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 āindependentā 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 canāt 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 itās 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 ānothing stops this (fiscal) trainā 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 itās 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 donāt bend the knee to some asshole. I run a profitable, lean, wholly owned company by me, and have some additional partnerships.
I donāt 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 Iām 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 thatās 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.
Iām 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 havenāt 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 Bitcoinās 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 Iām still bullish. I donāt 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 Bitcoinās existence, it is still less than 1% of Fedwire transfer volumes. And itās normal to be low until Bitcoin cash balances rival goldās or Fedwireās 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 donāt 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. Thatās why I bought it in the first place.
