"They’re passing the torch. And the torch is being received by entities who care less about ideology and more about returns. BlackRock doesn’t care about “being your own bank.” They care about portfolio diversification and risk-adjusted returns.

Is that a loss? In some ways, yes. Bitcoin will probably never again have the radical energy it had in its early years. The days of 100x returns in a single year are likely over. The volatility that created life-changing wealth will moderate as ownership becomes more distributed.

But it’s also a victory. Because Bitcoin survived long enough to become boring. It succeeded so thoroughly that the original believers can actually cash out. It proved itself to the point where the most conservative financial institutions in the world are buying it."
~ Jordi Visser

Everyone’s frustrated that Bitcoin’s not pumping. But what if this stagnation isn’t failure — it’s distribution? I break down why the OG whales are finally taking profits, what that means for institutional adoption, and how Bitcoin’s growing stability could mark the start of its next great era.

Check out the original article Bitcoin’s Silent IPO by Jordi Visser on Substack (Link: https://visserlabs.substack.com/p/bitcoins-silent-ipo-why-this-consolidation)

Links & References

• Jordi Visser on X (Link: https://x.com/jvisserlabs)
• Checkmate on X (Link: https://x.com/_Checkmatey_)
• Explore the data Checkmatey shared on Bitcoin holder waves and distribution trends (Link: https://x.com/_Checkmatey_/status/1984723754057113776)

Check out our awesome sponsors!

• Ledn: Need fiat but don’t want to sell your Bitcoin? Ledn offers secure, Bitcoin-backed loans with no credit checks, flexible repayment, and fast turnaround—often within 24 hours. With $10B+ in loans across 100+ countries and transparent Proof of Reserves, Ledn is a trusted option for unlocking liquidity without giving up your Bitcoin. (Link: https://learn.ledn.io/audible)
• HRF: The Human Rights Foundation is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that promotes and protects human rights globally, with a focus on closed societies. Subscribe to HRF's Financial Freedom Newsletter today. (Link: https://mailchi.mp/hrf.org/financial-freedom-newsletter)
• OFF: The Oslo Freedom Forum is a global human rights event by the Human Rights Foundation (HRF), uniting voices from activism, journalism, tech, and beyond. Through powerful stories and collaboration, OFF advances freedom and human potential worldwide. Join us next June. (Link: https://oslofreedomforum.com/)
• Pubky: Pubky is building the next web, a decentralized system designed to put control back in your hands. Escape censorship, algorithmic manipulation, and walled gardens by owning your identity and data. Explore the Pubky web and become the algorithm today. Don't forget to find me on my Pubky ID here: pk:5d7thwzkxx5mz6gk1f19wfyykr6nrwzaxri3io7ahejg1z74qngo. (Link: https://pubky.org)
• Chroma: Chroma is dedicated to advancing human performance and well-being through cutting-edge light therapy devices and performance eyewear. Their mission is to enhance physical and mental health, unlocking peak human health, cognitive function, a...

"The necessity for guys to be around other good guys and girls to be around other good girls... we had that really well structured all throughout history. We fucked it all up over the last of the last hundred years when we mixed everything together. And the price we're paying for it is that guys are more like women now and women are more like guys. And you start to lose the tension.
Because what you need for any sort of force or charge to exist is you need polarity. You need a positive pole and negative pole. You need a north and a south. You need a day and a night. You need a man and a woman. You need that. And the more you kill polarity and you move things towards sameness and similarity, the more you lose the tension and the more you lose the charge."
~ Aleks Svetski

Aleks Svetski returns to the show - this time as a new father - and we dive deep into how life, virtue, and purpose change once you’re raising the next generation. From home birth and the raw reality of becoming a dad, to the philosophy of Bushido of Bitcoin, we explore growth through discomfort, the tension between opposing virtues, and why true wisdom lives in that tension.

We talk about choosing responsibility over comfort, why the world needs polarity - men as men, women as women - and how modern culture’s obsession with balance and safety is erasing meaning. Svetski shares his evolving view on individualism, the rise of the “sovereign tribe,” and why character must come before capital.

