"Preach selflessness. Tell man that he must live for others. Tell men that altruism is the ideal. Not a single one of them has ever achieved it and not a single one ever will. His every living instinct screams against it. But don't you see what you accomplish? Man realizes that he's incapable of what he's accepted as the noblest virtue--and it gives him a sense of guilt, of sin, of his own basic unworthiness. Since the supreme ideal is beyond his grasp, he gives up eventually all ideals, all aspiration, all sense of his personal value. He feels himself obliged to preach what he can't practice."
-Ayn Rand, Fountainhead
"Bitcoin is dead."
-ECB,2022
https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/blog/date/2022/html/ecb.blog221130~5301eecd19.en.html
"Against Bitcoin? HFSP"
-ECB, 2024
The European Central Bank released a paper on October 12th 2024 kicking the propaganda war against Bitcoin into the next gear, from Bitcoin is gambling to Bitcoin is stealing. The study by the ECB paints the narrative that Bitcoin has no legitimate financial use case, and that if the Bitcoin price somehow manages to persistently continue higher it will only succeed in impoverishing non-bitcoin users and latecomers.
False. Bitcoin's financial use case is to protect every person on Earth from Central Bank basement.
Bitcoin will benefit non-bitcoin users and latecomers by ushering in the abundance of the 5-Hour work week. Without bitcoin, robots take your job and prices rise forever, forcing you to work harder. With bitcoin, robots take your job and prices fall forever, enabling you to work less.
But it is nice to see central banks finally agree with me that savers using fiat will be impoverished and savers using Bitcoin will be rewarded.
It's increasingly obvious that Bitcoin is becoming the world's reserve standard because it elegantly solves a major problem that every person, family, business, organization, and institution on planet earth all face: how to protect your savings from dilution and theft by those who control the money.
I just clicked twice to send an effortless zap to a guy I trust to get good stuff done for people in need. π€―
Nostr changes emergency aid.
Frustrating to hear them talk past each other.
Saif: Bitcoin market dynamics will drive down lending.
Saylor: why do you want to force people to stop lending?
I would have enjoyed hearing more thoughts on how fiat dies. Eventually everyone wants to exploit the infinite money glitch, which means nobody can.
War is naturally destructive, so we naturally avoid it.
It's unnatural that we should live in a world where war is so destructive to us and so beneficial to our rulers.
Such perverse incentives would poison society to annihilation. We are on our way, it seems.
We trust our rulers to administer the money well, but they counterfeit it for war and we pay the price.
Were it not for citizens storing their wealth in these corrupted notes, their printing would have no power. Like glass beads that no longer serve as money.
For anyone who is tired of paying the price, there is Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is the invention of a thermodynamically sound ledger - information that respects the law of conservation of energy. This changes everything.
I need an awesome nostr hat. Which are your favorites? #asknostr
For my enemies, fiat. For my friends, Bitcoin.
I'm currently making my way through the Martyr Made podcast by Darryl Cooper. In episode #3, about 1 hour and 11 minutes in, he twice repeats his money line about how essential the state monopoly on power is for laying the foundation for peaceful society:
"The state is the network of institutions that mediate and standardize relationships and exchchanges between individuals."
I get where he's coming from that some kind of absolute power is necessary to be the final arbiter of peace, otherwise conflict defaults to physical violence. But this, I would argue, is precisely the beauty of Bitcoin. In fact, it seems like we are watching Bitcoin become a network that mediates and standardizes contracts and exchanges between individuals.
Bitcoin is the discovery of a new kind of power that fuels cooperation.
What a time to be alive.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/5wQw92doCidAQsKIX2msMs?si=B5WGGMSdQY62oy9EQHbT2w
Training as a family to do a 60 mile backpacking trip along the John Muir Trail has been homeschool on steroids. We'll see how the hike goes, but I'm proud of how much stronger the boys are after just 4 weeks of hard training.
Our first training hike was supposed to be 3 miles. We didn't make it 0.3. Basically, the 10 year old moved like a 100 year old saying that his 12 lb pack caused debilitating pain. After 1.5 hours of "training," I was 80% convinced that we would have to cancel the whole thing.
To everyone's credit, they got serious about their weight training, and probably even more importantly they prepared their minds for heretofore unimagined pain to enter their cushy lives.
For me, the 2nd training hike marked the moment of peak pride as a dad. After seeing my kids carry heavy backpacks for 6 miles in swelteringΒ° Texas heat, wearing grimaces of suffering and strength, it was undeniable that they had crossed some kind of mythical threshold. They weren't the same kids anymore. And best of all, I could tell they felt the change.
Here we are on the 3rd training hike.
Now the taining hikes are done. The last one felt better than ever. Go time approaches. Hopefully mother nature is merciful to our little band of aspiring hikers.
And it's gone. Can you post using highlighter.com or some other long form most client?
Anybody else feel torn between abandoning their home country to the looters, and staying to fight to take it back?
I wonder if any big, centralized platforms will choose to integrate nostr? Or if they'll all just keep selling indulgences like the printing press was never invented?
It's amazing how outrage can become our identity, to the point where it hurts to abandon that identity.
gm to all you who won't give in to illegitimate power.