Pollan originally, that provides a lens to think about the effect of psychedelics on the default mode network of the brain. The default mode network is a region, or network in the brain that is understood to handle many internal tasks when one is not focussed on the outside world. ScienceDirect explain the default mode network as follows: “The DMN is a set of brain regions that exhibits strong low-frequency...
Feb 04, 2022•4 min
Good Morning Everyone, The last week has seen incredible scenes in Canada as massive convoys of truckers, have been protesting Trudeau’s government and the ongoing erosion of the rights and freedoms of the citizens of Canada via lockdowns and vaccine mandates. While supreme leader Trudeau and state media channels attempted to discredit the Canadian truckers labelling the estimated 70,000+ people a “ a small fringe minority ”, the protests have inspired many others globally to do the same includi...
Feb 03, 2022•4 min
Good Morning Everyone, Fidelity Digital Assets have come out with a new research paper entitled: “Bitcoin First : Why investors need to consider bitcoin separately from other digital assets” The paper is well worth a read and i’ve linked it above. Essentially Fidelity very succinctly explain, what many people seem to fail to understand about bitcoin - What it actually is? That bitcoin is the most pristine version of ‘money’ ever realised by human civilization, and is at the same time, the most s...
Feb 02, 2022•7 min
Good Morning Everyone, The chorus of authoritarian sociopaths has been increasing over the last couple of weeks in a bizarre attempt to pressure Spotify to cancel Joe Rogan. You know we’re living in a strange time when some cohort of people (read: authoritarian lunatics) think some guy should not be able to express himself and have open conversations on the internet that they do not like, and instead of them simply “changing channels”, said individual should be deleted, de-platformed and silence...
Feb 01, 2022•2 min
Good Morning Everyone, As most of you are probably aware, the ability to custody your bitcoin is at the absolute core of the bitcoin ethos and is as fundamental to bitcoin, as breathing is to life. You have most likely heard the saying: “Not your keys, not your cheese” or “Not your keys, not your coins” The understanding of this is demonstrated by the actions you take, and how you secure your keys. Most people that give custody of their keys to a 3rd party, do so without being aware of the hidde...
Jan 31, 2022•3 min
Good Morning Everyone, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, said recently that the UK are in discussions with the US administration about banning Russia from the SWIFT system, in response to the possibility of Russia invading Ukraine. Russia stated the European countries will not be able to receive gas, oil and metals from Russia in the event they were disconnected from using the SWIFT system. SWIFT stands for ‘Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication’ and acts as an intermediary ...
Jan 28, 2022•4 min
Good Morning Everyone, I’ve been looking at the following chart for weeks, and it continues to provoke deep thought and enquiry. The chart shows US federal debt as a percentage of GDP (Gross domestic product), and highlights a fairly obvious trend. That is, that times of relatively high debt to GDP have historically been a catalyst for some kind of war. This trend begins with the American Civil War which began in April 1961, with debt/GDP in the early 1850s bottoming in the low single digits and...
Jan 24, 2022•3 min
Good Morning Everyone, Bitcoin is now down 50% from the highs in November, and the class of 2021 are underwater and panicking. As shown by the fear & greed index, printing 11, an “extreme fear” read. To demonstrate our (humans) irrationality, F&G index was at a 95 (Extreme Greed) while price was rallying at the beginning of 2021 and price was around the $37,000 region. Pretty funny how volatile human psychology is. Same price, but bi-polar market sentiment. It is in these time when the t...
Jan 24, 2022•5 min
Good Morning Everyone, There has been a congressional hearing in the US overnight under the heading “Cleaning Up Cryptocurrency: The Energy Impacts of Blockchains” . Straight out of the gate i simply reject the premise of the title, at least how it relates to Bitcoin, suggesting there is something to be “cleaned up” or as if it is dirty. From what i have listened to so far, many of the critiques made, are items that have been proven false already. There are a couple of fundamental and foundation...
Jan 21, 2022•6 min
Good Morning Everyone, I shared a chart in a recent letter , that showed the Bitcoin Networks user growth compared with that of the internet. If you missed it, i’ve included it below.. The chart below was taken from a post by Willy Woo. It’s a super interesting chart, and i believe the comparison between the growth of the internet, as a network, is very analogous to that of the Bitcoin network. The chart shows that in 1997 the internet (represented by the thin purple line) had around ~120m users...
