Nostr notes by Phil 🇻🇦🇫🇷🎶

Yes, there is ONE God. The Catholic Credo says it: “Credo in ...

2025-12-27T19:41:59Z

In reply to nevent1q…p8k9
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Yes, there is ONE God. The Catholic Credo says it: “Credo in UNUM DEUM, Patrem omnipotentem”, “I believe in ONE GOD, almighty Father”. We say that every day, in every prayer, at every mass.

When Jesus says to the Jews: “Before Abraham was, I AM”, compare that to what God is telling to Moses in Exodus 3:14: “God said to Moses: I AM WHO AM. He said: Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel: HE WHO IS, hath sent me to you.”

Can you explain to me why Jesus speaks to the Jews like God spoke to Moses? And why the Jews tried to Stone Him to death just after He told that?

Christus Vincit Christus Regnat Christus Imperat Even on Bitcoin ...

2025-12-17T20:45:22Z

Christus Vincit
Christus Regnat
Christus Imperat

Even on Bitcoin Blockchain, obviously.

#CatholicNostr
#Bitcoin

Jesus Christ Himself says that He is God: “Jesus saith to him: ...

2025-12-17T10:47:32Z

In reply to nevent1q…882n
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Jesus Christ Himself says that He is God:

“Jesus saith to him: I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father, but by me. If you had known me, you would without doubt have known my Father also: and from henceforth you shall know him, and you have seen him.

Philip saith to him: Lord, shew us the Father, and it is enough for us. Jesus saith to him: Have I been so long a time with you; and have you not known me?

Philip, he that seeth me seeth the Father also.

How sayest thou, shew us the Father?

Do you not believe, that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?

The words that I speak to you, I speak not of myself. But the Father who abideth in me, he doth the works.

Believe you not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?“ — John 14:7-11

Have a GN 🌛

2025-12-15T21:51:34Z

In reply to nevent1q…8lh4
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Have a GN 🌛

GM ☕🌞

2025-12-15T08:08:41Z

In reply to nevent1q…56t3
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GM ☕🌞

You sum up quite well. Same thing for liberty. The majority of ...

2025-12-15T08:01:41Z

In reply to nevent1q…5nz2
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You sum up quite well. Same thing for liberty. The majority of people will always live without Bitcoin/Liberty, even if they know their existence, without having the desire to escape the system in which they are living.

I'm a 2-week newbie here, but I wish you a happy comeback and ...

2025-12-15T07:54:51Z

In reply to nevent1q…32gr
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I'm a 2-week newbie here, but I wish you a happy comeback and a vert good health!

As a father of a 8yo girl, I know my presence and my behavior ...

2025-12-15T07:50:11Z

In reply to nevent1q…qltz
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As a father of a 8yo girl, I know my presence and my behavior with her and my wife is utterly important for her future as a young woman, especially for her future comportment with men.

Very unique and beautiful! #nevent1q…7f79

2025-12-14T19:22:32Z

Very unique and beautiful!

quoting
nevent1q…7f79
Very rare 'Tall White Auroras' like never before spotted in the night skies of Senja, Norway last night👀 🌌✨

These ghostly white auroras are super rare and occur under very extreme circumstances.

I can easily imagine the nightmare this professional Apple ...

2025-12-14T15:19:17Z

In reply to nevent1q…kvrq
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I can easily imagine the nightmare this professional Apple developer is enduring now. A harsh lesson about the dangers of centralized platforms.

A must read! #naddr1qq…8ydk

2025-12-14T11:43:50Z

A must read!

quoting
naddr1qq…8ydk

As a Bitcoiner have you ever considered what would happen should Bitcoin fail? By "fail" I don't mean anything catastrophic happening to the base layer like the big blockers winning, but something more subtle like if Blackrock and the JP Morgue were to successfully neuter it via paper bitcoin, regulatory capture and thus permanently confining it to "digital asset" status without it being a medium of exchange.

The purpose of this inquiry is not to spread FUD or dish out black pills, but it's to peel back the layers of what Bitcoin truly represents, to each of us individually. Hopefully this little exercise in introspection will make some of us realize what it is we truly desire and the kind of life we would like to have.

The Collapse Has Already Happened

I recently wrote in a previous essay, that societal collapse due to monetary failure happens gradually, then all at once. The cataclysmic event eventually recorded in history books is always inevitable to those who understand the significance of preceding events; the seeds that, as the saying goes, always yield their harvest.

Based on my own assessment, nothing stops this train and it’s only a matter of time until we see everything come tumbling down like Humpty-Dumpty. If that is true, then the only rational thing to do is to build anew on a Bitcoin standard before the inevitable history defining monetary collapse eventually shows up.

This essay extends that argument from a different angle. Where my previous piece examined the inevitable collapse of everything fiat, this one asks: What's your plan if Bitcoin fails, or at minimum, if the hyperbitcoinization you've staked your hopes on doesn't materialize in your lifetime?

The Wrong Kind of Victory

We are always touting how Bitcoin has already won and how hyperbitcoinization is just around the corner. But what does that mean really to say Bitcoin has already won? Does it mean that something technically superior to fiat money is now in existence? The existence of technically superior money is not victory. Betamax was technically superior to VHS. The Dvorak keyboard is ergonomically superior to QWERTY. Superiority alone guarantees nothing in markets shaped by network effects, institutional capture, and human psychology.

Or does it mean a critical mass of people, a remnant, will start their own Bitcoin country? Perhaps. The uncomfortable truth is that Bitcoin hasn't won anything. Not yet anyway. Why do I say so? Well for starters, the vast majority of people still measure Bitcoin's value based on its fiat price, the very system it was designed to render obsolete. That alone is a contradiction so enormous that it borders on tragicomedy. It shows that while Bitcoin was designed to exist outside the fiat system, most Bitcoiners do not.

Living in Enemy Territory

The fiat financial system is controlled by central banks. It's their system. They own the pipes. You can't participate without their permission, usually granted via onerous licensing requirements.

