Jason Nichols

Father and Husband. cyber, cloud, data, web3 and stuff. Be nice, and Go Hokies.

[Timothée Chalamet @RealChalamet]

DUNE PART THREE

[Louis.Saillans @LSaillans]

His book has been banned by the Us governement in 2023.

A US Space Force officer wrote a thesis at MIT arguing Bitcoin is a weapons system.

The Pentagon ordered him to take it down.

The book is called SOFTWAR, written by Major Jason Lowery.

I managed to get my hands on an original, pre-takedown version.

Here are the ideas that apparently made the DoD nervous:

→ Bitcoin is not a financial technology, it's a weapons system.
It is an electro-cyber power projection system, in the same category as armies, navies, and air forces, but for the domain of cyberspace.

→ The "Power Projection Theory" framework
Every military branch exists to secure a domain by imposing severe physical costs on anyone who threatens it. Armies secure land, navies secure sea, air forces secure the sky. Bitcoin, Lowery argues, does this for cyberspace. It imposes real physical cost (energy/watts) on attackers, which no prior cybersecurity system could do.

→ Every military branch secures a domain by making attacks physically costly. Bitcoin does exactly this for cyberspace, imposing real energy costs on attackers for the first time in history.

→ Lowery draws on 5,000 years of history to argue that any system based purely on trust and rules eventually gets captured by bad actors. Physical cost is the only reliable constraint.

→ He calls this new paradigm "softwar": non-lethal, machine-vs-machine energy competition in cyberspace. Tesla predicted something like it in 1900.

→ His most striking claim: a soft, electro-cyber WW III war may have already started.
World leaders do not recognise it because they are expecting the next war to look like the last one.

Five concrete policy recommendations for the US government:

1. Stop letting economists set Bitcoin policy.
2. Treat Bitcoin as a cybersecurity asset first.
3. Consider strategic Bitcoin reserves.
4. Protect proof-of-work under the Second Amendment.
5. Recognise that proof-of-stake is a centralised fraud, not a viable alternative.

Because the nations that figure this out first will have an asymmetric advantage over those that do not.

The book was pulled in July 2023 by DoD.

Physical copies now sell for over $300.

@JasonPLowery

[Joe Blau @joeblau]

Real-time betting, trading, and prediction market exchange for the next generation of investors.

@solana × @magicblock = @bloxwap

[Jason Nichols @jasenich]

@joeblau At a solana conference or hackathon. Solana seems really active with both

[Ben Zhou @benbybit]

some of you saw I am wearing a WHOOP and asked what is my stress monitor look like for last night. Here is it, I didn't get any single sleep, but actually looks not too bad, i guess i was too focused commanding all the meetings. Forgot to stress...I think it will come soon when i start to really grasp the concept of losing $1.5B
FYI, I got told about the hack around 10pm my time.

[MR SHIFT 🦁 @KevinWSHPod]

The Best Insights From My 3 Hour Conversation With Gavin Wood, Co-Founder of Ethereum and $DOT Founder

I recently sat down with @gavofyork, @ethereum co-founder, founder of @Polkadot, and ex-CEO of @paritytech to learn more about what guides and drives one of the most accomplished builders in crypto to date.

With only £500 left in his bank account, he decided to work on Ethereum for £1,000 a month eventually leading him to become the crypto visionary and builder he is today.

As the creator of Solidity and EVM, co-founder of Ethereum, many of today’s blockchain innovations stem from Gavin. Without Ethereum, I might not even be involved in crypto today as a podcaster and interviewer.

Needless to say, I was very excited (and slightly nervous!) to meet him.

Here’s the summary of the conversation I had with him:

Idea Generation Comes Naturally

To innovate great ideas, Gavin lets inspiration in the moment take control. Whether it’s in the shower, or on a walk, that’s how some of his best ideas have come to him. Gavin takes the knowledge he has, and what he knows exists, and looks for unique combinations of them.

He’s looking to create outcomes that can be useful, positive, and not achieved before.

Ideas must be constrained by practicalities, and if you don’t have the means to work towards them, it may not be successful. Start ideas from the end goal, and break down incrementally how to achieve them.

