Opinion
Property Rights, Not Zoning, Should Settle the Data Center Debate
# Property Rights, Not Zoning, Should Settle the Data Center Debate
11 min read·opinion, analysis
Opinion
Editorial perspectives and commentary
Opinion
History Rhymes on AI, But the Smart Money Holds Steady
The Pomp Letter thesis is well-known: AI shows bubble characteristics historically, but top allocators remain committed.
8 min read·opinion, analysis
Opinion
$500K Damages for False Report of Assault to Police
A New York appellate court upheld $500,000 in damages against a defendant who filed a false report of assault with police, marking one of the largest civil penalties for fabricated criminal accusations in recent New York
10 min read·opinion, analysis
Opinion
Alligator Alcatraz Costs $1M a Day. Hard Money Would Have Stopped It.
DHS is reportedly weighing whether to shut down the Florida Everglades immigration detention facility known informally as Alligator Alcatraz because it costs more than $1 million a day to run. The story will be filed as a fiscal squabble between agencies. The deeper story is what happens when a government can spend without natural constraint, and how a hard money standard would have killed the project before the first contract was signed. Fiat is not the neutral medium people imagine. It is the silent subsidy that funds the indefensible.
8 min read·politics, macro, fiscal-policy
Opinion
The UK's Online Safety Act Just Made E2E Encryption Illegal
Ofcom quietly issued its first Section 121 notice this spring, the enforcement mechanism buried in the Online Safety Act that requires messaging platforms to scan content for specified material. There is no technical way to do that on an end-to-end encrypted channel without breaking the encryption. The law did not ban E2E directly. It banned the only way it can legally exist.
7 min read·uk, online-safety-act, encryption
Opinion
Stablecoins Are Winning. Bitcoin Maximalists Are Losing.
Stablecoin circulating supply passed $200 billion. Daily settlement volume routinely exceeds Visa in dollar terms. Emerging market users are adopting stablecoins faster than they ever adopted Bitcoin. The maximalist response has been to ignore the data and repeat the 2019 talking points. That response is losing the argument and losing the market share. It is worth being specific about what exactly is being lost, because parts of the maximalist case are still correct and parts of it are not.
8 min read·stablecoins, usdt, usdc
Opinion
Your Face Is Now a Search Query
AI-powered surveillance went from science fiction to city infrastructure in under three years. Your face unlocks your phone, and now it unlocks your file in a police database. This is not a drill.
7 min read·privacy, surveillance, ai
Opinion
Signal Might Leave Europe. Nostr Can't - and That's the Point.
The EU's Chat Control law is pushing Signal to exit Europe. But Signal is a company with servers, employees, and a jurisdiction. Nostr is a protocol with none of those things. You can't regulate what you can't find.
7 min read·nostr, signal, chat-control
Opinion
While You Were Watching ETFs, Africa Quietly Became Bitcoin's Biggest Testing Ground
Nigeria processes more P2P Bitcoin volume than any country except the US. Kenya runs mobile-first Lightning payments. South Africa's central bank is integrating Bitcoin into its regulatory framework. The continent Western media ignores is building the future of money.
8 min read·bitcoin, africa, adoption
Opinion
Corporate Bitcoin Treasuries: From MicroStrategy to the Fortune 500
MicroStrategy started buying Bitcoin in 2020 with $250 million. Five years later, it holds over 500,000 BTC and trades at a perpetual premium to NAV. The playbook is being copied - but the imitators face a market that has already priced in the strategy.
8 min read·bitcoin, corporate-treasury, microstrategy
Opinion
The Four-Year Cycle Is Dead. Here's What Replaced It.
Bitcoin's four-year halving cycle has been the most reliable pattern in crypto. But the 2024 halving produced no parabolic blow-off top, no 80% crash, and no altseason. The cycle didn't repeat - and the reasons why suggest it never will again.
8 min read·bitcoin, market-cycle, halving
Opinion
Your Pension Fund Owns Bitcoin Now
Roughly 600 institutional investors disclosed Bitcoin ETF positions in their most recent 13F filings. Among them: state pension funds, sovereign wealth vehicles, and the retirement systems of teachers, firefighters, and government employees. Millions of people now have Bitcoin exposure without knowing it.
7 min read·bitcoin, etf, pension-fund