It feels like summer has finally surrendered in the DC area. Mornings are crisp, even chilly, and afternoon highs have been consistently below 80 degrees. Traffic is abysmal. Of course, this weather is synonymous with election season, a time that consumes the Beltway but one that most Americans simply grit their teeth and endure.
What I’m watching:
The Middle East – Thus far my thinking on this has been correct (jinx!). Up until now Israel has opted against high-profile retaliatory action against Iran following Iran’s ballistic missile attack on 01 October. This is not to say that Israel has not been conducting retaliatory actions, as they have recently demonstrated that have a deep bench of capabilities at their disposal. But not the much-predicted kinetic attack on Iranian infrastructure.
As events unfold, I think Israel is looking to replicate the spirit of their Gaza operation in Lebanon against Hizballah. Decapitate it, cripple its ability to take the initiative militarily, and set the stage for an evolution of circumstances on the ground. The chattering classes in DC have also been floating the idea of a new paradigm in Lebanon. Ultimately, if Israel can defang Iran’s proxies in the region, the long-term effect will be greater than a potentially escalatory kinetic attack against energy infrastructure. Iran projects power through these proxies, their loss would be a significant blow.
China – The discussion about China’s hesitancy to dump a hot dose of adrenaline into the financial system reflects the choices Xi has made regarding China’s development. The WSJ journal just today ran a story about the scope and scale of China’s espionage operations – clearly a priority unaffected by the overall economic slowdown. What is interesting to me is how these choices are affecting the next generation of CCP leaders who grew up with the assumption of prosperity. Xi might have crowned himself leader for life, but even that lofty title is ultimately finite. I’m on the fence as to whether an economically suffering China under Xi is more or less likely to take military action against Taiwan. But I am reasonably optimistic that these same economic challenges make the prospect of a reprioritization of market reforms in a post-Xi world a decent bet.
What I’m Reading – The Fatal Conceit, Hayek.
Screw it. I’ve decided to become an MMTer of convenience. We’re now at a $1.8 trillion deficit for 2024 - so far. The line is blurry, but assuming we’ve crossed the threshold of no return, print away. Just keep my taxes low so I have more crappy dollars to trade for Bitcoin.
What a tremendous failure of our leadership class. Plan accordingly.
Not sure what came over me. I still have an X account, mostly because many of the commentators I follow post exclusively on X. But I generally restrict my own posts to Nostr. That said, while sipping on some Compass Coffee Bitcoin Blend this morning, I nearly Apple paid my way into an X Premium subscription – the blue check! Eleven dollars, and with Apply pay, two thumb clicks while staring into the screen is all you need. Ultimately, I didn’t do it. Time to get writing again on Nostr.
The summer kind of got away from me. Lots of happenings on the family front. There’s only so many hours in the day, and I’ve been making a more concerted effort to chop away at the pile of reading I’ve assigned myself. I’m also trying to be more balanced in what I read, making space for things other than Bitcoin books and the like. As Bitcoin becomes increasingly “normal,” probably time for me to do the same on the reading front.
Things I’m watching – the Middle East. I don’t think the tit-for-tat is over yet, although I suspect the overall decibel level of these actions is unlikely to continue escalating. But should the parties continue up the ladder of escalation, what might accelerate that doom loop? Keep an eye on Turkey. If the fighting in Lebanon expands, might Turkey step in to create some kind of safe zone in parts of Lebanon? That would put two US allies in geographic proximity to one another eyeball to eyeball. Just my own red team thinking.
And still aghast at what I’m reading about rescue operations in hurricane afflicted areas. The America I grew up in was better than this.
Lots of great used book stores in the Washington, DC area. But the best, IMHO, remains the Second Story warehouse in Rockville, MD. Open every day.
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I just had the chance to make an easy discretionary payment in bitcoin , but I opted to use fiat. I feel like I missed an opportunity….but the bitcoin I would have used is going one way in purchasing power, and the dollars I chose to use are going another.
Have I failed?
