My family used to own and operate the movie theater above, which is located in a quiet town on the northeastern end of Long Island, NY.

It was one of a few community theaters on Long Island that we owned and operated or that my father conceptualized, designed, and built in an effort to help revive certain Main Streets on Long Island.

My father was once an architect for United Artists, now Regal, movie theaters. For the company, he designed large multiplexes — theaters with a half dozen to a dozen and a half screens.

One of the more well-known theaters he designed is the Regal theater located on the south side of Union Square in New York City.

He came to a point in his career, though, at which he no longer wanted to design such big, impersonal structures.

Instead, he wanted to build and operate theaters at which parents felt safe dropping off their children.

He also envisioned these theaters becoming the centerpieces for suburban downtowns as well as entities that could help to catalyze the revival of these areas.

He had varied success in his efforts.

The theaters did often become focal points of downtown areas, and they did, in some regards, serve as a catalyst, something that encouraged other smalls businesses to open their doors on Main Street, as well.

But yesterday, I learned that the Greenport Theater had an effect on the town that I’m not sure my father, God rest his soul, could have anticipated.

I visited the theater and spoke with the two young men working at it that evening, both of whom were locals.

I let them know that I was there to visit because of my family’s history with the theater.

Beaming, they quickly began to share how they’d personally taken care of the facility over the last few years.

One was a creative and a handyman, and he pointed out all of the little flourishes he’d added to the interior of the theater.

The other told me about how the theater had become a non-profit. People from the area donate to keep it open, because, as he described, many were sad when it was closed for a few years. He seemed proud to play a role in running it now.

As I perused the revitalized theater, one that still maintains some of its physical character from when it was built almost 100 years ago, I felt a certain sense of peace, as I was more assured than ever that there is something within the human spirit that makes us want to preserve beautiful things from our culture.

And what came to mind as I reflected on this experience was perspective from Paco de la India, a man of culture if you will, someone who traveled the world for two years (predominantly on bitcoin) just a few years back.

I interviewed him for a piece I wrote for Forbes on Bitcoin adoption in Perú about his visit to the country, where he spent time with communities living in remote regions that used Bitcoin as day-to-day money and for saving.

When I asked Paco what using Bitcoin had done for the people of these communities, he shared that it was helping them to “preserve their culture.”

“They [now] have some liberty to dream, which was just getting wiped away by the [traditional] financial system,” Paco also shared.

He added that they were also starting small businesses, buying modest lots of land, and generally lowering their time preference (something that can propel the process of civilization).

I love the idea of these Peruvians dreaming and taking action accordingly, as it reminds me of my father, who was also very much a dreamer and who would work diligently to bring his ideas to life — even while raising four children.

What he and many of us these days are up against in actualizing our dreams is the fiat system disadvantaging small business owners and eroding our culture in turn.

The fiat system encourages the Starbucksification and Walmartization of everything. These sorts of companies have financial and political leverage because of the fiat system, and they wipe out the mom and pops out there who don’t have access to the same leverage, sucking the life out of downtowns in the process.

I advocate for a world on a bitcoin standard because, like my father, I believe in the revival of Main Streets. A world in which money retains value and the cost of capital for major companies is much higher is a world in which small business owners are more empowered.

This is the type of world in which I want to live.

So, like my father who stepped away from building multiplexes, which inherently lack some of the character and charm of smaller theaters, to build and operate community theaters, I continue to make effort to give less of my energy to the fiat system (which is more than just our monetary and financial systems — it affects politics, health, psychology, etc.) and to build, document, and advocate for a new system — Bitcoin — in which culture can be revived.

I believe that deep within all of us exists a desire to create, build, prosper, and serve our community.

The fiat system makes it more difficult to do these things.

Bitcoin makes it easier.

Best,

Frank

Happy belated 4th to all who celebrated yesterday!

I hope you had a wonderful day and that you were surrounded by friends and family.

I spent some time yesterday thinking about what the United States is and whether or not it’s living up to its billing as the “land of the free.”

As I scrolled past all the “America is the best country ever!” and “You should be thankful you were born in America!” posts yesterday, conflicted feelings arose.

I do believe that the United States is incredible in many, many regards, and I deeply believe that many of the rights we have here, including freedom of speech and the right to due process, are worth defending.

However, I also find it intellectually lazy to not acknowledge the genocide that the founders of the U.S. perpetrated on the indigenous people of this land as well as the enslavement of the Africans who were brought here against their will to build the U.S. economy.

And as much as I’d like to believe that part of American history is in our past, I know that it isn’t. We’re still perpetuating genocide via institutions like the Israeli government and we still partake in colonialism — albeit, subtler forms such as financial and monetary colonialism — via institutions like the World Bank and IMF.

Plus, the U.S. has also only not been at war for 20 years of its existence.

That said, the U.S. has been a refuge for those fleeing authoritarian regimes, a place where many have come to build businesses and to bring their big ideas to life, and the country in which technologies like the telephone, the electric lightbulb, the airplane, and the internet were created.

In other words, there’s a tremendous amount to be proud of here, as well.

In fact, I believe there’s much more to be proud of than there is to be ashamed of.

Congressman Ritchie Torres (D-NY) summed this up well earlier today.

(“Hagiography” is the biographical writing of saints, religious leaders, or spiritual icons. Don’t feel bad; I didn’t know what it meant either and had to look it up. Lol.)

And for anyone who tells you to shut up and stop critiquing the United States, I’d share with them a quote from one of the country’s greatest authors, someone whose writings helped set the stage for the Civil Rights Movement — James Baldwin.

“I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”

Not only should we all criticize America perpetually, but we should perpetually fight to maintain the rights that we have here, as well. Otherwise, we will lose them.

The Declaration of Independence states that Americans have a right to self-sovereignty, while the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states that we have the right to free speech.

When we combine these two notions in the modern, digital age, it looks like self-hosted open-source software.

You aren’t sovereign in this era where so many tools and gateways have become digital if a digital platform or service can kick you off of it. And we don’t truly have a right to free speech if developers aren’t free to publish the code they write — code that, if open-source, anyone can copy from a repository and run.

The fight for code to be classified as free speech began in 1991 when Phil Zimmerman published the source code for Pretty Good Privacy (PGP). The U.S. government first classified the code as a munition and restricted its export.

In response, cypherpunks printed the code on T-shirts and in books to make the argument that code is free speech.

This issue came to a head when, in 1995, Daniel J. Bernstein, a mathematics PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley, filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government with the help of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) when the U.S. government required that Bernstein register as an arms dealer before publishing the source code for an encryption algorithm he’d written.

Bernstein won the case, as a district court affirmed that software source code is protected free speech on December 9, 1996.

Without this legal precedent having been established, some U.S. citizens might have not been permitted to use Bitcoin, as the government could have classified it as a munition, requiring a registration process to use it, just as we do with guns.

And so, my fourth of July post on X yesterday, was inspired by the cypherpunks like Zimmerman, Bernstein, and the team at the EFF who have fought to legally establish code as free speech.

(The final line in the post is the final line in A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto, by Eric Hughes.)

Without open-source code, we have no sovereignty or means to know whether or not we have privacy in the digital realm.

Without sovereignty and privacy, we are not free.

And right now, governments and corporations around the world are clamping down to try to create a digital panopticon in which we will all be prisoners.

When even Palantir, the most evil surveillance company on God’s green earth, is posting about digital sovereignty, you know things are getting bad.

So, if the United States is to continue to be the “land of the free,” open-source technology must win.

Without it, we’ll be surveilled in every corner of our digital lives, which will have long-term negative effects on human psychology and expression. Plus, many will have little idea of what algorithms are altering their world view.

In other words, we’ll likely see governments work hand-in-hand with corporations to censor as many independent voices as possible, like we’re currently seeing in the UK.

So, please use and support open-source tech.

For a list of which types of tech are open-source and which are closed-source, please see the edition of the newsletter I wrote on this topic two weeks ago:

Open-source technology is inherently American, as it gives power back to people.

For the American experiment to last another 250 years, open-source must win.

If it doesn’t, then we’re just freedom LARPing, continuing down the path of the “land of the free” becoming a caricature of what it bills itself as.

PARTNERSHIP

Bitcoin is open-source, but you aren’t benefitting from this fact if you’re leaving your bitcoin in the hands of an exchange.

Take control of your bitcoin now with a Trezor Safe 3, affordable and easy-to-use hardware wallet.

South Africans Like Freedom, Too!

The beautiful thing about open-source tech is that it bestows rights on its users regardless of their nationality.

Sarah Joubert, who left her job at the investment arm of Africa’s largest bank to start a Bitcoin circular economy in South Africa, is someone who understands this acutely.

And she’s on a mission to make not just herself and those around her but the town in which she resides as well as surrounding towns as sovereign as possible, too.

I published a story on this two weeks ago for Fedi.

Enjoy!

Brazilians Like Freedom, Too!

Turns out Brazilians are also big fans of open-source tech and freedom.

And, luckily for Brazil, Lucas Ferreira is doing everything in his power to make space for Brazilian open-source developers through Vinteum, an organization he co-founded.

I recently saw down with Lucas and Fedi’s Brazil Knight, Viv, to talk about Bitcoin and open-source technology adoption in Brazil.

I hope you enjoy the conversation, which is in English and Portuguese.

Markets

Bitcoin’s price continues to chop sideways.

These remain good levels for dollar-cost averaging into bitcoin, if you have some discretionary income. (That’s not financial advice, nor is anything I write in this newsletter.)

And here are some other tips for how to accumulate bitcoin while we’re in the depths of this bear market:

As far as that variety of apps and services my buddy Derek referred to, please allow me to suggest a few:

Strike — a great place to buy bitcoin. Here’s my referral code for Strike.

Fold — Spin a wheel, get free sats every day. Plus, get sats back on gift card purchases. Here’s my referral link for Fold.

Gemini Credit Card — Get up to 4% back in sats on everyday purchases. Here’s my referral code for Gemini.

Alright. That’s all for this week.

Thanks, as always, for reading!

If you found this edition of the newsletter helpful, please feel free to become a paid subscriber or shoot me a tip over the Lightning Network at frank@primal.net. (I actually prefer the tip.)

If money is tight, please don’t do either of these things. Just keep grinding and stacking sats through this bear market. What would make me most happy is coming out on the other side of this bear market with you, so please just focus on that.

Big love and big hugs!

Best,

Frank

X | LinkedIn | Nostr

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I don’t often write in detail about bitcoin as a financial asset, mostly because viewing it through that lens makes it seem like an asset that exists within a broken system.

It’s not.

Bitcoin is instead a completely independent system — a new protocol for money.

That said, many of us live in a world that’s mostly priced in fiat, so it’s important to consider bitcoin’s price to some degree because we have bills to pay.

And so the question I’ve been asking myself lately is the question I posed in the title of this newsletter: What happens to bitcoin’s price if the U.S. stock market crashes?

But before addressing that question, it’s first important to address why I think we may see a significant drawdown in markets.

Why Might the Market Crash?

Zooming out about four years, we’ve seen the S&P 500 more than double in this time frame.

That’s an approximately 33% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) for an asset that historically has a CAGR closer to 10%.

And the CAGR of the QQQ, the index that tracks the NASDAQ, is 37.6%, while its historically been closer to 14%.

These sorts of moves are not normal, and IMO, there will be a significant correction.

Also, it isn’t a good sign that it’s mostly overvalued tech stocks that are carrying the market.

To get an idea of it company is overvalued, you can look at its forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio, which is an estimate of what a company is expected to earn compared to its current stock price.

A healthy forward P/E ratio for a tech company is about 25-30.

Palantir’s currently sits at 76, while Shopify’s is at 114, Advanced Micro Devices is at 74.

A healthy forward p/e ratio more mature companies, the type that would be included in the S&P 500, is about 12-14, and, as Bitcoin brokerage River recently pointed out in a great piece entitled “Stocks fail when you need them most” that ratio is currently closer to 22.5, which is higher than it’s been in years.

The following is an explanation from the article of what you’re seeing in the chart:

“The chart […] shows how valuation has historically shaped stock market returns over the following decade. Each dot is a moment in the past, showing how expensive stocks were and what the stock market went on to return over the following ten years.”

The author of the article made a few other excellent points in it, as well:

“If you started investing after 2009, you’ve watched stocks only go up. The S&P 500 has returned about 15% a year since then. Only two years (2018 and 2022) were negative, but both recovered within 16 months.

That’s not normal. It’s the best sustained run in modern history, and it has trained an entire generation to believe that stocks always recover quickly, that every dip is a buying opportunity, and that time in the market fixes everything.”

[Section on chart above]

If history is any indication, stocks this expensive have usually delivered low or negative returns over the following decade. If you do not hold other assets, you risk spending the next decade of your life accumulating no real wealth.

And even if stocks do go up over the next decade, they still have to outperform inflation for you to build real wealth.”

So, this leaves me with two questions: How does bitcoin’s price perform in an environment in which stocks/equities stagnate? and How does bitcoin’s price perform if we see a market crash?

Bitcoin’s Price in the Wake of a Stock Market Drawdown

I’m going to respond to the second question from above first.

My short answer is “I don’t know.”

If we see a *major* drawdown in markets, something like the S&P 500 coming down 75%, which I believe could happen, then I can’t imagine bitcoin’s price not drawing down at least 50% in such a scenario.

The other question to consider in this case is What price might Bitcoin be trading at when this drawdown occurs?

Maybe bitcoin’s price heads back to $85k in the coming month or two, and then we see the drawdown. That would bring us to a low of $42.5k. (I know that some of you think I’m insane for proposing these numbers, but many also thought I was insane when I proposed we’d hit $53k in 2026 in a piece entitled “Don’t Buy the Bitcoin Dip” that I wrote for Bitcoin Magazine in January 2025, yet we’ve already hit $58k.)

What is more, one of the biggest bitcoin buyers in the market, Michael Saylor, has announced that he will likely continue selling large chunks of bitcoin to pay for dividends, which could also depress bitcoin’s price.