Bitcoin was supposed to be the alternative to this permissioned system. Instead, it exists as a guest in the fiat ecosystem. As we've witnessed repeatedly, Bitcoin's price can be manipulated and suppressed by institutions like the JP Morgue. The reason is simple, while Bitcoin may be fully decentralized at the protocol level, the fiat on/off ramps remain at the mercy of the banksters.

That’s to say nothing of the fact that key economic inputs like energy, food etc., are still to be priced in Bitcoin. This might seem trivial, but stop and think about proof-of-work. PoW anchors a digitally created "commodity" to the physical world via energy expenditure during mining. In other words, PoW is a bridge between the physical and digital realms.

Without key economic inputs being priced in Bitcoin, price discovery is left at the mercy of the wolves of Wall Street and their trading algorithms.

The Chokepoints We Normalized

Since the banksters control the on/off ramps, centralized exchanges became the dominant way most people acquire Bitcoin today, not peer-to-peer as originally envisioned. While this brought efficiency, it created a fatal chokepoint that allowed the legacy system to roll out licensing requirements, letting the KYC censorship vampire slowly sink its teeth into the orange coin.

Pseudonymity was compromised the moment exchanges came into the picture and this spelled danger given the transparency of the blockchain. Compromised pseudonymity coupled with centralized chokepoints are a recipe for disaster. Wasn't the whole point to have a fully decentralized system through and through?

This isn't to say peer-to-peer methods don't exist, they do.; but it's pointing out the fatal financial chokepoint that exists especially when one's Bitcoin journey starts with taking a selfie, scanning your ID and providing your physical address. Aren't these the some of the same constraints that make fiat a permissioned system? If so, why did they become normalized?

How Bitcoin Actually Fails

This is why asking "What will you do should Bitcoin fail?" becomes critical, because our way of imagining failure is usually wrong. Most imagine that Bitcoin will fail with a great thud or a nuclear explosion. Not so. Bitcoin's failure (as well as success) will occur a day at a time, one bad decision at a time, one compromise at a time. Failure is a few errors in judgement repeated everyday.

Failure looks like convenience. It looks like custodial services disguised as “innovation.” It looks like ETFs absorbing supply until Bitcoin becomes a zoo animal: admired, priced, but no longer free. I will not bother discussing how Coinbase has become one of the largest custodians for institutions thus creating another centralized chokepoint, the centralization of mining and mining pools, the core vs knots controversy, as well as the so-called strategic Bitcoin reserves (SBRs) that the suitcoiners are constantly touting. These are either growing pains or possibly symptoms of a much bigger problem.

I acknowledge the fact that Bitcoin is still in its early phases and a lot of these issues can be overcome, however the window is slowly closing to remove these centralized chokepoints and vulnerabilities. Especially given that the fiat collapse has already happened.

When Money Dies, Virtue Dies With It

Adam Fergusson’s When Money Dies is often misread as a technical history of Weimar hyperinflation. In truth, it is a study of moral disintegration that follows when money collapses. Fergusson shows that when money loses its integrity, society loses its sense of proportion. Signals invert. Prudence is punished. Speculation is rewarded.

That inversion is no longer confined to history books. The New York Post recently ran a story about actress Milana Vayntrub launching a wildfire relief initiative called Only Philanthropy. Donations were solicited through “flirty and tastefully risqué” content inspired by the OnlyFans model, raising over $500,000 for victims of the Los Angeles wildfires.

At first glance, it appears innovative. Benevolent, even. On closer inspection, it is neither a solution nor progress, it is a symptom. When disaster relief must be mediated through eroticized attention markets, the problem is not creativity. The problem is that core institutions have failed so completely that charity must now borrow the incentive structures of soft pornography to function.

The Pornification of Value

The OnlyFans model exists in large part because attention, particularly sexual attention, can be monetized, often more lucratively than traditional professions. Today, some content creators on these platforms reportedly earn income that rivals, or even exceeds, what many engineers, doctors, and elite athletes make. For example, collectively, OF creators amassed $6.6 billion in 2023 alone, surpassing the NBA's total payroll of $4.9 billion, with some models outpacing LeBron James' earnings through non-nude content.

The modern attention economy already rewards intimacy more than craftsmanship, virality more than virtue, spectacle more than service. This is not prudish moralizing but it is an economic signal. When eroticized content consistently outcompetes sustained skill and long-term contribution in income generation, the incentive structure has inverted. When money dies, virtues follow. OF's rise isn't liberation; it's a symptom of this rot, where bodies become currency in a system where actual currency falters.

The Only Philanthropy model intensifies this inversion. Imagine that to direct capital to wildfire victims, tragedy became a marketing hook, a cultural logic rooted in eroticized exchange. Disaster relief has now become a side effect of fetishized attention markets. Relief is contingent on titillation. For the victims, the implicit message is devastating:

Your pain was not enough. It required sexualized attention to be noticed.

In other words ‘Only Philanthropy’ is not just a fundraising story but a revelation of a decaying society in which traditional institutions no longer fulfill their moral obligations and economic rewards accrue to attention markets divorced from long-term societal value. When victims of catastrophe must compete in the attention economy, the problem is not innovation, the problem is that money is dying, and with it, the moral compass of those who depend on it.

This twisted society where sex work is the dominant industry isn’t the world i imagine most of us want to leave for our children.

The Real Question: What Are You Building For?

So with this in mind, I ask again; What would you do if Bitcoin fails? Would your entire world shatter? Would you literally lose everything?

If the answer is yes, you've misunderstood Bitcoin entirely. You've merely treated it as number go up technology (NgU) and a get-rich-quick scheme, a speculative asset, a ticket to Lambos and moon. You've confused the signal for the noise.

Bitcoin isn't about NgU. Bitcoin is about freedom.

It's a freedom transfer protocol disguised as money. It's a tool for opting out of a system that steals your energy through inflation, surveils your transactions, and controls your economic participation through permissioned access. It's the ability to save in something that can't be debased, transact with someone without asking permission, and preserve purchasing power across time and space.

