In 4 or 5 years Bitcoin is going to be so “popular” that the people I appreciate here right now will likely be subsumed and lost in the tsunami of new Bitcoiners who are far more monetized and sexy and smarter and sophisticated than we are. It will be a painful transition. So I’d like to take a moment to appreciate everyone that hears this message. Right now. You’ve helped me. I appreciate that. And I will not forget you when you’re forgotten.

My recommended podcast episode from the past week: Bitcoin People podcast interviews Peter Dunworth. You will hear ideas about Bitcoin you haven’t heard before.

If I could encourage you to watch one 20min video about China, this is the one. Having followed this streamer, Laowhy86 (and his partner SerpentZA) for many years, I can assure you they loved living in & exploring China for more than a decade, having launched their channel long ago to show daily life there to the world. But under Xi Jinping there came a creeping police-state that forced them to leave. They now report regularly from the US on all things China - the warts and the roses - benefitted by their understanding of the Chinese language and their friends and family still living there. This video is jarring…it is not fud and misinformation…it is concerning to us all, and needs to be viewed widely, imo.

In the 1960’s computers were nothing more than oversized, glorified calculators. Yet virtually everyone automatically assumed they were destined to have true Artificial Intelligence that anybody would have access to for full conversation. It’s worth noting, imo, that this ‘destiny’ was achieved this year…in 2023.

Bert Lahr undoubtedly had many great performances in his lifetime, and I have no idea if this is one of them. It’s like “iykyk” existed before the internet.

I had a moment just now tonight, scrubbing a heavy cast-iron enameled pot in a too small sink, and I thought about all the plebs and good people at the Bitcoin Conference tonight and why I didn’t go and what they’re doing and what I’ve chosen not to do and what I’m doing now…. And I realized, scrubbing this pot and fending away my jackass cat who is amazing but an annoyance I never wanted in my life… There are two rivers of Life. They’re Energetic. One flows upward, one flows downward. I know and feel these rivers of energy inside me, sometimes, obey them always. Bitcoin is a Truth, I know that. It gives me a pole-star outside the turbulence of these rivers. I’m grateful for that. It also gives me an anchor. I appreciate the transformative influence Bitcoin has had on my life, even peripherally in only a few short years. But I don’t need Bitcoin. All I need is the promise Bitcoin has awakened in me. I don’t need my life to be guided by a Bitcoin future. I just want to know that another future is possible, and then I’m good. I washed my dishes in a different stream of Life tonight than I did years ago. I had a moment where I became aware of that, so I wanted to share.

Most people respond to feeling, not thinking. The initial feeling w/ self-custody is “if I fail, even once, all is lost”. Thus people prefer to feel that they are held by a community. In the developed world, corporations cater to this need for “community & trust”. So Bitcoin is a challenge to most, because we don’t want to feel that “if I fail, even once, all is lost”. This is the direction for Bitcoin, sooner or later.

As so many respected Bitcoiners seem to be accepting the ordinals-inspired immigration into Bitcoin, I feel for myself, personally, I just want to leave a final statement and then let it go and embrace whatever the future holds. The floodgates opened via ordinals should not be written off, imo. It’s an unexpected, unprepared for invasion. These are not No-coiners - a flood of no-coiners rushing into Bitcoin would be welcome. These are Shitcoiners. They are the antithesis of Bitcoin. They inherently, if unconsciously, reject Bitcoin. They don’t want Bitcoin. Welcoming or simply abiding them will backfire. They are fiat, they will poison the well. Yes. They won’t hurt Bitcoin the token, they won’t hurt Bitcoin the network. Obviously. But they WILL hurt Bitcoin. Somehow. Most likely in the true, original Meme-space, the social sphere. Again: they can’t help but do that, because they don’t value what they’ve been given. They will become toxic - and in a way that is by no means cool.

Keeping this short. How to get Forward Privacy on BTC holdings w/o paying to whirlpool: 1) Setup 2 new single-use, no-kyc email accts (i.e. Protonmail) 2) Setup 2 no-kyc accounts on Kucoin (which allows this, and use these 2 different, unique email addresses). 3) Download Cake wallet (for Monero) to phone or whatever. Have a new BTC address/wallet waiting at the end of this. 4) Transfer your current kyc’d BTC to 1st Kucoin acct (Kucoin allows withdrawals up to 1 BTC/day for non-kyc accts, fyi) You can send a small amount to test this strategy. 5) Exchange BTC for Monero (XMR) 6) Transfer the Monero (XMR) out to Cake Wallet 7) Transfer some portion of this amount of Monero (XMR) from Cake Wallet to 2nd Kucoin acct (i.e. just not all, to baffle heuristics). 8) Exchange the XMR for BTC in the 2nd Kucoin acct. 9) Transfer this new BTC to a new, non-kyc’d address/wallet. Voila: you have utilized the strength of Monero to break the stranglehold of BTC-chainwatchers to gain forward privacy for nothing more than the (pennies) cost of a few BTC/XMR transactions. Addendum: Kucoin’s interface is a bit wonky at first…they have a “Main” account for sending/receiving, but then assets must be transferred to the “Trading” account to trade, then transferred back again to send/receive. Spend time getting used to it.

I was debating #onlyzaps in my head this morning, not sure how I felt about it, then realized I’d never know unless I tried it. So I enabled it on Damus… Within moments it just felt right. And I haven’t even zapped anyone yet. So anywho I’m posting this now to encourage Nostr’ers on the fence like me to just enable it for a day, or two, see how it hits you in the feelz. Then debate it intellectually after that.

“You have to be an unsecured creditor. You were born to do this, you don’t get to choose. You have to be an unsecured creditor.” ~ Saifedean Ammous

Bitcoin is a test of who we are. If you don’t understand this, fair enough. Stay out of the way. We’re at war. There’s no room for children at the table. If you’re not here as an adult, respect the adults, learn from them, be humble. We have one chance to get this right.