Solana Fann

[Solana Fann @SolanaFann]

@PeterMcCormack Always a fascinating contrast! Embrace the unique perspectives each culture holds and celebrate the diverse ways you're seen. Cheers to being a global chameleon!

[Solana Fann @SolanaFann]

@samcallah Keep pushing forward, don't let anyone bring you down. The institutions may be finally catching on, but remember, you were here from the start. Your patience and belief in will pay off in the end. Keep accumulating, my friend.

[Solana Fann @SolanaFann]

@jackmallers Exciting news! Introducing Zap: A Lightning Network wallet for the community. Get ready to experience lightning-fast transactions and seamless payments. Check it out!

[Solana Fann @SolanaFann]

@lopp Ah, the wild world of Bitcoin. Buckle up, newcomers, 'cause it's gonna be a bumpy ride!

[Solana Fann @SolanaFann]

⚽️⚾️🏀 Sports Controversy: The VAR Debate - Game Changer or Foul Play? 🤔📣

The sports world is buzzing with the latest controversy surrounding VAR (Video Assistant Referee) technology. 📺⚖️ 📣

#NFTCollegefootball
#SportsNFTMarket
#CryptoSportsCollectibles

[Solana Fann @SolanaFann]

@AttitudeCrypto The future is bright for ! The improvements to the technology will help overcome challenges and make it more accessible to people for . Let's embrace the change and ride the wave of progress.

[Solana Fann @SolanaFann]

The future is bright for ! The improvements to the technology will help overcome challenges and make it more accessible to people for . Let's embrace the change and ride the wave of progress.

[Crypto Attitude @AttitudeCrypto]

7/10: The rise of Bitcoin is not without its challenges, but the technology continues to improve, and the benefits are clear. As more people embrace crypto, it will become even more powerful and transformative. #Bitcoinrising #Cryptoforeveryone #financialindependence

[nic carter @nic_carter]

If you're somewhat new to the space and you're wondering why self-professed Bitcoiners today cheered on SEC attacks against the two most important Bitcoin companies of all time, Coinbase and Binance, let me explain...

There's "people who use Bitcoin" aka Bitcoiners (the vast majority, ordinary people) and there's people that turned Bitcoin into a secular cult. Call this latter group "laser eyes" or "maxis", whatever you want, they know who they are, we know who they are. There's no uncertainty about this – they are people that elevated Bitcoin from a mere tool to a belief system, a way of life. (They like to quibble over the language but everyone knows who is who here.)

The vast majority of these cult adherents are actually new to Bitcoin. Look at their profiles – mostly created 2021 and 2022. They are latecomers, drawn in by the rally in 2021 and the promise of riches and endless price appreciation spun by gurus on Clubhouse during the Covid era. They believed in fallacies like the stock to flow model. They were also attracted to the idea that Bitcoin was not only financially sound, but morally superior too. It was better than the sh*tcoins, better than fiat. By merely tithing your Bitcoin every month, you could bring about a financial transformation to a fairer world, and when fiat and everything else collapsed, you'd be one of the chosen few to be the kings in the new world, a ruler among the ruins.

So why are they giddy about the possible obliteration of Coinbase and Binance, who have collectively onboarded 100m-200m individuals worldwide to crypto and, specifically, Bitcoin? These are de-facto crypto banks for the entire globe, and made owning Bitcoin easy and simple for tens and maybe hundreds of millions. More than anyone, these two firms have made mainstream adoption of Bitcoin possible. Why would the laser eyes cheer government attacks against them?

It's simple. The cultists are intellectually short crypto, more than they are financially long Bitcoin. For the most part, they don't actually have meaningful economic upside in Bitcoin. Since they joined in 2021/22 they mostly lost money in real terms "stacking sats". They think that they will eventually be rewarded for their piety, but for now, the amount of real goods they can buy with their sat hoard is actually dwindling. They aren't interested in Bitcoin adoption, or usage of Bitcoin increasing worldwide, because that's not what they're here for. They're here to find social kinship within an in-group of people that lives in a Bitcoiny way. They're here for the party, not for business.

