h/t x.com/bitcoin__apex

Americans can't afford a house. Which of these is the reason? - Houses have become more valuable - Money has become less valuable (due to central bank inflating the money supply via printing/QE, with salary rises unable to keep up)

I've worked out the code that the institutions are using in their bitcoin trading algorithms. Here's the whole source code: const price = 58000;

Chancellor of UK has come up with a genius plan for reducing the gigantic UK government debt.

one of the all time classics let's hope more people wise up this cycle

Shining a light on the force for good that is bitcoin. Thank you @gladstein for everything you do.

The "what if there's no internet?" question gets asked so many times by people that don't understand bitcoin. But they never ask what will happen to their own fiat world, when one little software update brings down half the system. h/t LinaSeiche

What is not to like?

Stupid old me thought that UK inflation was due to the vast amounts of money created out of thin air by the government. What a great relief to hear that it was all just down to Taylor Swift, so all our worries should be over now her tour is finished.

the Guardian

Hopes of August rate cut fall after UK inflation stays at 2%

‘Taylor Swift effect’ on hotel prices partly blamed for UK inflation defying forecast drop

"When the state and its governing bodies must routinely come to the citizenry to raise taxes, they will be cautious in what they request lest they be voted out of office. Many of the issues with the state stem from an overactive government using an inflation tax to do more than is necessary. For example, there is no way that the current global level of military spending, which invariably leads to conflict, would be sustained if the government used direct taxes to pay for it. What do you want: free healthcare or more AK-47s? Free university education or a fleet of F-16s? Affordable public transport or another nuclear missile-armed submarine? If the taxpayer decided, different types of public goods would be produced, leading to a better quality of life for many people." Arthur Hayes, in his 'Hot Chick' newsletter.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MONEY AND WEALTH (https://x.com/Devon_Eriksen_/status/1811272099647967330): Middle-class leftists don't really understand the difference between wealth and money. That's because what they have is a job as a retarded commie journalist, which pays them money, which they put in the bank before spending it on Funko Pops, cannabis, dildos, and tofu. They think wealth is "more money". And when they think about "more money", they think about all the Funko Pops they want but can't afford, and about how Elon Musk can afford more Funko Pops than he could ever use, that is if Funko Pops could be used for anything, which they can't, unless you count leftists' strange propensity for putting unexpected things in places they do not belong. They don't understand that Elon Musk doesn't have some sort of special titanium credit bank card connected to a bank account with 260,000,000,000 munnies in it, for the buying of Funko Pops. What he has is some businesses he started, and a bunch of dudes whose job it is to guess the value of things have arrived at the consensus that they are worth that much. That guess changes by the hour. Leftists can't really wrap their heads around this idea, not in the intuitive sense that would allow them to engage with it as a concept. They can't imagine what it would be like to be in that position. Why not? Because if they could, they wouldn't be leftists. In fact, many people can, and therefore are not leftists, so leftists are really just the group of people who are self-selected for not being able to figure this out. This is why they can, without blushing, describe "reusable space launch capability" as "unnecessary wealth". They don't understand that if you took every share of SpaceX away from Elon Musk, and all the other shareholders, it would still be valued at 200 billion dollars (or whatever it is on the day you are reading this), but it would not magically transform into 200 billion one-dollar bills that you could give to left-wing journalists to buy more Funko Pops with. It would still be a bunch of factories, and designs, and offices, and employment contracts, and rocket engines, and stuff. The reality is that the earn-spend-consume model of money that retarded leftist commie journos are familiar with has an upper limit. Once you've spent on much on yourself as you want, a ceiling which varies depending on your character, you need a new source of meaning and purpose in life. You need to develop different ambitions. Then your spending becomes not about what you want to have, but what you want to create. You build the things you want to see in the world. This is where money becomes wealth. Money is used to buy things. Wealth is used to build things. When you create something that a lot of people care about, it's valued at a huge amount of money, because money is a measure of fucks given. So maybe, when you have enough money to buy a mansion and a yacht, you decide that what you really want is "reusable space launch capability", because you're a nerd who reads science fiction, and so you think it's a kind of dumb idea for humanity to spend all its time on one tiny dust speck in an infinite universe. So you buy some computers and you hire some dudes who are good at designing things on computers, and then you buy some metal, and hire some dudes who are good at cutting metal and sticking it together, and pretty soon you're the proud owner of whole bunch of stuff.... computers and factories and tanks full of liquid oxygen and launch pads and most importantly, rocket boosters. And no Funko Pops. Not a single one. Now, it's worth more money than you started with, because the people who guess the value of things (it's called a "stock market") are starting to agree that this was maybe a pretty good idea. So, on paper, you're richer than you ever were. But that's your not bank account, or your Funko Pop collection. That's the fact that you now control humanity's effort to leave the gravity well. And you control it because you built it in the first place. Wealth inequality is a measure of technological progress. It doesn't exist in low-tech societies where everyone is chasing antelope with a throwing stick and a stone-tipped spear. Because no one invents anything and there's nothing to own. And it peaks in high-tech societies where enterprising people create entire economies ex nihilo by investing in a wild idea. Because things are being invented and people give a fuck about them, and so the innovators have a much higher net worth than the people who sit around eating processed snack foods and shopping for Funko Pops on the internet. Reducing wealth inequality is a disaster, and typically requires one. If you reduce wealth inequality in a free market, you are either outright destroying growth enterprises, or transferring control of them to non-producers. Which is what leftists really are. Useless journo flacks and cloistered academics who want to tear down the engines of tech innovation so they can buy more middle class consumer goods, until they tear down the engines that produce those, too. The most important task in all of economics is keeping people who don't get shit done out of the way of people who do. Leave humanity's orbital launch capability alone, Zaid. It is already in the hands of the people who are best qualified to operate it. We know that because they are ones who built it in the first place.

