The late Freeman Dyson visited my small college as a guest lecturer for a short seminar series many years ago. I had the privilege of taking part as a Physics major, and while I donât remember too many specifics of his visit, I strongly remember a sense of being around someone very special, someone who did not shy away from challenging conventional thought and taking up a diverse array of topics from first principles. A short YouTube clip hit my feed recently, discussing climate, and brought back some memories. Having read up on regenerative agriculture recently, this hit home.
âQ: If climate change does cause problems, how might we realistically be able to engineer solutions? There are all sorts of ways. There were a couple of farmers in Minnesota I was just reading about that decided to change from feed lots to grass. They are raising beef. These are farmers that are raising cows for beef, and a certain amount of milk as well⊠and they decided to switch from feed lots â which of course is a fashionable way of raising cows. You keep them on a very crowded feed lot and feed them on corn. So youâre growing corn to feed to the animals. Instead of that you put them out to grass, but you manage the grass in a clever way â moving fences around â so they eat the grass much more evenly. It turns out this pays, and theyâre doing extremely well â just going back from feed lots to grass. And it has a big effect on the CO2 in the atmosphere, in proportion to the area that they are using. That means that if the whole of the middle west would do this, it would make a substantial difference to the CO2 in the atmosphere. So that is the sort of practical thing you can do, just managing the land more intelligentlyâŠ. âŠitâs not all that spectacular, but it actually works. So changing from feed lots to grass doesnât solve the whole problem, but it solves a certain chunk of the problem. There are other things you can do, doing less plowing.â
https://youtu.be/-kSnd8t4ceQ?si=sQ5BGbaOui6Q3i9p
And in his final interview, days before his death in 2020 he touched again on quantum cryptography with a sobering view:
"In the real world, crypto-systems are usually broken by exploiting human errors in the day-to-day operations of the users. Human errors will probably be as prevalent in quantum systems as they are in classical systems. So long as humans are involved in the practical use of crypto, no system will be secure against hackers."
I think I'll crack open some of his excellent books... it's been too long.
You thought we were done??
In the spirit of Black Friday nostr:npub14kw5ygpl6fyqagh9cnrytyaqyacg46lzkq42vz7hk8txdk49kzxs04j7y0 is giving you two shows for the price of one.
At 6:30EST nostr:npub1hqaz3dlyuhfqhktqchawke39l92jj9nt30dsgh2zvd9z7dv3j3gqpkt56s and I are ecstatic to welcome âNostrâ nostr:npub1a2cww4kn9wqte4ry70vyfwqyqvpswksna27rtxd8vty6c74era8sdcw83a.
This is a double header you do not want to miss. đ𧥠
nostr:note1tq8vn6hyn5at26rudk0qarzkaew9g6rh0n0csge4llpulf5njqaqakjc56
đ§Ąđ§Ąđ§Ą
I think I finally uncovered nostr:npub1a2cww4kn9wqte4ry70vyfwqyqvpswksna27rtxd8vty6c74era8sdcw83a's superpower: making each of us be more awesome in our own ways. đȘđ§Ą
what a night đŠđ·
Regular moderate strength training, boosting quality meat intake, prioritizing sleep, spending time with loved ones.
Kang and Kodos agree 
We all wait patiently, with this song on repeat...
https://open.spotify.com/track/2LTPKboDDcoGId7hE3VjJg?si=ddc0190a9d464360
nostr:note1xurjdgflm7c4w000fsmle44sjydtvsrdy5cfvp6vkj9z4k98hc6qaqpf22
I don't normally share music to my husband but for nostr:npub1hrctsg2qwu5gsp65gvj29968z460g0th755jq92c8uaz620lewmq6qk525 I was like, "isn't this song cool?"
Love it.
what kind of music does he like?
https://open.spotify.com/track/2LTPKboDDcoGId7hE3VjJg?si=3d3664fb17464cec
Having lights out until June one year was deeply satisfying.
Stay humble, share stories.
âResponsibly all-in.â
âI like the orange coin. A lot.â
My research and audience straddles the macro finance world and the bitcoin world. And so humorously, I get heat from both sides.
âLyn, I love your macro work but youâre too obsessed with bitcoin; I wish you would focus less on that stuff.â -hedge fund reader.
Vs
âLyn, since youâre a fellow bitcoiner, why do you only have a 5-10% allocation to bitcoin in your public model portfolios!? Shouldnât you sell all your stocks and buy more?â -fellow pleb.
I talk to many institutions, as well as high net worth individuals, and medium net worth individuals like engineers and doctors. This is where individual situations come into play. I had been watching bitcoin for a while, publicly wrote about it near the top of the cycle in 2017 and (correctly) passed on it from that point, but then kept watching it during the bear market and then hardcore jumped into it during the March/April 2020 crash starting at $6,900/coin as a long-term bull, and havenât wavered since.
For example, 2.5 years later as Bitcoin crashed amid the FTX fallout in November 2022 from 69k to sub-16k, I was at Pacific Bitcoin laughing about it. I was not uncertain.
In those initial months of 2020, I put every dollar of my liquid capital into bitcoin. I didnât sell my existing stocks and trigger capital gains tax, didnât withdraw from my IRA or 401(k), but otherwise most of my existing liquid cash and all of my incoming earned cash went into bitcoin. I threw like a quarter of my net worth into it. And it paid off. For me as a conservative investor, that was my version of âall-inâ. I wasnât fucking around. I never go all-in like that, but I did it for bitcoin.
I grew up poor, and then worked for 12 years in engineering and engineering management. There is no world where I would invest in such a way that there was even a 1% chance that I could be wrong and lose my entire net worth and the past 12 years of my work at that point. I would never be 100% invested unless I consider it to be risk-free, and I consider nothing to be risk-free, and so I diversify by default. I am conservative as a baseline, but opportunistic when appropriate. I put at most 5% into any one stock, but I threw 25% into bitcoin as an anomaly due to how bullish I was. My husband was like, âwhat are we doing?â and I was like, âtrust me, hereâs whyâ.
