I am crossing the Rubicon and backing the Republican Party and President Trump. Many — including a former version of myself — get trapped in a mental framework that becomes their identity and prevents them from radically evolving their thinking with new facts and information. I finally broke free from it. My journey has been a gradual political 180 from where I stood in every previous election. It has been an eye-opening process of disenchantment, zero-basing lifelong beliefs, and rebuilding from there. In 2017, a good friend enlisted me to pitch the DNC to raise $100M from Silicon Valley founders and executives. The aim was to use these funds and know-how to build a CRM and tech platform to prevent a repeat of Hillary Clinton’s inadequate, outdated 2016 campaign. We met with DNC leadership, who told us we could raise that money, but it would have to go to the general fund; a single-digit percentage would then be allocated to tech. In the wake of one of their most shocking failures, they didn’t want the help. The next series of realizations began in 2019 while I was at Meta, right after we announced the Libra white paper. I testified before the Senate and the House and subsequently spent significant time in DC, engaging with lawmakers, cabinet members, regulators, and two White House administrations. At the time, I still believed the mainstream idea that Democrats were all about serving the People. However, I was shocked to learn that, for the most part, Republicans cared more deeply about their constituents, while Democrats, in my experience, cared more about government power and control. This is my observation on balance, with many stories to back it up. I also found that more Republicans wanted to understand our project’s goals and took the time to learn about the risks of censoring payments and controlling the network. I found myself remarkably aligned with them. Then COVID came, revealing more. While I don’t subscribe to the most malicious vaccine conspiracy theories, I do take offense at the censorship machine put in place to hide the origin of the virus from the NIH-funded Wuhan lab and all dissenting voices on vaccinations and lockdowns. At that time, I fully appreciated why Republicans value freedom of speech and preventing censorship. This trend of spinning and manufacturing a parallel reality to serve the Dem agenda, solidified by complicit mainstream media, hit home with the Hunter Biden laptop story, the coordinated vilification of President Trump and his followers, and President Biden’s cognitive decline — depriving voters of a voice in a proper primary. These examples displayed the hubris of the current Dem leadership. You must think the American people are fools to believe the spin on these issues. I despise this elite vs. general population ideology viscerally. This version of the Democratic Party is sidelining moderates and centrists and has adopted an increasingly leftist ideology. This drift to the left has dictated policies from which I’ve found myself estranged. On the domestic front, there has been a total departure from the core American value system of meritocracy, an extreme and weaponized DEI agenda, an open door to massive illegal immigration, and a once-fringe narrative, now mainstream within the party, of vilifying success. This shift is also causing us to fall behind due to an anti-innovation regulatory climate, notably on crypto and soon AI — two non-linear technological breakthroughs that will likely determine tomorrow’s leading countries. On foreign policy, the administration is exacerbating tensions with Russia through an aggressive NATO expansion narrative focused on Ukraine and prolonging an unwinnable war. This is costing American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars, the world hundreds of thousands of lives, depleting the U.S. military arsenal and risking World War III. On Iran, this administration is continuing a misguided Obama-era plan to bring Iran closer to the West by unfreezing Trump-era sanctions, thus giving the Mollahs’ regime the ability to fund terrorism and pursue its anti-America, anti-Israel, and anti-Jewish agenda. The withdrawal from Afghanistan was also handled disastrously. We’re leaving a door open for China to invade Taiwan by coming across as weak. Most importantly to me, concerning Israel, the administration is enabling Iran to fund Hamas and Hezbollah, restraining Israel in its fight against its enemies, thus prolonging another conflict, which is costing more lives on both sides and allowing unprecedented levels of antisemitism to rise at home. I believe we need a President who is unequivocally pro: America, the Constitution, business, Bitcoin/crypto, innovation, Israel, small government, legal immigration, free speech, meritocracy, and common sense — and anti: regulatory proliferation, illegal immigration, unjust wars, Iran’s current regime, and domestic groups that oppose American values. These issues are central to President Trump’s platform. Naturally, I disagree with President Trump and the GOP on some issues, particularly women’s reproductive rights. While I’ve come to learn that extreme views exist in both parties, I firmly believe that women should have the unalienable right to make their own decisions on this polarizing topic. President Trump confirmed he was against a national abortion ban and supported the Supreme Court’s decision on maintaining access to mifepristone, which was reassuring and a sign that the party was moving closer to the center. It’s impossible to close this post without mentioning President Trump’s recent assassination attempt. The courage and resolve he displayed seconds after being hit by a bullet was awe-inspiring for his followers and detractors alike. This was a man, however imperfect, who, at that moment, incarnated the American spirit in the most vivid way, starting to bring a split nation together. Some claim that reelecting President Trump will bring our democracy to its knees. However, the alternative — having unelected individuals with this much power and no accountability run our government coupled with four more years of bad policies at home and abroad — might present a more significant threat. Neither will likely change in a Harris administration and could potentially worsen. In this pivotal moment, confronted with the choices we have, I am endorsing and supporting a return to a Republican administration in 2025.

