Lyn Alden

I realized the other day that Wikipedia has an article for me now. It doesn't mention most of my work or Broken Money, but it does mention that nothing stops this train. 🤷 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyn_Alden

Space operas set 20,000 years in the future and spanning half the galaxy are pretty cool. Anyway, here's a review of Demon in White, which I just finished. It's book #3 in the Sun Eater series, which is a 7-book epic space opera. The crazy thing about this series is that on the first page of book one, the narrator tells you how the whole 7-book series ends: the protagonist blows up a star, which genocides an entire race of evil aliens and kills billions of humans in that solar system including his own emperor, but saves the rest of humanity throughout the galaxy from that alien threat. So the whole series is basically a deadly serious version of, ::record scratch:: "I bet you want to know how the hell we got here, huh?" For worldbuilding, I'd give the series a 5/5 so far. It's not hard sci fi, in the sense that there is ample use of faster-than-light travel, "high matter swords" which have some similarities to light sabers, "Royce shields" which people and ships can shield themselves with against most projectiles, etc. The author himself views it more like science fantasy, although there's more of a tech focus than, say, Star Wars. Humanity has spread across about 40% of the galaxy, and although they can travel faster than the speed of light, it's not instantaneous, and instead takes years or decades to cross a big chunk of the galaxy and they cryo-freeze themselves during the trips (they travel 100s or in rare cases 1000s of times the speed of light). But what's cool about the worldbuilding is the culture. Kind of like Dune, AI was destroyed and outlawed long ago in a great war (and Earth was decimated by atomics in the process). The Sollan Empire, which is modeled after a blend of the British and Roman empires, spans millions of worlds. They operate with a conservative aristocratic culture, and are the most harsh against AI or cyborgs to preserve order, although their nobility are still genetically modified to live centuries and avoid most diseases. The Principalities of Jadd are culturally similar but managed to separate themselves and remain aligned with the empire, and they push their genetics a bit further. The Demarchy of Tavros is a somewhat egalitarian/communist culture that is more receptive to cyborg adaptations and computers. The Extrasolarians are basically anarcho-capitalists; they live on the edge of civilization and more fully embrace AI/cyborgs/computers and extensive body modifications to whatever extent is possible. And then there are the alien Cielcin, the main adversaries at war with humanity. There are also some god-like or cthulhu-like beings out in the vastness of space and time. The series explores the interactions between all these cultures and more. For writing quality, I'd also give it a 5/5. It's written in first person by the aristocratic main character, Lord Hadrian Marlowe, and has a rather sophisticated aspect to it. For pacing, I'd give it a 3/5, and that's a trade-off from the above point. Hadrian himself is wordy and melodramatic, and that colors his first-person writing of the story. So he'll make all sorts of historical or philosophical references in the middle of a fight, which makes the whole project feel reflective rather than in the moment. The books are long and could be cut by 20% or more if a more direct prose style was chosen. Plot/characters so far are a 4/5 in my view. The plot is interesting, and there's a huge array of interesting characters. Hadrian himself is very dynamic (the reader at times is not sure if they're supposed to like him or not), a cyborg named Valka is really unique, and then all sorts of supporting characters from emperors and cyborg gods to plebian soldiers round out a big cast. Sometimes the cast is too large so that otherwise interesting characters don't get as fleshed out as much as they could. And the author consciously embraces the "chosen one" trope, which can be polarizing from a plot perspective. Overall, I'd rate it 4/5. I've read Empire of Silence, Howling Dark, and now Demon in White. I would note that the first book, Empire of Silence, is a lot more setting-limited and character-focused than the others; it's not until Howling Dark that the series expands to a full-on space opera.

Russell Napier is one of my favorite macro analysts that I've learned a lot from over the years. Had the chance to meet him at a dinner the other day and discuss macro with him. Him and I often have similar macro views and a focus on the topic of fiscal dominance and the financial repression that follows. But an area of historic difference is that he has viewed Bitcoin as unlikely to win. He has viewed it as something that governments will ultimately not allow to function once the gloves come off and financial repression gets real from the major powers. So I discussed that with him, since while I acknowledge that threat as being real, I think Bitcoin is a solid foundation to push back with. But in addition, I also highlighted Nostr, and decentralized comms and social media in general. Back in the 1930s-1940s when the US banned gold ownership and implemented yield curve control (hard core financial repression), information moved slowly. A lot of information was one-directional. It was hard for people to coordinate with each other at large scales. But social media changes the game entirely. People can meme about it in real time. Government and central bank social media accounts can get ratio'd. Maybe one day they'll try to put a stop to that on centralized social media platforms, but that's why the decentralized protocols are so important. The tools are simply much better today, making that type of smooth and coordinated financial repression harder to do since all of their reasons can be dissected and dunked on in real time.

