Trust is not a currency that can be traded. It is not something that can be abstracted away. Trust is, and will always be, an act of faith. Based on love.

I was called a "conspiracy theorist" by former friends for thinking that people like Thiel and Karp were plotting a fascist takeover of America over a year ago. It's been something of journey to see the rest of the world come to the conclusion I privately arrived at, before this all started.

The Plot Against America

How a dangerous ideology born from the libertarian movement stands ready to seize America

I want to be clear: I am not anti-Bitcoin. I am a critic of Bitcoin. I am anti-Bitcoin-as-politics. I think this is madness. I have always thought it was madness. Even when I worked on Bitcoin-related things. I have observed that fascists like Bitcoin. They promote it. Fascists of all kinds. American fascists. The IRGC in Iran. Bukele in El Salvador. And I think to myself: wow. Look at all these very bad people doing very bad things and branding themselves with Bitcoin. And I don't think Bitcoin advocates have passed a moral smell test. I see them go up on stage with actual fascists, who are actively pushing — among other things, and I'm debating one of these fascists on stage in Las Vegas at the Bitcoin Conference — for ending democracy and returning to a feudalistic world. And they are calling it freedom or "libertarianism." The notion that people just look past this and say "well, we can disagree on politics and work on Bitcoin together" think they are performing some principled compartmentalization. But that is not a reasonable argument for tolerating this. It is, in fact, quite suspicious that the fascists are very excited about ending democratic control over money. Now, you might think democratic control over money is a bad idea because of perverse incentives, public-choice problems, the time-inconsistency of political monetary policy, and we can have amazingly interesting philosophical debates about all of that late into the night. But what is it, exactly, that these "liberal" or "progressive" Bitcoin advocates think is going to happen in a world where the government is completely unable to constrain private finance? They think some magical fairy dust of bottom-up enlightenment will push back against those whose goal is to rule you and turn you into a serf? Forever? I think these are serious observations. I have not heard an answer yet. I am still waiting.

It's fun to think about how I became unemployable in Silicon Valley because I insisted on saying bad things about Donald Trump on the internet. And now I get to narrate their comeuppance.

The Capital is Misaligned and the Crash is Coming

My strong disagreement with the sentiment on Wall Street.

It’s still incredible to think back to last April when I wrote this piece and most of my friends and family saw me as a little bit unhinged and overly alarmist.

The Time of Monsters

On Institutional Erosion, Normalcy Bias, and the Conditions That Precede Catastrophe

My critique of the cypherpunks.

Show Your Face

A Critique of the Cypherpunks

For what it's worth, my best guess, using my most disciplined guestimation, that it is 70-80% likely that Adam BAck is indeed Satoshi Nakamoto. This includes my sense derived from personal interactions with him, strong buttressed by Mr. Carreyrou's reporting.

✅ Supposed human rights activist celebrates IGRC collecting extortionate toll payments in an international waterway that will be used to fund its brutal repression. View quoted note →