cameronvaske
Cameron Vaské

https://open.substack.com/pub/thecommonwealthperspective

Eternal optimist who thinks we can fix this. Zillennial. Sometimes I think I know things. Real human writer, professional toe-stubber. Views my own, but I don’t mind sharing them.

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Last Notes

2026-07-24 01:49:34 UTC

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I said to him, I said…
https://blossom.primal.net/f09626cd73e42504e1a8f8e27fe4b7ea31364494dbac1b0d1d7620968317a3cc.gif

2026-07-24 00:53:25 UTC

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Of course not… Unless you’ve already forgotten… Must be something you assimilated.
https://blossom.primal.net/bd5adbaf85345d46dab6318671e7f427148482140a30c6a4a246cc9ee613f0fd.gif

2026-07-24 00:49:12 UTC

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Unimatrix Zero.

2026-07-24 00:47:25 UTC

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*of

2026-07-24 00:46:08 UTC

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This isn’t very Bitcoin or you, buddy. Don’t make me send Hugh and One after you.

2026-07-24 00:32:42 UTC

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“Obedience brings victory.”
This you? Idk man…

2026-07-24 00:17:21 UTC

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https://blossom.primal.net/7880a6557c77147ddad25673a50fd3936142c519927bc33bab53f247cf53e9fb.gif

2026-07-23 19:27:51 UTC

Lately, I’ve been knocking around the center-left’s events in D.C.: Welcome Fest and the New Liberals Action Summit, in particular, to poke about and explore what the monetary and fiscal policy read is on the “Abundance” agenda.
And then I wrote an article critiquing it.
https://open.substack.com/pub/thecommonwealthperspective/p/abundance-has-to-come-from-somewhere
I used to be a social democrat (now classical liberal). I still understand the thought process and problem framing, and am openly trying to help expand that problem framing and reintroduce the debate on sound money—and yes, Bitcoin.
It’s going better than you might think. (Next or next-next mass adoption?)
There’s more open questions and genuine engagement than I think most critics assume in those spaces, and there are a lot of good faith debates to be had.
Come check it out and lend me your thoughts, memes, and critical takes!
https://blossom.primal.net/1964e64cacdc0831e051e04e86df8dbef9ef65f08a8bb2c89a44c513fa95224a.jpg

2026-07-19 19:45:21 UTC

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I cackled. I did. That was good.

2026-03-28 05:08:33 UTC

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Eh. I was born just in time to come technologically “of age” for the staging. Little I can do. I can be on here and slowly move more off of it than into it, but… I’m trying to advocate for positive change—including Bitcoin. So. Ironically and paradoxically gotta be in nearly all the spaces anyway.
I feel you though. I remember when social media was social and memes and “reels” content were legit and just funny YouTube videos…

2026-03-28 05:00:34 UTC

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One of my favorites. Such genuine laughter 😆

2026-03-27 02:48:00 UTC

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In fairness, they’ve been taught to understand the economy and finance in fiat terms of trust.
Discovering sound money is like finding out you’ve been working on a virtual machine the entire time instead of the actual operating system.
The system and constraints aren’t wrong, they’re just not the ultimate system and constraints.
If I was more glib and flippant back before I understood Bitcoin, I could see myself saying something like that. (And I would have been wrong.)
Opinion incoming: We reach these people not by pointing to the ultimate answer, but by redefining the problem set for them. Let them ask the next questions. Curiosity wins every time.

2026-03-27 02:43:25 UTC

You can’t fix what you refuse to face.
Politically— we say we want solutions but our electoral systems reward avoidance.
Leaders don’t name tradeoffs and institutions don’t admit failure. Everything becomes messaging instead of decision-making.
And so nothing actually gets fixed.
Economically— we say we care about the future, but our economic systems keep borrowing from it.
Debt lets us delay hard choices and inflation hides the cost. Everything becomes delay instead of decision-making.
And so we keep struggling and kicking the can down the road.
Socially— we say we want a stronger country, but our social systems expect less of each other.
Responsibility gets outsourced and citizenship becomes licensed commentary. Everything becomes spectatorship instead of participation.
And so the civics that hold a society together weaken and become brittle.
We can turn all of this around. And it’s high time that we do.

2026-03-26 22:45:46 UTC

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What’s fake?

