For now yes, but I’m working on

- Import an epub

- Import a PDF

- follow an RSS (like mises’)

And I’m making the experience optimized for reading/highlighting on an iPad

Oh, and one last thing: buying a book directly from Highlighter

💡 DROP IDEAS:

What website/app fully integrated with Bitcoin/Lightning/Nostr would you pay to use... but there is no such yet?

We need your help! 💥

210k FREE SATS up for grabs. Final day to enter!

I’ll be teaching a course on bitcoin this fall at a local college. I need some topics and discussions for the course.

My good friend #[0]​ is also in the business of educating people on bitcoin.

So we’re running a contest. A little brainstorming contest!

The winner of the contest will receive 210,000 SATS ⚡️

210 THOUSAND SATS

Here’s how to enter:

1. Comment below with some topics or discussions that would be useful to new bitcoiners

2. Must be following #[1]​ and the best (and only) golf company on Nostr #[2]​

3. EVERY comment (idea) will get a minimum of 21 SATS

Draw will be made Sept 15th! Every comment = one entry!

GOOD LUCK 👊🏼

#plebchain #asknostr #bitcoin

You are both criminal. Too much penis butter feels weird in my mouth. Jelly for the win 🥹🫠

You'll often see charts or visuals illustrating the depreciation of the $USD over time, normalized to $1.00, of which I occasionally share myself.

However, there's an important caveat: these visuals rarely account for short-term yields. Displayed below is the purchasing power of $1, adjusting for annual CPI inflation (in red) versus the purchasing power of $1 accounting for 1-year Treasury yields less annual CPI inflation (in blue), starting from 1962

Notice anything?

The purchasing power of $1 from 1962 to the present equates to $1.85 when accounting for 1-year Treasury yields and inflation. Meanwhile, adjusting for inflation alone leaves you with just $0.10 of purchasing power.

Quite the massive difference.

However, there's more nuance to consider:

1) Let's separate the data into distinct eras,

From 1962 to start of 2009:

- Average annual inflation: 4.40%

- Average 1y yields: 6.22%

- Average difference: +1.82%

Real gains in purchasing power.

From 2009 to Present:

- Average annual inflation: 2.34%

- Average 1y yields: 1.00%

- Average difference: -1.34%

Real losses in purchasing power.

2) The data doesn't include the 1940s where financial repression massively devalued the USD to erode real debt burdens (the data I quickly threw together only went back to 1962) in the post war period.

3) Why 2009 for the change in eras? What has changed? If the U.S. can just pay a nominally higher yield than the inflation rate in perpetuity, are the fiat doomers really just delusional?

In my view:

- Positive real yields can be sustained with a clean balance sheet. It's feasible for the government to pay creditors a positive real interest rate when real debt burdens are low, demographics are booming, and the global GDP is exploding as the world industrializes.

- With Debt to GDP meaningfully > 100% and other tailwinds reversing, this is no longer the case. Post GFC and the introduction of ZIRP + QE to facilitate "growth", has the positive real yield era behind us, at least until real debt burdens have been eroded - which will take either explosive real growth, or a steady dose of inflation above yields, debasing creditors in the process.

The Bottom Line: The reality is that the average/median American individual or family often doesn't have much disposable income to capture such yields. The ones that do, benefit; and the ones that don't are the ones that pay for it.

When you look at charts showing record wealth disparity, or are wondering why the political landscape is more polarized than ever, keep this chart in mind.

Fiat inflation didn't bother the investor class from for forty years as yields outpaced inflation. Currency devaluation wasn't felt in the slightest by this cohort, they didn't just escape the devaluation, but outpaced it significantly.

Now, with Debt to GDP levels domestically and globally near record levels, expect the post 2009 dynamic to continue into the future on a longer time frame. Don't let the current tightening cycle fool you as to what must occur.

Inflation > Yields, over a sustained period of time, is the only way global governments can mask their insolvency.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

“We should change Bitcoin now in a contentious way to fix the security budget” is basically the same tinkering mentality that central bankers have.

It begins with an overconfident assumption that they know fees won’t be sufficient in the future and that a certain “fix” is going to generate more fees. But some “fixes” could even backfire and create less fees, or introduce bugs, or damage the incentive structure.

The Bitcoin fee market a couple decades out will primarily be a function of adoption or lack thereof. In a world of eight billion people, only a couple hundred million can do an on chain transaction per year, or a bit more with maximal batching. The number of people who could do a monthly transaction is 1/12th of that number. In order to be concerned that bitcoin fees will be too low to prevent censorship in the future, we have to start with the assumption that not many people use bitcoin decades out.

Fedwire has about 100x the gross volume that Bitcoin currently does, with a similar number of transactions. What will Bitcoin’s fee market be if volumes go up 5x or 10x, let alone 50x or 100x? Who wants to raise their hand with a confident model of what bitcoin volumes will be in 2040?

What will someone pay to send a ten million dollar equivalent on chain settlement internationally? $100 in fees per million dollar settlement transaction would be .01%. $300 to get it in a quicker block would be 0.03%. That type of environment can generate tens of billions of dollars of fees annually. The fees that people pay to ship millions of dollars of gold long distances, or to perform a real estate transaction worth millions of dollars, are extremely high. Even if bitcoin is a fraction of that, it would be high by today’s standards. And in a world of billions of people, if nobody wants to pay $100 to send a million dollar settlement bearer asset transaction, then that’s a world where not many people use bitcoin period.

In some months the “security budget” concern trends. In other months, the “fees will be so high that only rich people can transact on chain” concern trends. These are so wildly contradictory and the fact that both are common concerns shows how little we know about the long term future.

I don’t think the fee market can be fixed by gimmicks. Either the network is desirable to use in a couple decades or it’s not. If 3 or 4 decades into bitcoin’s life it can’t generate significant settlement volumes, and gets easily censored due to low fees, then it’s just not a very desirable network at that point for one reason or another.

Some soft forks like covenants can be thoughtfully considered for scaling and fee density, and it’s good for smart developers to always be thinking about low risk improvements to the network that the node network and miners might have a high consensus positive view toward over time. But trying to rush VC-backed softforks, and using security budget FUD to push them, is pretty disingenuous imo.

Anyway, good morning.

We are told we need mass surveillance to protect civil rights.

We are told we need censorship to ensure free speech.

We are told we need bank bailouts to rescue the free market.

We are told we need compliance to protect science.

We are told we need rigged elections to save democracy.

We are told we need forever war to secure peace.

Ok followed everyone. Keep replying if I’m not and I’ll get to you. nostr:note1d0echzavf3jjc02dk94zx3mr500gl2nckga8qascj7unv9f6dpvs97m4pp

Peter Fucking Pan

Ok it’s Nostr playtime!

Name this pussy without using the letter ‘a’ in it.

Best name wins sats from #[1]​ and I ⚡️😂

#playtime

#nostr