Would you panic sell your bitcoin if we hit a level like $42.5k? If so, maybe consider not buying the dip so heavily right now. (That’s not financial advice, nor is anything I include in this newsletter.)

To answer the first question posed at the end of the section above, I think bitcoin performs quite well in an environment where equities stagnate.

One of the reasons for this is that bitcoin is being adopted more broadly around the world as money and as a tool for savings (it’s sad that I have to differentiate between money and a tool for savings, but this is where we’re at with fiat).

Because of this adoption, bitcoin’s price will rise. I don’t think it’ll rise in a straight line in the near future, but I do think we’ll see it continue to follow something close to the four-year price cycle we’ve seen it follow in the past.

So, with all that said, you’re probably thinking: Just get to the goddamn point, Frank: Is now a good time to buy bitcoin or not?

Is Now a Good Time to Buy Bitcoin?

Good question — and one I can’t answer for you because I’m not a financial advisor and nothing in this newsletter is financial advice.

However, I can share what I’m doing.

I continue to dollar-cost average (DCA) into bitcoin while prices are relatively low.

I’m not trying to perfectly time the bottom, mostly because I don’t know where the bottom will be, nor does anyone.

I’m instead just buying modest amounts of bitcoin semi-regularly at these levels with a plan to hold it and use it over a much broader time horizon.

I’m also keeping a significant cash buffer. I know, I know… How dare I? I write about bitcoin for a living so all my wealth should be in it!

That doesn’t work for me. What works for me is continuing to accumulate bitcoin at a rate that feels comfortable and continuing to educate myself about all of the advancements coming to Bitcoin.

I feel extremely lucky to be living in an era where bitcoin is incredibly cheap to acquire — in the era that precedes it becoming the denominator — but I’ve also learned not to let greed get the best of me because I know that holding a certain amount of fiat is actually comforting to me, because, again, we live in a fiat-denominated world, and ignoring that can be dangerous.

So, let’s recap.

If the stock market comes crashing down, bitcoin’s price likely fall, as well. How much will it crash down to or what levels will it hit at the lows? I don’t know for sure. I’d just say I wouldn’t be surprised to see it in the low $40k area, if not a bit lower.

If seeing it go that low would make you panic sell, then please adjust accordingly.

The people who really feel the benefits of bitcoin are those who hold it over long periods of time, not those trying to speculate on its price or those who are easily shaken out due to it’s volatility.

So, by all means, take advantage of these current low prices, but please do so with an understanding that they may not be the lowest prices we see this cycle.

Best,

Frank

X | LinkedIn | Nostr

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It’s becoming more and more difficult to do anything in the digital space with anonymity.

Whether in the world of payments, social media, or AI, we’re being surveilled or are soon to be surveilled and both the state and corporations are creating profiles on us in the process.

And as people start to gain an understanding of this and are opting into systems outside of traditional system, the traditional system is beginning to go after both them and these new systems.

We saw this with the Biden administration’s war on the Bitcoin/crypto industry and we are seeing this with the Trump administration prosecuting open-source developers like Tornado Cash’s Roman Storm and the Samourai developers.

In recent weeks, we’ve also seen other instances of this. Plus, we’ve recently seen troubling amounts of increasing censorship and surveillance on legacy systems.

Illinois Governor Signs Bitcoin/Crypto Tax Into Law

This week, we saw this with Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker sign into law a tax on holding or transfering crypto assets.

While the tax itself is troubling enough, the repercussions for not paying it is even more so, as doing so could result in a two-to-five year prison sentence.

Put another way, if you transfer for bitcoin from an Bitcoin exchange to a non-custodial wallet and don’t report and pay the 0.2% tax on that, you could go to jail.

This has the potential to have a deeply chilling effect on people using bitcoin anonymously in the state of Illinois.

Luckily, the Illinois Bitcoin Council is pushing back.

More on this at the link in the post below:

U.K. Government Bans Social Media for Children under 16

This week, the U.K. government banned social media for children under 16 years of age.

Such a law has little to do with protecting children.

It’s an early step in implementing ID verification for people of all ages to use the internet.

Taylor Lorenz published a great piece in The Guardian on why this U.K. law is bad this week.

Luckily, it seems as though U.K. prime minister Keir Starmer will be stepping down tomorrow. While not many mainstream news outlets have reported that the backlash of this new social media ban has contributed to the pressure he’s facing to step down, I personally believe it was a factor.

TFTC does, too.

Anthropic to ID Users

Anthropic, makers of popular AI assistant Claude, pulled it’s latest model, Fable, off the market after facing pressure from the U.S. government, which cited national security concerns related to the model, to do so.

We still don’t know when or if Fable will return to market or if it will be available to everyday users, but we do know that as of July 8, Anthropic will have the right to demand a legally-issued government ID before granting users access to Claude.

And here’s the kicker…

Anthropic’s verification partner is Persona, an entity owned by Palantir co-founder and Epstein affiliate Peter Thiel.

Utah Versus VPNs

In September, Utah will begin to enforce a law that makes it illegal to use VPNs to access certain age-restricted websites. (Luckily, in this situation, it seems that the websites get punished and allowing users to use VPNs instead of the users being punished.)

Congratulations, Utah, on keeping company with the following jurisdictions, which also either ban or place heavy restrictions on VPN usage:

• North Korean

• Iran

• Russia

• China

• Belarus

• Iraq

In enacting and enforcing this new law, Utah will now make it more dangerous for the likes of journalists to do their work in the state.

The Point

I share all of this because corporate- and state-backed walls of surveillance are closing in on us.

And we have little idea how the data obtain via this surveillance may one day be used against us.

If we look to China, we see that it’s not only using AI to suppress dissent, but to predict and stifle those who they think *might* become dissidents.

The New York Times recently published a great piece on this.

The following are the first four paragraphs from it:

“A Chinese company has been trying to develop artificial intelligence-powered technology that would enable authoritarian governments to not just monitor dissidents but also potentially predict who could become one in the future.

The work, which appears to be in the research stage, is ripped out of dystopian science fiction, offering a glimpse of a world in which an authoritarian state is able to move against its citizens before they begin any public dissent.

The Chinese company, Geedge Networks, sells a commercial version of the Great Firewall, the surveillance and censorship software that China uses to control online activity. Those tools allow governments to monitor internet traffic and flag when someone tries to get around traditional internet censorship.

But according to leaked company documents, the firm is working on new products that use artificial intelligence to examine location data and internet use to predict who could do or say something critical of the government, according to researchers at Vanderbilt University.”

Personally, I don’t want to live in a digital panopticon in which the government gets whatever access it would like to my digital history so to potentially use some of that information against me in the future.

But both those on the political left and political right are pushing for such a world.

This is why I often write that people are often better off using and supporting systems that empower them versus fighting systems that disempower them (though, I understand that doing some of the latter is still important.)

In regard to the systems that empower us that I’m referring to, they all have one thing in common: they’re open-source.

The Open-Source Way Forward

Open-source code is simply software source code that is made available to anyone to view, modify, and distribute.

When you create and publish open-source code, it’s like you’re giving the world a gift.

I tend to agree with my buddy Dread, who believes that the type of people who write open-source code operate on a higher frequency.

The clip above was taken from this interview.

So, what are some technologies created with open-source code?

Great question!

Examples of Technology Underpinned by Open-Source Code

The private messaging app Signal is open-source.

Bitchat, the peer-to-peer messaging app that runs over Bluetooth, is open-source. Speaking of Bitchat, Bitcoin Magazine published an interview I conducted with one of of its main developers, Calle, this week.

The decentralized ID and social media protocol Nostr and it’s various clients, one of which is Primal (great place to begin if you’re just getting started with Nostr!), are open-source.

ObscuraVPN, which doesn’t require you to input any of your personal info and allows you to pay with bitcoin, is also open-source.

Certain AI LLMs are open-source and can be hosted locally. Examples of such LLMs can be found here and here.

And, of course, Bitcoin and the code for most of it’s various layers, such as Lightning and Fedimint are open-source. (For those who don’t know, I work for a company that makes the privacy-preserving Fedimint layer of Bitcoin easier to use. It’s called Fedi. Click here to download the Fedi app.)

If you’re wondering which digital technology isn’t open-source, nor private, and is basically harvesting you for your data, think Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, X, PayPal, Venmo, your bank account, your brokerage account, etc.

Those are all mechanisms of the surveillance state, and you can only use those platforms with permission and often after inputting your personal data.

Open-source technology is different in that it can be used permissionlessly and anonymously (in most cases, certain tech like Signal still requires a phone number, though, you don’t have to disclose that phone number to those with whom you interact via Signal).

Another beautiful thing about it is that it can foster cross-border collaboration. My former co-worker Shinobi offered a great example of this yesterday:

So, as my buddy Kyle Olney so deftly explained on the TFTC podcast this week, open-source is one of the major remaining ways to defend our freedoms (including our freedom to work together as builders) in the digital age. Thus, we must defend it with all of our might.

Please understand that it’s not only important to use this technology but to support people who are fighting for our right to use it, people like Lydumyla Kozlovska, head of the Open Dialogue Foundation (ODF).

Donate to the ODF here.

The walls are closing in, and maintaining our ability to access and utilize open-source tech privately and without legal repercussions remains of dire importance.

Let us proceed together apace in defending open-source tech.

Markets

Bitcoin’s price has bounced off of the lows from a few weeks ago and has been trading sideways.

IMO, these are good levels for dollar-cost averaging, especially if you aren’t strapped for cash right now. (That isn’t financial advice, nor is anything I share in this newsletter.)

With that said, two things are troubling me right now.

The first is the volatility in the “Digital Credit” market (which isn’t a real thing). and both fell precipitously from their $100 peg this week, and I’m concerned that we see this products fail and that the companies that have issued these products, Strategy and Strive, have to sell large amounts of bitcoin as a result. That would hurt the market badly (though, I’d personally like to see some of Strategy’s coins back in the hands of everyday Bitcoin users).

The second is that the Dow Jones ($DJI), S&P 500 ($SPY), and Nasdaq ($QQQ) are all trading at or near highs, and I still believe we’re headed toward a broader major market correction.

More on these two items next week.

That’s that for this week.

Thank you everyone for reading!

Big hugs and big love.

Best,

Frank

X | LinkedIn | Nostr

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If you were paying attention to the news this week, you probably noticed that certain politicians on the left as well as certain leftist media outlets bellyached about the injustice of Elon Musk becoming “the world’s first trillionaire” after the SpaceX IPO.

Some even offered instructions on how to dislike him.

Before I continue, I’ll say that I’m not an Elon Musk fanboy, and I’m not here to defend him.

I don’t own any Tesla or SpaceX stock, and I liked Twitter a lot more before he owned it.

I also generally don’t trust a lot of what he says and think that the cult of personality around him is strange.

That said, I think his companies have built some incredible technology, and he deserves credit where it’s due.

As far as his having $1 trillion on paper (mostly in the form of equity in his own companies, not in the form of cash sitting in a bank account), I don’t really care, and I mostly agree with Erik Voorhees’ take on the matter.

He’s worth that much, nominally speaking, in large part because of the absolute and saddening lack of discipline at the U.S. Federal Reserve (the Fed) and U.S. Treasury.

You couldn’t have trillionaires today without these two institutions.

It’s only because they’ve created so much money and debt respectively that one person’s net worth can now exceed a trillion dollars.

For context, in 1913, when the Fed was created, only $3.3 billion dollars circulated in the U.S. economy and the U.S. debt was just over $1 billion.

The richest man in the U.S. at the time was John D. Rockefeller, and he was worth $900 million.

Since the Fed’s creation, we’ve seen a drastic devaluation of the U.S. dollar, one that accelerated in 1971, when the U.S. officially left the gold standard.

The amount of public debt accelerated beginning in 1971, as well.

It’s only in this parabolic phase of money printing and debt issuance that we’re seeing a trillionaire in the U.S.

If the world were on a bitcoin standard right now, Musk would have to own just about half the sats in existence to have a trillion of them, which would be virtually impossible.

What is more, all of the reports of him being the world’s first trillionaire are factually incorrect.

In U.S. dollar terms, sure, he’s the first trillionaire.

But there are about 175 fiat currencies in existence and many others that failed before these.

Some currencies hyperinflate before they fail, creating many “trillionaires” in the process.

Just ask any Zimbabwean or Venezuelan.

There have been an abundance of trillionaires in those countries.

In 2008, the Zimbabwean government printed 100 trillion dollar notes toward the peak of hyperinflation in the country.

Each of those notes was worth approximately $35 U.S. dollars, or 0.04 troy ounces / 1.25 grams of gold — virtually nothing compared to the massive 100 trillion number.

In 2021, the Venezuelan government had to take six zeros off of 100,000,000 bolívar notes, reducing them to 100 bolívar notes, in the wake of the country’s hyperinflation crisis.

My point is less than the U.S. dollar will hyperinflate tomorrow, and more that when you start to see trillionaires in a country, it’s more a sign of a broken monetary and financial system than it is of real wealth being created.

Don’t get me wrong, Elon Musk has real wealth (and I’m more than okay with both him and his companies paying their fair share of taxes), but what you’re witnessing here is more a sign of the real monetary and financial issues the U.S. is facing than it is an indication of Musk’s financial success.

Best,

Frank

X | LinkedIn | Nostr

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On Friday, bitcoin’s Relative Strength Index (RSI) momentarily dropped to its lowest level vs. the U.S. dollar on the daily chart since November 24, 2018.

Lower than the the COVID- and FTX-induced crashes.

This means that bitcoin is selling at a notable discount.

Put another way, this is an opportunity to buy more of a finite asset for less of your hard-earned fiat (U.S. dollars, Kenyan shillings, etc.).

Therefore, it’s best to look at this recent precipitous drawdown bitcoin’s price as a something to be grateful for as opposed to something to be scared of.

That said, please note that bitcoin’s price can go lower.

Will it go lower?

Good question. I don’t have the answer to that.

