“One of the many reasons Bitcoin is interesting as a monetary system is that its default state of possession and spending is not via a depository institution at all. The equivalent of hiding money under your mattress is entirely natural in Bitcoin, and so users do, in fact, have a choice as to whether to trust their money to an asset management business.”

“You can require banks to hold 100% reserves to satisfy your moral compunctions, but then you aren’t really talking about ‘banks’ any longer. You are talking about piggy banks. You can only complain about maturity transformation in the context of the lenders being unconsenting, but not in the context of asset management. Banking is asset management. Regular people should choose to opt in, for sure, but they can’t then also claim immunity from the consequences of poor management of their assets.”

“…even though the ‘money’ is still there in aggregate, there is temporary confusion over the true liquidity of the aggregate of assets, and so the net equity is not being treated as equity, which has knock-on effects.”

“…this does not mean the bank doesn’t affect money. I was very careful just above to say ‘net’ equity and ‘aggregate’ money don’t change, because it is still entirely possible that the way people use money changes over short periods of time as a direct result of the bank’s actions, and hence it is perfectly fair to say that money changes.”

“Everything the bank itself does has an equal effect on assets and non-equity liabilities… and leverage is simply the resultant ratio of assets to equity. Assets and liabilities can go up, down, and all around, meaning leverage can go anywhere, but net equity doesn’t change. Which means aggregate money doesn’t change one bit, either. The bank does not create money.”

“…I would say that FRB is not fraudulent to the exact extent that the business of banking is run successfully.”

“…in the event of an equity squeeze, the bank will seek short term funding (there’s liquidity and duration popping up as pertinent). Or it may seek to liquidate more long duration assets instead (ditto), or come up with ways to incentivise depositors to leave their money (extending the duration of liabilities in the bank’s favour).

The very nature of the equity cushion is that it is a function of leverage.”

“…if we acknowledge that the act of making loans is rife with economic uncertainty, dependent ultimately on the ability of the borrower to make a higher economic return than he pays in interest, then the idea of only making promises that can be fulfilled becomes obviously silly. Banking is a business. Businesses take risks. In particular, banking is in the asset management business, and it is certainly possible to manage assets poorly.”

“If the bank always has a large enough equity cushion to meet the calling of its short duration liabilities, then it is fulfilling its promises. If it can’t meet these calls, then it is not.”

“Money is (by definition) the most liquid asset, and yet is not productive. Productivity is only possible with illiquid, production capital. But this must be purchased with liquid, financial capital. The more capital intensive your business, or the higher returns you would ideally like to make, the longer the period over which you will have to commit to such an arrangement for it to bear fruit.”

“You thought banks dealt with ‘money’ when in fact they deal with capital of varying liquidities.”

“Bitcoin is so new and so interdisciplinary that it breaks established framings.”

“The Nautilus project… marks a crucial milestone in the adoption of nuclear energy in the tech industry.”

https://bitcoinist.com/nuclear-powered-bitcoin-mine-9000-plants-energized/

“Bailing out failed institutions creates moral hazard.”

“Sound money is not a new concept from a long-term historical perspective. It’s just new to us. Bitcoiners have embraced sound money and the need to protect it.”

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/parallels-between-homeschool-and-bitcoin?utm_source=carrot&utm_medium=partner&utm_campaign=carrot_share

“…no one in a position of power in the US understands anything about real money and real finance. They are blinded by the promise of Keynesian economics and modern monetary theory, which posits that creating aggregate demand (Keynesianism) funded by massive money printing (modern monetary theory) is the sure path to economic progress. They fail to acknowledge that the steady fall in the purchasing power of the dollar and the rise of an alternative trade settlement system are the inevitable consequences of their blindness.”

https://mises.org/wire/role-reversal-collapse-dollar-enforced-empire

“The merchant will have a window of time in which she expects to sell the amount in her inventory before then expecting to restock. If she gets through her stock faster than this, and still has more inquiries she cannot meet — or if she has the same number of inquiries but gets through her stock quicker because there was less to begin with, then she will decide — she will act — to increase prices to boost her margins, boost her returns, and better clear the market. And there you have it, price inflation. Customers decided, for reasons, to buy more stuff, and the merchant decided, for reasons, to raise prices. Methodological individualism 1, metaphysical abstractions 0.”

https://allenfarrington.medium.com/inflation-in-a-hyperbitcoinized-world-a51500a473e6

“The primary vulnerability that illicit actors exploit stems from non-compliance by DeFi services with AML/CFT and sanctions obligations. DeFi services engaged in covered activity under the Bank Secrecy Act have AML/CFT obligations regardless of whether the services claim that they currently are or plan to be decentralized.”

“Perfect forward secrecy is a name for a property of cryptographic systems which prevents the attacker from accessing all encrypted messages after gaining access to long-term cryptographic keys. This means that if your private Nostr key is made public then all private messages which you received can be decrypted using that key.”

https://0x46.net/thoughts/2023/03/27/nostr-private-messages/

“I am a one-way valve from fiat into Bitcoin. I only buy and I have no intention of selling back to fiat to “make money”.”

https://www.whatisbitcoin.com/culture/building-a-bitcoin-standard