Not this guy...

Hi Alex, huge fan of your work!

Do you have any advice to someone who wants to get involved working at the intersection of Bitcoin and human rights?

You seem to have such passion for what you do, which makes sense given it is for such a righteous cause. I crave finding such meaning in my life, but it is challenging in the typical corporate career where the goal is climbing the ladder and stacking more fiat.

Would love any advice you can provide!

I'd love to learn more about your logistics business if you are OK with sharing. I've worked in the logistics space for about a decade in the US (corporate job, mostly small parcel optimization strategies) and have been itching to quit my job and do a business but haven't been able to think of anything.

Unfortunately, I'm 99% sure Trump gave the pharmaceutical companies blanket liability waivers for the vaccine:

"President Donald Trump reportedly wants to fast-track approval of an experimental coronavirus vaccine being developed in the UK so it can be used in the US before the presidential election.

In a bid to secure a coronavirus vaccine before November 3, Trump wants the US Food and Drug Administration to grant emergency use authorization to the vaccine being developed by Oxford University in the weeks leading up to the election, even if it does not yet have full regulatory approval, the Financial Times reports, citing unnamed sources."

"Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has urged caution about Oxford's front-running status, however, reflecting the fact that most vaccines fail to receive regulatory approval.

"You've got to be careful if you're temporarily leading the way versus having a vaccine that's actually going to work," he told the BBC last month in comments reported by Bloomberg.

Fauci, the top US infectious-disease expert, also warned about the danger of fast-tracking a coronavirus vaccine after Russian President Vladimir Putin this month announced that Russia had approved a vaccine and hoped to begin mass production soon. Russia's vaccine has not completed its phase 3 trials, which are considered key in demonstrating the safety and efficacy of a vaccine and are usually completed before regulatory approval is given.

Fauci said while the US had numerous vaccines in development, "if we wanted to take the chance of hurting a lot of people or giving them something that doesn't work, we could start doing this, you know, next week if we wanted to — but that's not the way it works.""

Here is the executive summary of the report for those who don't want to click the link:

I think it is important to separate what bitcoiners (broadly speaking) feel about Trump vs. what the bitcoiners who have megaphones (influencers, podcasters, early adopters with large follower counts, etc...) feel.

Bitcoiners who have the megaphones certainly seem to lean towards Trump. Two quick examples I can point to are Marty Bent and AmericanHodl. From what I can gather, but I do not know with 100% certainty, they were both conservatives prior to both bitcoin and Trump. When they speak about politics, they cite Fox News reports or Tucker Carlson, etc... They both have large megaphones and often (perhaps just self deprecating humor) describe themselves as idiots, but they did have the good fortune to run across bitcoin early, spent the time/effort to understand bitcoin, latched on early and became relatively wealthy/popular in the process.

On the other hand, you have bitcoiners, the tens of millions of actual bitcoiners who don't have an outsized voice online. They, surprisingly perhaps, do not lean towards Trump (or conservative) but rather largely follow the general demographics of the US electorate except they tend to lean towards the younger and male side of the spectrum. The Nakamoto Project released an excellent study recently that you can read for free on their website. If you don't want to peruse their dozen page study (which I highly recommend), you can also listen to one of the study authors on the What Bitcoin Did podcast. I'll put some links below:

https://www.thenakamotoproject.org/report (click the "Download Your Report Now" button to read the doc, you don't need to fill out the mailing list info)

Summary image breaking down bitcoin owner's political leanings:

It is always the good guys who ban and burn the books in history right? That's the side you want to be on

Too damn much. I'm trying to transition fully to grapheneos from iphone in large part because I want to decrease my phone usage. I feel the more 'barebones' feel of grapheneos (at least by default) and that without google play services installed I won't have notifications for many apps, I can decrease my phone usage which is largely unproductive.

"Trump visited a Trump Organization property on 428 (nearly one in three) of the 1,461 days of his presidency and is estimated to have played 261 rounds of golf, one every 5.6 days."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_and_golf#:~:text=Trump%20visited%20a%20Trump%20Organization,golf%2C%20one%20every%205.6%20days.

Fair enough. I think a quote from Jameson Lopp is probably applicable here as well:

"Unless you're a professional trader, you're likely wasting your time looking at the BTC price chart, trying to understand it.

In 2013 everyone thought bitcoin was mooning due to the Cyprus crisis. Years later we learned it was Wences orange pilling his Silicon Valley buddies."

Yes, and what you describe can also be done with gold ETFs and while it sounds nice, in practice it does not happen.

Large investment firms, RIAs, sovereign wealth funds, pension funds and the like often cannot hold a physical commodity (per their own rules) or do not want to do so even if they legally could. They purchase into these ETFs and cannot/will not/do not redeem to purchase underlying.

But yes, it is easier for a pleb like you and me to do this with the ETF, but I imagine we already hold real bitcoin and not ETFs in any meaningful qty. For example, the Wisconsin Pension Fund that holds over $160M in bitcoin ETFs is not going to be holding spot bitcoin anytime soon :)

Agreed, we are pretty close to on track to where historical cycles say "we should be".

