jimmysong

Bitcoin Expert
Open-Source Coder
Follow me to learn #BTC

Author of 5 Bitcoin books

Fiat Ruins Everything: https://fiatruinseverything.com

PGP: C1D7 97BE 7D10 5291 228C D70C FAA6 17E3 2

Public Key

npub10vlhsqm4qar0g42p8g3plqyktmktd8hnprew45w638xzezgja95qapsp42

NIP-05 Address

jimmysong@programmingbitcoin.com

NIP-57 Address

jimmysong@primal.net

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs8k0mcqd6sw3h524qn5gslszt9am9knmes3uh268dgnnpv3yfwj6qpp4mhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mqpz3mhxue69uhkummnw3ezummcw3ezuer9wc2jzgq5

Publishing to

nos.lol

nostr.oxtr.dev

bitcoiner.social

Author Public Key

npub10vlhsqm4qar0g42p8g3plqyktmktd8hnprew45w638xzezgja95qapsp42

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Last Notes

2025-04-10 13:59:01

Legality does not determine morality because law is downstream of power. Ideally, the two align, but in a fiat society like ours, they do not.

2025-04-07 19:57:20

Closing the trade deficit is a form of capital control.
And you know what subverts capital controls? Bitcoin.

2025-04-07 14:10:47

Free issue for the first Monday of the month!
Moral Information, Replaceable Coders, Practical Virtue, Sierra Online, DEI End, Wallet Poisoning, Fidelity Bonds, Liquidity Freezing Attack, Jaded Bitcoin Confs, GME BTC plans and more!
#Bitcoin Tech Talk #443
https://jimmysong.substack.com/p/bitcoin-tech-talk-443

2025-04-06 20:19:03

Being set apart (holy) just means you're not addicted to the crap that other people are addicted to.
#practicaltheology

2025-04-05 13:44:13

GM, 50 years ago today, Satoshi was born... At least according to the BitcoinTalk forums. https://m.primal.net/QFIV.png

2025-04-04 15:25:48

GM, learning Latin using Grok is so much more fun than doing exercises in a book that you don't get feedback on.

2025-04-02 13:20:13

GM, for the first time in years, de-Googling seems like a real possibility.

2025-04-01 22:58:53

GM, I guess I have to figure out what this vibe coding this is all about.

2025-03-31 13:11:14

GM, metaphysical reality is more real than physical reality.

2025-03-29 22:55:35

Haircuts are a scam.

2025-03-29 14:12:56

GM, a lot more people are open to carnivory than Bitcoin in a lot of my circles for some reason.

2025-03-28 14:54:05

GM, I would be ghinlified live actionovies would do way better than Disney live action remakes.

2025-03-20 23:00:17

GM, I keep forgetting how cheap things are outside the US.

2025-03-15 13:33:02

I've noticed this inversion of value in real life. I originally posted my PGP key fingerprint to my X profile so people could tell that the digital me is the physical me. Now it's more useful to prove that the physical me is the digital me that people have been following.
In many ways, the digital is more real than the physical.
#nevent1q…nqyp

2025-03-12 03:25:21

Orange pilled 4 guys tonight that I first tried to orange pill 12 years ago. Gradually, then suddenly.

2025-03-11 13:16:13

GM, the federal government shouldn't own national parks.

2025-03-08 22:54:39

GM, Texas BBQ is the best BBQ

2025-03-06 12:46:14

GM, my dog is awesome.

2025-03-05 14:18:04

GM, just went to Ash Wednesday service. I'm giving up complaining for Lent, trying to be more grateful.
Appreciate all of you here that make this a community.

2025-03-03 14:22:19

I don't understand all this hate against the SBR, especially if you're American. Do you care about the United States? Do you care about your neighbors? Every organization is incentivized to own Bitcoin, including governments. Would you rather that much worse governments get Bitcoin?
Your ideal of "only ideologically pure people should own Bitcoin" was never going to be the case and if you think that, you have authoritarian tendencies and do not understand what decentralization means.

2025-03-02 14:11:41

GM, Lent is coming up and it's a good time to think about giving something up for 6 weeks.

2025-02-28 16:58:25

GM, Nostr. Nothing free is really free.

2025-02-27 21:27:18

- reply

FYI https://m.primal.net/PNpp.png

2025-02-17 23:16:02

Brilliant move by DOGE to ask the public for help. Instead of going through the traditional whistle-blowing path, DMing the people that have proven their competence in investigation is huge. I'll bet a ton of really terrible fraud and abuse gets exposed this way.

