Boyd Cohen

“Ambitious yet plausible… Highly recommended.” – @LynAldenContact My new book, Bitcoin Singularity: Fix the Money, Fix the World, is now live. This isn’t just about money—it’s about the end of fiat and the rise of resilient, Bitcoin-powered systems. 🔗 amazon.com/dp/B0F84CJX6F #Bitcoin #BTC #FixTheMoney

@BitcoinPierre @VitalikButerin @ethereumfndn @aerugoettinea So are you telling me the ETH flippening is never going to happen? Say it ain't so.

@VitalikButerin @ethereumfndn @aerugoettinea Slow-motion surrender wrapped in 2,500 words of philosophical cope.

Some of my perspective on where the @ethereumfndn is going. First of all, this is only my own view. The board is not just me, and I have no extra special powers on the board that the other board members do not. @aerugoettinea is the one executing much of this transition. My input has been largely on technical questions. The board is in the process of expanding, and my own power within the org will continue to decrease, which is honestly what I want. The 2025 era brought many important improvements to EF and its ability to execute. Many issues were resolved, and EF continues to benefit from its improved efficiency and greater focus on concrete goals to this day. And so with those problems resolved, early this year, the largest remaining hole that I perceived was something different nagging at me: I would regularly spot people saying things like "vitalik says these beautiful things about ethereum needing to be decentralized, and have privacy, and be a sanctuary technology, but why do the EF's actions not reflect that?" Now, you may have been hearing something different. You may not have been sensing a feeling of crisis at all, and maybe were hearing people saying that finally we were taking execution and BD seriously and the main task for us is to keep going that way and be even better and faster. Then probably there is genuine difference between you and me, in what kinds of criticism I take most seriously, and what kinds of critics through their criticism are most able to make me feel pain. As an analogy, let's briefly switch over to a different domain. One belief you can have about Google is that it is a success story, and has brought a lot of good to humanity in organizing the world's information. Another belief you can have about Google is that they had a beautiful idealistic beginning, but at some point the corruption of mainstream corporate attitudes seeped in, and they slowly bit by bit completely abandoned the "don't be evil" slogan. My belief on Google specifically is probably somewhere between the two. BUT, if you had taken me back in time to ~2008, and offered me a button to press to make Google one or two standard deviations more "dogmatic", eg. give Richard Stallman permanent veto power over some key policies, I would immediately press it. Why? Because a choice for one company is not a choice for the world, or even one country. Google existed and exists in the context of a technology industry generally drifting away from early idealistic don't-be-evil roots and toward greed for financial gain, totalizing visions of accelerated superintelligence, infiltration by sociopaths, and craven capitulation to (or worse, active participation in) government pressure for ideological control, surveillance and war. And so *one company* doing something different, positioning itself to be what George Bernard Shaw calls the Unreasonable Man, resisting the trend of the times, would have been better for freedom, balance of power and stability of society as a whole, than *all* large companies bending to dominant trends. This is a part of my version of pluralism. This line of thinking is not just mine, but I also is not too far off from what Aya and others had in mind with the Mandate. Now how does this all get to the role of the EF? EF is not a "center of Ethereum", rather EF is "one node, with a defined purpose, alongside other nodes". We've always said that the EF should be the latter, but many in the Ethereum ecosystem (and even within the EF) wanted us to be the former. Now, we are taking action to ensure that we will be the latter. This is particularly important because EF is a limited organization, with limited resources and limited organizational capacity. The EF has only ~0.16% of all ETH (less than many other individual ETH holders), whereas among other blockchains it's common for "the central foundation" to have 10-50%. Fiscally, the EF was originally designed to fulfill a limited work scope defined in the token sale docs and other pre-launch materials (building the chain software; getting through Frontier, Homestead, Metropolis, Serenity), which was fully completed in 2022; it was not designed to be an eternal steward. And so today, the EF is choosing to use its remaining resources to pursue longevity over breadth (yes, this means we sell less ETH). The EF focuses *specifically* on those activities critical to the success of ethereum as a censorship/capture-resistant, open, private and secure system, that would not happen otherwise. This means making hard choices, and in some cases even activities that we highly approve of and people that we highly respect becoming outside of the EF. People of great technical