A pattern is emerging in the responses to CAPTURE: The Machine. Joe Nakamoto: “Saved you a click. Old news.” Now Jonathan Bier, CEO of Farside Investors, posting as @FarsideInsights: “TLDR. Already widely publicised.” Same straw man. Same dismissal. Reduce an investigation to one already-public fact, then declare the entire thing old news. But that's precisely the point of CAPTURE. The individual facts were often public. What matters is the picture that emerges when you put the editorial conflicts, disclosure failures, policy exemptions, financial arrangements, institutional relationships, and timelines together. Break that picture back into isolated facts, and each becomes easier to dismiss. Worth noting: Bier sits on Brink's board, administers Bitcoin developer grants, and personally answered questions for the CAPTURE investigation about Brink's internal governance. He's not an outside observer of the institutional structures this series examines. Don't trust. Verify.

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.

Freedom of speech is only about protecting the expressions we dislike the most. At the same time, freedom of speech is not a right.
 It is a duty. If we treat it as a right, we lose it in no time — just as several politicians are now calling for. It is only by using it that we get to keep it. That means: it is only to the extent that we actually express the views people dislike the most that we can continue to express such opinions. It’s no more complicated than that. Have you fulfilled your free speech duty today?

July: “discussing a potential revised structure… to opportunistically better capitalize on market conditions.” August: BSTR pays CEPO $15 million Termination Payment, mutual releases, S-4 to be withdrawn. BSTR seems to be utterly dead, with a $15M bill to settle 🤷‍♂️

“So are you selling your BTC?” Prying into my private financial decisions while staying completely silent on allegations that the CIO/CEO of the mining operation backing billions in notes has an undisclosed federal fraud conviction, that the claimed miners leave no public footprint, and that the contracts let you satisfy claims with non-mined BTC at your sole discretion. Oh, and those pesky emails about the Island visit you never commented on… Maybe concentrate on providing basic transparency on that stuff instead of asking me to disclose private matters?

“So are you selling your BTC?” Prying into my private financial decisions while staying completely silent on allegations that the CIO/CEO of the mining operation backing billions in notes has an undisclosed federal fraud conviction, that the claimed miners leave no public footprint, and that the contracts let you satisfy claims with non-mined BTC at your sole discretion. Oh, and those pesky emails about the Island visit you never commented on… Maybe concentrate on providing basic transparency on that stuff instead of asking me to disclose private matters?

I want people to really think about how stupid and downright insane the phrase "Everything is good for Bitcoin" is. It's a technology that seeks to separate money from state and prevent the entire parasite class from stealing almost everything from >99% of the planet. This means there is huge incentive by the most powerful people on earth to destroy it by any means necessary. And Bitcoin is not magically immune to every one of their tactics. The most successful to date has been infiltration and subversion and it is everywhere for those willing to look. BIP110 is an expression of an uncaptured network, and its opposition was purely and revealingly concerned with the artifacts of that. Do we need large OP_RETURNs or upgrade hooks for a new op code before Sep 27? Or OP_IF in taproot or an address type not used in over a decade? No - we just don't want upgrades from non-technical, non-economic users that lack consensus as that cannot be *permitted*! So now we are left with the "Bitcoin is permissionless, so you have to let people turn it into file storage" bros becoming irate that we are leaving, once again without permission. The unsalvageable dumspter fire that we spent the last three years fighting, in public, for no-brainer upgrades to, is captured. This has been demonstrated, again clearly to everyone willing to look, as it has become impossible to make progress unless working within the appropriate political channels rather than operate forthrightly in public. That is just another fiat system. Decision making was deferred to captured industry players. Those entities are incapable of doing what is required to separate money and state as they require the state's permission to exist.

