🚨✨CONCUSSION RECOVERY UPDATE: I'm now in week four of recovery. Overall, a lot better. Working memory is slowly getting better, but it's kind of like a foggy feeling of having to retrain myself to remember things. The best way I can describe it is like this, "What did I eat for breakfast? I don't know, that's too hard to remember. Wait, maybe I know... Let me try. OK, it was yogurt with fruit and nuts." I'm doing cardio still. It was helping and also leaving me feeling fatigued, so I have only been able to do 3 times a week. My normal is exercising 4–5 times a week. Going to try to hit 4 days this week. Over the last several days, I have transitioned onto a keto diet. There's enough studies out there that show that the ketogenic diet is really useful for recovering from a TBI/concussion. So far, carb cravings are the hardest thing about this diet. 🤣 But that seems to be leveling off. Excuse to eat more fat? Yes, please. I still need a lot of sleep. I have a lot of 10.5 hour nights, which isn't common for me. I tend to average 7.5 hours per night. Last night I got ~9.5 hours. I often wake up feeling sad. I think this is partly due to circumstance (sudden life change, routine disruption, can't engage in my favorite activities) and partly due to my neurons being stretched and injured. I'm grateful for my friends, they have gone above and beyond in terms of trying to keep me happy. Today is my first day back to work. I consider it a positive sign that I have so far spent the morning trying to organize my browser tabs. Messy browser tabs is very bad! Hopefully soon, I can get back to posting savage takedowns and controversial insights about bitcoin. Until then, thanks for your support!! 🧡

Bitcoin doesn’t belong to any one person. But there are plenty who will try to take ownership of it. Why would you try to make it easier for them? Some narratives sound good on face value, but they are empty and designed to trick you into relinquishing your ability to decide the future of bitcoin. In this techno-dystopian landscape, we must all become cypherpunks. Both online and in the physical. I do not believe that knowing how to code is necessary, nor sufficient to see the mission to completion. We need a philosophy to guide us. The narratives lately have been lacking a cohesive philosophical line. So many drunk on short-term power trips and NGU gains. But these are short-term and will not win in the long run. I will fight for the bitcoin that empowers the many over the few. Privacy for the weak. Freedom to transact for the vulnerable. A way out for those who want it, but for a more free, sustainable, and egalitarian future, not oligarchic enslavement. I am not the only one.

I'm old enough to remember when bitcoiners were about separation of money and state, not for the consolidation of bitcoin and state.

Here’s my I have only had 5 hours of sleep take on Donald Trump’s win. This election was about class. Once upon a time, class and identity were separated as the neoliberal era took hold. Democrats capitalized on identity and it worked for a while. But as our guest on @TPBPod, Alan Minsky, noted… Neoliberalism is dead. We have to realize that these new alliances that are forming under Trump are not only odd bedfellows, but because they are, they signify a new cultural and political power shift. I have been watching this happen since Bernie ran in the 2016 primary. The coalition is building beyond race among the working class. A unity that the left could only dream of. Yet, this is not an empowerment of the working class in the way that we’d envision. I don’t believe that this will end in a worker revolution where the proletariat owns the means of production. I don’t because this is a coalition of the working class with a different faction. This isn’t the traditional corporate-state-capitalist alliance that has coalesced in the Democratic party. This is an alliance of those who feel powerless, with those who want absolute power. I am not sure where we are headed, but if Lawrence Wilkerson is right, this is dark. The liberals will have yet again made it possible for the worst outcomes to happen. The left progressives (a wide umbrella that covers a coalition of socialists and center-left), unable to unite to stop the Democrats, are at their most powerless. I really ask Democratic supporters, to wake up. We are a country that has been living three different experiences simultaneously. And just now, two roads have merged into one. I have traveled so much around the US and the world this year. I truly believe that in the US, we have two countries in one. There’s two cultures thar have developed as a result of rural isolation and gross economic inequality. For those who have, identity issues are the only remaining issues. For those who do not, identity is the least important. It makes sense. Then we have the ultra rich, who saw an opportunity to exploit this. This where the danger now exists. I wish I could tell you what happens next. But, what I do know is that the probabilities of socio-economic and political disasters are much higher now than ever before. The left must find a way to bring the workers back. But I am afraid that the left has become mainly the highly educated who do not understand the worker’s plight. And what of bitcoin? Bitcoin works no matter what but also because of what happens next. It is both a deterrent and an accelerant. We have skin in the game.

Two bitcoin conferences in the span of a week. Life forever changed. Left last Thursday for MN for the Mining Conference where I had the honor to introduce Daniel Batten’s recorded keynote, proved to everyone I am a sadist for loving how brutal mining is, and talked about the importance of supporting our work at the Bitcoin Policy Institute and my research on bitcoin mining! Then, back in Nashville, TN for an incredible Human Rights Foundation bitcoin summit. Met the most incredible humans from around the world. And somewhere in between, I became the next host of @The Progressive Bitcoiner ! Just another week…

Recorded my final @The Progressive Bitcoiner interview with @Trey Walsh earlier today. Bittersweet to say the least but I finished the conversation feeling hopeful about the future of our left movement within bitcoin and I think Trey likely brought new people into the space who will pick up the torch that he carried after Mark stepped down. The struggle continues!

