What if humanity could find some alien tech and thus greatly accelerate its own technological progress? But what if that tech was hoarded by a small group of people?

Anyway, here's a review of Theft of Fire by Devon Eriksen. It's a 22nd century hard science space opera set in our solar system, written by a retired engineer. One of the more successful indie sci fi books in recent years. It's also one of the most successful books to have bitcoin in it; it's a small background role, but bitcoin is one of the leading types of money in the solar system.

Marcus, an indebted down-on-his-luck asteroid miner (and secretly, a bit of a space pirate as of late, given how bad things have gotten) finds his ship taken over by a wealthy genetically modified corporate heiress named Miranda. She has bought his defaulting debt contract that his ship collateralizes, and has gained admin access over his ship's computer. And she knows he is secretly a space pirate, which altogether gives her multiple types of leverage over him. She wants him to take her on a mission to the edge of the solar system to do something she won't say, involving unimaginable treasure, and he has little choice but to go along with it. Secretly, however, he plots how to regain control of his ship as they go, because he recognizes how much of a suicide mission it is because of who guards the space out there.

Pros:

-The hard scientific realism in the book is great. The type that basically takes an engineer to write. No wonder he has endorsements from like, the co-founder of Autocad and such. It's also a smooth read, all from Marcus's perspective.

-Although the story mostly takes place on one ship with a few characters, the worldbuilding is a solid start. I assume it'll be expanded later in the series. The technological situation and structure of society are very fleshed out relative to how little we actually see, given the tight setting. The world feels realistic and lived-in.

-High nostalgia factor. Fans of Firefly and Cowboy Bebop, and more recently the Expanse, and all sorts of classic sci fi literature over decades, will find a lot of references or similarities in a good way. The author is very well-read on the genre.

-The audiobook is pretty unique and great. Unlike most audiobooks, it has a full-cast production, meaning that each line of dialogue sounds like the person speaking it, rather than just one person reading a given chapter's narration and dialogue. I listened to this one rather than read it. You can only buy the audiobook on the author's website though, not Amazon/Audible. (Amazon/Audible have been kind of shitty to authors lately.) The other version of the book are available on Amazon.

-AI gets a really good treatment here, and the third main character, an AI, is my favorite character in the book.

-There's a lot of suspense throughout. Most of it is not really predictable how it's going to end since it doesn't follow a basic tropey structure. Even if you don't particularly like some of the characters (and indeed they're designed to be rather unlikable), you're likely to find yourself reading further to see what happens.

Cons:

-The book is about 500 pages, and I think 50+ could have been cut out of the middle to make it stronger. The dialogue between Marcus and Miranda gets rather repetitive after a while. And because of the limited setting (mostly on one ship), most of the worldbuilding is done via exposition by Marcus. So if readers hate "info dumps", they'll probably get annoyed at this. I personally don't really mind exposition as long as it's good, so this wasn't a dealbreaker for me (the "don't do exposition!" advice to authors is overdone in my view). I just think the middle could have used a trim. And although most of the book is not predictable, one aspect imo very much is, and that's where a lot of the repetition is.

-There are some unnerving aspects/scenes in it. I can't really say what they are without spoilers. Let's just say being in Marcus's head for 500 pages isn't, uh, my cup of tea. The book is self-aware about it, though. It's an intentional choice to have put these unnerving aspects in, so it's not a con per se but it's more something that will put off some readers. And it's a little more understandable by the end.

Overall, a unique story. And for the audiobook, I do think that over time more audiobooks will be made with this more complete type of cast. Audiobooks used to be very expensive and a small piece of the market, and only in recent years have they become very popular. As they become a bigger and bigger share of the fiction market up to some substantial percentage, I think more work will go into their quality and details.

Just tried it for the first time on desktop, the feed is smooth, zero jank. Nice work.

And now you want to argue your time preference on spot price… again, illogical. This is the dumbest argument of all. Should I pick a year that Bitcoin went down 75% and argue spot price? Zoom out. It’s up 47,000% in 3 years. Again, another illogical argument. Any Bitcoiner should know better than this. I’m disappointed in the lack of critical thought.

I’m not forcing you to do anything haha. At this point I’m trying to show you that the points you’re arguing make zero sense. If you’re cool with having an illogical argument, then so be it.

It’s amazing that you told me I wasn’t listening and then repeated back to me what I just typed to you.

You don’t know this man at all, so you have no idea what his character is. Secondly, he created a technology nobody else has been able to and fair-launched it. Objectively, it is selfless.

Technology advancing to fix what problem? You still didn’t answer that question.

Ive been objective. You’re talking about a man’s character you don’t know and saying it’s strange for a man to want to preserve his wealth in what he does for a living. Pretty ignorant.

I’ve read the medium article. I was trying to get you to read the article so that you would see the context of how that was written. His sentence starts with “secondly”. When you go to work, do you hope to yourself that you work hard so that you can become poor? His primary reason for making Kaspa was to fulfill Satoshi‘s vision. It says as much in the medium article. However, you didn’t read it. You’re just reinforcing your biases, again. Bitcoin was created to preserve wealth. To gain riches. Nobody uses cryptocurrency and says I hope I get poor.