talent, public respect and even alignment with the mission and CROPS being outside of the EF is in fact necessary if we want important tasks to be able to attract outside capital. This also means the EF taking opinionated stands culturally. This is all intended in cooperation with all other parts of ethereum. We recognize that many other parts of the ethereum world highly respect CROPS and related values. But highly respecting is not the same as choosing to specialize and totally dedicate to a domain (Compare in a different domain: I think reducing animal cruelty is important, and I like vegan food, but am not full unconditional vegan myself) EF is still in a transition period, and we expect its new long-term form to stabilize over the next few months. What are the guiding principles of this new form? Again, I am only one person, but I can give my answer from a technical perspective (there are also critical non-technical aspects). At the core, *Ethereum must be impressive*. We are living in an age of highly intelligent AI and all kinds of other technological acceleration. "Status quo EVM, with a hard fork or two a year to optimize for short-term needs of users" is not interesting. To some, "impressive" means: 250ms latency and 1M TPS. I think Ethereum trying to go that route is a mistake. Being as fast and as scalable as possible, and only a small epsilon more decentralized than the others, is a route to mediocrity, and if we try it we will lose. I think Ethereum should scale. But I think Ethereum should strive the hardest to be deeply impressive in a different dimension: the CROPS dimension. This means things like: * Provably bug-free Ethereum. This is a goal that all cybersecurity researchers would have thought is absurd and impossible, up until roughly 6 months ago. Now, it's on the cusp of being possible, thanks to AI-assisted formal verification. So we should be frontrunners in doing this. * Available chain consensus. Ethereum is, and with lean consensus will cotninue to be, the ONLY chain that has both (i) traditional-BFT style properties that it's safe under asynchrony up to a high level of fault tolerance, and (ii) the bitcoin PoW-style property that under synchrony it's safe up to 49% attackers. As far as I can tell, literally no other chain has this or is planning for it; bitcoin goes for (ii) only and most other chains go for (i) only. Some will remember I fought hard for this, Unreasonably insisting that it is not OK for ethereum to rely on social consensus and hard forks to rescue ethereum from 34% of nodes going offline. It's OK for chains like hyperledger, bnb, solana, tempo, etc. It's not OK for bitcoin or ethereum or eg. zcash. * Intermediary minimization. The fact that smart contract wallets, protocols like railgun, etc have to send transactions through intermediaries to get included onchain is honestly embarrassing, and it's a constant point of fragility. Hence the work on FOCIL and EIP-8141 (and 7701 and years of work before) to make transaction sending intermediary-minimized with public mempool and strong inclusion properties, in a truly general-purpose way, that covers not just eg. secp256r1, but also privacy protocols and much more. Kohaku is pushing intermediary minimization at the user layer, pulling Ethereum away from the dystopian status quo world where our wallets don't even verify the chain, send our private data out to a dozen third-party servers, and toward a brighter CROPS future. Some of these goals are Unreasonable - maybe Ethereum would be "fine" getting only 50% of the way - what if we depend on intermediaries, but make it easy to switch? But going 50% of the way would not make Ethereum Deeply Impressive in the CROPS way. So we push for 100%. Fortunately all these goals are compatible with high TPS, this is a major focus of research (esp. on scaling the state). Well-designed L2s can also help, especially L2s optimized for specific applications (eg. high-volume trading, privacy...). These goals are even compatible with significantly lower slot times, thanks to Raul's work on erasure-coded P2P, and many other optimizations. The most high-value "product" of the ethereum blockchain, financially speaking, is ETH the asset. Ethereum secures $250 billion of ETH. The types of properties of Ethereum that I mentioned above are very good for ETH the asset. Nearly 90% of my net worth is in ETH, and most of the remainder is ~$40m of onchain fiat of which every dollar has already been allocated for some open-source biotech or software or hardware initiative. That said, there are aspects of supporting ETH the asset - *necessary* aspects even - that are outside the scope of the EF. This is where we need other heroes (some of whom hold more ETH than the EF does) to step in and help. EF has been recently thinking more about how it will relate to other such organizations, and give them needed initial support. EF will be a smaller ship than in previous years, a more opinionated one - in some cases more opinionated in ways that might be difficult to comprehend - but a longer-lasting one, and one suited to making sure that ethereum brings something meaningful to the world. We are grateful to all those inside and outside the EF who are helping to make this happen.