If Bitcoin "fails" in the sense that it never becomes the global reserve currency, but you've used it to build a parallel economy, establish peer-to-peer trade relationships, develop skills outside the system, and construct a life less dependent on institutions designed to extract from you, then Bitcoin succeeded. For you. In the way that matters.

The question isn't whether Bitcoin wins some abstract victory over central banks. The question is whether you're using Bitcoin to build the kind of life you want to live, regardless of what the broader world does.

Freedom as First Principle

Bitcoin is fundamentally a freedom transfer protocol. Its technical properties; decentralization, permissionlessness, censorship resistance, fixed supply, are not ends in themselves but means to a more profound end: individual sovereignty and freedom of economic action.

This reframing changes everything. If Bitcoin is primarily a freedom protocol, then its "success" cannot be measured in fiat price appreciation or institutional adoption. Such metrics represent category errors, attempting to measure revolutionary potential using the yardstick of the system being overthrown. Bitcoin's success is not measurable in dollars.

Instead, success must be evaluated by freedom metrics. How many people can transact without permission? How many have escaped financial surveillance? How many have achieved genuine monetary sovereignty? How robust are peer-to-peer networks? How resistant is the system to coercion and capture?

By these measures, Bitcoin may already be failing. not despite its rising fiat price, but partially because of it. High prices attracted institutional capital, which demanded institutional infrastructure, which required regulatory compliance, which necessitated surveillance and control. The very success we celebrated may have contained the seeds of capture.

The Choice Before Us

When you truly understand Bitcoin as a freedom protocol, then the relevant question is not "when Lambo?" but "how free?" Your decisions, daily and cumulatively, determine the answer.

Will you acquire bitcoin peer-to-peer despite inconvenience? Will you run your own node despite technical barriers? Will you measure your wealth in bitcoin terms rather than fiat proxies? Will you accept bitcoin for your labour and goods? These are not trivial questions. They represent the difference between genuine revolution and mere asset class diversification. They separate freedom-seekers from number-seekers. They distinguish those building parallel systems from those merely seeking better returns within the existing system.

More fundamentally, they reveal your time preference and time preference is civilization's bedrock. Contrast this with the high time preference of speculators waiting for NgU. They want wealth without work, freedom without sacrifice, revolution without risk. They treat Bitcoin as a lottery ticket rather than a foundation for building. If Bitcoin becomes merely another vehicle for high time preference behavior, it will have failed at its deepest level, regardless of its fiat price.

The uncomfortable truth: you cannot build a low time preference civilization on high time preference behaviour. You cannot achieve freedom through convenience. You cannot create parallel systems by taking the path of least resistance through KYC'd institutions. Every shortcut is a compromise. Every compromise is a step toward capture

The Remnant and The Path Forward

History suggests revolutions succeed not through majority adoption but through committed minorities, what Albert Jay Nock called "the Remnant." These individuals remain uncompromised by expedience, unbowed by institutional pressure, unwilling to trade principle for convenience. They understand that freedom is not granted but seized, not negotiated but exercised, not purchased but practiced.

If Bitcoin fails, it will fail because we chose convenience over sovereignty, because we measured success in fiat terms, because we normalized the very surveillance and control mechanisms Bitcoin was designed to obsolete, because we forgot that freedom; real freedom demands sacrifice, vigilance, and uncompromising principles.

Build Anyway

What I've learned is that the people most worried about Bitcoin "failing" in the technical sense are those who've invested nothing but capital. They bought an asset. They're waiting for a return. They've built nothing, changed nothing, learnt nothing new.

The people least worried about Bitcoin failing are those who've used it to fundamentally restructure their relationship with money, work, and freedom. They've:

Learned to run a node, verifying rules rather than trusting institutions

Established peer-to-peer trade relationships outside KYC'd rails

Developed skills that create value independent of fiat employment

Built businesses that accept Bitcoin and pay employees in Bitcoin

Created local circular economies where Bitcoin flows without touching fiat

Taught others what they've learned, expanding the remnant

These people understand something crucial: The victory isn't Bitcoin replacing the dollar. The victory is building a life where it doesn't matter if it does.

This is why the question "What will you do if Bitcoin fails?" is so clarifying. It reveals whether you're building on Bitcoin or simply betting on it. Whether you see it as a freedom protocol or just another speculative asset. Whether you're part of the remnant or just another tourist waiting for NgU.

The Remnant Builds in the Dark

The fiat system will not go gentle into that good night. It will fight. It will try to co-opt. It will regulate, capture, and neuter every threat it can. Paper bitcoin, ETF wrappers, KYC requirements, mining restrictions, node criminalization, every tool will be deployed.

Bitcoin might "lose" in the sense that it never overthrows the fiat regime. The central banks might successfully contain it. Hyperbitcoinization might not happen in our lifetimes. Even if Bitcoin were to cease existing today, the genie is not going back in the bottle. There is now verifiable proof that decentralized money can exist without the blessing of the state, and whatever replaces it will be even better, in the same way that Bitcoin was a better invention than previous attempts at digital money.

That said, the remnant will persist; because they're not building for hyperbitcoinization. They're building because the alternative, remaining fully captured by a system designed to extract and control, is unacceptable. They're building because money is dying, institutions are failing, and someone needs to construct something worth inheriting.

They're building because freedom isn't something you wait for permission to have. It's something you take, one transaction at a time, one node at a time, one relationship at a time.

So ask yourself: If Bitcoin "fails," what will you have built? What skills will you have developed? What relationships will you have established? What freedom will you have claimed?

If the answer is "nothing", if your entire Bitcoin strategy is "buy and hold until moon", then you're not a Bitcoiner. You're a speculator cosplaying as a revolutionary, and should the system co-opt Bitcoin, you'll move on to the next thing, having learned nothing and built nothing.

But if you've used Bitcoin to fundamentally restructure your life, to build parallel systems, to establish sovereignty over your own economic participation, then Bitcoin has already won. For you. In the only way that matters.

The collapse has already happened. The question is: What are you building in the ruins? Build peer-to-peer. Build without permission. Build like your freedom depends on it, because it does.

GM ☕🌞 Have a great Third Sunday in Lent, “Gaudete Sunday ...