Overall Bitcoin has made me a generally more tolerant person. Fair to say it has given me some new perspective. But what it has absolutely obliterated is any tolerance for institutions’ “processing” times for moving money. Transaction a few times on chain, and the whole logic of “processing time” is turned inside out.
Understanding he likely has few fans on this protocol, Nouriel Roubini, along with Stephan Miran, has published a paper that explains in great detail the ultimate in fiat games Treasury is playing with debt issuance. Having read this, I can’t understand how he doesn’t see how Bitcoin contributes to fixing the problem. Nonetheless, that problem is laid bare in this paper. There’s also a podcast on Forward Guidance / Blockworks.
https://www.hudsonbaycapital.com/documents/FG/hudsonbay/research/635102_Activist_Treasury_Issuance_-_Hudson_Bay_Capital_Research.pdf
It is also likely that other countries, using their intelligence collection capabilities, had greater insights into the chaos in the White House than the American people. Understanding the decision tree is critical to understanding an adversary’s plans and intentions, which is really the point of intelligence collection. Get that wrong, and a series of unfortunate events can unfold.
But at least now we know - the Harris people are in charge, and the vast mechanism of influence the democrats rely on will kick into high gear to make sure that whatever happens from today forward will be in support of her candidacy.
And we’ll be not-so-politely asked to forget the last three years of obfuscation and lies.
Assuming Harris becomes the nominee, she will be the titular head of the democrat party. She will also become the focus of effort for the vast establishment democrats rely on to keep their machine rolling. Biden might retain the title, but Harris will be in charge.
At least then we’ll know who’s actually in charge….
With my daughter soon heading to college, there has been a lot of packing and organizing in my house. Among the things we got around to opening was some old storage that hadn’t been opened for many years. Mixed in with a lot of stuff we probably never needed to save were some nuggets from travels past.
I found these East German coins I collected on a trip to the DDR in 1988. I was a student in West Germany and remember calling my parents to tell them I was going with friends to East Germany – back in a week. Obviously no cell phones, no email. Times have changed.
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I also found what I thought was a lost journal I kept during one of my deployments in the “forever wars.” I kept it as something my then infant daughter could have, should I not make it back. It’s mostly me writing to her, but consistent through it is a deep skepticism about why were there and likelihood of success.
These rediscoveries are timely, with discussions about 4th turnings and global realignment dominating the Zeitgeist. They recall two periods that figure prominently in the lifetime of a Gen Xer and show how fast the forces of change can upend your reality. These experiences have made me a skeptic by nature, but skeptics can still have faith.
To all you building freedom tech, thank you for what you do. Keep it up – this is your time to shine. And for the rest of us, if I can quote we all know who – stay humble and stack sats. They will serve you well.
If foreign governments won’t buy them, guess who will be the involuntary buyer of last resort? (Hint: turn on your phone camera, flip the camera direction, and click a picture to reveal the answer.)
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Great day running the Aerial Adventure course at River Riders in Harpers Ferry, WV. Staff is great, the scenery is beautiful, and it is a hell of a workout. A quick hour’s drive from the Washington DC area.
The view from one of the stands of the Potomac River where VA, WV, and MD all intersect.
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@fiatjaf I reread The Brothers Karamazov earlier this summer. It is a work that speaks not only across cultures, but across centuries. And I believe old man Fyodor would be perfectly comfortable denouncing all varieties of statist authoritarianism. Shall we ban The Gulag Archipelago next? No government anywhere owns the cultural history of then people they govern.
Jamie Dimon’s flip on Bitcoin just proves what we already knew - in most cases, opposition to Bitcoin comes from self interest and a desire to protect the privileges Bitcoin disrupts.
After a long string of Bitcoin books, I’m rereading Modris Ekstein’s “Rites of Spring.” The book looks at the cultural environment that preceded WWI and the destruction of European civilization that followed. While our current civilization lacks the cultural elevation of the time, some of the threads still ring true - youth frustration, cultural norms being challenged, an elite unable to perceive the depths of institutional decadence.
