jimmysong

Bitcoin Expert
Open-Source Coder
Follow me to learn #BTC

Author of 5 Bitcoin books

Fiat Ruins Everything: https://fiatruinseverything.com

PGP: C1D7 97BE 7D10 5291 228C D70C FAA6 17E3 2

Public Key

npub10vlhsqm4qar0g42p8g3plqyktmktd8hnprew45w638xzezgja95qapsp42

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

NIP-57 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs8k0mcqd6sw3h524qn5gslszt9am9knmes3uh268dgnnpv3yfwj6q3f9zmx

Publishing to

bitcoiner.social

nos.lol

nostr-pub.semisol.dev

nostr-pub.wellorder.net

nostr.bitcoiner.social

Author Public Key

npub10vlhsqm4qar0g42p8g3plqyktmktd8hnprew45w638xzezgja95qapsp42

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Last Notes

2024-07-25 23:08:19

how many banking panels can a conference have?? that was painful being in the green room listening to banksters

2024-07-24 11:51:52

Kind of crazy to say, but the assassination attempt seems played out already?

2024-07-20 10:37:12

it's easy to be cynical, hard to be optimistic

2024-07-19 14:49:17

Nostr is not down

2024-07-17 16:12:02

We're all in this together is the biggest lie. self sovereignty means you're not roped into stuff you don't agree with.

2024-07-15 18:08:56

The most interesting cultural result of this past weekend is that shy Trump voters are no longer shy. Theyve taken their lead from Trump and are now being bold about their beliefs.
I don't like what Trump did with covid and the vax and not draining the swamp his first term. but his courage is infectious and it's wonderful to see in a population that was acting from fear for the past 4 years.

2024-07-14 09:09:50

if this pic doesn't move you, you have no soul
https://m.primal.net/JQJK.jpg

2024-07-12 13:54:07

Savings is a useful tool, but it's a terrible master. Greed is still a vice and an addiction.
Not as bad under Bitcoin, but still a danger.

2024-07-10 18:19:53

"decentralized" projects
https://m.primal.net/JMRg.png

2024-07-09 13:20:36

Seeing a lot of posts on X about crypto people getting robbed on the street here in Brussels. The irony is completely lost on them.

2024-07-09 07:49:45

Funny how little we hear about ordinals anymore, now that they're all down 90%+

2024-07-08 17:36:55

For free subscribers: Divorce damage, Sex difference in the brain, Setting the Null hypothesis, Assange calculus and more!
For paid subscribers: 10 security disclosures, crazy tx, bolt 12 adoption, future of real estate and more!
Bitcoin Tech Talk #404
https://jimmysong.substack.com/p/bitcoin-tech-talk-404

2024-07-08 17:07:31

first time in this country
https://m.primal.net/JKqn.jpg

2024-07-08 11:24:20

Zero-sum games are for suckers.

2024-07-07 18:50:55

Finding out that my next destination is hosting a large "crypto" conference while I'm there... 🤮

2024-07-06 12:29:29

questions altcoiners ask: what's the next coin that'll pump?
questions Bitcoiners ask: how do I secure this against threats?

2024-07-04 14:06:37

Unpopular opinion: BOLT12 will chip away at lnd's dominance or lnd will start supporting BOLT12. Maybe both.

2024-07-03 10:42:38

The burgers in Germany are consistently very high quality. Anyone know why?

2024-07-02 20:16:00

The best hack for saving money is realizing you don't need to impress anyone.

2024-07-01 17:50:51

Seems obvious now, but until yesterday, I didn't know that the Tiannamen Square protests were inspired by all the communist countries falling in Eastern Europe.

2024-06-30 10:08:32

- reply

This is why I'm on Nostr, to hear random interesting stories like this.

2024-06-30 08:19:28

Ethereum is the coin of perpetual adolescence.
Ordinals are a midlife crisis.

2024-06-29 19:03:37

some day people will be amazed that we earned thousands of sats for a single post on Nostr

2024-06-28 09:17:41

If you've studied Girard, you can already see what's coming. Kamala Harris will end up the scapegoat, Biden will step aside for health reasons and there will be a new slate for the Dems.
The sacrifice of Harris will be brutal.

2024-06-27 13:44:55

Sound money, strong families.

2024-06-26 12:30:34

I'm going to guess that whoever gave the 8 BTC donation to Assange is on Nostr.

