Simon (2.₿y.2) Kofah

Probably unpopular take: I've never understood the hate I hear for Charles Hoskinson (the Cardano dude)... I get the shitcoining point. But is it possible that he's just WRONG about crypto but isn't necessarily a charlatan? I've always heard negativity about him, yet every single time I've listened to him speak (most recently on Shawn Ryan Show), my impression is that he's intelligent, nuanced, and ethical. What am I missing? https://youtu.be/_DZgdAUGXug?si=Xsgo8DJhrspBSAbV

What tradfi ppl don't understand: they are thespians. They're actors in the play. As a bitcoiner, I am an audience member that noticed the theatre is on fire. I don't care what act/scene we are in or when intermission is. I'm leaving.

Overhearing normie boomer finance dudes sharing their bad BTC and MSTR takes behind me in a restaurant = 4th turning version of taxi drivers giving stock advice

Hot take: when discussing leadership (esp in context of politics) business leaders or often lauded as having the best experience/acumen for the compexities of leadership. I would submit that an overlooked and underestimated intangible in a leader is an understanding of human nature. And few people understand human nature better than skilled adversarial-thinking software developers. So maybe that's what we need: more hackers (preferably cypherpunks) in politics. That's it. That's the tweet.

Every human action is a response to an incentive (or a matrix of incentives). If you can't explain another human's actions, that just means you're missing the incentive that they are attuned to. Dismissive pejoratives like "evil," "lazy" and "stupid" are cop-outs from understanding other ppl's incentives. There are certainly evil, lazy, and stupid people in this world. But even they are responding to incentives.

Make no mistake. Freedom of speech is on the menu. Both arms of the political apparatus are actively DEVOURING what remains of free speech. Charlie Kirk's assassination was an assault on free speech. Kimmel's cancelation (irrespective of the quality of his show) is a reflexive assault on free speech. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. The noose slowly tightens.

Could use some help with a game theory question I haven't seen discussed in #bitcoin posts/podcasts. It has to do with what I refer to as fiat sats - fake bitcoin held on fiat rails (think ETFs, treasury company equities, etc.). Looking long term, I see bitcoin dismantling fiat. Inevitably. But in the near/mid term, I can easily imagine bitcoin being viewed as a threat and coming under assault by a dying fiat system. In that timeline, we have to survive 6102 attacks; Operations: Chokepoint N.0; attacks on self custody, etc... In such a scenario, does it make sense to have some fiat sats as insulation? If for no other reason, holding fiat sats diverts attention from one's real stack and allows obscuring those coins from a hostile tradfi regime. This gives individuals the breathing room to wait out a dying fiat system without potentially doxing their UTXOs. Face it, BTC circular economies are promising, but interacting with the Leviathan is unavoidable if one is to buy a house, pay for medical bills, or pay tuition. This approach seems to me an effective way to be antifragile. This also explains why some OGs have been selling massive amounts of bitcoin. If you are going to be a multibillionaire regardless, doesn't it make sense - much as it pains me to say this - to sell half your stack? In so doing, a massive holder essentially locks in extraordinary wealth in both the fiat world AND the BTC world and plays both sides of the war to come. This assures that regardless of what timeline plays out over the next decade or two, you and your family are set. I know the goal is to never have to sell your bitcoin, but I do see this as a scenario that rarely gets fully gamed out. I'd imagine maybe 10% of a person's sats being kept in the sanctioned sandboxes of brokerage accounts, 401Ks, or whatever else, with the remainder essentially airgapped from prying fiat eyes in deep cold storage. Another way of putting it is keeping some fraction of your hard earned value in Ceasar's currency, while the family jewels are buried out back. Thoughts? #asknostr

Imagine you work for a powerful person, prone to violence. You are charged with managing your employer's finances. Now, imagine you have been quietly, imperceptibly, stealing from this employer for years. Eventually you become careless and increasingly bold in your theft. You now take stock and realize you have overplayed your hand. Your deception can no longer be concealed or embellished away. Knowing your discovery is inevitable, you are faced with two choices: make strategic plans to preemptively eliminate your dangerous boss before he kills you, or get your affairs in order. Choose force or suffer force. This is the dilemma faced by our present day parasitic hegemons (central bankers, bureaucrats, political class). Historical precedent dictates that theft of the magnitude they have committed only ends one way: violent revolution. They are no fools. Hence their sloppy and ham-handed fumbling for the levers of power. The masks are off. There is no longer time for tact or artful deceit. They are desperate. They have to secure the bag and bar the gate. Everything happening is a manifestation of this fear. Stay vigilant, anon.