Instead of asking to be given more, young professionals should ask how they can best add and improve.

A giant explosion went off at a military base in Cairo. Five killed. Media reports about it are pretty much suppressed- it’s probably an accident but could technically be some sort of terrorist strike as well. Tragic either way. But what is crazy to me is that the blast was powerful enough to break one of the windows of my house many miles away. It’s crazy how powerful big explosions like this can be.

In a couple of decades, what percentage of people do you think will be using centralized systems for money and communication vs decentralized ones?

Government officials often use “security” as an excuse to take your rights. They’ll increasingly say they need to surveil and control your communications and payments to keep people secure. How about starting with the streets and trains and such? If they were actually serious about security more-so than control, they’d make sure that basic stuff is sorted out first.

The left gives themselves new political powers which then get used by the right when they’re in power. The right give themselves new political powers which then get used by the left. It spirals toward more centralized government over time. Keeping government limited is like constantly passing the marshmellow test, delaying immediate gratification for longer-run benefit.

Can anyone shill me on why Superman 2025 was a good movie? I thought it was awful, but apparently I'm in the minority.

I see a lot of people on Twitter who talk about Nostr but I don’t see them here.

I have a lowkey but strong desire to see how long I could hang on a bar at one of the nostr:nprofile1qythwumn8ghj7mn0wd68ytnsv9ex2ar09e6x7amwqyvhwumn8ghj7mn0wd68ycmgv43kktndv5hhyetvv9usqgzn9kpsmllqnsf7wh5tz3wgy4cclsftqqplv8tpayrhwgw8llunevk4p6dz booths amid bitcoin conferences lately. It's such a great marketing thing. I'm literally riding my bike around a beautiful neighborhood today like, "I wonder how long I could hang if I really wanted to, though." Back in my martial arts days, we did pull-up contests. I touched 21 (ironically) at my absolute retarded peak where all I did was optimize for that like an absolute psycho, but couldn't do so today. Not even close. Never was I measured to just hang, tho. I feel like I could hang for a while and ignore the pain, which is why I'm like, "I want to go to one of these events, seems fun." I've been so busy at home that I keep turning down events and writing weird stuff, but in the meantime I'm mentally I'm like, "how long could I hang, tho."

When someone asks you what Nostr is like.

GM. Some people say that everything is good for Bitcoin. I almost, but not quite, agree. Everything that fails to land a critical hit, is good for Bitcoin. What doesn't kill it, usually makes it stronger. The bigger and more robust it gets, the more resilient it is against even the idea of a critical hit, and that has required work. When threats materialize, programmers program, financiers finance, and podcasters podcast. Bitcoin is a growing, robust ecosystem that responds to threats and hardens against them. Sometimes at the base layer, often at higher layers. It doesn't put too many premature resources against threats that aren't currently hurting it, but can swarm massive resources in response to something that does start to hurt it. Nobody's in control; it's a well-designed swarm of incentives trending toward life, and in this case life means functional operation as a permissionless and high-quality global ledger to store and transmit value (i.e. electronic cash). I've long since viewed it in that self-healing way, since it's a similar lens to how I view the established macroeconomic system as well. People continually underestimate a lindy system's response functions against threats, for both good systems (like Bitcoin) and bad systems (like central banking). It took me a bit of time to be convinced that Bitcoin was lindy, but once I did, I haven't seen any reason to waver. Bears doubt its robustness. Bulls consider it highly robust. I'm a bull. It's not that I consider it invincible though; it's that I consider it as having a high probability shot at resisting forces against it, and a better shot than any of its competitors. And for those who don't know, my background is in electronics engineering with a control systems focus in my early engineering career, so the fact that I became enamored with the robustness of a decentralized money's inbuilt control system and the ecosystem surrounding it was no small hurdle. It probably contributed to my skepticism early on, but once my skepticism was satisfied, it instead contributed to my conviction. I agree with those who say that one day state attacks will be the biggest threats against Bitcoiners. Not against Bitcoin's existence itself, most likely, but against its permissionless and private usage. The defense against that comes from those writing high quality code that gives people tools to resist, educators and financiers that help expand them, as well as jurisdictional arbitrage as high-conviction people can and do move around between legal jurisdictions toward freer ones. It'll be a longer process than many expect, I think. But the ecosystem is built for it, and attracts the best people to deal with it. And Nostr is currently part of its epicenter.

