Pretty much every Bitcoiner I know has a story about losing funds. I’m unaffected by this latest disaster, but I’ve lost funds in other mishaps. We all have. If this one affects you, I want to tell you that money really isn’t all that important. Which may sound insane when you’re staring at a zero balance with that pit in your stomach. And it’s also a strange thing for a Bitcoiner, with a degree in economics, to say. But, more accurately, I want to tell you that the accumulation of personal wealth is not very relevant to living a good or happy life. Now how money functions, the type of money that the world uses, that is very impactful. I don’t work in Bitcoin to stack sats, or build a citadel, or to drive a lambo, I do this work to separate money from state, to remove a giant concentration of power from the world. And having meaningful work in my life does make me a happier person. Where you spend your time and energy is wildly important, but wealth, the accumulation of stuff, is a different beast entirely. If this one affects you, I want to shake you and yell at you… WEALTH DOES NOT MAKE YOU A BETTER OR HAPPIER PERSON. Please believe me, I checked! ...a few times. I’ve been lucky enough to have seen this issue from many different angles. I grew up in a household that had some wild swings in income. One year a trailer in Florida, one year a month long vacation in Europe. I’ve lived in a roach filled studio apartment on the wrong side of town, and in a house so big you might get lost. I’ve lived among the poors and partied with the super wealthy. One time my ex won the lottery and then fell into a depression. True story. I’ve got some experience with this one! So many of us grew up with the belief that money is how you measure personal value and worth. That understanding is deep in our bones. I believed that for a long time and I fought really hard to ‘get into the room’, and then hated it there. Getting out of poverty will make you happy, but from there the more you climb that ladder, the more you find yourself in rooms filled with people absolutely desperate to prove themselves via money. People who have lost their soul. That is not winning. The accumulation of wealth is not an interesting or valuable goal in life. You can’t take the money with you. You can’t take the Twitter follower count with you. You can’t take the perfectly decorated giant house with you. You do take your story with you. And your story just got a wild new chapter. Welcome to the club.

Good times/bad times don’t make someone’s character, they reveal it. Re this Coldcard disaster, it’s been very interesting to see who is using this to dunk on others, who is trying to CYA, who is using this to gain new customers, and who is simply helping. Noted.

I’m so not a Ayn Rand fan, but she did say something brilliant once, “people who are genuinely racist usually are so because they don’t have a better reason to like themselves.” Nailed it! And this applies to all sorts of things and certainly to sexism, and especially to the Red Pill crew. Men who look down on women nearly always do so because they don’t have a better reason to like themselves. There is that zerosum hierarchy again. If you can be above a woman then you aren’t on the bottom… right?

I gotta admin, Trump makes me feel less bad about having voted for Bush... at least I didn't vote for Trump! This mess isn't my fault!!! 🤣😥

Get good at conflict. Humans are a social species. The #1 predictor of health and happiness is the quality of your relationships. No two people on planet earth agree on everything. All relationships require managing differences. Avoiding an argument doesn’t keep the peace it keeps the tension. The strength of a relationship is in the repair. Get good at conflict. Your health and happiness depend on it.

I just spend a half hour explaining Wavelength to my Spanish tutor ¡En español, por supuesto! She looked a bit overwhelmed 🤣 which is good news, I now speak Spanish well enough to overwhelm people with my nerdy enthusiasm in two different languages!

I’ve been working with Bitcoin payments since before Lightning was a thing. My personal motivation has always been to make better money, money that brings real utility to real people, and money that real people can use. For 14 years now I’ve always felt that we are just “a few years” away… just a few more years. But now, with this, with Wavelength, I think it’s finally happened. We’re ready. Wavelength is a toolkit for adding self-custodial bitcoin (and stablecoin) payments to any application. It takes everything hard about integrating bitcoin and turns it into a few simple API calls, so any developer, vibe coder, or agent can give their app a working bitcoin wallet without learning how Lightning works under the hood. Check out the blog post and ping me with questions!

Announcing Wavelength: Bitcoin on Easy Mode for Agents and Humans 〰️⚡

We're excited to announce the alpha release of Wavelength, a toolkit for adding self-custodial bitcoin (and stablecoin) payments to any application…

so true. I want to not think about the bank account when I buy groceries or book a trip. the rest you can keep.

What I imagine the toxic maxi Twitter influencers listen to in the morning while brushing their teeth.

The Total Perspective Vortex lives rent free in my head nearly every day.

The more you know, the older you get, the more you become aware of your own lack of knowledge. The universe is just way too big and complex. Life is just way too complex. We cling to religion and simple philosophies to avoid the panic of the vast unknown. Sometimes, just for a moment, I can hold just a glimpse of the immensity of my own ignorance and I have to go sit down and take a few deep breaths to avoid drowning in it.