degenbug

[10Δ @_10delta_]

Clarity Act is now poised to accelerate the “Bretton Woods 3.0” framework that I’ve talked about.

The yield “ban” is cosmetic & simply something for banks to tout as a victory.

It bans stablecoins from paying you interest for just holding them: the way a savings account does.

But it explicitly allows stablecoins to pay you rewards for using them: buying things, lending, providing liquidity, participating in any program..

Now consider that those rewards can be calculated based on how much you hold & for how long.

I think that’s what we just call interest, but it will now be rebranded under a new name.

So, the implications:

- The fact that there is now a carve-out for stablecoin yield will accelerate the Bretton Woods 3.0 system.

If the ban had been real (no yield in any form) there’s no reason for anyone to hold stablecoins over a bank account. Stablecoin adoption would flatline (especially in Developed Markets) & Bessent’s $3.7T target would be hard to achieve.

This carve out keeps the incentive to hold stablecoins, which keeps the growth flywheel spinning.

- CBDCs can’t compete. No central bank would design its digital currency to pay activity based rewards calculated by balance & duration (too close to monetary policy). However, dollar stablecoins can. So in every market where a CBDC competes against a $ stablecoin, the dollar product is economically superior. The Clarity Act now guarantees that advantage persists.

- The dollar now goes global without permission. The new text allows platforms to pay incentives for payments, remittances, & settlement activity using stablecoins. That’s a subsidy for global dollar adoption funded by private companies (not taxpayers). Meanwhile, increasing Treasury demand in the background.

For example, a Filipino worker now gets a rebate for sending remittances in USDC. There’s an additional incentive for him to now transact in stablecoins, which, unbeknownst to him, purchases American debt behind the scenes. A win-win for global stablecoin users & the American economy (fiscal situation).

The compromise looks like a ban.

But it’s actually a growth mandate.

As I’ve stated, the US government needs stablecoins to scale because it needs someone to buy its debt.

Bretton Woods 3.0

[degenbug @degenbug]

@IanGaudrea30195 @NoPaint_NoGaint @BoBromhal @willchamberlain will the canvas be destroyed? or will it get put up someplace else? if so, I think they should put it up as is

[nicolas, 30 ans @nic_carter]

it hasn't sunk in for most people. we already live in a post-scarcity society. UBI is already here.

basic package: disability, medicaid, food stamps etc

bonus package: literally getting paid for staying at home and hanging out with your relatives

extra bonus: if you are willing to commit fraud, pretend your kids are autistic and get paid for that. get paid for watching your neighbor's kid. pretend you are taking care of your grandma. fake hospice clinic. fake rehab clinic. fake therapy clinic.

giga bonus: during a time of crisis take advantage of PPP or CARES and open a fake business and get paid for existing

people are shocked when they learn that defense is the FIFTH largest line item in the budget. ahead of defense: social security ($1.6T), interest on debt ($1.1T) medicare ($1T), medicaid + ACA ($1T), AND THEN defense ($0.9T)

complain about defense all you like, but healthcare fraud is a way bigger factor. hundreds of billions per year.

this is only going to get worse, because the fraud is a structural part of the system – payouts to client groups in exchange for votes (normally D).

in the US, only 47% of the population actually works (fully 14% of the population is working age and does not work). retirees are 18% and children 22%.

the system I described above subsidizes 50m non-working people absolute minimum, but really it's far more because people that are paid to stay home and take care of their relatives are considered "workers"

of that 47% of "actual workers" maybe one third does real work, the rest are shuffling papers around or doing fake email jobs. so you have, rough math, 50 million actual workers supporting 300 million dependents. that's the nature of the economy today. it will only accelerate. eventually you will have 10 million using AI tools to do all the work and 340 million dependents.

the reason no one roots out the fraud is because it's the system that keeps our extremely fragile polity intact. the fraud is the UBI. the purpose of the system is what it does.

of course, it's a deeply unfair system, because you are allowed to commit fraud if you are a politically protected client group of the democrats. DOGE was killed faster than any government program ever, because it attempted to root out the fraud. if you are honest and unwilling to commit fraud, you are a huge loser in this system. your neighbor will have their mortgage subsidized by some government program. they will get favorable SBA loans due to DEI. they will open a fake hospice or autism clinic. they will get paid for taking care of their neighbor's kid and vice versa. the primary skill in the labor market is learning how to extract money from state and federal government programs, not gaining skills or making yourself employable. if you are just trying to work an ordinary wagie job you are a huge sucker. you are paying 40-50% effective all in taxes to everyone else who is a net taker.

the sad part is because AI is such a substantial productivity boost, it will actually keep this system going for a while longer, and maybe in perpetuity. AI boosts the 15% of the population that is actually productive so much that the remaining 85% can coast by. no one in charge will change this because they can't think of anything else. the political costs of a real UBI program are too great and we don't have the money for it anyway. so we will keep this covert fraud-based UBI program running indefinitely. unfortunately, if you are an honest wagie, you lose.

