This really is the way. I still have so many friends that are fast asleep but I don't care that I'm the "weirdo" at all. You have to not care. You have to care more about your family and the future than what people around you think about what you think.

In other words... have conviction.

The masses are missing their chance to front run the elite. Its on them for being sheep. I've come to that realization. I have talked to people till I'm blue in the face about it. Its like a stone wall. Its a waste of time. Bitcoin will win, its just that the masses have always been and will always be followers. They are risk averse. Not in investing but in the space of ideas.

With the government pretending to be pro-bitcoin and ETFs gaining adoption we are seeing the wealthy try to "adopt" bitcoin. They don't really get it either but they realize it is something they should be exposed to. Even if they don't admit it.

I firmly believe those that have done the work will be rewarded for that work and bitcoin will enrich the lives of everyone. It won't make everyone rich, but that's a dumb idea anyway.

Here's the thing I think about when this topic comes up. If bitcoin is at 100k+ with so little understanding of its true utility and worth for mankind. What the heck is actually worth? I don't think anyone really knows. But I can't see it being worth less than it is now. I see it as exponentially more valuable than it is today. 10x is probably way off actually.

For the past 5 years now I've been taking bitcoin seriously. Not just stacking but learning how it works. How the tools work. How to communicate why it works. How to answer questions. How to teach people how to use it. I have very few opportunities to use this knowledge now. But I'm preparing myself to be an uncle Jim. I am for my family and a friend but pretty much everyone else is clueless and fast asleep.

This isn't depressing really. It should be expected. I've written about adjusting our time preference many times. The US is fat and happy. Even today with things not being so great. When people need it, bitcoin will be there if we, the vanguard keep working at it. Using it. Using the tools and preparing.

I do think the other factor is regulation narrowing the focus of the manufacturers to higher end so they can make a profit. From MPG to emissions rules the state has once again distorted the market away from affordability. This would be a counter to the debasement. Same is true in housing, appliances, food and many other areas.

Money is the base no one talks about and regulations are mostly considered to cut into profits but actually reduce choice and hurt the lower income most.

Thanks @Car. Starting to listen to this now. My thoughts on Thiel are not massive but I have heard so much negative about him and I think a lot of it is missing a few key things.

But before I outline these I do want to say that we should be very concerned about people like Thiel how have massive wealth, power, and influence. Thiel may or may not be a malicious actor but it is naive to blindly trust people like him or Musk. It is also naive to blindly trust the faceless state, democracy, or whatever you wanna call the US system, EU system, or any state system.

The takes on Thiel usually fall into two categories. The black pill types that talk about Palantir in dystopian tones. Its a fair concern that I share. The other position is more of a concern that he's right wing and has all this power. This take is mostly that he's not on their team.

Thiel has long called himself a libertarian and he seems to be a beltway libertarian. One that wants to privatize many functions of the state. Primarily his focus is military and intel. This is a VERY common position within libertarian and anarcho-capitalist thought.

A straw-man argument against libertarianism is that it is naive. This is largely from people that have never seriously read on the topic and have only chatted with lightweights online that haven't read the deeper thinkers. Many in the movement understand that there is a need for security services like policing and military defense. This is true of a night watchman state or a stateless society. Of course if a group of people have no means of defense they would just fall to a state with the means to take them over.

I don't want to go into all the details but the common view is that a post state world would have these functions performed by corporations or co-ops (volunteers). I think this is where Thiel is coming from.

Just as in the US our food supply is provided in a largely decentralized private market way vs the USSR which was centrally planned in a post state country you'd likely have markets for defense, possibly managed by insurance companies . There are many books on these topics.

With all that said, any person with the wealth, power, and influence like Thiel should not be trusted. But we shouldn't trust the state either. No matter who is at the top of it.

I wrote about this some time ago and I don't think I would call them a layer 2 but rather an abstraction.

Bibi disgusts me. The more I learn about the history of this conflict the more I see the disgusting patern of esculation playing out. Each side feels justified in doing terrible things. So many bad faith actors and many more people caught in the crossfire. We need humble, honest men. Not the snakes we see in power across the globe.

If you are coming from Windows I recommend Linux Mint as a easy to use first Linux to try. Ubuntu is good too and is the base for Mint. I'm not sure how old your laptop is but there are distros of Linux designed for really old hardware.

There are many tradeoffs with Linux but I have never heard anyone that tried it say it was slower than their Windows on the same machine. Its not bloated and filled with spyware. Ubuntu and Mint have app stores that should have most of the things you need and use on Windows.

If you end up loving Linux there are tons of options and rabbit trails you can go down. But, just getting started is the best thing to do. Don't get stuck in picking the "right" Linux distro. Just go with Ubuntu or Mint. Hard to go wrong.

