Bitcoiners don’t want no gubmint gettin they hands on dem coins:
There’s a similar statistic which shows average LA<>NY flight times have not decreased in generations, either:
It continually surprises me, how much more we can do online:
Apparently robots don’t just dance and somersault:
web3 is the lovechild of blockchains, tokens, and VCs:
Ack, I just drooled onto my keyboard:
Put up the BitSignal – pay $1M to 1000 contributors for memes and stories
Made public bet that BTC will be worth $1M USD in 90 days times
“This is the crisis Bitcoin was built for”
Sounding covid alarm in January 2020, covid hit (the US) in March
On covid
Mental chessboard in his head, if X happens, then Y, Z, etc will happen
Viruses are exponential
Background in genomics
Same frame of mind now – “we’re in the fiat crisis”
All the centralization and opacity of fiat – it’s all blowing up
Will have wrenching transition to crypto economy
RSA: “fiat fire alarm that you’re pulling”, “the all at once moment”
Exact state of world in 90 days will be very different
Not bet on Bitcoin price but on falling value of US dollar
Today USD is no longer too big to fail – there’s RMB, there’s bitcoin
Financial engineering led to house of cards, “the money is gone”
If today, all depositors withdrew money, banks can’t liquidate assets to give them enough dollars
Time bomb was growing, regulators were aware of it
“Uncle Sam Bankman Fried”
Reality: Fed Reserve gave guidance to banks to buy certain assets that then dropped in value (due to rate hikes)
Fed gets lagging data, changes single parameter, highly political process
“Fed bankrupted the banks”
“There are 333 banks where the money is gone”
Also foreign banks who bought US treasuries – global Central Banks using emergency USD swap lines
These banks’ insolvency intentionally hidden in a footnote
Now the can can’t be kicked
Holding a flaming bag of dog poop
Every crisis powers them up – failures mean they get bigger – “more failure more funding”
Do you have an alternative regulator? Don’t you want one that will tell you if your money is still there?
New era, final era – can’t hike rates anymore – printing tons of money to give to banks through BTFP, swap lines
Initially said $25B injection, now it’s up to $2T, it will effectively be infinite
All the small banks, tech banks, will get wrecked
Big banks w/ Fed help positioned as saviors – “both arsonists and firefighter”
At end, will only have 4 giant banks in US, govt rolls out CBDC – now “too big to fail banks” become “too big to escape banks” – government now has control
On other side of this – bitcoin is gold, ethereum is the financial system
Lot of people will be converted overnight into bitcoin maximalism, will be bitcoin jurisdictions
Bitcoin is ONLY thing that Fed does not directly or indirectly administer
Tradfi – Fed has root access – can stop or delist any financial product (except bitcoin / crypto)
One honest signal that they can’t fully fake is Bitcoin – which is an expression of peoples’ desire to exit the (existing financial) system
Thus Operation Chokepoint / fog of war – kill the crypto connected banks like Signature, Silvergate
Lot of fiat banks will go to zero, or become like fiat flytraps
2008 Financial crisis
Rest of world paid for it through inflation, food price spikes
Democrats effectively taxed Republicans, and foreign dollar holders, to pay for the bailout
“Cost was shunted to the invisible”
Foundational macro view is a little inflation is good, deflation is very bad
Bitcoin’s view is deflation is good if caused by Moore’s Law (technology making things cheaper), even a little inflation is bad
American Keynesianism is bad, just like Soviet economics, but it’s just less bad
David: “Bitcoin during times of war, Ethereum during times of peace”
Bitcoin will be protected by enough governments, bitcoin is well understood
“Final digital devaluation of the dollar is coming”
This is not the make money time – everyone will be a lot poorer soon
“America is new Argentina” is not a bad mental model
Dollar holder is bag holder
Many countries (like India) will become gold backed after this
David: Ray Dalio’s macro cycles, 4th turning, all lining up
There are only two banks – Fed Reserve, and Bitcoin
Bitcoin is Schelling point
Hyperbitcoinization is collapse of all fiat currencies against bitcoin
Speed of transition will be shocking, even to Bitcoin maximalists
Most empire transitions happen gradually – eg, Britain > America
Internet is next America
Powell has turned America into Argentina
People will learn you can’t trust the state
Important to understand severity of situation, take calm conscious steps to insure yourself against it
Americans are running old scripts – Powell is doing 80s formula of Volcker hiking rates
Lot of countries that trusted Fed – holding a lot of Treasuries, US dollars – the money is gone
(US citizens) paid for all the regulation but got none of the protection
Hiding bank insolvency in a footnote – it’s a corrupt regime, it’s a betrayal
Russia and China will be unleashed
Taiwan could be captured without a shot
1
As you become an adult, you realize that things around you weren’t just always there; people made them happen. But only recently have I started to internalize how much tenacity *everything* requires. That hotel, that park, that railway. The world is a museum of passion projects.