Being misunderstood and called wrong for being too early

Gavin doesn’t care about being wrong, and focuses solely on creating things that can be useful for the world. It doesn’t bother him about being right, or convincing others of what he’s working towards. If the end product built creates value, eventually a wider audience will understand the intellectual sacrifice the founder has taken.

JAM, Gavin’s new vision for Polkadot technology, may be misunderstood by most now, but he has faith that as he pushes the boundaries of blockchain technology, eventually the solutions it can bring to the industry will be both revolutionary, and understood.

Building a support network for true innovation

There are countless builders in crypto, as seen by the response to Gavin’s JAM prize pool (currently worth $89,000,000). If there’s the right financial incentive, the best builders will compete to work towards a common goal.

Musical analytics as an edge in building for crypto

Gavin’s previous experience in music gives him an analytical framework to approach building that many others don’t have. Being able to listen, break down, and visualize how a song’s production gives abilities to juggle multiple threads, and have a top-down view that can be used outside of a musical framework.

While Gavin didn’t pursue working inside the music industry, his experience led to him working in the video game industry, developing ideas for a video game sequel, developing an audio engineer for a developer he admired. It was his varied and unconventional career path that eventually led him to cryptocurrency.

An email that led to him building Ethereum

While he knew about Bitcoin in 2011, due to the KYC/identification process needed to buy it, he didn’t investigate it further. But after reading an article about it in 2013, it sparked his interest once again in its potential. Emailing a Bitcoin developer through his open source software email, it led him to building the network that led to him meeting Vitalik Buterin, and working on Ethereum.

Coining the term Web3 in 2014

Gavin created the term Web3 in 2014, becoming much popular in the 2021 bull market. To Gavin, Web3 is the “Post-Snowden” web, citing Snowden’s revealing of government privacy breaches, but takes it further. It’s about protecting the users not just from 3rd parties, but 2nd parties users interact with on platforms, websites and applications.

Spotting the asymmetric opportunity of Ethereum

Ethereum has been said to create the most millionaires in the world due to its crowd sale, and subsequent price appreciation. But Gavin decided to help build it due to the liberalism beliefs and principles that guided its creation.

However, he doesn’t consider Ethereum an overall success when measured by its utility, with supply chain transparency as an example of utility yet unrealized by the network.

Leaving Ethereum in 2015, with Vitalik at the helm

Gavin left the Ethereum Foundation to found Ethcore, creating a second entity inside the Ethereum space, only leaving Ethereum in 2017 to start Polkadot.

Polkadot, the shared computer for infinite use cases

Polkadot is a native rollup host chain, and transform with JAM into a general computation resource, similar to how Ethereum took Bitcoin’s technology and adapted it into multiple use cases. It’s Gavin’s vision for what a Web3 world will eventually look like in the future.

Scalability is the goal for blockchains

JAM, Gavin’s new proposal, presents a new way of solving the scalability issue in blockchains, creating a playground-like environment where users can interact seamlessly. With parallel processing, multiple groups of smart contracts can work together without issue, processing hundreds of transactions without any issues.

Gavin’s perception of success for crypto projects

Good technological vision and a great platform will lead to success in Gavin’s eyes, as opposed to simply giving developers tokens. Polkadot is focused on achieving its whitepaper’s goal, while adapting to the crypto space as it continues developing.

What makes Polkadot different from other projects

Polkadot wants to become the platform that provides Web3 to the world, even if there isn’t a demand for it yet. Gavin sees the world moving in a direction where people recognize the need for Web3 values, and him working on Polkadot/JAM is a bet on that future.

Gavin on memecoins

He personally thinks they’re useless, especially if they’re just a smart contract deployment without effort behind them. The industry has grown with new participants looking for speculative opportunities, but Gavin believes supporting technological advancements and utility first and foremost to create a Web3 future.

NFTs as virtual receipts

NFT technology allows verification and proof of authenticity for art, and removes the need for 3rd parties to verify pieces of art. The trust-free aspects of blockchain technology and its financial use cases are a useful application for participants in the space.