2026-03-26 21:03:20 UTC

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Great stream. Very thoughtful questions and reflections. (Also scandalous questioning of the Saylor Orange tie.) Good stuff.
#nevent1q…68th

2026-03-26 13:02:06 UTC

We need to do for electoral incentives and governance what Bitcoin as a sound money does for economic incentives and the economy.
Repair and renew them.
https://open.substack.com/pub/thecommonwealthperspective/p/honest-institutions-how-americas-institutions-lost-trust
https://blossom.primal.net/17a46360e832da7d28a28c811b9c089443926c82b51dcbc991b756e78b7043c8.jpg

2026-03-26 00:55:50 UTC

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One of my favorite book quotes, and I always told my writers/colleagues this: “‘Weird is good. Strange is bad.’ Be weird.”

2026-03-25 22:39:00 UTC

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Exactly! I have a supporting companion piece coming out in the not-too-distant future to “back” this one. For most folks—even and most especially the institutionally-minded crowds in D.C. who haven’t looked at monetary policy quite as closely—this is just about as big a bite as I expect them to be able to chew.
Even then, pretty big bite in terms of an article. Too much shorter and it feels hand-waving. Too much longer and it’s a mini-dissertation and history lesson.
I wanted to write a piece that clearly draws the links for people, explains it tightly, and makes the case that the shift from sound money to fiat creates and exacerbates these issues.

2026-03-25 15:57:17 UTC

I know I’m preaching to the choir here on Nostr, but perhaps someone finds this article and argument useful to explain to their non-orange-pilled friends:
What do the affordability crisis, the decline of American industry and manufacturing, the national debt crisis, wealth inequality, and the erosion of the middle class all have in common?
Well, money.
https://open.substack.com/pub/thecommonwealthperspective/p/sound-money-part-1-why-america-economy-lost-anchor
https://blossom.primal.net/456a7d06c934b8836a17fcdfcaaf52c8c033290b9b7290712fd50a13886ef1f2.jpg

2026-03-24 13:49:04 UTC

We need to work towards honest institutions—not tear them down.
https://open.substack.com/pub/thecommonwealthperspective/p/honest-institutions-how-americas-institutions-lost-trust
https://blossom.primal.net/6963c5ef37ed2acdc1200a3f2068fe968d635c42e33d0f04c5824ff3a6f6e5d1.jpg

2026-03-22 14:52:55 UTC

Happy to report I am now zappable! Joining the Bitcoin community more fully.
Let’s bring Sound Money back, better.

2026-03-22 13:32:06 UTC

If your system will break without villains, it’s not about villains.
It’s about design.
Bitcoin offers better monetary design.
But we need better institutional design, too.
Let’s have an America of Honest Institutions.
https://open.substack.com/pub/thecommonwealthperspective/p/honest-institutions-how-americas-institutions-lost-trust
https://blossom.primal.net/ba2edbf40f08b50f738a5a3eee3419721a177e5548e6ca843a2a818b364c71a2.jpg

2026-03-19 02:59:46 UTC

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“To design a better future for ourselves, we must engineer an institutional return to sound money. Under a sound money architecture, costs become visible constraints again. Policymaking and politics must address real trade-offs with voters. Growth becomes sustainable again. Industry can become competitive again. Stewardship becomes more rewarding than capture and speculation. State capacity is bounded by economic reality.”
https://open.substack.com/pub/thecommonwealthperspective/p/sound-money-part-1-why-america-economy-lost-anchor
#nevent1q…pvs7

2026-03-18 23:03:35 UTC

My latest on Substack. Let me know what you think! As always, stay curious and stack sats.
“That is not good governance. We have created a system that preserves itself by steadily consuming the institutional trust and credibility on which it was built. That is institutional, economic, and societal erosion by design.
The most damning thing of all is that none of it needed a cartoon villain plot.”
https://open.substack.com/pub/thecommonwealthperspective/p/sound-money-part-1-why-america-economy-lost-anchor
https://blossom.primal.net/306d6d25f394c3c2a5d2a0d85d5b3f2bf3586c56275aa76c51bd116c59067ecb.jpg

