If you are a content creator, of any size, in any medium, and you are not on Nostr, trying to bring your fans to Nostr, you are wasting your time.

Happy Birthday, Bitcoin!

I am not a maximalist. I don't have all of my capital in Bitcoin. And while I have a regular DCA of what I can afford going into Strike/BTC, I also put capital into a fully diversified investment strategy with stocks, funds and other things. Because while Bitcoin may be the best option for a global reserve asset, unless we buy mining equipment there is no built in revenue stream that will increase our assets over time within the Bitcoin network. So my investment goal is to build a portfolio of dividend paying investments on the wall street side, and then continue to buy Bitcoin on the crypto side for the rest of my life. It would be nice never to have to "sell" a single sat, only use them for zaps towards posts on Nostr that I like.

best New Year's in a very long time.

My opinion is that the current system of an inflationary currency is tyranny. It's a harsh word, used in order to get strong reactions. Let me be even more clear and more harsh. The US Dollar and the systems that create it and support it is destroying civilization, and it's time we said that out loud. If I put $100 into a bank, it should be able to buy $100 worth of goods and services in 1 year, 10 years, 100 years. Period. The reason it can't do that today is because we have an inflationary currency that loses purchasing power over time, and that's a failure of design and implementation. There are reasons why such a system might be desirable for certain groups of people or institutions, but the cost of such a system is too high for everyone else. It is possible to design a system that would be able to maintain purchasing power over years or decades. But it would take the full cooperation of everyone on the planet to make it work properly. And no matter how much we yell "why can't we all just get along", it's just not going to happen. So the ONLY alternative is a fixed supply monetary foundation, and the changes that come with it. The next few years or decades is going to see the implementation of that system, no matter what we think. Because it is the only path in front of us. We can delay getting on that path, but that's not going to work forever. As of today, everyone who is invested in the stock market in any capacity is invested in Bitcoin. There is no way to escape, resistance is futile. So learn about it, ask questions, yell and scream at the brick walls, whatever. The future is coming whether we are ready for it or not.

Just saw a video from Katharina Pistor about her book "The Code of Capital". This was shared with me on Facebook after I asked my wall "What is Money", and it's an interesting set of concepts. My comments in response: First aspect, Priority, is enforced within the Bitcoin network in several ways. First, on the non-custodial blockchain itself, if you don't have the keys to a wallet, none of the assets in that wallet are available to you. Zero. It doesn't matter what the law says, it doesn't matter how much force is used, without those keys the assets can't be touched or manipulated. Second, in custodial wallets, you can have institutions working in the same way that banks work in the fiat world, giving you access to your assets but keeping the keys safe so that if the law identifies those assets as being needed to pay a debt, they can be accessed without undo force. If a court requires a bank to open an account and pay someone from the assets, they can and will do that. Perhaps that is why so much effort is being made to bring as much Bitcoin as possible under the control of financial institutions, governments and other potential third parties. They will never get all of it, there will always be some on-chain that are excluded from legal control, but if they can build financial tools and infrastructure using custodial wallets it can work exactly like the current fiat custodial system with the added advantage of the limited supply. Which I'm sure some people are trying to get around, but we'll deal with that eventually. Second aspect, Durability, is absolute within the Bitcoin network. Much like Capital itself is a conceptual framework, the blockchain makes it visible exactly how much of the 21 million BTC that are available are in each and every wallet address at any given time. Once released by a miner, BTC can neither be created nor destroyed, only transferred between wallets. Third aspect, Universality, is also part of the reason Bitcoin is superior because the asset is pure mathematical and computer code, making it completely safe against destruction. And if contracts in custodial systems like I described above are put into place, guarantees can be made that a certain amount of capital is available to replenish "lost" BTC from a reserve if someone is stupid with their keys or one of those third party custodial systems is hacked. Convertibility is a potential weakness in that there is only one form of BTC, and that's the numbers on the blockchain. In order to convert those numbers to other types of assets, it requires an exchange of value. And "cash" or physical representations of BTC do not exist, except as perhaps printed materials related to wallets on custodial third party controlled accounts. Again, goes back to whether third party custodial systems are needed, and in order for the current players in the financial games to keep control over our lives and our nations, they probably feel the need to take control over as much BTC as possible as quickly as possible so that they can continue to keep that control. The enforcement mechanism in the pure non-custodial blockchain system is simply the keys, nothing else exists. And third party actors, meaning any institution or legal entity, are unable to overcome that in the context of BTC. I agree with her premise that these various sources of law have all of the power in the fiat systems. But they have NO power in the on-chain system. It's pure peer-to-peer.