I think we’ll see another major price dip when the broader market crashes — something I think will happen later this year — but bitcoin’s price could be back up closer to $90k by the time that crash happens.

That said, I’m not making the argument that ~$60k is a good price for bitcoin because you should sell it some time in the near future. (In fact, I don’t think it’s best to sell it at all. It’s better that you use it. It’s money, after all.)

I’m making the argument because one bitcoin cost $126k not so long ago, and $60k is much cheaper than that.

Buy bitcoin. Hold it. Use it at a later date.

And when you buy it, don’t use exchanges like Coinbase. (Coinbase is gross. More on that here.)

Instead, use exchanges like Strike, River, Fold, Bitcoin Well, Hodl Hodl.

Here’s my referral code for Strike.

You can also use the Fold app to get free sats every day, to get sats back on gift card purchases, and to get sats back on everyday purchases with the Fold credit card. Here’s my referral link for Fold.

And you can use the Gemini credit card to get up to 4% back in sats on everyday purchases. Here’s my referral code for Gemini.

If you’ve been on the fence about making your first bitcoin purchase, you might consider this edition of the newsletter your sign to do so.

Please note that none of the above is financial advice. It’s simply me sharing my thoughts on the current market. I share these thoughts for educational purposes only.

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The Trezor Safe 3 is one of the most affordable and easy-to-use hardware wallets on the market today.

Click on the image below to get started on your self custody journey.

What Conviction Sounds Like

In the last few editions of the newsletter, I’ve written about not giving too much of your time and energy to traditional systems and, instead, moving more of your time and energy into the Bitcoin and freedom tech spaces.

I understand that this suggestion may sound abstract.

So, I’m sharing the video below for you to listen to the words of a convicted Bitcoin and freedom tech advocate — Jon, co-founder of Harlem Bitcoin.

Jon has done his homework on this technology and now spends some of his time teaching others about it and growing a Bitcoin community.

Listen to just 10-15 minutes of the video below and I think you’ll feel what I’ve been trying to say.

That’s all.

I’m going to shortening the newsletter and maybe writing a bit less infrequently over the summer here in New York.

I’ve got a few other things cooking right now, and I need to dedicate more of my time and energy to them.

That said, I’ll still be in touch when I feel it’s important.

Big love and big hugs.

Best,

Frank

X | LinkedIn | Nostr

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I came across the X post below earlier this week. It made me sad and bothered me.

It made me sad because the sentiment feels about right, as most people I speak with feel quite burnt out and fearful right now.

It bothered me because these sorts of statements can serve as a kind of contagion — they get other people thinking along the same lines, creating a scenario where more and more people feel hopeless.

According to the study, 48% say that there lives are lacking in fun, with 57% saying that budget constraints are the barrier to fun.

I’m sure most of these people feel that they’re in the situation in which they find themselves due to some sort of personal failing, which can exacerbate the negative feeling.

While some of the people in this study may have a habit of spending money unwisely, all of them are struggling not just because of financial or economic problems, but because of a broader monetary problem: the U.S. dollar has been losing value at an astounding rate over the past 55 years, and we’re now in a scenario where practically everyone in the U.S. is feeling the pain.

In short, it’s difficult to stay solvent in an insolvent system.

And so, I’m humbly recommending that you not dedicate too much time and effort to a broken system that you consider moving more of your time and energy over into the Bitcoin and freedom tech space.

When you not only hold or use Bitcoin but begin to build in the Bitcoin space with integrity, incredible things can happen.

You tend to not only end up in a better financial situation, but you become more optimistic, and in some cases, defy all odds and achieve things that many around you — and maybe even you yourself — never thought possible. (You know, like going from writing a Substack newsletter to becoming a White House correspondent.)

One of my favorite examples of this is the story of Lorraine Marcel and Bitcoin Dada, a institution and educational platform that builds financial, technical, and leadership capability for women in Africa.

Bitcoin Dada recently celebrated its fourth year as an organization and Lorraine published a beautiful piece entitled “From the Margins to the Infrastructure: The Bitcoin Dada Story” on all that the institution has accomplished for those it serves and for her personally.

Here’s a segment from it:

“I grew up inside a system designed to limit me.

Not in an abstract, structural sense — in the lived, daily, suffocating sense. By the time I was ten years old, I was already questioning the story I had been handed: that my highest aspiration was marriage, that my role in the economy was peripheral, that the world of wealth, power, and ideas was simply not mine to inhabit. That early defiance became a quiet compass. For years, I was drawn — almost unconsciously — toward anything that built women up. I didn’t have the language for it then. I just knew that financial dependence was one of the most effective tools of control ever devised, and that breaking it open was the work worth doing.

2018: A Lesson in What Not to Do

My first introduction to crypto came in 2018, during the ICO frenzy. The promise was seductive: financial freedom, decentralisation, money that moved at the speed of ideas. FOMO is a powerful force, and I gave in to it completely — diving in without a mentor, without a framework, with nothing but hunger and hope. What I found was a casino dressed up in the language of revolution. Projects collapsed. Tokens evaporated. People made fortunes and people lost everything. By 2021, I had stepped back, bruised but curious.

That period of observation led me to Bitcoin. Initially, the decision was simple. Bitcoin was the foundation, the origin point. If I was going to understand this space, I needed to start at the base layer. But the deeper I went, the clearer it became that Bitcoin was not just another asset class—it was a fundamentally different system. A decentralized, permissionless, open monetary network that did not rely on trust in institutions, but on verifiable code and global consensus. For someone who grew up watching institutions be used as instruments of exclusion, Bitcoin read like a different kind of promise entirely.

2022: The Moment Everything Shifted

In 2022, shortly after the COVID-19 period, I organised a small meet up with Paco de la India, who was traveling across the world connecting Bitcoin communities. It was an intimate room, mostly filled with what many would describe as “Bitcoin bros.” I stayed out of curiosity. But what I witnessed in that room was not hype, it was conviction. The kind that comes from understanding something deeply.

I thought about Africa — a continent where 57% of adults remain unbanked, where cross-border remittances are taxed at some of the highest rates in the world, where currency devaluation quietly destroys the savings of working people, and where women face compounded barriers: restricted land rights, limited credit access, social norms that discourage financial autonomy. And I thought: this technology was built for exactly this.

Then I thought about us – African women specifically. And I went looking. Across an entire continent of over 700 million women, I found two actively participating in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Two!!!!

That number became a call to action…

Please take the time to read the rest of the piece.

I share Lorraine’s story because

1. I think we can all use a dose of inspiration right now

2. She didn’t just buy some bitcoin and hope that its price went up — she actively built a community with an inclusive and permissionless monetary technology at the center of it

Had Lorraine spent her time fighting against the system that was oppressing her and other African women instead of building in a completely new system, she likely wouldn’t have made the exponential progress she’s made in her own life and in the lives of others.

The Bitcoin Dada story is a story of 1 + 1 = 3.

It’s the story of what likely seemed to some like an impossible vision come to life, a story of what it means to capitalize on community and global synergies to do something much bigger than one would have been able to do on one’s own, and a story of faith and dedication as opposed to one of logic and rationalization.

One last thing: Lorraine’s latest endeavor is an extension of Bitcoin Dada called Dada Devs, which I wrote about for Forbes. It’s a program for female African developers, and Lorraine and her team recently even built a hub — Dada Hub: Africa’s first physical Bitcoin developer space.

If you’d like to financially contribute to Dada Hub, you can do so via their Geyser Fund campaign.

Bitcoin Adoption in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

If Lorraine’s story wasn’t enough to snap you out of your “I’ll never have fun again” pity party, then the story of Gloire Kambale Wanzavalere might do the trick.

Wanzavalere is an entrepreneurial polymath based in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

He has a “utopian” vision for how Bitcoin will help Africa, and he isn’t waiting around for that vision to bring itself to life.

Instead, he’s building as if their were no tomorrow.

So, please enjoy my latest Spotlight piece for Fedi:

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Oh, you’re pumped up after reading all that?

But you still haven’t taken your bitcoin out of the hands of the exchange you bought it on?

My goodness.

Take some of that energy you’re feeling and get started on your self-custody journey with a Trezor Safe 3 today.

Markets

Bitcoin dipped a bit further than I predicted — we’re back down at $73k.

Where we’re headed from here in the short term is hard to say.

RSI is quite low. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a bounce tomorrow or this week.

The bigger question in my mind right now is whether the $77-78k area becomes resistance or support.

In the meantime, these are decent levels for DCAing. (That’s not financial advice, nor is anything I share in this newsletter.)

However, I know money is tight right now for many, so if you live in the U.S. and you’re looking to stack some sats without spending your hard-earned fiat, I highly recommend using the Fold app and the Gemini credit card to do so.

You can use the Fold app to get free sats every day and to get sats back on gift card purchases. You can use my referral link to sign up.

And you can use the Gemini credit card to get up to 4% back in sats on everyday purchases. Again, you can use my referral link to sign up.

Also, if you are buying bitcoin as these levels, please stop using Coinbase (more on why here).

Use Bitcoin-only exchanges like Strike, Fold, River, or Bitcoin Well, instead.

Thank you for reading!

Please keep your head up.

I believe wholeheartedly that brighter days are coming, and that they’re coming sooner if you move more of your time and energy over to Bitcoin. (Little by little, step by step — it doesn’t have to be all at once.)

Here’s to a fantastic week ahead.

Big love and big hugs.

Best,

Frank

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After attending a Springsteen concert last week at Madison Square Garden, I continued to go down a Springsteen rabbit hole, even though I kinda said I wouldn’t.

In traversing further down that rabbit hole, I came across the video below of Springsteen performing on the penultimate night of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

Before performing “Streets of Minneapolis,” a protest song about the two people that ICE killed in the midwestern city — an event that I wrote stirred within me a sense of dread and despair — Springsteen took his shots at Trump and the heads of CBS for cancelling Colbert.

The critique he offered was fair, and I appreciated the spirit of what he was doing.

What irked me, though was the way Colbert said “Thank you, Bruce… Thank you” as he shook Springsteen’s hand after the song had concluded.

It had this condescending tone to it, as if what Colbert really wanted to say was “Thank you, Bruce, for reinforcing everything I pound into my listeners brains every night. We’re the good guys. Trump is the bad guy. It’s that simple.”

It was the same vibe I often get when listening to most academics speak: We know best. Just listen to us. We’re on the good team. We’re here to confirm that we’re the good guys. No nuance to take into account here. No critical thinking necessary.

This morning, I came across a satirical post on X by Peter Girnus, who also publishes here on Substack, in which he wrote from the perspective of the “SVP of Late Night Strategy at CBS.”

While he’s hyperbolic at a points, and I don’t necessarily agree with each of the points he’s trying to make, the post is well-written, and implies certain points I attempted to make in last week’s edition of the newsletter:

• stop letting yourself be emotionally jerked around by political rhetoric

• do something; don’t just have your thoughts and feelings validated by those with whom you already agree

• stop placing so much faith and hope in external figures and start placing more within yourself; be your own hero

Here’s the post:

I am the Senior Vice President of Late Night Strategy at CBS. I am the person who turned a comedian into a priest and charged advertisers to watch the congregation.

I want to be precise about what I built. Not a comedy show. A permission structure. For eleven years, six million Americans tuned in every night to find out what they were allowed to believe by morning. We didn't sell jokes. We sold certainty. Certainty costs nothing to produce. People will pay anything for it. We charged $50 million a year and still lost money because it turns out permission is even cheaper than we thought.

In 2014, we had a genuinely dangerous comedian. A man who once testified before Congress in character as a fictional conservative pundit and made the entire chamber look like they'd been pantsed on C-SPAN. His fake persona was the most brilliant satire on television. Layered. Ironic. Unpredictable. The character could say anything because nothing was real. The character was the art. The character was the comedian.

We killed the character and put the real man on stage. The real man was a lecturer. Earnest. Thoughtful. Correct about everything. Correct is not funny. Correct is not dangerous. Correct is the absence of danger. We promoted the absence of danger and called it growth. His character could make a Senate committee squirm. The real him makes an audience nod. Nodding pays the same as squirming. Nodding is easier to produce.

His final words on air were "We love doing this show for you, but what we really, really love is doing this show with you." The audience wept. I wrote that line. Not the words. The architecture that made those words feel true. For eleven years, the audience believed they were participants. They were not participants. They were the product. "With you" is what you say to a congregation. A comedian says "at you." We hadn't said "at you" since 2015.

Our internal metric was called Affirm Rate. It measured the percentage of monologue segments that generated applause instead of laughter. I invented this metric. I also invented the bonus structure tied to it. In 2015, our Affirm Rate was 34%. By 2022, it was 94%. I received a raise every year. We are crushing it. At the things I made up. That's performance management.

But I need to tell you about the real discovery. The one I put in a deck called "Content Strategy 2019-2024." The one that got me promoted.

Agreement gets applause. I knew that early. But correction — telling the audience their vocabulary is slightly outdated, their outrage is aimed two degrees off-center, their feelings are valid but their phrasing needs work — correction gets them back tomorrow. Agreement is a transaction. Correction is a subscription. We converted a comedy show into a nightly software update for moral vocabulary. Churn was near zero. They couldn't afford to miss an episode. Missing an episode meant using last week's words in this week's meeting. That's social death. We monetized the fear of social death and called it entertainment.

I want to be honest about something. The content was not bipartisan. We chose a side. But I need you to understand: we did not choose it because we believed in it. We chose it because that side's audience is more responsive to correction. They want to be updated. They want to be told their language is outdated. They experience correction as care. The other side does not respond to correction. They respond to provocation. Provocation is harder to monetize. You can't build a subscription on provocation because the audience doesn't come back to learn — they come back to fight. Fighting is unpredictable. Correction is scheduled. We optimized for the audience that wants to be told what to think. That audience leaned one direction. That's not ideology. That's market segmentation.

The writers' room had a whiteboard. In 2015 it said "What's funny?" In 2018 it said "What should they feel?" By 2021 it said "What are they still saying wrong?" I watched that whiteboard evolve like a finch beak and I never intervened. The market was speaking. We listened. Listening to the market is the same as leading the audience. They can't tell the difference.