Is Trump really dead?

From Chadd Wright on Rogan. I'm reminded of "pearls before swine." This is so perfect.... applies in the spiritual context (how he intends it) AND with respect to #bitcoin. Substitute 'fiat' for 'garbage.' https://video.nostr.build/f1ced75b197f38ba99a2b613e6e8e0bba1f5c43360dc90249491ed60f7f7af92.mp4

Why do some species live much longer than others? (another long-ish biology/Bitcoin analogy…) There is a phenomenon observed in nature of remarkable longevity being reserved for only the most well-adapted and niche-dominant species. Think of all the organisms known to live for extreme amounts of time: humans (100+), tortoises (170+), bowhead whales (200+), Greenland sharks (500+), crocodiles (70-120), and of course, trees (1,000+). All of these species are so well suited to their ecological niches, that they are effectively removed from the food chain. The adaptations vary, but they all demonstrate recurring themes. First, excellent defense. Take the example of the tortoise. It is essentially a mobile boulder. It doesn't even need speed because it is essentially impervious to physical attack. Similarly, an oak tree does not share the same vulnerability that a clover plant does to being consumed by a grazing mammal at a moment's notice. Second, efficient, low-cost offense. Owing to their methods of attack, crocodiles and pythons are exposed to very little risk when they take down prey (as opposed to big cats or wolves, which hunt at considerable risk to themselves). Their offensive, and consequently defensive, adaptations make these reptilian carnivores superpredators with essentially no natural threats (except sometimes, each other). A third element, which straddles the first two, intelligence allows an organism to optimize its behaviors to its environment in such a way that it maximizes both its offensive and defensive attributes. This is the case with humans, whales, and, I would theorize, long-lived avian species such as parrots. Honorable mention goes to adaptations such as venom and flight. Both of these adaptations adhere to the same principle. Ultimately a pattern emerges: before a species can dedicate valuable adaptive resources to longevity (i.e. evolving defenses against cancer, infection and physiologic breakdown) that species must definitively conquer more imminent threats to its existence. A tiger sees no benefit from being able to live 50 years, if it is only physically capable of taking down large game for a decade or so; a broken jaw, injured joint, or simply age-induced decline in speed or agility are all a death sentence for a predatory cat in the wild. Therefore, a species having a long lifespan is almost a proxy indicator that that species has discovered some optimally efficient means of surviving in its environment (and it turns out that having to kill a bull elk with your face is not a long-term efficient strategy). In other words, ALL other natural threats must be neutralized before a species will evolve to live a long life. Absent this precondition, it is much more evolutionarily efficient to prioritize a short and expedient life/reproductive cycle. So how does this apply to Bitcoin? I would argue that Bitcoin needed to have the security and robustness to defend against hostile adversaries (e.g. China mining ban), supposedly well-meaning innovators (e.g. blocksize wars), bad actors (e.g. FTX, Teraluna), and a host of heretofore unknown threats FIRST, as a precondition for its long-term viability. Immutability, permanence, and durability of the timechain are attributes that must be built atop censorship resistance, permissionlessness and antifragility. Bitcoin must possess the attributes necessary to transcend politics, centralization, and human folly/greed if it is to unflinchingly transmit value through time. A theme I am going to borrow here is the axiom: Nature to be commanded, must be obeyed. Bitcoin, whether by design or by happenstance, just seems to abide by so many of the dictates of biological, physical, and indeed Natural law. This ties into a previous post on the relationship between Life and Entropy. By overcoming the immediate threats of day-to-day disintegration, Bitcoin can ultimately stand as an awe-inspiring monument against entropy into the distant future. Simply put: in order to be able to build for forever, Bitcoin had to be built for forever. #bitcoin #thinkstr

All true maps MUST align. There's a reason #bitcoin has all these serendipitous parallels with other intellectual disciplines (economics, biology, physics, cosmology, psychology, philosophy, sociology, etc.).... To the extent any or all of these disciplines uncover TRUTH they must agree or resonate with one another. This is axiomatic. Bitcoin finding analogy with other inquiries into the fundamental laws of the universe and/or life is proof of its alignment with Truth.

