Bitcoin Audible

Sure, everyone tells me that bitcoin is a new technology. That it's magic money for the internet and tokens you can buy and stick in an app that will probably be worth more later. But seriously… what the hell does all of that mean? I get that Bitcoin is a thing, but 'What is it?' Well let's get into it, with the first episode of Bitcoin Basics. Other episodes & works mentioned to dive deeper into...

"All of this is important because there has been a resurrection of Burns-type positions in the current debate about the cause of higher inflation rates. Senator Elizabeth Warren blames the rising inflation on greedy corporations raising their prices. Others have blamed rising prices on the greater prevalence of monopolies. Antitrust is apparently an anti-inflation tool. Make no mistake, these idea...

"Last night, lightning struck our house and burned it down. I escaped wearing only my nightclothes. In an instant, everything was vaporised. Laptop? Cinders. Phone? Ashes. Home server? A smouldering wreck. Yubikey? A charred chunk of gristle. This presents something of a problem." – Edent Today we read a story told from the perspective of someone who's entire life changed by the strike of lightnin...

"But as with all new technology, it can be incredibly hard to explain what’s actually happening, without getting too complex. This got me thinking about Bitcoin education and how to ELI5 (Explain Like I’m 5) with Bitcoin Lightning, enter… Bitcoin Lightning: The Airport Analogy" - Danny Scott Today we hit a short piece but a really great analogy in order to make sense of the lightning network. Sinc...

Today we break into the racket that is the IMF and World Bank monetary imperialism. Piggy backing off Gladstein's remarkable piece detailing the horrific consequences of this system and the clear intent and disregard for human life and basic freedoms, we discuss the fundamental principles of sound money that would be a basis to prevent this, how the fiat system gets around this balancing forces an...

Bad forgeries, fake signatures, backdated emails, more money than your country, & a lawsuit for everyone! This is the story of Faketoshi, explored through the extensive investigations of Arthur Van Pelt on the Craig Wrong debacle. He will have the biggest footnote in the Bitcoin history books under "people who pretended to be Satoshi." An achievement to be celebrated! Follow Arthur Van Pelt on twi...

"Bitcoin is paradoxical. It is simple yet complicated, ever-changing yet unchangeable. A novel machine without any novel parts; a technological innovation that isn't really about technology. You can't touch it, yet it is hard money. You can't see it, yet it will show you a vision of the future. You can't possess it, yet thousands of people seem to be possessed by it." - Dergigi In the spirit of ge...

The problem today is that we have companies who own both the protocol and discovery of content. Which ultimately puts one person in charge of what’s available and seen, or not. This is by definition a single point of failure, no matter how great the person, and over time will fracture the public conversation, and may lead to more control by governments and corporations around the world." - Jack Do...

Bringing back one of my favorites today that I mention often but we haven't covered in a very long time. This is an essential piece diving into the complexities and profound depth in the market establishment of a price. And why the very notion of the price being "wrong" or fixing it, is self-evidently impossible, as the only information we have to make a comparison, is given to us by emerging pric...

How much economic ignorance can you fit into 1 minute and 54 seconds? Well apparently its quite a lot. Peter Zeihan confidently embarrassed himself on Joe Rogan's podcast recently by going on a short rip regarding Bitcoin's negative value and how a reliable, fixed money causes economic disaster but the inflated, debt drowned political currency is more valuable. And how counterfeiters have rightful...

"Bitcoin is not a hedge against inflation; it is the permanent solution to inflation, and those are two very different things." - Parker Lewis Parker Lewis is back in action with the 18th installment of the Gradually, Then Suddenly series on its way to becoming a phenomenal book. Check out the many other articles in this series at the link below, but you don't want to miss this one. Bitcoin isn't...

"If your money requires permission to be spent, it is not your money. If your money has counterparty risk, it is not money—but credit. If your money steals from you, it is not your money—but a control and financing mechanism of your government. If your money requires identity, it is not money but a social credit score system." - Dergigi Today we dive into a short but excellent piece by Gigi in his...

"So they fire out digital chaff frantically in every direction, they play whack-a-mole with high-engagement nodes that are or could be threats. The enemy is now reactively defending themselves, not proactively steering the course. This is the Titanic and we are the iceberg." - Aristophanes We start the year off with a very interesting piece about the state of the ideological world and how the spee...

