Wrote an article on Revealed preference (watch what systems do, not what they say). I've got a lot of investment research locally, so I'll be transferring the updated versions to Nostr Reads/substack/twitter. View article →

People who constantly watch Bitcoin/gold/finance podcasts have become hopium addicted. You watch Peter Schiff and friends predict financial collapse and hyperinflation year after year and you start believing it. They tell you: "Hyperinflation in 5 years is inevitable. It's just math." Just don't ask why their hyperinflation math isn't reflected in financial markets. They'll tell you "Only I can do math" or "It will be sudden". Maybe you're right that it will be sudden, you just have to move to Zimbabwe. In first world countries however, we're about to transition to CBDCs/stablecoins so financial collapse/hyperinflation is an extremely unlikely scenario.

I keep seeing these reports/youtubers talking about how NVIDIA is outsmarting the US government by selling chips to China illegally. This of course doesn't make any sense because NVIDIA is arguably the 3rd most state-embedded company (after Palantir and Microsoft). The more accurate take is that the US government is managing dependence: - let enough silicon in to keep China tied to CUDA + NVIDIA networking, - maintain visibility and leverage, and preserve U.S. scale and R&D speed - while denying full frontier capability. China's alternatives are improving, but the software + interconnect moat remains the bigger hill to climb. That's why - even with curbs Chinese buyers still chase NVIDIA, and why the U.S. prefers a dial, not a switch. Why the Controllers still let NVIDIA silicon reach China (even under curbs) 1) Lock-in and dependency > self-sufficiency. - Let some A/H-class supply drip through and you keep Chinese labs tethered to the CUDA/NVIDIA tooling stack. - If you cut them off cold, you force a crash program to harden domestic alternatives and a non-CUDA ecosystem. 2) Standards capture. - Training at frontier scale wants a coherent software + interconnect standard. If China's hyperscalers keep buying - even throttled SKUs - they architect data centers around NVIDIA networking, storage, and scheduling. That makes future policy levers (firmware, driver, interop, licensing) more potent. 3) Telemetry and bargaining chips. - Allowing legal China-compliant SKUs plus inevitable gray flows gives the US government visibility into where compute concentrates (through export filings, customs, carrier logs, and partner audits). 4) Escalation ladder. - Partial supply provides a dial (tighten/loosen) instead of a binary switch. That maintains room for response to other events (Taiwan, sanctions, cyber) without jumping straight to maximum escalation. 5) Don't trigger retaliation on crown-jewel U.S. firms. - A total choke risks Chinese retaliation (licensing, data, taxes, procurement bans) against Apple, Tesla, Qualcomm, Boeing, etc. Allowing constrained flows reduces that risk. 6) Grey-market pressure valve. - Even with curbs, hardware will transit via re-exports (HK, SG, UAE), second-hand channels, dev kits below thresholds, and capacity rental (cloud time). Designing policy that recognizes - and meters - that reality is smarter than pretending it doesn't exist. If the US government wanted, they'd dramatically slow "illegal" chip exports to China (tighten end-user lists, ultimate consignee scrutiny, sanctions on third-country distributors, firmware locks). They don't, because the net-benefit of controlled leakage (dependency + visibility + NVIDIA scale + escalation control) beats the cost of full denial (accelerated Chinese substitutes + retaliation + price spikes in global AI supply chains). Does China have a credible NVIDIA competitor? - Short version: Partially, for inference and mid-scale training; not at full frontier scale yet. The moat is software + networking, not just Tera Operations per Second. So far, the Chinese competitors lack: - CUDA ecosystem gravity (framework optimizations, libraries, kernels honed over a decade). - System-level performance. - Developer familiarity and off-the-shelf tool-chains for every S-curve (ASR, vision, recommender, LLMs, RAG, video). - Full-stack support (drivers/firmware updates at the cadence hyperscalers expect). Over a 3–5 year horizon, I'd expect a rising domestic share, but CUDA likely stays first choice where available. The current mechanisms you see: - China-specific SKUs (e.g., H20/L20/L2 with restricted performance) officially shipped. - Third-country intermediaries, re-labeling, and "unrestricted market" routing. - Cloud capacity rented offshore for Chinese teams (compute by the hour, not by the pallet). - Refurbished/second-hand boards entering via looser ports. So China likely remains CUDA-dependent enough to slow self-sovereignty; NVIDIA keeps scale. At the same time, they'll try to accelerate Huawei Ascend/Cambricon (competitors) and their domestic software stack will likely improve faster. In the US, competition for NVIDIA seems to be somewhat heating up (but remains to be seen) as it becomes more and more clear that AI governance is the future. - If the goal is fast, global, uniform governance, NVIDIA wins on installed base + tool-chain + fabric. - If the goal is sovereign independence from one vendor, the Controllers will co-standardize: NVIDIA plus AMD (ROCm) and a hyperscaler cloud path (AWS/Azure) so there's redundant enforcement.

