“the only way to strike a real balance between effort and results is to resort to a sound money” View quoted note →

“Housing has become the defacto SoV for the masses who can afford to fund a mortgage.”

Stacker News

Debasement: What It Is And Isn't... \ stacker news

I can't wait to read the stacker economists' take on this article. [9 comments]

“Bitcoin solved the double‑spending problem with a global ledger that is independently verified by all nodes on the network. However, to achieve this, Satoshi’s solution traded off the speed and privacy offered by physical cash. Chaumian ecash grafted onto bitcoin reverses that trade‑off. An ecash mint handles double‑spend detection, while users regain instant, local finality along with the option to collapse the token back into money whenever connectivity returns.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidbirnbaum/2025/07/31/can-bitchat-build-a-free-internet-with-bitcoin/

Thanks for sharing! “Last-Mile Sovereignty The Bitchat-plus-ecash model widens bitcoin’s surface area without tampering with its monetary policy, showing that hard money can be used in contexts where payment speed is important and internet connectivity may or may not be available. All the while, the ecash tokens used for payment are bearer instruments that remain anchored to an incorruptible base. To get there, mint implementations need rigorous reputation management features and proof-of-reserve functionality so that users can understand how much counterparty risk is introduced by the mint. The end-user app itself must present ecash payments in a familiar interface, turning ecash payments and bitcoin redemptions into ordinary taps and swipes. If the user experience of this technology can be developed to the degree that it can be readily used by non-experts, it could do for payments what Nostr aims to do for speech: extend the reach of permissionless systems all the way to the physical edges of daily life.” View quoted note →

“i hate mobile devices, because the way that military and industry have set things up, they want to use it as a funnel for your attention” View quoted note →

“Bitcoin is replacing bonds, not dollars. The dollar's current global power comes from the bonds, not the token that spends.” View quoted note →

An interesting slide deck.

Google Docs

Coatue EMW 2025 - Keynote.pdf

@Kudzai Kutukwa - great article! Extract 1: "Schaaf's core mistake lies in treating money as a state tool rather than a market phenomenon. This collectivist conception ignores the fundamental truth that money emerges spontaneously from voluntary exchange, not government decree. His worldview represents central banking's pathology of conflating institutional monetary socialism with individual sovereignty." Extract 2: "In all honesty, what are stablecoins redeemable for? More fiat, debt-based, inflationary paper backed by government credibility drowning in deficits. This creates multiple layers of counterparty risks: the stablecoin issuer, the banking system holding reserves, and the deficit-spending government backing the securities." Extract 3: "Claiming Bitcoin lacks value because it isn't "backed" resembles arguing email has no value because it isn't printed on paper. This represents the dying gasp of fiat apologists and Keynesian witchdoctors; a worldview where money is decreed, not discovered; where value is granted, not earned; and where economic truth serves political necessity. "Backing" isn't a feature, it's a trap keeping you tethered to the system Bitcoin was created to escape. Stablecoins aren't stable; they're pegged to a sinking ship, maintaining 1:1 backing with inflating dollars. As dollars bleed value through systematic debasement, so do they." Extract 4: "When Schaaf warns that USD stablecoins might "weaken ECB control over monetary conditions," he inadvertently reveals central banking's coercive nature. The ECB's euro stablecoins and digital euro aren't about empowering consumers, they're about re-centralizing monetary control under slick looking interfaces and Orwellian surveillance. Both CBDCs and regulated stablecoins remove bearer instruments while subjecting all transactions to state scrutiny." Extract 5: "Whether your chains are denominated in dollars or euros matters little when the shackles remain identical." Extract 6: "Stablecoins and CBDCs represent the old world's final attempt to prevent monetary evolution through technological camouflage and regulatory capture. They offer innovation's appearance while preserving monetary authoritarianism's substance."

The Irony Of Unintended Consequences

"Money is not an invention of the state.

“most people can't handle the additive stress that comes with trying to find the time to simultaneously manage their personal assets, savings, and self-educating themselves on a novel technology like bitcoin” View quoted note →

“To be reliably able to focus on something, you need to be intuitively, emotionally invested in the outcome.”

benkuhn.net

Attention is your scarcest resource

how to ration your shower thoughts • care viscerally • monotask • evade obligations • timebox bullshit

“…when Covid was at the peak of madness and the Biden Admin was about to MANDATE the poison vaxx on over 80 million working class Americans or they were to lose their jobs... the Supreme Court stepped in and the Biden Admin realized it had lost total control of the population, the Covid hysteria wasn't going to win them the next cycle... they sent Kamala Harris to Europe where she declared Ukraine would join NATO. They had set the population up for 8 years that Putin was the source of evil and they played that card to deflect from their atrocious policies on Covid. Putin took the bait/ or had to and the next day every mask wearing covid vax fanatic had shifted their emotional ire onto Russia. Classic bait and switch Wag the Dog ops.” View quoted note →

“Money is a tool that humans figured out because they wanted to show appreciation and value to people they didn't know. So you have something to exchange with people you don't trust. That's the whole point of money.” View quoted note →

🤣 “If you can afford to off-board you can afford a Lightning channel without the trustodial shenanigans run by scammers.”

Stacker News

Playing Around with Ark \ stacker news

This week I've been playing around a bit with this working Ark protocol on Signet. It wasn't a deep dive down the Ark rabbit hole, just some superf...

A leaked memo shared with Wired indicates that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is reversing course on Middle East funding. He wrote that it's become "substantially harder to stay on the frontier" of AI development without tapping Gulf sovereign wealth, despite previously warning about the national security risks of granting "soft power" to authoritarian regimes. Anthropic in talks to raise fresh capital at $170 billion valuation

CNBC

Anthropic in talks to raise fresh capital at $170 billion valuation

Anthropic is looking to raise up to $5 billion at a $170 billion valuation in a funding round led by Iconiq Capital.

“If we don't become obsessed with our own hardware we will not stay free.” View quoted note →