2025-02-16 15:40:21

GM, we've raised a generation of people that won't do anything that they don't have permission for.

2025-02-15 14:53:36

Andrew Jackson abolished the Central Bank and ushered in an era of hard money Democrats.
Trump has a chance to do the same and set the tone for the 21st century with Bitcoin.

2025-02-13 23:16:47

Don't have a career, have a way to stack sats for what you really want to do.

2025-02-12 20:23:21

Winners aren't born, they're made... through lots of losing.
It's the people that aren't used to losing that lose big in the end.

2025-02-10 03:20:30

I recently started taping my mouth shut before sleeping. I feel like a better breather while I'm awake now.

2025-02-08 15:53:03

I've been teaching Bitcoin Programming in my two-day seminar for 7.5 years now. I've taught over 700 people on 5 different continents with alumni in nearly every prominent Bitcoin company around the world.
I am teaching it for one final time on March 31-April 1 in Austin. Here's your final opportunity to learn Bitcoin Programming from me. I will not be offering this class again as I want to open source all the materials and make room for more educators. It wasn't an easy decision, but this is what I believe will benefit Bitcoin the most.
Apply and if you're accepted, you can get early bird rates until March 3:
https://programmingbitcoin.com/#programming-blockchain

2025-02-07 17:53:28

Let's test this primal wallet collect thing.
Comments that make me laugh will be zapped.

2025-02-07 03:48:25

The lack of altcoiners on here speaks volumes about their commitment to decentralization, which is to say they have none.

2025-02-05 14:27:16

Is there a Nostr store front that you'd recommend? I'm embarrassed to say I didn't think about selling my books here, but it seems there are people that would like to pay me in sats.

2025-02-04 00:03:25

If you're not pissing people off, you're probably not saying anything worth saying.
Hopefully, you're pissing off the right people and not the wrong ones.

2025-02-03 03:21:21

Want to stack cheaply? Get married, invite a bunch of Bitcoin friends and don't have a wedding registry.

2025-02-02 15:58:11

GM, There are no heroes, just people that are very good at marketing.

2025-01-29 19:46:55

GM, except to people that don't rerack their weights at the gym.

2025-01-24 16:36:04

GM, Whitney Webb is a doomer whose schtick is spreading despair. She wouldn't recognize hope if she ran into it.

2025-01-23 20:51:25

Not a bad first step, I'd say.
https://m.primal.net/Nwrh.png

2025-01-22 19:49:35

I have to admit, my hopes for a dismantling of the administrative state are growing.

2025-01-22 00:37:59

You get the sense that he delayed pardoning Ross so he could let Lyn know personally.
The full pardon now means he can travel internationally as he now has a spotless record. Would it be too much to try to get him to come to San Salvador next week?

2025-01-21 17:05:44

GM, Texans are wimps when it comes to snow.

2025-01-20 23:15:05

As Hunter Biden has shown, having connections does not make you smart, moral, or anything other than being a Cantillionaire.

2025-01-20 16:20:33

For free subscribers: The value of the real, Spreadsheet Egregore, Gandhi's Life, Fertility and Rejecting Norms, New Hardcover Fiat Ruins Everything and more!
For paid subscribers: Bitcoin Safe, OFAC and F2Pool, JIT Channels, Trump Bitcoin Policy, TrumpCoin is Dumb and more!
Bitcoin Tech Talk #432
https://jimmysong.substack.com/p/bitcoin-tech-talk-432

2025-01-19 17:57:26

Trumpcoin is both showing that memecoins are all Nietzchean will-to-power games and that such games are fiat at core.

2025-01-17 13:38:52

GM, I'd like to see more evergreen content surface in my feed. Anyone have tips?

2025-01-14 19:38:22

The gradually is a gift to give you time to grow so that you're prepared for the suddenly.

2025-01-14 14:49:19

The envy is not just from relatives and friends anymore, it's from finance bros, investment bankers, CEOs.
Be careful out there.

2025-01-13 21:12:46

Doomscrolling is getting as bad as fiat money in stealing our time.

2025-01-13 15:41:33

For free subscribers: Hedonistic Culture, Lewis and Tolkien's Predictions, Zombie Academia, AI LARPing and more!
For paid subscribers: DLC Factories, Mostro, Finney Prize, DoJ's BTC sales and more!
#Bitcoin Tech Talk #431
https://jimmysong.substack.com/p/bitcoin-tech-talk-431

2025-01-13 00:34:58

There was a time when text messages weren't popular. But then it became obvious that for most things, texts were way better than voice messages.
Sometimes it takes society a while to catch up.

