Nostr is going to retain me off the bots alone. Notification dopamine on X is at an all-time low.

It’s not that mistakes are desirable in and of themselves, it’s that the sort of life you have to live to never make any significant mistake is a significant mistake in itself.

I think about this graphic every week. It’s from May of this year and it shows an uncomfortable trend in Bitcoin. Individual holders of BTC are the biggest demographic (around 66% of the supply), but they are also the only demographic seeing overall outflows. There are some normal reasons for this, but it’s still one hell of a fumble.

One of the most interesting things I’ve learned about Bitcoin this year is that not every bitcoin commands the same price. This has nothing to do with technical fungibility. Firstly, from the Nobitex hack, I learned that where satoshis have been in their life dictates whether some institutions, exchanges, and people will touch them in the first place. The traceable history means that many have to be careful not to hold any bitcoin that may have travelled through sanctioned entities or interacted with blacklisted wallets. Imagine if this were true of cash! Secondly, newly mined bitcoin commands around a 5% markup by virtue of its clean history. Thirdly, to many institutions, bitcoin that has been mined sustainably is also more desirable than bitcoin that hasn’t been. Green bitcoin commands a premium and some believe this demand will only increase. Digital provenance is a double-edged sword, but fascinating when it’s a component of money.

I see many Bitcoiners scoffing at the queues to buy gold, but people queuing to buy gold isn't what's interesting about this story. This is indicative of the shift in sentiment we can see all across the West, in particular. Some are buying because they see the all-time highs, but there’s a rise in desire for something between a hedge and a full-on life raft. There is a growing distrust of fiat and governments. Where does the average person go in this situation? To gold. In the UK, the Royal Mint has reported, "Investors seeking safe-haven assets amid economic uncertainty have driven online bullion coin revenue up 306% year-on-year." The revenue of silver weight sold is up 887% year-on-year too. The panic is driving people to metals because the path to them is well trodden, but this is where Bitcoiners are made, sooner or later. We don’t seek out solutions for problems we’ve never had. The British pound, for example, has consistent inflation, but not quite enough in one go to stir up the masses. Yes, you’ll see headlines of deficits and national debt, but the numbers are ludicrous, and you don’t “feel” the effects of their growth in any meaningful way. It’s not as if the UK national debt goes up £500B and I suddenly can’t buy bread. Slowly but surely, however, the curtains are falling off the wall, and once you see the problem Bitcoin was created to solve, you can never see fiat the same way again. I won’t be queuing for gold, but I’m familiar with the motivation.