The Hero's Fly Toward the Flame

Popular podcasters have had a good run. The latest OP_RETURN controversy was to juicy to resist. The hits, the downloads, the opportunity to get on the right side of something, the social side. Nver mind that it is a very subtle subject.

I am resisting this, in bitcoin we burn our hero's (or they burn themselves), social controls are diluted through math and privacy and bitcoin doesn't mix well with growing ego's. 

If you are a podcaster (or a blogger) Bitcoin isn't controlled by words, it is controlled by code. If you don't understand the code you have to interpret, and when you interpret you risk projecting yourself onto it and creating confusing hallucinations. For some it is technical, for others it is philosophical, actually it is both, but very subtle. 

If your not contributing to Bitcoin Core then I think that your right to complain is diminished. We need more implementations with more contribution and more users. If you don't like it or think you don't, it's time to get to work. Understand Segwit and Taproot, figure out the difference between node policy and consensus. Let's decentralise the code more, it's a good thing to diversify where the code comes from, it makes bitcoin more resilient. So it's not all bad to have a debate, a so called "war", but whilst I am researching pro's and cons, I'm not signing up to fight. 

Here are some current bitcoin implementations in need of your input.

🔒 Bitcoin Core
• Maintainers: Bitcoin Core developers
• Notes: The reference implementation; conservative and security-focused.

🔧 Bitcoin Knots
• Maintainer: Luke Dashjr
• Notes: A superset of Bitcoin Core with extra features for miners and power users. More experimental and policy-flexible.


🪶 LibreBitcoin
• Maintainer: Community-driven (Librechain project)
• Notes: A drop-in Bitcoin Core fork with hardcoded changes favoring decentralization and transparency (removes assumed trust points).


⚡ btcd
• Language: Go
• Maintainer: btcsuite
• Notes: Full node with a focus on modularity and clean Go code. Used by many in the Lightning ecosystem (e.g., LND).


🦀 Rust Bitcoin / Rust-bitcoind (under development)
• Language: Rust
• Maintainer: rust-bitcoin org
• Notes: Not a full node yet, but increasingly powerful libraries that may form a full implementation in the future.


⚙️ bcoin
• Language: JavaScript/Node.js
• Maintainer: Purse.io
• Notes: Full node and wallet library used for educational and dev-oriented deployments.


🧠 Bitcore
• Language: JavaScript
• Maintainer: BitPay
• Notes: Initially a full node implementation, now mostly focused on wallet infrastructure.

The People Built The Great Pyramids

I find the pyramids fascinating and hypnotic, as I think many people around the world do. It is fun to look at the commonly accepted history and to compare and contrast this with peoples alternate theories. There are so many that i'm not sure the societies consensus still resides with the normal history anymore, at least for the three great pyramids.

One thing that has been found by the science and egyptology community recently was that the masons who built the great pyramids of Giza we not slaves and in fact were some of the best paid and respected people of the city.  https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-1119792

These findings don't want to believe that the Great Pyramids, the first one of the best quality, were built by slaves. I don't like the idea, given my knowledge of people and economies today it just does not seem realistic. The slaves are not motivated, the army that you need to keep the slaves inline is huge, they have to be paid, they are not actually contributing to the building, you need to do this over generations, someone going to revolt, easily sabotage the project. It is just a huge problem considering where do you get the money and resources from. How you sustain the project to completion after the Pharaoh dies? you need a very intrenched culture to uphold this Pharaoh Hierarchy and we know that maintaining such an order is very difficult. We couldn't build such things now with slaves. We would even struggle if we could find the money to pay people well.

I find it more plausible that they were built by natural agreement of people who had developed an intergenerational low-time preference builder culture. This idea that one unquestionable selfish and self absorbed figure and controlling organisation can cause huge human work efforts. The concept that the team ethic and a long term altruistic perspective are much greater achievers. Examples of cathedrals in recent times compare more favourably to me, where the pyramid projects are considered projects of the society to the benefit many.

Further to this the slave story is a psychological operation designed to trick people into believing that they are better when they are told what to do. It lulls people into accepting slavery and that why the iconography is continued on the the dollar, the sly mechanism they used to bring slavery back. Its a story told by creeps, and whats with the eye?

To continue the metaphor and swap it around with our new money. The bitcoin pyramid, is not evil like the fiat one, it is a beacon signifying the singular powers of decentralised, intergenerational low-time preference builder culture. We might have to build another one to prove it.