2025-12-14T07:40:36Z

GM ☕🌞
Have a great Third Sunday in Lent, “Gaudete Sunday ”

Painting: “Saint John the Baptist Bearing Witness”, Annibale Carracci (1605)

“And this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent from Jerusalem priests and Levites to him, to ask him: Who art thou? And he confessed, and did not deny: and he confessed: I am not the Christ. And they asked him: What then? Art thou Elias? And he said: I am not. Art thou the prophet? And he answered: No.

They said therefore unto him: Who art thou, that we may give an answer to them that sent us? What sayest thou of thyself? He said: I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Isaias. And they that were sent, were of the Pharisees. And they asked him, and said to him: Why then dost thou baptize, if thou be not Christ, nor Elias, nor the prophet? John answered them, saying: I baptize with water; but there hath stood one in the midst of you, whom you know not. The same is he that shall come after me, who is preferred before me: the latchet of whose shoe I am not worthy to loose. These things were done in Bethania, beyond the Jordan, where John was baptizing.” (John 1:19-28)

Beautiful!

2025-12-13T17:03:14Z

In reply to nevent1q…vnum
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Beautiful!

I even thought there wasn't any algorithm here on Nostr. BTW ...

2025-12-12T07:43:33Z

In reply to nevent1q…zklz
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I even thought there wasn't any algorithm here on Nostr. BTW I share the same experience as you on X.

GM ☕🌞

2025-12-12T07:32:25Z

In reply to nevent1q…f29c
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GM ☕🌞

GM ☕ “Now we that are stronger, ought to bear the infirmities ...

2025-12-12T05:17:29Z

In reply to nevent1q…u48s
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GM ☕

“Now we that are stronger, ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let every one of you please his neighbour unto good, to edification. For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written: The reproaches of them that reproached thee, fell upon me. For what things soever were written, were written for our learning: that through patience and the comfort of the scriptures, we might have hope.” — Romans 15:1-4
#biblestr

Very retarded.

2025-12-12T05:09:26Z

In reply to nevent1q…8jqg
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Very retarded.

Amazing work with light (see the gun)

2025-12-12T05:07:44Z

In reply to nevent1q…khcy
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Amazing work with light (see the gun)

French voters?

2025-12-12T05:03:22Z

In reply to nevent1q…46wh
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French voters?

Astonishing!

2025-12-12T05:02:25Z

In reply to nevent1q…s2k5
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Astonishing!

GM Nostrians ☕ ...

2025-12-12T05:00:25Z

GM Nostrians ☕

The digital Euro is bureaucrats' money, and slavery's ...

2025-12-11T19:26:56Z

The digital Euro is bureaucrats' money, and slavery's money.

Bitcoin is people's money, and freedom's money.

quoting
naddr1qq…0a0v

A Response to Aurore Lalucq’s Monetary Authoritarianism

I have rarely encountered such a concentrated distillation of economic fallacy, political coercion, and anti-liberty sentiment as exists in Ms. Lalucq’s recent proclamation on the digital euro. Her statement deserves not mere disagreement but thorough intellectual demolition, for it represents everything that sound money principles and human freedom stands against.

The False Dichotomy: A Classic Statist Manipulation

“Anyone who opposes the digital euro is going against the euro and the European Union.”

This opening salvo reveals the authoritarian mindset at its finest. Let me translate: “Submit to our monetary surveillance apparatus, or you are an enemy of the state.” This is naked intimidation dressed in bureaucratic rhetoric.

The state’s monopolization of money has been history’s greatest theft. The digital euro represents the culmination of this theft, which is the conversion of monetary control into total monetary surveillance and control. To oppose this Orwellian nightmare is not to oppose Europe; it is to oppose the very debasement of European civilization.

The European Union is not synonymous with freedom, prosperity, or sound money. It is a bureaucratic monstrosity that has systematically eroded national sovereignty, individual liberty, and market coordination. To suggest that opposing a surveillance currency is tantamount to opposing Europe itself is to commit the most egregious conflation; equating a continent’s people, culture, and economy with a supranational political apparatus.

Money as “Political Institution”: The Core Falsehood

“Money is not just a means of payment. It is a political institution that must be protected and supported.”

Here we arrive at the ideological heart of darkness. Money, Ms. Lalucq declares, is a “political institution.” This statement is economically illiterate and historically reversed.

Money emerged from the market as a spontaneous order, as Carl Menger demonstrated in his ground-breaking work on the origins of money. It arose not from political decree but from the voluntary interactions of individuals seeking to overcome the double coincidence of wants problem inherent in barter. Money is fundamentally a market institution that political actors have hijacked, corrupted, and weaponized..

When Lalucq celebrates money as a “political institution,” she is celebrating theft, inflation, financial repression, and the systematic impoverishment of savers and wage earners. She is celebrating the mechanism by which governments finance wars, welfare states, and bureaucratic expansion without direct taxation, the invisible tax of inflation.

The digital euro doesn’t “protect” money, but it weaponizes it. It transforms currency from a medium of exchange into an instrument of total financial surveillance and control. Every transaction monitored. Every purchase tracked. Every economic decision subject to bureaucratic approval or denial.

The Myth of Democratic Money

“Mine is that of Europe, the euro and democracy.”

The invocation of “democracy” in defence of centralized monetary control is perhaps the most brazen Orwellian inversion in Lalucq’s statement.

Democracy, real democracy, means choice. It means the ability to vote with your feet, your wallet, your economic decisions. A truly democratic monetary system would allow individuals to choose which currencies they use, which forms of money best serve their needs, and which monetary networks align with their values.

The digital euro represents the opposite of monetary democracy. It is monetary totalitarianism; a single, mandated, surveilled currency issued by an unelected central banking cartel that has systematically destroyed the purchasing power of European savings through negative interest rates and quantitative easing. It’s democracy for the institutions not for the citizens.

The European Central Bank, like all central banks, operates under bureaucratic management, accountable not to market discipline or consumer choice but to political expediency and technocratic planning.