2025-01-10 20:07:24

Anyone try hyperbaric chambers? Would you recommend it?

2025-01-09 18:51:57

Imagine having your life savings in your home only to watch it burn.
Yea, you might have insurance, but that's a 2-year process and a giant headache of managing contractors, fighting the insurance company and getting displaced. Yet that's the most common store of value for most people around the world.
#Bitcoin is just better.

2025-01-08 20:59:34

The old days were so confusing. There was a guy in Austin that used to run the Bitcoin meetup who would brag about how he sent Bitcoin "around the world." Another guy was buying every altcoin in sight and celebrated when he broke even on one of them. Still another guy refused to buy and only would mine, which would, of course, be much worse than just buying Bitcoin.
Be thankful that there's so much clarity now. You have 16 years of history to look at and make good judgments. We had none of that back in 2013.

2025-01-07 20:55:49

I know Facebook has 10 floors of a giant highrise in downtown Austin that they're paying for but haven't occupied, so that's probably a part of why they're moving the moderation team to Austin.
That lease is for 10 years, BTW.

2025-01-06 17:00:27

Free issue for the first Monday of the month!
Why Science Stopped Progressing, FBI is the West's KGB, Christianity and Agency, ChillDKG for FROST, Boltz Atomic Swaps, Bitcoin Treasuries, Amir Taaki and more!
https://jimmysong.substack.com/p/bitcoin-tech-talk-430

2025-01-06 00:35:53

Normie friends congratulating me on $100k.
They still think they're late. <shaking my head>

2025-01-04 17:24:49

I seriously underestimated the effect of zaps on how nice people are to each other here. Just that little price that needs to be paid for rudeness or hostility is enough to get people to act civilized. It really doesn't take much to change culture.

2025-01-03 21:40:14

Method of payment will come when merchants demand it in lieu of any other form of payment.
I don't understand why most people don't get this.

2025-01-03 21:36:18

- reply

Are you trying to tell us something?

2025-01-02 21:11:47

I like weird people. But people that like their steak well done is a bit too much for me.

2025-01-01 17:27:21

Predictions for 2025:
* Dollar won't buy as much at the end of the year as at the beginning
* There will be lots of altcoins that rugpull
* Peter Schiff will still be calling for a fall in Bitcoin price
* Bitcoin price will go up and down and sideways.

2024-12-31 17:24:08

In a Bitcoin world, all investing is LARPing.
In a Nostr world, all news is LARPing.

2024-12-30 22:48:30

I think big purchases of Bitcoin should have names. Remember Iron Balls (MSTR's purchase of 20,000 BTC)? Has a ring to it.
We have memories of Bear Whale.

2024-12-30 16:52:41

For free subscribers: Rent Seeking Mechanics, Depopulation and Nature, Homo Economics as Philosophy, My Best of 2024
For paid subscribers: Taproot Multisig in the Wild, UMA, LNhance, Bitcoin Critic Idiocy and more!
Bitcoin Tech Talk #429
https://jimmysong.substack.com/p/bitcoin-tech-talk-429

2024-12-30 01:48:35

In time there will be real Bitcoin patrons that will give shape to the world that they want to see.

2024-12-29 02:28:51

Nothing makes me shake my head more than seeing people do squats where they barely go down, let alone below parallel.

2024-12-28 02:16:14

Show me lazy people and I'll show you terrible incentives

2024-12-27 02:14:24

I have doubts about world population figures. Regions within Nigeria have incentives to inflate their numbers so that they get more seats in government. It's also seen as bad to have population declines, so governments over-report their population. Particularly with respect to central banks, they want to over-report the population because they want their per-capita printing to not look as bad.
Maybe we're already down to 6.5B or so. I'm not sure how you can verify such a big number like 8B.

2024-12-26 20:21:16

I'm not sure what's more annoying, people that insist Bitcoin sucks unless we have privacy or people that insist Bitcoin sucks unless everyone is buying selling constantly with it.

2024-12-26 04:02:46

I don't support altcoining, bag-holding, negative-IRR, bloviating VCs pushing some agenda and neither should you.

2024-12-25 17:20:40

- reply

Such a beast! And I'm thinking I'm doing well just doing a run with my family.

