Here’s one of my random Nostr Lyn stories.
I have a friend who lives in Vegas, and we previously agreed that if I come out here, I would try In-N-Out Burger. This chain is not available on the east coast but of course I always hear of it. Never had it before.
And I’m about as introverted as one can be at these events; I start to get overwhelmed by the sheer bandwidth.
So I skipped the high-end events that were happening last night, and went to In-N-Out Burger. Away from the conference. Just peace and conversation with a friend. One of my favorite moments this week!
When the Bitcoin Conference asked me to speak, I first eugfested a Nostr panel and said I’d happily participate. Until recently I literally had no main stage panel because I pointed my enthusiasm toward that concept.
I said I want something interesting, and said that Nostr counts as interesting.
The conference started to put it together as a side panel, but some of my key fellows dropped out for business reasons. And the conference said I should do a keynote. And then the Nostr panel conflicted timewise with my keynote, which I pointed out to the conference. So I won’t be doing a Nostr panel. And then my keynote was moved anyway. I said given all the raised/macro shifts, I’m happy to talk macro.
The folks that tried to fit my schedule are good people doing good work.
I have no qualms with them. I’m doing both a keynote and panel on the main stage.
But now I feel the need to mention Nostr on the main stage. Which I will. 😈
One of the things that I find most troubling is audience capture.
People who work in corporations have to toe the party line. But then people who go “independent” often get captured by the most vocal parts of their audience. They often just get paid to rebel against whatever they left, and become as much one-sided as they previously were.
In its most benign state, many people with audiences will just not comment on certain things. They fear their audience. There is no positive ROI in it. When asked point blank, they will try to deflect. In the worst state, they will actively and consciously deceive, playing to their audience.
I can’t promise I will always be right on things. Sometimes I will be wrong.
But what I will promise is that I will always tell it like I see it. So when people agree or disagree with me, my goal is that at least they know it’s genuine.
I aggressively resist audience and platform capture.
I started talking about US fiscal deficits being the key macro issue to watch in the first Trump term. Then for four years during the Biden term I amplified it and started the “nothing stops this (fiscal) train” meme.
When Trump became president again, and Musk talked about specific deficit reductions by 2026, I re-iterated my view that they will fail, and that the deficits will continue.
When I was talking about deficits during the Biden term, I got a ton of comments saying I was too right wing. But they were in the minority vs those who found value in the commentary. And it was right. And then during the early Trump term I got a wave of critics saying I was some liberal. But I said it’s just math, your guy is wrong too like the prior guy, so I say it like it is.
When Musk took over Twitter I was cautiously optimistic at first, but then I pointed out that the platform was increasing its rate of censoring Indian and Turkish posts compared to prior management at the behest of their governments that are also potential rocket and car buyers. They did this while simultaneously broadcasting themselves as the new free speech platform in the US. I took heat for pointing this out on his own platform but I felt it important to do so. These various knee-jerk social movements are so shallow.
I am wealthy enough to not need income anymore, but purposely am not so high-up in anything that I have a gazillion employees that could get rekt if I don’t bend the knee to some asshole. I run a profitable, lean, wholly owned company by me, and have some additional partnerships.
I don’t take that middle ground lightly. People more hardcore than me chose not to take it. Too many employees eat because of those leaders. Meanwhile, I use time to analyze whatever it is I’m looking at.
The latest event is bitcoin spam.
Some folks want to increase the expressivity of bitcoin to put more spam in there. I disagree with that.
Other folks are mad at the spam that’s already in there, and want to censor it. I disagree with that approach too.
Many influencers are afraid to even wade into the debate and tell you their opinion.
I’m happy to talk and reply. Not that it really matters, but in case you care, since most of this is on social media anyway and I haven’t pushed anything hard and broad yet but have watched and analyzed it.
My first article on bitcoin in 2017 was interested but not committed. After Bitcoin’s price stagnated for several years and went through the blocksize war, my second article was strongly bullish. I basically said to buy the fuck out of this thing. It proved itself to have a dominant network effect and to be antifragile.
We are up 16x since then; and I’m still bullish. I don’t view any of the attacks as existential. I fade all of the moral panics that I currently see.
The JPEG attacks are weak, the token attacks are weak, etc. All of this is from 2 years ago and still weak now. NFTs and memecoins are weak as fuck.
Fees are low because16 years into Bitcoin’s existence, it is still less than 1% of Fedwire transfer volumes. And it’s normal to be low until Bitcoin cash balances rival gold’s or Fedwire’s at even 10%.
Part of why I am bullish is because until Bitcoin has another10x and becomes a common cash balance at scale, it will remain a niche spending unit.
I don’t agree that everything is good for Bitcoin. However, I am 90% there.
Everything that fails to break Bitcoin is good for Bitcoin. I am bullish on Bitcoin, having witnessed yet another attack crash upon its shores.
For those that are concerned about spam, I would 1) remind you of the existing blocksize limit, 2) point out that UTXO bloat is not occurring since the fad went out and Runes launched, and 3) few of the existing proponents represent permanent fixes.
Bitcoin can withstand this weak sauce. That’s why I bought it in the first place.
I think JPEGs on the timechain are stupid.
But the idea that they're going to hurt Bitcoin seems so weak to me. Like the US dollar can withstand people scribbling on it but Bitcoin can't?
In fact, the idea of Bitcoin as a glorious digital monument with some graffiti scribbled on it represents humanity pretty well. That's kind of us in a nutshell. Seems on-brand. Perfectionists trying to keep their little gardens tidy while trolls come in and find ways to mess with them anyway.
NFTs and memecoins already had their peak fad moments. People now know that they're non-scarce gambling toys rather than investments. It's just echoes of that peak now. The only thing that concerned me about the ordinals/runes period was the rapid UTXO bloat, not the blockspace usage, since the latter already has a consensus limit on it.
And if Bitcoin transactions can't outprice JPEGs in the long run, then it's just not that valuable. Bitcoin currently does about 1% of the gross settlement volume of Fedwire. That's peanuts. Imagine if it reaches a point where it does even like 10% of Fedwire. What would you pay to move a full bitcoin globally, permissionlessly, in 10 minutes, in a world where it's no longer a niche thing?