What True Monetary Freedom Looks Like

Contrast the vision Lalucq offers with the monetary revolution that Bitcoin represents. Satoshi Nakamoto’s whitepaper outlined a peer-to-peer electronic cash system that requires no trusted third party, no central authority, no political institution. It is money that cannot be inflated, cannot be seized without your consent, cannot be surveilled by default.

Sound money, money with reliably scarce supply, has been the foundation of every flourishing civilization. The gold standard’s abandonment didn’t free humanity; it enslaved us to central banking manipulation and perpetual currency debasement.

Bitcoin offers an escape route; not through politics but through mathematics, not through democracy but through voluntary adoption, not through institutions but through individuals. It is the denationalization of money that Hayek could only theorize about, made real through cryptographic innovation.

We live in an era of technological deflation where productivity gains should make goods cheaper and improve living standards. Instead, monetary inflation obscures these gains, transfers wealth from productive workers to financial speculators, and creates artificial boom-bust cycles.

The digital euro would amplify these destructive dynamics while adding surveillance and control mechanisms that previous monetary regimes could only dream of. It represents the perfection of monetary despotism.

The European Project: A Collectivist Fantasy Born in Envy

Let’s discuss the elephant in the room that Lalucq conveniently ignores: the European Union itself is a failed experiment in supranational collectivism, and the euro is its most spectacular economic failure.

The European Union didn’t emerge from spontaneous market cooperation or voluntary association. It was engineered by political elites seeking to create a bureaucratic superstate capable of rivaling American economic and geopolitical dominance. The project’s architects, Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman, and their intellectual descendants, never trusted markets or individuals. They believed that technocratic planning from Brussels could somehow succeed where Soviet planning had failed.

Jean Monnet was explicitly clear about the main goal of forming the EU:

“The sovereign nations of the past can no longer solve the problems of the present. They must be merged into a federation.”

This was never about cooperation. It was about subsuming sovereignty under bureaucratic institutions headquartered far from the people they govern.

The strategy was diabolically simple; incrementally transfer sovereignty from nation-states to unelected European institutions under the guise of “integration” and “cooperation.” What began as a coal and steel community metastasized into a regulatory behemoth that now dictates everything from the curvature of bananas to the wattage of vacuum cleaners.

The euro itself, launched in 1999, was never primarily an economic project but it was a political project designed to irreversibly bind European nations together and create a monetary union that could challenge dollar hegemony. The economic warnings were ignored. The structural incompatibilities between Germanic and Mediterranean economies were dismissed. The inability to adjust exchange rates was handwaved away. Political ambition trumped economic reality.

The results? Catastrophic.

The Euro: A Quarter-Century of Monetary Destruction

Since its launch in 1999, the euro has been an unmitigated disaster for European prosperity, purchasing power, and economic dynamism. Let’s examine the empirical record that Lalucq’s ideological cheerleading conveniently omits:

Purchasing Power Annihilation: The euro has lost approximately 40% of its purchasing power since introduction. What cost €100 in 1999 now costs roughly €167. This is systematic theft from savers, pensioners, and wage earners. The ECB’s explicit 2% inflation target is a commitment to devalue your money by half every 35 years. This is monetary policy?

Economic Stagnation: Eurozone GDP growth has consistently lagged behind the United States. While America, for all its own monetary sins, at least maintained some dynamism, Europe has suffocated under the twin burden of monetary rigidity and regulatory excess. Youth unemployment in Spain, Greece, and Italy has regularly exceeded 40-50%, creating a lost generation.

The Sovereign Debt Trap: Unable to devalue their own currencies, peripheral European nations were forced into deflationary spirals and austerity programs that enriched Frankfurt banks while immiserating Greek, Portuguese, and Spanish citizens. The euro didn’t create prosperity, it created a creditor-debtor hierarchy with Germany as overlord.

Negative Interest Rate Insanity: The ECB’s negative interest rate policy, charging banks to hold reserves, destroyed the traditional banking model, punished savers, and created massive asset bubbles. This is what passes for monetary “stability” in Brussels’ Orwellian lexicon.

Capital Misallocation on Epic Scale: Through quantitative easing programs, the ECB purchased over €5 trillion in government and corporate bonds, systematically distorting price signals, subsidizing zombie companies, and creating artificial demand for government debt.

The euro hasn’t brought Europe closer to American prosperity levels but has accelerated European decline relative to America. This is the monetary union Lalucq demands Europeans rally behind? This track record of failure and impoverishment?

The Regulatory Strangulation of European Innovation

The euro’s failure is merely one symptom of Europe’s deeper disease which is the belief that bureaucratic regulation can substitute for market competition and entrepreneurial innovation.

Consider the recent spectacle where the European Union slapped a €140 million fine on X (formerly Twitter), not for genuine harm to consumers, but for alleged violations of the Digital Services Act’s reporting requirements. This is the Brussels model in microcosm:

Can’t compete? Regulate.

Can’t innovate? Fine those who do.

Can’t build? Tear down.

It is the enforcement arm of a worldview that sees innovation as something to be tamed, not unleashed. This is the same worldview driving the digital euro. A worldview where the state monitors platforms, the state controls communication, the state designs money, the state monitors transactions, and the state punishes dissent through regulation and fines.

Where is the European Google? The European Amazon? The European Apple? The European SpaceX? They don’t exist because they can’t exist in Europe’s toxic regulatory environment. The EU’s response to its innovation deficit isn’t to reduce barriers, cut taxes, or unleash entrepreneurship; it’s to impose GDPR compliance costs, Digital Markets Act restrictions, and now, Digital Services Act penalties on companies that had the temerity to innovate elsewhere.

Europe’s digital policy is not about safety or fairness. It is about maintaining a managed, compliant society, where the bureaucratic class remains unchallenged and unaccountable

Instead of reforming, deregulating, or embracing market dynamism, the EU is doubling down on surveillance, monetary consolidation, and punitive governance. Why? Because once a bureaucratic superstructure begins to fail, it does not liberalize, but it clamps down.

