In early 2022 after Coldcard decided to ditch the open sourcd GPL license for Commons Clause, I called out NVK. Francis Pouliot defended came to his friend’s defense by arguing that I’m “gaslighting” with “esoteric nerd talk”. That’s when I lost all respect for Francis and I blocked him. I don’t care what else he does in the space, this man is not intellectually honest and chooses loyalty over truth. The reason I am posting this is simple: if more people called out Rodolfo (NVK) for his reckless decision to change licenses, the Coldcard firmware would have had more scrutiny from white hat hackers. Today’s incident could have been avoided if the people close to NVK had the balls to call him out on his bullshit.

I just want to thank @Peter Todd for opening my eyes about Coldcard in late 2019 with something that he described the “tiger rock”: a solution for a problem that you don’t have, but is marketed to you He also taught me that the best security is in the most tested solution (for hardware wallets, Trezor) and it’s better to use something limited in scope that you understand than something so complex that you won’t be able to replicate the same setup ceremony Peter also told me point blank that Bitcoin Core on a clean Linux computer is more secure than Coldcard or any other hardware wallet So yeah, I owe a lot of my understanding of security and threat models to him and the fact that he took the time to explain to me some basic concepts Once again: Bitcoin Takeover podcast listeners can sleep well these days

Will interview @Cory 🦢 Swan in about 10 hours 12:30 PM CET / 6:30 AM EST Join the livestream chat if you have any questions! https://www.youtube.com/live/Y8vFTR1L8Lg?si=kaB86u46ATzQKM0y

Where will the BIP110 supporters go after they find themselves on a minority fork? I don’t think they will return to BTC and admit that they were wrong They’ve been radicalized by hatred against Core, Blocksteam, Andy Back I think they’ll go to Paul’s eCash and build their own network Why? Because they need a safe space that is as close to Bitcoin’s purity as possible and ECX has no gatekeepers except for the SHA256 miners Call me crazy, but I envision a merge between the two August forks. Just like SegWit2X moved to BCH in 2017

Coin Market Cap top 50: 1. Bitcoin 2. Bitcoin colored coins with a virtual machine 3. Bitcoin’s CBDC pilot 4. Bitcoin finance exchange token 5. Bitcoin’s other CBDC pilot 6. Bitcoin for bankers 7. Bitcoin colored coins with a virtual machine, but purple 8. Bitcoin colored coins with a virtual machine, but Chinese 9. Bitcoin finance for degen traders 10. Bitcoin’s dog pet that Elon likes 11. Bitcoin’s replacement for rugged Bitfinex users 12. Bitcoin with Zerocash privacy, as it should have been 13. Bitcoin rewrite with built in fungibility, probably made in Russia 14. Bitcoin oracle token 15. Bitcoin for Jeb fans 16. Bitcoin according to the guy who doesn’t want to contact Metamask support 17. Bitcoin with smart contracts and some privacy for tokens 18. Bitcoin for math nerds who like getting pegged with US dollars 19. Bitcoin’s long-lost brother 20. Bitcoin printer for the Trump family 21. Bitcoin for the Telegram users 22. Bitcoin for math nerds who like getting pegged with synthetic US dollars 23. Bitcoin’s faster cousin 24. Bitcoin for globalists who like getting pegged by Uncle Sam 25. Bitcoin for super compliant corporate nerds 26. Bitcoin for the guy who told you to sell your bitcoin in November 2013 27. Bitcoin meme dog that looks a lot like the one that Elon likes, except that it’s not 28. Bitcoin for web3 applications, whatever the fuxk that means 29. Bitcoin for people who love PayPal 30. Bitcoin for AI applications, apparently 31. Bitcoin for goldbugs, that Peter Schiff can shill 32. Bitcoin payments across lots of Bitcoin forks 33. Bitcoin decentralized exchange 34. Bitcoin for machine learning models 35. Bitcoin for democratized institutional-grade finance, whatever that means 36. Bitcoin for goldbugs, but peaceful 37. Bitcoin investment fund, to help the Trump family load up on Bitcoin 38. Bitcoin for OKx exchange users 39. Bitcoin for decentralized exchanges 40. Bitcoin Core, but with a meme in the middle 41. Bitcoin printer for guys who love banks 42. Bitcoin dollar with double D t*ts 43. Bitcoin lending protocol, but not centralized like BlockFi and therefore unable to buy Peter McCormack an Aston Martin 44. Bitcoin colored coins with a virtual machine, but with dots 45. Bitcoin for bringing tradfi, whatever that means 46. Bitcoin governance token for something that could have been built on Bitcoin 47. Bitcoin Sam Altman’s Vision, with eyeball scanning instead of mining 48. Bitcoin for buzzwords 49. Bitcoin for the Morph blockchain, whatever that is 50. Bitcoin for moments when it feels good man

