Kirk
Kirk@nostr.nz
npub16dvm...2dq2
Freedom Maximalist
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.
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.
A friend just told me that, in the original story of Howl's Moving Castle, the reason he wanted his home to move around was to avoid property tax.
Makes me love it all the more.
The further I get into my bitcoin journey, the more I look back on the 2018-19 bear as the high-point of bitcoiner culture.
Bitcoin felt punk back then. We’d just emerged victorious from the block size wars, price had crashed to sub-$4k, lightning was just getting going, regulators were trying crush us...good times.
And, while on one hand, bitcoin has been substantially de-rerisked, open source funding has improved dramatically, the political environment has become more favourable…the culture feels like it has rotted (except for here on Nostr).
When I look at the empty mempools and lack of retail interest/search volume for bitcoin (despite basically being at ATHs), I can’t help but think it is because bitcoin has lost its counter-culture appeal in the eyes of most people. Between hyping MSTR and its myriad of clones, simping for politicians and cronyism, ‘strategic’ reserve bs, we’ve gone from suits not wanting to associate us because bitcoin is just used for drugs and terrorism dontcha know, to regular people not wanting to associate with us because of all the suits.
Feels like a kinda shitty timeline tbh.
Last 15mins was A+
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Fountain
TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast • #617: How Trump's Tariffs Should Have Worked with Lyn Alden • Listen on Fountain
Marty sits down with Lyn Alden to discuss Triffin's dilemma.
Lyn Alden on Twitter: https://x.com/lynaldencontact
Lyn's Newsletter: https://www.lyna...
Listening to this 1979 talk by the late psychologist, Nathaniel Branden. Though the topic is how libertarians can unwittingly work to undermine their own movement, it all equally applies to bitcoiners.
What starts as earnest and principled can so easily become performative if we don't engage in constant self-reflection.
Bitcoiners make fun of goldbugs a lot (and often for good reason).
However, gold is still the only other asset that it really makes sense to own. The kind of asset you would feel comfortable holding if you knew you were about to go into a coma for a decade.
Gold is the perfect compliment to bitcoin in a portfolio. The tail risks that could make bitcoin go to zero are twofold: political and technological. The tail risk that could make gold fall is that bitcoin's tail risks don't materialize.
So much for the first amendment
I like how, when a zap fails to send on Primal, it gives you a notification with the option "No"
Civil asset forfeiture is just a fancy term for theft
😂