https://twitter.com/collision/status/1529452415346302976
2
…even up against powerful prescription medications like Adderall and Modafinil: sleep and all sport categories are in the top-10 for every metric, weightlifting and low-intensity exercise are ranked 1st and 2nd for “probability of having a positive effect”, and weightlifting is ranked 3rd for “probability of changing your life
https://troof.blog/posts/nootropics/
3
And so we began. At the time it felt like a fun project, but not any sort of life-changing decision. The big moments rarely do, I think, and the danger of retroactive mythologizing is that it makes people want to hold out for something dramatic, rather than throwing themselves into every opportunity.
from Sid Meier’s memoir
4
Today the CO2 exhalation of all machines greatly exceeds the exhalation of all animals and even approaches the volume generated by geological forces.
from Kevin Kelly’s What Technology Wants (I think)
5
When people look at Quentin Tarantino, they see a mad creative with a singular talent for making original movies. But Tarantino’s originality begins with imitation. He’s famous for replicating and building upon scenes from other movies, and he once said: “I steal from every single movie ever made.”
https://perell.com/essay/imitate-then-innovate/
6
This realignment would not be traditional right vs left, but rather land vs cloud, state vs network, centralized vs decentralized, new money vs old money, internationalist/capitalist vs nationalist/socialist, MMT vs BTC, and (perhaps most symbolically) Hamilton vs Satoshi
https://nakamoto.com/bitcoin-becomes-the-flag-of-technology/
7
Lessin’s five steps:
1. The Pre-Internet ‘People Magazine’ Era
2. Content from ‘your friends’ kills People Magazine
3. Kardashians/Professional ‘friends’ kill real friends
4. Algorithmic everyone kills Kardashians
5. Next is pure-AI content which beats ‘algorithmic everyone’
https://stratechery.com/2022/instagram-tiktok-and-the-three-trends/
8
The UN estimates that 5 African countries will be amongst the 10 most populated in the world by 2100:
-Nigeria
-the Democratic Republic of Congo
-Ethiopia
-Tanzania
-Egypt
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/10/for-world-population-day-a-look-at-the-countries-with-the-biggest-projected-gains-and-losses-by-2100/
9
Yes, prices would fall and keep falling as technology and a free market did away with a false construct of needing more growth to pay for prices that were only manipulated higher through money printing in the first place. With prices falling to their natural level, and on a path to free, the entire infrastructure required to support price inflation, which was only caused by ignoring the free market, will fall away.
View at Medium.com
10
AIs can be used to generate “deep fakes” while cryptographic techniques can be used to reliably authenticate things against such fakery. Flipping it around, crypto is a target-rich environment for scammers and hackers, and machine learning can be used to audit crypto code for vulnerabilities. I am convinced there is something deeper going on here. This reeks of real yin-yangery that extends to the roots of computing somehow
https://studio.ribbonfarm.com/p/the-dawn-of-mediocre-computing
11
Bitcoin is here to stay because it is cheap and easy to bring into existence. It is a networked phenomenon that emerges out of equal peers, not unlike electricity and the internet before it. The fear of Bitcoin ceasing to exist arises out of a deep misunderstanding of the nature of these phenomena. It is akin to asking: “What if electricity goes away?”
https://dergigi.com/2022/10/02/bitcoin-is-digital-scarcity/
12
most are just technical ways to reframe the problem: play it faster, play it slower, change the order, change the instruments, add repetition, remove repetition.…They never seem to discuss or argue over these changes, they just play it to see if it works.
