"Preach selflessness. Tell man that he must live for others. Tell men that altruism is the ideal. Not a single one of them has ever achieved it and not a single one ever will. His every living instinct screams against it. But don't you see what you accomplish? Man realizes that he's incapable of what he's accepted as the noblest virtue--and it gives him a sense of guilt, of sin, of his own basic unworthiness. Since the supreme ideal is beyond his grasp, he gives up eventually all ideals, all aspiration, all sense of his personal value. He feels himself obliged to preach what he can't practice." -Ayn Rand, Fountainhead

"Bitcoin is dead." -ECB,2022

European Central Bank

Bitcoin’s last stand

The European Central Bank (ECB) is the central bank of the European Union countries which have adopted the euro. Our main task is to maintain price...

"Against Bitcoin? HFSP" -ECB, 2024

The distributional consequences of Bitcoin by Ulrich Bindseil, Jürgen Schaaf :: SSRN

The original promise of Nakamoto (2008) to provide the world with a better global means of payment has not materialized. Instead, the focus has inc...

The European Central Bank released a paper on October 12th 2024 kicking the propaganda war against Bitcoin into the next gear, from Bitcoin is gambling to Bitcoin is stealing. The study by the ECB paints the narrative that Bitcoin has no legitimate financial use case, and that if the Bitcoin price somehow manages to persistently continue higher it will only succeed in impoverishing non-bitcoin users and latecomers. False. Bitcoin's financial use case is to protect every person on Earth from Central Bank basement. Bitcoin will benefit non-bitcoin users and latecomers by ushering in the abundance of the 5-Hour work week. Without bitcoin, robots take your job and prices rise forever, forcing you to work harder. With bitcoin, robots take your job and prices fall forever, enabling you to work less. But it is nice to see central banks finally agree with me that savers using fiat will be impoverished and savers using Bitcoin will be rewarded.

The distributional consequences of Bitcoin by Ulrich Bindseil, Jürgen Schaaf :: SSRN

The original promise of Nakamoto (2008) to provide the world with a better global means of payment has not materialized. Instead, the focus has inc...

It's increasingly obvious that Bitcoin is becoming the world's reserve standard because it elegantly solves a major problem that every person, family, business, organization, and institution on planet earth all face: how to protect your savings from dilution and theft by those who control the money.

War is naturally destructive, so we naturally avoid it. It's unnatural that we should live in a world where war is so destructive to us and so beneficial to our rulers. Such perverse incentives would poison society to annihilation. We are on our way, it seems. We trust our rulers to administer the money well, but they counterfeit it for war and we pay the price. Were it not for citizens storing their wealth in these corrupted notes, their printing would have no power. Like glass beads that no longer serve as money. For anyone who is tired of paying the price, there is Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is the invention of a thermodynamically sound ledger - information that respects the law of conservation of energy. This changes everything.

I need an awesome nostr hat. Which are your favorites? #asknostr

For my enemies, fiat. For my friends, Bitcoin.

I'm currently making my way through the Martyr Made podcast by Darryl Cooper. In episode #3, about 1 hour and 11 minutes in, he twice repeats his money line about how essential the state monopoly on power is for laying the foundation for peaceful society: "The state is the network of institutions that mediate and standardize relationships and exchchanges between individuals." I get where he's coming from that some kind of absolute power is necessary to be the final arbiter of peace, otherwise conflict defaults to physical violence. But this, I would argue, is precisely the beauty of Bitcoin. In fact, it seems like we are watching Bitcoin become a network that mediates and standardizes contracts and exchanges between individuals. Bitcoin is the discovery of a new kind of power that fuels cooperation. What a time to be alive.

Spotify

#3 - Fear & Loathing in the New Jerusalem - Nostalgia and Naivety in Honor Culture

The Martyr Made Podcast · Episode

Training as a family to do a 60 mile backpacking trip along the John Muir Trail has been homeschool on steroids. We'll see how the hike goes, but I'm proud of how much stronger the boys are after just 4 weeks of hard training. Our first training hike was supposed to be 3 miles. We didn't make it 0.3. Basically, the 10 year old moved like a 100 year old saying that his 12 lb pack caused debilitating pain. After 1.5 hours of "training," I was 80% convinced that we would have to cancel the whole thing. To everyone's credit, they got serious about their weight training, and probably even more importantly they prepared their minds for heretofore unimagined pain to enter their cushy lives. For me, the 2nd training hike marked the moment of peak pride as a dad. After seeing my kids carry heavy backpacks for 6 miles in sweltering° Texas heat, wearing grimaces of suffering and strength, it was undeniable that they had crossed some kind of mythical threshold. They weren't the same kids anymore. And best of all, I could tell they felt the change. Here we are on the 3rd training hike. Now the taining hikes are done. The last one felt better than ever. Go time approaches. Hopefully mother nature is merciful to our little band of aspiring hikers.

Anybody else feel torn between abandoning their home country to the looters, and staying to fight to take it back?

I wonder if any big, centralized platforms will choose to integrate nostr? Or if they'll all just keep selling indulgences like the printing press was never invented?

gm to all you who won't give in to illegitimate power.

I cannot figure out the ecash cashu UX. Shouldn't I be able to hold the ecash without redeeming it and incurring the redemption fee?

I'm far prefering a nostr experience where I lower my default zap amount to feel the freedom of zapping everything I like without a second thought, basically replacing likes with zaps. But it seems that to be doing this right, I should be using ecash? Is this possible on Android? Feeling wofully ignorant on ecash.

Abundance leads to freedom, and freedom leads to virtue. Here's this idea beautifully captured in this cool except from the book Chronicles from the Future - The Amazing Story of Paul Amadeus Dienach. "They “live” the joy of nature, the joys of travel, love, music and dance, of kindness, friendship and the thrill of beholding the aesthetic. They enjoy the unimaginable, for our times, pleasure of working on what they really want, on what their souls desire, without anyone pressuring them! In this way, their inner world becomes enriched. They say that when you follow your inclinations, the aversion to evil is created automatically inside you. And the more you climb this spiritual mountain, the clearer you see life."

Now I'm too afraid to ask when and why nostr wallet connect stopped working on my Amethyst client.

The physical universe is networked energy in constant exchange according to the laws of physics. Bitcoin is networked energy in constant exchange according to individual choice. Choice, which is a form of love, is a higher form of energy. Bitcoin upgrades universal law.

"[Hank Rearden] had a few hundred dollars in cash, left in his wallet, nothing else. But the odd, glowing warmth in his mind, like the feel of a distant handshake, was the thought that in a secret safe of his bedroom there lay a bar of solid gold, given to him by a gold haired pirate." -Atlas Shrugged Thank you, Satoshi. You're the best pirate I've ever seen.