Arbitrum's Security Council froze 30,766 ETH overnight. A multisig reversed a transaction on a 'decentralized' L2. Meanwhile Bitcoin Core v31.0 shipped with no token, no foundation, no VC.

This line, which I’m swiping from Izzy Rabi’s mom, would be a good thing to write on billboards and bumper stickers, as persistent reminders that we should all ask something interesting every day. Notice that I’m not saying “Ask the hard questions,” or “ask…

People remember Thomas Jefferson mainly for the Declaration of Independence, which he wrote in 1776. Some remember that he served as president from 1801 to 1809, but aside from that, few know much more of his life and work. In fact, he lived and worked until…

BTC up 22% since Iran war. 46 days negative funding. Bears bleeding 6% to stay short. Strategy just bought $2.54B more. The setup is explosive.

It’s a massive waste of time and energy, not to mention seriously depressing, to turn on your computer in the morning and get slapped with the worst news that can be found. It is a blow to your overall health. Veraverba.com, our sister site, is now an alternative.…

Several years ago, an unusual set of events found me at Starbucks on a Saturday night. It had been a reasonably decent day, but somehow the pressures of the world – its parade of negativity – had had its effect on me. Sitting in the Starbucks cured me. What…

Tether froze $344M in USDT with a keystroke. Your stablecoins are not your stablecoins.

Sadly, I keep hearing stories about people slashing at each other for “cultural appropriation.” I had hoped this issue would die on its own, but evidently it hasn’t. And so I think it’s worth a brief post. Cultural appropriation refers to a sort of robbery:…

The social contract is a description of “the origin of society and the legitimacy of the authority of the state over the individual.” The social contract asserts that all of us have consented to surrender some of our rights to a ruling group, in exchange…

Last week we examined the “social contract” in some depth, to see if it passes as a legal concept. This week we’ll examine two follow-up issues: one that I didn’t mention and one that I mentioned, but didn’t delve into. And for those who missed last week’s…

The statement I’ll be making today is simple… very simple. Nonetheless, I think it’s of tremendous importance. It’s the type of thing that, if kept sufficiently in mind, can revise your mental universe. It’s the type of thing that makes me want to write,…

We’ve all heard the slogan, “United we stand, divided we fall” hundreds of times. It is portrayed as wisdom, but in fact it’s generally false. If you require a mass of bodies to charge another mass of bodies on a battlefield, unity matters. But when you want…

Block hits 800K merchants. Aven launches BTC credit up to $1M. DOJ backs off developers. Musk v Altman begins.

(Originally published October 12, 2022.) I prefer to focus on building the good rather than identifying the bad. But there is also a place for understanding what is happening in the world. (“Wise as serpents, innocent as doves.”) This piece, written by one…

Late last week, the US Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, released more than 100 pages of formerly-classified documents, showing that then-President of the United States, Barack Obama, ordered intelligence reports to be manufactured and to…

Cashu creator Calle: ecash mints inside enclaves mean operators can't access the bitcoin. Hal Finney's RPOW vision, finally realized.

The dominating systems of our world require us to feel weak, afraid, and insufficient. They couldn’t continue if most of us didn’t feel that way. And so the friends and operators of these systems must suppress the opposite thought: that we are not inadequate.…

(Originally published in October of 2022, and tragically still necessary.) This is not something I ever wanted to write or even imagined writing. And yet, here we are. I’ve been receiving a stream of reports from wildly divergent sources, all saying the same…