We end by diving into his latest project, building tools for the experience economy - products that drive us off the screen and back into the real world. It’s a whirlwind of fatherhood, philosophy, Bitcoin, and growing the courage to say no so you can build what really matters.

Check out our awesome sponsors!

• Ledn: Need fiat but don’t want to sell your Bitcoin? Ledn offers secure, Bitcoin-backed loans with no credit checks, flexible repayment, and fast turnaround—often within 24 hours. With $10B+ in loans across 100+ countries and transparent Proof of Reserves, Ledn is a trusted option for unlocking liquidity without giving up your Bitcoin. (Link: https://learn.ledn.io/audible)
• HRF: The Human Rights Foundation is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that promotes and protects human rights globally, with a focus on closed societies. Subscribe to HRF's Financial Freedom Newsletter today. (Link: https://mailchi.mp/hrf.org/financial-freedom-newsletter)
• OFF: The Oslo Freedom Forum is a global human rights event by the Human Rights Foundation (HRF), uniting voices from activism, journalism, tech, and beyond. Through powerful stories and collaboration, OFF advances freedom and human potential worldwide. Join us next June. (Link: https://oslofreedomforum.com/)
• Pubky: Pubky is building the next web, a decentralized system designed to put control back in your hands. Escape censorship, algorithmic manipulation, and walled gardens by owning your identity and data. Explore the Pubky web and become the algorithm today. Don't forget to find me on my Pubky ID here: pk:5d7thwzkxx5mz6gk1f19wfyykr6nrwzaxri3io7ahejg1z74qngo. (Link: https://pubky.org)
• Chroma: Chroma is dedicated to advancing human performance and well-being through cutting-edge light therapy devices and performance eyewear. Their mission is to enhance physical and mental health, unlocking peak human health, cognitive function, and physical performance. Get 10% off your order with t...

“Live by the mNAV, Die by the mNAV”.

What happens when financial alchemy meets the hardest money in history? In this episode, we explore how Bitcoin treasury companies may be repeating the speculative sins of the 1920s—where reflexivity, leverage, and overconfidence turned “innovation” into collapse. The question is: will Bitcoin break the curse, or amplify it?

Check out the original article Read_911 - Bitcoin TreasuryCos: Lessons From The 1929 Crash (Speculative Attack! Part III) by Be Water (Link: https://bewaterltd.com/p/bitcoin-treasurycos-lessons-from)

Links & References

• Read_909 - Bitcoin Treasury Companies (Speculative Attack! Part I) (Link: https://fountain.fm/episode/eShOXODGdCH3BD3M9Mzn)

• Read_910 - Bitcoin TreasuryCos & The Roaring 20s: Speculative Attack! Part II (Link: https://fountain.fm/episode/z21X5ypXXezxWQ1Y827s)

• The Flight into Fake Values by Be Water (Link: https://bewaterltd.com/p/the-flight-into-fake-values)

• The Great Crash 1929 by John Kenneth Galbraith (Link: https://www.amazon.com/Great-Crash-1929-Kenneth-Galbraith/dp/0547248164)

• Shelling Out: The Origins of Money by Nick Szabo (Link: https://nakamotoinstitute.org/library/shelling-out/)

• Read_882 - The Great Taking [P1] on Spotify (Link:https://open.spotify.com/episode/0CBszl5R5aWETQHN5wSgoo)

Check out our awesome sponsors!