A decade from now, I’m sure Netflix will produce a documentary about the agents who destroyed Bitcoin The guys who were principled sat stackers and never shitcoiners will laugh at all the batshit crazy narratives they created over the years to prevent BTC from becoming money “We had to protect the supremacy of the dollar, so we told them to HODL indefinitely because this is a store of value. Never sell your bitcoin! Meanwhile, our friends from BlackRock captured the price discovery to turn this thing into an institutional asset that nobody transacts for goods and services.” You’ll recognize the faces. They liked your memes. You had lunch with them after a conference. Maybe you shared a drink together. Now they’re on the TV screen in your living room. Not on some pleb podcast, but on a Netflix special. Not there to make you feel more bullish, but to laugh in your face and remind you how dumb you really were. Some will laugh, some will cry, some will be in denial. But it is what’s happening and you’re asleep at the helm because you think it’s “bullish” and one day your 1000 sats will buy you a yacht. That’s exactly what they want you to believe.

“Self custody is too hard and most people don’t want to manage their own keys. This is why we need banks and centralized services” Biggest psyop ever, orchestrated by the usual suspects Millions of people use Tether every day, have no problem backing up 12 words & using non-custodial wallets If anything, it’s even harder to use USDT because you need the gas token to pay transaction fees So how come they figure it out and it’s very simple for Tether, but in the case of Bitcoin the same people are considered unready for adoption? “Oh it’s because Bitcoin is savings tech and Tether is for quick payments” Oh fuck you, spook. Read the whitepaper

Some guys claim that crypto markets won’t pump hard until the AI bubble bursts I disagree: AI payments is the next big narrative, with agents making decisions with a given budget or else automating some transactions So instead of waiting for AI to crash, it’s wiser to build products and services that create this symbiosis

In 2017, the industry ignored Bitcoin Cash waiting for SegWit2X to happen. Then S2X never came, so all the action moved to BCH. Next month, we’re gonna have two more Bitcoin hard forks: Knots and Ecash. I wouldn’t be surprised if Knots joins Ecash to create a special sidechain for everyone who really hates spam and wants human filtering. Because the BIP110 side hates Core and “Big Bitcoin” so much that they would never come back to the a chain where Saylor and Adam Back are well-respected authoritative figures. But the BIP110 side has no good plan to survive as an altcoin. They’re redpilled, but unable to make it in the wild. On the other hand, the BIP300 eCash side also hates Core… but for the gatekeeping the BIP process and having an arbitrary governance process. But their side has much better infrastructure in place, which has been tested for many years. Creating a BIP110 merged mined sidechain is a walk in the park for them and I’m sure they would appreciate to have more users. A merge between the two forks is the perfect symbiosis which gives both factions better chances to survive and compete against BTC.

Bitcoin used to be 90%+ of the crypto market Today, it’s only 56% Which means that there’s a trillion dollars outside of Bitcoin, in projects that provide features and use cases that people want The fact that there’s a group of people who claim that this trillion is gambling on shitcoins is baffling Sure, there are shitcoins. But then you also have chains that never died for 10+ years, survived the bear markets & have developers and communities You can insult them, you can call them second class citizens or shitcoiners. But what if I tell you that there are cryptos that have been outperforming Bitcoin for many years… a concept which used to be considered unthinkable? The truth is that the game really isn’t zero sum. And for every limitation that Bitcoin has, the market will find workarounds. This means new altcoins, new forks, new technologies getting deployed on blockchains. Whether you like it or not, the future is multi-chain and we will never have everything divided by 21 million coins. Maybe it will be 200 million, maybe even more. But it’s fine as long as the greater mission of maximizing freedom gets accomplished, and everyone gets what they want.

How to evaluate L2s: ____________________________ / \ | Does it enable unilateral exit? | \____________________________/ | | / \ / \ | Yes | | No | \ / \ / | | use it it’s a bank

My interview with Perry E. Metzger is finally happening today starting from 2 PM EST / 8 PM CET Perry is the creator of the Metzdowd cryptography mailing list, where Satoshi first posted the Bitcoin whitepaper in 2008 He is also interested in open source AI, cypherpunk tech, and all sorts of cryptography use cases Make sure you tune in, this one is for the history books!

