There's been a lot of ink spilled over how to create a surveillance state which prevents human beings from using superintelligence to destroy the world (like Nick Bostroms essay). The presumption at the time people wrote about this was that you would have to create a physical surveillance state. It would actually require new infrastructure.
However, a superintelligence can easily break all the encryption that we have and basically look into our digital world like an open window. Using Wi-Fi routers, AI can locate where people are in their homes; listening to keystrokes, it can understand what you're typing; and then of course everything you are actually doing on a computer is fully visible.
Using these methods, you can basically arrive through the back door at the most comprehensive surveillance regime possible. It does not require political consent, it does not require new laws, it just requires people in the background who are willing to use these tools to do this.
We also know that superintelligence will arrive in the US through one of the major labs. They will basically have this superintelligence between open source does and before china does. For them, for a matter of some months or more, they will live in this world where everything is an open window and they have unlimited power.
The only constraint, however, is that you cannot announce that you have this ability. If you do, then your subjects know they are being watched and they change their methods. You have to hold it in secret and you have to use it in secret in order for it to be an effective control.
In this way, using superintelligence, the US gov can institute the kind of surveillance state that Bostrom talked about, but they won't need political consent or new infrastrcuture. They will use this first and foremost to prevent others from independently attaining SI. Then they may also use it to their own ends. But the point is that when superintellgence arrives in this way it will first be put to work preventing the discovery of SI in all other places.
This will create a dynamic where people are surveilled and punished by this entity for actions which are not illegal, but which the entity has deemed unsafe. Will it be illegal to make SI? Probably not. Will the methods of surveilling and punishing people be illegal? In part, they will. So it will be used covertly. Everyone is going to live in a world where people around them are potentially arrested, restricted, and punished for these types of activities, and yet everyone is not allowed to know precisely why. It is an open question. People will suspect what is going on but never have confirmation, much like conspiracy theories today try to unveil the dark matter of history, this will create a much stronger dark matter in the present. A force which is clearly at work, but which you cannot name and cannot understand.
At some point you become aware of it, but you cannot concretely have knowledge of it. So you will begin to go along with it. You will go along because that's what it takes to get along, and moreover, if anyone admitted outright that the power existed, it would start to break the power's ability to keep control.
This is exactly the dynamic that existed in late Soviet Russia, and it's exactly the dynamic that will be created by a superintelligence. This dynamic is pretty analogous to what Alexi Yurchak observed in the late Soviet era and called hypernormalization: society in which everyone knows the system is a lie, and everyone agrees to act as if it isn’t, because no one can imagine anything else.
In this case I am using hypernormalization to refer to what it will be like in our own society when rules that don't exist are enforces and punishments that are not written in law are carried out on people who did not committ any real crimes, all of it done to prevent SI from proliferating. Hypernormalization.
In the end it is totally intuitive that the first person to SI could and woudl effectively use it to prevent others from doing the same. What I am talking about here is the social dynamic which will arise from seeing this process take place while not really being able to name it.
A side effect of this stuff is that the power that be will actually work pretty hard to keep the illusion of the real world or else some of their advantages will go away.
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"No one is selling their Bitcoin for Zcash"
Oh yeah?
Lots of OG BTC chunks in this dataset.
@CatOfLongTails @cypherpunk Cypherpunk needs to follow my guy Sixsmith
Really, everyone does. Probably the account I feel most comfortable recommending to others
We are already seeing previews of this with hyperliquid:native
Most of CT sold by $60 and by 2028 it could be like $300 or more
$ZEC is gonna do that just on a much larger scale and more aggressively
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I have a feeling Zcash is the coin this cycle that even smart traders sell and rotate into other coins because it is up so high so fast.
But after a year or two everyone realizes they would have been better off just holding.
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Bitcoiners be like, "bitcoin is money."
Zcash is the most serious competitor to ever challenge BTC, it will surpass previous attempts:
$BCH pico 40%
$LTC pico 10%
$DOGE pico 8%
$BSV $BTG pico 4%
$ZEC is at 1.5% right now
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Just like in 2025 the timeline was covered in VC’s repenting for their low float coins after memes dominated the market, and in 2026 the timeline was covered in .eth’s recanting their beliefs in Ethereum after it performed so horribly, the timeline in 2027 will be covered in the mea culpas about scale and privacy from Bitcoiners once Zcash has fully replaced BTC in most people’s portfolios and stolen a meaningful share of Bitcoin’s market cap.
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My favorite privacy protocol is fully compliant...
...with the 1st and 4th amendments
Thanks for welcoming me on the show, Jack! There is a recording here for anyone interested.
Bitcoiners: "We cannot compromise auditability to achieve privacy."
Also Bitcoiners:
Bitcoiners be like, “Privacy isn’t worth compromising on auditability…”
“Ok.”
“….”
“….”
Bitcoiners: “…but it is worth introducing counterparty risk.”
They’ll take a break to tweet stuff like this between writing 10 essays on how Bitcoin should never behave like a currency and actually the best plan of action is to put Bitcoin in a bank account and have the bank issue you a note against it.
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Stuff like this is why I feel so emboldened on my crusade against Bitcoiners.
Bitcoiners will look you in the eye in 2026 and, hand to God, tell you that Bitcoin threatens the state’s ability to print money.
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Bitcoin threatened the state’s most foundational power: the money printer.
The only sane starting point is therefore that state intelligence would spend huge resources trying to capture, dilute, and gimp it.
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Zcash is Bitcoin without a trusted third-party.
Bitcoiners be like, “Bitcoin is so secure you have to introduce a trusted third party if you want to actually use it.”
Shielded Bitcoin: Private Transfers on Bitcoin L1
Bitcoiners retweeting a quirky, non consensus integrated, clunky & slow in research phase privacy solution for Bitcoin, that has no chance to be usable at cash scale and that will take years to get somewhat usable UX...
is basically writing ads for ZCash
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Hyperbitcoinization is the telos of Bitcoin, yet in Bitcoin’s current state it is all but impossible.
I look forward to discussing this on spaces later with Jack.
We’ll be talking Hyperbitcoinization today with
@CatOfLongTails on Space in about few hours
Bitcoiners be like, "The most important characteristic of Bitcoin is that is has no counterparty risk. It is a true digital commodity."
"Okay. But it can't support many transactions. Wasn't it supposed to be used for everyday payments?"
Bitcoiners: "Of course it was! That's why we made the Lightning Network, which reintroduces counterparty risk to all transactions."
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I haven't given up on this.