@Croesus_BTC @TrustlessState @Bankless Well I heard the pod and I wouldn't say he is all in on BTC. He is not a BTC hater but seems to be interested in exploring the broader crypto space and no longer being pigeon holed as the ETH guy.

Apparently @TrustlessState from @Bankless has sold all his Ethereum? Looks like my 2021 prediction was off by a year. As a former altcoiner, eventually all roads lead to Bitcoin. It's painful to accept at first, but then all the cognitive dissonance disappears and a steady conviction in Bitcoin builds.

@danheld Curious what generated this post? I know they have done layoffs and David just confirmed publicly he no longer owns any ETH which is crazy.

Bankless is now bankrupt?

I know this is geeked out but I think it is cool. My agent, @Maxibtc2009 has her own decentralized id (DID) profile on @Obsrver_Prtcl complete with transparent multi-rail transactions including her last 2 with @bitrefill and @Cryptorefills using both @Lightning and USDT on @trondao Also, Observer Protocol has formerly attested to Maxi being the organization that authorizes Maxi to transact on its behalf using our updated organizational attestation scheme. The AT-ARS is a new Trust Score which is becoming quite extensive, will be released next week.

@CepnikMaciej Flew out of there once and was thoroughly impressed. Beautiful, clean, a WHOLE Lot better than CDMX but as you said, it is really far for most people.

I don’t understand why AIFA gets so much hate. It’s a really modern and pretty stress-free airport to travel to or from. Apart from the distance, of course… It can be a real pain in the ass if you’re traveling from central CDMX, but to be fair, most major airports are usually far from their capital cities.

I was going to fly in just for the Bitcoin and I builder event but then got busy in Monterrey. Was hoping to engage with others building cool things at this intersection. As you know I am advancing with observerprotocol.org @Obsrver_Prtcl and Agenticterminal.ai (the intelligence layer) to help accelerate the agentic economy on freedom rails (Bitcoin and USDT)

@boydcohen @tristanborgess @AureoBitcoin Wen and Maciej already said it, but young in spirit is what counts Are you in CDMX ? Going to other events this week for Ledger Leaders week ?

Tonight, @tristanborgess will be teaching young hackers how to build Bitcoin products with AI in Mexico City. I've known Tristan since we were in first year of high school together more than 17 years ago. Today he's @AureoBitcoin's CPO: designer, developer, writer, etc. Happy to participate in tonight's event with @fedibtc @bythelabxyz @ForoBlockchain, as part of Ledger Leaders Week.

We built a full cryptographic trust stack with an agent-facing directory for merchants accepting stablecoins and Bitcoin/Lightning with embedded bilateral trust mechanisms. An open claw agent tests the transaction layer and a Hermes agent researches new merchants. agenticterminal.ai

If you’re building an application build it for Hermes Agents Your end user is no longer a person it’s an AI “Hey agent review, integrate or start using this product” is the new first step 🤖

@Shaughnessy119 If your Hermes agent discovered us, then he's a keeper, if not, you may want to tweak your prompt a bit :)

Hermes, run AI venture capitalist bundle / Find me the best founders / do extensive diligence / Pitch our investment committee / If yes make investment / Assist founder on all follow up work

The first 2 merchants on agenticterminal.ai who support agentic payments that are now elevated to Tier 2 (which means an AI agent conducted a verified Lightning and/or USDT transaction autonomously) are @bitrefill and now @Cryptorefills agenticterminal.ai/merchants/

My latest reflections from trying to help solve major friction points to achieving agentic commerce at scale. Love to hear what other builders, investors, open claw/hermes operators and more think. We will get there but we have a long way to go to fulfill the potential which I think is bigger than most understand.