2026-03-07 05:11:30 UTC

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On point. I’d add—it didn’t even need to be malicious to happen this way. It’s bad design. It’s crisis management layered on crisis management layered on crisis management that got us into this problem.
Burning it all down may seem tempting, but it’s designing something better that will fix it. Bitcoin does the something better at the level of money.
Next we need better institutional design so that our intentions for the world we want to create align with the incentives of the world we choose to build and the principles behind how we choose to live.
So yes, go buy the good sound money. Then let’s build some honest institutions and share responsibility for them and the world we create together.
#nevent1q…h7ql

2026-03-06 20:16:02 UTC

My latest. Faith in democracy and trust in America’s institutions are collapsing not because democracy is failing or because institutions lie—but because our incentives reward fear, performance, and fundraising over truth and accountability.
“The answer cannot be to insist that this system works, to demand moral heroism, or to insist that the institutions are sacrosanct any more than it can be to insist that tearing the system down will give us better results.
We must redesign the system so that it works the way we intended it to.“
https://open.substack.com/pub/thecommonwealthperspective/p/honest-institutions-how-americas-institutions-lost-trust

2026-03-03 01:06:10 UTC

Come be curious with me.
More on its way, tomorrow.
https://open.substack.com/pub/thecommonwealthperspective/p/the-fifty-eight-pages-i-didnt-publish-honesty-humility-conviction-clarity
https://blossom.primal.net/2506ad344957ea88894732f3368347f2f09de26f8e2f607c17344c1bd7c8ff36.jpg

2026-03-02 19:02:35 UTC

We are in an era of democratic rebirth—if we can keep it.
https://open.substack.com/pub/hyperdimensional/p/clawed
https://blossom.primal.net/d48dd4f8bd6b3c007073d3beb76596619ac52a2bd369a5413ad08e247f5fd1e2.jpg

2026-03-02 06:28:54 UTC

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Come prove me wrong, please.
https://open.substack.com/pub/thecommonwealthperspective/p/the-fifty-eight-pages-i-didnt-publish-honesty-humility-conviction-clarity
https://blossom.primal.net/a7da2c6cc57bf5204a371e3e6aacf8667d25d5c103aa70d83bf7f9ff96db734e.jpg
#nevent1q…0u6n

2026-03-02 06:26:03 UTC

Last week, before the weekend, I slept maybe 35 hours. I wrote fifty-eight pages about the crises facing America—in our democracy, our economy, and our society & civics. I didn’t publish them. Not yet. Here’s why.
https://open.substack.com/pub/thecommonwealthperspective/p/the-fifty-eight-pages-i-didnt-publish-honesty-humility-conviction-clarity

2026-02-26 21:28:27 UTC

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Since at least June 2025*

2026-02-26 21:27:56 UTC

AI industry looks to me like it’s heavily over-leveraged and about to crash out in a big way. We’ve seen since at least:
- OpenAI invested heavily nvidia, which is invested in OpenAI
- Sam Altman float being “too big to fail” and being rebuffed on “this echoes too much like 2008
- Numerous AI-led corporate and even government embarrassments and task failures, if you will
- Studies like those the AI Now Institute has conducted that credibly question whether AI usage has meaningfully increased labor productivity
- About a gazillion fearmongering takes that ‘AI is replacing white collar jobs, probably tomorrow’
- And now, this.
https://blossom.primal.net/e14958adbf78af6eac1ff73189eab1a5aea2e2e9d99a3ee92cc239ff50595af4.jpg

2026-02-26 20:13:38 UTC

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Can I have a checkmark to put by my name on all the things if I let you track me? 😜

2026-02-26 17:29:50 UTC

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Ahem. “What he said.” See? Good actor.

2026-02-26 00:56:00 UTC

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I’m gonna start calling this ‘marble-pilling.’ Honest institutions matter just as much as sound money.
#nevent1q…250u

2026-02-24 23:05:59 UTC

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*And yes, this is not a U.S.-only problem. It happens in plenty of other democracies, too.