When you see people gathering to protest their government in the streets, you already know they've lost. Public outrage without alternative defaults and direction is content for the Controllers, not counter-power. If the plebs had direction and alternative defaults, then they wouldn't have to protest in the streets. E.g. if they executed a mass tax revolt + adopting Bitcoin as MoE, they wouldn't have to beg for government officials who despise them to pay attention.

What are the red-line failure modes the Controllers design around? 1) Uncontrolled cascade: Global lockouts or false positives at scale (payments/ID outage). 2) Evidence rot: Missing lineage -> decisions tossed in court -> regime legitimacy hit. 3) Coordination schism: Major allies fork standards -> enforcement leakage. 4) Backfire martyrs: Overt bans that create off-system migration and strengthen opposition networks. 5) Data poisoning: Adversaries corrupt training/telemetry and flip enforcement against the Controllers.

What's the desired end-state for the Controllers - the TLDR version 1) Identity-first UX for everything material. 2) Provenance-by-default media/data/models, so automated moderation and courts are aligned. 3) Programmable payments where policy parameters (tax, limits, sanctions, consumer protection) travel with the transaction. 4) Decision OS with lineage and rollback so actions can be automated and defensible. 5) Soft law supremacy: Most control exerted via standards, contracts, and platform policies - cheap, fast, global, and difficult to litigate. This is the playbook a control-seeking system would actually use: defaults, perimeters, parameters, proofs - not endless public fights.

How the Controllers will contain Bitcoin (attack decentralization and MoE use) without heroic fights - a TLDR version - Paperization: Deep ETFs/futures/notes to satisfy demand while pulling usage into surveilled custody. - Tax/reporting drag: Treat any non-KYC movement as "high-friction" - 1099-style reporting, wash-sale parity, travel-rule enforcement. - Node/Mining pool pressure: Hosting TOS, app-store policies, and insurer clauses that make policy clients the default; off-policy is niche and risky. - MoE marginalization: Make CBDC/stablecoin rails cheaper, faster, and incentive-rich so payments gravity leaves Bitcoin as a taxable SoV niche. - Narrative steering: "Clarity" after scares -> price pops -> users settle into paper forms; self-custody shrinks to the ideologically committed and the skilled. In other words, contain without martyring. - Push liquidity and convenience toward custodial wrappers (ETFs, futures, payment gateways). - Nudge perimeters (banks/app stores/clouds/pools) to require KYC/attestation. - Price the "sovereign" path with friction (tax treatment, reporting, limited on/off-ramps) while avoiding outright bans that create hero narratives. This doesn't mean Bitcoin won't go up in fiat terms, of course. What I am saying is that most people are buying gold while thinking they're buying Bitcoin. Bitcoin is gold for most, permissionless money for few. I don't see this trend changing as of now, however, there are falsifiers that I am tracking.

As an investor, understanding the role of crises is very important. The role of crises is Parameter acceleration. Crises are windows to compress detect -> decide -> act timelines and standardize knobs across allies. The aim is not chaos; it's harmonization: make identical rules appear across jurisdictions so vendors can ship once and the Controllers can govern once. Especially in low GCP (Gross Consent Product) environments, crises are short, intense and quickly patched. You want to wait just enough for people to ask for a solution to the problem from their governments. However, you don't want to wait too much as then people start to look for alternatives outside the system. In other words, long crises breed alternatives.

