The problem with shitcoiners like Balaji and Slopp, is they think they got rich because they’re smart. And because they were smart to go all-in on “crypto” early, their vision of the future must be smart because they were right once before. That’s not how the world works. You can be smart, and retarded at the same time. I am. You probably are too. The trick is to know WHEN YOURE BEING RETARDED. Sam Hyde below is, and he nails what all the privacybros are too retarded to understand stuck sniffing their smart farts in their VC shitcoining circles. The next 8 years will not be about privacy. Privacy is not a winning idea. It’s not what will see #Bitcoin uproot fiat because it’s not what will grow adoption. What it is is a complicated concept which well-placed insiders can use to bamboozle retail schmucks and institutional money because they won’t understand the technicalities m, but will be drawn to the narrative in a world of increasing censorship and control. It’s pure opportunism to further pump their own bags. There’s no real ideological bent towards privacy here, they don’t actually care, they just know they can use it to fleece more suckers as they’ve proved in resurrecting Zcash recently. They don’t need to do this, they don’t need the money, but they can’t help themselves - it’s who they are. View quoted note →

One day I’ll get around to writing a thread on how traffic actually works in #Vietnam. You see the craziest shit on the roads here.

A short review of a short book for #bookstr This time, “The True Believer” by Eric Hoffer. Consider this a “replacement” for Desmet’s widely acclaimed “The Psychology of Totalitarianism” which I read and reviewed earlier this year: View quoted note → Desmet’s book remains the worst I’ve read this year. This book does a much better job of explaining that psychology - how it works, why it works, on whom, and by what tactics. It’s all rather simple but when you combine with Le Bon’s “The Crowd”, you can understand why and how that is the case. You could knock this over in less than 2 hours and would undoubtedly come away with a better understanding of how and why totalitarianism works after that than slogging through Desmet’s love letter to Hannah Arendt.

The reality of a 50 year mortgage is disgusting. 30 years to obtain just 25% equity in your home is absurd. You’ll be sacrificing your most productive years from ~25-55 just to own your living room, all whilst the Government takes half your income and redistributes it to their friends and pets who ensure they stay in power and your QoL continues going down. #Bitcoin adoption might seem slow but young people are going to see through the real estate ponzi and opt out of being liquidity for Boomers when they understand just how screwed they are locking in to this system.