• Ledn: Need fiat but don’t want to sell your Bitcoin? Ledn offers secure, Bitcoin-backed loans with no credit checks, flexible repayment, and fast turnaround—often within 24 hours. With $10B+ in loans across 100+ countries and transparent Proof of Reserves, Ledn is a trusted option for unlocking liquidity without giving up your Bitcoin. (Link: https://learn.ledn.io/audible)
• HRF: The Human Rights Foundation is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that promotes and protects human rights globally, with a focus on closed societies. Subscribe to HRF's Financial Freedom Newsletter today. (Link: https://mailchi.mp/hrf.org/financial-freedom-newsletter)
• OFF: The Oslo Freedom Forum is a global human rights event by the Human Rights Foundation (HRF), uniting voices from activism, journalism, tech, and beyond. Through powerful stories and collaboration, OFF advances freedom and human potential worldwide. Join us next June. (Link: https://oslofreedomforum.com/)
• Pubky: Pubky is building the next web, a decentralized system designed to put control back in your hands. Escape censorship, algorithmic manipulation, and walled gardens by owning your identity and data. Explore the Pubky web and become the algorithm today. Don't forget to find me on my Pubky ID here: pk:5d7thwzkxx5mz6gk1f19wfyykr6nrwzaxri3io7ahejg1z74qngo. (Link: https://pubky.org)
• Chroma: Chroma is dedicated to advancing human performance and well-being through cutting-edge light therapy devices and performance eyewear. Their mission is to enhance physical and mental health, unlocking...

In this read, I dive into Bitcoin TreasuryCos & The Roaring 20s: Speculative Attack! Part II by Be Water - a fascinating comparison between today’s Bitcoin Treasury mania and the wild investment trust bubble of the 1920s. What can the speculative pyramid schemes of Goldman Sachs’ Trading Corporation teach us about MicroStrategy’s leverage play? Are we witnessing a repeat of history’s most spectacular financial illusions - or the birth of something fundamentally different?

I explore the eerie echoes between leverage cycles past and present, from GBTC’s modern fallout to the gold trusts that came before ETFs. And of course, I bring my own thoughts on whether Bitcoin’s unique properties might break the cycle - or just reshape it for a new age.

Could Bitcoin Treasury companies be building a new future of financial independence, or setting the stage for the next roaring crash? Let’s find out.

Check out the original article Bitcoin TreasuryCos & The Roaring 20s: Speculative Attack! Part II by Be Water (Link: https://bewaterltd.com/p/bitcoin-treasurycos-and-the-roaring)

Links & References

• The Flight into Fake Values by Be Water (Link: https://bewaterltd.com/p/the-flight-into-fake-values)
• Speculative Attack by Pierre Rochard (2014) (Link: https://nakamotoinstitute.org/mempool/speculative-attack/)
• Speculative Attack Season 2 by Pierre Rochard and Allan Farrington (2023) (Link: https://www.axiombtc.capital/attack)
• Broken Money Revisited: Advancing Lyn Alden's Gold & Bitcoin Thesis (Memetic Monetary Theory) (Link: https://bewaterltd.com/p/broken-money)
• Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet by Julian Assange (Link: https://tinyurl.com/y33tr22c)

Check out our awesome sponsors!

• Ledn: Need fiat but don’t want to sell your Bitcoin? Ledn offers secure, Bitcoin-backed loans with no credit checks, flexible repayment, and fast turnaround—often within 24 hours. With $10B+ in loans across 100+ countries and transparent Proof of Reserves, Ledn is a trusted option for unlocking liquidity without giving up your Bitcoin. (Link: https://learn.ledn.io/audible)
• HRF: The Human Rights Foundation is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that promotes and protects human rights globally, with a focus on closed societies. Subscribe to HRF's Financial Freedom Newsletter today. (Link: https://mailchi.mp/hrf.org/financial-freedom-newsletter)
• OFF: The Oslo Freedom Forum is a global human rights event by the Human Rights Foundation (HRF), uniting voices from activism, journalism, tech, and beyond. Through powerful stories and collaboration, OFF advances freedom and human potential worldwide. Join us next June. (Link: https://oslofreedomforum.com/)
• Pubky: Pubky is building the next web, a decentralized system designed to put control back in your hands. Escape censorship, algorithmic manipulation, and walled gardens by owning your identity and data. Explore the Pubky web and become the algorithm today. Don't forget to find me on my Pubky ID here: pk:5d7thwzkxx5mz6gk1f19wfyykr6nrwzaxri3io7ahejg1z74qngo. (Link: https://pubky.org)

