I've been surprised by how many people leave Venmo privacy public by default

Elon's play is to try to turn X to WeChat - he's been forecasting this for a while. WeChat integrates with the Chinese banking system to make micropayments - its ability to be an "everything app" allows it to take lower transaction fees than the average in the United States when it comes to interchange fees. I suspect Elon will make a similar play with "X payments" or whatever. If he succeeds, it'll unfortunately likely to be an easy-to-track, custodybank payment network that has the added bonus of being tied to your social identity and communications.

I'm reading Your Brain is a Time Machine - been interested in neuroperception for a while.

As an aside, if anybody is on Goodreads, let me know :)

I do think that more and more people will see the wisdom of jurisdiction hopping. So far, Bitcoin-friendly countries tend to cluster outside of North America and Europe. It'd be interesting if someone created a ranking similar to NomadList that took into account BTC regulations, number of merchants accepting BTC etc.

My hope is that BTC-based social networks like SN and Nostr scale out to the point where people can make a decent living on a much lower barrier to entry. As BTC price increases, I believe this is possible.

Yeah, who you choose to surround yourself with really matters - and where you are

I believe some portion is "revenge spending" and the life experience of being locked up during COVID-19. I always refer to travel spending, for example, on the uptick: https://www.travelpulse.com/news/destinations/us-travel-spending-of-1-2-trillion-on-par-with-pre-pandemic-levels

People have covered a lot of ground with equities and their BTC journeys. To add something a little different, I would say the following:

1- Not prioritizing location - I spent a lot of time in different cities where your financial/economic development lag and you can only take remote jobs to make up the difference. However, you miss out on all of the convos that get people hired/help people fund their companies.

2- While this is a financial failing, I feel somewhat of a moral vindication that I haven't raised institutional venture capital, however that's easily one of the ways you can quickly build personal wealth if you play it right.

Thanks - will read through this :)

This is something that most Bitcoiners don't realize - crypto is more enmeshed into the traditional political world, partly because of the shitcoinery we decry. Crypto hosts a lot of random parties with open bar on some cruise boat at random tech conference 1. The consequence is that when politicians talk about Bitcoin, I don't think a single one says "Bitcoin" outright, but rather crypto. Crypto people are waking up to the fact that their cash treasuries are best leveraged for political influence as it's one of the highest ROI things you can do - make a (surprisingly) small amount of money in order to get respect from the policymakers who appoint your cops. If you can't build products or anything else with the money, your best bang for buck is to try to get yourself protected - FTX was a flagrant example of this.

a16z which comes from Trad VC background and the YC community surrounding Coinbase gave them an early look at this.

There are Bitcoin greenshoots here - but Bitcoiners should be cautious and understand what the "crypto" people are doing, because how Bitcoin is presented will be affected by this, and unless all of us decamp to Mars together, currently, this perception will matter.

-> I suppose my ultimate question is, "What would you prefer to hear a politician saying regarding bitcoin and crypto?"

My personal preference is to have somebody who doesn't platform pump.fun token funsters and just rather holds, in privacy even if they desire, and defends the well-worn pathways that protect Bitcoin in its most important ways and properties. One can dream, right?

The Trump path is one more politicians around the world are exploring: if our country's financial markets make this one more plaything, and 0.1% of the geeks spend like 88% of their mental mindshare getting a routing node to work, that's a fair trade. The distinctive word for me is his regard for "crypto" rather than Bitcoin. I'm not going to say it's disfavorable to watch him shift from anti-Bitcoin to pro-crypto, but I don't think it's as good of a marker as some might think.

I do believe Trump's actions are actually more significant in weirder ways outside of this though in the "private" ways I marked - for example, if he keeps on appointing more anti-Chevron Doctrine judges. But I'm not sure if that's because he believes in those principles to protect against the overarching reach of executive agencies, or because he pushes his own accomplishments (getting as many judges as possible to the bench) with the actual details beneath him. Likely the latter, as his public statements seem to advocate for relatively expansive executive powers (though of course, he's known for his fights with the alphabet agencies).

In short, I'd prefer to hear a politician say:

"I hold Bitcoin, but I lost it in a boating accident."

I would prefer they govern in a way that fits that philosophy.

I've been reading a lot about the topic: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/the-impact-of-bitcoin-on-war is a good reference.

I think that it's always good to remind ourselves that the modern nation-state is more or less an invention focused on gathering warfighting populations with enough state-issued money to fund wars. Yes, there was an idea to extend this sort of thinking to government-sponsored bubbles in healthcare, education, and savings - but at its root, centralizing war innovation, war purchases, and war-fighting has always been at the root of the state.

"and 47 dog testicles tested" - damn that's some gnarly work to do

Services with a European bent/HQ (ACINQ/Ibex/HodlHodl) getting out because they can. American services or services built on the States probably can. You can argue that people are overreacting but this is another argument for how being in multiple jurisdictions can be a hedge

hmm yeah I've heard about the patties stuff

Never seen a ton of lines at the Costcos I've been too, but I could see it depending on the spot you're at

The only reliable line of defense now is Costco chicken. If it falls to shrinkflation/inflation, then we are all done for.

unluckily, they opted for the third route...putting microplastics in us, straight to our veins, with cheaper packaging. But so far they've held on price-wise

One of the things about this that is most tragic is that Hong Kong used to host vibrant, large Tiananmen commemorations in physical spaces. One of the first things an "expanded definition" of national security has been focused on is social media content related to 6/4 in Hong Kong - a total 180 degree turn. As a result, it now appears that Hong Kong has gone from hosting thousands of people in the open to talk about June 4th to criminalizing social media posts about it. Indeed, a dark turn.

Canada