Just spent the better part of my last evening of this year at an all-ages NYE Party, laying on my back in the middle of a living room de-bunking Modern Monetary Theory for a group of recent Stephanie Kelton acolytes, while my 7 year old performed flying body slams on me from the living room sofa. Pretty emblematic of my 2024 overall, to be honest. Off to bed I go shortly, to rise early and take 2025 by the horns. Wishing you all a healthy, peaceful and fulfilling new year!

Hope y’all have a great New Year’s Eve and start to 2025. My plans for the night are all firmed up! Early rise on Jan 1st and to the gym, to set a tone for the year ahead.

The future is Bitcoin The future is Nostr Just think about how magical, how special it is that you are using both at this early stage in the game.

Done!

A little piece of fiction that I wrote a while back, loosely based on experiences many of us can relate to. Happy to share it here as my first Nostr Read (hopefully the link works).

Sojourns in the digital future

So wrong, yet so right.

Joyeux ___!

A nice visual of the global market caps of #Bitcoin and #gold. How long will it take for Bitcoin to surpass gold’s market cap? My guess is by 2029.

My hope is that the amount of Bitcoin held by individuals will never drop below 50% of the total supply of BTC.

I see a recent uptick in commentary, including from a number of #Bitcoin holders, that BTC is not money. To me, the question of whether Bitcoin is money is settled. The answer is yes, which doesn’t negate the fact that it is also a tool for savings. In the light of abundant evidence showing #BTC being used as money, around the world, debate about what threshold would appease critics as signifying “widely used” is kind of like debating whether sunbathing at midday for an hour in the Namibian desert” is “not advisable” or “extremely not advisable”. I propose that the much more salient, interesting, and pressing matter for discussion is as follows… What are the psychological and social dimensions of particular monies in terms of their variable uses as a “medium of exchange” and/or a “store of value” and what is the interplay between these uses in the context of people’s real, material circumstances? For instance, people who have access to only rapidly debasing currencies are heavily incentivized to spend quickly and to convert their holdings of this money into other monies or assets that will retain value, or at least not debase as quickly. The most extreme case of this that I’ve heard to date in terms of ramifications is from Ian Frost and Bitcoin Boma, describing the situation in Malawi. On the other hand, I wonder to what extent having access to a money (ie, BTC) which is demonstrated to accrue value over time incentivizes saving some of that money, even in instances where someone has little to no capacity to “save” (ie, all money is required for spending on daily/weekly needs). Does access to a money which accrues value over time foster transformative conditions for pushing past this threshold of spending only toward actual capital accumulation (ie, savings)? I would find it much more valuable if critics of the relative “moneyness” of BTC could look deeper and investigate the conditions under which BTC is actually being used as money. Suspend your disbelief, if you must, in order to observe. I don’t want to speak on behalf of any of the groups that I work with around the world where BTC is being used as money and a tool for individuals and community development, but they would tell you that “something” magical is happening. There are psycho-social transformations afoot and I can’t help but believe that the qualities of BTC itself, a non-debasing money, have something to do with it.

With all due respect to Americans and others who are talking about the U.S. Government’s “first mover” advantage in setting up a #Bitcoin Strategic Reserve (SBR), the U.S. will at best be the third country to officially have an SBR, after #Bhutan and #ElSalvador. Of course, the U.S. has potential scale that most others don’t. El Salvador is clearly the first mover on so many fronts, including the establishment of the El Salvador Government Bitcoin Office and publishing their #BTC reserves openly, for the whole world to monitor. 👇

National Bitcoin Office of El Salvador

The National Bitcoin Office (ONBTC) of El Salvador under President @nayibbukele

Welcome to Nostr, @Fran Finney! View quoted note →

It was a joy to be able to treat someone in Vancouver to a cup of coffee today. Paid from the comfort of my home in Toronto, over Lightning Network, using the best money ever known to humankind: #BTC Thank you @FunkCoffee for teaming up on this and enabling me to treat one of your customers at FUNK Coffee Bar, and thank you @Mysterious Hamster for providing an amazing tool for businesses and customers to transact with BTC seamlessly. #Bitcoin for the win, again!

