#I remember the debate on whether only rich people go to the grocery store more than once a week

[maddie-grove]

I wish more people could wrap their heads around “labor rights and a strong social safety net are important not just to the very poor, both on principle and because weakening those things means that more people end up in poverty” and “people at different socioeconomic levels have different experiences even if you disregard the very rich, and people can be viciously classist even if they don’t have all that much money themselves.” Also, if there could be a moratorium on “if you were really poor, you wouldn’t have/do [thing that varies a lot in expense depending on a million different factors].”

[jackcliu]

On tokens, markets, and a path to a real-time economy

Two years ago on March 1, 2019, I posted a Letter to my future self to the Bitcoin blockchain. This is the story of that letter, one where I didn’t write a word, and how two years later, the dream is still alive. There is an actual path with tokens and markets to make utopia a reality, and my case for what that might look like. 



About a month prior to March 1, 2019, I had privately begun telling my close friends, colleagues, and family that I was going to be making a significant career and life change and dedicate the next chapter of my career towards building exclusively for the Bitcoin SV blockchain. You can guess the confused looks and concerns people had about what it was I was doing. Did I lose my mind? To be fair, I still get those messages today. I knew what I had envisioned when I first read the white paper back in 2013 and somewhere along that journey, the crypto industry had taken a path that veered dramatically from the one I had imagined. With Bitcoin having course corrected twice already via hard forks, I wanted and needed a guiding compass - a North Star. That’s when I had the idea to write a letter to my future self.

I confided in one of my best friends, Jackie to help me write it. It was a busy month for me, my mind was all over the place and I needed help. Over two afternoons, I shared with Jackie what I wanted to say, what was the possible world that I imagined. To her I must have been repeating myself since she and many of my friends had heard this for a decade. The future would bring Proof of Work from a term to describe a computer science thing to one that would describe the workings of the entire global economy and drive a seismic shift in how value was created and how we humans would interact and cooperate with one another. I wanted her to include a thank you to some people who helped me along the way - titans of the industry whom I was fortunate to cross paths and work with. Jesse Powell, gave me my first job at Kraken. CZ hired me to OKCoin in 2014. Star believed in me and gave me so many growth opportunities. At Circle, I worked with my long time friend Dan, who would go on to create CMS. A few days later, Jackie sent me a draft. I was pretty shocked at first, thinking hey this doesn’t even say Bitcoin in it. Where are all the names I wanted to include. Then I read it another time and when she asked if I wanted any changes or if the approach was right, I said, “Let’s not change a single word”. It was different, it was exceptional, to me it was perfect. I sent the letter internally as part of my Circle resignation email, flew off to San Antonio with my parents to watch the retirement ceremony of my favourite basketball player Manu Ginobili, and then a month later on April Fools Day, RelayX was launched.

Having this Letter out there has served me well. Nobody could have expected the course of events of the past two years both within BitCoin, and the world at large. Politics, COVID-19, money-printing, delistings, court cases, you name it. Without it as an anchor, I might have lost sight of the bigger picture. If you would have asked me then what BitCoin would look like today, I would have predicted a 100x rosier picture than the current situation. Despite most of the boom in the cryptocurrency industry having not occurred on the Bitcoin SV blockchain, the rapid adoption of blockchain and digital currencies from NFTs to DeFi, to institutions putting BTC on the balance sheet shows the underlying movement is in full force. Just this week, I watched sharpshooter JJ Redick utter the words “non fungible token, and blockchain technology” on his podcast talking about NBA Topshot. That’s incredible.

In the letter are the words - “Your world will be frictionless and marked by truth, freedom and fairness. Your world will truly be one that is defined by human imagination and honest work.”

I am making the case for tokens as the critical solution to a real-time economy. I want to break the spell of the narrow definition of tokens that has bounded the Bitcoin SV ecosystem. For much of the past two years, there appears to be two camps in BSV when it comes to tokens. The dominant one being we want only regulated tokens, security tokens, tokens backed by real assets, with real utility, that real businesses and enterprises can use to make their businesses more efficient. The other, perhaps out of jealousy for what’s going on in other blockchains being let’s just port those Ethereum ERC20’s over and let it run wild for it might pump the BSV price! Funny thing is neither has happened as developers are busy debating whether tokens should be on layer 0 or layer 1 or layer 100 but that’s a topic for another day. Both views are myopic. 



Tokens are going to be a much bigger deal on BitCoin than anyone might imagine. 

How many websites are there on the internet? I looked it up recently and the answer is 1.7Bn. How many token contracts are there on the Ethereum chain? The answer is 350,000. 



Websites are kind of hard to set up - you have to purchase a domain name, at least use a website template creator, and there isn’t that much use for getting one for the average person. Not when you can have an Instagram page, a Facebook account, a Twitter handle, a Medium blog without having your own site. Yet there are 1.7Bn of them! Ethereum tokens are prohibitively expensive mining fee wise to generate. Out of interest, I asked one of the devs who minted the original USDC contract during my days at Circle to find the transaction. It cost 0.44 ETH. At today’s prices that’s well over $500 to create a token. Yet there are 350,000 contracts!



