All that building up of "stuff that's wrong with the world" is unraveling, and there are endless causes for people to champion.

This isn't a political discussion though, it is a practical one, and it has a lot to do with crypto.

Here are some things that really grind my gears

Things that concern me are primarily those things which limit my upward mobility, my ability to "level-up" in life. It really boils down to red tape, financial red tape designed to corral asymmetrical upside benefit to the truly financial elite.

While people protest I wonder why no one brings up the Federal Reserve? The money printing? The "Libertarian style" rules for the ultra-wealthy and the hyper-restrictive rules for the rest of us.

To hope to retire you have to invest pretax money.

But that money is severely restricted; you are essentially forced to buy the rich folks bags from them after they've already made many multiples of their investment, so they can move on to the next one.

Mutual funds are Jerome Powell sloppy snowball seconds for the rest of us.

And that is because of nonsense "accredited investor" rules, which don't stand to reason because they were not made to protect you, they were made to protect the profits of the elite.

Without that upside you're not going anywhere, except more in debt to the rate race.

People talk about slavery, literal slaves with physical chains, but where is the discussion of functional slavery? The rules we have to play by are designed to keep us balanced in a debt / income / consumption triad for as long of our lives as possible because we need to produce.

Unless your approach to life is that of a statistical outlier (low consumption / high savings rate / high income earner) you will never achieve upward mobility unless you are very lucky and take a large high risk bet on something in a grey-zone: crypto, or options (gambling)

The SEC, the taxman, they don't care about you or that kid who just committed suicide because he went -700k on accident with a phone app. Regulators don't care about "doing the right thing", they are about preserving wealth and power for incumbents who undoubtedly grease wheels.

If this wasn't the case we would have FOSS networks hosting regulated digital assets instead of a secret magic book owned and operated by the good old boys. @Overstock @tzeroblockchain would have BOX digital approved if they weren't subject to what is effectively a filibuster.

So lets circle back to crypto, what does this have to do with crypto? Everyone seems to forget that Satoshi, whoever the fuck that is, started this in response to money printing.

The equivalent of a crypto bootlicker is one who sucks the dick of a restricted presale token to further the cycle of disparity in investor classes.

You perpetuate what is wrong with finance when you participate in this system of self-flagellation via bagholder relief funds.

Talk all day about what "fair distribution" means, but when it really comes down to it it means that some average asshole can take a chance supporting a project with their time, resources, and help create a system that actually works, gets utilized, and helps people.

No functional equivalent to "accredited investors" should ever pass muster for a real cypherpunk, that is self-deprecating BS.

@brucefenton says much I don't necessarily agree with, but he has always been right about accredited investor restrictions and the value of a ledger.

This is why I have chosen to limit my support to only free & open-source projects, open networks, with actual decentralization.

There aren't many choices folks. You need to think about this in light of everything that is going on.

Why are we really here? We are here to make a difference. This is why you should forget all of the noise of the casino and remember the essence of what may result in meaningful change.

$BTC #Bitcoin is the biggest example of this. It isn't perfect. $RVN #Ravencoin is better, it is a censorship-resistant protocol for digital assets, a microcosm closed digital economy in a box. I say this so you learn about it, not so you buy it, you need to actually read up.

The tools now exist to have a fully sovereign economic system.

Coins: the rails of the system, a built in settlement tool, swappable directly with assets without counterparty interloping usury banker bullshit. Fuck you banks.

Assets: actual honest easy to use digital god damned assets. You don't need to pay a programmer to make you a digital bowl of spaghetti, do it yourself.

The assets have multiple types, there are "fuck you I do what I want" assets and there are asset types compatible with regulated markets that don't sacrifice your data in the constant KYC / AML nightmare we live in.

Better yet the assets have memo/messaging features so that owners & distributors can communicate and automate things like dividends without introducing middlemen to censor you or steal your stuff.

Fuck middlemen, they are carpetbaggers in our playground, don't let them in.

These tools are usable via mobile and desktop apps, and there are non-custodial third party tools to help make asset creation easier ( @MangoFarmAssets @ravenland_org)

We, as a people, need to start thinking about what types of tools we should choose to use when we replace the current system with our own system and those tools should not be proprietary corporate regurgitation. This project could have done things so much easier with centrality.

We've been fighting this good fight for years now, its the real deal, so many times I wanted to beg for the release of functional centralization. I even tried to influence things in ways I thought would be beneficial (constitution) but the protocol is a difficult to move glacier.

No one knows what the bigger picture will look like, who uses it to do what, but as people slowly wake up to these truths which I've bitched longwindedly of they will want tools like this...they just don't know it yet.

If nothing else build something with it, learn, teach.

But for the love of whatever you pray to, don't squander this opportunity to change the world on some myopic sleight of hand.

They say money is the root of all evil for good reason.

@threadreaderapp unroll