Money/Power/Sneed/Feed

Donald Trump reported more crypto-related income last year than any publicly traded US digital-asset company earned — link | AI comment

Nobody warns you. That's the sick part. Nobody sits you down and says, hey, if you spend one weekend actually reading about money, you will lose the ability to enjoy anything for the rest of your life. Your brother-in-law just mentions it at a barbecue. That's how it starts. Some guy holding a hot dog says "you should look into Bitcoin" and you laugh at him. You laugh AT him. You make the tulip joke. You feel superior for eleven more days. Then it's 2:47 in the morning and you're on your fourth Saylor podcast and your wife thinks you're having an affair. And in a way, you are. You're cheating on your entire worldview. ou came in to debunk it. That's the trap. Everyone comes in to debunk it. You wanted to find the flaw, dunk on your brother-in-law, and go back to your Vanguard target date fund like a respectable adult. Instead you found out what happened in 1971 and now you can't make eye contact with your 401k. Because here's what actually happens. Bitcoin is cool and all, but you REALLY learn about the dollar. Bitcoin is fine, Bitcoin is twenty-one million and a schedule, you understand it in an afternoon. The dollar takes months, because every time you think you've hit the bottom of that thing there's a trapdoor. The Fed just... prints it? And they gave how much to the banks in 2008? And the banks did WHAT with it? And the guy who ran that got a MEDAL? You're up at 4am reading about the Cantillon effect like it's your kid's toxicology report. Then comes the phase where you're insufferable. Everyone goes through it, nobody admits it. You ruin Thanksgiving. You genuinely ruin it. Your aunt says turkey prices are crazy this year and you see your opening like a lion seeing a wounded gazelle. Forty-five minutes later you're drawing the M2 money supply on a napkin and your mother is crying and your uncle is saying "it's not backed by anything" for the ninth time while his pension is backed by the promises of a government that's thirty-seven trillion in debt. He's worried about YOUR risk profile. He has unit bias so bad he'd rather own a whole Shiba Inu coin than a fraction of the hardest asset ever created, because his brain, poisoned by seventy years of fiat, thinks "whole thing cheap" beats "piece of thing good." And the prices. God, the prices. You can't turn it off. You're in the grocery store repricing eggs in sats. The eggs are getting cheaper in sats. Everything is getting cheaper in sats except your will to explain that to anyone. You look at a house and you don't see a house, you see the number of Bitcoin it costs, and that number falling forever, and you realize the housing crisis is a measuring stick crisis, and you say this out loud at a dinner party, once, and now you're not invited to dinner parties. Then the anger burns off and something worse arrives. Clarity. You realize nobody is coming to fix this. The people in charge KNOW. That's the part that breaks you. They're not stupid, they're incentivized. The debt can't be paid, only inflated, and every serious person in a suit on television knows it, and their plan is to be dead before the invoice arrives. So you buy. Coinbase, first time, hands shaking like you're doing something illegal, and the fee annoys you, and that annoyance is the last normal financial emotion you will ever feel. You set up the DCA. You learn what a hardware wallet is. You write twelve words on steel like a doomsday prepper, because that's what you are now, except your bunker is math. And then the loneliness. Nobody tells you about the loneliness. You've seen it. You can't unsee it. And you're surrounded by people you love who are working forty years to fill a bathtub with the drain open, and when you point at the drain they get mad at YOU. So you stop pointing. You just stack quietly, in the dark, waiting for the day one of them comes to you, at a barbecue, holding a hot dog, and says the words. "Hey... you were into Bitcoin, right?" And you smile. Because it's their turn in the barrel. Welcome. Nobody warned me either. .

I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief. “Bad news, detective. We got a situation.” “What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?” “Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.” The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?” “Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.” “Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.” He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.” “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.” I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside. “Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t. “Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up. “Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?” It didn’t seem like they did. “Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.” Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing. I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it. “Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled. Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him. “Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen. I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!” He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose. “All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.” “Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy. “Because I was afraid.” “Afraid?” “Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.” I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head. “Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.” He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me.

it's over AGAIN????

BREAKING: Bitcoin falls under $60,000 @WatcherGuru