My one concern this cycle is if the ETFs decide to fractionally reserve bitcoin and essentially issue 'fake' bitcoin. That could be a way to absorb a large amount of demand without having any effect on the limited supply of bitcoin. We saw FTX do this and absorb iirc ~1 million btc worth of demand without actually buying/holding that bitcoin. It is illegal for the ETFs to do so, but I also don't think anyone who follows gold believes the gold ETFs actually hold the gold they are legally obligated to hold based on the number of shares they have issued. Not to mention the countless times the big boys (JP Morgan, etc...) have been caught spoofing the price of precious metals markets.

Unfortunately, similar to gold ETFs, very few people (if anyone) can actually demand redemption of their paper IOU bitcoin certificates for real bitcoin. Not to mention none of the ETF providers AFAIK have proof of reserves so who knows what they hold.

With all of that said, I'm bullish and look forward to seeing where this next bull cycle takes us!

I love the pictures and can appreciate the sentiment.

It would be nice if we lived in a utopia where government didn't exist, everyone played fairly, countries/peoples didn't invade each other to steal resources, etc...

Maybe one day that world will exist, but I don't think I'll get to see it in my lifetime. I think the digital space gives some of us that freedom to operate without borders and without these governmental imposed restrictions, but in meat space most of us must adhere to rules or face the state monopoly on violence.

Haha fair point. But I guess that is politics, promise the world and then delivery a tiny percent of it once elected.

I think what makes him unusual is his personal grift off the office of the presidency. I wonder what people would think if there was an Obama coin or Bush coin that they released and pump/dumped onto their followers. Or if Obama or Bush took billions from foreign countries after their presidency.

I understand politicians often take financial advantage of their power, but this seems to be unusually brazen and half the country just doesn't seem to mind.

I really enjoyed your post and I think there is a lot of truth in it. I've felt some of these psychological changes you mention personally.

However, I do think it is important to distinguish between money and actual things people want. People don't really want a lot of 'money', whether that be fiat money, gold or bitcoin. They want what money can purchase.

That could be a banana, a new car, a new home, the freedom to tell your boss to fuck off and rage quit so you can do whatever you want whenever you want, etc...

So if you want a home to call yours or a new car or a banana, you don't need to feel bad spending money to purchase it. That is literally the only purpose of the money, to trade it for something real. To convert the human imposed imaginary value of a piece of paper or a long string of numbers representing your bitcoin, to food, shelter, etc...

I personally think there should be more of a culture of delayed gratification so people stop living paycheck to paycheck and spending every penny (and often more) that they earn. Bitcoin fits in very well with a savings and low time preference culture.

Ultimately, bitcoin is money. It is a wonderful money. But for better or for worse, bitcoin is just... money.

I enjoy Alan Watt's take on money, you can check it out starting around the 2:45 timestamp in this video:

I reflect on The Pale Blue Dot image of the earth taken from the Voyager 1 spacecraft in 1990 from 4 billion miles away. It helps me when I am worried about relatively trivial matters in the grand scheme of things. It helps me reflect on how little time we have on this earth when considered against the billions of years the universe has existed and will continue to exist once I have left.

I'd like to spend that infinitesimally tiny amount of time with loved ones and smile and laugh as much as possible.

Haha, did you watch Trump's 'economic' speech last week, I believe it was in NC. He, a "super smart real estate investor", did not know what the words delinquent or default mean. These are extremely basic terms that anyone in real estate (and I'd argue most people outside of real estate) should know. It is just funny at this point.

You point out gouging with gauging, but how many of Trump's gaffes can you name over the years? They are countless, but I imagine from your message, you likely don't watch news sources that expose you to them. Trump is on par with Biden with gaffes, with the added fun of spewing countless lies :)

They certainly are dumbing down the message, think we got down to a low of 3rd-4th grader comprehension level with Trump's speeches:

Yeah, I am not doubting your or Reason's intention of posting/writing.

I'm just observing that this is simply how politics works. You portray yourself as the savior who will swoop in and fix everything for everyone. That's just the game as I've observed it over my lifetime.

Agreed price controls are not the answer. However, I think media spinning of the facts is also important to observe. Kamala's proposal (which literally no one has seen, and I would bet has not even been written) is a price gouging proposal.

Most US states already have similar price gouging laws on the books, including very conservative states. From the extremely limited information we have heard from Kamala about this, it appears she wants to implement some type of national version of this so the federal government could also police corporations who price gouge.

Personally, I don't care for it, but I also think it is hypocritical for folks to yell and scream about this national proposal (which again, no one has seen or knows any detail about) vs yelling and screaming to get rid of the laws that are already on the books to prevent price gouging such as:

Arkansas Deceptive Trade Practices Act: § 4-88-301 Alabama Unconscionable Pricing Act: § 8-31-1 South Carolina Unfair Trade Practice Act: § 39-5-145 Tennessee Price-Gouging Act § 47-18-5101 Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Consumer Protection Act: § 17.4627

Lastly, I'd note that without having the house/senate/presidency, basically no law gets passed in modern America (save for Biden's presidency where there were unusually some bipartisan bills passed).