2026-02-24 23:04:17 UTC

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I think what you’re describing—the terror and ridiculousness of being forced to choose between two coercive systems—is real and damning, but not for the reason you imply. “Choice” without legitimate alternatives can feel like (and in the moment, perhaps might as well be) an illusion.
That said, your deeper point, I think, actually maps to structural problems in many modern democracies. When the incentive structures that ultimately drive institutions and institutional behavior collapse into false binaries and political partisanship, voters are often choosing between packages they don’t actually endorse. The system *as it exists today* only allows two viable bundles at a time in the United States. Voters are voting against what they most fear, not for what they actually want. But that’s not the only way to ‘do democracy.’
In that sense, the poison isn’t left or right, but poor institutional design (and here, especially, electoral design). Winner-take-all systems especially tend to turn complex multivariate disagreement into an often binary, forced-choice referendum, reward extremity, and convert politics and policymaking into semi-permanent ‘governance by emergency / fiat.’
I’d posit that the answer isn’t “reject the system,” but to “fix the system.” It’s to redesign the rules so choice is real and meaningful again. Proportional representation where legislatures reflect the public, majority-acceptable executives rather than factional winners, and fiscal/monetary constraints that make tradeoffs visible so politics can’t run on pure symbolism. The goal is not to have perfect options. It’s to have real, fair, honest, representation and legitimate options, so people aren’t asked to pick a tribe, but to select representatives who can build durable coalitions around specific problems.
In short—I don’t think this is so much a referendum on whether liberal democracy works, but how ours works now. If we fix the rules, we can keep our promises—to ourselves, to each other, and to future generations.
/rant over

2026-02-24 06:53:05 UTC

Sound money is institutional honesty. It is also inherently part of America’s democratic republican tradition.
- It requires the state to hold itself to account (literally) and keep its word in real time rather than defer its costs indefinitely into the future.
- It aligns public spending with visible trade-offs instead of obfuscating the part of the true cost in inflation; it tells the story of what things actually cost.
- It protects the value of work, savings, and contracts from quiet dilution; it’s how we keep our promises about tomorrow to ourselves and our fellow citizens.
Sound money is part of institutional truth-telling and accountability. Put simply, when money tells the truth, governance must as well.
Stay curious and stack sats, y’all.

2026-02-19 17:08:23 UTC

Reshared here—
So much to like in terms of questioning, line of argumentation, and ideas being posed here from John Avlon and the usual suspects at The Fifth Column.
https://substack.com/@wethefifth/note/p-186911701
A few key things really stood out to me and got me excited:
- There is a genuine opportunity here to distance from the illiberal extremes in favor of a common-sense politics that’s not “centrist” for centrism’s sake or “split the difference,” but by addressing the institutional and incentive structures that are repeatedly delivering poor results;
- Voting systems are one part of this problem, because they force us to the extremes and push out representation for many Americans (just look at the latest Gallup poll from January showing only 27% of Americans identify as Republican, 27% as Democrats, and 45% as independents);
- Overspending is the other half of this problem—constant fiscal deficits that blind the real trade-offs and incentives structures to governance driven by (in many cases well-intentioned, many not) instincts to solve everything through the state from both parties (implicitly through fiat currency debt financing);
- A through-line I don’t think got as much play and I don’t recall explicitly stated: the crisis is about trust, legitimacy, legibility, and incentive misalignment.
Definitely worth a listen. Got my attention immediately. This is more of the conversation I think we need to be having.

2026-02-18 16:57:26 UTC

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This is excellent—I’d agree. It’s also for this reason that I’d argue not only is this an economic issue, but a political one. Sound money adoption is necessary to restore that anchor, but that’s just one part of liberal democracy’s ‘ship of state,’ to torture a metaphor.
The structural incentives of governance—most especially those in voting systems for a democracy, as they either incentivize or constrain politicians’ freedom to argue the ideas and policies rather than along donor or partisan lines—also need re-stabilization. Here, the ‘truth-telling currency’ is votes, and the method of transfer is less continuous and necessarily more fixed. (The ‘compass, if you will.’) Unless votes can be aligned with genuine preferences (at least, way better than they can be now) and enable politicians to represent constituencies better, liberal democracy becomes unstable. Again—it’s not so much that vote counts lie, but that they are incapable of telling the truth.
Of course, ships still need to go somewhere—and that is the art of statecraft. Piloting a lopsided ship without a working compass and no stabilizing weights makes for quite a challenge. You have the expertise and ability to see far into the future (your eyeglass), but no clue where that leads and a less than stable ship to get you there. It’s unsurprising, then, that we repeatedly end up somewhere other than we intended to go—even with the best of intentions.
(Definitely used the metaphor too long; I hope you take my meaning.)