The Democrats rebrand is to take a Neocon imperialist ideology and package it within a hip, younger, and culturally diverse wrapper. They aren’t stupid. This isn’t a real win for struggles against oppression. This is just system capture. When your own identity becomes reified and sold back to you, it looks like you but something is missing. Sense it. Act on it.

Bitcoin for me right now is about finishing my PhD on bitcoin mining. It’s a lot of work but I am as close as I have ever been to being able to defend my thesis. I have a lot of educating to do among the academic community about why any of this even matters. It’s not an easy task. But we have a good story to tell, so I am fully committed and putting all my energy into this.

David Graeber on how to trigger Bitcoin Twitter during a bear market: "Then there's also libertarian socialism, which means the democratic control, not by the state, but by communities or by workers, self organizing in a voluntary fashion--that's genuine socialism in my opinion."

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ARTIST TAXI DRIVER (@chunkymark) on X

What’s Capitalism What’s Socialism @davidgraeber #TWT

Did you miss this? BM republished it this week. Tortured myself so you wouldn't have to.

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F%$K Bad Research

I spent a month analyzing a Bitcoin mining study and all I got was this trauma response. From "The Halving Issue" and "FUD Fighters" powered by HIV...

For all those crying, "communism is coercion", "communism is authoritarianism", let me introduce you to Peter Kropotkin. Kropotkin was a zoologist and advocate of decentralized communist societies, a.k.a, anarcho-communism. Here's an LLM-derived short biography. Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921) was a Russian geographer, zoologist, and one of the most influential anarchist thinkers. He is best known for his advocacy of anarcho-communism, a form of communism that emphasizes the abolition of the state and capitalism in favor of a decentralized, stateless society where resources and goods are communally owned and managed. Kropotkin's vision of society was rooted in mutual aid, voluntary cooperation, and the belief that human beings are naturally inclined towards solidarity and communal living. Kropotkin argued that centralized state power and capitalism inherently create inequality, oppression, and conflict. Instead, he proposed decentralized communities, where local groups or communes would manage their own affairs, making decisions through direct democracy and consensus. These communities would cooperate with each other in a network, exchanging goods and services based on need rather than profit. By removing the hierarchical structures of state and capital, Kropotkin believed that individuals could freely associate and work together for the common good, fostering a society of equality, freedom, and mutual support. In summary, Kropotkin's advocacy for decentralized communist societies involves dismantling both the state and capitalist systems, replacing them with self-managed, cooperative communities that operate on principles of mutual aid and shared resources. This vision aims to create a society where individuals have autonomy and equality, and where the social fabric is strengthened through collaboration and collective responsibility.

Peter Kropotkin - Wikipedia

Good morning fellow commies who are building on a free and open protocol in a very cooperative kind of commie anarchist manner.

Hoping this works. I am really sad to report that my talk was censored at Baltic HoneyBadger. As best as I know, here's what happened (please read my nostr-based article using one of the following options given below). My talk is on YT: On nostr: View article → Habla link: https://habla.news/a/naddr1qvzqqqr4gupzq47yajg409s43jlqkamr7mwsltwtzay44r7cmwxj0uqjyyt9qs3jqq25ym3ef9vhyanfvyk5u5z32an5kwt4fa5y5newzg8

By the end of this year, I will have attended 12 or so bitcoin events for 2024. These have been great experiences but they have also shown me that at conferences, bitcoin appears as tho it is mostly for straight white men. Yet, we know that this isn’t true when we look at the global demographics of bitcoin users. What I would love to see is a conference that invited bitcoin speakers like sex workers, activists, domestic abuse survivors, psychedelic-based healers, LGBTQ identifying bitcoiners, black bitcoiners who can educate us on the history of racist banking practices in the US and who are using bitcoin for financial empowerment, critics of bitcoin, and so on. Even if 75% of attendees were conference speakers, the event would be a success because it would be a great opportunity for these overlooked groups to be together under the same roof. Bitcoin is for anyone who needs it. I’d like to hear from those who need it most.

OK, finally got primal.

FUD. Agh. Need an edit button. My screen is covered in cracks so I can’t see typos as easily…support my work so I can buy a new phone. 😳 View quoted note →

Someone sent me sats thanking me for an amazing panel discussion at Madeira. Thank you. 😊

It’s also kind of broken lol.

In case you missed our announcement on Twitter. Environmental Bitcoiner Meetup is tomorrow from 6:30-9pm at Sweet Liberty Drinks in Miami.

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Dr. Margot Paez (@jyn_urso) on X

Calling all environmental bitcoiners! I'm pleased to announced our first Environmental Bitcoiner Meet Up at this year's @TheBitcoinConf. Where: S...