It would be at least a little crazy if the whole freezing Russia's assets thing was a big predictive programming (normalization) campaign for what comes after CBDCs are implemented. "If Russia's assets got frozen, then how could I protest my assets getting frozen. I'm just a simple pleb. There's nothing I can do about it. I guess I'll just have to sit down and take it"

The intersection between finance and psychology is very interesting and underappreciated (at least in the mainstream). The TLDR edge: - People don't actually act on principles, they act on incentives, and then they wrap those incentive-driven choices in post-hoc rationalizations that sound noble. That blindness is where the alpha sits. - Convenience > freedom - At scale, humans trade liberty for comfort every time. UBI, CBDCs, and digital IDs will be adopted enthusiastically, not resisted. - Human Nature > Ideology - Masses think values/ideology drive behavior. In reality, base instincts (fear, greed, status) dominate. Incentive: material comfort and tribal identity almost always override ideals. - The Core Principle: Show me an incentive, I'll show you the outcome. Show me a principle, I'll show you an illusion. The Meta-Layer Pattern: - Whenever there's a tension between stated ideals vs. incentives, always assume incentives win. - Whenever people say "but they wouldn't do that", assume it's already being done. - The alpha = position yourself on the incentive's side, not the ideal's side.

"Mental strength is far more important than pure intelligence." - Bruce Maguire

Why only a Minority "Sees Through" the deception Here are the main factors that enable a tiny slice of the population to actually grasp power structures: 1) Cognitive profile -> Higher tolerance for discomfort, skepticism, and pattern recognition. - Most people's minds shut down when reality contradicts their emotional need for safety. The Ego is a hell of a drug and as Mark Twain said: "It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled" This is by far the most important factor - most people are too mentally weak - they want their safety blanket, not the truth. 2) Historical literacy -> Actually studying prior collapses, currency resets, war cycles, and propaganda regimes. - History rhymes, but the average person has zero exposure to it beyond sanitized school versions. 3) Psychological detachment -> Ability to accept that "leaders" and "institutions" are not benevolent caretakers, but power-maximizers. - This is so alien to the mainstream psyche that it feels conspiratorial even when empirically obvious. 4) Direct exposure -> Travel, insider work, living under multiple regimes. - Someone who has lived under both Western and authoritarian governments is far more likely to spot the same methods being used under different branding. The Meta-Play The most profitable moves are where human psychology blinds the herd the hardest: - They believe in freedom -> bet on surveillance. - They believe in peace -> bet on war cycles. - They believe in democracy -> bet on technocracy. - They believe in decentralization -> bet on centralization. That disconnect is the edge.

One point coincidence theorists always raise to conspiracy theorists is: - Do you know how many people would have to be in on it for the conspiracy to be true? And of course, I don't know how many people would have to be in on it. If the conspiracy is true, however many people would have to be in on it would have to be in on it. This also ignores the fact that many people are unknowingly "in on it" - at the highest levels everything is on a need-to-know basis. - Do you know how many doctors would have to be in on the conspiracy of poisoning children by injecting them with heavy metals? - Do you know how many people would have to be in on the conspiracy that robbing them with fiat is required to grow the economy? - Do you know how many people would have to be in on the conspiracy that governments are required? Official sources say about 8 billion.