The Geopolitical Reality: Europe’s Self-Inflicted Irrelevance

Lalucq invokes “the current political and geopolitical moment” as justification for the digital euro. Let’s be honest about Europe’s geopolitical position: it is becoming irrelevant precisely because of the policies Lalucq champions.

Europe has:

Energy dependence created by abandoning nuclear power and sanctioning Russian gas without viable alternatives

Military dependence on American protection while free-riding on defense

Technological dependence on American and Chinese innovation

Economic stagnation driven by regulatory excess and monetary manipulation

Demographic decline exacerbated by welfare state distortions

The digital euro won’t fix any of this. It will merely give Brussels technocrats another control mechanism to manage decline rather than enable revival.

If Europe wants true monetary independence from dollar hegemony, the answer isn’t creating a European version of the same flawed fiat system. It’s embracing neutral, decentralized monetary networks that no nation-state controls. Bitcoin offers this path. The digital euro offers only a change of monetary masters from Washington’s Federal Reserve to Frankfurt’s ECB. Neither deserves your submission.

The genuine geopolitical threat to Europe isn’t lack of monetary centralization but the loss of economic competitiveness caused by excessive regulation, monetary manipulation, and bureaucratic sclerosis. Europe is falling behind not because it lacks a digital surveillance currency but because it has strangled innovation, entrepreneurship, and market dynamism under layers of political control.

Europe doesn’t need more centralization. It needs radical decentralization, deregulation, and a return to market principles. It needs less Brussels, not more Brussels with better surveillance tools.

Conclusion: Choose Freedom, Not Tyranny

The battle over the digital euro is the monetary front of a larger civilizational struggle between two visions: one where individuals are free to make their own economic decisions, build their own futures, and live their own lives; another where technocratic institutions manage, monitor, and control every aspect of economic existence “for our own good.”

To oppose the digital euro is not to oppose Europe, it is to defend the possibility of a free Europe. It is not to oppose monetary innovation, it is to defend genuine innovation over technocratic control. The digital euro must fail. Not because it won’t work technically, it probably will work perfectly at doing exactly what it’s designed to do. It must fail because what it’s designed to do is incompatible with human freedom, human dignity, and human flourishing.

Every person who opposes the digital euro, who refuses to use it, who adopts Bitcoin instead, who speaks out against financial surveillance, who demands monetary freedom, they are not enemies of Europe. They are defenders of everything Europe, at its best, has represented: individual liberty, cultural flourishing, technological innovation, and the dignity of free peoples.

And another interesting project thanks to Bitcoin and Nostr 👌 ...

2025-12-11T13:11:56Z

And another interesting project thanks to Bitcoin and Nostr 👌

quoting
nevent1q…aj84
Attention Nostr, it's time to get physical with postcards. https://bitcoinpostcards.net

A postcard with one of your paintings 😉👌

2025-12-11T13:10:52Z

In reply to nevent1q…rsgn
_________________________

A postcard with one of your paintings 😉👌

GM ☕ Let's destroy the fiat empire together 💪

2025-12-11T12:59:45Z

In reply to nevent1q…a4gc
_________________________

GM ☕
Let's destroy the fiat empire together 💪

Bitcoin is freedom, provided yours isn't locked in a ...

2025-12-11T11:49:56Z

In reply to nevent1q…x037
_________________________

Bitcoin is freedom, provided yours isn't locked in a centralized platform's wallets.

Here in France, it's impossible to get a phone number without ...

2025-12-11T11:48:49Z

In reply to nevent1q…smn8
_________________________

Here in France, it's impossible to get a phone number without id verification...

Very interesting, thanks!

2025-12-11T11:29:18Z

In reply to nevent1q…epjs
_________________________

Very interesting, thanks!

On my future travels list.

2025-12-11T11:25:53Z

In reply to nevent1q…x22k
_________________________

On my future travels list.

GM Nostr ☕ “A country run by banks will always be in debt. ...

2025-12-11T07:23:00Z

GM Nostr ☕

“A country run by banks will always be in debt.

Healthcare run by Big Pharma will never cure disease.

A state run by war will never know peace.

A nation run by the media will never know the truth.”

This is exactly the mindset I need to have in my musical and ...

2025-12-10T23:32:00Z

This is exactly the mindset I need to have in my musical and artistic work, if I want to make progress.

quoting
nevent1q…a42j

My Pixel powered by GrapheneOS is the best phone I ever had. Keep ...

2025-12-10T23:01:36Z

In reply to nevent1q…3hjy
_________________________

My Pixel powered by GrapheneOS is the best phone I ever had. Keep up the good work!

I am Catholic and I pray for your conversion, my friend, that one ...

2025-12-10T21:11:13Z

In reply to nevent1q…uy0t
_________________________

I am Catholic and I pray for your conversion, my friend, that one day you recognize Isa al-Masih as your Saviour.

Decentralized, uncensored and sound charity 👌 #nevent1q…3x5d

2025-12-10T19:46:53Z

Decentralized, uncensored and sound charity 👌

quoting
nevent1q…3x5d
Proof of Heart - Bitcoin-native charity directory
https://proofofheart.org/

Thanks and have a good evening!

2025-12-10T19:27:04Z

In reply to nevent1q…d4lr
_________________________

Thanks and have a good evening!

Thanks, buy way too touristic for me.

2025-12-10T18:53:33Z

In reply to nevent1q…xeyg
_________________________

Thanks, buy way too touristic for me.

Really bad news. I really wanted to visit Florida with my ...

2025-12-10T16:31:32Z

Really bad news. I really wanted to visit Florida with my family... I hope this will never be official.

quoting
nevent1q…xttn
If you’re planning to visit the United States from abroad, the White House is now demanding to review the last five years of your social media history so they can decide if you are sufficiently pure to enjoy our Constitutional right to free speech.

In France, all the leftists who are against Musk left X to ...

2025-12-10T14:40:57Z

In reply to nevent1q…zg33
_________________________

In France, all the leftists who are against Musk left X to migrate to Bluesky. Many of those folks are known for sexual harassments facts, not mentioning other bad stuff... This gave Bluesky a pretty bad reputation here.

The Evolution of Medicine ...

