Thinking on this a bit more. Feel free to point out flaws in my thinking. USDT running on Lightning means that BTC never has to be sold on an exchange to be used as a medium of exchange within the US dollar system. When you put BTC into a USDT Lightning channel, you are A.) Not creating a taxable event and B.) Removing the possibility of that BTC being sold on an exchange. If the US Government wants to incentive this “dual money” era, they would simply have to maintain the current capital gains on BTC traded for other currencies and communicate clearly that moving BTC to a USDT Lightning Channel is tax free. This means that value never has to leave the Bitcoin network in order to be used as a medium of exchange which would cause BTC supply on exchanges to plummet. View quoted note →

Waiting on politicians to make announcements regarding your money is incredibly fiat - or, at best, crypto - minded. Have some self-respect.

I’m starting to think daily social media use is unhealthy for me.

GM. Officially #NostrOnly.

Disciplined fools have accomplished more than distracted geniuses ever have.

Value is something we place on things. It’s not something inherently within things.

Disciplined fools have accomplished more than distracted geniuses ever have.

Short term Bitcoin price predictions are the lowest form of conversation.

I’m surprised no platform has figured out a way for people to temporarily loan their followers out to other accounts. The only thing worse than buying followers would be renting them. Given how many influencers rent homes, cars, and jewelry to give themselves credibility, I’m sure this is on the horizon. And just like all things, some people will want to rent BTC addresses to temporarily have the ability to flaunt sovereign wealth that also isn’t theirs. And worse, some Bitcoin holders will be willing to participate in these loans. They’ll still be fiat minded enough to think earning a yield is necessary. I’m sure the integration of USDT on Lightning will go a long way in facilitating loans like these. Yield will always be paid out in the weaker currency.

I don’t complain about clickbait or sensationalistic thumbnails/titles anymore. I just unfollow. If it’s a systemic issue, I uninstall the app entirely. That’s partly what led me to Nostr. I subscribe to the great master of fiction, Elmore Leonard’s rule that a writer can use 1 exclamation point per 100,000 words. When every title of every video ends with an exclamation point, I know I don’t belong anymore. There’s a special place in hell for those who artificially manufacture emotional responses in others for a living.

For eight months, I have heard the words, “…we will create a framework to enable the safe, responsible expansion of staple…stable…coins. Do you know what a stable coin is? Raise your hand if you know what a stablecoin is,” echoing in my mind ever since Trump declared them in Nashville. Today Tether announced it’s launching USDT on the Lightning Network. I don’t know if Lutnick and these guys have a deeper, more nefarious plan than it seems or if they have simply been sold by Saylor on the prospect of USDT becoming a medium of exchange the entire world has access to, thus capturing the supposed $5-10T market of daily economic activity. I’m not convinced Lutnick, Bessent, the Trump boys or even Lummis have a truly deep understanding of Bitcoin. Of course, I think, like any good Bitcoiner, “What are they trying to pull? How could they use this to make Bitcoin less sovereign?” But then I think, “You’re going to put the global reserve currency’s train directly on top of Bitcoin’s rails and think they’re going to harmoniously function side by side in some “dual-money-era” fantasy while one of them is going up forever and the other is going down forever? By all means, be my guest. The era will be short lived.” Cheers to the ones who understand all this better than I do. I’m just trying to make sense of it.

The lazy will always consider the efforts of the thorough to be excessive.

Your physique is a public ledger. The results of your decisions surrounding exercise and diet are publicly displayed through your physique. Anyone you encounter, whether consciously or not, immediately audits the ledger you present. Therefore your discipline, work ethic and consistency - or lack thereof - are all a matter of public record. Your physique is a representation of the standards you hold yourself to. Bitcoin uses Proof of Work to verify transactions and secure its network. Men use it to assess one another’s threat level or the value of a partnership with them. Women use it to identify potential partners, relying on their ability to determine which men could keep them safe for survival for nearly all of human history. We’ve witnessed the digitization of much of the analog world in our lifetimes. Now the digital transformation of money is unfolding in front of us. Despite more and more of our lives taking place online, no one is impressed by a grown man’s virtual avatar. Your social media presence evaporates when compared to the physical presence you exhibit when around other people. When you enter a room, your follower count becomes irrelevant. In the physical world, a man with a powerful build that no one knows commands more respect and admiration than a weak and frail man with a massive online following. Wealth has always been considered an equalizer in this arena. Smaller, weaker men can leapfrog their larger, stronger counterparts by measure of social status by accumulating vast sums of money. However, their power is abstract and for them to maintain it relies on stronger, more violent men cooperating with and adhering to social norms. What’s even more important than the respect a powerful physique garners from others is the self-respect it fosters in the man who built it. Attention from women is nice, but it pales in comparison to walking around in a body you’ve constructed with your own effort and will. While the results of your work draw parallels to a public blockchain, the details of it lie only within your mind. Only you know the full extent of the work that went into your physique. Whether you’re proud of yourself or not, you live with the understanding that you’re responsible for what you look like. Bitcoiners experience a level of sovereignty that fiat maxis will never have access to. Non-holders are barred from the freedom derived from immutable money. But sovereign money doesn’t equate to freedom across the board. You can be a wealthy Bitcoiner and still feel like a slave to an unhealthy lifestyle. You can create financial freedom for yourself and still feel miserable in your own body. You can be disciplined in your spending habits, but not have the strength to complete a single pull up. Even if your desire for materialism and luxury has softened along your Bitcoin journey, you can still be plagued by the softness of a mediocre body. Wealth doesn’t fix gluttony. It doesn’t fix laziness. It doesn’t repair a damaged relationship with food or an aversion to training hard. But it does give you the freedom to improve yourself. For many of us, Bitcoin demonstrates how a singularly focused man can create immense value for himself when deploying a deliberate, impassioned plan. It proves that diversification is for those who lack conviction in their strategy. Once we reach a BTC target, the energy we used to do so can be applied towards building a physique we are truly proud to reside in. There is no sovereignty without discipline and sacrifice. There is no freedom without self-control.

Exercise science degrees and personal training certifications are proof of stake. Looking like a brick shit house and benching 3 plates for reps is proof of work. Nobody cares about your degree if you keep your shirt on in the pool.

The politics the public sees is akin to pro wrestling. Everyone involved already knows who’s going to win and what moves they’re going to use to do so. It’s just a matter of putting on a good show for the people watching. The drama the public feels in waiting for the results to play out is all manufactured. They need you to feel it in order to maintain the illusion that any of it is real.

Sunrise at Port Newark, NJ.

Can the only piece of property I truly own be non-tangible? The concept of digital tangibility has not been established yet, but feels like it’s in its nascent stages for me, personally. When the bulk of human interaction and experience exists online, will we still consider it non-tangible? Bitcoin feels more real than nearly anything else in my life at the moment.

GM, Nostr.

There is no greater hubris in Bitcoin as attempting to speak for Satoshi. This seems to occur much more frequently on forks rather than Bitcoin itself, unsurprisingly. Satoshi’s work speaks for itself.