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(Please renote for visibility)

Just had a very simple exchange with my plumber about #Bitcoin that seemed to resonate with him…

He asked what made it valuable and why would it go up in price.

I said, if you could know that the set of rules for the economy were perfectly fair, where everyone had to put in value to get it out and nobody could cheat, would that be worth something to you?

Him: hell yeah.

Me: well we clearly don’t have that when someone can print trillions of dollars and just consume a horrific amount of capital without doing anything at all, right? Causing the price of everything to double, just like the PVC price we were just talking about.

So imagine you could just know, that whatever someone else did to get those bitcoin, you could *know* beyond any doubt, that they didn’t cheat the money. That they couldn’t print them out of thin air. They had to work within the rules. Would that be valuable?

Him: Yeah. So there’s a certain amount or something?

Me: Yes, 21 million forever. There will never be any more.

Him: So if inflation keeps happening Bitcoin will go up?

Me: Well it’s far more perfectly scarce than PVC pipe and housing and what has happened to the price of those things?

——

We got distracted with a leak issue after that, but he seemed to really follow this line of thinking.

Hello, my name is Joe Nakamoto and I’m not a captured voice

Despite dedicating the past four years to advocating, educating, and creating content about Bitcoin all around the world, I’ve been accused of being a Tether shill. I’d like to address that in this article.

But let’s start with a few things that I can’t believe I need to write out.

If you are employed by someone, your voice is not captured.

If you are hired by a company, said company has not “manufactured your consent.”

Accepting money can, of course, mean capture and indeed sometimes it does, but for me, and I hope most people, it’s simply not the case. It’s absurd and draconian to think you can buy someone’s favour in such a way.

Usually, your company and/or employer may understand and even sympathise with your point of view on a personal level while being obliged to manage it from a company PR optic.

What do I mean by this? And how can I prove to you that I am not captured?

* Well, I regularly challenged Cointelegraph (the largest crypto media), and I tried to push Bitcoin-only reporting as best as I could while working as their employee.

Despite their crypto and multicoin push, I resisted and managed to put more and more Bitcoin-only and Bitcoin maxi stories on their homepage. I also called Cointelegraph "ShitCointelegraph" in public at times, which I actually regret saying because it simply wasn't productive and it's not respectful...

but anyway, we learn. In short, I was paid by them for years, but they did not manufacture my consent.

* I recently made a documentary about a Bitfinex tour of Turkey. Bitfinex is, of course, an exchange that makes money from trading fees and listing crypto tokens. Bitfinex paid me to be their Bitcoin educator during the tour, but they could not influence my reporting.

I explicitly spell out the issues of crypto, exchanges, and rug pulls. I was paid by them, but they did not manufacture my consent.

* I have done sponsorship agreements with Bitrefill. Despite this, I also make Bitrefill FAIL content, in which I highlight when the app and solution do NOT work or have not worked in the past.

* I have been paid to MC at Bitcoin Conferences such as the Miami Conf and Bitcoin Asia in Hong Kong. However, if you follow me, you may have spotted that I still call out what I perceive as questionable practices from David Bailey or BM generally.

I do not like how close UTXO management is to Bitcoin Magazine, for example. I have been hired by them on several occasions and I have been paid to write articles in the Bitcoin Magazine Print Edition, but I have kept my voice. They have certainly not manufactured my consent.

Now, to address the first line of this article, I have not been paid directly by Tether before (I don't even know why that would make sense to do so because I make content about Bitcoin), but they own a lot and fund a lot of Bitcoin entities and initiatives.

The main sponsor for my YouTube Channel, Joe Nakamoto, is Plan B Network. As I understand it, Plan B Network is supported by Tether.

In fact, the overall Plan B initiative from the Plan B Conferences to Lugano’s Plan B is heavily funded by Tether. Plan B Network wanted to sponsor my content because I engage in Bitcoin advocacy journalism.

I care deeply about getting a Bitcoin-first message out there. I don’t think there’s a single moment in my reporting where I shill or even discuss Tether. I would if it came up, but I’m not seeking it out.

So have they tried to change what I say? No, never. The guys I work with at Plan B are Bitcoiners. Has the fact that Plan B is funded by Tether influenced my videos so that I start shilling Tether, or I change my focus to “Bitcoin as a Store of Value” as opposed to “peer to peer cash”?

Erm no.

My videos show people using Bitcoin as money in creative ways all around the world. And my content is not NGU, SoV nonsense.

But Joe, I bet you still can't call Tether a shitcoin? erm no.

Tether is a shitcoin.

*dies of shock*

The dollar is a shitcoin and Tether is a virtual copy. How can it not be a shitcoin?

Furthermore, I really don't like that Tether on Tron and Tether on Etheriyum have become so prolific, particularly in the Global South.

*oh no, my contract is over*

But hey, I've seen Tether in use in places like Cape Verde, Senegal, and across Latin America.