There are those who say Bitcoin doesn't scale, and build blockchains with more throughput at the cost of more centralization (generally in the form of it being way harder to run a node), and then also point to Bitcoin as having low fees as a criticism. The limiter it turns out, 16 years in, is not how many people *can* self-custody bitcoin. It's how many people *want* to. Not everyone wants to deal with the technicalities of their own car, and not everyone wants to handle the technicalities of their own money. Quite few, in fact. It's always a subset for these types of things. People who are hardcore over their area of knowledge. I leave my car details to pros down the street who I know the name of, and handle my money myself. There are those who handle their own cars but leave their money details to others. Bitcoin currently processes about as many transactions per year as Fedwire, which handles $1 quadrillion worth of gross settlement volume per year for the US and for a good chunk of the world (in context, it's approximately 200 million $5 million average-sized transactions). That's actually a crazy stat. Bitcoin is casually this open-source global Fedwire with its own scarce units, and unlike Fedwire anyone can permissionlessly build on it or transact with it, for low fees despite it being a +$2T network. And if it gets clogged there are all sorts of permissionless layers above it with certain trade-offs. Some people say paper bitcoin holders detract from the network. I say the opposite- their willingness to hold IOUs helps add to price stability and network size without clogging it. That leaves more room for cypherpunks to develop with, and work on. And those who finance them. This has been foreseen as early as Hal Finney in 2010, when he wrote about bitcoin banks (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2500.msg34211#msg34211). We live in a sweet spot by most metrics. A golden age. Historically, so few recognize it when they have it so good. Bitcoin is big enough to be of interest to many, and yet is still niche enough in a global context to have low base-layer fees. Suitcoiners are happy to add to its scale, and yet cypherpunks can also build, and users can transact right on the base layer, and move to Lightning and Ark and BitVM and Liquid and any sort of trade-off they want if fees get high. And you're bearish, anon? The real battle, though, is the ongoing government crackdown on privacy. Bitcoin itself is in a pretty good technical place. It's a great tool. Certain conservative low-risk covenants might make it better, but even the existing design space is great and still expanding. The US, Europe, and China cracking down on privacy is the threat. The headwind. And they're all expected. They're not surprising, but they're indeed fierce. That's the real battle- for the hearts and minds of people to embrace why privacy and permissionlessness are good traits. In this ongoing funny contrast between podcasters and developers, that's the ideal role of podcasters- to spread the good news of what developers have built. To educate people. To tell them what's now possible thanks to developers. To articulate why cypherpunk values are good to a broad non-technical audience. That's where the overlap is. In overly-simplistic D&D terms, those with high CHA try to spread the work of those with high INT. It's not so much that "governments" are the problem. Governments often at least partially represent the people. If you convince a lot of people that privacy and sound money are good things, then you defang the problem. And you also challenge them legally in jurisdictions where it makes sense. The technical foundation is good. The development of the past 16 years has been amazing, and it has brought us here. The scale has reached institutions, which is expected, not a threat. The actual threat is not treasury companies; it's anti-privacy regulations by governments. And more deeply that's a social issue, given how many people accept it. A vast amount of people believe privacy is only important for bad people who have something to hide. There's a ton of education work to do on it. Privacy is good. It's the default. But most people don't realize it when it comes to money. We're winning. For 16 years ya'll have been amazing. But we'll need another 16 years more. More developers. More podcasters. All of it. We're a $2 trillion in market cap entering into a global fiat network of hundreds of trillions. And as their own institutions melt down from their own failures, their own top-heavy demographics and false promises, they will look for scapegoats. They will look toward those who are winning, and say they are the enemy. When interviewers ask my price predictions, I tend to be conservative. That's mostly a liquidity assessment, and a rotation from OGs to new buyers. Price growth does take time. But under that surface, I also have the benefit of being a general partner at among the largest bitcoin-only venture funds. I see what people are building, and I'm bullish. And for those who are working on stuff that doesn't align with profit, entities like the HRF and OpenSats are doing great work. Across all of the options, people are building great things. I couldn't be more bullish on the ecosystem that's in place. All of you. Let's go. Good evening.

GM My August public newsletter has now been published: https://www.lynalden.com/august-2025-newsletter/ This issue covers: macro impacts from tariffs (ie a slightly slower but still unstoppable fiscal train), upcoming Fed easing, and the latest newsletter portfolio snapshot.

Gm. What’s your favorite movie made in the past five years?