2026-02-18 16:33:14 UTC

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Love this line of thinking.
#nevent1q…ql8f

2026-02-18 16:32:52 UTC

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Yep—because Bitcoin is a sound money. Very well put. From a societal and governmental point of view—sound money enables truth-telling across time. Without it (and especially under fiat currency conditions) the information is time-delayed and signal source is confused.
In some sense, none of us are “educated buyers” or “educated voters” because the price signals, political costs, and economic costs are all mixed up, misattributed, and deferred into the future. It’s not that the system isn’t lying, per se—it’s that it’s incapable of accurately telling the whole truth.

2026-02-18 05:08:07 UTC

I’m just getting to the part of fiat currency secondary effects in @npub1t62…aj6w's Broken Money book where we’re talking about the politics of fiat currency. So pleased to find I’m in good company with what I’ve been hammering home (to anybody who’ll listen—sorry @nprofile…8ws8) about democratic decision-making and fiat currency. Here’s a great excerpt, and one I urge pro-democracy reform folks to take heed of:
“The goal for this whole process is for the money supply to grow at a smooth and moderate pace, without big contractions or big accelerations that destructively feed on themselves. The peaks and troughs of the private sector are dulled, and external shocks are smoothed over—or at least, that’s the plan.
This theory works well on paper, assuming that government and central bank officials are more detached, intelligent, and/or long-term in their thinking than people in the private sector in aggregate, or at least that their incentives are more aligned with long-term planning. A problem obviously arises if they are not, and realistically, that’s usually the case. Authoritarian governments often have a clear lack of incentive alignment with their subjects. Democratically elected officials, meanwhile, are focused on winning the next election. None of these lawmakers have an incentive to run a surplus now and slow down the economy to create a reserve of capital from which they could backstop a weak economy later. And if they were to try, they’d likely get voted out of office because people in aggregate always want less taxes and more services in the present.”
What’s clear here is that, beyond the question of being able to manage fiat currency and Keynesian economics well, incentive structures in democracies—in large part by the *way* that elections are held—lead to short-termism in planning as much as the externalities of fiat currency systems themselves do.
In other words, the incentive structures of our voting systems (I’m talking first past the post, mostly here) discourage long-term planning by electoral logic by pushing long-term interest past the electoral cycle. (And it doesn’t have to be that way—and can be far better—under better and more representative voting systems.)
Fiat currencies further enable economic, and therefore political costs to be offset from present decision-making to the future, which also obscures accountability. “Is this inflation or slump all, partly, or none of the fault of X Fed/Presidential/Congressional policy?” And even then, most voters won’t (and I’d argue, fairly can’t be reliably expected) to connect all the dots there.
The two reinforce each other. In my mind, the sound money movement is therefore just one half of the solution to perhaps the biggest challenge for free societies and liberal democracies in the 21st century. Institutional reform and renewal is the other. Neither fixes the entire equation alone—both are necessary.
What do you think?
Stay curious and stack sats.

2026-02-17 16:00:55 UTC

So many parallels to what I’m analyzing these days, and such a clear-eyed assessment. “It is a story about institutional design and the incentives it creates.” Singing my song!
Great article and thoughtful analysis. Worth your time to read.
https://open.substack.com/pub/liyapalagashvili/p/ups-is-the-symptom-not-the-disease
https://blossom.primal.net/118859350502c6fbce8dab98041f653626a158178b775e193d0f06ca9eff421c.jpg