https://medium.com/fluxx-studio-notes/10-lessons-in-productivity-and-brainstorming-from-the-beatles-ea14385e27a4
13
In 2020, EVs made up 5.6% of all new car sales in China. Last year, the proportion was over 13%. For 2022, the data shows that EVs will comprise roughly a quarter of all cars sold. This is a case study on how quickly a market can turn
14
In practice, the freakishly specific nature of the stuff ambitious kids have to do in high school is directly proportionate to the hackability of college admissions. The classes you don’t care about that are mostly memorization, the random “extracurricular activities” you have to participate in to show you’re “well-rounded,” the standardized tests as artificial as chess, the “essay” you have to write that’s presumably meant to hit some very specific target, but you’re not told what
http://www.paulgraham.com/lesson.html
15
…opportunity and optionality are often inversely correlated. The challenge is that the greatest rewards generally go to people who are tied down in certain ways. People can only become world-class at things they commit to. Ultimately, the more hesitant people are about making commitments, the higher the rewards are for people who do.
https://perell.com/essay/hugging-the-x-axis/
16
Tezuka himself was a strong admirer of Disney animation, as were many of Japan’s pioneer animators. Even today Japanese animators are strongly aware of American animation. But, virtually from the start, postwar Japanese animation has tended to go in a very different direction, not only in terms of its adult orientation and more complex story lines but also in its overall structure. It is important to emphasize the link between television and Japanese animation in terms of anime’s narrative structure and overall style…This serial quality was also reinforced by animation’s connection with the ubiquitous manga, which emphasized long-running episodic plots as well.
17
One of the best ways of accumulating emotion is to go as rapidly as possible from one take to the next. The actor begins the second take on the emotional level he reached at the end of the first take. Sometimes I don’t even cut the camera. I’ll say quietly, “Don’t cut the camera—everybody back to their opening positions and we’re going again. OK from the top: Action!”
http://www.sheilaomalley.com/?p=36326
18
I spent a morning on a Naha beach working out with Fumiyasu Yamakawa, a one-time banker. Every day at 4:30 a.m., he cycled to the beach, swam a half hour, ran a half hour, did yoga, and then met with a group of other Okinawan seniors who stood in a circle and laughed. “Why is that?” I asked. “It’s vitamin S,” he said. “You smile in the morning and it fortifies you all day long.”
From the book Blue Zones
19
The conservative who resists change is as valuable as the radical who proposes it — perhaps as much more valuable as roots are more vital than grafts. It is good that new ideas should be heard, for the sake of the few that can be used; but it is also good that new ideas should be compelled to go through the mill of objection and opposition; this is the trial heat which innovation must survive before being allowed to enter the human race
From the book Lessons of History
20
Lorecraft is clearly a strikingly millennial school of management thinking. All the thinkers who belong in this tradition are, as far as I can tell, between about 28-35 or so. They are firmly middle-of-the-pack millennials. Founders of startups who seem to practice a sort of management by lorecraft, such as Conor White-Sullivan of Roam Research, are also in this cohort.
https://studio.ribbonfarm.com/p/lands-of-lorecraft
21
That carbon dioxide in every exhale has weight, and we exhale more weight than we inhale. And the way the body loses weight isn’t through profusely sweating or “burning it off.” We lose weight through exhaled breath. For every ten pounds of fat lost in our bodies, eight and a half pounds of it comes out through the lungs; most of it is carbon dioxide mixed with a bit of water vapor. The rest is sweated or urinated out. This is a fact that most doctors, nutritionists, and other medical professionals have historically gotten wrong. The lungs are the weight-regulating system of the body.
From the book Breath (more highlights here)
22
Van Gogh was a prolific painter. For a while, he painted a painting every single day. He still only produced 900.
Gauguin: 516. Cezanne: 1300. Picasso: 1885
https://twitter.com/swombat/status/1488306608908259331
I’ve been thinking about the relationship between blockchains and AI lately. Both are emerging foundational technologies and I think it’s no accident they are both coming of age at the same time.
