fighting for the user, issuing her assets since 1995.
Assets are soft, users are hard. The issue isn't the asset, the asset is you.
Jan 23 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Will Trump Side with the Hardliners on Russia?
Sy Hersh
During his campaign, Trump repeatedly vowed to end the Ukraine War even before taking office. It’s easy to mock those statements now, but in my reporting I have been told by someone with firsthand information that intense talks between Ukraine and Russia are ongoing and have moved “close to a settlement.”
Right now one of the main issues involves what I was told is “jockeying for territory.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr “Zelensky has to save face,” a knowledgeable American told me. “He never wants to kneel to the Russians.”
seymourhersh.substack.com/p/will-trump-s…
....The issues boil down to how much territory Russia will retain in the provinces where it continues to make small gains in trench warfare against the undermanned and under-equipped Ukrainian forces. “Putin is the bully In the schoolyard,” the American said, “and we gotta say to the Russians: ‘Let’s talk about what you’re going to get.’” In some places in Ukraine, he said, a negotiating issue comes down to whether a specific smelting plant would be Russian or Ukrainian.
It was his understanding that Trump initially was on board with the negotiations, and his view was that no settlement would work unless Putin was left with “a way to make money” in return for agreeing to end the war. Trump, the American said, “knows nothing about international history,” but he does understand that Putin, whose economy is staggering under heavy sanctions and an inflation rate of 8.5 percent, is in urgent need of finding more markets for his nation’s vast gas and oil reserves.
Jan 18 • 6 tweets • 5 min read
I react with wry amusement the economists' propensity to talk about things without definition. The Budish paper "Trust at Scale: the Economics Limits of Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains" spends 62 pages comparing one form of trust with another, with scant regard to what trust is.
It reminds me of the old economists trick of saying that money has a) a unit of account, b) a store of value, and c) a means of exchange. This all seems to be comfortable to the entire world of economics, without anyone realising that what was described was not a definition, it was a checklist of characteristics. It's like saying a bird takes off, flies, lands, without realising that others do this too...
What then is a bird? What is money? What is trust? These questions seem not to trouble people, nor even economists. But woe betide when a new contender arrives, and the knee jerk reaction is to compare the old to the new, and declare one good one bad.
Budish compares 'trust' in blockchains to 'traditional trust' which by introspection turns out to be the legal system of laws, courts, disputes, and all that rigmarole. Is that trust?
Well, it has some characteristics, it can be checklisted. But ask the people if they trust the courts, and the answer is not so positive - in many countries courts are simply not trusted for pretty good reasons.
Nov 17, 2024 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
Lots of chatter about the AI that told its user to die...
Now, this is a perfect time to be skeptical. Should we believe it? It's a common game to trick these AI tools into saying stupid things, it's even got a name: prompt engineering, and if you're any good at it, you can get a job doing it.
Now, if we wanted to figure that out, how would we? Well, we could ask Google, the erstwhile owner of this alleged genocidal bot. Obviously Goo-do-no-evil-gle will not want the bad press and will cover up. Oh, here it comes... tomshardware.com/tech-industry/…
Oct 19, 2024 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
a16z on stablecoins:
Stablecoins.. the realization that stablecoins can fortify the U.S. dollar’s position abroad even as the dollar’s global reserve currency status slips. Today, more than 99% of stablecoins are denominated in USD, which dwarfs the next largest denomination: 0.20% in Euro.
In addition to projecting the power of the American dollar around the world, stablecoins are potentially strengthening the country’s financial footing at home. Despite being only a decade old, stablecoins have risen to become a top 20 holder of U.S. debt, putting them ahead of countries like Germany.a16zcrypto.com/posts/article/…
While some countries are exploring CBDCs, the stablecoin opportunity sitting right in front of the U.S. is ripe for the taking. Between these discussions and the number of prominent political figures now weighing in about crypto generally, we expect more countries will start to flesh out their crypto policies and strategies in earnest.
May 3, 2024 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
@bpreneel1 This is playing out much the same as the Crypto Wars in the 1990s. The concern was never police issues & police privately acknowledged that. The concern was from *intelligence community* which wanted access to all the world's traffic.
The child-abuse meme was convenient...
@bpreneel1 to their cause, as it could not be logically denied - who would be against protecting our children? To push their agenda, they dressed up the chief policeman Louie Freeh, then director of FBI, and fought a long war with the Internet, libertarian and privacy communities.
Mar 15, 2024 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Back in the mid 2010s, there were a bunch of us literally meeting Satoshi. I thought long & hard about what & why. Eventually I came up with Prometheus' goals:
1. preserve the legend 2. protect the people 3. get them back to work
The legend of Satoshi was an amazing thing, a modern day, technophiliac version of Robin Hood, King Arthur, St George. Surely it should be preserved? Grown? Protected?
But even as I was thinking that, we didn't act for that - quite the reverse.
Mar 6, 2023 • 15 tweets • 4 min read
A story of hacking. Back in the day, I hacked the uni computer. This was in like '81 when we had a brand spanking new VAX780 and the admins had copied Sydney Uni’s port of Unix System V onto it. Somehow, we knew they had not got around to upgrading the part about ... 1/12
the 8 character password as standardly delivered in Unix System V then. Our guys were better and knew a 32 character password was needed.
So I and my autist-criminal mates spent 2 weeks every day going to our friendly sysadm and asking all sorts of arcane requests...
