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#JohnCavalho to #MichaelSaylor: Dear Mr. @Saylor, Your influence on #Bitcoin and society is undeniable. You’ve worked tirelessly to legitimize Bitcoin within the legacy financial system and inspired a new wave of corporate interest. For this, you deserve recognition. However, your impact could be much bigger than you realize. Bitcoin is more than a clever exploit or a hedge against inflation. It is a tool of liberation, a “black market money” not because it is criminal or evil, but because it operates without State permission. It empowers individuals by bypassing bureaucracy, rendering borders meaningless, and allowing economic freedom where it would otherwise be denied. We cannot have freedom without free markets. Yet, your influence has shaped a dangerous narrative: Bitcoin as a speculative investment, a headless Ponzi where value depends solely on others buying in and “never selling.” This undermines Bitcoin’s purpose. Its value isn’t in hype but in security and censorship resistance. Without these, Bitcoin is indistinguishable from other cryptocurrencies, just another gambling chip in a sea of digital assets. Bitcoin’s power lies in it being permissionless and incorruptible by any centralized authority. By emphasizing speculation, you risk reducing Bitcoin to a mere tradable asset, detached from its revolutionary purpose and, as a consequence, detached from its ability to resist censorship. Your strategy, while effective, ultimately aligns with State incentives for dollar imperialism. By framing Bitcoin as digital gold and lobbying for regulations that favor corporate custodianship, you protect entrenched interests rather than empowering individuals. Bitcoin was designed to escape legacy power structures, not reinforce them. White market Bitcoin is ultimately untenable. Aligning Bitcoin with State interests undermines its revolutionary potential. It risks turning Bitcoin into a tame asset, subject to the same controls and constraints as fiat. This is not the freedom Bitcoin was meant to provide. As a fellow Bitcoin Conservative, you have the chance to shape Bitcoin’s future more profoundly. Bitcoin is resilient because of its people and its software. You could fund node implementation alternatives, like Libbitcoin, further decentralizing development and safeguarding Bitcoin from centralized influence. Supporting competing implementations ensures no single group controls Bitcoin’s direction, fortifying its resistance to censorship and regulatory overreach. You could be remembered as the visionary who diversified Bitcoin’s infrastructure, preserving its sovereignty for generations. You could go beyond Bitcoin itself, investing in technologies that secure digital autonomy and privacy; missions I pursue through Synonym, thanks to Tether. Imagine empowering users to control their data and financial interactions without centralized intermediaries. While Bitcoin resists monetary censorship, freedom tech defies internet censorship. Funding decentralized identity, self-sovereign data, and censorship-resistant communication would amplify Bitcoin’s liberating potential. This is not just about wealth or inflation hedging; it’s about human freedom in the digital age. You stand at a crossroads. Today, you are Bitcoin’s most visible evangelist, but also of its speculative narrative. This is not how legacies are built. You could be remembered not as a digital gold proselytizer but as a great industrialist. Instead of merely speculating on Bitcoin, speculate on people: the builders, developers, and entrepreneurs shaping digital autonomy. True influence comes from empowering visionaries, not hoarding assets. By partnering with Bitcoin businesses and seeding startups, you could grow an ecosystem that enables Bitcoin to fulfill its potential as the backbone of a free economy. Establishing a venture fund to amplify Bitcoin-native technologies would position you as a patron of innovation, not just an accumulator of wealth. This is how you turn speculation into legacy—by investing in the resilience of Bitcoin’s architecture, the privacy of its users, and the freedom of future generations. Your bitcoin will become worthless without a free market of P2P commerce powering it. Not long ago, we met and you told me that you respected me and my perspectives. So, I have taken the time to spell them out here in regards to you. The legacy you leave is yours to define. Will you align with the State’s incentives, or embrace Bitcoin’s true purpose as a tool for freedom? You can change the narrative. You can champion Bitcoin not as a speculative asset but as sovereign money. You can fund projects that ensure Bitcoin’s security and censorship resistance while protecting digital autonomy. The question is not how much Bitcoin you can accumulate, but how much freedom you can cultivate. I challenge you to rise to this occasion. Respectfully, John Carvalho
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Unpopular take: Bitcoin is not ready for the #Palestine & the #Israeli. I see some posts about how bitcoin will help the Palestine normies. But i don't know. Bitcoin self-custody is hard, and it's even harder to work out a working bitcoin inheritance plan. I mean, how do you keep a recovery key backup in a safe place where things are blown up everywhere and you're trapped and constantly under surveillance? How do you setup a multisig when people around you can be killed at any moment? Can you make a urgent payment in a hospital with no internet? Will you survive a 5-dollar wrench attack for a desperate father who'll do anything to keep his daughter alive another day? Life is precarious there, even, to a much lesser degree, to the Israelis. What if you're killed from a sudden attack and those precious sats you hodl in the hope that your children will one day see a brighter future are also gone with you? As much as I love #bitcoin, i think #gold, or some hard fiat like USD, is better for them there. Bitcoin as a technology needs to improve to help the billions in eventualities such as this crisis.
This is wild! #Vietnam gov agents successfully obtained #Predator spyware and used it to target US congressmen. With such a top level tool, they used it in the most clumsy and brazen way, as usual, this time by posting it publicly on Twitter as replies to targets. What's the chance of protecting your privacy if you're in Vietnam? Virtually zero if the Vietnam gov is determined to hack you. :(. How safe is #nostr from the privacy & anonymity point of view? #asknostr From WaPo: "Like its better-known competitor Pegasus, Predator is a powerful and hard-to-detect surveillance program that can turn on the microphones and cameras of Apple iPhones and devices running on Google’s Android software, retrieve all files and read private messages, even when they are end-to-end encrypted." "the companies selling Predator also offered the capability to infect devices through WiFi wireless networks and through websites or telecom networks under national control." https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/10/09/vietnam-predator-hack-investigation/