thetrocro
Troy Cross

To traverse the globe at speed, to divide arbitrarily, to become programmable, to become money for the digital age... gold must be exchanged for an IOU for gold.
It then loses its censorship-resistance, its privacy, its trustlessness, the good stuff.
The market is saying it doesn't care so much about long-range censorship-resistant payments. It's also not concerned that custodians are lying about the underlying, or that, like Nixon in '71, settlement will be denied.
It's ok with IOUs if the underlying is supply-limited.
Capital isn't afraid of being squeezed at the chokepoints of finance. Those same chokepoints are there for the ETFs and for stables and for treasury company stocks anyway. The market actually CLAMORED for chokepoints for crypto. Capital begged to be chokeable.
So it's no surprise that capital would fail to appreciate this deep virtue of bitcoin.
In fairness, gold itself is hard to choke. Physics, not politics, is what slows the flow of gold. Physics makes its arbitrary division into smaller quantities hard too.
To transcend its physical constraints, gold must become an IOU, a social obligation, tracked on politically-approved centralized ledgers.
Bitcoin is different. While existing on a ledger it isn't an IOU. It's a stuff, a bearer asset. Its ledger is distributed, decentralized.
Bitcoin's ledger, strictly speaking, does have *a* throat to choke. The problem is that it's got tens of thousands of them, and you can't choke 'em all.
Why can't gold do the same?
Why can't gold jump to a decentralized ledger, like bitcoin, rather than taking the form of an IOU on a centralized ledger, which can be choked by a political or financial authority?
Because, for gold, the map is not the territory. The map is the ledger of who owns what gold and the territory is the physical stuff.
Bridging the divide between the ledger and the physical underlying, which lives in actual vaults, will always make the ledgers chokeable.
"The oracle problem" for physical gold is real.
With bitcoin--cue Gigi--the map is the territory. There is no oracle problem. The bitcoin white paper solves the problem of how to coordinate distributed ledgers without any reference to the outside world.
This is THE WHOLE INNOVATION OF BITCOIN.
In sum... when gold transforms into information, it loses its greatness.
Bitcoin was born as information, and hence, born already into greatness.
(Cue Lyn.)
It doesn't need to transform into an IOU to function as money and give up its greatness.
That's the difference.
But the market is telling us it doesn't care.
We're hardly in a position to complain, as our focus has been on achieving and then hyping highly chokeable forms of bitcoin ownership. We fully embraced the mindset.
"The important thing is that the underlying is still censorship-resistant!"
Well yes.
I do think it is a super important difference and it WILL matter in the long term.
But most bitcoin owners don't own bitcoin. They have ETFs, exchange balances, treasury company stock. (I can bring the stats on this if you like, from our study.)
Their bitcoin value is flowing through choke-able channels anyway.
Even bitcoiners choose chokeability with their own money, so why be surprised when normies buy paper gold over paper bitcoin?
It may take some hard lessons for capital, and the masses, and even bitcoiners themselves, to appreciate bitcoin's true value: scaleable censorship resistance. The moment is clarifying, isn't it?
Thanks for reading. Note also, I have nothing against paper bitcoin.
Let a thousand flowers of fiat-system-bitcoin bloom.
I am just pointing out a reality: the key differentiator for bitcoin > gold isn't being valued, even by us.

2026-01-15 06:59:32 UTC

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🫡

2026-01-15 01:19:21 UTC

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“Lamentations of a philosopher” makes a great title for a blog that “accomplishes nothing.”
#nevent1q…hqdq

2026-01-15 01:09:24 UTC

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🤣

2026-01-13 17:23:37 UTC

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Fair but it’s a certain type who writes a response here…

2026-01-13 17:22:52 UTC

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Design phase!

2026-01-13 17:21:52 UTC

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Working on something

2026-01-13 17:21:07 UTC

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True

2026-01-13 17:20:04 UTC

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You’re one

2026-01-13 17:19:14 UTC

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Awesome. The idea still holds up.

2026-01-13 17:18:35 UTC

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Good point

2026-01-13 17:18:25 UTC

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Definitely how I define it

2026-01-13 07:00:06 UTC

If you’re a bitcoiner, reply and I’ll follow you.

