Alex Gladstein 🌋 ⚡
@gladstein
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Chief Strategy Officer: @HRF + @OsloFF Author: Check Your Financial Privilege + Hidden Repression Opinions: mine
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Joined January 2009
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Today HRF launches the Finney Freedom Prize to honor Hal Finney, a champion of privacy, open-source software, and electronic cash
The 1 BTC award celebrates those who do the most for Bitcoin and freedom each halving era
Let it inspire many more Hals✌️
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Tesla buys Bitcoin.
El Salvador adopts Bitcoin.
Twitter adds Bitcoin.
Central banks attack Bitcoin.
200M users, growing faster than the internet.
And yet, most people in finance and economics are totally oblivious to what is happening.
What a world! 🌎
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So many are just completely missing the historical importance of what is happening in El Salvador.
The govt could have pushed a surveillance and control coin, a civil liberties-stripping CBDC, a China project...
No! They went with Bitcoin. Freedom money.
Just remarkable.
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Historic moment.
El Salvador on track to become the first country to accept Bitcoin as legal tender and to hold Bitcoin as a reserve asset.
The future is wide open.
@JackMallers
is a legend.
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Run a ponzi, steal billions, and then -- wait for it -- headline a NYT conference with the people who run Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and the global dollar system
🤡 🤡 🤡 🤡 🤡
SBF confirms today he is speaking at NYT for the DealBook Summit.
Other speakers include Zelensky, Zuckerberg, and Yellen.
It cost $2,499 to attend.
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Flawless experience using
@MuunWallet
here in El Zonte to buy all sorts of things with Bitcoin 👌
If you visit, make sure to stop by for a coffee with Karla, an excellent barista.
You can tip her instantly from anywhere in the world with Lightning here:
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Satoshi Nakamoto listed their birthday as April 5, 1975
If you are wondering what animated them to create Bitcoin:
April 5 = FDR signed order 6102 making it illegal for Americans to own gold
1975 = Americans could legally own gold again
It’s all about about financial freedom.
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I agree with
@Fidelity
, of course, but still astonishing to read this on Bitcoin adoption game theory in such a mainstream financial report:
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With Brazil now experiencing double-digit inflation, we're now at more than 1.4 billion people on earth living under double, triple, or quadruple digit inflation:
-🇵🇰 226M
-🇧🇷 214M
-🇳🇬 213M
-🇪🇹 118M
-🇨🇩 93M
-🇮🇷 85M
-🇹🇷 84M
-🇦🇷 45M
-🇸🇩 43M
-🇺🇿 34M
-🇦🇴 34M
-🇬🇭 31M
-Rest of 🌍 213M
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Why Bitcoin matters for human rights, in two minutes.
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Still one of the greatest Bitcoin tweets of all time
Ziya the 🐐
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Let's be honest
A lot of people did not expect Bitcoin to get back to ATH territory with Fed Funds at 5.33% and the average mortgage rate at 7.27%
It was a speculative, zero-interest rate, easy money phenomenon, they said
Boy do we have news for you
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The Ukrainian parliament has passed a law to legalize Bitcoin 🇺🇦
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“The plan is for Ukraine to make Bitcoin legal tender by the start of 2023 and create a ‘duel-currency country’ where Bitcoin sits alongside the fiat hryvnia before potentially being phased in as the dominant financial structure”
🇺🇦
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Just visited Norwegian parliament to educate top government officials about the global human rights and humanitarian impact of Bitcoin.
Was an easy job with this Avengers-level crew! 🇳🇴 ⚡️
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The fact that the NYT protects and refuses to call SBF out as a scammer *even today* while they continue to attack Bitcoin as bad, criminal, destructive, etc tells you all you need to know about their agenda
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At approximately $72,800, Bitcoin will surpass the total value of all the silver in the world.
That's the next big milestone for Satoshi Nakamoto's remarkable invention, once just a string of code on a solitary computer, running quietly in the wake of the Great Financial Crisis.
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Zero to nation-state adoption in 12 years.
Not bad for an open-source competitor to central banking.
Satoshi Nakamoto 👑
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Fidelity spot ETF rejected.
Kind of amazing how worried the US government is about the population investing in Bitcoin at a wide scale.