It’s bloody useful to people, but it’s not in my interest to make “Tether ADOPTION BOOMS in the global south” documentaries

I don’t think it’s much use to the guys at Tether, either—otherwise they’d be promoting it with someone else. Maybe Joe TetherStables or JoeTetherMoon’s channel.

So if you want to make the argument that Joe is captured by Tether or that his consent has been bought by any of the companies he’s worked with, then knock yourself out! I will chuckle.

Then I will continue to work harder making educational Bitcoin content about how Bitcoin is evolving as money in the real world.

The TL;DR here is that you can be paid by someone or something and keep your voice.

I grew up untrusting of institutions and entities, and in an environment where I could express that mistrust without fear of repercussions.

That's a TREMENDOUS privilege, one I would be incredibly sad to lose.

That said, I think it's a privilege that a lot of us in the West take for granted. Your voice is unique and you might not realise it, but it's not for sale—even if you’re being paid.

Please refer to my YouTube channel, and subscribe (pretty please) to watch me shilling Tether.

Oh crap, sorry, I meant bitcoin.

Brb. gonna invoice Tether 1 BTC for the previous sentence.

Thanks for reading

Everybody talks about how we should get more diverse and interesting content on to Nostr. We’re working with nostr:npub1qspus6smkn8mcdxg5jflh50s69vdgtwsd5p74gmjpzp2qekn5duqfv5afj to cover the Olympics!

nostr:note1fzuk90qeglqyk3898t94fvly5xj9d4gw6efshax259pf0wv8j3vswpgcz6

We’ve created special relay for the nostr:npub1qspus6smkn8mcdxg5jflh50s69vdgtwsd5p74gmjpzp2qekn5duqfv5afj coverage of the Olympics. It’s an experiment with topical paid relays. You can get some of the coverage for free on Nostr and pay with zaps. Or you can pay nostr:npub1qspus6smkn8mcdxg5jflh50s69vdgtwsd5p74gmjpzp2qekn5duqfv5afj and get access to the full feed of exclusive coverage.

I am increasingly interested in the way Nostr can be used for sports coverage and community. It’s a community which needs the real time public conversation that exists on Twitter, that’s why they haven’t moved off to one of the alt platforms I think. What’s more, it’s a community that has some very real censorship issues which are focused on copyright and region blocking. There’s a whole world of live sports streaming which is constantly facing shutdown due to broadcasters trying to control their content.

And so it is…

Spain, the country with the customer service of a Soviet prison.

Now we’re eating tires. I wonder which brand makes up the most microplastics in my body 🤔 nostr:note1wacwnn40pl55tfdrdkm3nnfrt4m30faqzz47es479cn3ufceg0kqvx5ds2

I love reading, writing, artists and entrepreneurs.

Nostr is giving me the opportunity to serve them all AND telling the state to go pound sand by building unstoppable freedom tech..

Feeling incredibly thankful.

(yes, content creators ARE entrepreneurs)

During the holiday of Eid al-Adha, a ton of people in Cairo take trips to resorts along the coast.

As a result, the streets of Cairo that are normally jam-packed with some of the worst traffic in the world become remarkably drivable.

It’s like the difference between driving in the middle of the night vs rush hour, except this state of emptiness lasts for many days.

So, we use the opportunity to stay in Cairo, and drive to all the further parts of the city that are normally a nightmare to get to.

AI is the worst thing man has ever created (and that's a pretty high bar, considering nuclear weapons, COVID, etc.)

And the worst is yet to come...

Artificial intelligence is the biggest psyop of the 21st century.

Until now google showed you the results they wanted, but in the end, it is critical thinking who has to discern between the different results and opinions.

Now with artificial intelligence, they only show you a single result, a single opinion, total and absolute opinion manipulation.

Is it just a “coincidence” that the day after the US house passes an act automatically registering men aged 18 - 26 in “selective service” ie - draft, that my 16 year son comes to me saying that signing up for the military looks “fun”.

As the propaganda and war machine ramps up, and social media channels/AI is used to manipulate minds and control the agenda, talk to your kids - openly and often about their thoughts.

Ps - It was a good reinforcement lesson for my son that his own thoughts are being manipulated. (He thought he was immune because we often talk about it as a family)

file:///var/mobile/Library/SMS/Attachments/99/09/968C4460-DD17-4B6D-8778-BEDAC4728133/IMG_1749.jpeg

Sam also isn't *the* problem. Even his actions, which are based in either ignorance, or malice, or he does so because he took a bribe, or they made a threat of violence to himself or loved ones. Even these are not the problem. They are all effects of a deeper problem.

"But to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to avoid repair of a motorcycle because it is a system is to attack effects rather than causes; and as long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible. The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and if a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government."

- Robert Pirsig.

Taking evil down when the effects that caused this evil linger on won't do anything in the long term.

But indeed, what you describe is a solution!

Sidestepping their tools of slavery and revoking our attention to their nightmare is what we are doing right now.