Currently checking out my copy of The Bushido of Bitcoin by @Svetski. I got to see it in draft form, but it’s nice to see it out in print. A treatise on virtue, basically. The forward by Ross Stevens is absolute fire; that part wasn’t available when I checked out an earlier version.

The combo of 1) people getting sucked into digital echo chambers and 2) people believing hallucinating AI answers without checking, is going to take a lot to change. We are in an environment where if things *look* official enough, we’ll usually just instantly believe them. Since nobody has the time or inclination to check everything. Like, someone can just tweet a picture of me at a conference, and put a quote next to it, and tons of people will take it at face value. People won’t stop and ask “is this actually a quote of hers from this conference?” It could be years ago, out of context, or not said by me at all, but one would never know since it seemed legit enough. The current counter to this is basically to assume most things are potentially wrong in part or in full, unless further verified. But the risk there is people get detached and don’t bother researching things. One thing you can do is go through your follow list and remove people/entities who don’t have a high signal ratio. In other words, keep people you agree or disagree with that are locked in and high signal, but remove those who parrot things they don’t understand or spread misinformation on a regular basis. In an environment of endless quantity, it is more important than ever to elevate quality.

Sometimes when I find myself not finishing a book but am still curious to at least know the ending, I ask AI to summarize it for me. But today I wanted to remember something from a book I fully read many years ago, and asked AI to summarize it for me, and noticed that it was totally wrong at multiple points. Dramatically so. I pointed out that it was wrong and it’s like “my bad, here’s the right answer.” So I asked how it could confidently make mistakes like that. Like what specifically happened in this case? And it talked about how it extrapolates from stories and thus if something avoids the usual tropes, it could get it wrong. It said if I ask for citations it could help it prove its accuracy (which I didn’t think to do for fiction, I mean the entire objective answer is in one book, there’s not like multiple conflicting answers here). So I was like “okay what happened to (this character) at the end? With citations.” It gave me a wrong answer with misleading citations. So I pointed that out. And it was basically like “oh wow, you’re right, I know that is disappointing to happen twice.” And some more boilerplate. So I asked “I mean, I should just disregard all your prior summaries, right?” And it more or less was like “Yeah. But we can revisit them if you want.” By the end I felt like JK Simmons in Burn After Reading.

One of the biggest unlocks I’ve had over the past year is just taking almost all meetings while walking outside.

In five years of going to bitcoin conferences, I’ve literally never had a truly bad experience with someone. People who fly out to be at places are almost always reasonable. To put this in context, I’ve had thousands of brief meetups over the years and nothing truly bad happened even once. The worst outcome was I had someone be slightly awkwardly clingy a few times, but nothing worse. So this is a 99.9% social uptime situation, and even the 0.1% is still okay. I am kind of at the top end of the gray zone of security. Super-celebs have security teams and don’t walk around on the conference floor. I do personally walk around the place by myself (which yes is a friction as I get dozens of interactions and photo requests and such), and when offered security by the conference to get out, I turn it down since I find it very hectic but manageable and worth it. People who are negative (and usually anon) online tend to either not go to these events or don’t show their face if they are there. That seems on brand. No skin in the game. This is a positive space, and I think we’re going to win.

Here’s one of my random Nostr Lyn stories. I have a friend who lives in Vegas, and we previously agreed that if I come out here, I would try In-N-Out Burger. This chain is not available on the east coast but of course I always hear of it. Never had it before. And I’m about as introverted as one can be at these events; I start to get overwhelmed by the sheer bandwidth. So I skipped the high-end events that were happening last night, and went to In-N-Out Burger. Away from the conference. Just peace and conversation with a friend. One of my favorite moments this week!

When the Bitcoin Conference asked me to speak, I first eugfested a Nostr panel and said I’d happily participate. Until recently I literally had no main stage panel because I pointed my enthusiasm toward that concept. I said I want something interesting, and said that Nostr counts as interesting. The conference started to put it together as a side panel, but some of my key fellows dropped out for business reasons. And the conference said I should do a keynote. And then the Nostr panel conflicted timewise with my keynote, which I pointed out to the conference. So I won’t be doing a Nostr panel. And then my keynote was moved anyway. I said given all the raised/macro shifts, I’m happy to talk macro. The folks that tried to fit my schedule are good people doing good work. I have no qualms with them. I’m doing both a keynote and panel on the main stage. But now I feel the need to mention Nostr on the main stage. Which I will. 😈