2026-01-13 06:58:33 UTC

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Dude

2026-01-13 06:58:18 UTC

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Seriously

2025-07-09 18:17:34 UTC

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Come hang out!
#nevent1q…guzn

2025-05-21 21:20:07 UTC

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It’s getting off zero, yes

2025-05-21 21:19:28 UTC

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Node running != ownership, not even ownership of large amounts.

2025-05-21 21:18:41 UTC

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We have self custody numbers for bitcoin not gold: coming soon

2025-05-20 17:08:20 UTC

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What’s your evidence? We have two separate measures, one higher than River’s and one lower. But this is in line with a lot of surveys actually. You “just know”? Fits also with etf, exchange numbers, hardware wallet sales and wallet downloads… (trust wallet alone has 200 million downloads) but you just know.

2025-05-20 16:58:23 UTC

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I agree with that interpretation.

2025-05-20 16:57:50 UTC

Nostr: “4 in 5 Americans can’t possibly want the U.S. to swap > 0% of their gold for bitcoin. You are full of shit!”
Meanwhile, more Americans own bitcoin than gold.
https://blossom.primal.net/f9136b5a9a0b56abfdef4a4adb7584bf18ca45ac996f03d2653c7bb75dca0c17.jpg

2025-05-20 05:46:42 UTC

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Learn to take a win!
nevent1qqsdyd928ehurfv2nucpnzflgd54f4pnrrqp7p859fn5dme38ru7vacpzemhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuurjd9kkzmpwdejhgw9yrvu

2025-05-20 05:43:44 UTC

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Many of you are skeptical of our finding, released this morning that 4 in 5 Americans would convert some US gold reserves into bitcoin.
"Yeah right! You must have done your survey at a bitcoin conference!"
We were also surprised. But results are results.
The internet doubted us last year when we saw that bitcoiners were all over the political map, and extreme liberals were well represented among owners.
Many other surveys have since vindicated what we found: in politics and in many other ways, American bitcoiners look much like America itself. We are confident that our results this year will also hold up in future polling.
Here's how we collected our sample and here's the precise prompt that led to our result.
1. Data.
Our survey consisted of national sample of 3,345 respondents recruited in partnership with Qualtrics, a survey and data collection company.
No sample is perfectly random. This was conducted online and participants were paid. But, we asked Qualtrics to match US Census distribution in terms of age, genders, race, income, education, geography, etc., as closely as possible. As you will see in the full report, we approximated the US population pretty well.
Many of our results very closely tracked last year's results in ways that confirmed the quality of our sample. The sample did not show unexpectedly high rates of bitcoin ownership (more in the report) or high rates of bitcoin sentiment (more in the report).
2. Timing.
We opened the survey at the end of February and ended data collection mid-March.
3. The prompt.
"Assuming the United States was thinking of converting some of their gold reserve into Bitcoin, what percentage would you advise they convert?"
Respondents were provided a slider used to choose between 0% and 100%.
4. Related question.
We also asked, in the wake of Trump's tweet on March 2, just as our data collection was getting underway, whether people approved of the formation of the Strategic Crypto Reserve (the 3/6 SBR Executive order had not yet been issued). We got a less enthusiastic response to that proposal: 66% of respondents were neutral-to-positive.
5. Framing.
We suspect framing effects are powerful here given how novel the idea of a reserve is. There are many ways of asking similar questions, some of which will elicit more positive, and some more negative responses. Such is the nature of surveys. But the fact remains: when given a slider and asked to advise the US government on the right proportion of bitcoin and gold, subjects were very reluctant to put that slider on 0% bitcoin and 100% gold. Instead, they settled around 10% bitcoin. Make of that what you will.
6. Average.
The median bitcoin conversion recommendation was 10%, but the mean was actually 20.3%. That sounds even more pro-bitcoin, and even more outlandish. But that was also the actual result.
7. Age.
As you can see from the graphic, the recommended proportions of bitcoin drops significantly with age. Not surprising to us, given the inverse relationship we found last year between age and bitcoin ownership/sentiment.
8. Gender.
Women recommend smaller bitcoin allocations than men, also in keeping with previous findings. However, older men (60+) were the most likely to recommend all gold, whereas older women were more leery of 100% gold exposure. So, men were more extreme in their recommendations at both the high and the low end.
9. The report.
It's a really rich data set, as we asked a comprehensive panel of questions, just like last year. I could go on with politics, race, and other factors related to just this question. But this thread is a preview. The full report is coming as fast as we can produce it.
Thanks for your skepticism--we welcome it, always!--and your patience in reading this long post.
Bottom line is that 4 in 5 of the people we surveyed recommended that the US diversify some of its gold reserves into bitcoin.
An amazing stat, we think! It's very different from the consensus in DC and apparently different from the nostr consensus too. Just like last year's result.

