Better > Political 🪃

Short, practical drops on culture and technology. 🚀

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To the community 🙏

Happy Friday! ☀️

We know we're in a socially divided moment. Nonetheless, those making things in the world continue to move forward and do their best. We're considering technologies that make us feel some-type-of-way today, but before we do, let's look at what happened on the internet this week:

• Jack Mallers told the IMF that bitcoin is disrupting cross-border payments

• Russia moves to recognize bitcoin and ethereum as currency (nation-states have been trying to decide how to classify the new asset)

• The Stripe gang is working with Apple to enable Tap to Pay on iPhone

• The internet woke up and chose violence. The debate that still rages? Censorship and platforms.

• Food prices are spiking in Hong Kong. Are you feeling the inflation squeeze?

Okay, let's get into it. 🚀

Tweet of the Day (TOD)! 🐦

In the bitcoin community there are occasional 'And so it begins' type tweets. I've been the author of many. In fact I did one this week when KPMG made their bitcoin bet. 😂

Big organizations like KPMG putting bitcoin and ethereum on their corporate balance sheet is a big deal, so naturally the community gets excited about the prospects for mass adoption. 

Check out Jack Mallers of Strike presenting the use-case for bitcoin to the IMF in this weeks TOD 👆. At the 25 minute mark he goes down a fascinating rabbit hole that separates bitcoin the asset and bitcoin the network. 

The long-and-short of it this:

What the IMF does with that information is anyones guess. But the reality is that the bitcoin network cannot be ignored. It's simply remarkable technology.

Better > Political 🌍

New technology can be scary. Especially disruptive technology. I get it. Folks working in establishment or legacy industry will feel threatened that what they've built will no longer be relevant. I have empathy for that, but isn't it more interesting to adapt and grow as the future demands?

In a time as politically charged as ours, there is a short-list of tech that produces legitimate anger from the establishment. The type of anger that feels virtually impossible to justify if we were committed to thinking from First Principles. 👇

• Nuclear power 

• Bitcoin and DeFi

• Decentralized/independent media 

You saw this Nielsen report in a post last week, and it's obvious why cable news is scrambling to find a way to compete with independent media. PS: Trying to compete with something like CNN+ misses the point and won't work. 👇

Nuclear power generation seems to have created similar divisions. 👇

Views like this 👇

But then also like this 👇

Double-click on Bitcoin 🤝

Let's double-click on bitcoin. 

Framing it this way first occurred to me when speaking with friends who work at TradFi (traditional finance) institutions. Mostly banks. When I unpacked the bitcoin network and bitcoin the asset (an unpacking that they had not done themselves, I might add) the response was always the same. 

• It's not backed by government

• Okay, so it just fixes fees? TradFi transactions aren't that expensive

• Okay fine, it solves remittance payments and other problems for those in emerging markets but why would we need it in the 'West'?

• We already have a solid system, why do we need this?

Zoom in on the last point. In what other category could you imagine the same take? Imagine if our health-tech choices were political. We find a way to disrupt current cancer treatments to the benefit of those with the disease and the establishment says 'I just don't understand why we need something better here.'  It was obvious to me that, of course, you wouldn't. You can't imagine it. 

Sure, progress for the sake of progress can get us in to a mess in certain areas, but shouldn't we be committed to better > political? 

Let's take store of value as an example. For those who like bitcoin because it has the properties of 'digital gold,' the logical conclusion would be to still onboard gold as you see fit, but to add the new, superior technology to the mix, no? As Michael Lewis points out on the Odd Lots podcast (which I love), gold does have the advantage of thousands of years of trust and use in human societies, but entrenching doesn't feel like it makes sense. 

We need to upgrade our thinking as the future demands.

Thanks for reading. I hope you start building today. 🚀

Gratitude 🙏

I feel lucky to have you on the other end of this newsletter. If you haven't yet, join the community, and a bring a friend! Have a great weekend.👇

See you on the path.

- MG