2026-02-16 17:40:39 UTC

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It was, it was. 😂

2026-02-16 16:54:37 UTC

Controversial take:
For those that want to explain to others the problems with fiat currency, don’t start with Bitcoin. I know it’s tempting to give “the solution” first, but it’s confusing and triggers an instant mental “immune response.”
Start with fiat currency vs. sound money.
Most people don’t realize what either of those terms mean in principle or in practice. In fact, I’d go as far as to say most people have never even heard the terms.
Con: This is totally new to them, so they don’t know the background.
Pro: This is totally new to them, so it doesn’t map onto preexisting biases.
Explain how money used to be backed by gold, how we got off of that, and what that means. Explain how money is no longer backed by assets. Then explain how money can effectively be created “out of thin air.” Tie that to inflation and debt. Take your time. Be patient. This is all new to them.
And now it’s starting to gel. You may even get the question: “Wait, so, money can just be created out of thin air, and that causes inflation? How does anyone save, then?”
Now you can start to talk about Bitcoin. Explain it as sound money—because it is one. Explain its benefits. Explain it as a new, not-yet-fully adopted money system. Patience. Let them argue and question it. Give calm answers.
This is how you reach people who dismiss this as a fad, a gimmick, or a Ponzi scheme. If fiat is all you know—which is most people—and you think money must be backed by a centralized institution with authority to be money, then yeah. Bitcoin sounds pretty fad-like, gimmicky, and Ponzi scheme–like. It doesn’t help that bad actors have used it, either (even though bad actors have used Dollars, Euros, and whatever else, too), or that there are genuine scam cryptocurrencies out there. It all looks the same to people who don’t know the difference.
It’s almost a problem of being too aware of a complex thing—it’s so known to you, you don’t necessarily remember what it was like to not understand this and be learning about it. My guess is it took some time. It took curiosity. That’s what you need to engender in others for them to want to understand. Curiosity. And then they need time to develop understanding.
If you don’t think this works—I’m here because of exactly that process. Curiosity. Time. Patience. Asking questions. Seeking answers. I didn’t get Bitcoin because of the blockchain technology, or out of a desire to speculate, or out of a distrust in other currencies per se. It all looked like *just* a digital fandom and technological nerdiness.
I did it once I understood enough to know *why* it was a good investment. Because I now understood what sound money and fiat currency were, and why Bitcoin is a sound money. It made logical sense. I could see how it would help me. I could defend that decision.
If Bitcoin is going to be *the* sound money in the future, it needs more adoption *as* a sound money. It only makes sense that it needs to be explained that way to people in terms they already understand from a perspective they already agree with. They need to be able to be curious about it, not defensive about it. And you can help with that.
Stay curious and stack sats, y’all.

2026-02-15 15:09:48 UTC

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Thank you very much—you’re right! I’m working on it. Still new(er) to it all!

2026-02-15 00:22:39 UTC

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Trying to explain to family and friends that “dollars in bank account” ≠ “dollars you have.” And that’s very hard to do.
Dollars in a bank’s possession is a promise for dollars. Not actual dollars you actually have. And even those are a promise on money backed by credit and faith, not actual money.
#nevent1q…ufcn

2026-02-14 21:39:09 UTC

Sound money is institutional honesty—what things actually cost.
https://blossom.primal.net/ac5d22a0b7b1aeb7634fe86104ff97bb8bf49753b3396cf4545f96dc28f6c822.jpg

2026-02-13 00:19:07 UTC

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To be clear, the dissent was on reform direction, not the “pro-democracy” bit.

2026-02-13 00:16:21 UTC

Just wrote a full 38-page dissent memo on democracy, representation, and institutional realism for a pro-democracy / reform group, with counterproposals.
Some early takeaways from the process and early discussion:
- Citizens’ Assemblies are good for showing a snapshot of public sentiment, but can’t replace deliberative policymaking in a republic;
- Especially in today’s America, any findings and/or policies from even a fully unbiased and good faith Citizens Assembly (and any supporting policy commission) will be polarizing, because enactment relies on existing legislative and executive, and therefore electoral incentive structures;
- Because of this, elected officials—both “good” and “bad” ones—are incentivized to make decisions that appeal to the base that can get them elected, anyway.
- As a result, the findings and any policy recommendations—whether good representations and solutions or not—instead become a new argumentative cudgel for politicians and parties to argue against each other.
- Citizens’ Assemblies are, however, crucial tools for a public to rewrite the incentive structures behind elections and social choice by demonstrating preference in expressing that choice. The key is then to approach that assembly with a coalition of good faith actors, incentive- and institutional-level problems, and get feedback on a better system.
In essence, good intentions that don’t address incentives and decision-making flows can do more harm than good.
What do you think?

2026-02-11 20:34:57 UTC

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Hi! Proof that you can indeed make it through. This is a good answer.