"This is the root of our cultural concern for crypto DeFi. The cultural, and arguably even structural, commitment to financialization is extremely difficult to reconcile with this core purpose of securities. In a sense, none of this is surprising given the foundations of crypto DeFi. If you jump straight to “decentralized securities” without first nailing down decentralized money and peer-to-peer...

This is the full, unabridged reading of Alex Gladstein's work, "STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENT: HOW THE IMF AND WORLD BANK REPRESS POOR COUNTRIES AND FUNNEL THEIR RESOURCES TO RICH ONES" published with Bitcoin Magazine. Link to the original read for the plethora of links and references to dig further into this incredible story. https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/imf-world-bank-repress-poor-countries Don'...

"Research from Mexico — a typical country in terms of consistent involvement historically from the Bank and Fund — shows that for every 2% decrease in GDP, the mortality rate increased by 1%. Now consider that as a result of structural adjustment, the GDP of dozens of countries in the Third World between the 1960s and 1990s suffered double-digit contractions. Despite massive population growth, man...

"The “generosity” of the West enabled unaccountable leaders to plunge their nations into debt deeper than ever before. The system was, as Payer writes in “Lent And Lost,” a straightforward Ponzi scheme: the new loans went straight to paying for the old loans. The system needed to grow to avoid collapse." - Alex Gladstein WERE BACK! We've got a bit of a lengthy introduction today while I mostly apo...

"Far from playing the role of good samaritan, the Fund does not even follow the timeless human tradition, established more than 4,000 years ago by Hammurabi in ancient Babylon, of forgiving interest after natural disasters. In 1985, a devastating earthquake hit Mexico City, killing more than 5,000 people and causing $5 billion of damage. Fund staff — who claim to be saviors, helping to end poverty...

"To give an example of what this might look like in a given year, in 2012 developing countries received $1.3 trillion, including all income, aid and investment. But that same year, more than $3.3 trillion flowed out. In other words, according to anthropologist Jason Hickel, “developing countries sent $2 trillion more to the rest of the world than they received.” When all the flows were added up fr...

"A 2014 analysis showed that the IMF had attached, on average, 20 conditions to each loan it gave out in the previous two years, a historic increase. Countries like Jamaica, Greece and Cyprus have borrowed in recent years with an average of 35 conditions each. It is worth noting that Bank and Fund conditions have never included protections on free speech or human rights, or restrictions on militar...

There are about a million claims out there as to what blockchains are going to fix, and how NFTs are going to be used to unlock your house, and how DAOs will be used to enforce and decide laws, but what truth is there to this really? And more importantly, does a blockchain really solve these problems? What are the inherent trust issues, and where are the vulnerabilities? Today we dive into this co...

"A data-driven exploration proving that Lightning scales bitcoin payments beyond Visa and that second-layer innovation is the way." - Stanislov Kozlovski Check out the original article at: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/lighting-network-makes-bitcoin-scalable Boost Bitcoin Audible on Fountain to get the best Bitcoin podcast to the top of the leaderboards Don't forget to check out our amazin...

“They just freelanced it,” is how one former employee characterized the decision. “Hacking was the excuse, but within a few hours, pretty much everyone realized that wasn’t going to hold. But no one had the guts to reverse it.” - Matt Taibbi Didn't have time to read that whole thread on the censorship of Twitter and the obvious politicization of all of our social networks and big tech platforms? W...

"We believe the core of the cultural fissure between crypto and bitcoin comes down to financialization. While the ethos of bitcoin is to definancialize, the ethos of crypto is to financialize. We repeat our characterization of this tendency from above: DeFi engages in arbitrary and automatable combinations of seigniorage, securitization, rehypothecation, and leverage. It is the purest form of fina...

"One counterargument might be that the de facto state capture of Ethereum in gradually becoming more and more OFAC compliant could, at the same time, be said to give it practical grounds to become more accepted as money via state enforcement, and more transparent than fiat currencies in traditional finance also. However, the cost is, once again, explicitly the loss of decentralization, so whatever...