Option Plus Podcast with Juraj Bednar

This is a reading of Lisa’s blog Beyond the Human Template: Notes on Consciousness, Intelligence, and What We’re Missing Links: Tamers of Entropy – a cypherpunk story of parallel path of the mind

Since the emergence of Bitcoin, we have observed a psychological phenomenon among certain groups, particularly those involved in traditional financial institutions, characterized by the moral opposition to Bitcoin’s early adopters and the system itself. This paper introduces and analyzes the “nocoiner syndrome,” a condition where individuals, especially those benefiting from the...

Recording from my talk at Bitcoin Retro in Bratislava — one of the most Lunarpunk events I’ve been to. I have two introductory observations. First, the world has gone to shit — war, censorship, central planners doing increasingly batshit-crazy things. Second, we’re in 2026 and the cypherpunk project is mostly done . The technology is here. You can live a mostly free life if you’r...

What do the modern cryptoanarchists and the hill tribes of Zomia (area the size of Europe in southeast Asia) have in common? They have evolved strategies to become state-repelling – not only avoiding the state, but making the state avoid them. What are the similarities of their strategies to cryptoanarchy? Can we learn something from them? And can they become cryptoanarchists themselves, sin...

People often praise big open-source projects. The number of users is pareto-distributed, most projects have very few users, if at all. But do they make sense? Is it worth creating projects with few users? Should you release software that you write for yourself? I have written quite a lot of projects that have very few users if at all. But building in public and sharing my work has many benefits &#...

This is a deep and somewhat technical conversation with Josh (Bitpunk.fm) , where we talk about the implications of the imminent “Albycalypse” in the value4value (podcasting 2.0 and Nostr) ecosystems. We discuss the transition happening with various podcasting apps as they move away from using Alby, a Lightning wallet API, which has become instrumental for Lightning payments by many podcasting app...

The internet is broken. We want free stuff, so we are the product. The datacenters are not free. Our identities, our social graphs, our channels and often our revenue are either owned or passed through intermediaries, who can flip the switch – and we’re gone. There are ways to take our online lives back, but it needs a bit of a cypherpunk mindset, and willingness to experiment. Reticul...

Swallowing the orange pill is only the beginning. What comes next has very little to do with the exchange rate or your wealth. What Bitcoin gives you is new outlook on life, through experience. Suddenly, you notice hierarchies are not required for most relationships. A decentralized networks works – tick tock next block – without the need of central planner. And by the way, it’s...

A look into cypherpunk’s history, goals, current status, and possible futures. Cypherpunks are individuals who build the technologies for the strategy of cryptoanarchy. This strategy involves using cryptographic tools to enhance personal liberty in everyday life, without waiting for systemic changes. I explain how cypherpunks have worked on cryptographic primitives to enable private communic...

We are Bitcoiners. We HODL. But what then? Do well sell our Bitcoin? Hell no! This is a podcast about Bitcoin-backed finance and our options after the proverbial moon. This podcast is a recording of a Twitter Space on the topic of Bitcoin finance. I explain my book and course How to harness the value of Bitcoin without having to sell it, Martin and Chairman explain Bitcoin-native lending protocol...