Hint: it’s not about consumer protection, but about preserving financial privilege
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WATCH: Check Your Financial Privilege
A new
@HRF
short animated film 🎥
Feat.
@ireaderinokun
@SudanHODL
@KalKassa
🇳🇬 🇸🇩 🇪🇹 🌍 ⚡️
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Apparently people in Brazil and all over the world are planning to convert $30 worth of their local fiat into BTC this Tuesday September 7th to commemorate El Salvador’s law making the open-source, decentralized, debasement-proof currency legal tender 🌎
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Critics: "Bitcoin has no use case"
Ok, here's me in a small village in Central America quickly transforming Bitcoin from my open-source, non-custodial, non-KYC mobile wallet into a $10 bill for a small fee.
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1/ It is *really important* to understand that Bitcoin is very different from Dogecoin.
Some are making jokes comparing the two, especially as Doge has outperformed BTC + ETH this year.
Many of you already know, but for everyone else, here are some of the key differences 🧵
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Shocker
Athletes warned against speaking up on human rights at Beijing Games
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Bitcoin critics: The government will ban BTC
SEC commissioner
@HesterPeirce
: "I don't see how you could ban it. It would be a foolish thing for the government to try. A bigger problem is we'd be missing out on the innovation around Bitcoin"
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“We’ve gradually gotten used to this environment where we can’t pay another person unless there is a corporation involved”
Watch Rogan’s sinking realization when Andreas explains to him what this really means
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Important to keep in mind:
Bitcoin's Proof-of-Work was invented to escape Proof-of-Stake financial systems, where the largest asset owners can unduly influence the rules of the game.
Thanks to PoW + full nodes, neither miners nor the biggest BTC hodlers can change the protocol.
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Say what you want about the Elon thing but if he bought $6 billion of Bitcoin today and then in 10 years distributed it evenly among the world's poorest billion — ~10,000 sats per person — it would be the most powerful and disruptive act of philanthropy of all time.
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It’s hard to believe this is real.
The pride with which this politician announces emergency surveillance measures in a country like Canada would have been unthinkable 10 years ago.
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Today I join 20 rights advocates from 20 countries in asking Congress to consider Bitcoin’s humanitarian impact.
Western technologists may ignore Bitcoin's role in helping tens of millions under tyranny or failed economies, but policymakers should not 🌍
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In 1944, the world monetary system was fixed by elites at Bretton Woods.
In 1971, it was rigged up by Nixon + Kissinger at the White House.
In 2021, after a decade of online public collaboration, a new open system was launched on a beach in El Salvador.
This time is different.
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1/ I'm thrilled to announce the publication of my new book:
CHECK YOUR FINANCIAL PRIVILEGE
It's a collection of two years of reporting on financial repression, monetary history, and global Bitcoin adoption.
Pick up a copy today:
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Those shocked by this tweet live in a bubble of financial privilege.
*1.3 billion* live under double, triple, or quadruple-digit inflation: Turkey, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Iran, Lebanon, Venezuela, Cuba, Sudan, and beyond.
It’s already one of the world’s biggest humanitarian crises.
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The government of El Salvador is planning to airdrop ~3,000 BTC into the hands of its citizens.
And they can’t even print money to buy the Bitcoin.
This will be really crazy to think about 10 years from now.
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A leading Ethereum engineer with some thoughts worth reflecting on
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We’ve officially crossed the Rubicon in terms of the “does Bitcoin have any value” discussion
If people still refuse to see the value after mass financial deplatforming in Canada, and after the Ukrainian government is fundraising with BTC during a crisis, they are truly lost
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Bitcoin users: be prepared to be labeled “fascist” for choosing to opt into an inherently anti-fascist and open currency by the mainstream economic orthodoxy which ironically views increasingly centralized control and surveillance as the only way forward for the monetary system.
