The credit card is "serviced by Deserve, Inc. and issued by Evolve Bank & Trust" so I doubt BlockFi going bust has any bearing on card users' obligations.

Strike is a great tool and I'm excited for what they're doing, but make sure you're using it as a tool, not as a way to outsource responsibility.

Not every company that fails its users is malicious or dumb - some have the best intentions and competence, but they're still people. People have imperfect foresight, imperfect ambition, a tendency to overestimate upside and underestimate downside, and a reluctance to admit mistakes, especially mistakes that seem like they can be fixed/covered up with just a little more risk-taking. Any of these in a tiny amount is enough to create catastrophe.

For me, the biggest takeaway from the FTX saga is that even traditional markers of credibility aren't enough in this space. I'm talking about lines of thinking like, "If a company does ___, it's probably alright" or "If a person is ___, they're probably alright". For example, "If a company is advertised on this podcast, it's probably alright" "If a company has its name on a stadium, it's probably alright" "If a company solved my problem within 48 hours, it's probably alright." Could be anything. In most areas of life, these markers tend to be accurate. Not in this space.

We're way out on the risk curve, way farther out than people like me (who don't come from finance, we got into finance through bitcoin/crypto) realized. Our standard for trust should be something like, "Could I satisfactorily answer every question about this platform/investment from an extremely annoying, extremely intelligent friend who will definitely say 'I told you so' every day for the rest of my life if it fails me?"

Sorry for the essay, I'm just drawing from my own extreme laziness/desire to just trust someone to make me money rather than put in the work to protect myself.

I'm blown away just by what you've already accomplished with this site.

I've thought a lot about this question (or at least, one interpretation of this question) as someone who grew up heavily indoctrinated into a particular religious view of reality and strongly believed it into adulthood. Not like "everyone around me believes in these general things so I guess I do too" but "it doesn't matter that hardly anyone around me believes what I do, because my family is one of the few that has correct beliefs, which involve numerous specific claims about reality, not just fuzzy feelings."

Thankfully, part of that religious teaching was to prioritize truth above all else (e.g. what people around me believe, what my tribe believes, or what feels good), so when I discovered that the facts didn't seem to support my religious beliefs, I followed the apparent facts rather than my beliefs. At significant social cost.

Years later, I discovered something called the Litany of Tarski, which embodies this philosophy and may be useful here. It goes:

If the box contains a diamond, I desire to believe that the box contains a diamond; If the box does not contain a diamond, I desire to believe that the box does not contain a diamond; Let me not become attached to beliefs I may not want.

To rewrite it in the context of Bitcoin, it might go something like:

If increased Bitcoin adoption is good for the world, I desire to believe that increased Bitcoin adoption is good for the world; If increased Bitcoin adoption is not good for the world, I desire to believe that increased Bitcoin adoption is not good for the world. Let me not become attached to beliefs I may not want.

I think we'd all say we want what's good for the world, and most Bitcoiners are Bitcoiners because we believe Bitcoin is good for the world, but the problem comes when we stop evaluating developments in terms of what's good for the world and instead what's good for Bitcoin.

It's hard to constantly ask, is this development good for the world? It's much easier to ask, does this development increase Bitcoin adoption? So we slip into what's easy. But that's what pulls us toward religious thinking instead of truth-at-all-costs thinking.

There's a reason Robert Breedlove's Twitter bio says "Freedom Maximalist", not "Bitcoin Maximalist". Robert is one of the biggest Bitcoin advocates I can think of, but I'm confident that if it came to light that something promoted freedom better than Bitcoin, or that Bitcoin actually diminished freedom, he would choose freedom over Bitcoin. I don't have the same confidence for a lot of other Bitcoin advocates.

Bitcoin is just a tool. I think it's an awesome tool, one of the greatest tools in human history, and precisely the tool we need at this time, but that can never mean it takes primacy over the values through which we came to believe in Bitcoin.

Same

I tend to agree

Thanks for the links! I knew I'd seen talk of this elsewhere but couldn't remember what/where it was

Thanks for the reply, looking forward!

Good idea!

Haha at first I thought "paise to satoshi" was supposed to be "Praise to Satoshi!" but then realized that's the Indian currency

That was a great read, thanks for that. You could make a lot of sats just commenting relevant passages from old articles and books, I think.

...or perhaps you already have...

Thanks!