2/12
Mar 4, 2023 • 14 tweets • 5 min read
two opposing views - first up a stellar insider's account of the West/Washington political lead up to invasion:
'Something Was Badly Wrong': When Washington Realized Russia Was Actually Invading Ukraine
politico.com/news/magazine/…
Politico's story is one of bravado and awe - how Washington tried to save the day! But then the counterpoint:
One Year Later in Ukraine: Washington and NATO Got It Very Wrong
So what's the truth? Possibly somewhere in between.
Feb 3, 2023 • 18 tweets • 7 min read
@caitoz I have no link to the thread. But the whole thing was about interference with the democracy / election of the USA. So to recap quickly:
There is one agent that is the #1 interferer in elections/democracies world wide. It's the CIA. It's ahead by leaps & bounds...
@caitoz ahead of anyone else. Sorry, the Russians don't even enter the game - the CIA has interfered with more elections/democracies than years of its existence. Ie, more than 1 per year. This is documented, you just have to push past your biases and censorship to find it.
Jan 5, 2023 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
Putin has unilaterally called a ceasefire from midday Saturday to midnight Sunday - for the Orthodox Christmas.
We in the cryptography community know how this works because we fought the crypto wars.
It goes like this:
1. Campaign is launched: cryptography is used by terrorist, pedophiles, bad people. 2. Cryptography must be tightly regulated by government. 3. the People are screwed.
Dec 28, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
You're occasional reminder that there is one country that isn't part of the sanctions:
Ukraine to hike transit fees for Russian oil to EU – Transneft
Kiev cited the destruction of the country’s energy infrastructure as the main reason behind the decision
That Russian site is censored, as clearly we don't want Europeans to know that Ukraine is shipping Russian hydrocarbons.
Dec 27, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Ha - this is excellent, I would have used this in the IEEE event in Alexandria last week. Bullet points:
Let's call BS on more things. Today, I call BS on governance. So does @AndrewYang but let me be more specific.
Consider blockchain v. regulators, a case in multiple courts. It's really about governance. To which the the regulators have one answer - blockchain must be regulated.
Nov 12, 2022 • 20 tweets • 5 min read
Crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried: ‘I got involved with no clue what a blockchain was’
The FTX founder on hype, the problem with bitcoin and how crypto can build a fairer financial system
ft.com/content/83bc68…
"Bankman-Fried studied physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before taking a job at Jane Street, the trading firm."
SBF was a trader! Now, this explains a lot. Traders are what are known as front-office. So he knew arbitrage. And from that came Alameda.
Nov 10, 2022 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Tether comes out with a fresh attestation from BDO.
1. Their reserves exceed their liabilities. 2. They are (now?) profitable, probably bc interest rates ⤴️ 3. They have switched out of around 50% commercial paper (CP) and into around 50% treasury bills.
2 years back their rep was in the toilet after repeated bashings by the political NYAG and a mob of haters. A cloud hung over their CP - who was it with? Evergrande? China? Nobody knew.
I argued that they should be given time.
Nov 10, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Thinking back 2 decades or more to the gold era - when eGold and Goldmoney battled it out - communication did work better. Both of the major players, and most of the smaller ones adopted my model of governance (5PM) and did not collapse for those reasons.
It was a simpler time back then as we were only dealing with one asset. And the people involved although tempted were presumptively honest and cautious.
Nov 5, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
The absolute biggest story last month was Biden's chip blockade. Banning USA companies and people from doing anything to do with Chinese chip making.
Up until now, all sanctions were mild or narrow and had a fig leaf of rationale to them. Eg natsec for Huwai telco gear.
This chip blockade had no figleaf. It was not narrow. It was not mild.
(Actually, the US did provide it with a figleaf but that fell off before it reached the press... they should have saved it for another day.)
Chips are needed for everything, these days. All machines are...
Oct 26, 2022 • 16 tweets • 4 min read
Facebook Libra was an example of not learning from history. A couple of anecdotes.
1. Back in around 1995, Bill Gates surprised the world when he said that Microsoft would deliver a digital cash in Windows. He was quoted as saying Microsoft was only interested in taking ...
half a cent from each transaction. Well, a back of the envelope calculation on Windows users (then, basically all of the world) multiplied by all the transactions multiplied by half a cent added up to be ... a whole lotta dosh!
The banking world went wild. Obv they picked up...
Oct 23, 2022 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
Russians may be withdrawing from north of Dnipro to defendable ground south of the river. This makes a lot of sense militarily.
BUT, as @WarintheFuture suggests, withdrawal is a hard phase of war to conduct, especially when harried by an advancing enemy. Few armies have done it.
See my earlier tweets about water - this is as much about protecting the water supply to Crimea as it is to protect the approaches to Crimea itself. Which is to say it's strategic- must be defended or all sorts of problems will occur. Unlike Kharkiv.
War in Ukraine: the big picture is that the odds of Russia losing this war have increased a lot. As I wrote b4, it is all about who cracks first - now Ukraine is sitting more strongly. In more depth:
1. Ukraine managed to build a big reserve, train/equip it for combined arms operations- WWII blitzkrieg style. It ofc did this with NATO training, NATO weapons, NATO planning, NATO intel, NATO everything except troops, altho nobody be surprised when/if embedded NATO are found.