2025-12-10T14:36:09Z

The Evolution of Medicine

D'où l'intérêt de rester anonyme sur des plateformes ...

2025-12-10T13:35:52Z

In reply to nevent1q…wx0q
_________________________

D'où l'intérêt de rester anonyme sur des plateformes décentralisées...

No. Not Primal. This app is full of bugs and lacks so many ...

2025-12-10T12:20:32Z

In reply to nevent1q…6cf2
_________________________

No. Not Primal. This app is full of bugs and lacks so many features. Amethyst is way better, at least for Android.

On Bluesky you have plenty of pedophiles and French leftists. ...

2025-12-10T12:11:42Z

In reply to nevent1q…6hs3
_________________________

On Bluesky you have plenty of pedophiles and French leftists. Quite the same kind of people BTW.

They don't want you, or your children, to be educated. They ...

2025-12-10T11:51:18Z

They don't want you, or your children, to be educated.

They don't want you to have knowledge in technology or computer science, because when you have this knowledge, you can understand how technology is used by them to enslave you.

They don't want you to have knowledge in economy, because when you have this knowledge, when you understand how their fiat system works, you can understand how finance and money are used by them to enslave you.

So, educate yourself. Educate your children.

Knowledge is liberty.

quoting
nevent1q…wa5v
if you’ve never worked in tech support, it’s hard to grasp just how non-technical most people really are.

Discovering in the sane time both nsm and GitWorkshop. So many ...

2025-12-10T11:38:54Z

Discovering in the sane time both nsm and GitWorkshop.

So many possibilities... The Nostr World is so promising!

quoting
nevent1q…fy23
I was recently working with state machines over Nostr for coordination between parties. The result is a distributed, event-driven, consistent state management protocol that can be used to model any process. It is also auditable, making it interesting for scientific and supply chain applications. Additionally, it enables the deployment of *smart contract-like* functionalities without the blockchain buzz or shitcoinery. I would love to hear your thoughts.

This project was originally inspired by a talk from Alan (npub1nyx…h9ph) during the last Sovereign Engineering (nprofile…n66j) 5.
It's also my first time using ngit 🔥

https://gitworkshop.dev/npub1gzuushllat7pet0ccv9yuhygvc8ldeyhrgxuwg744dn5khnpk3gs3ea5ds/relay.ngit.dev/nsm

GM ☕ Notre Dame de Bonne Garde Basilica, Longpont-sur-Orge, ...

2025-12-10T07:39:06Z

GM ☕
Notre Dame de Bonne Garde Basilica, Longpont-sur-Orge, France.

This is a major basilica, an old clunisian site.

#Catholic

Good Night 🌛 Nostrians! Notre Dame de Paris, photo taken in... ...

2025-12-09T23:46:19Z

Good Night 🌛 Nostrians!

Notre Dame de Paris, photo taken in... 1842!

Really good!

2025-12-09T23:37:43Z

In reply to nevent1q…jvd4
_________________________

Really good!

Be brave and make the most of you to leave this enslaved life! ...

2025-12-09T13:21:33Z

In reply to nevent1q…yn90
_________________________

Be brave and make the most of you to leave this enslaved life!
Sympa de rencontrer des français sur Nostr ! 😉🇫🇷

Nice and beautiful work 👌

2025-12-09T13:18:13Z

In reply to nevent1q…g4rh
_________________________

Nice and beautiful work 👌

EU and UK are governed by warmongers with blood on their hands.

2025-12-09T13:04:35Z

In reply to nevent1q…a8kz
_________________________

EU and UK are governed by warmongers with blood on their hands.

WTF happened in the 1980s 😱? #nevent1q…l94j

2025-12-09T13:02:16Z

WTF happened in the 1980s 😱?

quoting
nevent1q…l94j
The evolution of women's fashion

Interesting project #nevent1q…ttm2

2025-12-09T12:44:23Z

Interesting project

quoting
nevent1q…ttm2
Introducing Take My Sats — a #bitcoin-only ecommerce platform.

https://www.takemysats.com

If you told me a year ago when I left Shopify that I’d be building the platform for bitcoiners, I wouldn’t have believed you. But as we know, it’s gradually then suddenly. So here we are. The website is now entering its beta phase and coming out the gate with the following features:

🟠 Nostr login
🟠 Lightning address, NWC, and BTCPay payment integrations (Note: If using a Lightning address, it needs to support LNURL-verify)
🟠 BrantaOps (npub16nd…r9qr) verification
🟠 Pay for and create shipping labels via Bitcoin Postage
🟠 Support for promo codes
🟠 Store analytics

BETA ACCESS:
To get access, zap this note 2100 sats and I’ll get you set up with a store.

SPECIAL OFFER:
In the spirit of long time preference, I purchased the domain for the max amount of 5 years. If you’re bullish on what I’m building and would like to support, you can lock in a Pleb Plan for five years for 100K sats. I’ll also come up with a nice badge to display on your storefront.

Thank you to my alpha testers, you will continue to have access throughout the beta phase.

Arotags (npub17e8…xyw5) SmallBatchSteve (npub1w56…nsxk) DeAllen Young (npub1rsv…vmtf) oshi (npub1uzt…qtrh)

Finally, thank you for reading this note and for your continued support. Let’s keep building. 🫡

note1med…0u93

I'll give a try to 0xchat 😉

2025-12-09T08:52:14Z

In reply to nevent1q…radj
_________________________

I'll give a try to 0xchat 😉

Glad to see I'm not the only one with huge problems using ...

2025-12-09T08:28:10Z

In reply to nevent1q…guv6
_________________________

Glad to see I'm not the only one with huge problems using Primal. I'm using Amethyst now.

Thanks and have a great day!

2025-12-09T08:25:37Z

In reply to nevent1q…vdht
_________________________

Thanks and have a great day!

Première fois que je croise un français sur Nostr, ça fait ...

2025-12-09T07:19:06Z

In reply to nevent1q…u8up
_________________________

Première fois que je croise un français sur Nostr, ça fait plaisir 😀

GM ☕

2025-12-09T00:27:06Z

In reply to nevent1q…7hc8
_________________________

GM ☕

You're not alone... Me too.

