Bitcoin Tech Talk #340
Interesting Stuff
Peak EV - This Mises article makes a bold call that electric vehicles have reached their peak. It’s certainly not the conventional wisdom, but the logic in the article is sound. The costs of electric vehicles are very much hidden, especially around component parts that require significant amounts of the very fossil fuels that they’re supposed to be free from. As we saw with the NY Times article this weak, the narrative around clean energy is very much manipulated and while this article takes it much further than Bitcoiners, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if we really have reached peak EV. As we reach hyperbitcoinization, I expect hidden costs like this to come to light.
Demographic Explosion Culture - This article is about the current demographic collapse, going on all over the world and argues that the problem, at its core, is cultural. The impetus for this article are the latest statistics around fertility rates in each country, with a very large amount of the world going below replacement rates. South Korea, where I am now, is at the very bottom with a 0.81 fertility rate. To give some perspective, that means that every generation decreases population by around 60%. The article argues that the culture that survives will be very different than the current one that’s essentially causing extinction. The future, in other words, belongs to the cultures that can consistently produce lots of kids. Perhaps Bitcoiners can take over by just being very patient.
End of Life Dreams - An article on something I really didn’t know much about, which is what people experience toward the end of life and how hospice workers can tell if someone is about to die. Apparently, a lot of people tend to have very vivid dreams shortly before they die of their deceased relatives welcoming them. The conventional wisdom, being materialist in philosophy, dismisses these patterns, but it’s apparently so well correlated that workers can easily tell when someone is about to die. Instead of useless sociological studies on some politically biased outcome, studying stuff like this would be very interesting. Perhaps on a Bitcoin standard, we finally get that.
What I'm up to
Uzmancoin - I did this interview before the meetup in Istanbul and it’s finally released! I talked about my Bitcoin origin story, the nature of decentralization, the need for consensus to change anything and how rent seeking is destroying civilization. The conversation was a lot of fun and it’s in monetarily oppressed countries like this where Bitcoin will really take hold.
Seoul Bitcoin Meetup - I have a couple of meetups this week, this one is on Saturday with a bunch of Bitcoiners and it’ll be casual and we’ll have mostly Q&A. The other one is with KryptoSeoul, which is a more typical audience in Korea, with altcoiners and “blockchain” enthusiasts. I’ll be trying to orangepill them by presenting the problems with fiat money (see the next item). If you’re in Seoul this week, please stop by!
Book Submitted! - My book is now with the editors at Bitcoin Magazine Press, and it’s so far clocking in at 86k words, which should be roughly 350 pages. No doubt, I’ll have to cut some of that. My screed about how fiat money has ruined everything is something I’ve been thinking deeply about. I met with a North Korean defector this week and one of the things we reflected on is the fact that despite the huge economic advantage South Korea has right now, from a demographic perspective the North only needs to survive for 5-6 generations before they can overtake the South. Fiat money undermines even the heavy advantages of human rights and democracy.
Nostr Note of the Week
What I’m Shilling
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