Normies are so lost.

Bitcoin as foundation layer of an emerging economic biosphere (long-ish post... hopefully not a strained analogy) A distinguishing characteristic of a living system that I have found useful is the ability to counteract entropy. Indeed an informal definition of "life" could be formulated as: any closed system within which entropy is reversed or suspended and order is maintained or established. This holds true for the single-celled microbe as it does for the blue whale. Building on this assertion, it becomes evident that all life is in a continuous struggle against entropy. Most life forms (organisms) must continually fend off entropy by regularly sacrificing other organisms to this unyielding force. This is the case when a cow consumes grass. It is the case when a tiger consumes a deer. One life form converts the structure or Mass of another into biochemical Energy. Stated differently, the predator species breaks down - digests - its prey, disintegrating it from order into entropy (calories, micro/macronutrients, minerals, etc.), and absorbing it for the purpose of staving off the predator's own entropic decay. Entropic decay in this context represents death and disease. This relationship applies irrespective of whether the predator/prey diad is represented by: brown bear and cow; cow and grass; or krill and plankton. Not even herbivores escape this axiomatic reality of Life. Ultimately, all biological complexity rests upon one miraculous reaction: photosynthesis. Only organisms capable of this metabolic process are capable of ingesting entropy in its purest form, electromagnetic energy, thereby side-stepping the need to essentially rob another organism of its ordered/integrated state to fortify its own. As such, these organisms are the basis of all life. Every other, albeit transient, triumph of order over entropy (e.g. every other living system) owes its very existence to these foundational life forms. This is the biosphere. This is the primordial resistance to the universal process that extends back to the stars: the inexorable conquest of entropy over order. Life is that which claws back, deriving order from entropy. Satoshi's innovation, which cannot be overstated, mathematically encodes a novel means of accomplishing what only photosynthesis has. Energy/entropy is directly converted into order via Bitcoin's proof of work protocol. In no other manmade process is Energy truly captured and converted into order. All comparable applications are actually variations on two related but dissimlar processes: capture/storage of energy (as in a battery); use/harnessing of energy (as in a water mill). In a manner similar to photosynthesis, Bitcoin accomplishes a true phase change of its supplied energy. A battery CAPTURES energy in kinetic form - whether solar, thermal or electrical - and converts it to potential energy for use at another time/place. The watermill CHANNELS the kinetic energy of flowing water for use in a productive enterprise, such as milling grain. These are definitionally distinct from what plants - and I am proposing Bitcoin - accomplish. By means of photosynthesis, plants do not merely store energy. Instead they convert the energy into a complex substructure of carbohydrate (e.g. cellulose/starch), peptide (e.g. protein) and nucleic acid (e.g. DNA) polymers - curiously analogous to blockchains. This allows for the encoding of complex information and synthesis of complex proteins, enzymes and tissues. The energy of the sun is not merely being stored or harnessed. It is being converted into Order. By performing a similar function for the first time in human history, does Bitcoin represent the base layer of an entirely new economic biosphere? Are we witnessing the birth of a novel economic building block? If so, what superstructures can we expect to see built atop this foundation? My thesis here is that, in Bitcoin's proof of work protocol, we have a massively underestimated innovation that will take humanity in unimaginable directions. Unimaginable within a restrictive paradigm that seems only interested in the obvious monetary implications of this peer-to-peer electronic cash system. But Bitcoin is more than money. #bitcoin #thinkstr https://video.nostr.build/c939d8e4a788de288c6bcad03426411aff08e7d304f547e0faf93ff15abcdcf2.mp4

Stay humble. https://video.nostr.build/1895c540cba7e7289361bb251096f4d3d005a510b91434dec7331d124e658645.mp4

What are Litecoin sats called?

Perhaps an unpopular take, but after much reflection, I have concluded that the Cybertruck is cool in EXACTLY the same way that Batman's costume is cool: infinitely cool to look at it; infinitely uncool to wear (drive).¹ ¹Even on Halloween