Kirk

GM

I normally agree with Lola, but she’s mistaken here on virtually every point of this:
 1. USDT on lightning is in no way “expanding US hegemony over the global south”. Most people in third world countries are desperate for dollars (Jack Mallers talks about this a lot, and this bottom-up demand is why Strike started supporting USDT on Tron). Compared to their local govt shitcoin, the USD is a pretty decent store-of-value.

 While it used to be that only fairly wealthy people in these countries who were able to save in dollars (as they either had to have offshore bank accounts or purchase physical cash on the grey market), USDT vastly expands who has access to dollars. As much as I hate the dollar and the entire fiat system, in this context it is the opposite of subjugation. It is liberation for potentially billions of people. 

 It is also entirely opt-in. Compare some individual buying USDT on an app in their phone to vs the IMF or World Bank giving massive loans to their country’s dictator and then forcing all the citizens to pay off the debt once that dictator inevitably embezzles the funds. One is liberatory and voluntary, the other repressive and forced.
 2. As for Lola’s second paragraph: “The collab circumvents US dependency on selling debt to other nations while furthering Tether's position as one of the largest buyers of US Treasuries, custodied by a private entity formerly owned and operated by the US Secretary of Commerce.” I’m not sure what is particularly negative about any of this. 

We should want Tether’s position as one of the largest buyers of US Treasuries to be further cemented. Demand for USDT has historically been directly proportional to demand for bitcoin. If the US govt is dependent on Tether to buy its treasuries so it can fund itself, it can’t then go cracking down on bitcoin because that will affect demand for USDT and thus demand for treasuries. 

 This is unambiguously a good thing. 
 3. As for USDT being a CBDC… I’m not sure how Lola could be defining CBDC for this to make sense. 

 Despite being issued by the company, Tether, this company has virtually zero insight into who actually holds USDT. Tether only has direct knowledge of the KYC-verified accounts that deposit/redeem USDT directly with them. 

 This makes accurately discerning and freezing certain USDT wallets incredibly difficult. Especially since USDT is on a bunch of chains and swapped on all kinds of DEXes. 

 Chainalysis is already a bunch of probabilistic nonsensical voodoo akin to blood spatter analysis or the polygraph. 

Imagine how much harder things are going to be for the surveillers with USDT on lightning, where you already have pretty good privacy. Especially since you will be able to atomically swap USDT on lightning to USDT on Liquid (with confidential transactions). 

 This seems like the opposite of a CBDC. It’s far closer to the creation of dark, digital USDs.

I knew things were going to change with Gensler gone, but this is pretty wild

Fedimint feels like a dead project. The Discord is a ghost-town, a lot of the early contributors have quietly moved on, mentions on podcasts have nose-dived...Cashu has clearly captured all the mindshare in the ecash space.

I'm seeing a lot of posts mourning the death of David Lynch. It's made me want to learn what it is about his work that folks here clearly love so much. As someone who has never seen anything by David Lynch, where should I start?

Rogan was nothing short of heroic during covid. That makes it all the more disappointing to see what he has become since: the Oprah of the new right — the place all the most despicable people go to rehabilitate their image.

It is curious to me that so many of those apoplectic about the supposed "grooming gangs" in the UK, are also staunch defenders of Israel, a state that explicitly advocates for the rape of Palestinian hostages. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-hamas-war-idf-palestinian-prisoner-alleged-rape-sde-teinman-abuse-protest/

I increasingly worry that the block size wars were a Pyrrhic victory. It conditioned an unhealthy reactivity and knee-jerk opposition to all proposed protocol changes, regardless of merit. In any case, happy Genesis Day.

Iyah has incredible talent! I really hope this doesn't turn out to be another 'Rich Men North of Richmond'. Her voice is much needed in our crazy world. https://youtu.be/y29kmnhjtc8?si=TRckyzELOx99pJDC

Ross Stevens just dropped his latest investor letter. As always, beautifully written and an absolute must-read. https://www.nydig.com/research/stone-ridge-2024-investor-letter

The NZD is like one of those shitcoins that doesn't even make the first page of Coinmarketcap.

For some reason YT decided to feed this up to me today 😂 Mike is one of those guys who is ideologically such a Statist that bitcoin's success is both a repudiation of everything he believes, and deeply threatening to the "reasonable, centrist, adult-in-the-room" soft authoritarianism he yearns to see enacted across the world. Mike is the man for whom the "Have Fun Staying Poor" meme was invented. He is poor in the sense that really matters: intellectually bereft and morally bankrupt... And I can only hope bitcoin's continued rise will make him reputationally destitute as well. nostr:npub1d3f4m9dgvkdjxn26pqzsxn6lpfn78sxwllxyt8mp76q0a9zyyjlswhr4xv

Are there any ARKs running on Liquid? I want to get a sense for the UX.

Just having fun playing with my bitcoin

It's generally not my kind of art, but I swear all I want for Christmas is a nostr:npub1ndketdm2qyv35nrhsxzks8kh7w7w6tll4rjp29hv0qjqkgfjsh6snmgk2v painting of some babe and a machine gun.

I can imagine how many eth folks are looking at this lovely little series of higher lows and higher highs and embodying that dude with the butterfly meme. If it rolls over, max pain.

You can't convince me this is healthy

Am I the only one feeling a bit depressed by the resurgence in shitcoins?

Great, non-technical overview of the Ark protocol by nostr:npub1jusfy5rfwzrj42zkrcja09c675dk979tzhfdlzk9fp7hjg424yusjrhr2e: https://youtu.be/HKaj41uFMr4?si=Oe4tDeGXhkm-IEyk