Kusama’s tattoo experiment

Both Gavin and I share a tattoo that links us as a member of Kusama Society, a social experiment to see what resources Gavin had to build with in the future. It’s another example of one of his ideas brought into reality.

AI will impact society on a scale most don’t realize

With the rise of AI and self-governing agents communicating with each other and humans, this movement won’t be isolated. It’s non-linear, non-trivial, and will develop in ways many can’t foresee. It may be controlled by a single government or enterprise, and this concerns Gavin.

Software developers impact their users, and AI is moving into this sphere over time. It’s likely to be a communication revolution on many different levels.

Decentralizing AI may not be viable economically

AI models can be improved incrementally, but decentralizing it doesn’t give enough economic incentives, and private models will have a market advantage. However, downloading models to run queries in private may be a method of decentralizing the AI space. But with it’s resource intensive for users, and as such centralized models will continue to dominate.

Why he stepped down as a CEO

Gavin notes he doesn’t have the specific skillset to run a company, and wants to focus on innovating and building above all else. It’s led to him now having the mental resources and time to think creatively, and increase his productivity.

Money is an illusion

Gavin grew up knowing the value of money, but still views it as something not to be prioritized. He’s turned down multiple high-paying jobs purely to pursue more creative fields of work that he was curious to explore. Without a friend’s financial support while developing Ethereum, he may not have been able to contribute to its success, which he paid back with 5000 ETH tokens when it launched.

To Gavin, curiosity and freedom should always be priority over money.

The joys of fatherhood

His children beginning to grow and understand the world help him relive certain insights, and experience some of the childhood joys he had growing up, playing old computer games with them.

Loss of faith in European society

Gavin doesn’t believe that Europe is as democratic as it seems, and that the issues he sees with it today can be seen in multiple societies today purely due to their centralized nature.

Overall, my conversation with him has me incredibly bullish on Polkadot’s future, and I’m excited to see what Gavin will build with JAM over the coming months and years.

The full episode can be watched on the WSH YT Channel!

[Meltem Demirors @Melt_Dem]

1/ quick rip on why @Polymarket matters and why the future of information is markets

markets are efficient at pricing information. if you have information or insight that others don't, there's a huge opportunity to generate alpha. alpha generation requires information edge.

[David Bailey🇵🇷 $2.0mm/btc is the floor @DavidFBailey]

We’re in talks with Kamala Harris campaign for her to speak at the conference. Would be very savvy of her to reset the democrat positioning on the fastest growing voter block in the country. They’re making up their minds today.

[Matthew Green @matthew_d_green]

So Apple has introduced a new system called “Private Cloud Compute” that allows your phone to offload complex (typically AI) tasks to specialized secure devices in the cloud. I’m still trying to work out what I think about this. So here’s a thread. 1/

[Anthony Scaramucci @Scaramucci]

“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.” Albert Einstein

[Milan Kovac @_milankovac_]

@aelluswamy summarized the past decade very well.

When I hopped in my friend’s model S in 2015, it hit me in a weird way: that car was running software all around, had a nice big touch screen (finally, an actual “screen”), was receiving frequent feature updates over the air, and came with a mobile app for essential remote controls. How could a big car company build something like this? Didn’t make sense back then (and still today for many).

My interview with the Autopilot team early 2016 was very different than most interviews I’d ever taken. We first had a technical discussion on something I had built before, with several engineers and the executive in charge of the group at the time. An actual white board chat where we were all bouncing ideas on the matter together. The only places I’d ever seen the face of anyone above, at best, a team lead during interviews was at some small startups.

Every 1:1 interview that followed was similarly practical. Real coding situations you’d encounter as an engineer, not useless LeetCode trick questions typically found in other big companies’ interviews. When we got done, the recruiter walked me through the office. Everyone was sitting literally next to each other: autopilot software, hardware, vehicle firmware, and many other teams interacting live without friction. Eventually, we walked past @elonmusk's desk and he was sitting right there, next to the engineering teams. Not in any separate ivory tower.