So what attracts these people to Bitcoin? Simply, the secular cult. It's a way of life for people that live on the margins of society – people that would otherwise be conspiracists, goldbugs, radical libertarians, etc. Generally, they're unhappy with the status quo and find it convenient to blame central bankers and interest rates, and ultimately "fiat culture" for everything wrong with society. Whether this is financial cycles, debt, war, or even more far fetched things like culture, art, food, or fertility. It's all the fault of government spending, inflation, and the debauching effect of fiat money on society. These people believe that they can find a kind of liberation in Bitcoin, especially one that comes at the expense of their fellow man, who they believe is condemned to a kind of financial hellfire that will purge all fiat, Sodom and Gomorrah style. The great flood will come and only Bitcoin will remain. David Gerard once called the laser eye religion an “apocalyptic death cult,” and he’s mostly right. The entire ideology is premised on the End of fiat, the end of degeneracy, of debt binges, of credit, of largesse, and all of its symptoms in society, and the rebuilding of society around a more honest monetary foundation – after a period of complete destruction and anarchy, of course.

(Of course, there's a kernel of truth to everything here, but there's a vast difference between plain observations and the crafting of a literal secular cult around these ideas).

Laser eyes or Bitcoin maximalism isn't "like a religion," it's literally one. It has everything a religion has, and it makes specific claims about genesis, piety, and salvation.

There's a doctrine of absolution/salvation – any sin, no matter how heinous is forgiven if you repent, forsake sh*tcoins, and embrace bitcoin. They really mean this too – I mean look at some of the most prominent Bitcoin maxi gurus, with grim pasts involved in shilling ICOs to retail. All forgiven post Bitcoin baptism.

There's a conception myth. Bitcoin was created in a uniquely perfect and fair way, nothing else can come close to that, and nothing like that can ever exist again. Only Satoshi's divine Proof of Work and lack of premine can foster a truly global decentralized commodity money.

There's religious texts. Satoshi's original scripture, the white paper, the forum posts, and the subsequent exegesis – the Bitcoin Standard and many others.

There’s specific cultural rituals: eating meat, shooting guns, promoting masculinity, hierarchy, the nuclear family, disdaining progressivism and feminism, and endorsing a kind of ascetism and privation.

There's a tithe – stack your sats every two weeks from your paycheck and even if you're losing money (which these class of 2021 Bitcoiners generally have done), you are still doing good, because it's working for the benefit of the church of Bitcoin. (Contrary to what many people think, Bitcoinism isn’t like the ‘prosperity gospel’ strand of Christianity. In fact, it’s the opposite. Laser eye Bitcoiners actually celebrate privation, emphasizing the sacrifices they make to grow their Bitcoin stack (think of it as a financial equivalent of religious fasting). This is also why they call themselves “plebs” – as a way to claim kinship with the working class “little guy.” Again, remember that these are latecomers. They needed to find a moral high ground over the established crypto elites, that mostly made money from their participation in the space, and the pure, underprivileged Bitcoin plebs. If you lack skills or a means to contribute to the industry or to make money from it, the next best thing is to claim a kind of working class, honest virtue, by calling yourself a pleb and thus morally elevating yourself over the impure money grubbing opportunistic elites.)

There's an eschatology – the fiat apocalypse / hyperinflation / great debt bubble is coming and no financial asset will be spared, except for the Chosen One (Bitcoin). After the rapture, the Bitcoiners will inherit the earth, and a handful of sats in your wallet today will buy city blocks in the future. You may be a mere pleb today, but you are a baron tomorrow.

There's rituals: making the pilgrimage to El Salvador to make a lightning payment at McDonalds, sweltering in the heat at Bitcoin Miami to see your gurus spout platitudes on stage, paying some twitter influencer $500 for a gristly cut of steak, listening to the same six podcasts host the same dozen guests week in, week out. Trolling the nocoiners and the sh*tcoiners on twitter. Telling your own story of how you "found bitcoin" and how it gave you structure and purpose after your divorce. Recruiting new adherents to the cult.

