"Legislating is Congress’s job—and Congress’s alone."
The Fifth Circuit's ruling to remove Tornado Cash from OFAC's sanctions list is a direct stab at the Government's recent regulation by enforcement strategy.
Here are the most important arguments:
1. The court has found that Tornado Cash smart contracts do not constitute a service or property, defining the contracts as tools that are "nothing more than lines of code," which cannot be sanctioned under current OFAC regulation.
2. The court has found that Tornado Cash does not own or control the smart contracts, as the developers revoked any role in the software's operation – making important distinctions between "mutable", which it defines as custodial, and "immutable" software.
3. The court recognizes that OFAC's framework may be outdated to apply to modern technologies, but explicitly states that it "declines the Department's invitation to judicial lawmaking", stating that
"Legislating is Congress’s job—and Congress’s alone." ✊
Updated story: https://www.therage.co/fifth-circuit-lifts-tornado-cash-sanctions/
Got my first pair of progressive glasses today (just started needing readers 2 years ago, and needed upgrade).
Feelings…mixed
Some seem to have gotten PhDs in convertible bonds and macro Econ, while learning nothing deeper about bitcoin. SAD!
nostr:npub1sg6plzptd64u62a878hep2kev88swjh3tw00gjsfl8f237lmu63q0uf63m on a scale of 1-10 how proud are you of another bat-shit insane woke social platform you helped create at Bluesky?
Oh yeah, I’d somehow forgotten his involvement (didn’t follow it closely)!
There’s that cool mini iPhone… think they still make it
I’ve just started dabbling a tiny bit now and then. Becoming a habit :)
Haven’t gotten too much into it yet, just have some small pack of 5 small ones I like to get now and then
Starting to get jealous with all the good looking cigars
Interesting. Will have to check it out. Been a while since I used ublock origin, didn’t realize it was not so great anymore. The YouTube ads when listening to an album are out of control!
Oh nice! That makes sense
Did this save you $4k on bounty, or was that some other project 🤯
New guide for node operators: how to speed up initial node sync time by an order of magnitude with UTXO snapshots!
https://blog.lopp.net/bitcoin-node-sync-with-utxo-snapshots/
Great write up as per
I’m going pro. I just secured a starter citadel which I’m financing with a BTC backed loan (not selling any BTC to make it happen.)
I’m building a media company, POW Media.
Cameras will be following me around.
I’ve been living with middle class camouflage on for the last 7-8 years.
I’ve been able to avoid the uncomfortable feelings and fears of having people around me know my relative net worth.
(I told Peter McCormack privately how much BTC I had in ~2020, but I gave him a fake number to see if he would repeat it 😅)
I’ve been very cautious about this, but in fact I think it’s held me back.
I want to get a million people to start a bitcoin savings plan and mint10,000 wholecoiners.
Bitcoin education and increasing financial literacy is what helped me escape poverty, and I want to do the same for others.
However, I’m not as smart with thinkythoughts as nostr:npub1rtlqca8r6auyaw5n5h3l5422dm4sry5dzfee4696fqe8s6qgudks7djtfs and people follow confident voices who they trust can give them a blueprint to repeat the path they took.
My paranoia about people knowing how wealthy I am has provided me some ground cover so far, but it also made me less credible (why would you take a former child magician’s financial advice when he can’t even afford a razor, and lives in a normal house like yours because he can’t get a mortgage.)
For the people around me, there will be signs.
There have been signs (the real estate purchases for family members, the trips, the RV, donations and investments).
A few years ago they started speculating … “brad can pay, he’s a millionaire.” “Don’t worry dear, you’re a millionaire.”
I never confirmed nor denied, never told anyone in my family the number.
I just dealt with it awkwardly, and felt weird.
They will start to get a picture of the level of wealth I have soon, and I’m going to have to face more awkward conversations.
I’ve been dealing this year with my negative beliefs and limiting beliefs around this.
Why do the words “rich” and “millionaire” trigger negative feelings?
I discovered that your reaction is a reflection.
What do I believe about rich people?
Is it true?
How can you fix that?
Doing the work to create Citadel Mind has been helpful this year.
I also run into the opposite problem where people assume I’m way wealthier than I am because I got into bitcoin in 2011.
I’ve been very public about all of my hacks, losses, bad sells & other lessons learned to advocate buy & hold.
IE I sold half my coins at $30, I tell that story a lot to illustrate the value of “saving” not “investing” or “trading” … but I also tell that to temper people’s curiosity if I’m one of those made-every-right-move early billionaire bitcoiners 😅
My coach Dan Martell told me the other day that my secrecy around my success is the only thing holding me back from helping more people, and if that truly is my goal, I have to face it or give up on it.
Lots of folks are public with their wealth like Michael Saylor, Jason Williams, American HODL, etc.
On the flip side, people like nostr:npub1qny3tkh0acurzla8x3zy4nhrjz5zd8l9sy9jys09umwng00manysew95gx, nostr:npub1qg8j6gdwpxlntlxlkew7eu283wzx7hmj32esch42hntdpqdgrslqv024kw, nostr:npub1ahxjq4v0zlvexf7cg8j9stumqp3nrtzqzzqxa7szpmcdgqrcumdq0h5ech, nostr:npub1a2cww4kn9wqte4ry70vyfwqyqvpswksna27rtxd8vty6c74era8sdcw83a, nostr:npub1s5yq6wadwrxde4lhfs56gn64hwzuhnfa6r9mj476r5s4hkunzgzqrs6q7z and others are very influential and I do not believe they ever talk about their net worth.
I’m trying to figure out if there’s a way to thread the needle of having obvious signs of wealth, influencing regular ppl towards bitcoin effectively at mass scale, while not disclosing how much BTC you have or what your rough net worth is.
It seems kind of like once you live a certain lifestyle, it becomes obvious that you have a high net worth, and there might be some mystery brand value around not disclosing it…makes ppl want to lean in to try to figure it out.
These are questions we’re all gonna to have to deal with on the way to $1 million per coin and beyond.
I think I will probably just start being more public about my upgraded lifestyle, talk confidently, and not give specifics.
Once you disclose, there’s no undoing that (especially on Nostr.)
Please Brad, it’s too early for a top signal 😭
I found some of the inner reflections a bit tedious at times, taking me out of the story a bit