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The
@Strike
send globally feature is amazing
I just sent $5 from my US dollar balance to
@bernard_parah
in Lagos, and in under 2 minutes he received the value as naira in his Nigerian account
All I had to enter was his phone number, bank account, bank name
Made possible by ⚡️
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The scale of Bitcoin adoption in Africa is absolutely staggering
Today I met people running growing Bitcoin businesses or communities in Somalia, Cameroon, Togo, Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, South Africa, DR Congo, Sudan, Benin, Senegal, Uganda… just to name a few
🌍 🤯
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Stage 1: Bitcoin too small to react to Fed policy
Stage 2: Bitcoin big enough to react to Fed policy (you are here)
Stage 3: Bitcoin too big to react to Fed policy
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Bitcoin just activated a major upgrade, increasing privacy, flexibility, and efficiency for global digital sound money… with no major opposition and—you have to think—basically all government officials and bank executives not even having a clue that it happened
Bullish 🥳
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Grateful for those trying to convince the govt to not pass restrictive legislation but ultimately Bitcoin is the product of activists who thought we should seize — not beg for — our freedoms.
This quote from Wei Dai (a Cypherpunk cited in the Bitcoin White Paper) sums it all up:
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Bitcoin is coming to hundreds of U.S. banks this year, says crypto custody firm NYDIG
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If not Bitcoin or cryptocurrency:
How else can one send $100 to a Ukrainian who has fled into Poland?
How else can one send $100 to a Russian stuck in Moscow?
This can be done instantly w/ virtually no fees to *any phone* via ⚡️
The “BTC has no value” camp has lost.
Onwards.
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Bitcoin network back to full strength (without central planning) just months after the CCP knocked out half its power. Unbelievably resilient decentralized architecture.
#Bitcoin
Hash Rate nearing all-time highs only 5 months after China kicked out $btc miners.
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1/ While doing research for my essay on the negative externalities of the petrodollar, I learned a huge amount. Much of it was shocking or surprising.
Here's a thread with a few of my favorite bits of insight, with links for further reading 🧵
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Some think “Bitcoin fixes this” is a joke. It’s not.
A very partial list of things BTC fixes:
-Extortionate remittances
-Financial censorship
-Elites having special abilities in a monetary system
-Frozen funds
-Immoral sanctions
-Payments without a bank account
-Debased savings
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1/ Update: there are now more than *2 billion people* living under the extreme time theft of double or triple digit inflation worldwide 🚨
-🇵🇰 229M
-🇳🇬 216M
-🇧🇷 214M
-🇷🇺 146M
-🇪🇹 120M
-🇪🇬 106M
-🇮🇷 86M
-🇹🇷 86M
-🇨🇴 52M
-🇪🇸 47M
-🇦🇷 46M
-🇸🇩 46M
-🇺🇦 43M
-🇵🇱 37M
-Rest of 🌍 590M
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“Bitcoin is the world’s first globally-accessible public money.
It will be as significant for freedom, prosperity, and human flourishing as the birth of the internet.”
Always great to see this GOAT speech by
@valkenburgh
pop up on the feed
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Something that blew my mind when I first learned it:
Bitcoin's mining difficulty is updated every 2,016 blocks... as in, 6102 backwards
Also Satoshi chose as a birthday April 5, same day FDR issued 6102
Bitcoin was invented to stop government theft of citizen resources
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Reminder: Bitcoin has done more for people of color and vulnerable populations worldwide in a few short years than this warmongering, elitist magazine has ever done in its 175-year history.
As long as bitcoin and its ilk are decentralised, the ability of far-right groups to use them will remain
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Advertisement in Kenya, coming after a decade where the shilling lost almost half its purchasing power against the dollar and where the Central Bank is now mulling a CBDC 🇰🇪 🌍
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Humans can do incredible things.
The Pyramids.
Flight.
Going to the moon.
Nuclear power.
But creating a money system that no one can corrupt might be our most impressive and improbable achievement.
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At the end of the 50BTC block subsidy era, there was 50% of Bitcoin left to be mined.
At the end of today’s 6.25BTC block subsidy era, there will be 6.25% of Bitcoin left to be mined.
And on and on.
Just a neat detail but hadn’t connected the dots before.
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Photo of Ukrainians fleeing Kiev, heading closer to Poland and NATO troops.
What if you had to escape your home because of an invasion today?
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1/ Bitcoin is a powerful tool for human rights.
What is happening in El Salvador will have a huge impact on the lives of people there and across the world.
A nation adopting Bitcoin is a big step forward for global human freedom.
But that's not the full story 🧵
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You have to wonder if Satoshi thought this day would actually come, where the issuer of the world reserve currency would get visibly nervous.