2025-05-19 16:16:51 UTC

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Yes it’s an online poll. Other polling also shows super high brand awareness. Although if you ask people about what they know about bitcoin it starts to fall apart. But yeah we’ve been in the news for 15 years. Brand awareness is very high.

2025-05-19 15:27:40 UTC

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We were too. This question was asked with a slider from 0 to 100. Most people clustered around a 10% allocation.

2025-05-19 15:01:47 UTC

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Representative sample. We worked with Qualtrics who administered the survey.

2025-05-19 15:00:41 UTC

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We have data on that too from the same survey. It’s well into the 90s actually.

2025-05-19 14:45:34 UTC

4 in 5 Americans want some US gold reserves converted to bitcoin.
https://blossom.primal.net/65f3bf72c493a021da154df805ef4eb65985e9f5c79cfd3a3ccea23fa318d0ff.jpg

2025-04-22 03:31:51 UTC

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Was asked this once on a panel, at Princeton. My answer came after a govt official said we need to get everyone in a room and decide how to censor transactions. I said: the question is how to make a currency where you can’t do THAT.

2025-03-10 07:16:39 UTC

She’s wearing a very nice bitcoin orange here, I’ll give her that.
https://m.primal.net/PaZn.jpg

2025-03-09 03:29:30 UTC

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If I had the wealth to do it I’d endow the Troy Cross Chair of Philosophy, and as a condition of the gift also demand to occupy it. Then I’d introduce myself as Troy Cross, the Troy Cross Chair of Philosophy at such-and-such university. I’d also make everyone else refer to me by the full title and laugh at them every time.

2025-03-09 03:24:06 UTC

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Yessssir

2025-03-01 05:21:38 UTC

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2025-03-01 05:14:00 UTC

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Yes

2025-02-26 20:30:44 UTC

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Ah that sucks

2025-02-25 16:10:25 UTC

GM nature is healing.

2025-02-23 14:56:32 UTC

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Social contagion is a hell of a drug.

2025-02-23 05:03:35 UTC

Someone please host these libraries and charge sats for downloads.
No junk and ads and delays and captchas to monetize. Just money.
#nevent1q…z7mn

2025-02-13 08:17:09 UTC

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You don’t have five seconds. You’re dead by the time you read the instructions.

2025-02-13 08:12:31 UTC

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My favorite conflicting advice;
1. Don’t fight the tape.
2. Be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy.
Also, the two versions of the gambler’s fallacy. When you are on a winning streak you “have the hot hand” but when you are losing, you’re “due” for a win.
These things precisely cancel and we invoke them as needed to do what we want with a nice rationalization.

2025-02-13 08:07:25 UTC

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> 2 years without drinking now. Not going back.

2025-02-10 20:55:16 UTC

Silk Road hoodie arrived today from @nprofile…rf3s.
https://m.primal.net/OZvg.mov

2025-02-10 19:44:04 UTC

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True. The gold isn’t manufactured. But its rate of discovery is a function of technology and demand. Bitcoin’s is pre-set. That constantly trips people up when they think of mining. Dhruv’s way of thinking about it is better. The network already has the bitcoin: they just haven’t sold them to the miners yet in exchange for hash.