One week in the job, and I was already in a team meeting with him brainstorming Autopilot technical challenges, exactly how it went during my interview. And that went on almost every single week, for the 8+ years that followed.

It soon became pretty clear that Elon was directly behind that culture of pragmatic innovation, percolating through all aspects of the company.

Week after week, I’ve witnessed that relentless drive to build features that make people’s lives better and safer, removing roadblocks and unnecessary layers one after another, systematically drilling down to the fundamental “why” - all of this while sleeping at the factory during Model 3 production hell, designing new vehicles, working on BOM reductions, and launching new factories across the globe. During that entire time, through all these chapters, news headlines and other difficult company-wide moments, and while landing rockets on drone ships in the ocean, Elon was still sitting with us in a room every week, often more, with the only objective of building things that will change humanity for the better.

When he announced Tesla would soon start a humanoid robotics program to fuel a future of abundance at AI Day 2021, many once again laughed and doubted. Two years into the program, and Tesla is actively testing early versions of what could well be the first full-fledged humanoid robots equipped with articulated hands autonomously conducting real tasks in a real factory via an end-to-end neural net, running entirely on the bot’s compute hardware. And again, using 2D cameras only.

Whether at Tesla or not, I’d say the same: without Elon, none of any of these amazing things would have ever happened. I can only imagine what a lesser future we’d be living without his involvement and dedication.

If you own Tesla shares, please find 5 minutes to vote.

[Jason Nichols @jasenich]

full article: https://t.co/4NJWd36RH9

[Jason Nichols @jasenich]

#BitcoinMining

The digital equivalent of expending effort to extract a precious metal from the earth continues to be fascinating. Mining has evolved rapidly over the last few years with the advent of ASIC computers (miners), to mining firms locating operations near cheap sources of energy. More recently, mining companies are increasing revenue by capitalizing on the value of newly created blocks on the bitcoin blockchain.

Evidenced by past halvings, the smaller and more inefficient miners will shut down or get consumed. The larger miners consistently optimize operations, reduce cost and expand scale. Bitcoin mining execs predict that bitcoin mining operations will eventually transition to become hybrid electrical grid-compute utilities, performing grid stabilization. And, by investing in a mining company, investors get the beta benefit of investing in the Bitcoin network.

Next: Bitcoin L2s. 6/9

[Jason Nichols @jasenich]

I changed during the week at Consensus2024. Before the conference I was part retail investor, part boomer crypto bro, with a dash of technologist. After, I am someone who seeks to be more involved in “crypto”. I don’t seek this because of its newness, coolness and hard-core tech. Rather, I seek this for non-technical, and non-financial reasons - this technology and community will change our country and the world for the better.

Thanks for reading 😊 For more depth, Full article on Medium. 9/9

[Jason Nichols @jasenich]

#CryptoAndAI

the most important crypto use case for humanity is the enablement of safe, trusted and distributed AI. All of our personal datasets, stored and monetized on separate Web2 platforms will be used and further monetized with AI.

The use of cryptographically protected personal datasets are a perfect benefit of blockchain-enabled and distributed applications (dApps). And, a massively powerful, fast and decentralized AI training capability is the best way in which web3 can complement AI.

Next: Bitcoin Mining. 5/9

[Jason Nichols @jasenich]

As a retail investor and tech nerd, these are my top questions:

1. What is the current and future state of regulation, policy and politics affecting crypto?
2. Where is the intersection of crypto and Artificial Intelligence?
3. Post halving, what is the future of Bitcoin mining?
4. What is happening with Layer 2s (L2s) in Bitcoin?
5. What is trending in the areas of academic research and entrepreneurial startups?

For each of above, I’ll summarize importance and my experiences…

3/9

[Jason Nichols @jasenich]

#CryptoRegulation

For years, the US SEC has been executing targeted enforcements against crypto firms. Most actions have resulted in significant financial penalties impacting growth and creating a chilling effect on investment within the industry. The SEC has lost several impactful court cases. And, under significant pressure, the SEC has surprisingly approved bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs. Further, a significant number of democratic congresspeople are now voting in favor of crypto legislation.