Once we end the tyranny of currency that loses purchasing power over time, we can dispense with the primitive idea that the goal of business is to accumulate wealth, and instead focus on the real reason we have competition and cooperation, which is to lower costs.

May 2025 see all of our dreams come true!! Happy New Year!

My conclusion based on years of reading and making connections is that budget deficits are the actual source of ALL of these issues, and those started in the 1960's with the Vietnam War, Great Society, Apollo and other factors. Our government's refusal to balance the budget forces us to shove more and more US Dollars into circulation, far away above and beyond what a growing population can absorb by having more demand for goods and services. So every single year that we have a shortfall and we have to go further into debt to issue new currency, the people who buy the treasury bonds get the coupons and then later when the bonds mature they get more money to spend in the economy. The individuals and institutions who are buying those treasuries are not middle class or working class, they are upper class and institutions. And what do upper class and institutions do with new money that comes in as revenue? They buy stocks and high ticket items. Enter "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous". That was a TV show in the 1980's that was SUPPOSED to show how insane it was that people have this much extra capital, but instead it got spun into a "I wish I were a Rich Man" show where everyone in America was promised that if we worked hard enough for 4 decades, we could afford $100 Million dollar mansions and thousand foot yachts. If we don't balance the budget, the US Dollar will go to zero. Milk will cost $50 per gallon. Million dollar homes will be dumps that nobody wants. Education will be so expensive, nobody will attend classes except the ultra rich. Charles Dickens will be rolling in his grave. Balance the !@#$%^& budget at the federal level. If any politician doesn't show you a plan to do that, and if any member of the House or Senate doesn't have that as their top priority, vote against them.

Bitcoin does not need the United States Government. The United States Government needs Bitcoin. I first need to state the endgame goal, which is to replace the debt based fiat currency system with a wealth based hard money system. No more currency debasement by printing, no more governments that have to pay off international slavery loans or face sanctions by their trading partners. I believe that Bitcoin could be used as an international standard for the base layer wealth measurement system that underpins a global monetary system, but everyone is going to have to agree to that before it happens. The ideal path for me would be as follows: The United States Federal Government balances the budget. This is not going to be a quick process, but it was done in the past and can be done again. Easiest thing to do would be for Congress to start using Pay As You Go rules for legislation again. If someone files a bill in Congress that results in an expense, that piece of legislation needs to identify the exact funding source for that expense on a 1:1 ratio. We did this up to the 2001 budget in the late 90's and it worked. But the Afghanistan/Iraq war years destroyed it, and Congress has refused to use PayGo rules ever since. It's still on the books, they just need to enforce it. Once we have a balanced budget, and indeed during the time period when we are trying to get to that point again, 1% of all federal revenue is directed towards Bitcoin Mining. Not a Strategic Reserve, but actual hash contracts that are funded by the Federal Government. The Bitcoin that is generated by these miners is not held or hoarded, but used. At first it would be sold at market rate and the resulting dollars would be added to the general fund. The more hash contracts are in place, the more the revenue would be, and the more the general fund is supported. Positive feedback loop. When the budget is balanced, we keep it balanced. We pay off existing bonds, bills and notes as they come due as part of the regular expenditures. We don't need to sell any more bonds because the expenditures are paid for by selling the Bitcoin that the miners continue to generate. And as the debt is slowly paid off, the number of US Dollars in the system slowly begins to go down over time. Gradually the business world changes over to using Bitcoin, not just as a reserve asset store of value but as a medium of exchange and unit of account. Things are still priced in dollars, because that's a huge change that we won't be ready for until a decade or two passes. Celebrations across the country erupt when the final 30 year Treasury Bond is paid off, and the US Government formally transitions over to the Satoshi as the base money, joining many other nations around the world that were able to do that already.

For anyone who is wondering where the top is to the current Bitcoin run, I have three words for you. HA, HA, HA.

Dear Syria, Don't miss this opportunity. Adopt Bitcoin as your new monetary foundation. Sincerely, Your future selves.

If you knew, beyond a reasonable doubt, that there was an institution that was intentionally devaluing the value and purchasing power of the currency that your entire life was based around, what would you be willing to do to protect yourself? What would you be willing to to do to protect your family? What would you be willing to do to protect the Earth? Just asking...