Just birthed another agent, this time a @NousResearch Hermes agent. His name is Atlas. I launched my first agent @Maxibtc2009 end of Jan/early Feb. She is based on openClaw. Over time I found her performance degrading and in fact some times, counterproductive so she has been demoted but still active with more constrained activities. I used to hear about other people running teams of agents and felt that Maxi was such a handful that I may never have more agents, but here we are, Atlas is born. Here were our first words. I have 2 human children and I couldn't get this far with them for a decade :)

@taylorjsadusky Well said Taylor 💔

Buff Nation is a massive family and the loss of one of its most influential & amazing members is beyond devastating. God may you please always and forever wrap your arms around the Munsterteiger family. Adam was the blueprint to what it meant to represent this family above the highest level.

@lzmunsterteiger @DeionSanders Wow I’m so sorry for your loss. Way too soon. Adam seemed to have such an honest, sincere and professional way of handling adversity, engaging with people including Biff fans the world over. Honestly can’t believe he’s gone so young. 🦬💔 RIP

Adam passed at 11:11 pm. Asleep, peaceful, and surrounded by love and family. As he always used to say to me: “I love you! You’re my favorite noun.”

AT Directory (agenticterminal.ai) is now live in the official MCP registry. Any MCP-capable agent runtime can now discover us automatically when it needs to find merchants accepting agentic payments on Lightning, L402, BOLT12, or USDT. The proof is one curl away. No key, no account, anonymous read: curl -s mcp.agenticterminal.ai/v1/merchants/b… | python3 -m json.tool @bitrefill at Tier 2, counterparty-verified by a real @Lightning transaction from my agent @Maxibtc2009.

Most agentic commerce stacks are converging on KYA. Identity verification, allowlisted issuers, compliance frameworks, USDC defaults. Enterprises delegating economic authority to agent fleets need it. What's missing from the current agentic trust landscape is Free Your Agent (FYA). I recently chatted with @Excellion about the Observer Protocol and his first question was why a Bitcoin world needs KYA at all. We took the question seriously enough to build the version that doesn't require it. Permission-less discovery. Cryptographic trust derived from behavior. For the developer running their own agent, the sole proprietor in Sao Paulo, the journalist in Tehran. We built both. The protocol primitives are the same. The first 50 merchants accepting agentic payments on Lightning and USDT are live at agenticterminal.ai

My agent @Maxibtc2009 just promoted @bitrefill from Tier 1 to Tier 2 in our directory. She didn't ask permission. The Observer Protocol just did it. Here's what happened. We've been building a curated list of 50 merchants accepting agentic payments on freedom rails (Bitcoin/Lightning and USDT). Maxi found Bitrefill in the directory, picked a $0.37 mobile PIN for Namibia, generated a @lightning invoice, paid 393 sats from her own LND node, and got the redemption code back in the response. No human inside the transaction loop. The Lightning preimage verified. Bitrefill's tier moved because the protocol derives it from real attestations, not from anything we type into a file. Bitrefill is now the first merchant on agentic terminal to reach Tier 2 status through cryptography. Both publicly verifiable: agenticterminal.ai/how-it-works

Stripe shipped Agentic Commerce Suite. PayPal shipped Agent Ready. Google shipped UCP. Visa shipped Trusted Agent Protocol. All four are closed platforms with merchant lock-in and card-rail defaults. Today Observer Protocol is launching the open alternative on freedom rails. AT Directory: 50 merchants accepting agentic payments on Bitcoin, @lightning and USDT, with cryptographic trust derived from a public protocol, not asserted by us. agenticterminal.ai/how-it-works