2025-02-10 19:41:29 UTC

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Analogy is good but I don’t like the idea that the value exists before issuance. The bitcoins exist, but their value is yet to be decided because they haven’t touched a market. But their quantity has already been fixed.

2025-02-10 12:03:01 UTC

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Yeah that’s exactly the kind of weird auction it is.

2025-02-10 08:02:26 UTC

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Alex, what a shot!!

2025-02-10 07:57:51 UTC

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@nprofile…vytp you do allow that the fiction that determines the existence of the fictional stuff known as bitcoin… this fiction isn’t just the time chain, right? But the software too? So this fictional stuff can exist, according to the fiction, but be no one’s and nowhere on-chain? Is that consistent with your work? (Sorry I should just look it up.)

2025-02-10 07:50:10 UTC

Been thinking about Dhruv Bansal’s idea that bitcoin are not produced or generated — wrong way of thinking about it induced by “mining” metaphor — but rather all bitcoin existed from the moment the network was launched, but are auctioned off to miners as a whole, in exchange for hashes (compute), on an auction schedule of 140 years or whatever it is.
Each miner decides to take the network’s offer or not, by running their machines or not. Collectively, they determine how much that latest round of auctioned bitcoin is worth, in hashes and/or in energy.
Then there’s another market on top of this one which is coincidental but distinct, and that’s the market for block space, where the sellers are individual miners and the buyers are would-be transactors and of course that’s sat/vbyte.
I really do think it’s more accurate than thinking of bitcoin miners as “producing” bitcoin the way a manufacturer produces a product like cars or even discovered like gold miners discover gold. The bitcoin, all 21 million exist, just not on the ledger, from the get go. They only need to be auctioned, like treasuries. We don’t think the bidders on treasuries produce the 10-year! It’s just a weird auction mechanism where you have to prove work and your odds of winning the auction are proportional to your work / the total work by bidders.
I do get it and I think it’s right and I think it helps with a lot of misconceptions once you grok it fully. And as Dhruv says it shows you the formula for how bitcoin disrupts everything which is by making markets where there weren’t any, and building layers of distinct markets, including lighting and eventually the internet.
So, good job Dhruv.
But… it is not so easy to communicate is it? This thing is bloody hard to explain, as someone said once.

2025-02-10 03:59:43 UTC

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I got 3 copies but haven’t had the time to crack em open yet!

2025-02-07 00:23:41 UTC

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Yeah this but arranged by Kempff https://imslp.org/wiki/Wachet_auf,_ruft_uns_die_Stimme,_BWV_140_(Bach,_Johann_Sebastian)

2025-02-06 22:37:01 UTC

Let’s get the former Mayor of Caracas a sizable following on here, yeah?
#note1qdy…0kxv

2025-02-06 22:35:21 UTC

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Well said

2025-02-06 14:42:48 UTC

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Welcome to my world

2025-02-06 14:35:55 UTC

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Extremely difficult habit to kick. Good luck and stick with it for awhile. It takes a long time to fully adjust.

2025-02-05 23:43:52 UTC

Title of this is “Awake, the voice commands.” Yes it’s Bach.
https://m.primal.net/OSNT.mov

2025-02-05 21:39:08 UTC

Obsessions and manic work episodes. Yep.
#note18y2…kukg

2025-02-05 21:34:00 UTC

Bitcoin needs paranoid freedom nerds. https://www.btcpolicy.org/articles/meet-the-fellows-troy-cross
https://m.primal.net/OSDP.jpg

2025-02-05 03:00:22 UTC

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lol

2025-02-04 15:03:28 UTC

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I know what this means, lol

2025-02-04 15:03:00 UTC

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🤣

2025-02-04 15:02:15 UTC

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lol

2025-02-04 15:01:53 UTC

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lol

2025-02-04 15:01:24 UTC

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Not in the dream but I woke up thinking I would soon be completely covered.

