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This one is a sledgehammer: Rose does not argue that government is “too big” or “the wrong party is in charge”. He argues that authority itself is a superstition: the belief that some people have a moral right to rule others, and that the rest of us have a duty to obey. "The belief in “authority,”…
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…
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…
Welcome to Stasher. With this post, I want to introduce you to the funniest game powered by Monero, a privacy coin you can earn and spend to create insightful posts and thoughtful comments. I discovered Monero a long time ago, forgot about it, and this game gave me an opportunity to dust off my…
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…
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
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…
I’ve been around the block. I was a Bitcoin maxi. I know the inner circles, the outer circles, the group chats, and the “private” Signal groups where people say what they’d never say on Twitter. So let me tell you about an open secret: The Closeted Bitcoiner. You may know who I’m talking about.…
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…
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…
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. 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 phenomenon of the 'Streisand Effect' refers to any attempt to hide or censor information, with the unintended consequence that exactly this information will be spread wide and far. The term came into existence through Mike Masnick (CEO Techdirt) when he wrote an article in 2003 about an…
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…
This is my conversion story. A journey of escape from the BTC ecosystem — increasingly unrecognizable every day — which I managed to leave thanks to the involuntary work of the subject mentioned above. Let me explain. Matthew Kratter runs “Bitcoin University” on YouTube. He regularly flexes his…
It's truly a miracle of this age that anyone with a computer and an Internet connection can access and study hundreds of years of humanity's intellectual legacy, thanks to free culture projects such as Project Gutenberg. But I realised there's not enough information on this area of the Internet.…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