I would wager there will be over 100Bn unique tokens on BitCoin and I’d guess higher but I don’t want to be outside the bounds of the very Overton window I’m creating.

It takes a few seconds to issue a token on BitCoin and at current mining fees, less than a tenth of a cent to issue. If I’m a store owner, I might issue a different gift card a week for the various deals I have going on. If I’m an artist, a different NFT for each piece of artwork. Neither the store owner nor the artist needs more than one website and you start to see the math.

If reading this, you still think tokens are going to be contained to some narrow definition of ‘security’ tokens, or NASDAQ like tokens, or fiat currency tokens, realise it’s like saying the internet will only have The New York Times or CNN or some licensed officially approved site. It’s ok if not every account on Instagram is world class photography. Not every Twitter account is going to be insightful (that’s clear) and that’s ok. In a world of 100Bn unique tokens, You bet there’s going to be a great deal of useless ones and a pretty large number of scams. Just like there are websites that are phishing for your passwords, websites with illegal content, and websites with viruses in them. Over time, services emerged to protect you by blocking, or warning you about potentially dangerous websites.

What’s the bigger picture and what do tokens have to do with a real-time economy? I’ve made the case for there being a ton of tokens. Does that mean it’s just going to be a Coinmarketcap with a lot more pages? An exchange with a lot more trading pairs? No, a lot more exciting than that.

A world with 100Bn tokens means every single asset, service, good, company, project, video, post and many more abstract things than one can imagine is going to have a dynamic, live price. It’s not about the tokens, it’s about the markets. Today, you visit a restaurant and you check Yelp to see if has a good review. BSV entrepreneurs are making some new review site but with reviews posted on the blockchain thinking this is the problem that needs solving. “Immutable reviews”. Much more valuable than a review or immutable review however is if this particular restaurant’s loyalty token is trading at a premium to the other one next door. There’s actually money on the line. Then after eating, instead of being a foodie with a blog and an Instagram to hype up such restaurant, if you’ve got that talent for knowing what’s going to be the next hot restaurant, you can just buy on the open market more of the restaurant’s tokens. Yes, a local foodie just became an crypto trader. Now you profit when you promote the restaurant on your blog. The chef who started that restaurant instead of using Groupon to attract an initial set of customers who have no loyalty to you, can instead issue 10,000 tokens, where each dish costs 100 tokens. Pretty soon if your food is delicious, those token prices are going to jump. Think Global, Live Local is not just going to do good, it’s going to now make you rich. 



I grew up in a lower middle class first generation immigrant family. I remember being a teenager in those years where oil prices were very volatile as the world approached the idea of “Peak Oil”. We would sometimes drive by a gas station one day where prices were a few cents cheaper than the day before, and even though the tank was half full, we filled up. Other days, the warning light would be on, but we held off for another day to fill up the tank in hopes prices would come down. Is this speculation on oil prices bad? Another fun memory I had was going grocery shopping with my folks and my favourite cookies were the Chip Ahoy Crunchy chocolate. Eating those with milk is probably half the reason for my height. Once in a while they would be on sale but next to them were the No-Name brand versions of the same cookies. Chip Ahoys were definitely better but were they $2/100grams better? No. We would calculate every time to decide which we would buy. Is this speculation on cookie price bad? How come other goods and services in the economy didn’t fluctuate in price? That’s what’s always fascinated me. I knew they would if they could. With Bitcoin, it was possible.

Tokens on Bitcoin with the perpetual scaling design of Bitcoin where it isn’t the holder that’s rewarded (Proof of Stake) but rather those contributing to scaling the network (Proof of Work) will lead to the formation of markets where markets were too inefficient to exist - unlocking trillions of value in the process. 



A fully tokenised economy makes everything efficient, fair, honest, and real-time. I don’t mean efficient like fast transactions or cheap mining fees. It’s the economy that will be efficient. You won’t need to be a big grocery chain or a big oil company or big tech company with financial analysts, and big data and machine learning folks in order to know what to set the price of a Chips Ahoy or a Gallon of oil or surge pricing on a taxi ride. It’ll be orders of magnitudes better than that and for every person on earth because it’s all going to be open, issuable, transferable, tradeable. You won’t be checking page 978,950 of Coinmarketcap. You won’t be scrolling to AHOY/USDT on an exchange. I predict all of this will happen without you realising that it did and all our lives will improve as a result.

For those who immediately think of the regulatory ramifications of this, I’ve thought the same. In 2015, while leading OKCoin, I led our initiative to become the first international benefactors of Coin Center - the industry body working with regulators and governments. I am a minority seed round investor in Chainalysis which looks for criminal activity onchain. I look forward to working with all those who would like to embrace innovation while having an eye on ensuring an orderly, legal transition to this future.

I could not be more excited to support the emerging token projects on BitCoin, through building products, investment, advice, or even in spirit. 

Bitcoin is plumbing - just plumbing where billions of trades and speculation down to the satoshi will be happening every second.