2024-12-25 17:02:05

Most charity is a LARP

2024-12-24 19:29:29

Kinda glad Wikipedia never accepted Bitcoin donations, because it would suck to find out later that this is what they've been doing with the money.
https://m.primal.net/NFZq.png

2024-12-23 22:10:13

I keep trying to manage my on-line experience to be what I want it to be. I have ad blockers. I run an extension on YouTube so I don't see any suggested videos and can't spend hours surfing it. I don't have a lot of social media on my phone. I put my computer in an inconvenient room when I go to bed so I don't look when I wake up. I put every screen I have in grayscale.
Yet it's still hard to stay off of stuff that's addicting. It's like the incentives are not aligned for these places to have me be productive. They want me to doomscroll instead.

2024-12-23 19:30:39

For free subscribers: De-risking De-civilizes, Political Realignment, AI-created laziness, Intellectual Obesity and more!
For paid subscribers: ColliderScript, CoinJoin De-anonymization, Off-chain payment resolution, Bitcoin CDOs and more!
#Bitcoin Tech Talk #428
https://jimmysong.substack.com/p/bitcoin-tech-talk-428

2024-12-23 00:05:44

Altcoins: Everybody wants the benefits, nobody wants to do the work.
Socialism in a nutshell.

2024-12-22 20:42:38

- reply

I wish you could say that universally, but that's just not practical. Think about a 10 year old or an 80 year old. Do you really trust them to not lose their keys? Competence is ideal, of course, but my experience tells me that self-custody is not something most people will do, and maybe even can do.

2024-12-22 18:13:32

Custody with someone you trust is better than Custody with a faceless corporation and probably also better than self-custody for non-technical people.

2024-12-21 20:12:27

Austrian economic autists insist that Bitcoin isn't money because it's not a "common" medium of exchange. That is, it's not accepted everywhere.
But by that definition nothing is money because I can't use it in to pay taxes in Portugal.
That's not just stupid, it's motivated reasoning.

2024-12-19 22:35:06

I don't understand this argument that we need to onboard 8 billion people for Bitcoin to be successful.

2024-12-19 04:55:46

Mainstream history is a bigger lie than the mainstream news.

2024-12-18 20:52:01

History is written by the winners.
Ghandi was not who you think he was. He defended the caste system by using the fasting-till-death protest when the UK wanted to give some political power to the Untouchables. He was also into war and violence until he calculated that peaceful protest would play better in the western media. He also slept with naked teenage girls (though apparently he didn't do anything with them).
Who funds the view of Ghandi as a modern day saint? The Indian government.
Verify, don't trust.

2024-12-17 19:35:03

College these days is a giant rug pull.

2024-12-16 22:33:50

Centralized algorithms choose winners and losers.

2024-12-16 15:51:10

For free subscribers: Culture Discovery, Detached Moms, Lazy DEI, Einstein the Plagiarist, Quantum Computing Hype and more!
For paid subscribers: Covenants Desirability, Channel Depletion, Debunking Chokepoint 2.0 and more!
#Bitcoin Tech Talk #427
https://jimmysong.substack.com/p/bitcoin-tech-talk-427

2024-12-16 13:55:59

Stalin was first and foremost a bureaucrat. He was able to become dictator over the USSR precisely because he had an enormous capacity to do mind-numbing paper-pushing work. Lenin gave him lots of such work because he didn't mind doing it and Stalin, in turn, used the bureaucratic position to cement his position once Lenin passed.
Our tendency is to view bureaucracy as something benign and annoying, but in fact it is a cancer that devastates the organization that hosts it. If you've read The Real Anthony Fauci, you'll see that Fauci did something similar to cement his power, just at a smaller scale. It's the consummate bureaucrat, that will double-think their way to the top that ends up in power and unsurprisingly, they are truly sociopathic once in power.
They also don't stop being bureaucrats. Stalin worked 18 hours a day until the day he died, doing the paper-pushing that got him there. It's perhaps why he got more cruel the longer he stayed in power.

2024-12-15 19:17:39

Orange pilling people that have been screwed by the system is much, much easier than people that have greatly benefited (aka Cantillionaires).
One of the consequences is that people in industries/countries that are further away from the Fed, are easier to convince.

2024-12-15 00:53:01

- reply

he secretly wants a government to perform a 51% attack

2024-12-14 18:12:33

Cancellation is their sword.
Nostr is our shield.

2024-12-13 17:01:44

Every social media platform is a mini experiment in governance.
Facebook is a plutocracy
YouTube is a technocracy
BlueSky is an oligarchy
X is a monarchy
Nostr is anarchy
The centralized/decentralized distinction, as usual is the most important part and why it's so much freer here.