A writer named Marcus raised his hand in 2019. "What if we just tried to make them laugh again?" I thanked him for his passion and scheduled a creative alignment conversation. He transferred to streaming development within the month. The Affirm Rate the week he left was 91%. Laughter would have brought it down. That's risk management.

Here is what nobody will say out loud. I will say it because I am proud of it.

We made our audience worse at politics.

Not better. Worse. Every night for eleven years, we expressed their outrage for them. Professionally. With a band and good lighting. And because the outrage had been expressed — because a man in a suit had furrowed his brow with the precise calibrated degree of indignation — they didn't need to express it themselves. They watched. They clapped. They felt the catharsis of resistance without resisting anything. They went to bed having done nothing and feeling like they'd done something. That's the product. Not comedy. Not information. Catharsis. Catharsis is the enemy of action. A man who has screamed into a pillow does not then also scream in the street. We were the pillow. A $50 million pillow with a house band.

If you feel the outrage has been expressed for you, you will not march. You will not organize. You will not call your representative. You will tune in tomorrow to feel it expressed again. That's retention. Our retention was extraordinary.

I want to talk about the comedy-to-catechism pipeline because I think people underestimate what we achieved.

Stage one: comedian makes jokes about the powerful. Audience laughs because the powerful are absurd. This is the Carlin model. The jester punches up. Everyone below feels relief.

Stage two: comedian makes jokes about people who disagree with the audience. Audience laughs because disagreement is stupid. The jester has turned around. He's still on the stage but now he's facing the crowd with a pointer.

Stage three: comedian stops making jokes. Comedian identifies incorrect beliefs and explains why they're dangerous. Audience does not laugh. Audience claps. The jester is gone. In his place: a hall monitor with a desk and a band.

Stage four: audience watches not for entertainment but for certification. Having seen last night's episode means you know which words are current. Not having seen it means you might use yesterday's vocabulary in today's meeting. The show is no longer comedy. It is a credential. Watching it means you are educated. Not watching means you are the person being discussed. We made a show that you watch to prove you're not the kind of person who doesn't watch it. That's a closed loop. Closed loops don't need content. They need continuity. We provided continuity for $50 million a year.

A comedian — whose entire historical function was to say things too dangerous for anyone else to say — became the person who decides which things are too dangerous for anyone to say. And the audience applauded. Every night. For 2,500 nights. Because being told what is forbidden feels exactly like being told what you already knew. Prohibition performed as validation. I put that in the deck too.

Our audience was correct about everything. I know this because they applauded everything we said. The applause proved the correctness. The correctness justified the applause. We called this audience research. The methodology was peer-reviewed by the audience. They approved unanimously. Every night.

The actually funny comedians left. They went to podcasts. To clubs. To rooms where the audience doesn't know what's coming and that uncertainty is the point. They took the laughter with them. We kept the applause. We called those spaces problematic. That's market differentiation. The problematic spaces are funnier. But funny is not our product.

We lost $40 million a year. We didn't lose it because the show failed. We lost it because we spent $50 million producing what a podcast host in his garage gives away between mattress ads. The podcast is funnier. The podcast is more dangerous. The podcast has an audience that laughs instead of claps. But we had the Ed Sullivan Theater. We had 461 seats. We had a former Beatle play the farewell episode. Paul McCartney, Elvis Costello, Jon Batiste, and Louis Cato playing "Hello, Goodbye" like it was a benediction. I booked a Beatle for a funeral. The Beatles played that stage in 1964 and the audience screamed so loud you couldn't hear the music. Our audience didn't scream. They wept politely. That's the difference between entertainment and church. We ran a church.

Jon Stewart showed up to the finale and did a bit where he pretended to deliver a corporate statement from Paramount about the cancellation. The audience laughed. It was the first time they laughed in a way I didn't recognize. Involuntary. Surprised. Dangerous. For ninety seconds, a comedian was in that building. Then it was over.

John Oliver said "At some point, this may come for all of our shows" and then added "but Stephen, what's important to remember is that tonight, it is going to eat you." The audience laughed again. Involuntary again. Two moments of actual comedy in a three-hour farewell. Both of them about death.

The finale drew 6.74 million viewers. Biggest weeknight audience in our history. More people came to the funeral than ever visited the patient. I know what they were mourning. Not comedy. The comedy died in 2016. Not the man. The man is fine. He's wealthy. What they mourned was the permission structure. Starting today, they have to decide what to believe on their own. They have to form an opinion without waiting for a man behind a desk to form it first and deliver it with a knowing look. Some of them haven't done that since 2015. The funeral wasn't for the show. It was for the certainty.

He joked about the Peanuts theme music licensing cost on his last night. "Oh no! I hope this doesn't cost CBS any money!" The audience laughed. It was a joke about money. About the network losing money. The last joke was about money. Not about truth. Not about power. About a licensing fee for a cartoon piano riff. Eleven years and the final joke was about accounting. I think that's perfect. The show was always about accounting. We just dressed it up as conscience.

The President of the United States — the man we spent eleven years explaining was dangerous to an audience that already believed he was dangerous — posted an AI-generated video of our host being thrown into a dumpster on the Late Show set. Then Trump danced to "YMCA" in the clip. Viewed more times in four hours than our farewell managed in a week. His production cost: zero. Ours: negative $50 million a year. We manufactured his relevance every night at 11:35 for eleven years and he never paid us a dime. We were his marketing department. He turned our funeral into content. His ROI was infinite. Ours required a write-off and a farewell concert.

The Strike Force Five — Fallon, Kimmel, Meyers, Oliver — appeared in a segment about late-night losing "one middle-aged white man who makes jokes about the news." They were joking about their own obsolescence. All of them know. None of them will say it. The format is dead. The audience moved to phones. The phones don't have desks or bands. The phones have men in garages who are allowed to be wrong, allowed to be surprised, allowed to say something their audience hasn't already approved. That's comedy. We stopped doing that a decade ago. We did approval. Approval looks like comedy from a distance. Up close it's church.

I do not feel guilt. Guilt would require me to believe I took something from them. I didn't take anything. They came to us. Every night. They chose the catechism over the comedy. They preferred correction over surprise. Certainty over danger. Instruction over laughter. They wanted to be told. Not challenged. Not shocked. Not made to laugh against their will at something they didn't see coming. They wanted to see it coming. They wanted to mouth along. That's not comedy. That's karaoke. We ran the most expensive karaoke bar in television history and the only miscalculation was charging a cover when the songs are free on every phone.

We turned a jester into a priest. We turned an audience into a congregation. We turned laughter into obedience. We turned political engagement into passive consumption. We turned a comedy show into a permission structure and charged $50 million a year to tell people what they already believed in a voice slightly nicer than their own.

They were so grateful they showed up to mourn us. 6.74 million of them. Weeping. For the certainty.

Applause is more reliable than laughter. I proved it. The proof cost $450 million, one character, one comedian's capacity for danger, and one audience's willingness to act.

The metric went up.

Again, I don’t agree with all of what Girnus says and implies, and I would argue that the likes of Colbert and Jon Stewart do a better job at genuinely critiquing Democrats than pundits on Fox News do at critiquing the political right.

But I do very much agree with his broader point about Colbert being someone who people outsource their thinking to when it comes to what the politically correct way to think is.

With that said, a bigger takeaway here (and one that the author doesn’t make) is that personalities/pundits like Colbert on both the left and the right harvest your attention and keep you paying close attention to the spectacle that is political theater.

I’m not saying that we should ignore politics completely, as I believe we all have a civic duty to vote for and engage with elected officials.

I just think it’s equally if not more important to free ourselves from systems that harvest our time, energy, attention, and data.

This is why I advocate for Bitcoin, Nostr and other open-source tech that actually puts the power back in people’s hands.

Imagine a world where fewer people focused their attention on political punditry and spent more time educating themselves on how to be more self sovereign.

Imagine if people learned how to run a Bitcoin node and use Bitcoin privately, how to better engage with open protocols instead of walled-garden platforms, and how to host open-source LLMs locally instead using centrally-controlled LLMs that suck in our data for the surveillance state.

If you’d like to begin that educational process, I recommend subscribing to the following channel:

All of the people I know who are doing these things feel more empowered and don’t feel as susceptible to what traditional systems try to make them think and feel.

The world transforms when we take responsibility for transforming ourselves. Learning how to use tools that empower us is part of this process.

The world stays the same or gets worse outsourcing our thinking and allow ourselves to be emotionally ping-ponged back and forth by the powers that be.

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If you’re looking to get started on your journey toward a more self-sovereign life, check out the Trezor Safe 3, one of the most affordable and easy-to-use Bitcoin hardware wallets on the market today.

Remember, you don’t technically own any bitcoin if that bitcoin is in the hands of an exchange.

Take control of your bitcoin with a Trezor Safe 3.

Markets

As I said a few weeks back, bitcoin was likely going to revisit $74k before it went higher. This week, we tapped just over $74k just before bouncing off of it.

If I had to guess, we’ll head back above $80k within the next week or two.

That said, I’m becoming a bit more concerned with the broader market backdrop.

The S&P 500 has been on a tear in the last few weeks, and I get the feeling that we’re heading into a final leg up before the bubble pops.

I could very well be wrong here, but as I’ve said in this newsletter for a while now, I subscribe to the thesis that we’re heading to the top of a decades-long cycle that ends in a massive bust.

For this reason, I’m holding onto more fiat than I normally would.

Please note that this is just me sharing my perspective on markets. It isn’t financial advice, nor is anything I write in this newsletter.

Okay, that’s all for this week.

Thank you for reading, and here’s to a fantastic week ahead filled with lots of opportunities to be a hero and to transform the world around you.

Big love and big hugs.

Best,

Frank

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Last night, I went to see Bruce Springsteen at Madison Square Garden.

I’m still buzzing from the sheer amount of energy that came off the stage for three hours from the nearly 20-piece band.

And I say that as someone who isn’t necessarily the biggest Springsteen fan.

However, I am someone who appreciates talent and who has a deep respect for those with an exemplary work ethic.

Bruce has both of these in spades.

Plus, I spent the last few weeks going down a Springsteen discography rabbit hole after watching Deliver Me from Nowhere, a biopic on Springsteen, last month.

This prepped me to better absorb the songs last night.

What I wasn’t totally prepped for was the amount of political banter at the show.

Even though I agreed with a good portion of what Springsteen had to say about the state of U.S. politics, what I couldn’t fully take in was the idea that if we just get rid of the current president, things will get significantly better.

And, this morning, when I read a review in Rolling Stone of Springsteen’s show at Madison Square Garden this past Monday entitled “Bruce Springsteen’s Tour Is An American Revival That Succeeds Where Democrats Fail” I was frustrated with the idea of the mainstream media (Is Rolling Stone that? IDK) putting forth the idea that if we just vote harder and get the “good guys” into office, things will markedly improve.

The closing paragraph of the piece particularly irked me. It read as follows:

“The show began with a light lingering on an empty spot behind the mic stand, which Springsteen eventually stepped into for his opening speech. In the moments before his arrival, it was hard not to think about that void, and dread the day that Bruce Springsteen won’t be around to fill it.”

While I respect how well-written this piece of text is, what I didn’t like was this idea it presented — that we’ll be lost when the likes of Bruce Springsteen isn’t around to convince us that fighting within a broken system is what really matters.

Now, I know we all need people to look up to. I think this is actually a good and special part of the human condition.

However, my issues with such a statement is that it posits two things that I fundamentally disagree with:

1. The onlooker is powerless

2. That just fighting within a broken system instead of opting into new systems is the only way forward

Please don’t get me wrong, I still believe that we need to take part in political processes, and I respect that fact that Springsteen urged people to get involved instead of just saying something along the lines of “follow me and I’ll fix it.”

But what he didn’t say is that President Trump is a symptom of a broken system, not the cause of it. And at the core of that broken system is broken money, which deeply warps political incentives.

For example, Springsteen spoke out against the war in Iran — a war the U.S. couldn’t afford to start if it didn’t have the ability to print money and/or issue debt to no end.

While I don’t fault Bruce if he hasn’t read his Hayek and Mises, and I understand full well that he’s a rockstar speaking to arenas full of everyday people who don’t know who either of those names are or why their work is significant, I am also no longer susceptible to getting riled up or enthused when a celebrity tells me that Democrats are the answer, or even that we just need to get rid of this particular president for my situation to materially improve.

That said, I believe Bruce’s heart is in the right place, and I respect the fact that he not only speaks his mind on the topic of politics but encourages people to stand up against authoritarianism.

And I think if he knew more about the transformative power of Bitcoin, he’d support the way that South Africans are fighting back against their own tyrannical government right now in efforts to preserve their right to own and use bitcoin as well as more broadly maintain property rights.

I spoke about this with Bitcoin Ekasi founder Hermann Vivier this week.

You can watch and/or listen to our conversation here:

You can watch and listen on Apple Podcasts and Fountain, as well.

But let me get to my point…

I share these thoughts because I believe that when we believe that someone else or some other entity that will save us, we give our power away, and we’re often left feeling disappointed when we aren’t “saved.”

I don’t like being let down like that any more, which is why I tend to think about what’s actually in my power in considering how to address an issue.

Bitcoin is one thing that puts power back in my hands, and I’ve seen it do the same for many all over the world, some of whom are in far worse political situations than the situation in the U.S., and this is why I advocate for it.

But there is something that people tend to get wrong about Bitcoin much like the way that I think the writer from the aforementioned Rolling Stone article missed the mark in a way about his comment about how we’ll feel in a world without Bruce.

And that is that neither Bitcoin nor Bruce are the endgame, and neither are altars at which we should worship.

It’s better to view both as catalysts, entities that respectively empower and inspire us.

I thought about this a lot this morning, as a felt the lingering buzz from last night’s concert.

My first instinct was to do whatever I could to hold onto the buzz.