It’s hard for me to openly criticize a company I used to love and gave so much to. But @PayPal’s new AUP goes against everything I believe in. A private company now gets to decide to take your money if you say something they disagree with. Insanity. paypalobjects.com/marketing/…

Realizing that this was and continues to be a lie was a turning point for me. Regardless of where you stand on this election, you should watch the video below and compare it with the spin pushed by the campaign just to know you’re being manipulated.

How Libra Was Killed. I never shared this publicly before, but since @pmarca opened the floodgates on @joerogan’s pod, it feels appropriate to shed more light on this. As a reminder, Libra (then Diem) was an advanced, high-performance, payments-centric blockchain paired with a stablecoin that we built with my team at @Meta. It would’ve solved global payments at scale. Prior to announcing the project, we spent months briefing key regulators in DC and abroad. We then announced the project in June 2019 alongside 28 companies. Two weeks later, I was called to testify in front of both the Senate Banking Committee and the House Financial Services Committee, which was the starting point of two years of nonstop work and changes to appease lawmakers and regulators. By spring of 2021 (yes they slow played us at every step), we had addressed every last possible regulatory concern across financial crime, money laundering, consumer protection, reserve management, buffers, and so much more, and we were ready to launch. We had worked on a slow rollout of a limited pilot that some members of the Fed’s Board of Governors were supportive of. At last, Chair Jay Powell was ready to let us move forward in a limited way. The story, as I heard it, is that Jay Powell was told by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen at one of their biweekly meetings that allowing this project to move forward was “political suicide,” and she would not have his back if he let it happen. I wasn’t in the room when this conversation happened, so take these words with a grain of salt, but effectively this was the moment Libra was killed. Shortly thereafter, the Fed organized calls with all the participating banks, and the Fed’s general counsel read a prepared statement to each of them, saying: “We can’t stop you from moving forward and launching, but we are not comfortable with you doing so.” And just like that, it was over. One essential point is worth making here. There was no legal or regulatory angle left for the government or regulators to kill the project. It was 100% a political kill—one that was executed through intimidation of captive banking institutions. That was the hardest part of this story for me personally. Not that we had failed, but that America, this country I immigrated to and became a proud citizen of because of its rule of law and value system, behaved in such a way for political reasons. It was a very tough pill to swallow. The bright side of the story, though, was the many learnings from this wild ride. By the end of the project, we had made so many concessions to get a thumbs-up that the whole design of the network became a Frankenstein of our initial ambitions. We also learned the biggest lesson of all, which is that if you’re trying to build an open money grid for the world—eventually moving trillions of dollars a day, designed to be here 100 years from now—you have to build it on the most neutral, decentralized, unassailable network and asset, which, hands down, is Bitcoin. And now this is what many of us who went through this scarring journey are building together at @Lightspark. And this time, we won’t stop until we get it done!

Went to UCLA this afternoon to talk to people peacefully. Few interesting takeaways: 1) Most of them openly say they support Hamas, a designated terrorist organization; 2) They say 10/7 atrocities, rapes, murders, didn’t happen. The official line is “even the NYT debunked it!”; 3) 10/7 was justified. It was resistance; 4) 100% of the people we spoke to had the exact same narrative and MO, trying to recenter the conversation to 1948, without knowing any of the details when challenged; 5) They have their own security and control access to their encampment; 6) We remained very calm, but they got really aggressive and angry; 7) When you approach people who clearly are junior to others, “handlers” show up very quickly to takeover; 8) Since many of them are truly ignorant about historical and present facts, when they know they’re going to embarrass themselves, they all say “read our 5 demands to divest, now I’m going to stop talking to you.” More organized and orchestrated than I expected. Very sad to see so many young people in a higher education setting being manipulated and brainwashed and totally devoid of critical thinking.

