"The most important ways in which I think the Internet will affect the big issue is that it will make it more difficult for government to collect taxes” — Milton Friedman

"I think that the Internet is going to be one of the major forces for reducing the role of government. The one thing that's missing, but that will soon be developed, is a reliable e-cash - a method whereby on the Internet you can transfer funds from A to B without A knowing B or B knowing A." — Milton Friedman

Taleb's change on Bitcoin in 2021 was much harder to bear than any of the crashes. I remember reading his Bitcoin "black paper" trying to figure out what I'd missed, but instead made me realise how poor his arguments were.

Seeing him repeat the same nonsense years later with that smug look of his reminds me of the loss of him as an important intellect. I can no longer engage with his other views since I now know how dishonest (probably even with himself) he can be when he simply doesn't like the people associated with an idea.

It was a real "kill your heroes" moment.

Centralised vs. decentralized unelected experts. Lesser evil.

PredictIt doesn't use real money so you can't arbitrage.

Generally Manifold and PolyMarket are more accurate.

Also worth looking at Nate Silver - I think his model is in line with Manifold.

You should keep using it and install via APK.

By default it connects via Tor, so there's no way Phoenix or anyone else knows your location.

Don't ask for permission - this is Bitcoin.

So you take cash, right? And do you use it at stores only, or also for big things like rent/mortgage?

As a net P2P buyer (mainly via Robosats) I'm always curious about people selling.

Where did you get your Bitcoin in the first place? P2P, KYC CEX, mined or earned?

And what's your aversion to wire transfers if it's legal? There's obviously no direct Bitcoin link, although your peer will know your name 🤷‍♂️ Or are you just trying to avoid your bank seeing "income"?

Ah, so this is how they solve the deficit. Prediction: they'll negotiate by replacing the increase with a low wealth tax (which of course they'll ratchet up over time).

This is serious

Tim Reynolds is the founder of Jane Street Capital. He currently runs a set of luxury resorts.

He's a rich guy who likes Bitcoin, and is giving back. Not every rich guy who likes Bitcoin can say the same :)

Even the article post-verdict can't articulate the state's case. Everyone seems to have been bamboozled by Chainalysis proprietary tools.

To be fair, it's possible Roman is guilty of what they're accusing him, it's just hard to verify.

(Not that this should be a crime in the first place - there are legitimate reasons for wanting privacy, and Bitcoin Fog helped)

The acceleration should look even more dramatic if you denominate this chart in purchasing power held. As the price goes up they'll be able to accumulate less BTC, as was designed. Praise be Satoshi 🙇

To be fair, I'd rather have the ETF than hold my Bitcoin on blockchain.com 😅

Yeah I love the aesthetic and build quality of ThinkPads

Graphene has been great. Was some effort to migrate things like passwords, but generally pretty easy.

A few minor inconveniences I add to it like having location off and not choosing to use Google maps (although it's possible). Also changed the keyboard to gboard (no network access) and use the pixel camera (also no network access) to make things a bit better.

I've progressively been moving my life away from Google and Apple for a couple of years now.

Besides from some university computers and the odd AWS instance, I only really tried Linux when I decided to buy an old ThinkPad and set up a new Bitcoin node. I chose Ubuntu because it just seemed the simplest with lots of support.

Recently I've moved away from my MacBook since it's about 9 years old and not coping so well, but I wanted to make the final switch so I don't rely on Apple at all (moved to GrapheneOS 1.5 years ago).

Bought a newish refurbished ThinkPad and installed Ubuntu again just because I'm used to it. It's so simple and clean, and I love using FOSS - people dedicate so much time crafting it (Ubuntu, LibreOffice etc) for almost no financial reward, the least I can do is use it :)

This is great 👏

I had a very elaborate scheme involving Coinos to try get around the Phoenix static swap in address

Hello

I'm not an expert, but I somehow managed to roll a set of dice enough times to get 256 bits of entropy. I also added a passphrase.

Dice rolling is an excellent method to mitigate risks of RNGs because you're obviously generating verifiable entropy in front of your own eyes.

Here is a straightforward guide, maybe not for Grandma, but easy enough for non-experts like me:

I assume the process should work on devices that copied the Coldcard's firmware, so Passport wallet may be able to do this process too.

I was on the beach in South Africa's "Wild Coast". Some friends and I saw dolphins swimming in the waves so we rushed in to try swim with them.

I should have been suspicious at how quickly I managed to swim out. We really did swim with these dolphins though which was incredible. But my friends were both frequent swimmers and surfers and water polo players, while I prefer running. I got tired and told them I was swimming back.

But as I was swimming it felt like the shore kept getting further away, and the waves were quite big so I kept losing sight of the beach altogether. I got really scared since I was exhausted and wasn't getting anyway and only then realized I was in a riptide.

I only vaguely remembered what to do (you're supposed to swim horizontal to the shore) so I started swimming backstroke diagonally towards it. I really thought I wouldn't make but I gave everything I had and was encouraged when I started getting closer.

I tried to explain to my friends that I thought I was going to die (they swam back in a few minutes later without much effort since they had experience with riptides). I got a tiny bit of sympathy 😅 Thought about it constantly for weeks, but I'm good now and still swim in the sea. Have read shitloads about riptides!

Sorry to hear. Stay strong and you'll get through it.