In the free market of ideas self reliance and self governance wins. To your point we must stay in front of the wave of tyrannical over site and the inevitable control that comes with it.

My frustration is that I lacked the foresight years ago to understand it would be a struggle over electrons and data transmitted onto screens, not lead… that miscalculation has left me dependent on others to keep us connected.

thanks to the anon for the 5k ⚡️

number one priority should be a nostr based, decentralized, non custodial, peer to peer exchange

I don’t believe in price being set by centralized, kyc regulated exchanges

What would it look like, if an emergent money was being monetized?

Often when I talk with academics or other high-IQ critics of bitcoin, it’s the volatility and seemingly speculative aspect of it that turns them off. It’s almost distasteful to them. They can get behind the idea of global open-source payments and so forth, “but that’s not why people buy it” they’ll say. “They buy it because they’re speculating. It’s too volatile for its own good.” Some aspect of them dislikes it in principle, almost *because* one can make money from it.

But a new decentralized money, including its own unit of account and liquidity, doesn’t just emerge as a multi-trillion dollar-equivalent network out of the box. In order to go from zero to trillions in market capitalization and liquidity, it needs upside volatility. And with upside volatility comes speculation, leverage, and downside volatility. Cycle after cycle, it’s priced like an option. At first it’s like a 0.1% chance that it succeeds in the long run. And then in the next cycle it’s like 1%. And then in the next cycle it’s like 5%, and so forth. So, early capital allocators that have seen a thing or two and know the high failure rate of new ideas will say, “This’ll probably fail, but if it doesn’t, both the investment gains and the macro implications will be enormous.” And then 15 years into it with a few more cycles under its belt, the probability of success looks less like a distant moonshot and more like a real possibility, and then eventually starts to look like the base case. In the beginning the question is, “how will this succeed?” and at later stages the question becomes, “what risks could prevent this from continuing to succeed?”

The process of buying bitcoin is often a speculative process at first, but then as people learn more, they often view it differently. Those that really want speculation will then continue down the pipeline of altcoins- there’s always some shiny new object to try to speculate on. On the other hand, those who begin viewing bitcoin as money, start to view it as a defensive or risk-off act to hold a piece of this liquid and globally decentralized network of value. One would feel too financially exposed not to.

I appreciate you adding that insight. And the cautions regarding SWAN have come from a number of folks. I've appreciated their education focus and they do strongly encourage self-custody...even if you can't do it for the IRA product. They also have a lot of thought leaders I respect that contribute their knowledge to their efforts (Lyn, Livera, Breedlove, Callahan, Boyapati, etc.).

SWAN feels that it will be Unchained customers who will get rekt because of the lack of regulatory clarity and the "precedent" set by the McNulty case.

One of the biggest x-factors is the IRS/government/Congress/Elizabeth Warren's of the world. They could always change the tax code and have a bunch of boomer Congress people put it into law. That is one reason why I never converted to a Roth IRA and pay taxes up front. I just never trusted them to not change the rules, so I've deferred tax payment as long as possible.

No way to completely mitigate life’s myriad risks! Gotta accept that.

How very unpleasant.

“but when the state comes to kick my door down to steal my life’s work and put me in a cage..

i will just politely pack up all my things and apply for citizenship in a really nice romantic country and live happily ever after”

y’all need to start getting real

I'm navigating - or fighting - that right now. I think an IRA should be held in a multi-sig with the owner having 2-of-3 keys. That allows the custodian to still have visibility into whether those BTC move, but "your keys/your coin" so you can't get rug-pulled.

My IRA is with Swan, and they dodged bullets with both Prime and Fortress Trust. I know they have other partnerships now, but it is all 3rd party risk.

However, it is Swan's opinion they must hold all the key to keep the IRS from defining it as having "unfettered access" to move the BTC...even if you have auditability via the timechain. Unchained does allow the multi-sig...but they might be making assumptions, based upon no perfectly aligned legal precedent...that the IRS will not view the Bitcoin like they did the gold in the McNulty case.

Having said that, I think Swan will now support the "checkbook IRA" setup...but they basically say if the IRS comes for their 10% penalty + capital gains, that is the risk we take to have the quorum on the multi-sig keys to prevent rug pull.

Also yes. If you're Bitcoin rich you shouldn't advertise that fact. Jameson Lopp has compiled a list of all known occurrences of people who have been physically attacked by criminals who were after their Bitcoin stack.

removing the app from US app stores will not satisfy regulators - they will expect kyc on all users globally to make sure americans are not using it

yes, that is fucked up but that is how large custodians have been treated in the past

removing the app from US app stores abruptly with delayed comms indicates a level of panic from their team that is a concern - the only responsible path forward requires deliberate action from the wallet of satoshi team to encourage users to withdraw funds ASAP - otherwise the next course of action is likely a panicked shotgun kyc of all users without notice

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What's a documentary you've enjoyed recently?