Starting drafting a post entitled Bitcoin Is Agency.

My thoughts aren’t organized enough yet, but had the idea that hope and fear are just positive and negative poles of passivity. You hope x and fear y. Same as fear not-x and hope not-y.

But agency is the opposite of both — you are taking part, assuming responsibility for your fate.

“Bitcoin is hope” per nostr:npub15dqlghlewk84wz3pkqqvzl2w2w36f97g89ljds8x6c094nlu02vqjllm5m isn’t quite right, unless you bought some and are waiting for the number to go up before trading it for something.

It’s agency.

Instead of waiting to withdraw your IOU from the bank with its permission, you actually possess the money yourself. You have traded the passive IOU for the active bearer instrument.

You can achieve final settlement without permission.

It’s easy to feel powerless in a world with printable money, astroturfed politics, insecure elections and endless propaganda. It’s easy to hope for world events to work out in your favor, for the right leaders to be elected, for the right policies to be enacted. Or to fear the opposite.

But what a contrast to acting with agency — creating something of value, interacting with the people you choose, and if it comes to it, disobeying the laws you find unjust and in violation of fundamental rights.

You don’t know what will happen, but you have a hand in your own fate.

Agency, not hope.