This timeline is so off. Can you imagine a prominent Congress representative from another time celebrating someone who openly supported Osama Bin Laden, ISIS… and organized anti-West / American uprising? Wild.

This is so wild. Let me get this straight, the EU is trying to censor an interview with a US Presidential candidate on a US platform? Insane.

Worth pointing out that when we announced a mere whitepaper for Libra on 6/18/19, it took less than 24h for me to be called to testify in front of both the Senate and the House. Meanwhile the total meltdown of FTX unscrupulously misappropriating ≈$10B of customers funds…

I watched that SBF @andrewrsorkin interview, and I have to say that I still can't believe what I just witnessed. I'm actually speechless at the level of reality distortion field at play here. Also... audience applauding at the end? WTF!

Wait. Did 1X just invent remote immigration?

I don’t think most people fully understand the significance of this breakthrough.

It’s exhausting. Exhausting to see the hate against Jews rise from every corner of the world, and from people who have no connection to the Middle East whatsoever. These very people who have never felt outrage for real atrocities taking place all around the world. No Jews, no news. Exhausting to see these very people being fed manufactured lies parroted and amplified by every mainstream media as fact, and believing the propaganda turning aggressors into victims. Exhausting to hear words that have no place in this conflict like genocide, apartheid, ethnic cleansing — crafted by terrorists and their henchmen — in the mouths of an entire generation in the West and across our “elite” university campuses. Exhausting to watch Western civilizations and governments committing suicide by aligning themselves with groups and ideology that seek to destroy the Judeo-Christian and Western way of life. It starts with the Jews, and ends with the rest of you… It’s exhausting to be a Jew these days. But then you think of your brothers and sisters fighting and risking their lives every day to return our hostages, and to ensure Israel continues to exist forever, and you find the energy again to fight in your own ways. Again, and again. Because you know right from wrong. Am Yisrael Chai!

To all the people planning to celebrate October 7 in America: fuck off you vile little shits.

Dropping AirTags in checked-in luggage is such a game changer.

Simply this.

Inflation at 6.2% means that if we keep it steady for 10 years, your $100,000 will become $54,800 by then. Compounding is a powerful force. Satoshi is having 🍿 somewhere right now. #Bitcoin

Palestinians in Gaza are celebrating, but their supporters in the West aren’t. Intriguing, isn’t it?

I wanted to share that we are starting a new company called @lightspark to explore, build and extend the capabilities and utility of #Bitcoin. As a first step, we’re actively assembling a team to dive deeper into the Lightning Network. (1/3)

How is more #Bitcoin mining power moving to the 🇺🇸 and the West a bad thing? IMO China cracking down on mining is a great development for BTC.

#Bitcoin is the only blockchain/asset that’s not controlled or influenced by any specific person, company, or group. We haven’t fully internalized the terminal value of that yet. It’s one of a kind and can’t be replicated.

Boasting about how much money you made in 2020, how great of an investor you are, ... is beyond tone-deaf and gross at a time when everyone is hurting financially. Just think about all your local small business owners for just a second and check yourself in the mirror.

This whole cabal against @sriramk is totally out of control. There’s no self serving agenda whatsoever here, nor character flaws. We should celebrate people like Sriram who are going to leave so much $ on the table to serve the country. Enough of this nonsense.

There’s a difference between being tone deaf, and calling neo-nazis fine people. What the campaign claims is the latter, not the former, and it’s a lie. That was my only point.

It’s become clear to me that #Bitcoin will be the one asset and L1 still around in 20+ years with increased compounding relevance over time. The #2 slot (for a different use case) is still tbd. #Ethereum is in the lead for now, but #Solana and others nipping at their heels. 1/2

I didn’t realize until now that mayor Bass left on her taxpayer funded “work” trip to Ghana last Saturday (1/4) when it was already clear that LA was a tinderbox with the strongest Santa Ana winds forecast in many years. Purpose of the trip below 🤯

Turns out that people who virtue signal the most are often the worst human beings behind the curtain.