How speechwriters engineer consent (spot the tricks) 1) Motte-and-bailey - Start with a hard-to-disagree claim ("protect kids"), then smuggle in a broader, invasive policy ("ID to post online"). - Example: "To protect kids, we need ID to post." - Why: People consent to the small good; later, the big policy piggybacks. 2) Passive voice laundering - "Mistakes were made" = we're not naming the decision-makers. - Example: "Mistakes were made", "Standards were not met", "Implementation failures". - Why: Blurs accountability, reduces anger. 3) Goalpost smuggling - Define "success" so it can only be achieved by the proposed knob (ID, CBDC, provenance). - Example: "Only verified identity can ensure safety". - Why: Collapses the solution set to the preferred knob. 4) Benchmark theater - Cite % improvements without a baseline or denominator. - Example: "Harm fell 40%." - Why: Big numbers imply big wins. 5) Conditional certainty - "If it saves one life..." makes any cost appear reasonable. - Example: "If this saves one life, it's worth it." - Why: Moral blackmail disables cost–benefit. Infinite value assigned to a single outcome. 6) Dead-cat distraction - Drop a sensational side story to crowd out scrutiny of the real rule drop. - Example: Celebrity scandal day of a regulatory filing. - Why: Limited attention; outrage monopolizes it. Big spectacle + small PDF with consequential changes. 7) Sandwiching - Announce a hard measure between two feel-good items; attention edits out the middle. - Example: "Jobs up… new ID checks …scholarships expanded." - Why: Primacy/recency effects; middle is memory-thin. (Positive–negative–positive cadence) 8) Euphemism cascade - Each year's term softens the same control. - Example: "Backdoor -> lawful access -> safety scanning" - Why: Word fatigue softens resistance. New label, unchanged capability. 9) Triads & cadence - Three-part lists feel complete and crowd mental objections. - Example: "Safer, fairer, faster." - Why: Rhythmic closure suppresses objections. 10) Forced binaries - "Either act or do nothing" collapses superior third options. - Example: "Either act or accept chaos." - Why: Crowds avoid appearing passive. Missing third option. 11) Rhetorical questions - Pose and answer your own straw-man to pre-empt critique. - Example: "Who could oppose protecting kids? No one." - Why: Feels like dialogue, is monologue. Questions that pre-judge dissenters. 12) Numbers without error bars - Point estimates imply precision where none exists. - Example: "The policy will create 320,000 jobs." - Why: Specificity reads as certainty. 13) Normative framing - Call an option "common-sense" or "responsible" so dissent sounds deviant. - Example: "This is common-sense reform." - Why: Makes dissent deviant. Adjectives about virtue, not mechanics. 14) Future perfect tense - "We will have built..." projects inevitability. - Example: "By 2028 we will have built a safer internet." - Why: Anchors acceptance; reduces scrutiny. 15) Appeal to externality - Recast preference as harm ("your choice endangers others") to justify compulsion. - Example: "Your privacy choices endanger others." - Why: Justifies compulsion for the "greater good". Harm claims without quantification or threshold. 16) Policy by perimeter - Don't legislate - change app-store, bank, or cloud terms and call it safety. - Example: "Platform safety updates." - Why: Faster, less litigable, same effect. 17) Sunset mirage - Promise expiry, then attach new conditions that require renewal. - Example: "Temporary for 12 months (unless threats persist)." - Why: Threats always "persist". Vague termination criteria; self-referential reviews. 18) The study loop - Commission a study to delay, then cite it selectively to hurry. - Example: "We await the independent report." -> "The report urges urgency". - Why: Time control + selective evidence. 19) Outlier amplification - Spotlight rare horrors to set rules for the median case. - Example: One horrific case proves the need for universal checks - Why: Availability bias; moral vividness. Anecdote -> universal mandate without incidence math. 20) Stakeholder ventriloquism - "We heard from..." - funded groups supply the testimony. - Example: "Civil society demands action". - Why: Manufactured consensus. Funding ties, same authors across "independent" letters. 21) Precedent padding - Cite other countries’ "norms" we encouraged to create circular legitimacy. - Example: "We're aligning with international standards." - Why: Safety in numbers. The "norms" are newborn, driven by the same authors. 22) Responsibility hop - "Platforms must..." offload state choices onto corporate ToS - less oversight, same effect. - Example: "Platforms must ensure safety." - Why: Evades constitutional checks; same outcome. 23) Simulation authority - "Models show..." = black-box decree. - Example: "Our models project a 37% reduction." - Why: Math mystique silences lay critique. 24) Pick-your-metric - Choose KPIs your policy guarantees will move, then claim victory. - Example: "Compliance tickets resolved up 90%". - Why: Optimizes measurement, not outcomes. 25) Asymmetric vagueness - Our powers worded broadly; your rights worded narrowly. - Examples: "Reasonable measures", "credible threats" vs "except under X only". - Why: Elastic authority, brittle liberty. Open-ended verbs for state; enumerated, conditional rights for you.