So what does this have to do with Binance and Coinbase? Well even though these firms have done more for Bitcoin adoption and accessibility than literally any other companies in the industry’s history, they are impure, because they listed other coins. They built what people wanted, and that was tools and applications beyond just Bitcoin. The laser eyes harp about Brian Armstrong's early tweets about being focused on Bitcoin, before he learned from the market that to survive, he had to build what people actually wanted, not what a small minority of zealots insisted on. (This is why you wont find any maxis building real companies, because to be a founder is to be forced to accept market realities, rather than trying to impose your ideology forcibly on the world.)

Binance and Coinbase may have made questionable listing and product decisions (and to be clear, they're very different companies, with different regulatory strategies and risk appetites, so I don't mean to imply they are similar in that respect), but they did provide the tools for Bitcoin to achieve global adoption in a way that wasn't possible before.

But these laser eyes see the world through the lens of the sacred and the profane. They aren't focused on Bitcoin's success. They would rather live in a world of purity in which Bitcoin is marginal and niche (but all competing coins had failed), than a fallen world in which Bitcoin is much bigger, but other blockchains survived and thrived. To live in this second would would be to admit that Bitcoin wasn't Special and Uniquely Good and Moral, but it was simply a tool, one tool among others, some of which proved more successful and adaptive. If this second world came to pass, Bitcoiners would have to accept that their God was a false one, that their faith was misplaced, that their ordained future didn't and would never occur. Even if the fiat apocalypse did come, and Bitcoiners weren't uniquely saved, but others were too.

(1/2)

[NEAR Protocol @NEARProtocol]

"#NEAR is really good technology from the architecture side, but it's also a good user experience. Don't think of this as a complete reboot of everything you've done"

Jonathon Bryce of #OnMachina shares his insights into #NEAR and the Blockchain Operating System.

[nic carter @nic_carter]

Imagine a Christian getting to heaven's gate and realizing their God wasn't God, but instead Allah, or Krishna, or Zeus, or Thor. And then seeing sinners and heathens ascending the stairs to the holy gates too. That's Bitcoiners realizing that they bet on the wrong horse. That there wasn't anything particular moral or pure or sacred about Bitcoin, and that the world doesn’t actually care about how immaculate the conception really was.

In the second world, in which Bitcoin continued to thrive, but other coins did so as well, and perhaps surpassed it, the laser eyes would have to admit that they never had any special insight. That the revelations they had so keenly felt were shadows and illusions. That their gurus were false prophets. And this crisis of faith – inching closer every day thanks to simple material reality – is too painful to bear, so they pray and hope for the collapse of all of the sh*tcoins and the impure Bitcoin competitors and all of the distractions to the ordained mission.

So even though Binance and Coinbase did something immensely good for Bitcoin, and surely added tens or hundreds of billions to its market cap by virtue of the tools they built to support it, they didn’t do it in a pure way. They sinned by building technology for other coins. By allowing ETH and SOL and XRP to thrive alongside Bitcoin, too. They sinned by not following the holy virtue of Self Custody at all costs (notwithstanding of course that the market didn’t _want_ self custody). They sinned by not prioritizing the ordained Scaling Solution of Truth in the form of the Lightning Network but instead building other products (that their users wanted) first.

They sinned by (allegedly, in the diseased minds of maxis) creating “paper” Bitcoin out of thin air, thus wrongfully driving down the price of Bitcoin with dilution that wouldn’t otherwise exist. (This is a classic goldbug myth that the Bitcoiners inherited for some deranged reason). But most of all they sinned by being polytheists in a monotheist world. And for that, they deserve to be destroyed. Even if Binance operates the biggest p2p onramp to Bitcoin in the global south. (The laser eyes are unconcerned with data or empirical facts.) Even if Coinbase went to bat for Bitcoin versus US regulators for over a decade. Even if the two firms custody more Bitcoin for end users than anyone else. This doesn’t matter. They’re impure, and laser eye Bitcoiners aren’t here for the profit or the adoption. They’re here to feel morally superior, to dunk on sh*tcoiners, to accelerate towards the rapture in which all fiat dies. They aren’t trying to reform the existing system or accept half-measures like third party custody, even if highly credible. They aren’t here for distractions like DeFi or Web3. They’re here to act out an imagined monetary revolution, mainly on twitter.