I use Fedora and Arch daily but I could do all my work on Mint or Ubuntu without an issue.

Yeah, I agree with this one. First off it sounds delusional. Second it is not something that gives me confidence at all since its easy to become complacent if this is all you hear. I would much rather hear steel man arguments about how it could fail. When I started reading things like that and started thinking about game theories it made me far more bullish. Hearing a bunch of young men full of over-confidence say dumb things with their chests out doesn't do anything for me. I think many bitcoiners are signaling a LACK of confidence when they respond with bravado. They are like a mirror of the tradfi boomers who mock bitcoin. All talk.

It reminds me of Christians that get angry when people ask hard questions. It comes from insecurity. When you know a topic and have conviction in your beliefs you welcome hard questions. You don't fear or resent them. I wish bitcoin had better opponents. People with better arguments about how it could fail, most are really lame and it leads to over-confidence.

I'm guessing you aren't running Linux.

A good cheap way to run a node is on an old laptop with Linux or a 1 liter PC by Dell or Lenovo. I have bought a few on eBay and put new SSDs in them. They make great nodes. Low power use and small. You can install Umbrel or StartOS

It can't hurt

Yeah, StartOS seems like its on a good path and Umbrel is doing it differently. I'm cheering them on!

I really like the Sparrow guide on when to get a hardware device.

I would for sure run a node first. You can likely do this without spending any sats. If it were me I'd do that. Then set up Sparrow and then set up the bitcoin only firmware @k00b mentioned on the trezor unless you just want new hardware. Cordcard seems better if you can afford the sats though. That said you can use your existing device as a signer for multi-sig if you decided to do that in the future.

Didn't know that. Makes sense though.

There are far too many influencers with limited technical knowledge milking controversy for clout. This happens in most movements but it gets really old. Bitcoin Twitter is full of that crap.

That's not @Scoresby but it is something to be aware of. My advice in general about bitcoin, politics, and pretty much everything is to stay calm and avoid emotionalism. Its hard to think clearly when you are fearful or angry.

They've had a Knots app for some time. Also platforms like Umbrel and StartOS make it very easy for devs to add their apps to their systems via containers.

These node in box solutions have been nothing but great for getting people to run their own nodes. I have set up several of them. I see this as part of the long path to exposing less technical people to bitcoin. Many will never dig deeper but that wasn't true for me. Umbrel and some of the other node in box solutions saved me a ton of time getting a node spun up.

I've also set nodes up completely from scratch but that wasn't my first time and probably will never be something most people will do. Its not hard to find problems with Umbrel or StartOS if you look long enough. But, its all about tradeoffs to me.

Its a new GUI. Every node in a box solution has their own GUI. Nothing to be concerned about from what I'm seeing.

It also hasn't occurred to them that many systems are not broken. They are working as DESIGNED!

I ALWAYS lead with this when I talk about the problems with communism/socialism.

Even if you have the smartest people in the world and the most moral people in the world setting it up and facilitating it you'd still fail. Why? The calculation problem. Of course the AI maxis will probably think they can do it... if people can't get that this is a fool's errand I don't waste my time.

Usually these people are very naive in many other areas as well. Looking at incentives is a great angle to take on so many things. Usually the people that get incentives aren't engineers unless they have worked with the UX or marketing side of the businesses. I've always worked closely with those sides and I'm able to talk to normal people and engineers alike. Bridging the divide. Empathy is undervalued as a learned skill IMO. It can be a multiplier for an engineer's career.

You nailed it.

My frig went out a couple weeks ago. Thankfully it was still under the warranty but it was under 5 years old. Compressor went out. The repair guy said its super common.

All I could think about was fiat being the root cause along with energy conservation at all costs. The compressors on these newer fridges turn on and off a lot more to save power. They have smaller fans. To save power. If they aren't kept clean they burn up fast.

The governments require low power consumption and the side effect of breaking is not a concern. You have to buy a new one... there's not competitive pressure from another company making a more reliable unit because that would require more power consumption.

So its fiat + the state putting their finger on the market to distort it.

In the last 3 months I have had a water heater and a fridge go out. Both less than 5 years old. Fiat does ruin many things. And almost no one talks about it outside of our circle here and in bitcoin. Some days it can be maddening.

I mean they think they can design much smaller things and fail very often in those endeavors. But with the AI hype get ready for a new crop of tech socialists.

Yeah, I know plenty that seem to think the problem with communism was that they didn't have the right people or systems in place and we can do it now with the tech we have....

I have never heard any mention Mises at all by these people. They aren't reading philosophy. I know one exception who is a big fan of decentralization but he's no socialist.

I mean, think about it. Communism was supposedly a society driven by science...

Of course that is incredibly naive.