And then, there are eight family members and associates who, if I were to go broke, would have to radically diminish and change their lifestyles. Their housing support and their everyday income comes significantly from my earnings. Itâs like running a small business. So, when I see people on social media be like, âwHy DoNât YoU gO aLl iN?â Iâm thinking like, âBitch, Iâve gone about as all-in on this new distributed ledger as I can while still sustaining a reasonable level of lower volatility equity and other assets for tangible income and fallback support for eight peopleâ. And then I realize the anon who wrote that is probably a single dude in his parentsâ basement, and my response is unwarranted. Donât let anons on social media affect you.
For example, our extended family ran into a liquidity issue and had to change households this year, and we got a good real estate deal but it was based on me having six figures in liquidity to just throw around at short notice, which meant having maintained adequate diversification for that possibility, which I was anticipating.
In my model portfolios, I began to recommend a 5% bitcoin allocation in early 2020, and then I took some chips off the table in 2021 near the highs after a 3x and 5x gain as Musk was pumping Dogecoin, to rebalance back down to that 5% target. Why? Because not everybody has put a thousand hours of research into it and can realistically put a quarter of their liquid net worth into it. My point was, âyour portfolio has zero bitcoin, you should probably have at least 5% bitcoin, and better yet, you should buy bitcoin non-custodially at whatever size is appropriate for you. As it soars, rebalance. As it falls, buy back in.â That rebalancing worked well for my public portfolio. I warned of exuberance, leaned into fear, despite not trying to predict any short-term price action.
And during 2022, amid the bear market, I joined the formation of Ego Death Capital, a bitcoin-only VC firm, as a founding advisor. And more recently, Iâm leaning more into that role, and some announcements regarding that are incoming in terms of my deeper involvement. In other words, while bitcoin price action was in a period of weakness, I was happily ready to lean in to it with my capital, my time, and my reputation, to fund bitcoin companies that were developing cool stuff. https://egodeath.capital/portfolio
And then there was my husbandâs wisdom. He edits all of my research reports, among other work that he does. And he has better wisdom than me overall. One day in early 2023 amid the bear market out of the blue after hardly ever talking about bitcoin he was like, âHow many bitcoins do we have?â I said the number X but also explained that I am buying more lately. He said, âAlright, good, letâs get to Y soon. I know you are super cautious, and I love that, but donât mess around on this. Buy more. Push harder. I know you have extra pockets of liquidity above the baseline. Use them.â By Y, I mean he gave me an aggressive number that was a bit above what I would have otherwise done in that timeframe.
I was like, âOkay Iâll try. But I mean, we need certain liquidity.â And he said, âIâve edited your research reports for years. Iâve never seen you more convicted on something. Donât fuck around on this. Lean into it. We will figure out liquidity if need be. You said to trust you in early 2020 when you initially bought it. Trust me here in 2023 when I say to buy extra vs whatever youâre buying. I can read you better than you can read yourself, and the answer is to buy. Youâre being too conservative.â I followed his advice, at like sub-$20k and sub-$25k.
And then later this year, within the past few months, we indeed balanced it very tightly; I had bought as many bitcoin for us as we could early in the year and I barely hit the target he set since I was being cautious, and then we ran into a surprise liquidity requirement (changing households in Egypt) and needed to throw capital at a new place as a down payment for our family for seven people, and I was like, âThis is why I maintained so much liquidity, btw. We have it because I saw this type of thing coming!â And he was like, âBut we have it, right?â I and I was like, âYes, barely at such short notice!â And he was like, âSo we have the exact amount then, fucking nailed it!â The yin-and-yang worked well.
The point is, Iâm as all-in on bitcoin as I get with any asset. Which means to say, I am ready to survive its failure or repression in long bear markets without selling any, but I am also highly engaged and invested in its success. I never go all-in on anything, but Iâve never leaned into any asset as thoroughly as I have done on bitcoin since April 2020. Itâs the maximum I lean into any asset while still maintaining financial prudence. When it falls 80%, it doesnât affect my lifestyle or force me to sell. When it soars, I am cautious, and focus on how to best improve the success of the network.
Good evening. Let's accelerate.
Nothing hits quite like Sunday evening Lyn.
Thanks for sharing. Everything is relative.
Same here. Good baselining/calibration exercise and as open a dialogue as it gets today Iâm the mainstream.
I feel like the timescale in which he finally does come around to Bitcoin will be an important signpost, at least in gauging public perception and a turning point in the learning process. Heâll get there eventually. His past comments about (and love for) sports can be interpreted as a clear one for one proxy for proof of work.
His podcast, club random, does this. One on one format.
Calling on the desert sage to pay us a visit. We wait patiently. đ”
Zooming outâŠ.
As humans, how do we come to terms with or evaluate the relative magnitude of suffering associated with physical violence vs. economic pain vs. cultural strife? What baseline metrics or frameworks can we point to in order to inform our views on such complex issues?
How does time-frame / time-preference affect the analysis of this issue/conflict? How do we quantify oppression over an extended period vs. violence over a short/acute period? Are there parallels we can draw from other fields?
In what ways does technology affect the current conflict and potential outcomes (communications, weapons, money, etc.)?
-What guides? Anita Posch website or book
-Where to buy? Highly dependent on jurisdiction.
-How to store it? Start with Muun or equivalent. Follow up with single sig (+ passphrase) HW wallet.
A lot of the answers to this poll are North America centric. Having experience trying to do this for family members living in a different country and language presents a lot of challenges/frictions that I took for granted in my local jurisdiction.