Was thinking of a metaphor about blockchains and girlfriends Bitcoin is this prude girl who blushes & gets overwhelmed when you touch her lap in church, only accepts missionary position, and obviously refuses to scale for every boy in town. Ethereum is this dirty girl who does everything. And I mean EVERYTHING, with everyone… for the right price. The biggest problem is that she also doesn’t scale: she’s limited by the number of holes. Can get creative and try to find workarounds, but most of them involve searching for equally dirty lookalikes. Very exciting when you switch from Bitcoin, but you’re very likely to catch some infection. Zcash is the girl who’s always vague. Reliable, always shows up. But you never know what she really thinks, you have no idea what she does for a living and whether she’s faithful or cheats on you. As soon as the date is over, she vanishes so you cannot follow her around. Has no problem showing up at your place, but you don’t know where she lives. Monero is the World of Warcraft girlfriend. Only exists online, is always there for your guild raids and always available for virtual sex. However, you’re not sure if the person behind the account is truly a girl or some sick dude. As a matter of fact, it might as well be a bot. But whatever she/he/it is, you’re always having a good time. If you’re a junkie, he/she/it can also recommend someone who’s selling what you’re after, with absolute discretion.

Imagine being Messi Arguably the greatest football player of all time The most decorated player, winner of every title and championship About to retire in glory after defeating the final boss: Spain, the country that trained you and taught you everything you know about football The best possible streak and story arc is about to unfold … and then a hothead team mate named Enzo Fernandez gets 2 yellow cards, gets eliminated and leaves your team in numeric disadvantage for 30 minutes Your shot at legendary status, your opportunity to become the undisputed god of the sport, ruined by a guy who enjoyed playing dirty and arguing with the referee

The next couple of weeks will be amazing for Bitcoin Takeover podcast Got some bangers lined up Sorry for the delay, but I’ve been traveling and scheduling new interviews and I do believe that you won’t find this type of content on any other show 🙃

For the record, I don’t view the Bitcoin whitepaper as some kind of religious book that must be followed strictly But I do think that the whitepaper is aspirational: it explains why this money system was created and what it ought to accomplish The “how” part can change when better tech emerges. But the goal was never to create an institutional asset, a Wall Street tech stock, or a “store of value” Bitcoin is payments tech. And if the original chain does not pursue the goal, then the forks will.

“Read the whitepaper” triggers store of value preachers just as much as “read the constitution” triggers leftists in the US.

Look, I’m sorry that lots of bitcoiners learned about how the network works from Saylor interviews and really bad podcasts But narratives and metaphors always break when they get confronted by the technical reality My podcast can definitely improve your understanding - not because I am some kind of my expert, but because I mostly interview guys who are much smarter than me Learn from multiple sources, listen to conflicting opinions, constantly search for the truth, and build your own individual views to the point where other people follow you and consider you a valuable contributor. This is how you win. This was always the way. There has never been and never will be a yellow brick road in this world: not even Bitcoin can provide certainties and guarantees. To a great extent, Bitcoin’s success has been a self-fulfilling prophecy: people put a lot of effort into making predictions come true. But it doesn’t mean that it will always work this way, as new challenges always emerge. Constantly ask questions and seek new information to update your understanding. Otherwise, you become someone’s useful idiot – just a follower, or a “pleb”. And I want all of you to become so much more!

One of my favorite cognitive dissonances: 1. shitcoins are worthless and going to zero 2. shitcoiners are somehow wealthier than puritan bitcoiners who virtue signal about sound money & digital alchemy

With less than 1% of Bitcoin’s development budget and a lot of hate that’s second only to BSV and Ripple BCH is now so far ahead with development that Bitcoin devs study it to figure out how to soft fork some features to BTC How is this even possible? Firstly, I have been told that BCH is a dead shitcoin that only exists to fuel the vanity of Roger Ver and Jihan Wu. But it keeps shipping code while both Roger and Jihan moved on. Secondly, hardcore Bitcoin devs who regularly speak on conference stages now take inspiration from CheckDataSig (which inspired Jeremy Rubin’s CheckTemplateVerify & CheckSigFromStack), OP_CAT, OP_MUL & all the cool introspection OP codes that already work on BCH. Once again, these guys had 1% of the budget, but did a much better job than Blockstream with Elements/Liquid, MIT, and Chaincode. How is this possible?! In a world where BTC is winning, this could never happen.