The accelerationists have won. It's time to pick up the pieces. View quoted note →

"I want to attend a money conference and join a local money meetup group." Something sounds eerie about that. #bitcoin

I had a full day. Had 7 meetings today. Wrote at least 4 emails. Ran payroll. Have 4 more emails to write, but ran out of steam. People don't realize how much work goes into these stupid emails and they never read them.

Gave myself a haircut today. Feeling like I'm getting better at it without a mirror after 6 years of doing it alone. I would have my boys do it, but they are off with relatives for a week.

Listening to Jimmy Door chit chat with his buddy Kurt at 1.5x is exhausting

I actually unsubed from a YouTube channel for going down the tartaria rabbithole. It's just too far man.

I hate it when I hear about an organization or group that I expect would be the long-lost group I've been searching for that shares my values, only to find out it's a bunch of leftist statists larping as whatever that group is supposed to represent, and I don't find out the truth until after I've spilled the beans and have been ousted from the clique, because they keep their true beliefs hidden because it turns out the group had long been inflitrated by subversives. This is a recurring pattern everywhere I go. Lesson: Treat new groups as compromised until proven otherwise.

Calling Bitcoin “old tech” misunderstands what Bitcoin is. Bitcoin is not trying to be the fastest app platform. It is not trying to run every smart contract. It is not trying to be a global computer. Bitcoin is trying to be trustworthy money. That is a different mission. A distributed compute platform wants flexibility. It wants more features, more apps, and more ways to build. But more flexibility also means more complexity. More complexity means more bugs, more attack surfaces, more insider advantages, and more ways for normal users to stop understanding what they are trusting. The same is true with privacy coins. Privacy is important. But some privacy systems become so complex that normal users cannot really audit the money supply. They have to trust experts, cryptography, ceremonies, circuits, or assumptions they cannot personally verify. That may be useful for experiments. It may even produce good tools one day. But Bitcoin’s strength is different. Bitcoin is simple enough to verify, hard enough to change, and valuable enough to attack. That combination is rare. Bitcoin does not need to become every other kind of crypto system. Other chains can test those ideas first. Some will fail. Some will teach useful lessons. Some may produce ideas Bitcoin can later use in a safer form. Bitcoin’s job is not to move fast. Bitcoin’s job is to remain money that no one can easily corrupt. View quoted note →

Miner signaling and node signaling do not automatically define the “real Bitcoin.” Miners matter because they produce blocks and provide proof-of-work. But miners do not own Bitcoin’s rules. Nodes matter because they verify the rules. But node counts can be misleading. A person can run many nodes, and not every node represents real economic weight. So neither miner signaling nor node signaling is enough by itself. Bitcoin’s true governance happens through costly market choices. Which chain do users hold? Which chain do exchanges list? Which chain do merchants accept? Which chain do businesses build on? Which chain do long-term holders refuse to sell? Which chain does hash power follow because it is more profitable? That is where the real signal appears. Bitcoin is not governed like a company. There is no CEO, board, court, or parliament that decides what Bitcoin is. Bitcoin is governed by a distributed struggle between users, miners, developers, businesses, exchanges, and capital markets. Each group can influence the system. None of them can fully control it. The “real Bitcoin” is not decided by slogans. It is decided when competing rule sets enter the market and people must choose which one they will actually use, secure, price, and trust. View quoted note →

Bitcoin is not perfect as it is today. That is exactly why changes to Bitcoin must be treated carefully. One real issue is throughput. Bitcoin’s base layer cannot handle every small payment in the world directly on-chain. That means we need Layer 2 systems. But Layer 2 is not simple. Lightning helps, but it requires channel liquidity. That means money has to be locked into payment channels so payments can move. This works in many cases, but it also creates limits, complexity, and routing problems. Other proposed Layer 2 ideas may need new Bitcoin features, such as covenants, CTV, OP_CAT, or other scripting changes. These may allow better scaling, but they may also create new risks. For example, they could make it easier to create restricted coins, controlled withdrawal systems, or coins that are trapped inside rules they cannot easily escape. So the question is not, “Can Bitcoin scale?” The better question is: Can Bitcoin scale without damaging the properties that make Bitcoin worth scaling? Bitcoin should not accept every Layer 2 proposal just because it promises more transactions. A bad scaling solution could preserve the name Bitcoin while weakening the freedom, privacy, auditability, or neutrality that gives Bitcoin its value. The right answer is probably not one single Layer 2. It may be a mix of Lightning, federations, ecash systems, statechains, Ark-like systems, and future designs that have not fully matured yet. But every solution should be judged by the same standard: Does it reduce cost and improve privacy without creating new custodians, new permission systems, or new ways to trap users? View quoted note →

Bitcoin is not “old tech” just because it changes slowly. Bitcoin changes slowly because it is trying to be sound money, not a playground for every new feature. Its main value is that people can trust its rules to stay stable, even when governments, companies, miners, or developers are pressured to change them. Altcoins are useful because they test new ideas with real money at risk. Some of those ideas may fail. Some may prove useful. Bitcoin can watch those experiments and later choose whether to reject, improve, or adopt anything that truly matters. Bitcoin can be upgraded, but the bar must be very high. A bad change to Bitcoin could damage the whole system. Bitcoin is not governed only by miners or by people running nodes. Real governance comes from the market: users, miners, businesses, and investors choosing which valid version of Bitcoin they will actually use, hold, and secure. The big question Bitcoin is testing is simple: Can money with a fixed supply beat money that governments and institutions can keep expanding over time?

Could it be that Melanoma is caused not by being in the sun, but by eating seed oils supressing mitochondrial photosynthesis of melatonin, removing yourself to a cool cave to avoid sunburn, and flooding your body and thyroid with blue light from phosphoric fluorescence? Then, when you eventually do go outside, your body has no natural defense against UVB, normally biochemically neutralized by intracellular melatonin, and this is why we think the sun "causes" skin cancer?

Imagine how horrible you would become if you could lie without rebuke and everyone is required to believe you lest they are treated as dangerous by society. That kind of power should not be in the hands of men.