the excuses blue checks make about their verification compliance will sound very similar to those made about CBDCs - it is a teaser of what is to come

THE GREATEST ORANGE PILLING YOU’VE PROBABLY NEVER HEARD OF.

[Part 1]

What if I told you a band has been orange pilling millions of listeners... for nearly a decade... and nobody, not even Bitcoiners, have detected it?

And that this band has won a Grammy Award, recently announced a world tour in venues like Madison Square Garden, performed live with music icons like Metallica and Elton John, while also being dubbed the "torchbearers of rock 'n' roll."

Enter Greta Van Fleet.

Formed in 2012, Greta Van Fleet is an American rock band consisting of three brothers and their best friend. They burst onto the scene in 2017 as Apple Music's new artist of the week and quickly drew comparisons to Led Zeppelin and the vocals of Robert Plant. Their popularity has since skyrocketed, with over 250 million streams in 181 countries on Spotify alone as of last year.

So… How are they orange pilling?

The band is known for 'cryptic' lyrics that are riddled with metaphors, personification, and symbolic references - nothing new. Here's where things get interesting…

Since their first publicly released EP, Greta Van Fleet has been narrating a multi-album story about an orange 'Second Sun' rising over a new parallel world. Within this story, a 'peaceful army' battles against the 'gatekeepers' of the old world (under a green Sun) with the hope of ushering in the 'Age of Man'...

“A lot of [our music] is an analogy. There’s basically this parallel universe.” — Josh Kizska, lead singer.

Here's the kicker...

The story begins with the band proclaiming their love to this invisible thing called 'Electric gold'... sound familiar?

“Electric gold our love with tender care” — Flower Power, 2014

How do others interpret their music?

Fans, including myself, have been trying to interpret their lyrics and symbols - like the Second Sun - for years, but nothing seemed to completely make sense. Their music was encrypted, and nobody had found the key.

Bitcoin fixes this...

Through the lens of Bitcoin, every album, song, lyric, music video, visual, and anything else related to the band becomes crystal clear. Greta Van Fleet is orange pilling millions of people through rock 'n' roll.

nostr:note1n3fgy4fm50xmgzlygwd0j245p5n433985s98jct6fj033dgp06zq8e9uwl

Why are you here and not on twitter?

This Max and Stacy episode… 😭😂 I’m literally rolling editing it. Should be out either Saturday, Monday at the latest.

I posted about our on-grid strategy at Standard Bitcoin.

Now let's talk about our off-grid strategy, which aims to tackle the stranded well problem in Appalachia with bitcoin mining data centers and generators produced by Upstream Data.

Appalachia is filled with shallow oil basins that were drilled years ago. At the time, it only made sense to extract and transport the oil out of the area. There were very few nat gas pipelines built to bring the associated gas to market because it wasn't economically viable.

This has created a massive stranded well issue. When the oil wells went dry producers capped the associated gas wells and left them behind with the land owners. A lot of these wells are poorly maintained, degrading, and sometimes leaking methane into the air.

The only profitable solution to this problem is bitcoin mining because bitcoin mining is location agnostic. Meaning that miners are willing to show up to the well to monetize the gas on site. Nothing else makes much economic sense.

Our ability to leverage this gas to mine bitcoin has some positive knock-on effects; it ensures the wells are properly maintained, prevents methane leak, and turns a stranded asset into the hardest money on the planet. Turning waste into bitcoin is a boon for economic prosperity.

Beyond this, we are exploring ways to make sure the land owners benefit from allowing us to come on their property to monetize the gas. Aligning incentives to help them become more economically secure.

In the long-run we believe this alignment will strengthen rural America economically and breathe life back into a part of the country that has been cast aside by the coastal elites. Strong rural economies are desperately needed if we're going to right the ship in the US.

I should caveat this with the fact that not every stranded well is equal. We may not be able to save all of them, but we can certainly make a material dent to begin turning waste into prosperity for those who desperately need it.

Another caveat, stranded wells are just one subset of abandoned wells that are scattered throughout the country. There are ~120,000 orphaned wells out there. These are wells with no current owner or maintainer. This is another problem that bitcoin miners can help solve.

There are many problems to solve before we perfect our off-grid model at Standard. Many of them have to do with logistics. However, they are very solvable problems at the end of the day and we plan to work our hardest to tackle them.

We're very passionate about what we're doing because we believe deeply that the work we are doing both on-grid and off-grid to turn wasted resources into sats is going to have many compounding positive effects on the areas we operate in.

Bitcoin is a powerful tool that is revitalizing neglected areas of the US. Most do not see it yet, but they will in time. We plan to highlight the benefits of bitcoin mining on energy systems through our work as we stack some sats along the way.

We're going to win.

Had an epiphany on the mining stage during my panel with Troy Cross, Guy Swann and Blake King that I tried to articulate on the go and want to articulate it here.

It is very ironic that politicians and central bankers refer to bitcoin mining as wasteful.

I understand this irony very deeply because of the work we're doing at Standard Bitcoin. Our strategy is to identify rural towns with falling populations that have excess capacity at substations because a large manufacturing facility left town due to globalization.

At Standard Bitcoin we are taking advantage of the waste produced at substations across Appalachia. There is a lot of waste because the dollar system made it unprofitable to manufacture goods in the US.

Substations were built for heavy industry, heavy industry was eventually disincentivized due to monetary and economic policy, they were priced out and forced to leave or shut down, and substations were left behind producing massive amounts of electricity with declining demand.

Bitcoin mining has produced a profitable way to take care of the waste created by the dollar system and its perverse incentives that have led to a hallowing out of our manufacturing base here in the US. This is a beautiful thing and a saving grace for the Rust Belt.

It is truly ironic that those in government and central banking call bitcoin miners wasteful when we are fixing a waste problem that their policies created.

Our ability to solve this waste problem has very positive effects on the towns we operate in too.

We create jobs while allowing utilities to keep prices lower for residential consumers because we provide them with a significant revenue boost.

We're driving peak efficiency. We don't waste a single watt.

The gaslighting over this topic is pretty insane.

While I was at the Bitcoin Conference, my husband was like “alright let me know when you’ll be on so I can livestream it.”

So I had to text back, “Okay so, right now Kennedy is on stage, and then it’ll be some wizards debating with a ninja, and then I’ll be on after them. I can explain later.”

Had a pretty productive weekend.

- I got my #lightning node setup. Opened 4 channels, so far, despite the higher fees though not horrible.

- I linked my node to Alby with a new LNURL: tisza@getalby.com (it works, I tested it myself 😉)

- Added some cool Amboss widgets to my website

What about you guys?

Feel free to reach out it if you want to open channels with me. 🫱🏽‍🫲🏻

I know ledger is and always has been shit. But can someone who understands the situation shed any light on the urgency for users to switch HWW's? I have friends using ledger who probably haven't updated the device's firmware in a long time and haven't installed the latest update. Are they still at risk? How bad is it?

A) There's no time to talk about it, tell your friends to move their corn onto a hot wallet until they get a FOSS HWW

B) Don't panic, just buy a FOSS HWW and move your corn safely asap

If only project developers had access to a technology that can monetise power whilst waiting for grid connection.

#bitcoin

there was no choice. But yes, that was terrible. Making it a company set those wheels in motion.

What makes sense to me are "crowdwalls" - content gets unlocked FOR EVERYONE as soon as X sats are paid. All or nothing. Like kickstarter.

Everything else doesn't make sense to me. Article paywalls? Laughable. Screenshots will circulate for the good stuff. Bad stuff will stay behind paywalls with effectively zero readers.

Paywalls artificially restrict reach. Against the design of computers and the internet.