2025-12-09T00:26:24Z

In reply to nevent1q…0jxd
_________________________

You're not alone... Me too.

Terrifying. They want the same in Europe. We must fight against ...

2025-12-08T21:38:09Z

Terrifying. They want the same in Europe. We must fight against that.

quoting
nevent1q…lwhh
⚡️🇨🇳 WATCH - China has a system that warns people on WeChat when someone nearby is on a debt blacklist, telling users to keep their distance so their own social score does not fall

The future is algorithm-free decentralized social platforms like ...

2025-12-08T12:41:37Z

The future is algorithm-free decentralized social platforms like Nostr.

Algorithmic and centralized social platforms are already a toxic past.

quoting
nevent1q…jfhr
It’s pretty clear that X is designed to parasitically feed on negative emotions in short loops that are thematically linked.

It’s the eyeball dopamine feedback loop glitching out on the horror show max infinite. It’s like the rubbernecking at a grisly car accident had a freak baby with your nightmares about your own insecurities sprinkled with a few cat videos.

There’s this slow rot that is gangrenous to the whole thing. I think more and more folks are getting how unhealthy it is, and it’s not ‘social media’ fault—people want to connect and know what is going on in the world—but traditional social media models are designed for manipulation and control from the get go. The big tech companies don’t give a shit about our experiences, they only care about their bottom line which they make through advertising.

The good news is there is something new on the horizon and Nostr is likely the substructure of whatever that is. I’ll be glad when old social media dies from necrotizing sepsis.

Or anonymity sunglasses. I've already seen some.

2025-12-08T12:09:35Z

In reply to nevent1q…hnzv
_________________________

Or anonymity sunglasses. I've already seen some.

Burn it.

2025-12-08T12:06:52Z

In reply to nevent1q…kh32
_________________________

Burn it.

Absolutely. Being free of all those biased algorithms is the very ...

2025-12-08T10:16:09Z

In reply to nevent1q…h9we
_________________________

Absolutely. Being free of all those biased algorithms is the very first reason why I'm feeling so good here on Nostr.

GM ☕ Today is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception ! “And ...

2025-12-08T07:51:43Z

GM ☕
Today is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception !

“And in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God into a city of Galilee, called Nazareth, To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary. And the angel being come in, said unto her: Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.” — Luke 1:26-28 (Douay-Rheims)

#catholic

Can't resist such beauty ❤ #nevent1q…keyc

2025-12-07T20:17:51Z

Can't resist such beauty ❤

quoting
nevent1q…keyc
The spectacular Aldeyjarfoss waterfall in northern Iceland.

[📹 gauihicelander]

Always unable to load my profile's content. Primal on ...

2025-12-07T18:19:15Z

Always unable to load my profile's content. Primal on GrapheneOS.

Anyone has the same issue? How to resolve it?

primal (nprofile…kclk)

Prot here 😉

2025-12-07T18:04:44Z

In reply to nevent1q…sq7y
_________________________

Prot here 😉

The uncomfortable truth is that the majority will never complain ...

2025-12-07T17:58:42Z

In reply to nevent1q…qdg7
_________________________

The uncomfortable truth is that the majority will never complain about living under such a dictatorship.

God is the Truth.

2025-12-07T17:38:32Z

In reply to nevent1q…v3cf
_________________________

God is the Truth.

Do you ship to France?

2025-12-07T15:29:02Z

In reply to nevent1q…8e5j
_________________________

Do you ship to France?

But you must pay to use Kagi. I've never need to pay to ...

2025-12-07T15:18:33Z

In reply to nevent1q…ypp2
_________________________

But you must pay to use Kagi. I've never need to pay to search on the web since the early 2000s.

A brilliant work of gesture coordination 👏

2025-12-07T14:35:50Z

In reply to nevent1q…xt99
_________________________

A brilliant work of gesture coordination 👏

What a surprise... Nazis were against homeschooling... And their ...

2025-12-07T14:31:43Z

What a surprise... Nazis were against homeschooling...

And their descendants in the contemporary EU too...

quoting
nevent1q…4cvc
DID YOU KNOW in Germany it’s ILLEGAL to homeschool your kids?

Hitler’s 1938 compulsory public school mandate, or Reichsschulpflichtgesetz, is still in effect to this day…

Why did Germany keep this Nazi law?

I can think of a few reasons…

They always promote good intentions... “We must control the ...

2025-12-07T13:09:28Z

In reply to nevent1q…eakw
_________________________

They always promote good intentions... “We must control the Internet to fight pedophile networks ”, “We must restrict crypto self-custody and anonimity to fight money laundering ”...

Tested: this app asks for our phone number. Bad point for me. ...

2025-12-07T12:00:46Z

In reply to nevent1q…x5at
_________________________

Tested: this app asks for our phone number. Bad point for me. Will keep using Robosats (nprofile…szmg)

Great idea! Actually, there's a lot of studies proving that ...

2025-12-07T11:26:06Z

In reply to nevent1q…yreg
_________________________

Great idea! Actually, there's a lot of studies proving that nature is good for our mental health. No wonder why people who live in modern cities, disconnected from nature, are so mentally sick.

GM ☕ and have a good Second Sunday in Advent Annibale Carracci, ...

2025-12-07T07:13:29Z

GM ☕ and have a good Second Sunday in Advent

Annibale Carracci, “Saint John Baptist bearing witness”, 1605

The Truth is intolerant.

2025-12-07T06:49:10Z

In reply to nevent1q…6wgd
_________________________

The Truth is intolerant.

Or not. We'll see...

2025-12-07T06:35:40Z

In reply to nevent1q…aga4
_________________________

Or not. We'll see...

EU will die like USSR.

2025-12-06T21:21:02Z

In reply to nevent1q…j8us
_________________________

EU will die like USSR.

Thank you for quoting the French precursor of Austrian economics ...

2025-12-06T20:57:12Z

In reply to nevent1q…qx4w
_________________________

Thank you for quoting the French precursor of Austrian economics 😉