Hearing rumors that the FDIC is blocking GSIBs from buying SVB on the grounds that it would create too much concentration with our largest banks. If true, they really need to understand that not finding a suitable buyer over the weekend will result in much greater concentration in GSIBs than letting one buy it, and this will happen across industries as businesses and people move balances out of smaller banks in fear the same thing will happen to them. Do the right thing. Protect deposit holders while you still can!

If you’re marching our streets with the flag of the terrorist organization that brutally murdered one of our citizens days ago, it makes you a traitor. Period.

Many people believe that this pandemic will change our behaviors forever. I disagree. People will go back to hugging, shaking hands, concerts, restaurants, nightclubs, ... faster than we anticipate once this is behind us. We will likely continue washing our hands more, though.

The thought of a 2024 Biden/Trump race is so incredibly depressing.

I’m not surprised, nor mad, President Biden decided to pardon his son, even though he said he wouldn’t. But claiming Hunter was the victim of lawfare as a reason for the pardon is ironic beyond belief.

#COVID19 is virtually gone from LA. From peaks at 20,000 new cases and 300 deaths a day this winter to 356 new cases and no deaths yesterday. Really great to see our 2nd largest city turn the corner so decisively. latimes.com/projects/califor…

To people saying Bitcoin has no intrinsic value, a reminder that each Bitcoin represents ~1 GWh of energy transformed into digital scarcity, secured by code, halving every four years until 21M max supply. Good luck finding a better asset. cc: @Lagarde

Those who oppose #Bitcoin mining on environmental grounds are the same people who opposed nuclear on the same grounds and are now declaring it green after their needs and incentives have changed. Base your own opinion on facts, not popular beliefs or propaganda.

Here's the receipt of another dimension of the Libra kill job. Letters sent to all regulated entities that were members of the Libra Association. Stripe, Mastercard and Visa received this. Pay attention to the highlighted section threatening scrutiny on their entire business.

This is a bigger deal than you think.

This is such a fine example of what “journalism” can be these days. A @WIRED hit piece claiming that people who can watch an unedited video for themselves and realize they’ve been lied to for years are somehow the bad guys. Oh and it comes from a “disinformation” specialist! 🤣

These headlines are unbelievable. Right after 10/7 Haniyeh was giving interviews saying they would do it again and again. He was a monster, lining his pockets with $4B he stole from Palestinian people. Now they’re going to give him a Nobel posthumously and rewrite history.

I’ve never felt this connected to a community of builders like the crypto/web3 one. I’m not talking about folks who are in it for a quick speculative win. I’m talking about people who want to rebuild the internet’s infrastructure to move value and power in the hands of people.

If you’re already excited about Bitcoin, wait until it hits its utility phase for mainstream payments. It’s coming faster than you think and it’s going to be unreal.

This is truly not meant to be ETH bashing, but with the upcoming merge, I can’t help but feel great about building on #Bitcoin. The lack of uncertainty and the predictability of the network over a very long time generates trust and stability.

So many people are 💩 on Tesla’s Cybertruck design, but I love the audacity and courage it took to create a vehicle that looks like it dropped from a Sci-Fi movie. 👏🏼 @elonmusk

Personal news: after a fulfilling seven years at Meta, I’ve made the difficult decision to step down and leave the company at the end of this year. (1/7)

This upcoming election is different. It’s a referendum on a system.

From the very beginning @brian_armstrong made the decision that @Coinbase should play by the rules, engage with regulators and lawmakers, and behave like a responsible actor in what used to be a nascent industry. We should be proud of this exact kind of US-born responsible innovation and leadership, but instead such companies that play by the rules are treated far worse than ones that operate full-on fraudulent operations (cc: FTX). What kind of an incentive system is this?

Thrilled to announce that @Coinbase has selected @Lightspark to enable the #Bitcoin Lightning Network across its platform and services. Yet another significant milestone for Lightning! ⚡to many millions of new people and 100+ countries coming soon! bit.ly/3xkjwAH

Saddened by your ill-informed stance. You could’ve taken a more nuanced one, condemning these atrocities and calling for restraint. That would’ve been acceptable. You chose to support terrorists. As such I’ll never attend/sponsor/speak at any of your events again.