The universe moves in mysterious ways. I have a story to share, and if you read on you'll see why I'm connecting it to a message shared on X by Dom Bei and Proof of Workforce (see pics below). Twenty years ago, in late 2004, I was travelling from Nairobi to Kisumu for work. At the time, I worked with a global physicians NGO, and this was the height of the HIV/AIDS pandemic that was decimating communities around the world, especially throughout the African continent. I was on my way to Kisumu for meetings about scale up of access to antiretroviral drugs in the region. These were still the early days of HIV drug access throughout most of the continent. My small flight to Kisumu was a mixed bag of people but it was mostly foreign aid workers from different countries. I recall having a few different conversations with people and also overhearing some conversations. As we arrived in Kisumu and I made way to my hotel, passing through the city, there was a massive fire which engulfed a three-story building. Crowds watched on. There didn't appear to be any firefighters on site. It turns out that the fire was ravaging a building containing Kisumu's largest pharmacy, book store, and several other small businesses. Life-saving drugs, books, and more, gone! It turns out further that, at that time, there was only one fire truck in town and the small fire brigade that staffed it were required, by law, to be stationed at the airport for the incoming flight from Nairobi (the one I had just arrived on). Imagine, a fire truck and brigade rendered helpless to tend to a local emergency because their priority was tending to a plane full of foreign aid workers. The cruel, infuriating irony! This experience taught me a valuable lesson about foreign aid, root causes, and unintended consequences. That experience is part of what pushed me away from larger global aid agencies (I had also worked for WHO) and toward projects that are fundamentally "by and for" the community. It instilled in me a healthy skepticism of large global aid projects and an insistence on interrogating projects to ensure that they don't entail unintended consequences which outweigh the good to which they aspire. The very next year, in 2005, I began working with Community Health Centres in Canada and around the world, and this enabled me to live out the values of social impact "by and for" communities. That work carried me forward to 2023 when I decided to make my next professional transition, shifting toward projects focused on #Bitcoin #BTC as a tool for social impact globally. I made this transition, in 2023, because I had become convinced that Bitcoin presents unprecedented, upstream opportunity to shift global balances of power, to empower communities, and to achieve social impact around the world. Participating in the first @AfroBitcoinOrg conference in Accra, in late 2022, helped me arrive at that conclusion. My belief in Bitcoin as a powerful pathway to global transformation is a claim that still falls on many deaf ears when I engage colleagues, friends, and strangers who fall under the umbrellas of social justice and global development but who haven't yet studied Bitcoin. Coming back to the message here on X from Dom and Proof of Workforce though. To see this message in the days leading up to the @Africa Bitcoin Conference conference, and amidst so many other inspiring #ABC24 related tweets, it hits home in a very personal way. It pulls me back to that experience in Kisumu 20 years ago. It re-assures me that not only are we are on the right track via Bitcoin, but that in some small, magical ways, we are also making amends for the past. I will be making a donation to Proof of Workforce to be passed on to the Kenya Fire Brigades Association. I invite you to do the same. See their tweet below for details. Thanks, Dom! 🫡 I'm sad to not be in attendance this year at @Africa Bitcoin Conference conference, but to all of you who are, I send my love and very best wishes. Thank you for everything you are doing to make this a better world, now and for future generations. 🌍

Way to go @Mysterious Hamster team! Vancouver is the #Bitcoin adoption and use capital of North America. Hopefully this will inspire other cities throughout the continent…and especially Toronto (being selfish, if I may). View quoted note →

The stories that our children will tell their children are almost unimaginable. They will rival in significance (perhaps surpass) the tales of transition from darkness to fire, from kerosine to electricity, from horse to automobile, from paper- and audio-based communications to the age of digital communications. What will distinguish the tales of transition from broken, fiat money and financial systems to #BTC and #Bitcoin-based systems, however, will be the fascinating pathways of this transition. These tales will be of an almost unbelievable admixture of individuals, groups, and communities around the world whose diverse and disconnected needs somehow magically coalesced to make manifest this transition. A very large proportion of these protagonists, no less, are forsaken or dismissed by the incumbent systems and structures which they are collectively interrupting. We are still at the dawn of this transition, but we are at that special moment when we can finally recognize it for what it is. Photos: via @npub1q0pa...5u4j. Women in the high Andes Mountains, Peru using and accepting #BTC for everyday needs.

🤣🤣🤣

Haha! Truth! 🇨🇦🏒

It was beautiful and inspiring to participate in the @My First Bitcoin graduation ceremony in Ilopango, #ElSalvador earlier this week and to learn more about the transformative impact #Bitcoin education and adoption is having in this community once overrun by gangs, endemic poverty, fear and despair. My heart and soul were truly uplifted. Congratulations to all graduates and future leaders! Thank you to @My First Bitcoin and to local community members in Ilopango for allowing us the honour of joining you for this special day. 🙏🧡🇸🇻

I’m so excited that this year’s @Adopting Bitcoin #AB24 conference in #ElSalvador has a dedicated kids space and that my daughter, Malaika, has the opportunity to volunteer and speak. This is such a powerful, inspiring opportunity for all participants. Thank you to Bitcoin Juniors Club and everyone else involved in making this happen, and for the thoughtfulness and love you have poured into planning this space and sessions! Vamos, #Bitcoin para niños!