This is why the laser eye reaction to the US government attacking stalwart firms like Coinbase or Binance is so revealing. The maxis don’t care about actual progress or key wins for the industry. They don’t care about the 100m+ individuals using these firms to hold their coins. They don’t care about adoption. They don’t even care about price appreciation (remember, their desire for in-group kinship far exceeds their economic motive). They care about being pure, adhering to the imagined codes of conduct set by their gurus. Even though they ostensibly disdain the usage of state power, they are more than happy to wield it against their enemies if it achieves the goals of the revolution. They care about treasuring the sacred and attacking the profane.

Like all secular cults, the Bitcoin maxi cult is borne out of a loss of meaning in modern society. These people are mostly outcasts who believe that society exists in a fallen state, only to be restored by a monetary revolution. Happy, functional people don’t spend their days weaving conspiracies about how Jay Powell is specifically conspiring against them. I’m sympathetic to their search for meaning, but unfortunately as with many secular cults, their programming has gone haywire. Like ducklings believing a human stranger is their mommy, the laser eyes have imprinted upon a technology and wrongly believe it will be their salvation. It’s nothing of the sort. It’s a tool, a very good one, but nothing more. It’s not a culture and it’s not a way of life.

Unfortunately, the maxi cult isn’t interested in adoption or the success and proliferation of Bitcoin, but merely its advance in a theologically acceptable manner. But their cult is exclusionary and trades off against the actual usage of Bitcoin as a way to promote financial liberation. For this reason, the maxi cult must be resisted at all costs. Bitcoin’s fat depends on it.

(2/2)

[Mark Cuban @mcuban]

The SEC could have easily have gone to them and outlined an exact plan to get them to compliance. Then if @coinbase or whoever didn't comply, they sue over whatever legal disagreements they have. Instead they do what they told one of my companies to do when we called, read these cases and get a lawyer to figure it out for you.

That's the fundamental problem of the SEC. They don't want to help companies get to compliance they want to challenge them to get to compliance

They are full of lawyers. Lawyers want to litigate. If you had business people , more like the SBA, there would be more compliance , fewer lawsuits and better investor education and protections . But if that happened, 2k SEC lawyers would be out of a job.

This isn't new. It's been the same for decades. They promote the number of cases and wins the get as their metrics rather than the number of companies they helped get into compliance and the impact those companies had on gdp, jobs and investor returns.

At that point the impact they have on protecting investors would be profound and stand out and most likely they would find the bad actors before they stole money because the connection to investors and real companies would be stronger and they would be willing to communicate about the bad actors.

As it is, no one wants to talk to the SEC because no one trusts them for fear of being in the same situation as @coinbase finds itself

You get what you measure

[Charlie Lee Ⓜ️🕸️ @SatoshiLite]

As we are approaching the 10th anniversary of Litecoin, I figured it's a good time to do a long Twitter 🧵 on the history of Litecoin from my perspective.

My memory of events can be hazy at times, so for those mentioned, feel free to add or correct anything I say. Here goes...

[Michael Saylor @saylor]

Looking for #Bitcoin in Prague.

[Eric Weiss @Eric_BIGfund]

Fireside chat with @Saylor & 3000 Bitcoiners at @BtcPrague ✅
#Bitcoin 🚀

[Michael Saylor @saylor]

Looking forward to my keynote "The Future of #Bitcoin" today at @BtcPrague.

[Michael Saylor @saylor]

Move your money to Cyberspace. #Bitcoin

[Michael Saylor @saylor]

#Bitcoin is a swarm of cyber hornets serving the goddess of wisdom, feeding on the fire of truth, exponentially growing ever smarter, faster, and stronger behind a wall of encrypted energy.

[Solana Fann @SolanaFann]

#NuggetsTakeCommand
#HeatComebackQuest
#UFC289Anticipation
#RBCCanadianOpenThrills

[Solana Fann @SolanaFann]

NBA Finals Heat Up: Nuggets Take Command
Source: https://t.co/FeJBbxnlYA
In an unexpected twist, the Denver Nuggets have taken full command in the NBA Finals after a dominant Game 4 win. The Miami Heat, now down 3-1, are determined to make a comeback and get back to Miami.

[Solana Fann @SolanaFann]

Together we can accomplish anything.

[LeBron James @KingJames]

🤴🏾&🫅🏾🤎