I looked into other dates on the tour I might be able to attend, and I even picked up my acoustic guitar again and daydreamed for a bit again about being a rockstar (I used to perform a decent amount as a singer-songwriter and I’ve played in a number of bands).

But then I realized that this wasn’t the point.

Trying to emulate or further follow the person that helped give you that buzz isn’t the answer. And trying to hold onto the buzz isn’t the goal.

The point is to transform that buzz into energy into something that helps you to bring your dreams and your ideal vision of yourself to life.

This is similar to the notion that the point of Bitcoin isn’t to acquire more bitcoin or to be in awe of how awesome Bitcoin is (doing a little of that is okay), it’s to use it as a tool to accomplish what you truly want to accomplish in your life.

People like Springsteen should inspire you to be the hero in your story, and tools like bitcoin help you to accomplish this.

While it’s important to be politically active and to stand up for what you believe, it’s also important to not spend too much of your time and energy fighting within a broken system.

In other words, it’s essential to not just be against what we don’t like, but for the things that do empower us and structurally shift the paradigm so to better enable ourselves and others to be the heroes in our own stories.

Best,

Frank

Bitcoin is a tremendous tool for empowerment.

But not everyone understands that, and it takes people who do understand it to teach others about it and to facilitate situations in which people can come to not only grasp the tech but get their hands on it, as well.

And some of those people go above and beyond in their efforts to empower others with Bitcoin.

They give of themself selflessly to help the most vulnerable among us to gain some leverage in oppressive situations via Bitcoin.

I’ve had the distinct pleasure of talking/engaging with a number of these types of people in the work I do.

And in recent weeks, I’ve interviewed three people who truly embody this sort of spirit. I knew that they did not just because they told me about the incredible work that they do when I interviewed them but because of something I felt deep down after interviewing them or writing a story about them.

I walked away from each of these encounters feeling as if I was vibrating at higher frequency — like I was a candle that had been lit by another candle.

These three people are Venezuelan developer Francisco Calderón, Malawian Bitcoin educator Thandi Mtemang’ombe, and Afghan tech entrepreneur Roya Mahboob.

In this edition of the newsletter, I’ll a bit about each of them as well as links to the work I’ve created with them.

Francisco Calderón

Francisco is a seasoned open-source developer who dedicates his to time to developing Mostro, a protocol that enables people throughout the world (Latin America in particular) to trade peer-to-peer permissionlessly and without KYC.

Francisco could be applying his skills at a job that pays much more, but he works on Mostro, which is built to work in the most challenging, low-tech scenarios — places like Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran — because he believes with all his heart that the people in this country should have access to the type of freedom tech that helps them to get their hands on bitcoin.

In my conversation with Francisco, we spoke about the work, his vision for who he’d like to reach, and the current situation in his home country, Venezuela.

You can also listen on Apple Podcasts and Fountain.

Thandi Mtemang'ombe

Thandi is a Malawian woman who co-founded the Women of Satoshi Cooperative.

Thandi helps to educate women who live in rural Malawi about Bitcoin, and, in her efforts, she makes sure to include women who haven’t completed their formal schooling and/or who are illiterate.

This work is particularly necessary in Malawi, where the national currency has been decimated in recent years.

In just one day alone — 9 November 2023 — the central bank of Malawi devalued the Malawian kwacha by 44% against the U.S. dollar.

And, according to Thandi, the prices of certain everyday goods in the country have nearly doubled in recent months, while the wages of most people living in the rural regions of the country have remained stagnant.

Read more about situation in Malawi as well as the wonderful and inspiring work that Thandi does to help empower the most vulnerable in the country in the following piece I published or Fedi this week:

Roya Mahboob

Roya Mahboob has been using Bitcoin to empower women in her home country of Afghanistan since 2013 (the same year she was ranked by Time Magazine as of of the most 100 influential people in the world) when she started paying women at tech her company in Bitcoin. (Great piece by Alex Gladstein on how and why Roya did this here.)

Some of those women fled the country and started a new life elsewhere. They weren’t able to leave with many things of value, as these things would have been stolen at border crossings or at other points along the way, but they were able to write down their 12-word Bitcoin seed phrase and keep that hidden until they reached a safer place.

I caught up with Roya on behalf of Bitcoin Magazine at MIT last month and spoke with her about the work that she does as well as why more mainstream institutions haven’t acknowledged the work that people like her are doing with Bitcoin.

We also generally discussed how Bitcoin is used as a tool for human rights in places like Afghanistan and Iran.

If you’re unfamiliar with Roya’s work, I highly recommend watching this interview:

No markets section this week.

I’m fighting a nasty cold, and it’s hard to talk about Bitcoin as number go up tech after writing about the people above.

Thank you, as always, for reading, and here’s to a wonderful week ahead!

Big hugs and big love.

Best,

Frank

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Bitcoin was designed to tip the balance of power back into the hands of individuals.

It’s a tool to (re)distribute power amongst its holders, who gain leverage from holding it and being able to transact over a permissionless network.

While this was front and center in the messaging from early Bitcoin enthusiasts, many of whom were libertarians and anarchists, things have changed a bit.

Now, some Bitcoiners are more interested in exercising their power over others — “wearing the boot,” so to speak — instead of working towards a world with no (or at least fewer) “boots.”

Plus, we’re in an era in which many Bitcoin enthusiasts seem to be more into figures like Trump, Bukele, and Michael Saylor, seeming proponents of Bitcoin, than Bitcoin itself.

On these fronts and more, it seems we’ve strayed from the original mission.

And so when I saw the following post on X from Lightning Labs Developer Advocate Hannah Rosenberg, I had to reach out, because I had a feeling we’d see eye-to-eye what currently feels *off* in the world of Bitcoin.

Turns out, I was right.

Both Hannah and I are a bit concerned that we’re losing the plot — that some authoritarianism and elitism has crept into the Bitcoin space and that we’ve brought some of our baggage from the traditional political and financial spheres over to Bitcoin.

The good news is that neither Hannah nor I feel that we can’t course correct and that there are still many in the space who are here for the original mission.

Enjoy the convo :)

You can also listen via Apple Podcasts and Fountain.

Told Ya So

While I don’t like using the phrase above, it feels a bit too fitting when it comes to a point I often make in this newsletter: inflation hurts the least well off among us the most.

In the following video, which is from April 29, 2026, you’ll see Kevin Warsh, soon-to-be Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve — the institution primarily responsible for inflation in the U.S. — drive home the point I made above.

For those who didn’t watch, here’s a segment of the discussion from the clip:

Senator Pete Ricketts (R-NE):

“I think you share the view that inflation is a silent tax on American households. Is that accurate?

Kevin Warsh:

“Senator, it’s accurate; it’s the most regressive that anyone in Washington can come up with. If you were trying to do the most harm to the least well off among us, inflation would be the way to do it.”

Just something to keep in mind next time you think I’m being hyperbolic when I write about how inflation hurts the poor the most.

PARTNERSHIP

While I’m a proponent of opting out of inflationary currencies with bitcoin, I believe that it’s only truly worth doing so if you’re going to take self custody of that bitcoin.

I recommend starting your self custody journey with the Trezor Safe 3 — an affordable and easy-to-use hardware wallet.

Click on the link below to learn more:

Write Code or Suit Up: Bitcoin 2026 Panel

I had the great privilege of joining Peter McCormack, Troy Cross, and American HODL on stage at Bitcoin 2026 last week to discuss whether Bitcoiners should suit up and run for office or focus on writing code.

Truly enjoyed the convo and grateful I got to be a part of it.

And I appreciate the person who made the tile for this video, as they’ve reminded me that I’m in desperate need of some sun.

Enjoy!

Markets

I’ve been quite wrong about bitcoin’s price as of late.

I’ve been predicting that we’d head back towards about $70-71k, but here we are at $80k. (I still think we head closer to about $73-74k soon.)

Anyway, this serves as a good reminder that dollar-cost averaging into bitcoin is better than trying to time the market.

None of us know what the market will do next for sure, and dollar-cost averaging into bitcoin, especially during bear markets, is a great way to slowly and humbly increase your bitcoin stack.

Okay. Very short rip this week.

I’m extremely burnt out from Vegas, and I need to recuperate.

Thank you, as always, for reading, though!

Big love and big hugs.

Best,

Frank

X | LinkedIn | Nostr

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Nelson Mandela’s political party, the African National Congress (ANC), has proposed capital flow management regulations that would effectively outlaw Bitcoin in South Africa.

The ANC has proposed these regulations even though Mandela himself shared support for a regulatory framework that included the “abolition of exchange controls” in his address to the National Foreign Trade Council on October 3, 1994.

Here’s the segment from Mandela’s address that includes this point:

Within this broad framework the South African Government is further committed to the following: a stable and predictable policy and regulatory framework that promotes investment, reduces protectionism, and increase investment opportunities for all; the abolition of exchange controls and the dual currency system as soon as objective conditions allow; the rapid conclusion of tax agreements with the United States; and implementation of the results of the Uruguay Round on trade arrangements.

He also called for the lifting of exchange controls in his State of the Nation Address from February 9, 1996:

In order to improve the investment climate, our monetary authorities are reviewing, on an on-going basis, the timing and pace of lifting existing exchange controls. For us, it is not a matter of whether, but of when, these controls will be phased out.

Still, though, the ANC wants to enact these regulations into law.

And if they do become law, it will mean that:

• Bitcoin self custody in South Africa will be banned

• Bitcoin holders will have to sell their bitcoin to the country’s National Treasury

• Bitcoin circular economies like Bitcoin Ekasi, Bitcoin Witsand, and Bitcoin Loxion will be be outlawed

In essence, the South African government is waging a war on Bitcoin — open, permissionless money that has been a lifeline for the unbanked in the country and a financial boon for many other South Africans.

One of my biggest inspirations in the Bitcoin space, Luthando Ndabambi, a member of the Bitcoin Ekasi community, shared on X how Bitcoin has had a transformative effect on his life:

It was what Ndabambi shared with me about the many tangible ways in which Bitcoin changed his life in my interview with him two years ago that made me fully commit to advocating for Bitcoin.

I want Bitcoin to help billions more people the way it has helped Ndabambi.

It’s deeply disturbing to think that it’s the political party of Mandela that’s looking enact a law that would hurt Ndabambi and the many other South Africans like him who’ve bettered their lives with Bitcoin.

So, please stand with South African Bitcoiners and help them make some noise online about this.

Please repost Ndabambi’s X post above and repost this post from Bitcoin Ekasi.

If you are South African or have friends or family in South Africa, please have them submit their objection to the proposed regulations here by May 18.

Let’s make sure we do what we can to ensure that all of the incredible Bitcoin adoption that’s happened across South Africa isn’t crushed by these senseless regulations.

PARTNERSHIP

Speaking of holding bitcoin… You have it in self custody, right?

I’m imaging that if you were savvy and sophisticated enough to find this newsletter, then you definitely are…

…but just in case you aren’t, you’ll likely want to check out the Trezor Safe 3, one of the most affordable and easy-to-use bitcoin hardware wallets on the market today:

More on Politics and Bitcoin…

I’ll be speaking on the following panel tomorrow, at Day 1 of Bitcoin 2026:

The discussion (which should be a fun one!) will be streamed live at 12:00 PM ET / 3:00 PM PST.

You can watch it at the link below or via the Bitcoin Magazine X account:

South Africa Should Learn from Bolivia

Bolivia banned Bitcoin for over a decade.

Luckily, the Bolivian government came to its senses in 2024 — after realizing that they can’t stop it — and legalized it.

Since then, Bitcoin/crypto transactions in the country are up 530%.

And organizations like Bitcoin Research are making sure that Bolivians are using Bitcoin securely and privately.

This week, I published a piece on the incredible work that the organization is doing.

From educating everyday Bolivians about Bitcoin to working with developers to create Bitcoin tools tailored to the Bolivian context to publishing academic papers on Bitcoin, Bitcoin Research is raising the bar for what a grassroots, community-focused Bitcoin organization can accomplish.

Enjoy the article!

Markets

While I thought we’d see bitcoin’s price closer to $70k by now, it’s stubbornly continuing to trade at about $77-78k.

No complaints!

That said, I still wouldn’t be surprised to see it come back down to $72k or so in the near future.

I’ve personally lightened my DCA at these levels, but generally speaking feel like this is still a decent place to be DCAing into bitcoin. (That isn’t financial advice, nor is anything I write in this newsletter.)

If money is tight, however, and you live in the U.S. and you’re still looking to stack sats without spending your hard-earned fiat on them, I highly recommend using the Fold app and the Gemini credit card to do so.

You can use the Fold app to get free sats every day and to get sats back on gift card purchases. You can also use the Fold credit card to earn sats on everyday purchases. Use my referral link to sign up for a Fold account today!

And you can use the Gemini credit card to get up to 4% back in sats on everyday purchases. Use my referral link to sign up for a Gemini account today!

Also, if you are buying bitcoin as these levels, please stop using Coinbase (more on why here).

Use Bitcoin-only exchanges like Strike, Fold, River, or Bitcoin Well, instead.

Alright, my layover is coming to a close, and I’ve gotta catch my flight to Vegas!

Again, don’t forget to tune in tomorrow at 12:00 PM ET / 3:00 PM PST to catch me live from the main stage at Bitcoin 2026.

And thank you as always for reading!

Big love and big hugs.

Best,

Frank

X | LinkedIn | Nostr

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A few months back, I published an edition of this newsletter in which I posited that the real rate of inflation over the past 55 years has been 9.3% per year on average.

In the piece, I used the price of gold as the measuring stick for the rate of inflation.

I suppose that my point in publishing that piece was similar to Luke Gromen’s point in publishing the chart above.

But before I get to exactly what that point is, please allow to explain what you’re looking at in this chart.

The blue line indicates the rate at which the S&P 500 has appreciated versus the US dollar. Put another way, whatever you invested in the S&P 500 in 2002 would be up 1,156.59% since then.

Seems like a pretty good investment, right? Not really. Keep reading to better understand why.

