Coordinator @FBCE | Board Member @TPBInc | Creator of “The Machine Economy” at machineeconomy.world | I work at the intersection of political-economic analysis, disruptive technology, community development and social impact.
Filtering by: BTC · clear filter
My latest article is out, published via
.
Quantum Computing and Bitcoin: Separating Real Risk from Manufactured Panic
“By the time quantum computers reach the strength needed to challenge Bitcoin’s existing security, Bitcoin will already have moved forward—just as it has always done.” #Bitcoin #BTC
I don’t own any real or paper gold. I’m more convinced than ever that I don’t want any. I’ll leave that for people who are ready to resign themselves to the so called “debasement trade” or, as I prefer to call it, the despair and cynicism trade.
Instead, I choose #Bitcoin #BTC. Bitcoin is the hope, optimism, and structural change trade. Others have called it the “purification trade”. Sure, I can get with that.
The move to gold is a cynical retreat from our world’s most pressing challenges. It is a giant middle finger to billions of people around the world for whom gold is an untenable asset due to security and access barriers, and its lack of portability in the face of major geopolitical uncertainty. This gold “debasement trade” is also a giant middle finger to younger generations left to reconcile the debts and downstream impacts of their predecessors. Gold will not and cannot provide these younger people the tools for renewal and rebuilding that are so urgently needed.
On the other hand, Bitcoin offers the opportunity not only to escape the impact of fiat currency debasement, but to also restructure social engagements, reformulate the incentives that drive political discourse, and build across borders and other arbitrary barriers. Bitcoin offers Gen Z and Gen Alpha not only affirmation that yes, our current economic and financial systems are fucked, but also a roadmap and tool for rebuilding.
What an ounce of gold will scarcely or never do for youth in a deprived community setting, Bitcoin can and will do.
Country rankings. Top 100 public companies holding #Bitcoin #BTC treasury reserves.
I see a recent uptick in commentary, including from a number of #Bitcoin holders, that BTC is not money. To me, the question of whether Bitcoin is money is settled. The answer is yes, which doesn’t negate the fact that it is also a tool for savings.
In the light of abundant evidence showing #BTC being used as money, around the world, debate about what threshold would appease critics as signifying “widely used” is kind of like debating whether sunbathing at midday for an hour in the Namibian desert” is “not advisable” or “extremely not advisable”.
I propose that the much more salient, interesting, and pressing matter for discussion is as follows…
What are the psychological and social dimensions of particular monies in terms of their variable uses as a “medium of exchange” and/or a “store of value” and what is the interplay between these uses in the context of people’s real, material circumstances?
For instance, people who have access to only rapidly debasing currencies are heavily incentivized to spend quickly and to convert their holdings of this money into other monies or assets that will retain value, or at least not debase as quickly. The most extreme case of this that I’ve heard to date in terms of ramifications is from Ian Frost and Bitcoin Boma, describing the situation in Malawi.
On the other hand, I wonder to what extent having access to a money (ie, BTC) which is demonstrated to accrue value over time incentivizes saving some of that money, even in instances where someone has little to no capacity to “save” (ie, all money is required for spending on daily/weekly needs). Does access to a money which accrues value over time foster transformative conditions for pushing past this threshold of spending only toward actual capital accumulation (ie, savings)?
I would find it much more valuable if critics of the relative “moneyness” of BTC could look deeper and investigate the conditions under which BTC is actually being used as money. Suspend your disbelief, if you must, in order to observe. I don’t want to speak on behalf of any of the groups that I work with around the world where BTC is being used as money and a tool for individuals and community development, but they would tell you that “something” magical is happening. There are psycho-social transformations afoot and I can’t help but believe that the qualities of BTC itself, a non-debasing money, have something to do with it.
With all due respect to Americans and others who are talking about the U.S. Government’s “first mover” advantage in setting up a #Bitcoin Strategic Reserve (SBR), the U.S. will at best be the third country to officially have an SBR, after #Bhutan and #ElSalvador. Of course, the U.S. has potential scale that most others don’t.
El Salvador is clearly the first mover on so many fronts, including the establishment of the El Salvador Government Bitcoin Office and publishing their #BTC reserves openly, for the whole world to monitor. 👇
It was a joy to be able to treat someone in Vancouver to a cup of coffee today. Paid from the comfort of my home in Toronto, over Lightning Network, using the best money ever known to humankind: #BTC
Thank you
for teaming up on this and enabling me to treat one of your customers at FUNK Coffee Bar, and thank you
for providing an amazing tool for businesses and customers to transact with BTC seamlessly.
#Bitcoin for the win, again!
12/10/2024, 7 engagements
The universe moves in mysterious ways. I have a story to share, and if you read on you'll see why I'm connecting it to a message shared on X by Dom Bei and Proof of Workforce (see pics below).