Interest by attendees in government regulatory policy was high to say the least – the most crowded talk (at a tech conference!) that I experienced was for two commissioners of the SEC and CFTC. Ms. Peirce of the SEC and Ms. Mersinger of the CFTC spoke on the current state of regulation. Change must happen for this incredibly promising industry to succeed in the U.S. The only question is how much more harm occurs.

Next: Crypto and AI. 4/9

[Jason Nichols @jasenich]

I changed during the week at Consensus2024. Before the conference I was part retail investor, part boomer crypto bro, with a dash of technologist. After, I am someone who seeks to be more involved in “crypto”. I don’t seek this because of its newness, coolness and hard-core tech. Rather, I seek this for non-technical, and non-financial reasons - this technology and community will change our country and the world for the better.

Thanks for reading 😊 For more depth, Full article on Medium. 9/9

[Jason Nichols @jasenich]

I changed during the week at Consensus2024. Before the conference I was part retail investor, part boomer crypto bro, with a dash of technologist. After, I am someone who seeks to be more involved in “crypto”. I don’t seek this because of its newness, coolness and hard-core tech. Rather, I seek this for non-technical, and non-financial reasons - this technology and community will change our country and the world for the better.

Thanks for reading 😊 For more depth, Full article on Medium. 9/9

[Jason Nichols @jasenich]

I changed during the week at Consensus2024. Before the conference I was part retail investor, part boomer crypto bro, with a dash of technologist. After, I am someone who seeks to be more involved in “crypto”. I don’t seek this because of its newness, coolness and hard-core tech. Rather, I seek this for non-technical, and non-financial reasons - this technology and community will change our country and the world for the better.

Thanks for reading 😊 For more depth, Full article on Medium. 9/9

[Jason Nichols @jasenich]

I changed during the week at Consensus2024. Before the conference I was part retail investor, part boomer crypto bro, with a dash of technologist. After, I am someone who seeks to be more involved in “crypto”. I don’t seek this because of its newness, coolness and hard-core tech. Rather, I seek this for non-technical, and non-financial reasons - this technology and community will change our country and the world for the better.

Thanks for reading 😊 For more depth, Full article on Medium. 9/9

[Jason Nichols @jasenich]

#CryptoAndAI

the most important crypto use case for humanity is the enablement of safe, trusted and distributed AI. All of our personal datasets, stored and monetized on separate Web2 platforms will be used and further monetized with AI.

The use of cryptographically protected personal datasets are a perfect benefit of blockchain-enabled and distributed applications (dApps). And, a massively powerful, fast and decentralized AI training capability is the best way in which web3 can complement AI.

Next: Bitcoin Mining. 5/9

[Jason Nichols @jasenich]

I changed during the week at Consensus2024. Before the conference I was part retail investor, part boomer crypto bro, with a dash of technologist. After, I am someone who seeks to be more involved in “crypto”. I don’t seek this because of its newness, coolness and hard-core tech. Rather, I seek this for non-technical, and non-financial reasons - this technology and community will change our country and the world for the better.

Thanks for reading 😊 For more depth, Full article on Medium. 9/9

[Jason Nichols @jasenich]

I changed during the week at Consensus2024. Before the conference I was part retail investor, part boomer crypto bro, with a dash of technologist. After, I am someone who seeks to be more involved in “crypto”. I don’t seek this because of its newness, coolness and hard-core tech. Rather, I seek this for non-technical, and non-financial reasons - this technology and community will change our country and the world for the better.

Thanks for reading 😊 For more depth, Full article on Medium. 9/9

[Jason Nichols @jasenich]

I changed during the week at Consensus2024. Before the conference I was part retail investor, part boomer crypto bro, with a dash of technologist. After, I am someone who seeks to be more involved in “crypto”. I don’t seek this because of its newness, coolness and hard-core tech. Rather, I seek this for non-technical, and non-financial reasons - this technology and community will change our country and the world for the better.

Thanks for reading 😊 For more depth, Full article on Medium. 9/9