The red line indicates that the S&P 500 is down 17.53% since 2022 when priced in gold. Put another way, when you price the S&P 500 in hard money (gold) as opposed to a failing currency (the US dollar), the illusion of number go up in dollar terms becomes clear.

In the United States, many have been taught to think about the S&P 500 / the as if it were a savings vehicle, and, since the early 2000s, many in the US have invested in the via 401ks and other types of retirement account vehicles, as opposed just saving their money in a bank at a decent interest rate.

Since 2002, the highest interest rates we’ve seen in the US for bank accounts has been just over 5%, which means that if you were saving your money in a bank at such a rate, you would have only been losing 4.3% of your purchasing power per year (again, using 9.3% as the average annual rate of inflation).

The yield for bank savings accounts tends to mimic the Fed Funds rate, and when we look at the chart for the Fed Funds rate (below), we see that, while the rate has been as high as just over 5% at points, it’s actually be closer to or at 0% much more than it’s been closer to 5%.

So, since 2002, the best you could have done by holding your money in a high-yield savings account in the US is lose about 4% of your purchasing power, while most of the time, you were losing closer to 9%.

But let me not get too far off track.

Going back to Luke Gromen’s chart, it illustrates that your investment in the S&P 500 hasn’t even beaten inflation, because not only is the S&P 500 down 17.53% versus actual money (gold), but you have to pay a 15-30% capital gains tax when you sell you shares of the S&P 500 ($SPY).

So, in actuality, you’re down 17.53% + 15-30% of your average cost basis for your investment in the .

And this, ladies and gentleman, is is a poignant illustration of just how much the fiat system steals from you. It is a system premised upon theft.

Not only are those who’ve used the S&P 500 has a “savings account” lost, but those who’ve been living paycheck to paycheck for the last 24 years — the least well off among us — have lost even more dramatically, as they’ve just flat out had their purchasing power robbed at an average rate of 9.3% per year.

And if you look at the S&P 500’s performance versus bitcoin since Bitcoin’s inception, it makes the S&P 500 look like a shitcoin, all of which trend toward zero versus bitcoin.

While I’ll admit that this isn’t a fair comparison because Bitcoin is brand new and still benefitting from global network effects that increase daily, the chart still illustrates that, even over the last 10 years, the S&P 500 has essentially flatlined versus hard money, while Luke Gromen’s chart shows it performing very well versus the US dollar, broken money.

My point in all of this is that many of us work very hard for our money, and we deserve to have the value of our labor preserved over time with that money.

We shouldn’t have to speculate in markets to barely preserve our wealth. Our money should just do that for us.

While gold has done this wonderfully over the past 5,000 years, I advocate for Bitcoin because it’s considerably better (i.e., more easily divisible, more easily transportable) and considerably harder (i.e., it’s perfectly scarce and harder to produce than gold).

And because it’s virtually impossible to debase bitcoin, it’s the best tool that we have to preserving the value of our labor over longer time horizons (four years or more, at least).

Bitcoin isn’t a get rich quick scheme, it’s a don’t get poor slowly scheme, and a remedy to the theft at the core of the traditional monetary and financial systems.

Bitcoin, not STRC

If you were paying attention to Bitcoin-related news this week, you may have heard that Michael Saylor has used proceeds from the billions of dollars that flowed into $STRC, the preferred stock that his company, Strategy, issues, which tends to trade at about $100 and yields 11.5%, to buy almost 14,000 bitcoin this week.

But if the real annual inflation rate is 9.3% (I’d argue it’s currently closer to 13-15%), 11.5% barely beats inflation (or still doesn’t beat it).

Plus, if you’re buying and not bitcoin — especially in a bear market — you’re missing out on about 26.5% upside per year in return, as Michael Saylor himself says that bitcoin’s compound annual growth rate (CAGR) is about 38%, while he’s offering STRC buyers at 11.5%.

Plus, if you’re buying STRC, you’re also contributing to the following issues:

• You’re investing your money in a broken system that treats bitcoin as just another asset in that system versus a new protocol for money.

• You’re contributing to the centralization of the asset, which hurts bitcoin, as the Bitcoin network benefits from people using it versus the asset just sitting still (in a massive honeypot).

• You’re losing out on some of the best properties of bitcoin, like the fact that it’s both a bearer asset and can be used permissionlessly when you hold it in self-custody.

Obviously, please don’t treat my take on STRC as financial advice, as nothing I write in this newsletter is financial advice, nor should it be misconstrued as such.

I’m just sharing this info so that you think twice before purchasing a financial product that’s far inferior to bitcoin by practically all measures.

PARTNERSHIP

You don’t actually own any bitcoin, nor can you use it permissionlessly, until you self custody it.

The Trezor Safe 3 makes offline/cold storage self custody easy and affordable.

Click on the link below and pick one up today:

Why It’s Better To Own Actual Bitcoin

This week, I published a Community Spotlight feature for Fedi on Bitcoin Ekasi, Bitcoin circular economy based in South Africa. (If you’ve been reading this newsletter since early last year, you might remember that I’ve published a piece for Forbes on Bitcoin Ekasi.)

In the piece, Hermann Vivier, the founder of Bitcoin Ekasi, discusses how, for the next phase of Bitcoin adoption, we likely aren’t going to be explaining bitcoin’s superior monetary properties to people to get them to start holding it. (I guess I’ll have to stop writing sections of the newsletter like the one I led with this time around!)

We’re likely just going to show them how to use it to buy things that they need, like clothes, food, or even Internet access.

More on this in the piece:

Bullish on Bitcoin In India

This week, I sat down for a conversation with Vikas, a Bitcoin builder in India, and Dea Rezkitha, Fedi’s Southeast Asia Community Master, to talk about the apps Vikas has been building as well as what broader Bitcoin adoption across India looks like.

I walked away from the conversation feeling bullish about Bitcoin adoption in the country, as Vikas made it clear that, while people in India don’t often publicly share their thoughts on Bitcoin, more and more are holding and using it within India, and this number will only likely continue to increase with time.

Enjoy the conversation!

Markets

Bitcoin continues to trade above $70k, and the Straight of Hormuz remains open (I think — reports have been mixed).

If the straight stays open, I think we’ll continue to see bitcoin above $70k for a while longer.

If it closes, I think it could easily fall below $70k.

These remain decent levels for DCAing into bitcoin, in my opinion (not financial advice).

However, I know money is tight right now, so if you live in the U.S. and you’re looking to stack some sats without spending your hard-earned fiat, I highly recommend using the Fold app and the Gemini credit card to do so.

You can use the Fold app to get free sats every day and to get sats back on gift card purchases. You can use my referral link to sign up.

And you can use the Gemini credit card to get up to 4% back in sats on everyday purchases. Again, you can use my referral link to sign up.

Also, if you are buying bitcoin as these levels, please stop using Coinbase (more on why here).

Use Bitcoin-only exchanges like Strike, Fold, River, or Bitcoin Well, instead.

Thanks for reading, everyone!

I hope everyone is having / had a relaxing Sunday, and here’s to a wonderful week ahead!

Big love and big hugs.

Best,

Frank

X | LinkedIn | Nostr

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Hello and happy Sunday, everyone!

Just wanted to take a moment to spread the word that I’ll be speaking at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) today at 3:45 PM ET.

You can tune in via the livestream below:

I’ll be giving a talk about why advocating for Bitcoin and freedom tech matters as well as how to best do it.

In the talk, I will make the connection between the work I did at as a White House and political correspondent and the the work I have done in covering Bitcoin and freedom tech adoption in communities around the world via Forbes, Bitcoin Magazine, Fedi and my podcast, new renaissance capital.

Also, I will sit down for a fireside chat with the head of MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative, Neha Nerula, to discuss how Bitcoin scales, how people around the world are actually using Bitcoin on the ground, and the need to improve quality of the discourse around Bitcoin’s potential quantum issue.

You can watch that chat via the livestream at 1:25 PM ET.

A Nuanced Take on the Iran Conflict and Bitcoin in the Middle East

This week, I published my conversation with Faisal Saeed Al Mutar, founder and President of Ideas Beyond Borders and the Middle East, Uncovered newsletter.

I first met Faisal in HRF and Bitcoin circles have always appreciated his decency, optimism, and commitment to human rights.

Faisal, an Iraqi-American who fled Iraq in the wake of the fall of Saddam Hussein, tends to see the best in people, despite the challenges he’s had to confront in his life. (Or maybe because he’s had to confront and overcome those challenges.)

So, I reached out to him to speak about Iran because I was hoping that he was seeing something, some sort of a silver lining, that I, and just about everyone else I’ve spoken with on the matter, can’t see.

While he didn’t necessarily offer said silver lining in our conversation, he did share a very nuanced view on the matter, which, as someone who’s just trying to understand better what’s happening, I very much appreciated.

In our conversation we discussed:

• The best and worst case scenarios for the Iran conflict

• An ethnic and religious overview of Iranians (not all Iranians are Persians)

• Why and how Iran isn’t Venezuela

• Whether or not the majority of Iranians want regime change

• Important details about the Straight of Hormuz and who might control it moving forward

• Bitcoin adoption in the Middle East

While some of the information in the conversation is out of date at this point since we recorded late last week, what Faisal offered is still quite valuable for those looking to learn more about how things work in Iran and the Middle Eastern region more broadly.

PARTNERSHIP

Are you still leaving your bitcoin in the custody of an exchange?

You are?!?!

Why would you do this to me, Frank, the guy who’s been trying to teach you about the importance of self-sovereignty and holding your private keys for over five years now?!

(Just playing.)

But, for real, take custody of your bitcoin.

And use a hardware wallet that makes it easy to do so — like the Trezor Safe 3.

Bitcoin in Zambia

This week, I published a Community Spotlight piece for Fedi on Bitcoin Victoria Falls, a Bitcoin circular economy on the Zambia side of the Zambia-Zimbabwe border.

One of the co-founders of the project, Humphrey Simwinga, is this rare type of human being that is a great community leader, technically adept, and incredibly kind all at once.

In the piece, I shared his story and highlighted the incredible impact he’s had on his community.

A great read if you’re looking to feel uplifted and inspired.

Markets

Last week, I said that I didn’t think we likely wouldn’t see bitcoin's price above $70k for an extended of period of time if the Straight of Hormuz were to remain closed, but it’s open now and bitcoin is trading at just over $71k.

Will it stay around or above this level for much longer? I’m not sure.

I think much of this depends on whether or not the Straight of Hormuz stays open (I don’t foresee that it won’t) and what the final deal between the U.S. and Iran looks like if they are to maintain the ceasefire that was established this week.

IMHO, these are still decent levels for DCAing into bitcoin. (That’s not financial advice. Please don’t interpret it as such.)

However, I know money is tight right now, so if you live in the U.S. and you’re looking to stack some sats without spending your hard-earned fiat, I highly recommend using the Fold app and the Gemini credit card to do so.

You can use the Fold app to get free sats every day and to get sats back on gift card purchases. You can use my referral link to sign up.

And you can use the Gemini credit card to get up to 4% back in sats on everyday purchases. Again, you can use my referral link to sign up.

Also, if you are buying bitcoin as these levels, please stop using Coinbase (more on why here). Use Bitcoin-only exchanges like Strike, Fold, River, or Bitcoin Well, instead.

Alright, I’ve gotta run over to the university, as Day 2 of the MIT Bitcoin Expo is about to get started.

Thank you for reading, and big hugs to everyone.

Best,

Frank

X | LinkedIn | Nostr

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“The need to panic — it relates to the fact that … [people] need to find things to be worried about to satisfy their natural evolutionary need to be worried about something. We [are] prone to panic, and it’s easy to rile people up about this stuff.” -Brandon Black, on Bitcoiners panicking about the quantum threat to Bitcoin

Before we dive in today, I just wanted to say ‘Happy Easter’ to all who celebrate!

I hope you are having/had a wonderful day with loved ones.

The latest round of FUD around Bitcoin is that quantum computing will crack the cryptography that protects Bitcoin private keys by 2032 and that Bitcoin developers should have a quantum-proof security scheme operational by 2029, when Ethereum plans to migrate to a post-quantum security scheme and Google plans to migrate its authentication services.

A whitepaper on this topic, co-authored by Google Quantum AI researchers and a member or the Ethereum Foundation, was published this week and it sent some into a panic.

Whenever I see any sort of panic induced in the Bitcoin space, I try to take a step back to see whether the cause for alarm is warranted.

After digesting a lot of information on the topic this week, I’ve come to the conclusion that notion that quantum computers may become a threat to Bitcoin’s security is a genuine concern, though, I don’t believe it’s something worth panicking about right now.

The most sober take on this potential issue came from Brandon Black, an engineer that has been tracking the progress on quantum computing for years.

Black appeared on Marty Bent’s TFTC this week and discussed how:

• the pace at which progress is being made about quantum computers are being developed is often reported incorrectly and without the proper nuance

• quantum computers may become a threat to Bitcoin, but there’s also a danger in implementing untested and potentially unsafe ‘quantum-proof’ schemes into Bitcoin in a hurried fashion

• there is an appropriate level of conservatism to Bitcoin development (Bitcoin isn’t a move-fast-and-break-things-type project)

• there are many very intelligent people working on the potential quantum threat to Bitcoin

To the latter point, the names of the people working on these solutions aren’t often made public so that they don’t become targets.

Blockstream co-founder and former CEO Austin Hill touched on this on X in an excellent response to Nic Carter, who claimed that Blockstream’s current CEO, Adam Back, was lying when he said that Blockstream “has its 20 person applied cryptography/security team working on the quantum issue basically full time.”

So, while it’s surely a good thing to be concerned about the threat that quantum computers may pose to Bitcoin — if they ever actually come into existence — it’s not something worth panicking over at this very moment.

(This general approaching of opting to be concerned versus panicked/worried tends to pay dividends in life. I say this as a worrier in recovery.)

In the White House on Behalf of Bitcoiners around the World

I recently joined BTC Inc. CEO Brandon Green as a guest on Bitcoin Magazine’s podcast.

