NORDIC NODE FOEH REAL

Last week we did an interim 0.5 Nordic Node (#1580878) because of BTCHEL Week. So this week, while barely functional, I'm delivering a full, regularly scheduled NN.

NEXT ONE = September 10-11, 2027. Same place, same city, same saunas; you know the drill.

I’m tired, fam. Done for. 

From the beginning of European Mining Summit (EMS) on Wednesday until I left Helsinki Tuesday morning, it was all one big chop-chop-chop mania blur. Sauna, meetings, interviews, lectures, sauna, yoga practice, writing Nordic Node, dinners, conference chatting, panel sessions, eat, yoga, sleep, swimming in the sea, push-ups with the push-up master @Kontext , Bitcoin Walk, talking political philosophy with Ben de Waal (whose new books were available in the Infinity bookstore booth), etc etc. I also have thirty-two pages of handwritten notes I shall now ask Claude to make sense of for me. FML.

"And for all of you missing out: convos all week took place in broken English, moomin-svenska, kebabnorska, and förortssvenska. That’s how we roll up north."

Simple middle school math tells us that if you didn’t jump on this incredible offer, you’re forecasting a BTC/EUR exchange rate of €160,965 by mid-September next year. 

Anything higher than that, and you’re better off paying for the ticket with your appreciating sats. Put differently, just to illustrate how good that deal was: it’s a CAGR of 1.61% per week. Try getting that on a fiat bank account or in the stock market.

How's that for today's math exercises, Mr. @simplestacker ?!

Also some stories in there about media coverage (quite a bit) and mining drama (HIVE in tax trouble).

SAUNA STORY this week is brutal

I thought I liked the health-obsessed, outdoorsy, hardcore aspect of the Nordics. I go into the frigid Icelandic sea mid-winter; I venture up the snowy mountains at the winter solstice for a brief, fleeting glance at the sun; I swim naked in the glacial lakes of my fjord. I do hot yoga and sweat to my core. But my god, proper Finnish sauna was something else. 

“You’re a sick people!” I remember blurting out in the crowded sauna, as I was suffering from the latest round of löyly and having completely forgotten that I was butt naked next to a bunch of hairy Finnish men. It’s raw and unadulterated pain, the waves of intense heat rolling over me. I was strategically holding my breath so that I wouldn’t inhale the invisible vapor heading my way: can’t breathe, can’t hold my head up. Covering my ears and face with my hands didn’t quite help either… the skin literally burned off my knuckles.

"I need a sauna in my home: I must practice. If I ever move Suomeen, I shall fight the grammatical cases and master the sauna."

Peace out, friends. See you next year.

READING LIST:

Iceland’s Inflationary Rollercoaster is Back: Lars Christensen, Danish monetarist and altogether cool macro guy, talks about the Icelandic economy — which just posted a neat little 5.9% inflation. (In Danish; yes, I needed subtitles to follow along.) Nothing to see over here, plebs.

Death to the Lender of Last Resort: Toby Nangle just casually out here in the Financial Times reporting on the foundational myth behind central banks. You don’t actually need to stop bank runs by printing money. Crazy. #1584878

One Ring to Rule Them All: Another cool macro guy, Ansel Lindner, writes about the shockingly fast dollar appreciation, the dollar wrecking ball returning.

Disagree but Worth Reading: I had lengthy chats with Alex von Frankenberg at BTCHEL about the monetary system and his new book Honest Money. I don’t like it; I think he’s materially incorrect and dumbs down a lot of content… entshittification, Bitcoiner style. But the market says I’m wrong since he sells them like hotcakes — including, specifically, during one of our convos. Go get the book; it’s available at the BTCHUB in Helsinki as well as online.

Nordic Node archive:

The Nordic Node 10.5: "BTCHEL Week Is Upon Us, and We’re Painting Europe Orange"

The Nordic Node #10: "KYC Is Dangerous"

The Nordic Node #9: "The Rich Europooreans Don't Want the EU"

The Nordic Node #8: "Suitcoiner Phoenix, Pokémon, and Blockchains"

The Nordic Node #7: "The Day the Token Wars Came"

The Nordic Node #6: "A Dilution a Week Keeps the Saylorbois Weak"

The Nordic Node #5: "EU Overlords, Decaying Cultures, & Treasury Companies Dying"

The Nordic Node #4: "Satoshi Talks, Mining Controversy, and some Suitcoinery"

The Nordic Node #3: "Two Suitcoiners and a Bitcoin Bodyguard Walk into a Bar..."

The Nordic Node #2: "Lambs, Bitcoin Adoption, and Criminals"

The Nordic Node #1: "Welcome to the Nordic Node!"

Subscribe to The Nordic Node over at BTCHEL.com, the coolest(!) place on the Bitcoin scene.