You’re so stingy!

I’ve been in California for over a decade, and I’ve never witnessed such an exodus of talent to TX, FL, and WA. The brain drain is real and picking up momentum.

#Bitcoin is truly leaderless, censorship resistant, and has much greater network effects. In essence, it’s unique and cannot ever be replicated. Its creation truly was the Big Bang event of crypto. 2/2

Honored to be at the White House today to take part in the first Digital Assets Summit a day after @POTUS @realDonaldTrump signed the historic EO creating 🇺🇸’s Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. Hat tip to @DavidSacks’ leadership. Exciting day ahead!

Reminder: if Bitcoin were valued like gold, 1 BTC = $1.3M. It’s already a better store of value, and its payments utility isn’t priced in yet. Crossing into 7 digits is only a matter of time.

I come from the future and I’m here to tell you CorpChains are not the way. Come and build the open internet of money on Bitcoin. The only network fit for purpose.

Imagine if you couldn’t send an email between Gmail and Yahoo! mail. This is the sad reality of payments in 2023. There is no SMTP for money. Lightning solves this and will bring interoperability between wallets, exchanges, and financial institutions. It’ll change everything.

Many want to pit Libra vs. Bitcoin. In my mind these two are not in the same category. BTC is a decorrelated (investment) asset. Libra is designed to be a stable medium-of-exchange. I have been, and remain a fan of BTC, but for very different purposes.

I wonder who’s going to inherit the $4B fortune Haniyeh stole from international aid and Palestinians from Gaza… Should be seized and put to its original use of rebuilding Gaza and serving its citizens.

So let me get this straight, for the 2nd time, a judge rules against the will of the company's shareholders despite them confirming their intention yet again?

Now ask yourself which asset in the world can go liquid USD on a Sunday in one ≈$2.7B transaction.

I wonder why car manufacturers even bother investing in proprietary nav systems. They’re universally horrible, and no one I know uses them.

Yup. We’re in Silicon Valley alright.

I still can’t wrap my head around the idea that the city that evokes capitalism the most in the world is about to elect a full-on socialist as mayor.

So science created a safe, >94% effective vaccine for a previously unknown virus in under 12 months, and figured out how to mass produce it, and... we’re failing at *logistics*.

There’s no better Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the immaculate conception, the Big Bang of digital assets. It cannot be recreated. What it lacks in functionality can be built on L2s like Lightning and @buildonspark. Trying to build a better Bitcoin is a fool’s errand.

Since the FTX roadside bomb shocked the entire industry, many have asked me how I felt about this situation. My answer is that I’m steadfast on #Bitcoin as one of the most important technological breakthroughs of this generation and still so excited to build on it. Onward!

1/ Hello, ≋

No network/asset/technology other than #Bitcoin can become the neutral global 24/7 settlement network for the world. Anything else is just not “neutral” or decentralized enough.

Time for a new challenge! After four amazing years leading Messenger, I'm going to setup a small group to explore how to best leverage Blockchain for Facebook. I will miss my fierce Messenger team, but I'm excited about the journey ahead. My full note: facebook.com/davidm/posts/10…

Not a well known fact about me, but my mother was Iranian (my father is Romanian Ashkenazi). I have many fond memories of pre-revolution Tehran as a toddler. The thought of taking my kids to a mollah-free Iran is incredibly emotionally charged for me.

Back to UCLA. Better today. Pay attention to where the 🇺🇸 flags are. Always a good telltale.

Thrilled to unveil the @Lightspark Platform today. We believe the Internet badly needs an open payment protocol. One that works 24/7, settles in near real-time, is dirt cheap, interoperable, and open to all to build on. Money should move online like emails or text messages, and the Lightning Network has the best chance of becoming the standard protocol that enables that and much more for everyone around the world. Today, the complexity and steep learning curve inherent to Lightning are gone. It's now intuitive and easy to reliably send and receive payments on the network or to build payment experiences without any of the constraints of antiquated rails — hello, streaming money! Head out to lightspark.com to learn more and get started. We’re excited to see what you're going to build with it!