Jan 20, 2022•7 min
Good Morning Everyone, Alex Gladstein popularized this concept of Bitcoin as a trojan horse based on the story from greek mythology. According to Wikipedia: “The Trojan Horse refers to a wooden horse said to have been used by the Greeks, during the Trojan War, to enter the city of Troy and win the war. The Greeks at the behest of Odysseus constructed a huge wooden horse and hid a select force of men inside, including Odysseus himself. The Greeks pretended to sail away, and the Trojans pulled the...
Jan 19, 2022•6 min
Good Morning Everyone, I watched a clip last night of Chinese President Xi Jinping address the World Economic Forum, outlining his vision for the world, values he see’s as necessary and some priorities and areas of focus for future. It was quite strange to watch, as his audio had been muted and had someone else narrating essentially what he is saying, rather than providing subtitles to his audio. His primary points included: * Embrace Cooperation and defeat the pandemic * Resolve various risks a...
Jan 18, 2022•4 min
Good Morning Everyone, Canadian Politician Pierre Poilievre, gave a powerful speech in the Canadian house of commons last month. It’s so strangely refreshing to hear a politician actually make sense and have a thorough understanding of what they’re talking about, rather than just playing words games, deflecting, blaming and a general avoidance and lack of true intention of actually addressing anything meaningfully. It’s crazy this stands out, and even seems novel in the time of COVID hysteria, b...
Jan 17, 2022•5 min
Good Morning Everyone, In a tweet this morning Jack Dorsey announced his intentions to build an open Bitcoin mining system. Jack first signaled that this was being considered back in October last year, and that the hardware would be based on custom silicon and fully open source for individuals and businesses worldwide, built in the open and in collaboration with the community. Fast forward three months, and it’s now confirmed and is happening. One of Jack’s colleagues posted a thread discussing ...
Jan 14, 2022•3 min
Good Morning Everyone, Yesterday in an email to the bitcoin developers mailing list, Jack Dorsey along with Alex Morcos and Martin White, announced the formation of The Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund. The Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund is a non-profit entity designed to defend developers from lawsuits and unwanted legal issues that may discourage developers from contributing to Bitcoin and related projects like lightning. To quote from the email: “The Bitcoin community is currently the subject of multi-...
Jan 12, 2022•4 min
Good Morning Everyone, In the early hours of the Australian morning while most were still sleeping, big tech, specifically Google’s video platform Youtube, were busy maintaining their horrific record in relation to censorship. The Bitcoin Magazine channel was deleted mid-livestream overnight. Youtube’s apparent reason for deleting the channel was that to educate people to buy bitcoin is “encouraging illegal activities”. I haven’t seen the livestream, so I have no idea what was being discussed, a...
Jan 12, 2022•3 min
Good Morning Everyone, There is a wild situation unfolding in Kazakstan as the country have seen massive increases to the cost of energy, specifically LPG (liquified petroleum gas), resulting in large anti-government protests, with the president of Kazakstan calling on Russia to send troops to support the government in quelling protests. It seems the government had a cap on energy prices and the removal of this allowed prices to increase, sparking violence and disorder across the country, unbeli...
Jan 11, 2022•6 min
Good Morning Everyone, A debate erupted (pun intended) on Saturday with American fiat economist Steve Hanke intentionally mocking El Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele over his plans to utilize geo-thermal energy from an inactive volcano to mine bitcoin, and to power the proposed “bitcoin city”. He said in a tweet: Lets be clear. Hanke is the epitome of a fiat economist. His twitter bio states he is also an FX and commodities trader. Assuming he is actively participating in markets as per his ow...
Jan 10, 2022•7 min
Good Morning Everyone, In a really valuable conversation with Preston Pysh, Nic Carter highlighted the situation in Myanmar, and pointed out what an interesting and telling example it is for the potential fork in the road that more countries are likely to face in the upcoming years as political monies become more and more encumbered and weaponised. For those that are not aware of the situation in Myanmar (Burma), the short version is that the country had enjoyed a brief period of democratic rule...
Jan 07, 2022•6 min
Good Morning Everyone, Nasdaq-listed company BTCS has announced a world first corporate dividend that has the option of being payable in Bitcoin. They are calling it a Bividend . The bividend will act as a typical dividend whereby share holders on the registry at the ex-dividend date, will be entitled to a dividend from the company which they can opt-in to having paid in bitcoin, or otherwise receive as normal in USD. Interestingly, the divided is not the usual income & capital gains dividen...
