This is central banking in a nutshell: A group of rich guys go to the king and say: "Hey, you need money for your war. We'll give you all the money you want." The king says: "Great, where's the money?" They say: "We're going to make it up. We'll write numbers in a book and that's your money now." The king says: "What do I owe you?" They say: "You pay us back with interest." The king says: "Where do I get that money?" They say: "You tax your citizens." The king says: "What if I can't pay it all back?" They say: "That's fine. We'll lend you more. Same deal." The king says: "And what do you do with the IOUs I gave you?" They say: "We use them to prove we have money, so we can lend even more money to other people and charge them interest too." The king says: "So you made up money, lent it to me, I tax my people to pay you back, and then you use my debt to make up even more money and lend it to everyone else?" They say: "Yes." The king says: "What did it cost you?" They say: "Nothing." That's literally how the Bank of England started in 1694. The Bank was formed to finance King William's war with France. The king gave the Bank a charter, granting it a monopoly on money. The king could have as much money as he wanted. The bankers could always earn interest. Taxpayers covered the bill. Now replace "king" with "United States Government" and you have the Federal Reserve in 1913. Same story, different country. It doesn't end there. 185 central banks exist in the world today. Across the globe, the governments get as much money as they want, the bankers load their pockets with interest, and the taxpayers pay for it all. Oh, and if you don't pay your taxes, they'll fine you, penalize you, or throw you in jail. The ONLY way out of this is to STOP USING THEIR MONEY. As long as you're using the money that central banks control, the central banks will have control. You have to stop giving them energy. Use a different form of money that they can't control. This is why Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin.

If Bitcoin had come first, nobody would agree to fiat

Is Bitcoin trying to tell us something? What is is Lassie? Is Timmy stuck in the well?

What it's like to be a Bitcoiner in 2025. #Bitcoin

#Dontwait

Taste the rainbow. #steakstr

Is the reason that Bitcoin whales are selling because they know they finally have just as large of buyers on the other end of the trade? (Institutions, nation states etc) And large scale selling won't drop the price so they feel this is their time to unload?

Tether represents the mechanism by which transition occurs. A TROJAN horse that appears to strengthen dollar demand while actually accelerating Bitcoin monetization. Every dollar going into Tether seeking stability, contributes to Bitcoin's March toward monetary dominance.

One of the cope tendencies I've seen among bitcoin bears is that they said "the state" wouldn't allow it, would shut it down, as a justification for not being bullish years ago. Then as the network grew massively, and a subset of politicians liked it either because they have anti-big-state views themselves or because money speaks, those bears shift to "well now it lost its way, now it is captured" as a way to continue to be bearish on the idea even as the price soars and the network strengthens. Part of being bullish years ago was understanding this type of game theory.

The perfect beer for my evening read #TheBigPrint #Beerstr #Bitcoin #Bookstr

The life you want is on the other side of the uncertainty you avoid.

The virtue is in having the power but showing restraint over that power.

The way I like to value Bitcoin is more like an adoption story rather than USD price. People say, what do you think the price should be? And I say, I don't look at the price or predict it. What I do is start with the assumption that it is going to become the dominant form of money and then I look at where we are in the adoption curve. And not just how many people have adopted it, but who is adopting it. And I think the "who" that is adopting it is in the middle of changing right now. We see bitcoin Treasury companies and governments buying, so I think these types of holders of Bitcoin are going to change the past volatility patterns that we've seen. When there is a sell-off and the algorithms try to get people to sell their Bitcoin, almost no bitcoin Treasury company is going to be spooked into selling its Bitcoin, nor will any nation. So I think we will see meaningful volatility pattern changes on the downside. This is the way to think of Bitcoins value from the standpoint of the network itself. Stop looking at the dollar price. The network effect of looking at how many participants and who are those participants, how much buying power do those participants wield? ..that will move the adoption overall very differently than your grandma buying $5 worth. If you look at just these metrics from a fundamental standpoint, it's insane how much the bitcoin network has performed recently. So the question is ... How do you model that? How do you put that data onto a chart? Now, instead of "future cash flows" for evaluation, we have "future adoption" as a data metric.

It’s very rare that you find a technology that solves every rich person's problem and every poor person's problem simultaneously. - Michael Saylor on #Bitcoin

Fiat money incentivizes you to talk, and talk is cheap and easy, just like Fiat I think we have all adjusted to listening to the talk and forgetting to check if there is actually a "walk". -Bram

Future generations will likely discuss finance in terms of pre-Bitcoin and post-Bitcoin, much like we reference history eras as BC and AD. @Lawrence Lepard

Any Bitcoiners out there hand crafting shoes for sale?