2024-06-25 07:40:56

hotel room keys that keep demagnetizing have to be some of the most unnecessarily painful UX

2024-06-24 17:31:14

For free subscribers: Upper Class and writing, Piety and Patriarchy, Two Academic Cultures, Excel Championships and more!
For paid subscribers: Reducing Fees, Lnd DoS bug, Bitcoin History and more!
Bitcoin Tech Talk #402
https://jimmysong.substack.com/p/bitcoin-tech-talk-402

2024-06-24 13:15:23

All companies die eventually. protocols, on the other hand, generally survive.

2024-06-23 17:52:12

You don't need to try harder, you need to repent.

2024-06-23 12:06:49

so few people are interested in seeing reality as it is.

2024-06-22 15:58:34

As destructive, pointless and unnecessary rent seeking tends to be, it is nothing compared to total war.

2024-06-21 11:25:47

Pilgrimage complete. A little disappointing to find that the statue is so close to the Microsoft building.
https://ibb.co/vvzKrV6
https://ibb.co/RyTMw1c

2024-06-21 09:34:55

I've never seen someone getting into altcoins, start getting fit, becoming more disciplined, having lots of children. They mostly seem to have and up drinking a lot and getting fat.
altcoins are fiat 2.0

2024-06-20 18:47:14

- reply

The South wasn't a bunch of innocents, for sure, but the question we need to raise is, did he need to wage war? if you think that he did, then I would argue you haven't studied history enough. Why did chattel slavery end everywhere else before and after the Civil War without a war?
I believe revoking the Fugitive Slave Act and letting the South secede would have ended slavery in the same way it did in Brazil, through economic means and without millions of deaths.

2024-06-20 18:36:29

There are still people that think the lockdowns were justified, much like how there were still people in 2007 that thought invading Iraq was justified.

2024-06-19 09:44:34

Anyone starting an argument with "we need to compete with X" where X is some shitcoin can be safely ignored.

2024-06-18 14:37:47

People love self serving delusions

2024-06-17 15:23:05

Who's with me?
https://m.primal.net/IoAq.png

2024-06-16 08:07:11

1200 gram wagyu
https://m.primal.net/ImcF.jpg

2024-06-15 11:58:17

Don't talk about your diet or exercise routine, show me your body.

2024-06-14 12:27:05

AI is really just a good search engine. It does not create because it has no telos.

2024-06-13 20:30:09

Wish more men in BTC would wear suits and not hoodies/jeans/sneakers.

2024-06-13 20:25:11

- reply

I've seen this a lot.

2024-06-12 17:28:35

- reply

Lots of times

2024-06-12 14:36:26

The graffiti in Prague bothers me. I strongly suspect it's a remnant of it's communist past where people didn't learn responsibility.

2024-06-11 21:23:31

On X you're the product.
On Nostr you're the producer.

2024-06-10 15:44:38

For free subscribers: Hyperpleasures, Needing Enemies, Reality and Engineering, Soulless Virtue and more!
For paid subscribers: Ark v2, LN Alliance, OKX fee screwup, DCG's bad behavior and more!
#Bitcoin Tech Talk #400
https://jimmysong.substack.com/p/bitcoin-tech-talk-400

2024-06-10 09:09:01

Every centralized app ultimately leverages it's position to make money off bilateral transactions. in other words. rent seeking is a constant temptation for centralized players.

2024-06-09 09:30:16

If you don't care about virtue, you will be ruled by vice. Shotcoiners, for example, don't care.

2024-06-08 13:12:30

Austrian economists that don't understand programming, technology and cryptography will dismiss Bitcoin or attempt to change Bitcoin because of what they don't understand.
Programmers, cryptographers and technologists will do the same because of the economics that they don't understand.
Stay humble.

2024-06-07 18:15:46

As Bitcoin price increases, so does envy about our situation.
I talked to @JohnathanBi about how to deal with it looking at envy through the lens of philosophy.
https://youtu.be/-5Aqo-inaMc

2024-06-07 12:33:16

if hurt people hurt people, then journalists must be seriously hurt

2024-06-06 17:21:57

I'd like to see Bitcoiners buy profitable businesses and provide value to the communities they're in.

2024-06-05 09:33:31

my conviction is stronger than your ability to comply

2024-06-04 10:54:33

There's a tremendous amount of capital that Bitcoiners have. We will literally be building the future.

