Kirk

We won't get another bull market until Blue Collar Bitcoin returns

Feels right to be dumping on the anniversary of BitConnect launching

Something I've recently realized is the extent to which Israel completely controls the US far beyond its middle-eastern foreign policy. If Javier Millei had all the same positions he currently holds, only instead of being slavishly devoted to Israel he was critical, do you think the US govt would be creating a strategic peso reserve to bail out Argentina? Of course not. If María Corina Machado wasn't a pro-Israel fanatic who proclaims that "the struggle of Venezuela is the struggle of Israel", would she be such a darling of the US establishment? Not a chance. You can believe anything about any other issue, but if you aren't full-throated in your support of a genocidal ethnostate in the middle-east you will find yourself arrested, deported, fired, cancelled, regime changed and just generally demonized. Almsot everything the US govt does is first-and-foremost to aid Israel: there's the direct financial aid, there's the endless weapons, there's the intelligence support, there's vetoing every UN resolution against Israel, there's running diplomatic cover for Israel, there's firing Ivy league professors and expelling US students critical of Israel, there's criminalizing US firms boycotting Israel, there's criminalizing speech against Israel in states like Florida, there's all the financial aid to surrounding Arab states so they don't intervene on behalf of the Palestinians but instead assist Israel whilst keeping their population in check (these are just bribes to look the other way), there's bombing Iran on behalf of Israel, the entire terror wars... It's endless and it's utterly sickening.

Two things stand out watching this 1981 episode of Phil Donahue: 1. The arguments for unschooling/home schooling are pretty unassailable. 2. Donahue was a master, and his popularity speaks to how we had more intellectual, more curious America. Ironically, I think the government schools have played a large role in why a show like this would not be feasible today. https://youtu.be/fXLWPpln0rQ?si=fKFmZpRDDWVg3zT4

My citadel

I can't speak for 2013 and am not an OG, but the culture around Bitcoin was far more exciting during the 2018-2019 period. Instead of simping for politicians, obsessing over zombie treasury companies, and arguing about things like op_return that don't matter, the discussion was serious and engaging. Lightning was just getting started, the earliest coinjoin implementations were launching, soft forks were actively being worked on and debated, the podcasters weren't all promoting penny stocks... It was a better time, imo. This isn't hipster to recognize. We can be be glad that bitcoin is still alive, but there's more to bitcoin than NGU. There's many ways in which things are better: Nostr exists now, there's a lot more sustainable funding for open source developers, bitcoin has been massively de-risked and normalized as an investment, and we've all gotten richer...but we've lost a lot too.

Max always has a great, principled perspective. https://fountain.fm/episode/BGphNLL3sek1jYt3L84D nostr:nevent1qvzqqqpxquqzq0upl3ret504wxpdklhfmre7rs8da9rfuyc6hgzmdaa5jtqnxnztuca9du

"Don't hate the player, hate the game" is one of those flippant things people say to absolve people of responsibility for the most blatantly unethical actions. It's a shitcoiner morality slogan. It is possible at once to understand that we are living in a golden age of grift, and that systems have evolved to incentivize people to check their principles at the door for a buck. Still, everyone has agency and can choose not to sel their soul for a few bucks, a few clicks, a few likes. It's important to find it within yourself to hate both the player AND the game.

A perhaps unpopular opinion that I firmly believe: MSTR has not even been net positive for bitcoin’s price. It’s been a negative on every front.

GM

For all the young father's out there, I can't recommend this book highly enough: https://www.thesovereignchild.com/ We all want to be good fathers. This takes that abstract desire and provides a concrete guide for that means in practice.

https://fountain.fm/episode/iCQcMXw9gD04pPtDgB31 nostr:nevent1qvzqqqpxquqzpq8r59vd82jw78wdwvlj2f2d5j9qyk47js7afv50vfxgecm8v8ftpfwu2u

Great ep! https://fountain.fm/episode/F2XMl0iPF4tPxN3AEXQO nostr:nevent1qvzqqqpxquqzqfy7qh9cc8mnlzy8z38wty4jh44s2pwjmjr0ztjyl7lf0nmr0pxs5h60hp

God I hate the bellcurve meme

https://fountain.fm/episode/xdISRqZvcFCJcwvTNA7o nostr:nevent1qvzqqqpxquqzqdpjc24h903zx74l0a5rhds3zxs8wflrquq9xy268cclfrua34a3m20yaj

While I agree that “everything is good for bitcoin” is mostly true, I don’t think it pertains just to attacks that don’t kill or meaningfully cripple bitcoin. Shitcoins are the prime example here. They aren’t able to outcompete bitcoin in the marketplace, but they have been wildly successful at poisoning public sentiment. People see the grifting and associate it with bitcoin…they aren’t particularly discerning with their hatred. Even otherwise intelligent and thoughtful people, like Cory Doctorow, can’t seem to disentangle bitcoin from “crypto”. It’s all just a VC and tech bro con. This reputational damage has proven to be fairly durable, which I think is why we haven’t seen much retail interest in bitcoin this cycle (even though the we’ve 6x’d since the 2022 lows). Anecdotally, I have many casual friends, who were previously at least open to bitcoin and are now ideologically opposed to it. To give an example: a couple days ago I was having my annual fantasy football draft zoom with 11 guys I went to high school with, and the topic of bitcoin came up. One of the guys is a professional videographer. He was talking about having just been hired to film Eric Trump at the Bitcoin Asia conference in Hong Kong a week ago, and apparently had been re-hired to do another shoot during Eric’s travels in Japan. The body language and derisive comments from guys on the call, not towards Trump but rather bitcoin itself, made me think that there is literally no price bitcoin can go to where these guys will ever purchase any. They will only hate it more as it grows. I can’t say how exactly it will manifest, but this will hurt bitcoin at some point. It certainly won’t kill it, but there are going to be political backlashes in a lot of countries where politicians tap into this animosity. I know npub1n3sjlzmhpu8rl56umtptc4lua6zkretq2p82yhytnmlcuq639vlqd0te5l and others have done great work showing how bitcoin is widely owned by people across the political spectrum. What I would be curious to see, though, is how prevalent extremely negative sentiment towards bitcoin is amongst the population, how rigid those beliefs are, and where those people lie politically.

https://fountain.fm/episode/XRHxPWDK43EF80B3M3bM nostr:nevent1qvzqqqpxquqzqz4pdzusqs0y8jlgjgc5lwj76hcm7nhq39ty0k5c4we26nmg8jv3q93758

This is very fiat, but are there any Nostrich Fantasy Football leagues going this year? If not, I'm keen to make one. I'm thinking 250k sats buy-in.