Bitcoin Epiphany Favours the Poor

Having a Bitcoin Epiphany is a special gift and a very valuable thing. Once unlocked it has the power to change your life financially in the long term and upgrade your personal perspective immediately. The frequency of Bitcoin epiphanies favours the poor. 

The working poor, not the working wealthy or the fiat-endowed. This is because it’s easier to let go of fiat if you don’t have any of it to let go of. If you have spare fiat supposedly storing value and if you have dedicated a large portion of your life and energy to attaining fiat it is much harder to accept that this may have been done, at least partly in vain.

In addition to this, if you are cashed up and full of fiat, or achieving more than average in fiat terms, then it makes sense to justify it and feel empowered by it, to disregard and cast off fiat is self-deprecating and feels destructive. 

In a way, the fiat wealthy must let go of a part of something that has reinforced their ego. This is why it can be delicate and difficult to convince people of the good in Bitcoin. Time is needed and we are figuring it out as we go. The good thing with this psychological barrier is 'number go up' can fix this.

One year a poor person might realise that all the work they have done in their life prior is worth less than what their bitcoin savings has become. Bitcoin has gone up. This forces some reflection I call a Bitcoin epiphany, some bitcoiners never get this. In this state change all the choices that you have made about where to spend your time and how you relate to family and the future of humanity are affected. 

If you're rich this Bitcoin epiphany is mathematically less likely to happen. Your other assets and income are so high that even if your bitcoin goes up 100x you will likely not feel the full life-changing effect. The wealth change needs to grab you by the heart to truly make a difference in your financial perspective. Most people's fiat jobs and savings now will become irrelevant in terms of Bitcoin in the future.  For wealthy people, it may take decades or even generations for them to go broke and they might have to wait till they get there to have a Bitcoin epiphany.

El Salvador Still Going Strong

Three years later El Salvador is still bitcoin and doing really well. Their Bitcoin stack is back all in the green, they first started buying bitcoin around 60-68kusd. The economy is growing and crime has dropped. It appears that bitcoin might be fixing this. 

I wouldn't normally post a flag, but this one has done well. 

I will be visiting sometime soon and will leave my thoughts with you. 

Doubling Down on Ocean Going UP

I'm not sure if this is tattoo-worthy, but there is some good art inspiration possible. Anyway, this a reminder that all my sketches are open source, take them mod them, make them better with AI, I don’t mind. Just mine with Ocean this coming winter. It's a big pool that puts you in control.

Buy Bitcoin or Maybe Never Eat Fish Again

With nuclear-powered subs being thrown around the ocean tin foil hats might actually come in handy Australia contracting the USA and UK to build nuclear subs to apparently "defend" themselves in the South China Sea, I am feeling a little bit concerned. This is nuclear escalation if you ask me.

The main tactical factor of a nuclear sub in my opinion, is not just that they can stay underwater, it is that your opponents can't shoot at one without risking destroying the ocean around you for possibly 10,000 years. Subs can fire at an opponent from hiding, it could be anywhere, and when it attacks, you don't even know what you are shooting at or from what country they come from. In this way it is close to a terrorist weapon. I think that there's no moral justification for this type of weapon. Anyone who chooses knowingly to wield such a vindictive tool is not morally acceptable.

So here go the nation-states with the villainy, and on top of that we now have a nuclear energy narrative growing with powerplant investments by Microsoft and Amazon. These new power plants to be used for AI data centers. Ironic since the news and government was persecuting Bitcoin mining for using comparably less energy than they say they need now. I'm not anti-nuclear energy. The more watts the better but AI is basically a fiat bubble. It's nice to have easy art, coding and quick but suspect search answers though hardly compares to the human impact of sound money. Really the AI will be used for tax collecting, narrative control and disodent detection. So it's just like Government mining, and of course they think it's ok despite the blaring contradiction. State and big media only last year were saying private bitcoin miners were boiling the ocean 

It used to be taboo to use energy in a data centre like this, maybe will be less so now. I think the mining love is growing. AI and Bitcoin mining centres are being built as it is beneficial to have both in one location. I wan't to see more home miners and more home AI systems for a decentralised future. More nuclear power plants are ok, but let's just hope the government don't blow them up. The governments are degenerating so much they should not be trusted alone with advanced technology. I hope I don't see them manifest their own trope, I am not keen on freshly cooked radioactive fish from the sub wreck. 

Governments end up boiling the oceans, not bitcoin.

Let's Decentralise Bitcoin Mining

Bitcoin mining has become more centralised. The Antpool Bitmain monopoly needs to be resisted.  FPPS and all its fiat variations need to go eventually. Let's decentralise mining, check out https://ocean.xyz/