Who Sets The Price Of Bitcoin?
# Video Description
> In this video, I discuss how global arbitrage across centralized exchanges, decentralized exchanges, and OTC desks help to ensure that the price of KYC Bitcoin converges.
> I also discuss how non-KYC Bitcoin is priced relative to KYC Bitcoin.
I'd rather decentralize this whole debate, by kicking it down to the states. Why not levy a head tax on the states and let them figure the best way to collect it?
Some states have low populations and huge extractive industries, like AK and ND. For them, taxing those industries a share of their profits would negate any need to tax normal people's stuff.
Other states have enormous tourism sectors, so they could collect taxes on hotels and cruise ships or whatever.
Anyway, the point is there's a ton of heterogeneity and it's best to avoid one-size-fits-all solutions.
Distinguishing Libertarian Philosophy from Political Strategy
https://mises.org/mises-wire/distinguishing-libertarian-philosophy-political-strategy
By Wanjiru Njoya and David Gordon
> What makes a libertarian society libertarian? Certainly, one must begin not only with the nonaggression principle, but also with the unequivocal protection of private property rights.
## Thick or Thin?
### Charles Johnson:
> To what extent should libertarians concern themselves with social commitments, practices, projects or movements that seek social outcomes beyond, or other than, the standard libertarian commitment to expanding the scope of freedom from government coercion? . . . In other words, should libertarianism be seen as a “thin” commitment, which can be happily joined to absolutely any set of values and projects, “so long as it is peaceful,” or is it better to treat it as one strand among others in a “thick” bundle of intertwined social commitments?
## Rothbard on the Right
> The word “conservative” is unsatisfactory. The original right never used the term “conservative”: we called ourselves individualists, or “true liberals,” or rightists. . . . So what should we call ourselves? I haven’t got an easy answer, but perhaps we could call ourselves radical reactionaries, or “radical rightists,” the label that was given to us by our enemies in the 1950s. Or, if there is too much objection to the dread term “radical,” we can follow the suggestion of some of our group to call ourselves “the Hard Right.” Any of these terms is preferable to “conservative,” and it also serves the function of separating ourselves from the official conservative movement which, as I shall note in a minute, has been largely taken over by our enemies.
> Within the overall consensus, then, on the Old Right, there were many differences within the framework, but differences that remained remarkably friendly and harmonious . . . free trade or protective tariff, immigration policy, and within the policy of “isolationism,” whether it should be “doctrinaire” isolationism, such as my own, or whether the United States should regularly intervene in the Western Hemisphere or in neighboring countries . . . other differences, which also exist, are more philosophical: should we be Lockians, Hobbesians, or Burkeans: natural rightsers, or traditionalists, or utilitarians? On political frameworks, should we be monarchists, check-and-balance federalists, or radical decentralists?
The Lesson of the Trump Conviction
https://mises.org/mises-wire/lesson-trump-conviction
By Connor O'Keeffe
> The case against Donald Trump was utterly ridiculous. Yet he was convicted anyway. Opponents of the political establishment need to understand why.
Tucker Carlson’s Guests Keep Bringing up the Mises Institute
https://mises.org/power-market/tucker-carlsons-guests-keep-bringing-mises-institute
By Jonathan Newman
> Austrian economics and the Mises Institute have come up in Tucker Carlson's interviews with three different guests over the past few months, and instead of being critical or dismissive, Carlson was open to the ideas.
### Carlson to Ron Paul:
> I’d never seen you speak before and you went off about the Federal Reserve and I remember thinking “what a weird, what an esoteric subject!” I knew nothing about it. I thought only crazy people cared but again I was completely ignorant about monetary policy at the time and I was shocked by how much the crowd loved it.
### Dave Smith
> It’s kind of the same thing that happened to Libertarians. I think they’re in Washington D.C. and that’s not where you’re supposed to be. The best libertarian organization in the world is the Mises Institute and it’s based in Auburn. They specifically put it there because they want no part of Washington D.C. And then you see the Cato [Institute] and guys like that who are based out of D.C. They get very corrupted. […] They’re having cocktail parties with the Fed Chairman.
### Erik Prince
> When you look at history, the lie of socialism, communism, it’s easy for elitists to love that paradigm. Because the right-wing, Austrian school economics approach is massive decentralization, decision-making at the micro-level. A farmer knows what prices are, has a good idea what demand is going to be, decides whether he is going to plant more acres that year or not, and takes that risk himself. The Soviet planner says, “I need everyone to plant this many acres, and we’re going to do it at this price.” It’s the lie of individual incentive versus massive central planning to the betterment of elite thinking, with the grift that goes with it. And that’s just a mind-worm disease that so many people generation after generation continue to fall for.
Debunking Robert Reich’s Debunking
https://mises.org/mises-wire/debunking-robert-reichs-debunking
By Jonathan Newman
> Robert Reich is an economic fallacy machine, and he has begun a ten-week series in which he claims to debunk economic myths. Of course, to do so, he has to create economic myths and present them as factual.
