Brian Daniel

1/9 A 🧵. If you’re new to Bitcoin and crypto it can be a LOT to take in. Over the last 2 years I’ve found some incredible books and podcasts. I’ve bookmarked and noted them here. Take your time, you’re about to take a pill 💊 and fall deep into the 🐰 hole.

Tom Lee in 2019 on Bitcoin: "We think the best approach for most people is to put 1% maybe 2% into BTC." CNBC: "I still think that's CRAZY." Morgan Stanley 2026: "We recommend 7% allocation into BTC."

$12 trillion Charles Schwab releases educational video on Bitcoin and risk management. They manage 40 million investor portfolios and are recommending up to 7% allocation to Bitcoin! Times have certainly changed 👏

Capital gains tax represents one of the most egregious examples of double taxation in the federal code, yet politicians treat it as if they're taxing "unearned" income for the first time. You earn $100,000, pay income tax on it, and save $70,000 after Uncle Sam takes his cut. You invest that already-taxed money in stocks, real estate, or bonds. Ten years later, you sell for $140,000. The government swoops in again, demanding capital gains tax on your $70,000 profit. They're taxing the same economic activity twice: your initial productive work that generated the savings, then the delayed consumption that made investment possible. Capital gains represent nothing more than the time value of money plus compensation for risk. When you save instead of consume immediately, you defer gratification to provide capital for productive investment. That $70,000 you invested didn't sit idle; it funded business expansion, job creation, and economic growth. The return you earned reflects both the productive use of that capital and inflation's erosion of purchasing power over time. The double taxation becomes even more perverse when you consider inflation. If your $70,000 investment becomes $140,000 over ten years, but inflation averaged 3% annually, your real purchasing power increased by roughly $18,000, not $70,000. Yet the IRS taxes the entire nominal gain, including the portion that merely kept pace with their own monetary debasement. Every dollar collected through capital gains tax is a dollar stolen twice; once from your labor, again from your thrift.

It has been much better to own stocks than real estate over the last 50 years. (h/t @Barchart)

The man @NYCMayorsOffice is trolling gave $400 million to @MSKCC_BreastCA cancer hospital, $60 million to @SuccessCharters & $40 million to #NaturalHistoryMuseum. So, yeah Zohran, I think Ken Griffin is “paying his share.” Such a jackass, juvenile move to play @DSA class warfare with Griffin. Grow up. @nycgov @CMFrankMorano @CM_KMarmorato @GaleBrewerNYC @CMSandyNurse @SpeakerMenin @LincolnRestler @OsseChi @JoannAriola32 @vmmalony . Zohran, put the ego aside & try showing appreciation 4 this philanthropy.

Never give up

Mamdani’s city-run grocery store is 10x more expensive than Whole Foods per square foot. This comes as no surprise. Whole Foods founder @iamjohnmackey understands the beauty of capitalism: "Capitalism created the possibility of the win win win. It used to be a zero sum game where somebody won, somebody else lost. The biggest mistake people make, intellectuals in particular, they still think we're in a zero sum world. They're obsessed with some billionaires because Bernie Sanders thinks that Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk somehow stole the money from the people. They don't understand that it's this prosperity machine that's creating more, not just for those billionaires, but for everything that they're touching. They're creating value for their customers, they're creating value for their employees. Their suppliers are flourishing, their investors are seeing their capital go up. It can be reinvested and compound. All philanthropy ultimately comes from business. That's where the profits are. Where does all the taxes come from? It ultimately comes from business as well. This is the engine that's lifting humanity out. The entrepreneurs are the drivers of that engine. Somebody like Elon Musk, he gets a very, very, very tiny sliver of the value that he creates for the whole world."

8m views after 3 hours is insane

Everyone eventually gets Bitcoin, it’s just a matter of when.

Mamdani singled out and named a private citizen not for a crime or corruption, but for the offense of having money and owning a home. That is how third-world despots operate. I do not know how it works in Uganda, but in America we do not build policy around punishing people, and we do not declare law-abiding citizens enemies of the state or take their money simply because the mayor dislikes them. Taxes exist to fund the functioning of a city. They are not instruments of revenge or tools to satisfy a mayor’s personal envy. This has no place in New York City and runs against everything America stands for, but if you import the third world, you become the third world.

The last thing you see before you move to Florida:

@rchav9 If the value created by the top earners raises the entire economic floor, then why is the income gap a problem?

@b_adastra the real problem is the income gap between the two. the top 1% of Americans making 2.4x the bottom 50% in AGI is nuts.

Politicians would have you believe the wealthy pay no taxes. They pay the most.

Agreed

⚡️The American university system is the largest wealth transfer from the young to the old in human history and nobody frames it that way because the people who benefit from it control the framing. Eighteen year olds who can’t legally buy a beer are signing six figure debt obligations to institutions that face zero accountability for outcomes. The loan is non-dischargeable in bankruptcy. The university gets paid regardless of whether the student gets a job. The incentive structure is pure extraction. Get them in. Get the money. What happens after is their problem. 43% underemployment isn’t a failure of the students. These kids did exactly what they were told. Study hard. Get good grades. Go to college. Get the degree. They followed the script perfectly and the script was a lie. Not a lie that anyone intended maliciously at first. But a lie that became profitable enough that nobody corrected it even after the data made it obvious. The people who designed this system, the administrators pulling $500k salaries, the tenured professors teaching subjects with zero market application, the loan servicers collecting interest on degrees in fields that haven’t produced a living wage in twenty years. None of them are underemployed. They’re doing fine. The 43% is subsidizing their comfort. Now add AI. The entry level professional jobs that justified the debt are the first ones being compressed. Not blue collar work. Not trades. The exact white collar knowledge work positions that the degree was supposed to unlock. Legal research. Financial analysis. Consulting grunt work. Content production. The 43% who are already underemployed are about to be joined by a significant chunk of the 57% who thought they made it. The people who will come through this are the ones who figured out early that the credential was a trap. The ones who built skills instead of collecting letters after their name. The ones who found asymmetric paths. The ones who created value directly instead of waiting for an institution to certify them as valuable. The university system had a real function once. It produced genuine education and genuine opportunity. That function has been hollowed out by decades of misaligned incentives until what remains is mostly a financing operation that happens to have classrooms attached. And 43% of its recent customers just confirmed with their own lives that the product doesn’t work.

Can we just take a second here and admit something that the regime media and the foreign policy geniuses in Washington will never say out loud? President Trump just dropped the hammer on Iran—and it’s not just tough, it’s brilliant. Absolute chess move. After Tehran laughed in our face and refused to play ball on the terms we laid out—no more nuclear games, no more shaking down the world for passage through the Strait of Hormuz—Trump didn’t blink. He announced a full naval blockade of the Persian Gulf. No ships in, no ships out. And here’s the part that should have every oil trader and every globalist suit sweating through their overpriced suits: he’s redirecting those tankers straight to the Gulf of America. Buy American oil. Pay in U.S. dollars. End of story. Why is this genius? Let me break it down like the simple truth it is. First, it ends the extortion racket without sending a single American boot into another Middle Eastern quagmire. Iran thought they could turn the world’s most important oil choke point into their personal toll booth. Wrong. Trump just flipped the script: you don’t control the flow anymore. We do. The same Navy that’s been babysitting the planet for decades is now finally working for us. No more free security for countries that hate us while they get rich off our protection. Second, it supercharges American energy dominance. We’re sitting on more oil and gas than anyone else on Earth. Block the Gulf, prices spike everywhere else, and suddenly every country that needs crude—Europe, Asia, whoever—has one logical place to go: right here. Gulf of America terminals firing on all cylinders. American workers. American profits. American dollars. The petrodollar doesn’t just survive; it gets a shot of adrenaline straight to the heart. While the rest of the world scrambles, we’re printing money and telling our enemies to pound sand. Third, it exposes the whole rotten global order for what it is. For years, we’ve been told we have to play nice, subsidize everyone else’s defense, and let hostile regimes dictate energy prices. Trump just said: no thanks. This isn’t “escalation.” It’s accountability. Iran wanted to play pirate in international waters? Fine. Now they get to watch their economy choke while American energy booms. China and India want cheap oil? Better start buying it from the country that actually produces it instead of funding the mullahs who hate us. The usual suspects are already screaming about “warmongering” and “oil prices” and how this is all so very complicated. Spare me. The complicated part was pretending America wasn’t the strongest kid on the block. Trump just reminded everyone—especially our adversaries—that we don’t have to beg or bribe or negotiate from weakness. We set the terms now. This is what America First actually looks like when it’s executed by someone who means it. No forever wars. No blank checks. Just raw, unapologetic leverage that puts American workers, American energy, and American strength first. And the best part? The Iranians are the ones who forced his hand. They chose this. Trump just made them regret it. God bless the guy. In a town full of people who couldn’t negotiate their way out of a wet paper bag, he just reminded the world who runs the table.

population has grown ~9x in 200yrs, while poverty trends to 0 people act as though capitalism is a zero sum game, but it’s actually the only system that creates positive sum outcomes the average person today is far richer than most kings in days past

🔫🛡️

An open letter to @ProfSteveKeen regarding your recent comments about Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining. Respectfully, I have listened to your comments on Bitcoin mining and it is very clear that you have no understanding of how Bitcoin mining works. This is not a hill you I believe you should be seeing your reputation die on. Specifically it is very clear that you have no understanding that it is a flexible user of energy that does not rival other energy users for its power, no understanding of the well established ability Bitcoin mining uniquely has to monetize otherwise wasted renewable energy, no understanding of how Bitcoin mining obviates gas peaker plants, and no understanding of the unique role Bitcoin mining is playing in methane mitigation. You also appear not to understand that these facts are not some pot pouri of greenwashing claims from "Bitcoin supporters" looking to defend their assetclass but datapoints that have been repeatedly established in 24 peer reviewed journals, and 8 independent reports (including Cambridge University) Your characterization of Bitcoin supporters as not understanding the interrelationship between global warming and energy dynamics is as patronizing as it is a reconfirmation of your own lack of research, given there are a number of committed environmentalists, climatetech investors and climate scientists who are avid supporters of Bitcoin mining precisely because it already can and is incentivizing renewable energy transition and methane mitigation at scale. You also appear ignorant of the fact that the first generation research on Bitcoin mining that suggested environmental harm was debunked in peer reviewed study in 2023 and that is why the media has not quoted this study since. Finally your contention that Bitcoin is "going to zero" because mining will become unprofitable shows again an appalling lack of basic understanding of the economics of Bitcoin mining. Bitcoin mining companies are able to earn ancillary revenue through any number of means, they may be vertically integrated, they may mine using last-gen machines on stranded solar/wind, they may mine offgrid on otherwise wasted power sources such as landfills of oil&gas fields, they may be nation states such as Bhutan using Bitcoin mining on their otherwise surplus hydro energy. These unique abilities of Bitcoin miners mean that far from being at risk, Bitcoin mining is by far the most resilience industry in the face of rising energy prices. The mere fact that Bitcoin mining exists and is growing in EU despite already very high energy prices is proof of Bitcoin miners' resilience to rising energy costs that affect other industries far more. Your opposition to Bitcoin, and Bitcoin mining, appears more motivated by regret aversion, a well documented psychological phenomenon where someone who "misses out" rationalizes that "there was nothing to miss out on" rather than engage in genuine intellectual curiosity and humility by revisiting their decision, and this is leading you to invest an inordinately large amount of time dismissing a technology you have made an inordinately small amount of time trying to understand. When someone of your standing in the field of economics talks so dismissively about a domain they have spent so little time seeking to understand, it does not weaken that domain, rather it weakened 1. your reputation 2. people's general trust in economists 3. the extend to which we esteem people in society with the title "professor" If you want to continue to erode the reputation of all three, you are welcome to do so. Bitcoin does not care. Bitcoin miners will continue to stabilize grids, monetize wasted renewable energy, mitigate methane, obviate the need for gas peaker plants with or without you. But if you ever decide to re-allocate a small fraction of the hours you have spend dismissing Bitcoin mining into understanding how the technology works that you are dismissing, I would be more than happy to connect you to any number of utilities, renewable energy experts, methane mitigation specialists, climate scientists, climatetech investors or battery engineers who can explain to you why Bitcoin is an essential part of solving the exact issues you claim to care about. Daniel Batten Environmentalist, Climatetech investor, Bitcoin mining analyst

I’m over thinking I’m going to rule the world with Claude CoWork and Dispatch 😂