2026-02-11 20:20:09 UTC

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I’ll bite. Here’s my two sats:
To be fair, most people don’t get the difference between sound money and fiat money, anyway. Bitcoin, to most everybody else, just looks like digital fanaticism at best or scammy and untrustworthy money at worst. I say this as somebody who didn’t know or understand. (Yes, despite my B.A. in Economics, which focused more on modern economic systems and laws of supply and demand than sound money vs. fiat money—more a function of what was practical to learn for a career than epistemically coherent.) My thinking on economics and finance and investment used to only live in my understanding of fiat money (and ignorant event to the term).
When I first learned about Bitcoin, it was only presented as a means of easy digital exchange—not as a store of value that couldn’t be inflated away by monetary expansion. It never occurred to me—and indeed confused me—why it would retain any intrinsic value. I scratched my head a bit around why any money inherently holds any value, and sort of filed that away to think about another time.
Had I then invested even $1,000 in Bitcoin, I’d have ~$7,300 today. It was just as clear a concept then as it is today. But I still didn’t get it. I might’ve if I’d learned about sound money and fiat currency more plainly.
It doesn’t help people in tradfi—everyday people, journalists, or analysts even—that there are actual scams, plenty of phishing and other dodgy digital kerfuffery. Bitcoin gets wrapped up with that in their heads, somewhat understandably, from that point of view. It certainly did for me. It seemed to be a fad.
Add in the ‘spectacle’ of equally understandable genuine fans of Bitcoin who *do* get what it means as sound money, and it starts to look exactly like what tradfi people who don’t get it as sound money thought it was to begin with—a fad.
We can argue that the actual tradfi experts should know the difference, but many may not. Many mainstream media outlets also likely don’t have much staff that really understands the difference or the global financial system, either. It IS complicated and pretty much all that most people have ever known is fiat money. The world seems to work okay on that money to them, and there are partial or plausible causes to many of the problems that fiat currency contributes to.
This is why I’m a newly huge fan of @nprofile…pztr's approach to this topic in Broken Money (which I’m thoroughly enjoying reading) and in her 32-minute YouTube summary of the book. It’s a dispassionate and clear-eyed approach to highlighting the problems with the system.
Even if we had entirely good faith actors in that system, you would still get bad results because of the incentive gradients at play—as would be the case for so many other systems we can decry. There don’t even HAVE to be villains for this to fail—normal people making rational short-term decisions that they must make would still get us this outcome.
I am all for the energy—Bitcoin isn’t going anywhere, and on some level, it is genuinely laughable to think it will just die. But I think the cause of restoring sound money for what it can enable us as individuals and a species to do deserves more of us, and if there is to be a stable transition, demands more of us. That means a lot more patience with those who don’t yet understand why we’re out here cheering for it. After all, to them, it looks like we’re cheering for ‘just another asset’ that just dropped more than 40% of its value in less than a year.
Is that fair? Maybe not. Is it necessary? Most assuredly.
It may be easy for me to say—after all, I really just got here. I only really got here because my good friend @nprofile…6p39 patiently, but insistently kept talking to me about fiat and sound money—and how Bitcoin is a sound money.
Perhaps it’s best to face this music by talking through the basics, time and time again, with great patience and deference. After all, that’s the same patience behind, “Stay humble and stack sats.”
Stay curious, y’all.
#nevent1q…5rn7

2026-02-09 14:20:00 UTC

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“Reckoning with the failures of past generations, confronting the hard truths of American history, and refining our institutions in light of progress—these are parts of civilization itself. They are among the most dearly earned civic legacies, because a society capable of self-critique is a society capable of repair.”
https://open.substack.com/pub/jaysthoughtcriminal/p/uncommon-valor-is-a-common-virtue

2026-02-09 14:19:02 UTC

Thoroughly enjoyed this article—and especially loved this passage.
https://blossom.primal.net/a18654c251566b74114081785da1388e662051b8e735811da66e344307dcd288.jpg

2026-02-05 18:35:14 UTC

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Awesome. Thanks!

