Just don't dance.

Last Friday the Chinese government brokered an agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia to restore diplomatic relations and bring a halt to the years-long undeclared conflict between both countries. Meanwhile, after spending two absolutely wasted decades in first Iraq and then Afghanistan, the government of the United States spent last Friday cleaning up a regional bank blowup at the behest of members of their political donor class. Years from now this will be written about in history textbooks as the signpost for when the post-WWII 'rules based order' came to an end.

CNBC

The China-brokered Saudi-Iran deal has big repercussions for the Middle East — and the U.S.

The deal is "a much needed pressure valve amid heightened regional tensions" — but significant changes are far from guaranteed, analysts told CNBC.

One down, one to go

Spare a thought for the people in your life stil trapped in the fiat mindset today.

1) The FDIC, the Treasury and the Federal Reserve have decided that SVB depositors will be made whole. This means that Circle will be able to redeem USDC at par. This means USDC will continue to exist. See Jeremy Allaire's thread celebrating here:

X (formerly Twitter)

Jeremy Allaire - jerallaire.arc (@jerallaire) on X

Update thread on USDC We were heartened to see the US government and financial regulators take crucial steps to mitigate risks extending from the ...

2) Last year we learned that, in the event of a contentious Ethereum fork, the 'winning' chain will de-facto be whichever one Circle believes is 'valid' (see screenshot of Circle's August 9, 2022 statement before the merge). 1) + 2) = 3) Circle exists because Treasury has decided to allow them to exist, which means any forks that are recognized by Circle as valid for USDC are - in their judgement - not going to get them on Yellen's bad side and have her reconsider that decision. So, yeah, Ethereum is officially captured by the State, I don't make the rules.

I'm not certain what the ideal amount of Roku's $487mn of funds - out of a corporate treasury of $1.9 billion - should have been stored away in an m-of-n Bitcoin multisig. But clearly the answer is not 'zero'. It turns out 'zero' loses you $487 million dollars! Even for companies with significantly less exposure, if you find yourself not being able to make payroll - either b/c of exposure to Rippling or to SIVB diretly - how can you justify not keeping at least two weeks of payroll in an asset that doesn't require an intermediary between you and your employees, once you dig yourself out of this mess?

We were right about everything - about yield farming, about shitcoins, about fractional reserve banking, about inflation... ...and they will never forgive us for it.

Fuck a bailout, I want to see show trials.

I mean. If you're a stablecoin that has lost it's peg as a result of a run on a fiat bank....

Them: you shouldn't celebrate when banks fail Me:

SVB going into receivership. Bitcoin users unaffected.

<extremely Siouxsie Sioux voice>: 🎶 whoah ooo oh, all your shitcoins lie in dust, my friend 🎶

I would simply not build software that requires permission from the NYAG. It's not complicated

Reading Dr. Niel Ten Oever's Ph.D thesis right now for the University of Amsterdam and it's such a banger: The entanglement of the Internet with the daily practices of governments, companies, institutions, and individuals means that the processes that shape the Internet also shape society. In this dissertation, I study the norms that shape the Internet’s under- lying structure through its transnational governance. Norms are the ‘widely-accepted and internalised [sic] principles or codes of conduct that indicate what is deemed to be permitted, prohibited, or required of agents within a specific community’ (Erskine and Carr 2016, 87). Internet governance is the development, coordina- tion, and implementation of policies, technologies, protocols, and standards. Internet governance produces a global and interop- erable Internet functioning as a general-purpose communication network in transnational governance bodies. I examine four cases of norm conflict and evolution in three key Internet governance institutions: the Internet Engineering Taskforce (IETF); the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN); and the Réseaux IP Européens Network (RIPE). https://www.academia.edu/44194819/Wired_Norms_Inscription_resistance_and_subversion_in_the_governance_of_the_Internet_infrastructure

Doing research for the book aaaand: I was already familiar with the "Everything about the Internet is bad" Greek chorus of Nicholas Carr et al - the early Internet equivalent of nocoiners, if you will - but I seem to have hit a rich vein of "the Internet would be so much better if only those damn Internet maxis would have listened to me" cope - from Louis Pouzin at CYCLADES (pre-TCP/ARPANet) to Mark McCahill at University of Minnesota (Gopher) to Robert Desjardins (OSI). It's wild how often the same behavioral pattern repeats itself, with even the same personality (arche)types. Maybe I should be studying mental health and dysfunction instead of networking...?

"Iranian Vice President for Economic Affairs, Mohsen Rezaei, proposed the creation of a joint bank with African states with the aim of helping develop economic relations."

thecradle.co

Iran proposes creation of joint bank with African states

During a conference with representatives from West African states, the Iranian president stressed that, unlike the west, Tehran is interested in Af...

Goals for today: making chicken katsu at home and filling in the gaps in my understanding of PSBTs.

Any nostr clients or apps with built in cashu wallets?

Thinking about how the State encouraged home ownership because it meant more saltpetre (a precusor to gunpowder) would be produced.