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Ruling groups maintain power via force, but long-run ideological support from the majority is essential: “Once a State has been established, the problem of the ruling group or ‘caste’ is how to maintain their rule. While force is their modus operandi, their basic and long-run problem is…
We all know the idea of separating money from the state. The Myth of the Rule of Law by John Hasnas was the first time I saw someone try the harder cut IRL (non-fiction): separating law / lawmaking from the state. (The real first time I ran into the idea was in Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh…
For those who do not know: Nikolai was a true builder and one of the last genuine cypherpunks in crypto. He focused on elegant, permissionless, corruption-resistant systems rather than hype, profit, or personal branding. As one tribute put it, he spent his life crafting tools to realize a vision of…
today is Nikolai Mushegian's (@delete_shitcoin) 33rd birthday. here's to a genius who dared to see things for what they are and call them by their true names—and, most importantly, when he saw something wrong, he built the tools to make it right. Nikolai was a builder in the…
The Depoliticization of Law John Hasnas Advocates of the privatization of law often assume that unless law springs from some act of agreement, some express or implicit social contract by which individuals consent to be bound, it is nothing more than force. In this Article, I argue that this is a…
Disclaimer: This is a copy of an article from localmonero.co's knowledge base from before they shut down. They still list links for web archived versions of these articles, but at least for me, those web archive links are down. I will be posting one per week (from the ones I saved, I did not save…
For people who already know what and why we need better OPSEC. We have been operating under an assumption that doxxing comes with high costs and requires intensive resources. And that deanonymisation is possible but expensive, that linking a forum account to a real identity takes a skilled…
There’s a rounded value heuristic (often discussed in Bitcoin privacy) which is inherited by any public chain, including non-shielded Zcash. This isn’t the case when values are hidden, especially for Monero and any shielded Zcash (or future shielded Bitcoin). A pool boundary… twitter.com/yfarmx/status/2109671242458358176
I. The Delusion of “Adjective Capitalism” versus The Reality of Propertarianism, Praxeology, and the Parasitic Anatomy of State Interventionism In contemporary political and academic discourse, it has become fashionable to blame every socio-economic pathology caused by government intervention on…
The Stash #03: What Could $100 Million Do to Monero? Level: Beginner Reading time: \~15 min Last verified: 13 Nov 2026 Author's note: In the previous post, I mentioned that the next one would be about FCMP++. However, since I didn't want to publish two technical posts back-to-back, I pushed its…
The entire Bitcoin story is a scripted, staged illusion put together by insiders to convince you that states and corporations are “wholeheartedly committed to this” and that the market is growing on genuine demand. We are looking at the BIGGEST bubble in human history, one that will go down in the…
I have come to suspect that to most people thinking is painful. Some of us are addicted to thinking. Some of us find it a necessity. Johnny enjoyed it. I even have the suspicion that he enjoyed almost nothing else. -- Edward Teller, eulogizing John von Neumann I listened to Ananyo Bhattacharya's…
Bitcoin as a Failed Medium of Exchange from the Perspective of the Austrian School of Economics, Human Action, and Praxeology Although Bitcoin’s economic model is widely characterized as Austrian, it adopts only a limited subset of this school’s thought: Namely, a strict focus on scarcity and…
The Stash #02: How does a ring signature work? Level: Intermediate Reading time: \~25–30 min Last verified: 6 Nov 2026 Version covered: Monero v0.18.5.4 "Fluorine Fermi" (GitHub release ) Scope: This article is based on the original CryptoNote v2.0 ring signature (2013). Quick heads-up before we…
For anyone who cannot open the original link, the full text is below. The Shadow Superpower Forget China: the $10 trillion global black market is the world's fastest growing economy -- and its future. By Robert Neuwirth October 28, 2011, 9:16 PM With only a mobile phone and a promise of money from…
Bitcoin was a revolutionary breakthrough that proved peer-to-peer digital cash could function without banks or any financial intermediaries. It combined publicly accessible transactions with a Proof-of-Work mechanism that operates free of any central authority or third-party trust. Yet this…
Excessively Foolish Cycles "Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them." - Frank Herbert, Dune Civilization collapsed because of a nail, but I no longer tell this story even to my…
First published July 5, 2018 Came across this essay on the internets, hope it educates you the reader as much as it educated me. I admit I used to believe in Bitcoin. I was one of its most naïve and vehement apologists to friends, family members, and complete strangers (online). This was all before…
I. The Financial Black Hole and The Bounty In 2020, the United States government attempted to crack a cryptographic network and hit a brick wall. Having failed to breach the protocol on its own, the state publicly funded and legally authorized an open bounty starting at $625,000 -and eventually…
I read this yesterday. Totally agree. None of the ideas were very radical or new to me. I've long held the view that nobody has authority over me. I am sovereign and I live as ungoverned as I am practically able. I don't vote and don't care about political parties. It's all nonsense. It's a good…
The Stash #01: What Monero Hides, and What It Doesn't Level: Intermediate Reading time: \~10 min Last verified: 26 Oct 2026 Version covered: Monero v0.18.5.4 "Fluorine Fermi" (GitHub release ) Contents In short Scenario Stop 1: Exchange Stop 2: Swap Stop 3: Payment Deadly zone: network and OPSEC…
In my quest to investigate the rising RAM and storage prices, as I am looking to upgrade my workstation and build a NAS with plenty of storage for backups and media, I've been researching, ironically with AI, the market prices, the current and forecasted trends, and the news surrounding these…
Stasher News FAQ To quickly browse through this FAQ page, click the chapters icon in the top-right corner. This will let you scroll through all chapters or search for a particular topic within this page. last updated: November 1, 2026 New Stashers Start Here What is Stasher News? Stasher News is a…