Man cannot recreate Bitcoin. There will forever only be one.

Bitcoin will win.

🚨 Sneak peek... Bitcoin Lightning settling in USD to US bank accounts in near real time via @umastandard. More soon...

I’m shocked. Shocked. By the silence about the 200+ hostages (including babies!) still held by Hamas. Where’s your outrage and virtue signaling about them?

It’s impossible for most people to truly understand the level of sacrifice required to fully succeed at anything meaningful.

🎯

🇺🇸

This is a big deal. BlackRock has over $10 trillion under management, this partnership will enable access to #Bitcoin for some of the largest institutional investors in the world.

The people have spoken. We’re on the eve of a new glorious era for America, and potentially for the world. Common sense, meritocracy, and the builder’s mindset that made us into the country we’ve become are coming back ❤️🇺🇸!

When most people talk or think about #Bitcoin it’s all about the asset and its price. My hope (and goal) for this year is to start shifting the narrative to its underlying technology and what it’s capable of. So much opportunity lies ahead!

Some of my colleagues call me old fashioned because of this, but I’m so fed up with this work from home thing. I’m so ready to go back to the office and see people irl. Video and screens are incredibly draining. Real people interactions are energizing (at least for me).

My bank called me to let me know fraudsters used my routing/checking numbers to make fake checks and steal funds from my account. It’s 2023 and we basically use the equivalent of a private key as a public key. But hey, no worries, we don’t need new rails. All is fine.

I know you’re not involved in editorial decisions @Benioff, but this is worth your attention. Millions of people will see this image and take it at face value, but it turns out it was all staged.

SF golden hour from above yesterday evening.

It’s amazing to see significant tech leaders get into the crypto/web3 rabbit hole and come out on the other side with bored apes profile pics, .eth usernames and crypto lingo. What an awesome time to be alive. wagmi for sure!

I never understood the schadenfreude between the #Ethereum and #Bitcoin communities. These two will end up being complementary. One as a protocol for the decentralized web, the other for the most secure and trusted form of decentralized store-of-value and settlement.

And... It's live ⚡🚀! Welcome to moving #Bitcoin at the speed of light, @Coinbase! We're so thrilled to be part of this journey with you to bring Lightning to 100s of millions of people in over 100 countries. Big milestone for the entire network and for Bitcoin. Let's go!

No matter what one thinks about the strategic (crypto?) reserve—and I haven’t been shy about my opinion—accusing @DavidSacks of being conflicted is the same as accusing @elonmusk of wanting to steal your SSN for financial gain. Nothing to see here. David is 💯 high integrity.

I guess the times of complaining to the CEO of a large tech company at an all hands in front of thousands of people about the quality of toilet paper have come to an end. (True story. This really happened.)

I really believe people are severely underestimating the change — and the rate of change — that's coming at Twitter with @elonmusk at the helm. Fasten your seatbelt, folks! 🍿

Clearly, most people haven’t fully processed what happened yet. This is a turning point for Bitcoin like none before.

It just hit me that a good chunk of this next generation coming into the workforce might never experience the joys of collaborating with colleagues in a vibrant workplace, sharing coffee, after work drinks, … Sad to imagine so many people looking at screens all day.

I’ve never been more bullish about Bitcoin. Not talking about the price appreciation — although it’ll follow. Zero doubt in my mind it’ll become the standard protocol for money movement on the internet.

When we launched the @Lightspark Platform last week, many asked whether this streaming money demo below was real, so today we’re releasing the Lightning-enabled Chrome wallet extension and open-sourcing it too. Head to lightspark.com/demos and try it for yourself for free!

How it started // How it’s going

Can you imagine how insanely great California would be if it was run by competent people? It’s time.

