Krugman be like “mUh DeMoCraCy”

Once a retard always a retard.

Good afternoon.

The Bitcoin conference currently has a lot of political theater, and the Trump headliner is front and center much to everyone’s joy or frustration depending on where you stand on that, but I’ll take a moment to highlight something that’ll get lost in the shuffle.

Today on the main stage, Jason Maier (author A Progressive’s Case for Bitcoin) interviewed progressive congressman Rho Khanna. They talked about a lot of stuff but the TLDR headline takeaway statement from Khanna was “Bitcoin is about freedom. Bitcoin is about human rights.”

And around the same time, a bunch of Democrat Congress people sent a letter to the DNC chair saying the party needs to embrace this industry better, and basically that the Warren wing of the party isn’t the way to go here anymore. Whether it’s polling data, sheer numbers about how many Americans own this stuff, or more knowledge conversations about bitcoin’s energy impact and other things, being anti-bitcoin is a losing strategy.

Yes, a lot of this will be forgotten after the election, both from Republicans and Democrats. Politicians gonna politic. And there will be shitcoinery. Politicians are currently in their pandering phase. But when I began writing about this industry nearly seven years ago, I would not have expected to see this much explicit support by 2024.

The builders, the educators, the advocates- all of your work does matter. At least when it comes to protecting Americans and others against some of the most potentially hostile government positions, the narrative war is working. We need more work on the right to privacy, and that imo is the harder battle, but given how successful things have been on other fronts, I think that front is workable too.

Immutable money. Unstoppable voice. Endless memes.

It’s true. The biggest impediment to understanding bitcoin is not intelligence. It’s ego.

You have to re-assess something you previously dismissed. You have to buy in late compared to what you could have done earlier, and accept that. You have to embrace the fact that you are but a tiny node on a network that nobody controls.

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It’s true. The biggest impediment to understanding bitcoin is not intelligence. It’s ego.

You have to re-assess something you previously dismissed. You have to buy in late compared to what you could have done earlier, and accept that. You have to embrace the fact that you are but a tiny node on a network that nobody controls.

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NYT article covering the DJT and RFK appearances at Bitcoin 2024 conveniently forgets to even mention that Dem representatives Ro Khanna and Wiley Nickel were speakers.

"I'm going to recognize that Bitcoin is for human rights. Bitcoin is about freedom." - Ro Khanna

Too much of an inconvenient truth for the NYT?

You tolerate other people ten times more if you know ahead of time that you have a shared principal with them. You'll disagree around the margins but realize you're basically on the same page.

Back in like the 1950s USA, people felt that sense with their neighbors, church, and even government. They might disagree on things, and there were some shitty downsides to that (anyone not in the majority) but they were like, flag-waiving Americans. So a question is how to recreate that, and more broadly than it once was.

And ironically, as shitty as the authoritarian economic and legal situation is in many ways, people in Egypt today feel that way today. There's a substantial sense of unity or shared ideals, aside from a small percent of extremist outliers. That's true for many developing places.

One of the major strengths of the "bitcoin community" is this set of shared identity. Bitcoiners will loudly argue with each other, but they know they have at least one foundational shared agreement. That's healthy.

There were times, at like conference side-parties, where I noticed I was standing in a friendly discussion circle with like an anarcho-capialist to the literal right of me, a progressive to the literal left of me, a human rights advocate from an authoritarian state in front of me, a billionaire capitalist with pragmatic politics also in front of me, and us standing in a circle happily talking and basically friends. It's because we have at least one shared major principle that brings us there. A unifying factor for which, as we enter discussions for which we might disagree, we know we can build common ground upon.

As certain countries get hollowed out, and as neighborhoods become more remote and distinct, I continue to believe that local in-person bitcoin communities are absolutely profound. Regular meetups help exchange local fiat with bitcoin P2P, help educate people on the latest tech, help bring people from different viewpoints together, etc. Absolutely essential.

Don’t make me tap the sign.

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Six blocks since he was supposed to appear on stage... tick tock...

ANY MINUTE NOW