(Apparently, I did someone at Bitcoin Magazine dirty and they took it out on me by giving me more gray hair than I actually have!)

We spoke about my time as the White House correspondent for Bitcoin Magazine and what I intended to accomplish in the role, which was to bring attention to the importance of protections for open-source developers and to a de minimis tax exemption for spending bitcoin. I also touched on how I wanted to shift the Overton window regarding how governments around the world perceive Bitcoin in part because I’ve seen the transformative power of Bitcoin on members of Bitcoin circular economies around the world.

In other words, I’d like to see a world where all human beings — not just U.S. citizens — are empowered by Bitcoin and that this was/is something worth advocating for.

On that note, I’ll actually be giving a talk on this exact topic entitled “Why Advocating for Bitcoin and Freedom Tech Matters” at the MIT Bitcoin Expo next weekend.

I speak at 4:20 PM ET on Sunday, April 12 and will share a link to the livestream in the next edition of the newsletter.

But I digress…

Please check out the Bitcoin Magazine interview if you’d like to learn more about my motivations.

PARTNERSHIP

Speaking of Bitcoin and freedom tech, Bitcoin doesn’t fulfill its role as such tech if you’re leaving it in the hands of an exchange.

Get started with your self-custody journey today with the Trezor Safe 3, a fantastic Bitcoin hardware wallet for beginners.

Stop Listening to Michael Saylor

Michael Saylor stated this week that “global consensus is that $BTC is digital capital.”

I had something to say to this in response:

What Saylor is trying to say without explicitly saying it is that bitcoin isn’t money, it’s just capital.

This is what we like to call, in plan English, a trash take.

So, why is he saying this?

Short answer: Hard to tell.

Longer answer: Maybe the U.S. government has tapped him on the shoulder and told him to say that because it doesn’t want bitcoin replacing the dollar as money. Maybe he’d prefer people support his shadow central bank as opposed to Bitcoin itself. Maybe he really believes it.

While I don’t know what he’s thinking, here’s the truth: This “global consensus” he’s referencing isn’t real AT ALL and Bitcoin is money, not just capital or an asset that should exist within the broken system.

What is more, the line that follows his “global consensus” line is yet another trash take.

The four-year cycle is still well intact. 2026 is proving to be a bear market year, just like 2022 and 2018 were.

All of this adds to a point I’ve made previously and that I’ll make again here: “Michael Saylor Doesn’t Understand Bitcoin”

Markets

Bitcoin continues to chop sideways.

There’s a small part of me that wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t see bitcoin above about $70k for any extended period of time in the coming weeks (as indicated by the sloping blue line on the chart above, which now might be the resistance line).

That could change if the conflict in Iran concludes and the Straight of Hormuz reopens, but I don’t believe that will happen any time soon.

Why is that? you ask.

Because Trump is obviously quite panicked about it, and he is acting in a completely inappropriate manner (to put it mildly), as he “negotiates” from a position of weakness.

Shameful.

Markets don’t like uncertainty, and they’re getting an ungodly dose of it right now.

And that’s that.

Thank you for reading, and Happy Easter once again to all who celebrate!

Sending big hugs and big love to you all.

Best,

Frank

X | LinkedIn | Nostr

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You’ve probably read in the news lately about the blackouts and subsequent protests in Cuba.

You may have also read about President Trump saying that ‘Cuba’s next’ (after Venezuela and Iran) when it comes to U.S. military interventions.

The more headlines I read about Cuba, the more I wanted to get a better idea of what was actually happening in the country and how the Cuban people felt about it.

So, I invited two of the co-founders of the Cuba Bitcoin community to come on my podcast to discuss these recent happenings in their home country, and they graciously accepted.

Here’s an overview of what we touched on in the conversation:

• The effect that seven decades of dictatorship has had on Cuba

• Whether or not Cubans want U.S. intervention

• What Bitcoin does and doesn’t fix in Cuba

• The Cuba-tailored freedom tech that these co-founders have created

• What it’s like to educate people on the ground in Cuba

Also, I tried something new for this episode: I conducted the interview in English and in Spanish with the help of the one and only Reyna Chicas, best known for her work as My First Bitcoin’s Bitcoin Training Coordinator (BTC).

My philosophy in conducting the interview in two languages is as follows: I’d like for more non-English speakers to understand the power of Bitcoin, and I’d especially like any Cubans that find this interview to feel comfortable listening to it in their native language.

Thus far, the reaction to the episode has been incredible and heartwarming.

Thank you to everyone out there who has already watched/listened and shared. I sincerely appreciated it.

On that note, here are the links to the episode:

Fountain

The Motiv Perú Team Embraces Fedi

The incredible team at Motiv Perú, whose work I’ve written about for Forbes Digital Assets, has begun teaching the members of the communities with whom they work about how to use Fedi’s multiple features — from it’s wallet to its Communities and private messaging features.

I wrote a piece on this recent work with Fedi that the Motiv team has been doing. However, before sharing it, I’d like to note that I’ve joined the Fedi team as a content producer and strategist.

With that said, here’s a link to this week’s Community Spotlight piece for Fedi’s website:

Partnership

In the piece above, the team at Motiv highlighted how they are trying to make the members of the communities with whom they work more self sovereign with Bitcoin.

To truly attain this sovereignty, you have to hold your bitcoin in a non-custodial wallet, and a great wallet to start with for your long-term bitcoin savings is the Trezor Safe 3.

Trezor is a trusted brand, as its the longest-standing hardware wallet maker in the Bitcoin space, and the Safe 3 is both affordable and easy-to-use, making it a great cold storage wallet for beginners.

Click on the image below to get started on your self sovereignty journey today.

Markets

Bitcoin’s price has been chopping sideways for about a month now — just as long as the intervention/war in Iran has been going on.

I’m actually impressed that’s its price has held up so well, especially given the amount of uncertainty and fear in the market.

People may be starting to view Bitcoin as less of a risk-on tech-type asset and more of flight-to-safety play.

I have very little idea in which direction bitcoin’s price will move next, but I do feel these are good levels for dollar-cost averaging (DCAing) into bitcoin. (That’s not financial advice. Please don’t interpret it as such.)

With that said, I know that money is tight for many right now.

So, if you live in the U.S. like I do and you’re looking to stack some sats without spending your hard-earned fiat, I highly recommend using the Fold app and the Gemini credit card to do so.

You can use the Fold app to get free sats every day and to get sats back on gift card purchases. You can use my referral link to sign up.

And you can use the Gemini credit card to get up to 4% back in sats on everyday purchases. Again, you can use my referral link to sign up.

Also, if you are buying bitcoin as these levels, please stop using Coinbase (more on why here). Use Bitcoin-only exchanges like Strike, Fold, River, or Bitcoin Well instead.

Short rip this week.

Final thought: While the chaos in the world seems to refuse to subside, it’s also giving us an opportunity to look deeper within ourselves to find, develop, and nurture peace as well as to take stock of all that is good within our lives and to focus more on that.

I hope you’re all doing as well as can be, and, as always, I appreciate your time and attention in reading this newsletter.

Big love and big hugs to everyone.

Best,

Frank

X | LinkedIn | Nostr

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When I started this newsletter five years ago, I had to think about whether I should write under my real name or a nym.

I knew that on a number of levels I might become a target if I chose to write under my real name, but I opted to do so anyway for two main reasons:

1. My background includes working with vulnerable communities around the globe, and I wanted this dimension of what I’ve done with my life to be associated with Bitcoin.

2. I believed that if I was ever targeted that the Bitcoin community would have my back, especially if I’d been honest and done good work in educating people about what Bitcoin is and how it can help the human race.

In short, I took a bet that who I am and what I’ve done would be good for how Bitcoin is perceived and that if I brought right energy to my work in this space, I’d always have the community to fall back on.

This week, the latter part of that bet paid off.

On Tuesday evening, someone notified me that my private Nostr key had been compromised. (I consider Nostr to be Bitcoin-adjacent technology, or freedom tech that complements Bitcoin.)

Once this happens, a Nostr account is basically unusable, because anyone with the private key can access it. (I mean, you can use it, but so can anyone with the key, so it’s not really “your” account anymore.)

Nostr isn’t like traditional social media or online identity platforms (it’s actually not a platform; it’s a protocol) in that you can’t just reset your password when you learn that someone has gained access to your account.

It works much like the way accessing your bitcoin on the Bitcoin blockchain works.

With Nostr and Bitcoin, you have a private key and a public key. The public key is what people use to find you on Nostr, just as it’s what people use to send you bitcoin on Bitcoin.

Your Nostr private key is what you use to access your account via Nostr clients (e.g., Primal, Damus), while your private Bitcoin key is what you need to access your bitcoin and to sign transactions.

If your Nostr private key has been discovered, anyone can access your account via any Nostr client. If your Bitcoin private key has been discovered, anyone can access your bitcoin stack.

If either of these keys are compromised, it’s best to set up a new public-private key pair immediately and begin migrating info/funds ASAP.

Needless to say, managing these private keys well is very important.

Turns out, I had used my Nostr private key somewhere I shouldn’t have (likely to test out a new Nostr client) and a bot found it and exposed it, along with 18,000 other private Nostr keys. (I still don’t know exactly how the key was discovered.)

Finding out that my account had been compromised wasn’t a great feeling, to put it mildly. I’d spent about three years building it, and the last thing I wanted to do was to start from scratch building a new one.

Plus, I was anxious that someone might start posting malicious content through my compromised account. (Luckily, that didn’t happen/hasn’t happened.)

So, when I learned that the account had been compromised, I just wanted to ignore it. I wanted to pretend it wasn’t true.

I also wanted to curse Nostr and never use it again.

Deep down, though, I believed/believe that Nostr is the future of digital identity (or at least it’s the best we’ve got right now), and I knew I’d have to deal with this situation.

Luckily, I didn’t have to deal with it alone.

The Nostr community came to my aid in a big way.

Below is the post I wrote about how things played out:

(Note: Miljan, someone mentioned in the post below, is the creator of the popular Nostr client, Primal, while Daniel is a prolific Nostr community member as well as a friend IRL.)

(Here’s a link to that Harlem Bitcoin piece, if you’d like to check it out: Community Spotlight: Harlem Bitcoin.)

I’d like to think that the community came to my aid because I’d done my best to bring attention to Nostr when I had the opportunity to while I was at Bitcoin Magazine (and even here in this newsletter).

Examples of such coverage below:

I’d also like to believe that that Nostriches and Bitcoiners that helped me out did so because they trusted me and valued my contributions to the Nostr and Bitcoin spaces.

Whatever it was, I got the first taste of what it was like to have the Bitcoin/Nostr/Freedom Tech community help me out when I found myself in a shitty situation, and it felt quite good.

In just a few days, I got about 20% of my followers back (that percentage is higher if you subtract all the bots that followed my old account) and even got boosted with about $16 worth of zaps (bitcoin sent over the Lightning Network via Nostr) as I got the new account up and running.

In the midst of all this happening, someone quote posted my post above with the following message:

This was the moment that my frustration dissipated and some tears even came to my eyes.

Community truly is the ultimate hedge.

And when you combine community with Bitcoin and other freedom tech, you get something very, very special.

So, thank you to the Bitcoiners and Nostriches that validated my choice to lean into the Bitcoin community five years ago.

I’ve never felt more empowered by this tech nor more inspired by those involved with building it and helping to expanding its reach.

I’m forever in your debt.

Bitcoin, Nostr, and Bitchat as “Emergency Tech” in Jamaica

If the account above didn’t make you believe in the power of the Bitcoin and freedom tech community, the interview below will.

It’s my conversation with Dread, founder of Flash, a Bitcoin app that was used to put the $15,000 worth of Bitcoin donated by members of the global Bitcoin community to work in effort to get aid to those in need in Jamaica in the wake of the storm the island faced this past November.

Listen and watch on Fountain.

Dread has actually yet to stop working with his team as well as a number of other teams and communities in Jamaica to help people in the wake of the hurricane. (He’s an absolutely remarkable human being.)

In our conversation, he shared stories about how people came together to deliver aid as well as how, when the banking and communication infrastructure went down in the wake of the hurricane, people relied Bitcoin (largely via Flash) to move funds and apps like Bitchat to communicate.

Dread is now working with his team to use the aforementioned tech as well as Nostr as part of a plan to prep Jamaica for the next time a storm hits the island.

In the process, he and his team have created a new way for us to conceptualize Bitcoin and freedom tech: “Emergency Tech”

This technology may not be able to stop mother nature from doing what it does in Jamaica, but it can help people to communicate, coordinate, and distribute funds more readily next time the island endures an act of God.

When you combine this tech with someone like Dread and the people in the communities with which he works, you truly get a sense of hope that we can weather all sorts of storms (pun intended) together.

No “Markets” section this week, because I can bring myself to talk about Bitcoin’s price after sharing how it’s so much more than that in this edition of the newsletter.

That said, I will repeat what I often say in this newsletter, and that is that I know money is tight for many right now. So, if you’re looking to stack some sats without spending your hard-earned fiat on it, I highly recommend using the Fold app and the Gemini credit card to do so if you live in the United States.

You can use the Fold app to get free sats every day and to get sats back on gift card purchases. You can use my referral link to sign up.

And you can use the Gemini credit card to get up to 4% back in sats on everyday purchases. Again, you can use my referral link to sign up.

On a final note, please consider joining a Bitcoin/Freedom Tech community if you’re not already a part of one. I’m a part of a few of them, from Bitcoin Dada to PubKey to the broader Nostr community, and I’ve met so many incredible people through each of them.

In being a part of these communities, you not only get some relief from the chaos in the world, but you get a sense of hope that the future is going to be better.

These communities also provide a notable reminder that we are more powerful when we work together than we are when we work alone.

So, on that note, let us continue to proceed together apace.

Best,

Frank

X | LinkedIn | Nostr

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Working in the Bitcoin space can be psychologically and emotionally challenging.

(Partially because many of us who’ve moved much of our time and energy over to Bitcoin tend to have at least a touch of insanity!)

Many in the space are solopreneurs, and they spend countless hours each week working on tasks at their computer.