2024-06-03 16:45:16

Free issue for the first Monday of the month!
Shrinking Control, NK Remote Workers, Crippled Miners, Clams, Ross Pardon and much more!
#BITCOIN Tech Talk #399
https://open.substack.com/pub/jimmysong/p/bitcoin-tech-talk-399

2024-06-03 07:52:51

Freedom is paid forward

2024-06-01 07:03:28

aisan cultures do orders of 10 in groups of four instead of three.
so western is thousand, million, billion and so on, which are 10^3
east Asian is by 10^4, so the word for 10,000 is mahn in Korean, and 100,000 is 10 mahn and so on.
maybe the reason we have 100,000,000 sartoshis per BTC is because Satoshi was east Asian. 10^8 is much more natural in those cultures.

2024-05-31 01:11:18

What do you think happens if Trump is assassinated?

2024-05-30 14:47:39

All altcoins ultimately trade on association with Bitcoin's success.

2024-05-30 03:49:54

Savings vehicle or jpegs and memecoins? your choice

2024-05-29 01:32:16

way more people would travel if border controls weren't so onerous.

2024-05-27 23:36:49

For free substibers: Attachment to Gold, Industrial Conspiracy, inverting Midlife, Sanction Economics, Seoul and more!
For paid subscribers: eCash DLCs, Pathfinding, Samurai, CSW and more!
Bitcoin Tech Talk #398
https://jimmysong.substack.com/p/bitcoin-tech-talk-398

2024-05-26 15:04:38

Nothing like 20 hrs of travel to catch up on some Bitcoin reading.
Also @npub1a2c…w83a's book is a great work of scholarship while being very accessible. I regret not starting earlier.

2024-05-26 01:44:30

- reply

funny, I do this when I go to church.

2024-05-25 16:30:43

I would like to see clients surface older notes based on content. This is something YouTube does very well that Nostr could benefit from.

2024-05-24 17:09:50

A picture is worth a thousand words.
This was sent to me by my tour guide from the West Bank of a child waiting at a checkpoint to get to school.
https://m.primal.net/ILWM.jpg

2024-05-24 15:03:48

Mindful consumption is way better than haphazard, propaganda driven consumption.
Hard to live that, though.

2024-05-23 15:27:41

I find it strange that the reasons I don't like Trump are the things most of his haters give him credit for. Like the lockdowns and the vax.

2024-05-22 22:42:21

In this excerpt from my book, I argue that people draw the wrong lessons from Pizza Day. Instead of day dreaming about being a lucky gambler, you should be providing value instead.
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/bitcoin-magazine-books/the-wrong-lessons-of-pizza-day

2024-05-22 14:43:16

How would jewelry that hides a private key work?

2024-05-21 18:44:47

There will be a lot of Bitcoiners that will regretnot having more kids in 20 years

2024-05-21 14:54:26

The attacks against Bitcoiners show just how important decentralization is to our collective security.

2024-05-20 22:36:07

Most people that we want to orange-pill or even Nostr-pill need to be security-pilled first.

2024-05-20 18:37:51

One of the biggest reasons people don't succeed is because they don't know what they want. Yes, everyone wants a lot of money, an attractive partner and so on, but what's your priority? What do you really want? Those other desires, the *results* are generally very vague and therein lies the problem. Your goals are not specific enough and your vision not clear.
That's why you lack passion. Because it hasn't come from you, it's come from envy of others.

2024-05-20 17:18:35

For free subscribers: Second Career of Hitler, Republican/Democrat Flip, Delusional Teachers, Difficulty of changing people, Relating to Tech and more!
For paid subscribers: BitVMx, Penlock, LN address privacy, Silent payments and more!
#Bitcoin Tech Talk #397
https://open.substack.com/pub/jimmysong/p/bitcoin-tech-talk-397

2024-05-19 15:05:06

Using a Daylight computer is changing how I spend my time.

2024-05-18 17:01:35

The monetary system sets you up to be fragile.

2024-05-18 16:59:07

- reply

From what I understand of the protocol, no. That's one of the main features is that the fact of its privacy preservation is hidden in what look like completely normal transactions.

2024-05-17 19:39:08

My Nostr key is mine in the same way my Bitcoin private keys are mine.
We own these things in ways that are qualitatively different than anything else. We have property rights that exceed that of physical possessions.
This still blows my mind.

2024-05-16 21:00:26

As a techie, it's easy to overestimate peoples' ability to use technology. My wife spent an hour helping my mother in law figure out how to check her text messages to log into a two-factor auth account.

