Less ego leads to more success. It allows you to learn and adapt. The real cost is not making a mistake, it's defending it.

“What if a plumber came and fixed your sink and you paid him $40? He went into the bank and he goes, ‘I’d like to cash this check. Mr. McAfee wrote it to me and I’d like my $40, and, while you’re there, would you please tell me what his balance is, and, from now on, forever, would you please inform me every time he has an incoming wire or deposit, and every check that he writes, and to whom?’” “That’s what bitcoin is,” McAfee said. “Would you be happy if your bank did that?” He added, “Please, you know you wouldn’t. We know, if anybody has any sense, and if you understand human nature, then privacy coins will be the winner.” Privacy coins, also sometimes referred to as anonymous coins, are cryptocurrencies such as monero (XMR) and zcash (ZEC) that tout capabilities to hide transactions and other activities. (from a John McAfee interview with Forbes in 2019)

Buying one Bitcoin today is the equivalent of a boomer buying a house in the 1980s. You buy it, do nothing, and you'll get rich. And the world will go to shit and the next generation will hate you. Or how are we going to separate money and state with a transparent ledger?

Some cryptocurrency tribes build bridges and trade with other tribes. Others go to war and isolate themselves. Which strategy is more likely to succeed in the long run?

Freedom technology invariants

Freedom technology invariants

This post is not about one particular freedom technology, but about what stays constant if everything changes — freedom technology invariants.

I have this theory that a lot of social media is dominated by psychopaths, narcissists, and autists. Psychopaths don't give a shit if people like them or not. Narcissists feed on any form of attention. And autists are so obsessed with a topic that they can ignore the hate.

If you want to have an impact there will be haters, it's just the law of the universe.

I just finished my first rewrite in Rust. Does that complete my initiation?

So many layers in this picture.

Long degeneracy, short common sense.

I talked to a banker in rural Bavaria yesterday and he told me how people were taking out 100k EUR in cash when they had negative interest rates and stored it in a barn. And then put it back in their normal bank account when they were back at 0% interest. Normies are so cooked.

I'm not sure if the Linux community realizes how big of a deal it is that DHH took an interest in the Linux desktop experience. This is going to cost Apple billions of dollars in revenue. And rightly so.

OK, maybe I was wrong on Rust, it's growing on me.

Great intro on Zcash and how its privacy compares to Monero from Arjun Khemani:

Zcash: A Zero to Hero's Guide

I just added Litecoin (MWEB) to my donation page. Not because somebody asked for it, but as a testament to the upgradability of old protocols.

Becoming a verb is a sign of the highest level of adoption: to google, to venmo, to tweet (dang!) When "to zashi" is commonplace ("zashi me the money", "just zashi it", etc.) Zashi app and financial privacy will have won. Internet, do your thing 😉

I just tried to figure out how to best announce updates to my blog and settled on an Atom feed and a Signal group.

Frank Braun

I believe in personal freedom and property rights.

I didn't want to deal with the complexities and privacy issues of an email list or a Substack and keep the website purely static for now. Signal has a group size limit of 1000, but as the famous Kevin Kelly says, 1000 True Fans is all you really need anyways 😉

The Technium

1,000 True Fans

This is an edited, updated version of an essay I wrote in 2008 when this now popular idea was embryonic and ragged. I recently rewrote it to convey...

Pair programming is the new default modus operandi.