Dusk on the Mediterranean, northwest Egypt. Attending a family wedding.

Yes, Nostr is my Instagram now.

So it is night here and the family pulled out a knockoff version of Jenga to play, called blocks.

There were no instructions (but there are four 6-sided dice and the blocks are numbered from 1 to 54). So I went to read the text on the box. First, whoever wrote the text on the box mistakenly called the game Layer (they must have missed the memo), and second, it’s the most glorious game description ever written.

Crows at the Red Sea.

I don't mean to brag, but I floated next to a dude and talked to him about Bitcoin and Nostr for 2 hours today 👀

I am open to recommendations on a platform to make Broken Money easily buyable with sats, either print+ebook or just ebook (since I won’t be handling physical shipping).

Let me know some of the best ways to proceed and I’ll look into them.

This first round is print books on Amazon, which is done. Next in the queue is the kindle version which should be available within a week or so.

And then the audiobook will come out. It’s in development but it takes time.

In parallel with the audiobook, I will be working to have it available in print in Barnes and Noble and other bookstores.

And I will figure out a way to make it buyable in sats. As I said, I am open to suggestions on the best way to do that. Any books I happen to sell in person will of course be buyable with cash or sats.

And then depending on sales figures, I will be looking into translation options.

All of the profits from the first thousand copies sold (about $5 per book) will go to the Human Rights Foundation Bitcoin Development Fund.

And for those for whom the book price is a burden or distribution is an issue, perhaps because they live in countries where the money is most broken, I invite them to pirate it.

All the psychopaths out there made Broken Money the #40th best-selling book on Amazon today and the top seller in all three of its categories. It’s a great opening surge.

I appreciate you all so much. <3

I like these trees with the hanging leaves.

That’s it. That’s the note.

I had three pairs of glasses. One of them broke, and one of them I left at a restaurant during a bitcoin-related business/academic meeting. The last one is half-broke, like it works decently enough but the left hinge is busted and opens too wide, and so it doesn't stay on my head as well as it should.

I usually prioritize my glasses poorly because I only wear them when driving or when I need to read things at a distance (e.g. walking around an airport or other unfamiliar environment). I purposely only wear them when I have to, and do my best to do eye exercises and such in other times, to avoid getting too dependent on them. As a result I tend not to take very good care of them.

I have a pair of prescription sunglasses too, so I've been wearing them, including in some contexts where it's not quite normal (e.g. inside). It ends up feeling like an awkward version of The Matrix.

Before I go to Egypt for the late summer, I scheduled an appointment for an eye exam and a new multi-set of glasses. Most places around me were booked for a full month (labor shortage). With one place that was open, I scheduled weeks in advance but then one eye doctor got into an accident and and their whole schedule changed. So there were *no* eyeglass places within a reasonable distance of me that could do an eye exam, prescribe and manufacture new glasses before I go to Egypt.

So I'm just kind of going there with a busted normal pair of glasses and then my sunglasses, which I'm increasingly getting used to using in abnormal places. I'll probably be walking around the airport in sunglasses. Maybe when I'm there I can get new ones, or just wait until I get back.

Back during COVID, when we all needed tests before travel, I always found it easier to get tests in Cairo than in New Jersey. The US tests were like, "okay we can get them to you in 48-72 hours" which was awkward because the government+airline was like, "we need tests within the past 72 hours". So there was this weird window where they get it to you just in time... or they don't. I had to get a second emergency test for like 10x the cost once, with high stress and extra activity right before the flight, because the first test was too slow and missed their 72-hour timeframe. But in Cairo I could always get one within 24-36 hours without issue.

Anyway, that's my current version of first world problems. Heading to Egypt with broken glasses, and the Egyptian system might ironically fix this faster than I can here in New Jersey. Everything feels weird due to labor shortages.

I spoke at a big bitcoin-adjacent company this week and one of the best questions was from someone who asked what the downsides of bitcoin adoption might be.

I always do appreciate these steelman questions, the skeptical questions, the ones where we challenge ourselves. Only when we can answer those types of questions do we understand the concept that we are promoting.

So the classic example is that in modern economic literature, "deflation is bad". This, however, is only the case in a highly indebted system. Normally, deflation is good. Money appreciates, technology improves, and goods and services get cheaper over time as they should. Price of Tomorrow covers this well. My book touches on this too, etc. The "deflation is bad" meme is still alive in modern economic discourse and thus is worth countering, but I think in the bitcoin spectrum of communities, people get that deflation is fine and good.

My answer to the question was in two parts.

The first part was technological determinism. In other words, if we were to re-run humanity multiple times, there are certain rare accidents that might not replicate, and other commonalities that probably would. Much like steam engines, internal combustion engines, electricity, and nuclear power, I think a decentralized network of money is something we would eventually come across. In our case, Bitcoin came into existence as soon as the bandwidth and encryption tech allowed it to. In other universes or simulations it might look a bit different (e.g. might not be 21 million or ten minute block times exactly), but I think decentralized real-time settlement would become apparent as readily as electricity does, for any civilization that reaches this point. So ethics aside, it just is what it is. It exists, and thus we must deal with it.

The second part was that in my view, transparency and individual empowerment is rarely a bad thing. Half of the world is autocratic. And half of the world (not quite the same half) deals with massive structural inflation. A decentralized spreadsheet that allows individuals to store and send value can't possibly be a bad thing, unless humanity itself is totally corrupted. I then went into more detail with examples about historical war financing, and all sorts of tangible stuff. In other words, a whole chapter full of stuff. I've addressed this in some articles to.

In your view, if you had to steelman the argument as best as you could, what are the scenarios where bitcoin is *BAD* for humanity rather than good for it, on net?

If a book had a decent number of diagrams and charts, would you want the audio version or would you want the physical/ebook (visual version)?

Secondary question- if those charts and diagrams are described in the audio version by someone who knows what they are talking about, would that affect the answer?

The final archvillain is not the boring one you assumed.

Instead, it's the one you knew from the beginning of the movie, that you kind of liked, because he was really good at getting your attention. But that turned bad and fraudulent retroactively the more you learn from him, and he grew bigger than any villain you could have anticipated.

That's the final archvillain.

Let's fucking go.

It's kind of a verbal meme, but one of my favorite questions is, "what radicalized you?" Since I'm someone who appeals to moderates with a tempered but purposeful element of anti-establishment fire, it's kind of a notable question.

My first thought is, "well let me tell you about my childhood and why I'm not a huge fan of the state."

My second thought is, "let's talk about the global financial crisis."

My third thought is, "look at the 2016 time period where U.S. fiscal deficits started to wonkishly deviate from unemployment.

My fourth thought, regarding the Current Thing, because nobody wants to go back that far, is, "they replaced a beautiful blue bird with an X and said it would be half of the global financial system."

And that made me angry.

Bitcoin Cash nostr:note1exk4hhfheaa02nanxyqqsdjt65c684r95shq46vl52m5q7rgsufs2m5st8

I will not live in the pod, eat the bugs, turn off the air conditioning, or visit the Orb.

Like a psychopath.

That is the biggest challenge out there. If you go through airports, for example, you get all sorts of scans.

All the credit agencies collect information on you without you opting in. Unless you’re a mountain man or a monk, interacting in civilization more results in data collection.

Best we can do is mitigate it and meme about it. nostr:note1sgq34kn6km5r7mtkp5rwy036g0e8vr257x0ftmr0hqlrdyl628ws7hy7wh