2024-05-16 16:30:30

I talked to @AnjanKatta about our relationship to Technology. He's the founder and CEO of @daylightco and is building devices that will reset this dysfunction.
#Bitcoin Fixes This #124
https://rumble.com/v4um1o5-bitcoin-fixes-this-124-relating-to-technology-with-anjan-katta.html

2024-05-16 01:48:18

- reply

Sad to say, but IQ has a big part to do with it.

2024-05-15 15:26:24

- reply

Less built around engagement, more built around ideas. Formatted for quick consumption, not continuous consumption. Less built around links and lots of good exit points so I can do other stuff. Make it easy for me to save long-form stuff for me to read later.
Basically, more contemplation, less reaction.

2024-05-15 14:27:14

I wonder how many bad design patterns have been built into most Nostr clients. I'd pay for one that's built to serve me rather than the other way around.

2024-05-15 01:15:11

Our enemy has always been, and always will be, those that abuse their authority, to steal, jail and murder.

2024-05-14 14:39:35

Has anyone made some sort of Nostr dating app? Every single guy I talk to seems very frustrated with the centralized dating apps that currently exist. Wouldn't one that isn't so exploitive do better?
But then again, the big problem to solve is, how do you get the single women on here?

2024-05-13 18:14:19

As an engineer, doing something under duress is likely to have a lot more problems later on. This is called technical debt and you pile it on when you're doing things reactively and urgently.
Like most fiat things, technical debt doesn't really get paid off in most places because every non-engineer hates spending resources paying it.
But Bitcoin is different because it's not built reactively or urgently. It's not fiat and we do pay off technical debt. That's why it's got the record that it has, especially compared to altcoins. Something like Ethereum 2.0 is building something from scratch because there's too much technical debt.
Bitcoin is not going to imitate fiat practices. We will make things in due course, with sufficient review and consideration.

2024-05-13 00:11:31

15 years of payments vs. savings.
Savings has won every.single.time.

2024-05-12 14:39:45

Back when I was in elementary school, I was obsessed with computers. This was back in the 80's when they weren't that common, but my parents saw that I really liked them, so they got me one for my 9th birthday. It was a Commodore 16, not the 64 which had lots great games, but the 16, which had like 3 games, total.
Having nothing else to do with it, I learned how to program simple programs in line-basic. Stuff like this:
10 print "hello"
20 print "world"
30 goto 10
Honestly, I didn't know many commands, so goto loops were about the most I could do.
My mom somehow found a teacher for me to take computer lessons. She was doing something with networking computers and I guess had graduated with a degree in Computer Science. She was also pregnant.
I took lessons for about 5 months (until my teacher gave birth) where I learned stuff like variables, prompts and so on to make a really basic text interface. It was the first time I felt like I could make something useful with this device.
Anyway, I tell this story because that's what a good mom does. My mom was a recent immigrant who had no idea what computers were, but she found the right teacher for me so I could develop my talents. For all you moms out there, this is one of the best gifts you can give your kids.
Thanks mom.

2024-05-12 02:38:19

Malthisiam idiocy about population led to Marx's theories.
The neo-Malthusians like the WEF and Bill Gates are bringing about a neo-Marxist state.

2024-05-11 18:26:16

I can't decide whether the people complaining about lightning are perfectionist engineers or disgruntled latent altcoiners.

2024-05-10 14:20:44

OK, question for @npub1get…0nfm now that I've hooked up primal to Alby, I can't see who's zapped me and it makes all my posts seem like there aren't any zaps on it, even when I'm receiving them. How do I fix this?

2024-05-10 01:49:41

Inside of you are two wolves.
The one that wants to be lazy and rent-seek.
And the one that wants to beat up that other wolf.

2024-05-09 19:09:36

I talked to @Matthewlysiak about Fiat food, the control that ig companies have over food narratives, health and more!
Bitcoin Fixes This #123
https://rumble.com/v4ttnf2-bitcoin-fixes-this-123-fiat-food-with-matthew-lysiak.html

2024-05-09 01:55:36

The only thing we have to fear are authorities that tell us there's nothing to fear.