"What distinguishes this speculative attack from its Weimar predecessor is that now - thanks to Bitcoin, Bitcoin Treasuries, Money Printer Go Brrr memes, and social media - it is nearly impossible for public opinion to misconstrue the economic consequences of the inflation. The speculative attack has evolved from a relatively obscure trading strategy during the Weimar Republic into a coordinated, full-fledged social media-mediated and Wall Street-assisted assault on the monopoly of state-issued money itself."
~ Be Water

We’ve entered a world where perception overtakes reality, and debt is the new weapon in a monetary war. I break down the first part of The Speculative Attack series, connecting it to everything from Weimar inflation to the hollowed-out middle class—and ask the question: are Bitcoin treasuries the future of sound money, or the next crack-up boom?

Check out the original article Bitcoin Treasury Companies: Speculative Attack! Part I by Be Water (Link: https://bewaterltd.com/p/bitcoin-treasury-companies)

Links & References

• The Flight into Fake Values by Be Water (Link: https://bewaterltd.com/p/the-flight-into-fake-values)
• Speculative Attack by Pierre Rochard (2014) (Link: https://nakamotoinstitute.org/mempool/speculative-attack/)
• Speculative Attack Season 2 by Pierre Rochard and Allan Farrington (2023) (Link: https://www.axiombtc.capital/attack)
• Broken Money Revisited: Advancing Lyn Alden's Gold & Bitcoin Thesis (Memetic Monetary Theory) (Link: https://bewaterltd.com/p/broken-money)
• Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet by Julian Assange (Link: https://tinyurl.com/y33tr22c)

Check out our awesome sponsors!

• Ledn: Need fiat but don’t want to sell your Bitcoin? Ledn offers secure, Bitcoin-backed loans with no credit checks, flexible repayment, and fast turnaround—often within 24 hours. With $10B+ in loans across 100+ countries and transparent Proof of Reserves, Ledn is a trusted option for unlocking liquidity without giving up your Bitcoin. (Link: https://learn.ledn.io/audible)
• HRF: The Human Rights Foundation is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that promotes and protects human rights globally, with a focus on closed societies. Subscribe to HRF's Financial Freedom Newsletter today. (Link: https://mailchi.mp/hrf.org/financial-freedom-newsletter)
• OFF: The Oslo Freedom Forum is a global human rights event by the Human Rights Foundation (HRF), uniting voices from activism, journalism, tech, and beyond. Through powerful stories and collaboration, OFF advances freedom and human potential worldwide. Join us next June. (Link: https://oslofreedomforum.com/)
• Pubky: Pubky is building the next web, a decentralized system designed to put control back in your hands. Escape censorship, algorithmic manipulation, and walled gardens by owning your identity and data. Explore the Pubky web and become the algorithm today. Don't forget to find me on my Pubky ID here: pk:5d7thwzkxx5mz6gk1f19wfyykr6nrwzaxri3io7ahejg1z74qngo. (Link: https://pubky.org)

"If you have this disconnect between Core devs that value one thing and the users that value something else, something's got to give at some point, right? Either you get developers that are more in line with the users or a lot of the other users kind of end up leaving and so on.
So this is not a trivial concern and it's a big attack
surface and we've seen it in these communities where a lot of this political stuff enters and then next thing you know it gets completely sort of subsumed by that movement, by institutional capture, if you will.
And that's not just true in open source software, it's true in every nonprofit organization and so on.
This is a big problem."
~ Jimmy Song

Jimmy Song joins me for a deep dive into one of the most heated topics in Bitcoin today - the debate around Bitcoin Core, the OP_RETURN controversy, and the growing cultural divide within Bitcoin development. We explore whether Bitcoin’s technical decisions have become political moves, and what “verify, don’t trust” really means when trust itself starts eroding.