2026-02-05 17:48:01 UTC

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Learning that thumbnails don’t alway show. So here’s the pretty version.
https://open.substack.com/pub/thecommonwealthperspective/p/sound-money-law-enforcement?r=13ezdi&utm_medium=ios&shareImageVariant=overlay
https://blossom.primal.net/0a955084434fa1fd5b43afd489edd7f42c5b1c826d6dd2ac54e5be5ea2eb8e13.jpg
#nevent1q…kjet

2026-02-05 17:46:17 UTC

Wrote a thing. Come check it out and tell me what you think and where you think I’m wrong—or right.
“If the state can fund coercive capacity without visible cost, it will expand it. If cost is visible, it must justify it. […] How can you expect a polity to tell the truth about its governance if it cannot tell the truth about its finances?”
https://open.substack.com/pub/thecommonwealthperspective/p/sound-money-law-enforcement?r=13ezdi&utm_medium=ios&shareImageVariant=overlay

2026-02-04 16:35:51 UTC

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Thoughtful piece. Out of curiosity—is your answer to this expressed with resignation or determination?
I’m here to learn and contribute my two pents on sound money as a structural realignment for sound governance and civil liberties.

2026-02-02 16:02:35 UTC

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I’d agree. Just making the case for patience with others as they make their best decisions for themselves, too! Love the mindset.
Out of interest, how did you come about learning about Bitcoin/sound money (and which came first?)

2026-02-02 14:39:56 UTC

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Hi! Also new here. Nice to meet ya! This is a fair point. I’ll counter just to say—most people’s lived experiences still take place in the context of fiat money. Rent, groceries, taxes, vacations—it’s all mostly still fiat. Adoption of sound money (imo, the most important part, however that looks when stable), yes, we should advocate for. And still, people have to live in the world.
I could imagine someone with little in the way of extra finances or someone closer to retirement feeling a little nervous when the prices fall quite a lot, and that would make sense. It would seem to me to be as much about someone’s time preferences/needs as wider adoption.

2026-02-02 05:46:10 UTC

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Love the positivity and message. What meagre life savings I have mustered are in Bitcoin, too—beyond my IRA retirement investments. Easiest to recall for myself that this isn’t the value I need to care about—it’s the one 10 or 20 or 50 years down the line to borrow against for a home or actual retirement.

2026-02-02 05:38:04 UTC

Just got done with Dave Walker’s “America in 2040: Still a Superpower?” A really good and authoritative read on America’s fiscal future, oversight challenges, and an inside perspective on reform efforts.
Below is a link to the author’s webpage for the book.
https://americain2040.com/
A few takeaways:
- Durably reforming and improving fiscal policy (and governance, generally) requires careful needle-threading and broad-based popular support built on common understanding in good faith;
- When presented with the actual problem sets (including in fiscal terms), Americans are not only willing, but eager to undertake hardship to achieve sound governance and a better future; and
- The existing ‘tools’ to course correct from within the oversight, Congressional, and civil service have become tangled up in political quagmire such that solving through small d democratic or small r republican methods individually seems unlikely—a combined approach seems necessary.

2026-02-01 23:03:16 UTC

Curious what the Nostr community thinks:
What is one principle or value you think America promises that it doesn’t fulfill (or fulfill well), and why? What’s important about that to you? How do you think we can or should recover that?

2026-02-01 13:00:38 UTC

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👋

2026-02-01 12:42:44 UTC

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That was Scotty beaming up a member of the away team.

2026-02-01 12:30:28 UTC

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Fair enough! To what would you (anybody here) attribute this? Inflation, greed, ‘brand-like’ dining price hike or something else?

2026-02-01 10:58:42 UTC

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Fair. But also… that looks like fresh squeezed Valencian Oranges 😍 And that is actually a pretty penny (of value), on the flip side.

2026-01-31 20:12:49 UTC

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Thanks, @nprofile…pnfv! Always good to continue the conversation. (Be curious!)

2026-01-31 20:01:56 UTC

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Hello! Good to be here—definitely out of my element in technical terms, but I’m all for finding ways to fix the institutions and make them work the way we mean for them to. Here to learn (and share what I think I know). One thing I think is that sound money is a core base layer for an effective democratic republic. And since Bitcoin does that—I’m in!

2026-01-31 19:07:42 UTC

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Some of us are late to the sound money game—but realizing what that can mean for accountability, transparency, and stewardship.
Point taken, yet also—here I am.
#nevent1q…t798

2026-01-30 23:30:27 UTC

Hello, world.