Probably the most important post I'll ever write on here. Why I think that the "Great Taking" type scenario was written into law as a Strategic fallback, and not as a Primary Base-Case. If you are unfamiliar with the book "The Great Taking": - The book describes what David Rogers Webb calls "The Great Taking" - a systematic, global seizure of all collateralized assets through legal, technological, and financial mechanisms. In other words, you don't own the stuff in your brokerage account. - All assets "in the system" (brokerage accounts, bank deposits, bond custodianship, mortgages, even most "gold ETFs") are structurally vulnerable to seizure via rehypothecation chain. - This is enabled by the laws in EVERY country in the World (they were changed recently to allow for this global seizure type scenario). - Only assets outside custody chains (physical, bearer-form, or strong self-custody digital like Bitcoin, Monero, physical gold in personal possession) are immune. Of course, if a Great Taking type scenario takes place, assets like Bitcoin and Gold get revalued exponentially (10x–100x relative to collapsing seized assets). Everything else = frozen, haircut, or outright transfer. So why do I say "The Great Taking" is not the base case? - Based on my research, I'd give it ~25–35% over the next 10-20 years. It's still far too high to dismiss. - Mechanisms (UCC laws, rehypothecation structures, bail-in clauses, digital rails) already exist. - Only trigger required: systemic crisis + narrative cover ("protect system stability / prevent contagion"). - However, if fiat sovereign debt spiral accelerates, I'd move my odds up to ~60-70% over the next 10-20 years. - If global debt pyramids become visibly unserviceable, asset seizure (via collateral sweep) becomes the only way to reset without open default. - Still, it is not the Primary Base-Case - The Controllers prefer gradual controlled capture (CBDCs + behavioral shaping + perpetual claims on labor/energy). - It is the Strategic Fallback - If systemic control frays (currency collapse, capital flight, delegitimized political system), then seizure protocol is triggered as the emergency override. - The fact it is legally embedded across all jurisdictions signals it was always intended as the last resort fail-safe - not daily operating mode. - Bitcoin, Gold, land without liens (physical, bearer-form, or strong self-custody digital) are the true anti-fragile hedge here. - Avoid: Leveraged assets, rehypothecated claims, pooled accounts (even "segregated" ones collapse in stress). - Psychological edge: Most can't accept that "ownership" has already been redefined legally. They'll rationalize seizures as "temporary stabilizations". - The Great Taking isn't a fringe hypothesis. It's already structurally embedded. The only question is trigger conditions. - Everything in custody might get swept overnight. With narratives: "protect system", "fair distribution", "prevent collapse". - Still my base case is: No outright seizure, but effective confiscation via inflation, negative rates, and behavioral CBDC restrictions. Things get nuanced once you get into state-embedded equities (e.g. Palantir, Microsoft) in a Great Taking type scenario. Technically, all stocks held through custodians, brokerages, and CSDs (DTCC, Euroclear, Clearstream, etc.) are legally collateralized and can be swept. However, the Controllers usually do not "punish" their own instruments. State-embedded companies are not "capital assets" in the same way as random ETFs. They are extensions of the state-control lattice. Seizing their equity en masse would destabilize their role. Why would the Controllers burn the infrastructure they rely on? Instead, these equities are more likely to be: - Ring-fenced: carved out from seizure frameworks. - Converted: forcibly shifted to "CBDC-denominated ledger shares". You still "own" them, but only inside the CBDC matrix. - Protected selectively: insiders, elites, and aligned funds retain ownership; retail may be converted or frozen. So - yes, they are technically seizable, but practically unlikely to be targeted, because they are the command system itself. In summary, the full Great Taking type scenario is technically possible, legally enabled, but extremely risky. Requires near-perfect control of narratives + timing (crisis trigger + CBDC rollout + global harmonization). If mismanaged, triggers chaos -> loss of trust in state. Hence, fallback scenario if debt pyramid collapse outruns managed transition. If you are very concerned about this type of scenario, you can explore Direct registration (if possible), transfer to Custodians Outside Seizure Jurisdictions, or long-term call options (which can be cash-settled in "new CBDC terms" instead of seizure). But, in general, random S&P companies have higher seizure odds than State-embedded firms (which have the lowest odds of getting seized), in a Great Taking type scenario. This doesn't make holders of State-embedded firms immune to seizure. Let's look at Palantir as an example - arguably the most state-embedded company. Immune archetypally -> Palantir itself will not be destroyed. Its contracts, revenues, and integration with the state guarantee survival. Not immune retail-wise -> your access to PLTR shares can still be taken, frozen, converted. In other words: - The entity is immortal. - Your claim on the entity is not. (Its only as safe as your custody arrangement). So in the worst possible case scenario, the "Great Taking" doesn't eliminate Palantir - it just eliminates weakly-held claims to Palantir. Alpha comes from mastering custody layers - not just asset selection. The Controllers designed the game so that they keep the immortal entities while you keep the disposable claims. The alpha is to invert that game as much as possible.