Any honest observer sees the institutional decadence on full display. Regardless of your politics, the metaphor of Biden, personification of those institutions, declining before our eyes despite institutional insistence to the contrary, is glaring. Everything that has been directed at Trump, culminating in the events of July 13th, all spasms of resistance to that decline.
The sensation of a generational rotation is palpable. I give credit to a lot of people on this platform for building the tools that will help make this rotation a renewal. History books are replete with stories of the birth of technologies that changed the world for the better. I look forward to watching my own grandchildren read stories about the technologies being built here today, asking rhetorically, as we all do about previous generations, how anyone could have ever lived without them.
Conversely, the Washington DC area is abnormally crowded. Traffic usually subsides in the summer, and although tourists clog the usual spots, traffic in the suburbs is usually lighter all summer long.
Maybe people are just staying close, trying to make sure they get their cut of the Cantillon Effect in these uncertain times.
I agree. People who really needed the money had years of opportunity to sell their claims. Those that held on throughout the whole drama are more of the ride or die variety.
I think I’ve increasingly come to mistake cynicism for experience, or maybe even wisdom. I’ve traveled a bit, been part of a few things, fair to say I’ve been around. But it is only recently that I’ve noticed what might be an unhealthy degree of cynicism in my thinking.
I think this cynicism is unhealthy, it blocks doorways and inhibits gestures that might otherwise lead to fulfilling experiences and relationships.
Sometimes it’s hard to avoid the descent to cynicism. The world makes it easy, yet we can’t make it better if we too easily surrender to the temptation of extreme cynicism. I’ll keep my skepticism, but that does not prevent me from making an effort to be more faithful.
Celebrating Independence Day with a family hike down Turkey Run trail to the banks of a very low Potomac River.
Wishing everyone, no matter where you’re from, a happy and healthy Independence Day.
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I’m three months into my hobby mining project. If you want to contribute some low maintenance hash-rate, the Bitaxe Supra is a beast. Fire and forget. Occasional reboots, but damn it just doesn’t stop hashing.
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American policymakers are stuck in a fading framework - dollar dominance understood as the ability to manipulate currency as a tool of national power. And it isn’t Bitcoin causing this framework to fade, but rather the abuse of the very privileges people wish to maintain.
While Bitcoin is neutral, that neutrality speaks to what I hope can remain core American values - the sovereign individual, economic freedom. Challenged as these values are, people are seemingly waking to the realization of the false promises of collectivization. Because Bitcoin speaks to core values, it inherently offers Americans the opportunity to benefit from this competitive advantage.
The dollar system is resilient, but it is not immortal. When it comes to Bitcoin, the US enjoys the competitive advantages of values, hash rate, and innovation. Something will fill the gap left by the dollar as its role as reserve asset fades. Right now there is no clear successor. Perhaps we will stumble upon a new generation of leaders who see the possibility of filling this gap with a monetary asset that, while perhaps beyond our ability to directly manipulate, is well suited to help the American people realize a sound future for themselves and the country.
And with that example, might not other like-minded countries follow? I believe there is space enough on this Earth of ours for everyone to prosper.
I’ve been using venice.ai for a few days, both chat and image. It’s great. I’ve also run some thornier questions past it and ChatGPT and Gemini. As advertised, Venice provides straight forward answers without the sensitivity knee and elbow pads. Plus, it is decentralized and doesn’t store your data.
Looking forward to seeing where the team takes it next.
If the ETH peoples are happy with their ETF, I have no malice and wish them no harm. But what I really love is knowing that Gary Gensler will never have his name on the dollar as Treasury Secretary. Yes, he did Warren’s bidding, and she’ll likely remain in the Senate. But Gary embarrassed a lot of people. Gary is done.
Negative incentives aren’t a great way to structure your life….but this is just delicious.
Delicious.
It was a good week for Bitcoin on the policy front. But this was just one week. We need to take advantage of this momentum to force vulnerable candidates to take public positions - and punish those who oppose financial freedom and inclusion at the polls.
Stay frosty, friends.
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Notes by Bayman11771 | export