Does Increasing the Money Supply also Increase Economic Growth?
https://mises.org/mises-wire/does-increasing-money-supply-also-increase-economic-growth
A little red meat for the lions, today
Article by Frank Shostak
> Keynesian economists believe that the key to increasing economic growth is increasing the supply of money in circulation. Money, however, is a means of exchange, not a means of payments.
### Mises:
> As the operation of the market tends to determine the final state of money’s purchasing power at a height at which the supply of and the demand for money coincide, there can never be an excess or deficiency of money. Each individual and all individuals together always enjoy fully the advantages which they can derive from indirect exchange and the use of money, no matter whether the total quantity of money is great, or small. . . . The services which money renders can be neither improved nor repaired by changing the supply of money. . . . The quantity of money available in the whole economy is always sufficient to secure for everybody all that money does and can do.
Israel Rejects Biden’s Ceasefire Deal, US Then Blames Hamas
From The Kim Iversen Show
It was definitely more about the later part than the former, but that was also Jeff's main point.
We were having a conversation very much along those lines, at Stacker News this morning:
Bitcoin: Wall of Money Incoming
# Video Description
> In this video, I discuss the wall of institutional money that is headed for BTC and the spot BTC ETFs. Even if institutional investors like pension funds allocated just 1% to Bitcoin, the resulting inflows would be enormous.
> The good news is that when institutional investors (banks, pensions, endowments, hedge funds, etc) buy the spot Bitcoin ETFs, it has the paradoxical effect of also enriching Bitcoiners in Nigeria or Venezuela or Turkey (or the US) who own real BTC.
> There's no zero sum game here.
No Honor Among Government Thieves: The Evil of Asset Forfeiture
https://mises.org/mises-wire/no-honor-among-government-thieves-evil-asset-forfeiture
By Ryan Wardle
> Asset forfeiture is another term for state-sponsored theft. Reform of this pernicious policy is almost impossible because of the incentives set up by governments at all levels.
Scott Galloway’s TED Talk Reveals a Basic Ignorance of Economics
https://mises.org/mises-wire/scott-galloways-ted-talk-reveals-basic-ignorance-economics
By Artis Shepherd
> One of the problems in presenting economic concepts to a public audience is that too many people in the academic world do not comprehend the simple presence of opportunity cost.
Are Robot Lawn Mowers Finally Worth It?
# Video Description
> Electric lawn mowers are great. Quieter, more powerful, no toxic fumes or gasoline, and far less maintenance than a gas mower. However, there’s another way to level up your electric lawn mower game and that’s with the latest onslaught of robotic mowers hitting the market. Autonomous mowers that use proximity sensors, computer vision, and accurate to the centimeter global positioning systems are everywhere now. Last year I beta tested a model that’s out on the market now, and this year I bought myself a second one for comparison … and because I have a tech addiction problem … I even have a third, but it’s technically not a mower in its current configuration. It’s a yard robot with a snow blower attachment that I’m looking forward to testing out next winter. When I said that these things were everywhere now …. maybe I just meant at my house. But seriously, how well do they work and are they worth it?
Civilization Depends upon Economic Freedom
https://mises.org/mises-wire/civilization-depends-upon-economic-freedom
By Wanjiru Njoya
> Political and academic elites claim that economic freedom is the antithesis of civilization. They claim that functioning civilization can come only from a welfare state, a nonsensical proposition.
### Mises:
> What is wrong with our age is precisely the widespread ignorance of the role which these policies of economic freedom played in the technical evolution of the last two hundred years. People fell prey to the fallacy that the improvement of the methods of production was contemporaneous with the policy of laissez faire only by accident.
> It must be emphasized that the destiny of modern civilization as developed by the white peoples in the last two hundred years is inseparably linked with the fate of economic science. This civilization was able to spring into existence because the peoples were dominated by ideas which were the application of the teachings of economics to the problems of economic policy. It will and must perish if the nations continue to pursue the course which they entered upon under the spell of doctrines rejecting economic thinking.
### PT Bauer on economic development:
> What happened was in very large measure the result of the individual voluntary responses of millions of people to emerging or expanding opportunities created largely by external contacts and brought to their notice in a variety of ways, primarily through the operation of the market. . . . In my own work I was able to show that very poor illiterate people were well informed about economic conditions in distant and alien countries, and that they responded intelligently to the opportunities they perceived.
### Mises again:
> The liberal champions of equality under the law were fully aware of the fact that men are born unequal and that it is precisely their inequality that generates social cooperation and civilization. Equality under the law was in their opinion not designed to correct the inexorable facts of the universe and to make natural inequality disappear. It was, on the contrary, the device to secure for the whole of mankind the maximum of benefits it can derive from it.
Bitcoin Self-Custody Made Easy (Bitkey)
# Video Description
> In this video, I review the Bitkey hardware wallet from Block. This is an excellent beginner's self-custody solution for those who are less tech-savvy, but would still like the advantages of multisig.
> For those further down the Bitcoin rabbit hole, using a Coldcard or Blockstream Jade paired with Sparrow Wallet and your own Bitcoin node will offer a more private and self-sovereign solution.