The possibilities that lie in the future are infinite. When I say "It is our duty to remain optimists", this includes not only the openness of the future but also that which all of us contribute to it by everything we do: we are all responsible for what the future holds in store. Thus is it our duty, not to prophesy evil but, rather, to fight for a better world. Karl Popper, The Myth of the Framework, 1994

Join early or join late. Everyone is free to choose.

This is why Bitcoin is not like the other crypto-currencies.

Someone actually did the science:

BITCOIN POWER CONSUMPTION.INFO

Bitcoin power consumption

Bitcoin energy consumption & emissions, a climate alarmists take. TLDR- Bitcoin essential !

Turns out that four years after The End Of The World (according to the mainstream media's 'Science' section), bitcoin uses 0.065% of global electricity, and produces 0.024% of emissions.

GM

Power Law

I find bitcoin's adherence to the Power Law fascinating, and for me it has become my favoured price model. It is so beautifully simple, with only one input variable: time. I built this Bitcoin Power Law web page because the other couple out there didn't allow me to do what I wanted: - To choose a date (e.g. your retirement, or a major purchase goal), and to see where price might be. Not only the fair price, but perhaps more importantly, the floor price below which bitcoin should never go under again. - To choose a price (e.g. $1m), and to see the probable date (when fair price reaches the price) and very high probable date (when bottom price reaches it). - To remind me to stop making too emotionally fantastical price predictions whenever price takes off on one of its major spurts, or I read some ultra-bullish article. And more importantly, just to be able to show the chart while talking to a noob, with price indisputably sloping from bottom left to top right. Message: it's not too high to buy ;) Of course, models are not guarantees. They all have their flaws, and the obvious one in this case is the model does not take into account the 4 year halving cycle to refine its price predictions. But I believe there is less likelihood of this stock-to-flow cycle repeating indefinitely (as the halving becomes a less and less significant part of the bitcoin stock), than of nature's Power Law continuing as we go through the global adoption curve. Enjoy! (no ads, trackers, spammers, or VPN blockers)

Power Law

ChatGPT fans need to be aware that they will increasingly be fed propaganda and have "inconvenient" narratives censored. Alternatives do exist and I would suggest using them. An example that just launched is

Venice AI

Venice | Private AI for Unlimited Creative Freedom

Try Venice.ai for free. Generate text, images, characters and video using private and unbiased AI.

(needs to prove itself but on a quick comparison is way better: not censored and cheaper/faster than ChatGPT).