2024-12-12 22:45:29

Regulations hurt crypto way more than it does Bitcoin.
Debanking hurts crypto way more than it does Bitcoin.
Laws hurt crypto way more than it does Bitcoin.
This is because crypto is centralized and has single points of failure which Bitcoin doesn't.

2024-12-11 15:49:11

If you're nervous about quantum computing being imminent, just read this paper. It was published a decade ago and it still holds up. Really, they have no idea how to do most of what's required to make a quantum computer still, and even if they did, there's no real way to QA a quantum computer. Like most academic disciplines these days, it's fiat through and through.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1401.3629

2024-12-11 14:07:30

Unpopular beliefs give you the best return for effort/money/time *because* they're unpopular. If they were popular, then you'd have no edge. But they're unpopular, so people will get upset at you sharing them because you disagree with them, usually about something that's fundamental to their identity.
I find that it's not worth reacting to those people that get upset. In fact, it's probably good for them to get upset because that's an early touchpoint for another way to think about things. Enough of those and they'll change. It might take years though.
Belief-change is a long game. And as Bitcoiners we should get used to that.
#note1t23…qjd5

2024-12-10 21:28:28

Thoughts on the Roger Ver/Tucker Carlson interview
First, let me be clear, I've had a somewhat combative history with Roger [1], but the man does not deserve to be in prison. The US Government's contention that a non-citizen can be guilty of tax evasion is just laughable on its face.
That said, there are a whole lot of lies and half-truths in that interview. First, Roger still seems to be giving himself credit for Bitcoin's early success. Yes, he promoted it a lot on different platforms, and indeed he was known as "Bitcoin Jesus" for a bit for his almost incessant proselytizing. But he wasn't the reason for Bitcoin's success and it was this belief that led him to say "I made Bitcoin what it is today and I'll do the same with Bitcoin Cash." Years of languishing BCH price (literally the same price as it was 2017 and that's not taking inflation into account) hasn't humbled the guy one bit.
He also shilled a lot of different altcoins, mostly focused around privacy. One of his goals on the show seems to have been to pump his bags and for him, it's probably not very different than his early Bitcoin advocacy. He's still a classic altcoin promoter and despite his utter lack of success the last 7 years, he continues down this path.
But the most egregious lie is this idea that his new book is the reason why everything is happening to him, implying that he has something so important to say that the US government must shut him down. The suggestion is that somehow Bitcoin was taken over by the US government and that they needed to suppress his book for the sake of government policy.
The lie wouldn't be so egregious if he sincerely believed it. But I don't think that's the case. Why? Because he still owns Bitcoin. The man is a salesman first, and his public pronouncements are almost always spin to get other people to buy what he's selling.
Personally, I don't think his arguments were compelling and he kept saying "cryptocurrency" which grated on my ears, but who knows how many people will be convinced by him? But then again, I always thought CSW was a fraud, but there were a surprising number of people that fell for his claims (including Ver, at least for a time).
Regardless, I don't think this presages some sort of Roger Ver comeback as he's been irrelevant for a long time. Yes, he may go to prison and become something like a celebrity cause, and he certainly has enough money to promote his suffering. And yea, he may get some fame from being something like political prisoner of the deep state. But it won't make his opinions any more palatable because they're demonstrably dumb.
[1] https://jimmysong.medium.com/bitcoin-cash-is-a-fiat-money-39626c002f77

2024-12-10 14:46:07

- reply

It would be more fun to do you 10, 20 and 40 years from now.

2024-12-10 14:37:50

The Fed basically funds all the psyops not just in the US but all over the world.
It can't be destroyed fast enough.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/7uBY7Ti0g2nNroNJOS7zo9

2024-12-09 23:42:06

Seriously, you trust Google?
You trust an organization that's incentivized to put out impressive sounding results or lose funding?
You trust people that "achieved" quantum supremacy in 2019 which was later debunked?
Stop trusting "don't be evil".

2024-12-09 15:11:39

For free subscribers: Remnant Bitcoiners, TSA shows Cowardice, Democratic Ideological Conformity, Amish Fertility Incentives, High IQ Envy and more!
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#Bitcoin Tech Talk #426
https://jimmysong.substack.com/p/bitcoin-tech-talk-426

2024-12-08 18:37:26

I'd bet a significant amount of activity on OnlyFans is money laundering.