Jan 06, 2022•3 min
Good Morning Everyone, The process of phase transitions, that is transitioning from one state to another, is interesting to think about, particularly in respect to money - and bitcoin. Water is one of the best examples. it can exist in four distinct phases, or states. Solid ←→ Liquid ←→ Gas ←→ Plasma Money has undergone many phase transitions over time, from animals and produce, to shells and physical objects, to metals, coins and various commodities like gold and silver, to paper fiat money and...
Jan 05, 2022•4 min
Good Morning Everyone, January 3rd 2021 marks 13 years since the Bitcoin genesis block was mined by Satoshi, and this entire shift began. Pretty wild to think about how much has changed in 13 years. The very first iPhone for example was released only 18mths earlier.. Life was very very different. Above you can see the codebase from the genesis block with a message inscribed by Satoshi which reads: “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancelor on brink of second bailout for banks” Here is the image of the new...
Jan 04, 2022•3 min
Good Morning Everyone, Turkish Supreme Leader Erdoğan is currently walking a path that history has not been kind to. As discussed , Turkey has been the most recent country to cave to painfully high levels of inflation which have seen a flight from the local currency, the Lira, to just about anything else, as citizens seek to prevent their wealth being siphoned away at a record rate. While many will attempt to seek safety in other assets, a likely majority of unsuspecting individuals, that are no...
Jan 03, 2022•6 min
Good Morning Everyone, The price of Bitcoin at the time of writing this is $47,136 when priced in melting USD ice cubes. From the low in January 21 to now, price is up approximately 69% From Low to high price rallied 147% in 2021 Lets compare that to major market indicies… The Nasdaq (NQ1!) which is predominantly comprising of tech & financials, is up 31%, with the S&P (SPY) up 31% for the year. Both have printed new all time highs in the month of December, and look set to print new mont...
Dec 31, 2021•5 min
Good Afternoon Everyone, Following on from yesterday’s letter.. Let’s address how much energy the Bitcoin network actually uses. Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index is the most-cited source estimating current annualised electricity usage at 126.25 TWh. To get a perspective of what this means - The entire world uses in excess of 170,000 TWh per year of electricity. This means that the Bitcoin network at peak estimated consumption uses <0.1% of the worlds energy. To quote Lyn Alden ...
Dec 30, 2021•9 min
Good Morning Everyone, The energy usage of the Bitcoin Network has been discussed and hotly debated for years. From an article in 2017 claiming “Bitcoin Mining on Track to Consume All of the World’s Energy By 2020“ (which was clearly nonsense and a classic example of clickbait headlines) to Elon Musk tweeting about Tesla suspending Bitcoin payments due to concerns about rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining. It is clear that there is still a perceived issue by some, and a lac...
Dec 28, 2021•4 min
Good Morning Everyone, The notion of needing permission and also the psychological dynamic it creates is really interesting to me and something I’ve been giving more and more thought to. It is something that is baked into our cognitive operating systems from a foundational level as children, and certainly expanded upon through traditional schooling and into adulthood and in the workforce. We are built and conditioned for obedience & compliance, and to seek permission from a figure of authori...
Dec 27, 2021•5 min
Good Morning Everyone, In a fascinating conversation with Anthony Pompliano that i highly recommend you listen to, Jason Lowery, a member of the US Space Force discusses some of the ways that he is thinking about the Bitcoin network and dives in to some wildly powerful comparisons between the role of a military in maintaining the social contract in a society, and that of Bitcoin’s mining security model in maintaining and securing the network from any kind of attack. To quote Jason: “All civiliza...
Dec 24, 2021•6 min
Good Morning Everyone, It was reported recently that a group of 10 Nations, The World Bank, Bank of International Settlements and the IMF ran what they called a “War game” to simulate a “cyber attack” on the global financial system. “Israel on Thursday led a 10-country simulation of a major cyberattack on the global financial system in an attempt to increase cooperation that could help to minimise any potential damage to financial markets and banks.” There is not much information given about wha...
Dec 23, 2021•8 min
Good Morning Everyone, Strike CEO and Founder, Jack Mallers, recently presented to the IMF regarding Bitcoin, Strike and the implications for cross-border payments. He posted the presentation to his youtube - Linked here. Firstly, you have gotta love seeing a young individual like Jack absolutely laying down to the IMF in his inimitable style running a hot pink hoodie and a baseball cap giving zero f***s. Phenomenal. He begins his presentation by re-engineering the title, from: Strike - Disrupti...
Dec 22, 2021•3 min
