I have an unpopular opinion about #bitcoin . It will not take over absolutely every transaction in the world. There will always be someone who wants to use something else. Optionally provides strength.
Eternal Student
eternalstudent@nostrplebs.com
npub1lvac...l5gg
Interested in freedom, Appropriate use of technology to empower rather than oppress people
My inner peace is not good today. Intellectually i know nothing too serious is happening,but im feeling several small things going on. I find notes from @Seth
Help me to keep some perspective
My conviction on bitcoin is feeling weak today. With all the inflows from large financial institutions, I have concerns that the tail is wagging the dog. #bitcoin #alternatecurrency
This is a non bitcoin way to describe money losing value for those needing it. Inform and help your families.
So long as human life is finite, time preference willalways be limited. So long as needs are immediate, time preference cannot go forever.
This text has helped me stay humble for years "My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
The person that interested me in Bitcoin has passed away and his remaining family can't be bothered with bitcoin. I know nothing about his holdings but I hope they find it.
Ive decided im using nostr wrong, or im too early. I watch the apps that come through, most either aren't for me, or dont have a clear advantage. The social end has a few , but not many things eoth reading and I find maybe 3 thinks a week I want to interact with. I wanted this to be awesome, im not seeing it yet. #nostr
The government today increasingly resembles an insane, impotent king: draped in ceremony, convinced of his own grandeur, barking decrees at a world that quietly routes around him. He rants from a gilded balcony. Courtiers clap on cue. Scribes record the pronouncements as if they were holy writ. But beyond the palace walls, the roads are cracked, the granaries are thin, and the villagers have learned a hard truth—whatever the king says, their survival depends on what *they* do.
This is not a call for apathy. It’s a call for realism.
An impotent monarch is most dangerous not because he is powerful, but because he is desperate to *appear* powerful. When he can’t build, he compensates by declaring. When he can’t solve, he substitutes spectacle. When he can’t protect, he demands loyalty. And because he cannot actually deliver stability, he sells a story: that stability is always one edict away—one election, one bill, one agency reorganization, one emergency order. The court insists salvation is imminent, provided the peasants only obey, pay, and wait.
Waiting is the trap.
In the modern version, the palace is federal: massive, sprawling, expensive, perpetually “working on it.” Its voice is everywhere—briefings, press conferences, policy announcements, executive orders, hearings designed for cameras. Yet ordinary people experience less competence where it counts: affordability, local resilience, predictable rules, workable institutions, and basic trust. The throne issues proclamations, but the lived reality is drift.
So what do you do with an insane, impotent king?
You don’t storm the palace every morning. You don’t spend your whole life staring at the balcony. You don’t let your household rise and fall with the king’s moods. You keep him busy with his own echoes—and you build your life in ways that don’t require his permission to remain intact.
There’s a parable here: imagine a dictator so petty and delusional that he’s obsessed with hearing himself rant—so obsessed that if you simply leave him alone in a room with mirrors, he will talk himself hoarse while everyone else gets on with living. Let him thunder at the walls. Let him declare new holidays. Let him threaten the furniture with sanctions. The point is not admiration; it’s containment. His noise becomes background. His theatrics become self-consuming. His power shrinks to the size of the audience that indulges him.
That’s the posture citizens should take toward federal dysfunction: not obedience, not fixation, not constant fear—but strategic distance.
Because the truth is: your stability is personal before it is political.
A self-supporting life—financially, socially, practically—is the most peaceful form of dissent and the most reliable form of insurance. It reduces the government’s leverage over your choices, and it reduces your exposure to the regime’s incompetence. When the king can’t deliver bread, the household that learned to bake is less afraid. When the court debases the coin, the family with skills, savings, and relationships still has value. When the capital changes its mind every news cycle, the community that can rely on itself becomes harder to bully.
What does “independent steps” actually mean? Not fantasies. Not cosplay. Not isolation. It means boring, durable things:
- **Lower your dependency footprint.** Avoid building a life that collapses if a program changes, a regulation shifts, or a bureaucracy misfires. Diversify income. Know what you can cut fast. Keep fixed costs from becoming chains.
- **Build real skills.** Credentials are fragile; competence travels. Learn trades, repair, basic accounting, cooking, gardening, first aid, negotiation—skills that function under any flag.
- **Strengthen local ties.** The federal government is an abstraction; your neighbors are not. Mutual aid, community groups, local business networks, faith communities—these are stability machines when institutions wobble.
- **Own more of your necessities.** Not hoarding, not paranoia—just prudence. Keep a buffer: food, water, medical basics, cash reserves. Maintain your vehicle. Know how to heat your home. Keep backups for what you truly need.
- **Treat politics like weather, not religion.** Pay attention, prepare, then move on with your day. Don’t let outrage become entertainment that drains your capacity to act.
The palace thrives on an exhausted population—people trained to believe the only meaningful action is to argue about the king’s latest rant. It’s the oldest trick in authoritarian history: keep citizens emotionally tethered to the throne, whether through love or hatred, and they will neglect their own sovereignty.
There is a difference between civic engagement and civic dependence. The former is a duty; the latter is a vulnerability.
None of this requires pretending government doesn’t matter. It does. Bad policy hurts. Corruption corrodes. Rights must be defended. But the modern state’s most corrosive achievement is convincing people that their *personal* stability must be mediated by distant authorities. That’s how an impotent king keeps his relevance: he can’t rule effectively, so he makes himself unavoidable.
You don’t have to accept that arrangement.
Let the ruby-throned dictator rant—let him exhaust himself on declarations and dramas. Let the palace scribes file their proclamations. Let the cable-news heralds trumpet each new royal mood swing. Meanwhile, you should be doing what free people have always done when the crown becomes a circus: plant roots, build capacity, cultivate trust, and make your household harder to shake.
Because when the king is insane and impotent, the most radical thing you can do is stop organizing your life around his delusions—and start organizing it around your own resilience.
With thanks to #btcsessions #jackspirko #tsp #bensessions
Good morning nostr. I spent time with friend and family today. It was a day well spent. Saturday I cursed at my computer and got a new program running. That day felt a bit less productive.
In reading the news today I'm reminded of a Star trek episode in which one of the main character's shady past comes to light and he says "I've given you all the answers I'm allowed to". We should seriously consider how many secrets our states/nations/polities/organizations are allowed to keep
The more I think about it the less I want governments in bitcoin. So long as there is an interface between dollars and the coin the govt will be looking for a way to leverage into it. I have a half developed thought about if they went into mining they might convert taxes to btc by out buying all the miners and we couldn't so anything about it. How would this effect value?