We talk about Bitcoin’s identity crisis between innovation and ossification - should Bitcoin keep evolving with new toys, or hold the line and protect what already works? We cover everything from Taproot’s legacy to mining decentralization, censorship, left–right polarization in the dev community, and the spirit of cypherpunk independence.

Most importantly, Jimmy challenges us to think for ourselves - to stop being clones of whoever we agree with, and to test every assumption against reality. Because Bitcoin’s strength has never been in consensus for its own sake, but in the willingness to ask hard questions.

Check out our awesome sponsors!

• Ledn: Need fiat but don’t want to sell your Bitcoin? Ledn offers secure, Bitcoin-backed loans with no credit checks, flexible repayment, and fast turnaround—often within 24 hours. With $10B+ in loans across 100+ countries and transparent Proof of Reserves, Ledn is a trusted option for unlocking liquidity without giving up your Bitcoin. (Link: https://learn.ledn.io/audible)
• HRF: The Human Rights Foundation is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that promotes and protects human rights globally, with a focus on closed societies. Subscribe to HRF's Financial Freedom Newsletter today. (Link: https://mailchi.mp/hrf.org/financial-freedom-newsletter)
• OFF: The Oslo Freedom Forum is a global human rights event by the Human Rights Foundation (HRF), uniting voices from activism, journalism, tech, and beyond. Through powerful stories and collaboration, OFF advances freedom and human potential worldwide. Join us next June. (Link: https://oslofreedomforum.com/)
• Pubky: Pubky is building the next web, a decentralized system designed to put control back in your hands. Escape censorship, algorithmic manipulation, and walled gardens by owning your identity and data. Explore the Pubky web and become the algorithm today. Don't forget to find me on my Pubky ID here: pk:5d7thwzkxx5mz6gk1f19wfyykr6nrwzaxri3io7ahejg1z74qngo. (Link: https://pubky.org)
• Chroma: Chroma is dedicated to advancing human performance and well-being through cutting-edge light therapy devices and performance eyewear. Their mission is to enhance physical and mental health, unlocking peak human health, cognitive function, and physical performance. Get 10% off your order with the code BITCOINAUDIBLE...

"Payments are the camcorders of our age, the next technology whose time has passed. The new age that is just beginning will feel qualitatively different, like the moment Dorothy steps out of her black-and-white world into the vibrant colors of Oz. When value flows as freely as information, the economy changes, and society changes with it."
~ Roy Sheinfeld

What happens when money moves as freely as a text message? This episode dives into Roy Sheinfeld’s vision of Bitcoin not just as an asset - but as the network that commoditizes value transfer itself. I explore how this shift could dissolve borders, upend the legacy payments stack, and unlock a new creator economy built directly on Lightning.

Check out the original article The Utility of Bitcoin: Moving Value Like Information by Roy Sheinfeld (Link: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/the-utility-of-bitcoin-moving-value-like-information)

Links Referenced:

• Breez (Link: Breez.tech)
• Breez SDK (Link: https://breez.technology/sdk/)
• Alby + NWC [Start9 integration] (Link: https://tinyurl.com/yzhwf6t6)
• PearDrive Core (Link: https://github.com/peardrive/PearDriveCore)
• PearDrive CLI (Link: https://github.com/peardrive/PearDriveCLI)
• Zero to One by Peter Thiel [PDF] (Link: https://morfene.com/021.pdf)
• Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get it by Scott Kupor (Link: https://a16z.com/books/secrets-of-sand-hill-road/)
• Arc / Spark / Fedi / Botanix / Cashu

Check out our awesome sponsors!