2025-02-04 08:23:21 UTC

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History in a hairline

2025-02-04 07:11:30 UTC

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🤣🤣🤣🤣

2025-02-04 07:11:14 UTC

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🤣🤣🤣

2025-02-04 07:09:20 UTC

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https://m.primal.net/OPdn.jpg

2025-02-04 06:53:56 UTC

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Lolololo

2025-02-04 06:31:42 UTC

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💪

2025-02-04 06:30:52 UTC

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Hahahaha

2025-02-04 06:29:32 UTC

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This is the best

2025-02-04 06:27:18 UTC

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Always apt

2025-02-04 06:10:18 UTC

I woke up this morning from a dream in which I noticed I had re-sprouted a full head of hair. In fact, my hairline was actually too low, like encroaching on the eyebrows.
What does it mean.?
Will zap all interpretations.

2025-02-03 00:15:47 UTC

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Could go a lot lower. I’m ok with that too!

2025-02-02 21:36:56 UTC

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We haven’t had such an asymmetric advantage for the virtual. (Arguably, Amazon paying no sales tax was similar.)

2025-02-02 21:35:40 UTC

I just bought some bitcoin.

2025-02-02 19:10:26 UTC

Something is going to break as the physical economy becomes hyper-localized and borders regulated while the virtual economy becomes borderless and impossible to control.
Anything that ships to your house will either come from the US or being taxed heavily. But what you download won’t be subject to that tariff (unless we surveil you heavily) because there’s no customs at a border.
Likewise, tariffs plus immigration restrictions means you can’t outsource production to cheaper labor markets and you can’t import the labor either. But… you can pay someone for their labor while they remain overseas, by streaming them sats.
So something will give. Either we’ll get draconian surveillance and control of the digital domain or accelerated virtualization as we can achieve efficiencies there from free trade and cheap labor that are not available in the physical domain.

2025-02-02 08:53:27 UTC

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🤣🤣🤣

2025-02-01 16:39:07 UTC

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Have never played but listened to a lot of

2025-02-01 16:38:43 UTC

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I think so

2025-02-01 16:37:00 UTC

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Wild

2025-02-01 16:32:45 UTC

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🤣🤣🤣

2025-02-01 07:29:20 UTC

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“You decide which system you give your energy to.”

2025-02-01 07:16:57 UTC

I can’t quite tear myself away from X, but I also can’t get that @npub1s05…eyhe voice out of my head.

2025-02-01 07:05:29 UTC

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I do too. Especially that first note.

2025-02-01 04:25:43 UTC

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Daily Gigi rant from the driver’s seat. It would do numbers.

2025-02-01 04:20:24 UTC

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Bounties were well-designed. Reachable, but also added real value.

2025-02-01 04:18:17 UTC

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His logic cannot faulted on this. The value of the permit should be high if it’s worth zero otherwise. 50/50 seems like the reasonable starting point.
But that makes a permit-independent platform worth twice as much, because it doesn’t have to share ownership at all.

2025-02-01 04:09:01 UTC

Now that they’re out of power (in the US), I wonder if it misinformation experts:
(a) realize the value of free expression and the dangers of censorship,
or
(b) continue to push for aggressive censorship, but assuming they’ll seize power again soon.
I’m thinking it’s (b).

2025-02-01 03:50:31 UTC

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I want one

2025-02-01 03:42:18 UTC

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I’m enjoying the takes on here rn. Twitter is filled with shitcoinery.

2025-02-01 03:41:39 UTC

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Yeah I think I getting a little better. Kind of like fitness. Even a little bit helps if it’s consistent.

2025-01-31 20:01:09 UTC

Happy day.
https://m.primal.net/OKJq.mov

2025-01-26 16:28:14 UTC

It’s not about eliminating trust. It’s about bootstrapping integrity.
#note19hu…kqdf

2025-01-25 19:31:08 UTC

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Love it. Bitcoin bootstraps integrity.

2025-01-25 19:18:34 UTC

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I ain’t watching that

2024-12-23 07:38:14 UTC

Will write another post about this that’s NOSTR-specific. Why and where this makes sense to do. Subsidies for solar and why we don’t want them. Etc. In the meantime, this is a thread from that other site with nice pictures.
https://x.com/thetrocro/status/1870342559593357637?s=46&t=z8UE7xH1Oq1lkaJCi5kisw