Every single argument you’ve presented thus far makes zero sense. Just like everybody else on this platform that I have talked to, they worship at the church of bitcoin and can’t objectively assess an issue.

I’ll reiterate, one more time, I love bitcoin. I buy it every week. It’s an excellent store of value. But it has not fulfilled Satoshi‘s vision and the federal government and stable coins are not going away. There is room for both in a growing digital economy. It’s saddens me to see such lack of objectivity on this platform.

I asked you to post that Medium post for context. Share what he said. Truth matters.

First, I never said sell all your Bitcoin. It has a store of value achieved. There is plenty of room for both in a growing digital economy.

Second, you first have to define what needs to be better or what the problem is that drives “better”. Can you define what a better version would look like? As a fair-launched POW… if Kaspa is secure, if Kaspa can scale for P2P, if Kaspa can scale smart contracts for stable coins and tokenized assets… What Does the “next new tech” need to be able to do? Do you see what I’m saying? Should the new tech cook us dinner? We have to name a problem to entertain a hypothetical question such as, “what do we do when there comes a better tech?”

Money is time and energy in abstract form. Full stop.

Do people not use Spotify because it was born out of Sweden? Or the QR code because of Japan? What about GPS because it came from the US DOD? Your argument is nonsensical. You only appeal to it because it supports your bias.

Do people not use Spotify because it was born out of Sweden? Or the QR code because of Japan? What about GPS because it came from the US DOD? Your argument is nonsensical. You only appeal to it because it supports your bias.

“You seem to support Israel a lot” is subjective vs objective. If you’d like to discuss an objective issue, I’m happy to facilitate learning between the two of us. If you’re just looking to express your subjective feelings, I’m not interested.

I’ll add that you ignored my comment to discredit HODL’s ignorant words that didn’t support your position, yet scrolled through my feed to find something that supported your bias. Again, rather than challenging objectivity, you looked to reinforce your bias. Imagine HODL preaching about Bitcoin for years (and I don’t blame him for that, I have as well), but saying probabilistic finality is bad… Then to make matters worse, you and him both ignore the issue when you realize you’re wrong. And then after ignoring it, yourself goes to confirm your bias by implying Kaspa, an open source protocol, is Israel money. Do you use fiat currency? I guess that makes you a _____ (insert adjective). Everybody that’s contributed to fiat have qualities you can assign malice to.

Oh, and I’ll add:

Ideally trustless sidechains via some fancy ZKP tech. Liquid without the federation with Lightning to move between difference chains.

It's a far off dream but it's scaling without having to take gambles with the base layer.

What’s up, NOSTR fam? I’m Kent—pumped to be here with you all! I’m all about Bitcoin as sound money: hard-capped at 21M, immune to inflation, and free from central bank control. My mission? Share knowledge and create content that helps people break free from fiat chains through education. Let’s HODL strong, keep learning, and build a free financial future together!

#introductions

I’m going to engage on this only once ok? Not looking for a back and forth.

leave them.

1. Kaspa’s early coins were disproportionately mined by insiders and early contributors. While they claim “fair launch,” the reality is there was no real user demand or widespread access at genesis. That’s a premine.

2. Kaspa has no hard cap.

3. It has a probabilistic finality model. Which is bad for settlement and trust. No one will trust a probabilistic model with billions in value.

This thing is an absolute shitcoin, completely indistinguishable from any other shitcoin making the same claims.

My opinion? You’ve committed a cardinal sin and fallen in love with a shitcoin bag to the point where you are attempting to promote it to me of all people lol That’s bad.

Not from a moral standpoint or anything I’m just saying that’s what happens to people right before they get rekt.

It shows that you’ve drank the buzzword marketing kool aid. You believed the shitcoin sales pitch and the most likely thing that happens next is you lose everything you have in Kaspa. I’ve seen it 10,000 times.

It won’t happen tomorrow or the next day and you’ll probably even get a good pump going in your favor.

You’ll think to yourself “stupid hodl, with his OG maxi privilege, he told me I wouldn’t make any money and look at me now. I’m crushing it.”

But you won’t get to keep the money because Kaspa will nuke down hard and you’ll bag hold it because you actually believe in it.

You’ll think it will come back, but it won’t because a newer shinier shitcoin will have taken its place by then. And the market will be onto the next pump.

Meanwhile the smart investors and Kaspa insiders will have already taken their profits into bitcoin because they know the game they’re playing.

You’ll think to yourself “stupid hodl, he was right. Fucking asshole” but it will be too late…

X and youtube dont even consider you eligible for monitization until you've grown a very large follower count of thousands. On Nostr, I posted my first #vlog, filmed with only my phone from UNDER MY TRUCK, and was paid almost $5usd in the first day with less than 150 followers. Even better, those payments were in Bitcoin, settled IMMEDIATELY.

Why would I ever go back?

#nostronly

I’ve had a few ppl over the past week, tell me they didn’t order, because I charge sats, and they wanted to pay in fiat.

If you don’t want your fiat, why do I?

I do think so, yeah

I was looking at a car and the sales guy noticed my bitcoin moral patch on my bag. He asked what I think about XRP and I tell him I’m bitcoin only. He then tells me a story about loosing a few thousand dollars on XRP a few years ago and then asks no follow up questions about bitcoin. 🤷‍♂️