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27 Jan, 7 tweets, 7 min read
☀️ The city of Miami just posted the #Bitcoin whitepaper on their website! This is a simple but powerful move that any jurisdiction can make to show they are in favor of technological progress. Who will follow Miami's example?
Boom! Here's @RepTomEmmer, chair of the Congressional Blockchain caucus posting the Bitcoin whitepaper on the House website. Clean URL!
Here is Representative @PatrickMcHenry of the House Financial Services Committee standing up for open source innovation in finance by posting the Bitcoin whitepaper!
🇪🇪 Estonia: the first state to post the Bitcoin whitepaper as a symbol. A world leader in e-government, it's no surprise they saw the value of crypto early. Their @e_Residents program recruits technological progressives to set up in Estonia. Check it out!
🇨🇴 Colombia: the first nation state in the Americas to symbolically post the Bitcoin whitepaper. @JCastroS is an advisor to the Colombian President & former Vice-Minister of Digital Economy. The country is becoming a regional center for crypto!
I'm working with @cobraBitcoin on a bitcoin.org page to honor the nations, cities, elected officials, companies, and individuals who have posted the #Bitcoin whitepaper as a symbol of technological progress. Please reply to this tweet with candidates for inclusion!
Here we go!

A list of symbolic mirrors of the whitepaper at Bitcoin.org, the site Satoshi himself registered.

Pride of place goes to @e_Residents, @JCastroS, @FrancisSuarez, @PatrickMcHenry, @RepTomEmmer for their early support.

Adding more! bitcoin.org/en/whitepaper-…

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More from @balajis

balajis.com Profile picture
29 Jan
Today showed us that the SEC has had it wrong. The problem isn’t that some cryptos may be securities. The problem is that all securities aren’t yet cryptos.

Now is the time to draft a bill that legalizes security tokens.
If all securities were represented on-chain:

- all users have self-custody of certificates
- brokerages can’t stop you from trading
- trading runs 24/7
- and settlement happens in minutes, not days

Basically, root cause is the antiquated financial backend. On-chain fixes this.
The stockchain

What we just observed was a technology problem that is being cast as a human problem. It was basically a Slashdotting of the legacy financial system, an unexpected workload that it isn’t prepared to handle. Putting stocks on chain really does fix this.
Read 7 tweets
balajis.com Profile picture
28 Jan
We don’t know all the facts yet. It is quite possible Robinhood was leaned on by the SEC, a banking partner, or one of many other regulators / regulated entities they are beholden to.

We’re seeing the limits of fintech vs crypto in real-time. Not your rails, not your stocks.
OK, here *may* be why Robinhood & other brokerages shut down trading.

Not because evil. Because they can't afford the cost!

Due to the volatility of these stocks, their partners now (understandably) want cash up front. No one wants to be holding the bag. finance.yahoo.com/video/heres-wh… ImageImageImage
This is plausible to me & similar to the kinds of thing that happen in crypto when there is an unexpected surge in price.

If true, it's a supply chain issue due to slow settlement times. No one wants to take principal risk on a ton of highly volatile assets.
Read 9 tweets
balajis.com Profile picture
28 Jan
FYI

1) Reddit did not shut down r/wallstreetbets

2) The mods shut it down bc they were overwhelmed

3) It’s now back, for now at least:
reddit.com/r/wallstreetbe…

Source: senior Reddit administration official
The r/wallstreetbets & #defi crossover is coming.

I expect a pseudonymous founder to set up a contract-for-difference engine in some country. Maybe legal in some places, do your own diligence!

But that would allow *uncensorable* on-chain exposure to the price of every stock.
Basically, the way MakerDAO works is by putting the exchange rate of ETH/USD on chain. Through some transformations, that gets you a USD stablecoin called DAI.

But the same approach can be used to put ETH/GME, ETH/TESLA, ETH/ANYSTOCK on chain.

Which means multiple exchanges!
Read 9 tweets
balajis.com Profile picture
26 Jan
The long-term consequence is the end of the 20th century regulatory state.

The SEC is set up to go after Goldman, not 1M retail investors. The FDA was built to regulate Merck, not 1M people with personal genomes. And the FAA is meant to leash Boeing, not 1M drone hobbyists. 🧵
The premise of the regulatory state is that it ostensibly protects the individual from the giant corporation.

That’s the basis of its legitimacy, reputation, and power.

But when they go after an individual directly the facade of “protection” falls away.
press.princeton.edu/books/paperbac…
For the SEC to go after all the countless sympathetic individuals on Reddit who profited off the back of a giant fund isn’t just logistically difficult.

It’s *reputationally* difficult.

It’s like the RIAA suing its own customers. You are pursuing the little guy...why exactly?
Read 5 tweets
balajis.com Profile picture
25 Jan
Lyn is very smart — but Ethereum really isn’t that early in development anymore. Just from a numbers standpoint, it’s a $100B+ platform hosting multiple billion dollar projects. See defipulse.com.

That doesn’t begin to touch the tech innovation, which is substantial.
I don’t think it’s persuasive to say “Ethereum is still rapidly innovating therefore it’s not worth $100B+”.

Actually, for a platform worth $100B+ to still be rapidly innovating is a very positive signal. Excessive risk aversion is the ultimate risk.
businessinsider.com/amazons-jeff-b…
Perhaps the most important difference between a tech investor and a macro investor (like @LynAldenContact) is that Lyn explicitly says she wants to invest in “finished products”.

A reasonable approach, but one that limits upside. newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/open-reply-t…
Read 6 tweets
balajis.com Profile picture
24 Jan
The human rights argument for crypto as a balance against centralized power of all kinds, from nation states to corporations, is more obvious every day.

Money is just a tool to incentivize adoption.
People tried popularizing decentralized systems like Tor without the economic component. It didn’t fully work, because these systems are tricky to build and maintain.

But digital assets now provide an offsetting term that more than compensates for the technical complexity.
Crypto allows open source developers to finally capture some of the value they create. They can choose how much.

But it’s an important and general tool to address the funding gaps that @nayafia talked about in her recent book.
Read 4 tweets

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