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@stoolpresidente
You never owned any bitcoins unless you withdrew them to your own control. If you paid FTX or anyone else for “Bitcoin” which you then just kept in their system then you only owned a claim or IOU which at this point sadly may not be redeemable. Best practice is to self-custody.
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@Jason
Do you know how impoverished this country is? 70% don’t have a bank account. You’re going to dunk on them from your private jet. What an unbelievable display of ignorance and lack of empathy.
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Bitcoin is anti-fascist technology
Bitcoin is anti-imperial technology
Bitcoin is anti-ruling class technology
Bitcoin is anti-communist technology
Bitcoin is anti-forever war technology
Bitcoin is anti-megacorp technology
Bitcoin is anti-tyrant technology
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Satoshi was a human rights activist
Igniting the biggest and most effective peaceful protest of all time
Planting a seed of liberty at the root of exploitation and tyranny
With nothing more than free and open-source code
✌️
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Me: Wow, a country seems to be adopting Bitcoin at the national level.
Media and experts: It’s not a big deal. And probably won’t work. Trust us. And please look right here:
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1/ Secretary Yellen’s latest public remarks are nothing short of remarkable.
Here, the top US govt official in charge of the financial system talks about Satoshi Nakamoto's innovation:
“New technology has raised the possibility of reduced reliance on centralized intermediaries”
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My
@TIME
column on why bitcoin matters for freedom. For billions living under authoritarianism, it can be an alternative money system and an escape from economic control. And for all of us, it preserves the peer-to-peer virtues of cash in an increasingly digital financial world.
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Brilliant explanation of why Bitcoin is so revolutionary by Julian Assange in 2014 🎯
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1/ Thread on Ziya Sadr, the Iranian Bitcoin educator detained by the regime amid
#MahsaAmini
protests
I've followed Ziya's work for years: he is an incredibly brave person who has helped thousands of Iranians achieve more freedom by teaching them how to use open source currency
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In case it wasn’t obvious to you yet, here’s the head of the Bank of International Settlements clarifying that the difference between cash and CBDCs is that the former provides privacy while the latter gives the central bank “absolute control” 🥶
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Many make the mistake of thinking Bitcoiners are doomers hoping for social collapse.
On the contrary.
Bitcoiners are some of the most hopeful people I have ever met. They believe in a positive future for humanity that is meaningfully better, more free, and more just than today.
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Some Bitcoiners don’t like how Bukele imposed BTC on 🇸🇻
Some Bitcoiners don’t like how 🇺🇦 is fundraising in BTC to defend itself from Putin
Some Bitcoiners don’t like Terra buying tons of BTC
Reality check: Bitcoin doesn’t care and will continue its march to global adoption ✌️
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Senator Warren:
Emissions from open source incorruptible money available to billions worldwide: bad
Emissions from private jets: totally fine
🤡
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Here’s an IMF paper recommending that governments consider “financial repression” (i.e. looting public savings by pinning interest rates below inflation) as a tool for reducing national debt in advanced economies:
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People skeptical that Bitcoin can still work if all hell breaks loose are apparently completely unaware that it is keeping millions of people afloat right now where all hell *already* broke loose in Iran, Venezuela, Gaza, Sudan, and many other places
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1/ This post from the IMF is worth reading.
They are hugely concerned about more countries taking a “shortcut” by making Bitcoin a national currency, as they predict this will hamper their global operations 🧵
Privately issued cryptoassets like Bitcoin come with substantial risks. Making them equivalent to a national currency is an inadvisable shortcut. Read more in our
#IMFBlog
by the IMF’s Tobias Adrian and
@RhodaWeeksBrown
:
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It's increasingly likely that governments will protect and promote KYC'd Bitcoin, custodied BTC, and regulated Bitcoin securities
While at the same time discouraging or even prosecuting non-KYC activity
Building out global non-KYC BTC infrastructure remains mission critical 🫡
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No, Bitcoin *undermines* Putin’s plans to isolate, repress, and plunder the Russian people.
It gives them a way out.
Do not allow confused, pro-surveillance and control politicians to tell you otherwise.
Cryptocurrencies risk undermining sanctions against Russia, allowing Putin and his cronies to evade economic pain.
U.S. financial regulators need to take this threat seriously and increase their scrutiny of digital assets.