2024-05-08 15:20:29

https://m.primal.net/IEcg.jpg
# On Memecoins
The VC token industry is not what it was in 2017 or even 2021. Back then the newbies to the "crypto" space trusted them to give recommendations on what to buy and what to not buy. Fortunes were made by crypto VCs as almost anything they promoted would be bought by the gullible public and subsequently pump. They made money on all kinds of tokens, from EOS, to IOTA, WAX and STEEM. Those were the golden days when they had influence in the market.
The crypto VC influence has significantly waned the last few years and the days of making 30x on an ICO are long over. Their reputation since has been sinking faster than Bill Cosby's, as the market that they built their funds on got away from them. In a sense, though, they deserved it, as pretty much everything they pumped did horribly, and the promises of these tokens about as likely to be fulfilled as a Kardashian wedding vow. The run they had was unbelievable, fueled by a ZIRP environment and insane FOMO, but when the altcoin market started going south, their prospects crashed along with them.
## The Demise of VC Tokens
Despite their struggles, Venture Capital benefit from the fact that it's a lagging industry. They typically raise the next fund while the iron is hot, and can raise crazy amounts during these bull cycles. They can survive a long time on their 2% yearly management fee, even as their 20% of profit looks increasingly unlikely. Crypto funds have all done terrible the last few years and most of them are deeply underwater.
The few coin pumps that they've tried have more or less died before they had any chance to pump, BitClout and WorldCoin being two notable examples. VCs poured a lot of money into these things, hoping to bring back the good old days, only to find that the market no longer trusted them. And who could blame the market? The coins they pumped previously were down significantly in USD terms, and in BTC terms, they looked like the Venezuelan Bolivar.
## The Rise of Memecoins
But that doesn't mean altcoins went away. Memecoins obsoleted the VCs and ultimately brought some more honesty to the Neitzchean will-to-power games that were always being played. The original memecoin, of course, was Dogecoin, and Elon Musk pumped that thing like a hot air balloon, and surprisingly, the market followed. What Dogecoin did was to lay bare what was actually going on in the altcoin markets. The narrative didn't matter and it was all a power game, a Keynesian Beauty Contest, and mob rule. These "blockchain" use-cases were about as realistic as a Milli Vanilli comeback, so in a sense, the altcoin market reduced to its essence.
Dogecoin was also notable because it cut out VCs. It was a retail phenomenon and VCs for the most part, didn't get into it. How could they? These are people that supposedly figure out what the future is going to look like and invest accordingly. There's no expertise, no due diligence and no market research needed in a memecoin pump. VCs don't have any special access or insight in the memecoin market and they didn't provide anything of value to the pumpers. They got cut out as middlemen.
Doge was followed by Shibu Inu and its success rapidly rendered VCs completely unnecessary. The game that was being played didn't require large injections of capital, just the appropriate buzz and enough marketing to achieve escape velocity. Shibu pumped purely as a meme, copying Dogecoin and it similarly required no VC pumping to succeed. And with that, VCs became the cable news of the altcoin industrial complex, where the only attention they garnered was from their deluded peers.
## A New Cycle
We're now in an environment where memecoins have become the altcoin pump and dump of choice. Indeed, just about the only coins this cycle that are pumping are either memecoins or platforms for memecoins.
For what it's worth, memecoins seem to have a similar dynamic as other altcoins, in that a few mainstays seem to hold significant mind share while everything else dies a quick death. What's different is that because these memecoins don't have large marketing budgets, they get to their dump phase much quicker.
All this is good. The altcoiners are in a sense a lot more honest this time around. There's no grand promises of crazy applications using blockchain, or disrupting some industry. The people that are getting into memecoins know that it's a gambling vehicle and that they're playing a greater fool game. There's little deception in PepeCoin or DogWifHat because they're not claiming any utility or even a future.
And don't feel sorry for the VCs. They are reaping the rotten fruit of hype and fraud that they've sowed. Many have destroyed their reputations pumping useless stuff and the fact that no one is listening to them is the market functioning properly.
There's also a lot less waste of developer time. Instead of altcoin platforms wasting developer time on barely working, insecure projects, they're eschewing utility altogether for "fun." The entire altcoin industry has been about gambling and now, everyone knows.
In the end, memecoins make Bitcoin look better and better.

2024-05-07 14:33:27

Watching the Tom Brady roast, it made me think that there's a deep cultural ritual that was being performed.

2024-05-05 19:14:37

Bitcoin doesn't care what features you want, but anyone is free to build tools.
Complaining about something that doesn't exist as if it's just a matter of politics is a very fiat way of thinking.