[lifegoeson-wecarryon]

Youtube AU Chapter 5

YouTube AU That-Doesn’-Have-A-Name-Yet Words:1057 AU Summary: Simon and Baz are popular YouTubers with a rivalry. Chapter Summary: Penny teases Simon. Agatha talks to the mysterious man. First Chapter | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter [ Wow, I’m late yet again. Only a day this time though! Shoutout to @cloudyrainyday for the beautiful fan-art that inspired the first scene~ ]

[ Penelope ] I hear Baz's voice echoing from the living room, and I roll my eyes. With a smirk forming on my face, I grab a new bottle of lipstick that Agatha bought for me yesterday and put it on. Then, I pull my phone out and open Snapchat. I walk into the living room, taking a picture just in time to catch Simon looking up and blushing profusely. "Gotta love this shade of lipstick," I say out loud as I type the caption, "It's called 'at winged mage busted watching at fangs and flames' videos." "Penny! You can't-" "Whoops." I say, clicking the button to add it to My Story. He groans, pausing the video and putting his head in his hands. "You are literally the worst." I laugh, slightly. "Relax, it's not like he's going to see it." "Still," He tries, "So many shippers know your snap, you're just fueling them." "Technically, you're the one fueling them." "I hate it when you're right." "I'm always right. Guess you constantly have a bad time then, huh? Sorry about that." He rolls his eyes, tapping his fingers on his laptop. I know he wants to keep watching the video, and he's growing impatient. My smirk returns. "Hey, Simon. You all packed for con next week?" "Do I really have to pack anything?" "Simon. It's con." "It's local." I roll my eyes. "At least pack a few things, Si. I don't want a repeat of last year." He visibly tenses up, remembering last years monstrosity. He stands up, closing his laptop and setting it on the table. "Fine, fine. I'll pack one bag." "Two," I say. "Two bags. That's it. I don't like carrying stuff." "Says the boy who bought so much merch last year that we still haven't figured out where to put half the stuff." He rolls his eyes, walking to his room. "Oh, and Simon?" He turns to look at me, raising an eyebrow. "Yeah?" "Baz might be coming." His eyes widen, before he shakes his head at me in disbelief. "No way, he lives on the other side of the continent." He shakes his head again, as if emphasising his point. "And he hasn't posted anything about it on Twitter." "Course you would know, you practically stalk him." "Shut up. Why do you think he's coming?" I grin, thinking back to the Snap I received from Baz's roommate. "Oh, just a feeling. And you never know, Simon. He does come from a rich family, so it's not doubtful that he would be able to afford plane tickets." He shrugs, before walking into his room. I know he's going to start packing. But of course, he's Simon Snow. He'll get distracted, and I'll have to pack for him. I might text Agatha. I'd be nice of her to come with us, considering it's her last year in the area. And plane tickets from America are expensive, even for her. I walk over to the bookshelf we have near the telly. We have a few framed pictures sitting here. I pick one up. It's a picture of the three of us- Agatha, Simon, and I- from when we went to our first gaming convention. Agatha was Simon's girlfriend at the time, so she got dragged along with us. I set the picture down, smiling upon the memory. I've been to conventions before that- anime and comic ones- but gaming was a whole new concept to me. It was like entering a new school for the first time, or moving to another country. It's been a while since I've felt like that when going to a con. Simon and I have been going together for years. But it's still fun to look back at how new we were, and how it felt like to meet fans for the first time. The look on Simon's face was priceless when someone ran up to him, asking for a hug. We even got a few gifts, despite not being all that popular at the time. We still have a few of them scattered around the apartment. Simon insisted that we vlogged our first con experience, so I could possibly find it in the depths of our channel if I really wanted to relive it. Instead, I pick up one of the books lying on its side. (I put the books I'm currently reading on their side so that Simon doesn't take them.) Eleanor & Park is a good read so far, and I'm almost done. I have roughly one hundred pages left. I walk over to the couch and sit down. When I open it, I make a mental note to text Agatha when I'm done reading, which shouldn't take too long.

[ Agatha ] I'm out grocery shopping when I see that man again. He's walking along the sidewalk as I exit the store. He has his hood up, but he passes me as I step out. When I see his face, that feeling of familiarity washes over me again. But from where? Should I talk to him? What would I even say? "Uh . . . Excuse me, sir?" He looks back at me curiously, and I'm able to look at him more clearly. God, he's attractive. "What is it?" He says, sounding annoyed. He has a different dialect than other people here, and I feel my face heat up. It takes a few moments for me to think up a response, and he turns to walk away. "Wait! Uh . . . ," I take a breath, and smile when he turns back. "Do you like dogs?" "What?" "Dogs. I saw you at the dog park the other day." His face turns red slightly, and I giggle. "It's okay, I love dogs too. My best friend has a German Shepard, and I play with him all the time." He nods at me, then goes quiet, as if he's debating on whether or not he should say more. An awkward minute passes, before he walks towards me. "Do you need any help with your bags?" He asks, "I can help carry them to your car, if you want." My bags are kind of heavy, and I have my phone on me in case something goes wrong. "Sure," I say, handing him a few bags. "Thanks!" I smile, and he responds with a nod before I lead him to my car.