Lately, there's been more debate around the value of the #Bitcoin Lightning Network. Based on the work we've been doing @Lightspark for the past 18 months, I will share my honest view. First things first — Bitcoin is the only viable neutral settlement asset and network that can usher in a new era of global real-time payments. Everything else is either too centralized, not secure enough, doesn't have the required regulatory clarity, or doesn't have the required depth of liquidity against the (fiat) currencies that people and businesses want to use for everyday transactions. Once you believe the above, you must make Bitcoin move faster and cheaper than on L1 to make it competitive and valuable. But, you need to achieve this while retaining Bitcoin's trust and security principles. In other words, no new consensus paradigm. You also need to introduce privacy, while not sacrificing compliance. Once you add up all the above, the only way forward — at least for now — is to use the Lightning Network. Now let's talk about the challenges. Lightning used to be complex, failure rates for higher value transactions were relatively high, managing liquidity, rebalancing channels, and keeping a node up and running, were all things that got in the way of adoption. To the greatest extent, this is now a thing of the past. We — and others in the industry — have addressed these shortcomings and complications with good software and services. On Lightspark's stack, you can get up and running in no time, without ever having to learn about channels, liquidity, routing, or any of these different concepts. To be clear, the above works exceptionally well for enterprises, and custodians. It allows them to settle BTC in near-real time, at a very low cost, in a private, compliant, and reliable way. Add to that the newly launched and open-sourced UMA (Universal Money Address) standard, which extends LNURL to add compliance and FX capabilities, and any consumer or business can send and receive any currency of their choosing in real-time with a human-readable address between participating institutions without ever knowing Bitcoin or Lightning was involved. Just as someone sending an email doesn't think about SMTP and TCP/IP. It just works. So we're done? Is it all great? No. It's not. We collectively have much more work to do. I agree with @Leishman, Lightning with the above advancements works well in custodial/institutional settings. This is why at Lightspark, we started our development journey by focusing on enterprise solutions at first. This is where most of the volume is, and where we felt we could have the most impact in the short and medium term. Let's now turn to the work ahead: - Non-custodial Lightning: as much as custodial LN is now fully ready for primetime, self-custody on Lightning presents two distinct challenges: (1) offline receive; and (2) channel open fees for smaller transactions. About (1) — if you're running a node on your device unless your app is foregrounded (iOS), or if you have bad connectivity, you won't be able to receive an incoming transaction. And (2) — opening channels with higher L1 fees is currently cost-prohibitive. Some solutions are being worked on to address these, from @lightning labs to @spiralbtc, and of course @lightspark. But to be blunt, if you want full support for non-custodial Lightning with offline receive and want to make it economically viable, you have to accept some form of compromise on the trustlessness level of the solution. With some solutions, you have to trust an LSP, with others, it's a bit better with more distributed trust across different entities/service providers. This will be for consumers to choose between usability, cost, and full trustlessness. There's a lot more work and research that is taking place to improve these solutions and find non-linear breakthroughs, but for now, tradeoffs are required. - Pushing identity / addressing to be fully self-sovereign: LNURL, and by extension, UMA, is fantastic when it comes to user experience, but users rely on their custodians to provide the addressing service as it relies on DNS. Again, it's probably fine for most people, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't push harder to enable people to own their identity and money address and make that portable. Some exciting work we're tracking is what @TBD54566975 has been building with DIDs. We're also wondering — and to some, it'll be blasphemous! — whether there are interesting bridges to make with ENS in the future. - Issuing other assets on Lightning: bringing stablecoins and other assets onto the network to make it more efficient for a subset of transactions will be critical. @lightning has been working on Taproot Assets and making good progress, @bitfinex is working on RGB, and we're working to help make this a reality across the board. Lightning is seeing more talent flock to it rather than leave it. It's ready for primetime and mass market for exchanges, custodial wallets, banks, and institutions. It needs more work for non-custodial wallets and applications, and to bring stablecoins to the network. But let's take a deep breath. We're about to see #Bitcoin become the standard protocol for money on the internet with mass adoption on the horizon. It'll require tradeoffs and collective efforts, but I'm more bullish than ever on our odds of success.

The fact that some US states don’t require showing an ID to vote is totally insane. I can’t think of any other major democracy where this is true.

Memecoins are “fine” for Vegas-style gambling, but let’s not conflate them with Bitcoin. Bitcoin stands alone as the most neutral form of digital money/gold, secured by 100+ TWh of energy and backed by a robust, long-term incentivized ecosystem.

It’s going to be fascinating to watch the impact crypto will have on the economies of countries that will embrace it, vs. those that will reject it or course-correct at a later date. Innovation compounds.