If you don't cut corners, learning can be an exponential process.

I think that the moment when you truly become a bitcoiner, is the moment when you realize that bitcoin will eventually make all other financial assets, including currencies, effectively obsolete outside of their utility value. I've noticed that, especially recently, a lot of bitcoiners like to talk about how bitcoin "fits" into the current system. I think this is an intuitive way to try to orange- pill people because it's too jarring (and therefore not effective) to say, "everything else is going to zero." Maybe some bitcoiners have even convinced themselves that bitcoin will be just another asset class alongside stocks, bonds, and real estate. But deep down, if you have taken the orange pill, you know that bitcoin is going to eat them all. It's hard when you can't share this monumental discovery, even with those closest to you, because to everyone on the outside, this perspective seems completely insane. I'm not sure watering it down is helpful either though. Probably the best way to handle it is to just keep taking our lumps from everyone around us, watch as bitcoin just keeps winning, and wait for the rest of the world to catch up.

Good Morning! Just had a new way to define money pop into mind: Money is the foundation of human ecology. Happy Friday everyone!

Good Morning! I have to share an epiphany that I had prompted by a discussion I was following on Twitter about the emergence of money being tied to energy versus money being decreed by an authority. The "money is decreed" side made the interesting point that gold wasn't really money until a governing body put a stamp of authenticity on it, and as cringe-worthy as that is, it does seem to have some validity. I started to imagine what I would do with a sizable nugget of gold that I found in my backyard if I was in a society that used cold coins as money. The fact is, I would probably trade it for gold stamped coins, and take a haircut. I could potentially trade it for a cow, or some land, but if I wanted to buy a hat, I don't think I would be able to to chip off a chunk of gold and take it into the hat store- even if I had a scale with me. The hat store owner needs to enter the sale into their books, give you a receipt, etc. and that process is more efficient if they accept standardized tokens that communicate well with a community ledger. They would most likely tell you to head down the street to the gold dealer, and return with stamped coins. Fiat takes this to the extreme, taking pieces of paper and just printing elaborate designs on them that are hard to fake to protect this stamp of authenticity. The epiphany came when I realized that the most important distinction between Bitcoin and all other forms of money throughout time, is that money until now has always depended on a stamp of authenticity from a governing body in order to conform to a standardized ledger, and Bitcoin does not. Bitcoin is the ledger! Or thinking about it a different way, Bitcoin is the central authority, maintaining its sound monetary properties without incentive, or the ability to influence or be influenced.

Bitcoiners are long human flourishing. We say "Bitcoin doesn't need you, you need Bitcoin," but I disagree. Bitcoin doesn't just need us, Bitcoin is us. Every Sat you own represents a hope that the human race will choose a better path.

Hello everyone, I live in Washington State. I was using Phoenix, then Mutiny... Any suggestions for a good lightning wallet to move to?

People who want power will always try to control those who truly possess it.

Time to say goodbye to the philosophy that states "nothing means anything," and say hello to the philosophy that states "everything means something. "