[degenbug @degenbug]

@bongyunng this is neat!

[Fusilli Spock @awstar11]

So hard to pick just one. So, here are my top 10 in no particular order:

[degenbug @degenbug]

@solvictor77 Didn't know this was a thing, thanks. But Grok gave many downsides

[Tim Urban @waitbutwhy]

America’s political landscape is more complicated than it used to be. Here’s my attempt to depict what I see as the seven broad camps today. Most people I know fall pretty cleanly into one of these circles (each of which has some common ground with the two adjacent circles).
Some additional points:

- The top two circles (green/yellow) are concerned first and foremost with the rise of illiberalism—disregard for the constitution, cancel culture, mob behavior, political violence. They see liberal vs illiberal as more critical right now than left vs right. In 2020, they agreed that wokeness was bad but today they’re divided on whether Trump or Harris/Biden are the lesser of two evils.

- For the middle two circles (blue/red), left vs right is the main thing. They’re not illiberal themselves but tend to focus on illiberalism from the other side while ignoring or condoning illiberalism from their own team. Both skew older and are the main consumers of traditional media, whether it be cable news or newspapers.

- The two lower circles (pink/orange) share a strong sense of grievance, place utmost importance on identity, tend to view identity groups (race, religion, sex, etc.) as monoliths, and are prone to believing conspiracy theories that fit with their worldview. Both skew younger, with woke skewing feminine and upper class and groyper skewing masculine and lower class. Both use revolutionary rhetoric, seeing the establishment as rotten to the core, and readily employ illiberal tactics under the belief that desperate times call for desperate measures.

Thoughts?

[Nick shirley @nickshirleyy]

🚨 Here is the full 42 minutes of my crew and I exposing Minnesota fraud, this might be my most important work yet. We uncovered over $110,000,000 in ONE day. Like it and share it around like wildfire! Its time to hold these corrupt politicians and fraudsters accountable

We ALL work way too hard and pay too much in taxes for this to be happening, the fraud must be stopped.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

A major additional factor should be considered.

Satellites with localized AI compute, where just the results are beamed back from low-latency, sun-synchronous orbit, will be the lowest cost way to generate AI bitstreams in <3 years.

And by far the fastest way to scale within 4 years, because easy sources of electrical power are already hard to find on Earth. 1 megaton/year of satellites with 100kW per satellite yields 100GW of AI added per year with no operating or maintenance cost, connecting via high-bandwidth lasers to the Starlink constellation.

The level beyond that is constructing satellite factories on the Moon and using a mass driver (electromagnetic railgun) to accelerate AI satellites to lunar escape velocity without the need for rockets. That scales to >100TW/year of AI and enables non-trivial progress towards becoming a Kardashev II civilization.

[degenbug @degenbug]

@TheStalwart I think this is a good change. If they introduce filtering/hiding posts I'd imagine it'd be smarter than just doing it by region, so I don't see this as a 'firewall'.

[ɖʀʊӄքǟ ӄʊռʟɛʏ 🇧🇹🇹🇩 @kunley_drukpa]

BEST OF R/LEGALADVICEUK 🧵

r/LegalAdviceUK is a reddit subreddit where people ask for legal advice about their problems. Because of the levels of dysfunction in Britain (AKA ‘The Yookay’) today they often read as parody. Here is a thread of some of the more absurd recent posts

[Bayani Mills • Vires In Numeris @bayanimills]

Saw a video ad for @MortgageChoice and immediately thought this.

[degenbug @degenbug]

@CryptoHayes busted

[degenbug @degenbug]

@MelMattison1 keep up the great calls! I don't want you to get tooo popular

[degenbug @degenbug]

@MelMattison1

[degenbug @degenbug]

@ClareONeilMP Please explain why housing prices need to go up. It’s killing Australia

[degenbug @degenbug]

@SStapczynski wow such a dumb outcome

[degenbug @degenbug]

@DipWheeler damn merriam webster bought fartcoin?

[degenbug @degenbug]

@ByzGeneral I think the bigger story here is stonks is becoming even more of a juiced up savings account. up only forever

[degenbug @degenbug]

@AvidCommentator bearish retest last year, yikes