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This is an encyclopedic and must-read essay from
@LynAldenContact
about the nature and politics of money.
Here are some highlights 🧵
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Oct 31, 1517: Martin Luther nails 95 theses to a church door in Germany, sparking the Protestant Reformation
Oct 31, 2008: Satoshi Nakamoto posts the Bitcoin white paper to the Cryptography Mailing List, sparking the separation of money and state
Hadn’t realized that before 🤯
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Theory as good as any: Satoshi Nakamoto was sent back in time from the dystopic future with a blueprint for something that would kill the otherwise inevitable Skynet of money — Central Bank Digital Currencies
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On this day 13 years ago, Satoshi Nakamoto launched Bitcoin.
Why?
Hidden in the genesis block—mined on January 3, 2009—is a clue.
This wasn’t a reaction to a surveillance scandal, but rather a reaction to the inadequacy and injustice of central banking and fiat currency.
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Astonishing
@nytimes
chart of home equity wealth by generation.
Over the past 2 years US home owners gained more than *$6 trillion* in housing wealth.
These gains have almost entirely gone to those born before 1980, while millennials are mostly locked out of home ownership.
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Bitcoin was $8k two years ago
$2k five years ago
$5 ten years ago
Today, in the early innings of some of the worst macroeconomic conditions in 50 years, it’s at $30k
Could it go down a lot from here?
Absolutely. But context and history matter.
Zoom out and reflect 👌
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1/ My essay "Structural Adjustment: How the IMF and World Bank Repress Poor Countries and Funnel Their Resources to Rich Ones" is now live
The Bank and Fund claim to help poor countries develop and rescue them from crises
But what if that's not true?
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Thrilled to share my new essay
"Stranded: How Bitcoin is Saving Wasted Energy and Expanding Financial Freedom in Africa"
I was profoundly moved by what I saw on a trip to Kenya + Malawi
If this can show you even 1% of what inspired me, that's a win 🧵
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@joshtpm
1/ Josh, what's remarkable is your arrogance, ignorance, and financial privilege. 1.3 billion live under double or triple digit inflation and 4.3 billion live under authoritarianism. Millions of them have turned to BTC as a way out. That you would mock them is bizarrely cruel.
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A lot of people seem confused about why it’s good that a questionable leader is promoting the use of Bitcoin in his country, so it’s a very good time to revisit Bitcoin Trojan Horse theory:
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Showed someone halfway around the world how to set up a Bitcoin wallet today. Sent them some BTC on-chain and via LN, and had them send LN back to me.
"But I never had to put my ID in?"
No :)
"Wow. It appeared instantly!"
Yes :)
Information is powerful tool, let's use it ⚡
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If you are in financial journalism and report when Bitcoin loses 10% in value, but you do not contextualize this with the fact that it is up 10x in the past year or 100x in the past 5 years or 5,000x in the past 10 years, then you are gaslighting your readership.
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MSM: “Bitcoin is a bad store of value”
Reality: cost of each new iPhone📱
iPhone 4 - 2857 BTC
iPhone 5 - 16.6 BTC
iPhone 6 - 2.17 BTC
iPhone 7 - 1.28 BTC
iPhone 8 - 0.24 BTC
iPhone X - 0.16 BTC
iPhone 11 - 0.14 BTC
iPhone 12 - 0.06 BTC
iPhone 13 - 0.02 BTC
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1/ Here are 25 brief, minute-long lessons and moments of insight on the under-discussed yet critical relationship between human rights and money
All filmed at the
@OsloFF
last month in Norway
First:
@nic__carter
on why Bitcoin is the world's only depoliticized monetary system
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Ok Bitcoin critic, what’s your alternative?
Minimum requirements:
🌍 Works anywhere
⚡️ Teleports instantly
🗽 Neutral/open-source
🚫 No corporate control
📈 Increases user purchasing power
🔐 Easy/cheap to audit/self-custody/transact/verify
♻️ Runs on ☀️ 🌊 ☢️ 🌋
We’ll wait ⏳
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If we didn't have "toxic" Bitcoiners, big-blockers would have won the blocksize wars and Bitcoin would no longer be decentralized and all would be lost.
So for those complaining about bitcoin "toxicity" -- do you think the network will never face an existential threat again?
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