Multiple writers have already expressed this view:
AIs can be used to generate “deep fakes” while cryptographic techniques can be used to reliably authenticate things against such fakery. Flipping it around, crypto is a target-rich environment for scammers and hackers, and machine learning can be used to audit crypto code for vulnerabilities. I am convinced there is something deeper going on here. This reeks of real yin-yangery that extends to the roots of computing somehow
From Venkatesh Rao: https://studio.ribbonfarm.com/p/the-dawn-of-mediocre-computing
I think AI and Web3 are two sides of the same coin. As machines increasingly do the work that humans used to do, we will need tools to manage our identity and our humanity. Web3 is producing those tools and some of us are already using them to write, tweet/cast, make and collect art, and do a host of other things that machines can also do. Web3 will be the human place to do these things when machines start corrupting the traditional places we do/did these things.
From Fred Wilson: https://avc.com/2022/12/sign-everything/
In both writers’ examples, blockchain helps solve some of the problems that AI creates, and vice-versa. I’m reminded of Kevin Kelly who said, Each new technology creates more problems than it solves.
Blockchains and AI have a sort of weird and emergent technological symbiosis and I’m here for it.
So the brain flatulence below is just my way to think aloud, using the writing process to work through the question(s).
*Note: when I say “blockchain”, I include what Fred Wilson calls web3 and Venkatesh calls crypto; there are just a few canonical applications that we’re all familiar with (namely, bitcoin and ethereum); and when I say “AI”, I am thinking about the most popular machine learning models like GPT3 and Stable Diffusion
*Note also: I am just a humble user of these new and powerful AI tools, and can barely understand the abstract of a typical machine learning research paper; so part of the reason why I’m writing this is to find out where I’m wrong a la Cunningham’s law
—
A blockchain is a tool for individual sovereignty; while an AI is a tool for individual creativity
A blockchain operates at maximum transparency; while an AI operates largely as a black box
A blockchain clearly shows the chain of ownership and history; while an AI… (does something like the opposite in the way it aggregates and melds and mutates as much data as possible?)
A blockchain is “trustless”, in the sense that what you see on-chain is the agreed upon “truth” of all its users; while an AI is (?), in the sense that what it generates is more or less unique to the specific prompt / question / user (and even this can change as the model is updated, or new data is added]
An AI is much easier to use than a blockchain
An AI can create vast quantities of content, very cheaply; while a (truly “decentralized”) blockchain is limited by scalability and cost
An AI is centralized (to a specific company, or model, or data set) in the sense that decision making rests with a team or company; while a blockchain is decentralized and decision making is distributed
A surprising user experience – as in, an unexpected but delightful output – is typically net positive for a user of AI, while seeing something happen on a blockchain that you don’t expect would generally be pretty bad (yes, of course there are airdrops)
Blockchains are a competitive threat to industries with a high degree of centralization (such as fiat currency issuance, and payment networks); AI is a competitive threat to many individual online workers (such as language translators, and freelance writers, and basic QA/QC employees)
Both blockchains and AI have multiple open source products that can be forked by developers
Both blockchains and AI are platforms upon which many other products and services can be built
Both blockchains and AI are technologies that exploded into the popular consciousness in the last 10 years
Both “blockchain” and “AI” are very broad suitcase words, in part because they are both the product of many technologies combined in innovative ways: for blockchain that is everything from cryptography to smart contract programming to PoW mining to distributed consensus mechanisms; for AI that’s, uh…well everything listed here and more, I suppose
—
I’ll end here for now, but let me know what I got wrong, what I’m missing, and what questions or ideas this might inspire
—
Addendum #1: I asked ChatGPT
—
Addendum #2: This NYT article notes that SBF (“Sam Bankscam Fraud”) donated at least $500M to organizations researching AI alignment and AI safety. Not exactly the kind of symbiosis I want to explore, but worth noting.
—
Addendum #3:
Blockchains can only give precise answers, while AI can give approximate answers or even fabricate answers
Blockchains are censorship resistant, while AI is centralized (most are created by small doxxed teams) and have implemented restrictions on usage (most have rules against, for example, CSAM or nudity)
I agree:
I’m placing my bets that another hard money renaissance will occur in our lifetimes, as many have before, and that Bitcoin will be a key beneficiary. I don’t believe it will be the /only/ money, but that its role for the generations ahead will be an important one.
Source: https://alphabetasoup.ghost.io/a-penny-spent-a-penny-lent/
And Stable Diffusion’s take on “hard money renaissance, art by leonardo da vinci”:
