Bitcoin Well

Trump's Bitcoin Money Trail Nobody's Talking About x.com/i/broadcasts/1…

Last week: launched a new pod and opened by saying we are so back... You're welcome

@q_liketheletter @JoeConsorti @ChrisAlaimo6

@bitcoinwell @JoeConsorti @ChrisAlaimo6

Tomorrow, 2pm EST, Episode 2 of the Bitcoin Well Podcast. @JoeConsorti has spent years mapping Bitcoin against global liquidity and monetary policy. @ChrisAlaimo6 has spent years in the trenches of Bitcoin media. Two different lenses on the same question: is the playbook breaking, or is everyone else just early to the exit?

@q_liketheletter @Rob1Ham As is tradition. 🤣🤣🤣

@bitcoinwell Hey @Rob1Ham just know my wife and children will reach out to you directly on my behalf

The most common way to lose your bitcoin isn't a hack. It's dying without a plan. Don't name a stranger from a podcast as your failsafe. Write it down. Run a fire drill with your family. Self-custody isn't just about protecting your bitcoin. It's making sure it survives you.

@q_liketheletter @JoeConsorti @ChrisAlaimo6 This I would pay to see.

@bitcoinwell @JoeConsorti @ChrisAlaimo6 No clue but he will be muted every time anything unhealthy is consumed on screen

I’ll be chatting w @JoeConsorti and @ChrisAlaimo6 this week, any questions for them?

"Bitcoin has no intrinsic value." Neither does the dollar. Let's actually compare what backs each one. The dollar is backed by: · a government that has debased it nearly every year it has existed · debt it can only service by printing more · a promise to keep the promise Bitcoin is backed by: · energy that was genuinely spent and can't be faked · rules no single party can change · a supply cap that tens of thousands of independent computers enforce every ten minutes "Intrinsic value" was always a story. The only question is whose story you're holding. — Zach 🧙‍♂️

@q_liketheletter @JoeConsorti @ChrisAlaimo6

@bitcoinwell @JoeConsorti @ChrisAlaimo6 Squad is getting back together

Saylor said he'd never sell. Strategy just sold Bitcoin anyway. Wednesday, 2pm EST: Episode 2 of the Bitcoin Well Podcast. @JoeConsorti and @ChrisAlaimo6 join @q_liketheletter to unpack it. Panic, or the plan all along?

@ne0matrlx Exactly we always recommend doing test transactions and delete and restore from seed phrase before moving any serious amount of Bitcoin to the wallet. youtu.be/b3vMKbKt4ac

@bitcoinwell The first thing to do before anything else is to recover with your seed phrase though. It will give you s lot of confidence for your future bitcoin operations

Nobody feels sovereign the day they buy bitcoin. They feel it the day they move it themselves. There's a specific kind of quiet that shows up after someone sends their first transaction from their own wallet. It isn't excitement. It's calmer than that. It's the feeling of holding something that is finally, actually yours. You can't explain that feeling to anyone. You can only hand them the keys and let them find it themselves.

A central bank digital currency isn't digital cash. It's a leash with a balance. Cash doesn't care what you buy. It doesn't expire. It doesn't report to anyone. A CBDC is the opposite of all three. It's programmable money, which sounds like a feature until you remember who holds the keyboard. Programmable means an issuer can put an expiry date on your savings to force you to spend. It can block a category of purchase it disapproves of. It can fence your money to a zip code, or switch it off entirely if you step out of line. None of that is speculation. It's just what the technology is for. Bitcoin is programmable too. But the rules are fixed, and they're enforced by you, not aimed at you. No one can freeze it, expire it, or tell it where it's allowed to go. One system asks you to trust that they'll never abuse the switch. The other doesn't have a switch.

Iran got cut off from the dollar. So it mined its way around it. Sanctions work by locking you out of the world's money. Bitcoin has no bank to pressure and no switch to flip. Neutral money is neutral for everyone. A money no one can print is a money no one can freeze.

@VerticalRidge How so?

@bitcoinwell Oh you're going to be disappointed 😆

They don't need to take your money. They just need to make it worth a little less every year while you sleep. Mises saw this a century ago. He called sound money an instrument for protecting civil liberties against a government's despotic reach. Not an investment. A defense. Bitcoin doesn't ask the government to behave. It just works around them. That's the defense he was talking about.

@VerticalRidge Yes, because you obey the laws you have to. 😉

@bitcoinwell Thank you. Come visit sometime: you won't need to go to the woods or jail 😉😁🤝

An exchange showing you "proof of reserves" is showing you half of a magic trick. Proof of reserves tells you what the exchange holds. It says nothing about what the exchange owes. A vault full of coins means nothing if five different customers each hold a claim on the same coin. That isn't an audit. It's a photograph of one side of the ledger. This is fractional-reserve banking wearing a crypto costume. Your balance shows a number. Whether that number is actually backed, one to one, not lent out three times over, is something you are trusting them about, right up until withdrawals freeze. There is exactly one audit that can't be staged. The coins in a wallet whose keys you hold. You don't have to believe a report. You can check the chain yourself. If you don't hold the keys, it isn't a reserve. It's an IOU with good marketing. youtu.be/ezeXqYg9JVs

@VerticalRidge You too, brother!

@bitcoinwell Cheers for success!

@VerticalRidge Government isn't anyone's friend. Just a mafia you have to deal with when you become large enough. You can stay small and under the radar. We took another path.

@bitcoinwell I am a bitcoin exchange for lots of people. You're the one who chooses to run a retail facing operation that has bounds. My point is: they can and should be rejected. Government isn't and won't be a long term friend.

@WolfgangLohmann 🤮

@bitcoinwell In Bitcoin, Merkle Trees are essential. For SPV. Essetial for scaling on base layer. Ignored by many who prefer BTC.

Every Bitcoin block carries the fingerprint of a man who never worked on Bitcoin. You just can't see it. In 1979, a cryptographer named Ralph Merkle patented a way to take a mountain of data and boil it down to a single fingerprint, so anyone could check whether one piece belonged to the whole without having to see all of it. He called it a hash tree. Everyone else calls it a Merkle tree. Thirty years later, Satoshi cited Merkle by name in the Bitcoin whitepaper and wired the idea into the heart of every block. Each block header carries one Merkle root, a single string that commits to every transaction inside it. It's why your phone can confirm a payment without downloading the entire chain. It's why nobody can quietly rewrite an old block, change one transaction and the fingerprint shatters. Merkle wasn't building money. He was one of the people who invented public-key cryptography itself in the 1970s, then handed the world a tool for proving things without trusting anyone. That was Bitcoin's whole spirit, decades early. Don't trust, verify. Merkle gave us the math to do it.