One of the things that I find most troubling is audience capture. People who work in corporations have to toe the party line. But then people who go “independent” often get captured by the most vocal parts of their audience. They often just get paid to rebel against whatever they left, and become as much one-sided as they previously were. In its most benign state, many people with audiences will just not comment on certain things. They fear their audience. There is no positive ROI in it. When asked point blank, they will try to deflect. In the worst state, they will actively and consciously deceive, playing to their audience. I can’t promise I will always be right on things. Sometimes I will be wrong. But what I will promise is that I will always tell it like I see it. So when people agree or disagree with me, my goal is that at least they know it’s genuine. I aggressively resist audience and platform capture. I started talking about US fiscal deficits being the key macro issue to watch in the first Trump term. Then for four years during the Biden term I amplified it and started the “nothing stops this (fiscal) train” meme. When Trump became president again, and Musk talked about specific deficit reductions by 2026, I re-iterated my view that they will fail, and that the deficits will continue. When I was talking about deficits during the Biden term, I got a ton of comments saying I was too right wing. But they were in the minority vs those who found value in the commentary. And it was right. And then during the early Trump term I got a wave of critics saying I was some liberal. But I said it’s just math, your guy is wrong too like the prior guy, so I say it like it is. When Musk took over Twitter I was cautiously optimistic at first, but then I pointed out that the platform was increasing its rate of censoring Indian and Turkish posts compared to prior management at the behest of their governments that are also potential rocket and car buyers. They did this while simultaneously broadcasting themselves as the new free speech platform in the US. I took heat for pointing this out on his own platform but I felt it important to do so. These various knee-jerk social movements are so shallow. I am wealthy enough to not need income anymore, but purposely am not so high-up in anything that I have a gazillion employees that could get rekt if I don’t bend the knee to some asshole. I run a profitable, lean, wholly owned company by me, and have some additional partnerships. I don’t take that middle ground lightly. People more hardcore than me chose not to take it. Too many employees eat because of those leaders. Meanwhile, I use time to analyze whatever it is I’m looking at. The latest event is bitcoin spam. Some folks want to increase the expressivity of bitcoin to put more spam in there. I disagree with that. Other folks are mad at the spam that’s already in there, and want to censor it. I disagree with that approach too. Many influencers are afraid to even wade into the debate and tell you their opinion. I’m happy to talk and reply. Not that it really matters, but in case you care, since most of this is on social media anyway and I haven’t pushed anything hard and broad yet but have watched and analyzed it. My first article on bitcoin in 2017 was interested but not committed. After Bitcoin’s price stagnated for several years and went through the blocksize war, my second article was strongly bullish. I basically said to buy the fuck out of this thing. It proved itself to have a dominant network effect and to be antifragile. We are up 16x since then; and I’m still bullish. I don’t view any of the attacks as existential. I fade all of the moral panics that I currently see. The JPEG attacks are weak, the token attacks are weak, etc. All of this is from 2 years ago and still weak now. NFTs and memecoins are weak as fuck. Fees are low because16 years into Bitcoin’s existence, it is still less than 1% of Fedwire transfer volumes. And it’s normal to be low until Bitcoin cash balances rival gold’s or Fedwire’s at even 10%. Part of why I am bullish is because until Bitcoin has another10x and becomes a common cash balance at scale, it will remain a niche spending unit. I don’t agree that everything is good for Bitcoin. However, I am 90% there. Everything that fails to break Bitcoin is good for Bitcoin. I am bullish on Bitcoin, having witnessed yet another attack crash upon its shores. For those that are concerned about spam, I would 1) remind you of the existing blocksize limit, 2) point out that UTXO bloat is not occurring since the fad went out and Runes launched, and 3) few of the existing proponents represent permanent fixes. Bitcoin can withstand this weak sauce. That’s why I bought it in the first place.

One of the things that annoys me most is deception. I live around Atlantic City, and so I do go to restaurants and shows there. They purposely design it so you have to walk through the casino to get there. In Vegas now. And of course you have to walk through the casino to get to your room, or to leave, each time. It’s so banal. So obvious. Also, there are kits of lube and condoms at the mini bar. Just casually there in case you need them. That’s nice and all but I never saw that at a mini bar before across countless other cities and hotels. Seems like a Vegas thing? Anyway, good evening.