Twenty years ago, in late 2004, I was travelling from Nairobi to Kisumu for work. At the time, I worked with a global physicians NGO, and this was the height of the HIV/AIDS pandemic that was decimating communities around the world, especially throughout the African continent. I was on my way to Kisumu for meetings about scale up of access to antiretroviral drugs in the region. These were still the early days of HIV drug access throughout most of the continent.
My small flight to Kisumu was a mixed bag of people but it was mostly foreign aid workers from different countries. I recall having a few different conversations with people and also overhearing some conversations. As we arrived in Kisumu and I made way to my hotel, passing through the city, there was a massive fire which engulfed a three-story building. Crowds watched on. There didn't appear to be any firefighters on site.
It turns out that the fire was ravaging a building containing Kisumu's largest pharmacy, book store, and several other small businesses. Life-saving drugs, books, and more, gone!
It turns out further that, at that time, there was only one fire truck in town and the small fire brigade that staffed it were required, by law, to be stationed at the airport for the incoming flight from Nairobi (the one I had just arrived on).
Imagine, a fire truck and brigade rendered helpless to tend to a local emergency because their priority was tending to a plane full of foreign aid workers. The cruel, infuriating irony!
This experience taught me a valuable lesson about foreign aid, root causes, and unintended consequences.
That experience is part of what pushed me away from larger global aid agencies (I had also worked for WHO) and toward projects that are fundamentally "by and for" the community. It instilled in me a healthy skepticism of large global aid projects and an insistence on interrogating projects to ensure that they don't entail unintended consequences which outweigh the good to which they aspire.
The very next year, in 2005, I began working with Community Health Centres in Canada and around the world, and this enabled me to live out the values of social impact "by and for" communities. That work carried me forward to 2023 when I decided to make my next professional transition, shifting toward projects focused on #Bitcoin #BTC as a tool for social impact globally.
I made this transition, in 2023, because I had become convinced that Bitcoin presents unprecedented, upstream opportunity to shift global balances of power, to empower communities, and to achieve social impact around the world. Participating in the first @AfroBitcoinOrg conference in Accra, in late 2022, helped me arrive at that conclusion.
My belief in Bitcoin as a powerful pathway to global transformation is a claim that still falls on many deaf ears when I engage colleagues, friends, and strangers who fall under the umbrellas of social justice and global development but who haven't yet studied Bitcoin.
Coming back to the message here on X from Dom and Proof of Workforce though. To see this message in the days leading up to the
conference, and amidst so many other inspiring #ABC24 related tweets, it hits home in a very personal way. It pulls me back to that experience in Kisumu 20 years ago. It re-assures me that not only are we are on the right track via Bitcoin, but that in some small, magical ways, we are also making amends for the past.
I will be making a donation to Proof of Workforce to be passed on to the Kenya Fire Brigades Association. I invite you to do the same. See their tweet below for details. Thanks, Dom! 🫡
I'm sad to not be in attendance this year at conference, but to all of you who are, I send my love and very best wishes. Thank you for everything you are doing to make this a better world, now and for future generations. 🌍
The stories that our children will tell their children are almost unimaginable. They will rival in significance (perhaps surpass) the tales of transition from darkness to fire, from kerosine to electricity, from horse to automobile, from paper- and audio-based communications to the age of digital communications.
What will distinguish the tales of transition from broken, fiat money and financial systems to #BTC and #Bitcoin-based systems, however, will be the fascinating pathways of this transition.
These tales will be of an almost unbelievable admixture of individuals, groups, and communities around the world whose diverse and disconnected needs somehow magically coalesced to make manifest this transition. A very large proportion of these protagonists, no less, are forsaken or dismissed by the incumbent systems and structures which they are collectively interrupting.
We are still at the dawn of this transition, but we are at that special moment when we can finally recognize it for what it is.
Photos: via
. Women in the high Andes Mountains, Peru using and accepting #BTC for everyday needs.
Hello Nostr folks, if you wouldn’t mind, please follow
and help us build visibility and momentum for #Bitcoin circular economy efforts around the world.
Head on over to www.fbce.io to learn more and to connect with #BTC circular economy projects from different parts of the globe.
We’re gonna chase those crazy bald heads out of town.
#Nostr #Rumble #Revolution #Bitcoin #BTC
https://rumble.com/v2nfq9k-1977-bob-marley-crazy-baldheads-live-at-rainbow-theatre-in-london..html
We’re gonna chase those crazy bald heads out of town.
#Nostr #Rumble #Revolution #Bitcoin #BTC
https://rumble.com/v2nfq9k-1977-bob-marley-crazy-baldheads-live-at-rainbow-theatre-in-london..html
A big thank you to the German Government 🇩🇪 for selling 80% of their #Bitcoin #BTC at these very cheap exchange rates (below USD $60K) especially since a very large portion will now be held by individuals spread around the world, building a true global people’s movement of hope.
I relish the thought that many of these sats, once held by the German state, will now be held and used in communities throughout the global South to assist in true community development and empowerment where so many years of national “foreign aid” and multilateral loans have failed. Power to the people! ✊🧡