Spending so much time in one’s own head can be challenging, even if you’re working on something you love.

Amiti Uttarwar knows this firsthand, as she first began contributing to Bitcoin as a developer in 2018.

In her experience, she’s learned that the barriers many face in the Bitcoin space have less to do with technical or subject matter know-how and more to do with psychological and emotional barriers.

In recognizing this, she chose to step back from her work as a developer and to shift to being a coach for developers.

In doing so, she started an organization through which other coaches can help provide psycho-social support to Bitcoin and other open-source developers, as well.

It’s called Waye, and it’s very cool.

I first met Amiti at the Human Rights Foundation’s Global Bitcoin Summit this past October.

I attended a workshop she hosted at the event, and it caused me to reflect on my place in the Bitcoin space and on whether or not I was happy and fulfilled.

I realized I wasn’t and that I needed to make some changes.

One of those changes was bringing back my podcast, new renaissance capital, through which I highlight what I consider to be some of the most interesting and important stories at the cross section of Bitcoin and human action from around the world.

So, it only seemed fitting to have Amiti on as one of the first guests for the reboot of the show.

You can also listen and watch on Fountain.

On the episode, we discussed how not only open-source developers need support but almost anyone in the space trying to bring their vision to life.

From those who’ve founded Bitcoin circular economies to activists who use Bitcoin to entrepreneurs trying to get their Bitcoin business off the ground, we can all use a little help.

We also touched on the following points:

• The 10x mindset (get more down with less effort)

• How to overcome our autopilot mindsets that keep us stuck

• How diversity amongst Bitcoin developers leads to better network security

I truly loved speaking with Amiti, and I hope you enjoy listening to this conversation!

Also, please note that some of what we discussed in this episode can be applied more broadly to anyone looking to change or better their approach to work and life.

PARTNERSHIP

Speaking of changing your approach, you aren’t still leaving your bitcoin in the hands of an exchange, are you?

You are?!?!

¡Dios mío!

It may be time for you to get started with your self-custody journey, and one of the easiest ways to do that is with a Trezor Safe 3, an affordable hardware wallet from a trusted company in the Bitcoin space.

Click on the image below to learn more about the Trezor Safe 3.

Markets

Bitcoin continues to chop between the 50 Week MA and 200 Week SMA.

We’re back above $70k at the time of writing but I don’t get the sense that there’s much strength behind bitcoin’s move higher last week.

For that reason, if I had to bet, I’d say we’re heading back to under $70k this week.

There’s still a lot of uncertainty and fear in the market, and this is reflected in the timid fluctuations in bitcoin’s price.

Personally, I still feel that these are decent levels for dollar-cost averaging into bitcoin. (Please note that this isn’t financial advice, nor is anything I share in this newsletter.)

That said, I know money is tight for many right now. So, if you’re looking to stack some sats without spending your hard-earned fiat on it, I highly recommend using the Fold app and the Gemini credit card to do so if you live in the United States.

You can use the Fold app to get free sats (fractions of a bitcoin) every day and to get sats back on gift card purchases. You can use my referral link to sign up.

And you can use the Gemini credit card to get up to 4% back in sats on everyday purchases. Again, you can use my referral link to sign up.

I use my Fold account and Gemini credit card to accumulate sats daily.

Alright alright alright.

That’s all for this week.

It’s a short one because, frankly, I’m a little burnt out and could use a little more time away from my computer screen.

Sending big hugs and big love to everyone.

Here’s to a fantastic week ahead!

Best,

Frank

X | LinkedIn

Nostr: npub1dnzzyhmewrzkh862z7z2shwmhh5htx0rvkagepj2fkgst9ptwg3qj4x52h

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What I love most about Bitcoin enthusiasts is their unbounded sense of optimism.

We see opportunity where others only see misfortune.

We see potential where others only see dead ends.

Alessandro Cecere, known to many as El Sultán de Bitcoin on X, is a fantastic example of this.

In 2013, when Venezuela was on the cusp of having its economy completely decimated by the authoritarian regime that ruled the country, Cecere started mining bitcoin.

The cost of power in Venezuela at that time was near zero, because the government subsidized it, meaning that anyone could plug in a Bitcoin miner and essentially produce bitcoin for free.

Cecere didn’t just plug in one Bitcoin miner, though.

Instead, he built what he says was likely the biggest bitcoin mining farm in Latin America at the time, and from 2013 to 2015, he and his father likely made a small fortune by taking advantage of the free energy in the country.

He then used some of the money he made to get himself and his family out of Venezuela when things got really bad a few years later. (2017 is often reported as the peak of the economic crisis in Venezuela.)

Now, he’s preparing to return to his home country.

Why is that? you might ask.

Well, he sees a tremendous opportunity yet again.

As a member of the team at Luxor Technologies, one of the most trusted names in the Bitcoin mining space, Cecere wants to court both private and public Bitcoin mining companies to Venezuela as a means to rehabilitate the country’s power grid, which has been badly neglected and doesn’t provide consistent power to many parts of the country.

How would that work?

The Bitcoin mining companies would come in via official deals with the Venezuelan government (and U.S. government by proxy, for now at least) and would agree to pay for the reconstruction of certain parts of the power grid in exchange for mining bitcoin at extremely low rates, $0.01/kWh-$0.02/kWh, creating a win-win for the miners and Venezuela’s electrical grid.

What is more, these mining companies could also then become the buyers of last resort for power, which would help to subsidize the cost of power for everyday Venezuelans, much like the dynamic Gridless has established in various African countries.

But let me stop here.

I’d rather you learn more about all of this from Alessandro himself.

Please check out my conversation with him below, and please allow it to open your mind to the fact that no matter how grim a situation may seem, there’s often times an opportunity within it that can serve to better the situation on many levels.

You can also watch and listen on Fountain.FM.

(Fountain is very cool. I highly recommend you download the app.)

ADVERTISEMENT

Speaking of opportunity within failing systems, Bitcoin itself is one such opportunity in the age our our failing monetary and financial systems.

We live in a world in which you need permission to use the money that’s in your bank account. Plus, that money is continually losing value.

Bitcoin is money you can use without permission, and it’s gains value over longer time horizons.

To truly reap the benefits of Bitcoin, though, you have to hold it in self custody.

And Trezor makes this easy.

So, please click on the image below to pick up a Trezor Safe 3, one of the most affordable and trustworthy Bitcoin hardware wallets on the market today, and get started on your Bitcoin self-custody journey.

Focusing On Bitcoin Adoption Around The World

I recently sat down to speak with Rob Wallace of Bitcoin News to discuss why I stepped away from my role as White House correspondent and have returned to documenting Bitcoin adoption around the globe.

In the conversation, we also touched on:

• The importance of Lightning-to-fiat apps like Tando and Bitspenda

• The Samourai and Tornado Cash cases

• The importance of peer-to-peer (P2P) rights in the digital age

• Why digital privacy needs to be normalized

• Why Bitcoin is punk rock

• The importance of staying true to oneself as a writer in the Bitcoin space

Really loved this conversation, and I hope you do, too!

Speaking of Bitspenda

On Thursday, I sat down with Bright Kportiklah, the Ghanaian developer behind Bitspenda, and Modibe Matsepane, African Community Master for Fedi.

Bright shared his incredible journey to becoming a Bitcoin developer, which includes a really fun story about how, to start coding, he’d borrow a friend’s laptop while that friend was at church.

Bright is great. Modibe is great. The conversation was great.

Enjoy!

The Market

I mentioned in last week’s edition of the newsletter that I wouldn’t be surprised to see Bitcoin’s price tick up above $70k for a bit this week, and this is what played out.

We shot up to about $74k by mid-week and have since come back down to $67k.

I’m not sure what we’ll happen this week. I could see bitcoin’s price going back above $70k just as easily as I could see it dropping to $60k.

For this reason, I find dollar-cost averaging into bitcoin at these levels to be the best strategy. (Please note that that’s not financial advice, nor is anything I share in this newsletter.)

I know money is tight for many right now. So, if you’re looking to obtain some bitcoin without spending your hard-earned dollars on it directly, I highly recommend using the Fold app and the Gemini credit card to do so.

You can use the Fold app to get free sats (fractions of a bitcoin) every day and to get sats back on gift card purchases. You can use my referral link to sign up.

And you can use the Gemini credit card to get up to 4% back in sats on everyday purchases. Again, you can use my referral link to sign up.

I use my Fold account and Gemini credit card to accumulate sats every day.

And that’s that.

Thank you, everyone, for reading, and I hope you all have a lovely week.

Big hug.

Best,

Frank

X | LinkedIn

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I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how to approach the reboot of my show, new renaissance capital.

I’ve considered a number of variables regarding why someone might want to listen to a podcast.

Some listen to gets tips for self improvement, some for educational purposes, and some maybe just because they like the vibe of the show (i.e., it just kind of feels like a warm blanket).

While I’m not quite sure what the show is to most watchers/listeners yet, I can say that the most recent episode of the show is very much a ‘vibe’ episode.

It features Ronnie Mdawida, co-founder of the Afribit project/Bitcoin circular economy in Kibera, Kenya.

Kibera exists within the city limits of Nairobi and is well known for being Africa’s largest informal settlement (i.e., slum).

I’ve been to Kibera myself and have written about the work that Afribit is doing to empower the residents of Kibera for Forbes, so I’m not going to go into detail about either Kibera or the project here.

Instead, I’d like to share a conversation that I recently recorded with the co-founder of the project, Ronnie Mdawida. (Scroll a bit more for the link.)

Ronnie is a kind, gentle, and considerate human being who has been doing incredible work in Kibera for years before he even knew what Bitcoin was.

These days, though, he’s incorporated Bitcoin into his work, and it has proven to be a powerful tool for catalyzing change within the residents of Kibera.

While I’m sure you’ll find the episode educational on a number of levels, what I really hope you that the episode renews your faith in the fact that all is not lost in this world and that there are truly incredibly people on this planet doing truly incredibly work that makes their communities and the world at large a better place.

Ronnie is one such person, and he is a model for us all.

His entire being is a beautiful example of grace personified.

So, please enjoy this episode, and allow it to melt away your fears and defensiveness.

Ronnie is proof that there is a great goodness in this world and that it can work through each of us if we let it.

You can also listen on Fountain here.

I will hopefully have the episode live on Apple Podcasts soon. I’m currently dealing with some technical difficulties in getting it posted on the platform.

The Iran Situation

The chaos in the world continues.

The U.S. and Israel have bombed Iran, killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s ‘Supreme Leader.’

Given that he was disfavored by over 80% of the population, many Iranians around the world have been celebrating his demise, as they are now free from a tyrant whose regime killed upwards of 40,000 innocent Iranians and who plunged a once flourishing country into chaos and poverty.

I highly recommend watching the video embedded in the X post below. It features Masih Alinejad, an Iranian activist and creator of the “Woman. Life. Freedom” movement in Iran at the moment at the moment she finds out that Khamenei is dead.

While I understand why someone like Alinejad would be happy about Khamenei’s demise, there’s also much cause for concern in the wake of this event.

U.S. interventionism in the Middle East has a history of creating power vacuums and that lead to more chaos and violence tends to breed more violence.

Hence, I’m not sure what comes next for both Iran and the world from here.

I think we could see anything from disorder and perhaps even worse leadership in Iran to the breakout of World War III.

Because I’m not an expert on this topic, I’m simply praying that things resolve in a peaceful manner from here and that Iranians can now live as freely as possible.

Lastly, if you’d like a glimpse into what life on the ground in Iran has been like for the past few decades, I highly recommend listening to this clip from my recent conversation with Iranian activist Ziya Sadr, who spent time as a prisoner of the regime in Iran.

In it, he details the level of violence that has occurred under the regime, and why he felt it was necessary for other countries to step in to help Iranians.

It’s a very powerful listen.

You can also listen to my full conversation with Ziya here and you can donate to Ziya’s efforts to help the Iranian people by sending sats over the Lightning Network to patchybow79@walletofsatoshi.com.

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Stop Using ChatGPT, Start Using Maple

This week, OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, finalized a deal with the U.S. Department of War. (Yes, I know, it’s totally insane that we have such a department.)

In the X thread below, the company shared that the deal stipulates that the Dept. of War can’t use OpenAI’s models for domestic surveillance or to direct autonomous weapons systems.

If I had to guess, we’ll likely see the Dept. of War do both by next week, so strap in.

Also, please take this as your queue to stop using ChatGPT, and consider using private AI tech like Maple.

Maple is open-source and encrypted, meanings your interactions with the AI remain private. (ChatGPT harvests all of the info you give it about itself to train its models, and it can share that data with anyone, including the government.)

For more on the very cool work Maple is doing, check out my interview with Maple’s CEO Mark Suman:

Markets

It looks like bitcoin’s price is finding a local bottom in the mid-$60k area.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see it tick up back above $70k for a bit this week.

Very difficult to tell what comes after that, though, as I think we’re just in a bear market where we’re going to see a lot of chop before a crash and then a major print from the Fed that catalyzes a massive bull run. (I’m quite not sure on the timing of all that, though. However, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it all play out within this year.)

In my humble opinion, these are decent levels for dollar-cost averaging into bitcoin.

Please note that that’s not financial advice, nor is anything I share in this newsletter. Please do your own research before buying bitcoin.

If money is tight right now and you live in the U.S., you can use the Fold app to get free sats (fractions of a bitcoin) every day and to get sats back on gift card purchases. You can use my referral link to sign up.

You can also use the Gemini credit card to get up to 4% back in sats on everyday purchases. Again, you can use my referral link to sign up.

I use my Fold account and Gemini credit card to accumulate sats every day.

Alright. That’s that for this week.

Hoping everyone out there is okay, especially Iranians.

If the world feels likes it’s spiraling toward destruction and you’d like to do something to make it better, you can donate to Ziya over Lightning at patchybow79@walletofsatoshi.com or you can simply channel some of that good Ronnie energy into your own life.

Much love and big hugs!

Best,

Frank

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