• Ledn: Need fiat but don’t want to sell your Bitcoin? Ledn offers secure, Bitcoin-backed loans with no credit checks, flexible repayment, and fast turnaround—often within 24 hours. With $10B+ in loans across 100+ countries and transparent Proof of Reserves, Ledn is a trusted option for unlocking liquidity without giving up your Bitcoin. (Link: https://learn.ledn.io/audible)
• HRF: The Human Rights Foundation is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that promotes and protects human rights globally, with a focus on closed societies. Subscribe to HRF's Financial Freedom Newsletter today. (Link: https://mailchi.mp/hrf.org/financial-freedom-newsletter)
• OFF: The Oslo Freedom Forum is a global human rights event by the Human Rights Foundation (HRF), uniting voices from activism, journalism, tech, and beyond. Through powerful stories and collaboration, OFF advances freedom and human potential worldwide. Join us next June. (Link: https://oslofreedomforum.com/)
• Pubky: Pubky is building the next web, a decentralized system designed to put control back in your hands. Escape censorship, algorithmic manipulation, and walled gardens by owning your identity and data. Explore the Pubky web and become the algorithm today. Don't forget to find me on my Pubky ID here: pk:5d7thwzkxx5mz6gk1f19wfyykr6nrwzaxri3io7ahejg1z74qngo. (Link: https://pubky.org)
• Chroma: Chroma...

"One of the founding tenets of anarcho-capitalism [is] that in a world without a government, you would have insurance contracts as the means for negotiating, disputing things. This actually goes into the original fire
departments were actually insurance companies. You'd purchase fire insurance from a particular purveyor of fire insurance and you would actually stamp on the cornerstone of your building, the sigil of whatever insurance company was protecting your property.
If the fire burned the building, the insurance company's on the hook. It's the most skin in the game, risk aligned way to get different parties to align on an outcome as an insurance contract. It's so much cheaper just to have an on-call fire bucket brigade team than to rebuild a building. So in the world without a government, you have insurance contracts."
~ Rob Hamilton

In this conversation with Rob Hamilton of AnchorWatch, we dive deep into the evolving frontier of Bitcoin custody, multisig innovation, and the emergence of Bitcoin‑insured financial infrastructure. We explore how tools like Miniscript and MuSig are reshaping what’s possible with shared ownership, time locks, and key hierarchies, and why AnchorWatch’s partnership with Lloyd’s of London represents far more than just insured Bitcoin—it’s a preview of an entirely new risk and capital market built on Bitcoin.

We talk about turning legal contracts into programmable money, the bridge between Bitcoin and traditional insurance, and the future path from Lloyd’s underwriting to fully Bitcoin‑denominated coverage. Rob breaks down how multisig could transform the meaning of trust, and we even venture into the implications for Lightning, AI authentication, and the long‑arc future of custody itself.

How do we insure Bitcoin without fiat? Can multisig redefine the institutional model? And what might a Bitcoin‑native insurance industry look like when the world finally catches up?

Check out our awesome sponsors!

• Ledn: Need fiat but don’t want to sell your Bitcoin? Ledn offers secure, Bitcoin-backed loans with no credit checks, flexible repayment, and fast turnaround—often within 24 hours. With $10B+ in loans across 100+ countries and transparent Proof of Reserves, Ledn is a trusted option for unlocking liquidity without giving up your Bitcoin. (Link: https://learn.ledn.io/audible)
• HRF: The Human Rights Foundation is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that promotes and protects human rights globally, with a focus on closed societies. Subscribe to HRF's Financial Freedom Newsletter today. (Link: https://mailchi.mp/hrf.org/financial-freedom-newsletter)
• OFF: The Oslo Freedom Forum is a global human rights event by the Human Rights Foundation (HRF), uniting voices from activism, journalism, tech, and beyond. Through powerful stories and collaboration, OFF advances freedom and human potential worldwide. Join us next June. (Link: https://oslofreedomforum.com/)
• Pubky: Pubky is building the next web, a decentralized system designed to put control back in your hands. Escape censorship, algorithmic manipulation, and walled gardens by owning your identity and data. Explore the Pubky web and become the algorithm today. Don't forget to find me on my Pubky ID here: pk:5d7thwzkxx5mz6gk1f19wfyykr6nrwzaxri3io7ahejg1z74qngo. (Link: https://pubky.org)
• Chroma: Chroma is dedicated to advancing human performance and wel...