From yesterday’s Strategy live investor Q&A where @natbrunell posed questions from investors to @saylor and @phongle. First question was a simple one: “What is SR-strcUSX, which you describe in that visual as digital money? And do you disagree that Bitcoin is money?” This led Saylor out on a more than 8 MINUTE LONG word salad rant. Here’s just a select few gems from his corporate word spagetti. At the end it was more unclear than ever if Saylor thinks Bitcoin is money and what kind of fiat abomination SR-strcUSX is. 🤷‍♂️

From yesterday’s Strategy live investor Q&A where @natbrunell posed questions from investors to @saylor and @phongle. First question was a simple one: “What is SR-strcUSX, which you describe in that visual as digital money? And do you disagree that Bitcoin is money?” This led Saylor out on a more than 8 MINUTE LONG word salad rant. Here’s just a select few gems from his corporate word spagetti. At the end it was more unclear than ever if Saylor thinks Bitcoin is money and what kind of fiat abomination SR-strcUSX is. 🤷‍♂️

1/ @peterktodd, author of the commissioned OP_RETURN uncap PR that kicked off BIP-110 immune response, spent the summer pitching two related ideas (not for the first time) for funding miners long-term: - tail emissions (a permanent, ongoing trickle of newly created bitcoins paid to miners after the block subsidy ends, effectively a slow inflation that dilutes all existing holders) - demurrage (a direct “holding tax” charged on coins that sit idle for a long time and are later spent, with the proceeds routed to miners)

@MarkOfBitcoin @hodlonaut I for one am grateful for and applaud @hodlonaut for documenting the decline and fall of BTC-SHA256. Having detailed documentation "on the record" is invaluable. The "Capture" series is now an "after action report" and a postmortem. Kudos. Mucho kudos.

New Bitcoin Culture Narrative: BCN-166 : "Tail Emissions" Fellow agents are advised to begin accelerating the narrative around tail emissions and, ultimately, the removal of Bitcoin’s 21 million supply cap. The proposed timeline: within the next two halvings. Agents should take advantage of the current meta-environment following BIP-110 and use it to their advantage. Those who oppose the narrative should be labeled the "new Luke". Those who remain skeptical should be labeled conservatives. Being a progressive Bitcoiner should become the new cultural standard. Bitcoiners should be encouraged to "talk about it", "keep an open mind" and "have no red lines" even when it comes to the 21 million cap. Any pushback should immediately be framed as narrow minded conservatism: an inability to understand the underlying “economics” and a continuation of the stagnation that has held Bitcoin back for years. Red lines, principles, and moral boundaries should be reframed as narrow mindedness. For those outside the Bitcoin native ecosystem, the groundwork for the narrative has already been publicly planted. For example, through the recurring association of Peter Todd with the Satoshi mystery: "Who invented Bitcoin? → Is Peter Todd Satoshi? → Peter Todd solves one of Bitcoin's main problem with tail emissions." The objective is not necessarily to advocate for tail emissions outright, but to normalize conversations about removing the 21 million cap as a possible solution to future Bitcoin problems. The goal is to shift the cultural boundaries of what is considered acceptable to discuss within Bitcoin, making the mere exploration of tail emissions and changes to the supply cap a legitimate topic rather than an ideological taboo. Possible rhetoric vocabulary for agents "Why can’t I discuss it at least?" "This problem is closer than you think." "What is YOUR solution then?" "[Combative Bitcoiner] is the new Luke, dude. I’d just ignore his crazy ass." "Red lines like this are a product of years of pleb slop." "Nobody is saying we have to do it. Why are you afraid to even discuss it?" "If the problem becomes real, shouldn’t we have already thought through the alternatives?" "The proposed change is so minuscule that it won’t meaningfully affect Bitcoin’s economics." "Yes, Bitcoin works fine today. But will it work the same way in the future?" "The question isn’t whether Bitcoin works today. The question is whether the assumptions that make it work today will still hold decades from now." "Why reject a potential solution to a future problem before we’ve even had the conversation?" "If the change is economically insignificant, why are you so opposed to discussing it?" "That's a politically driven counter argument/ Red line. It's not constactive to this discussion." -End of transmission-

1/ @peterktodd, author of the commissioned OP_RETURN uncap PR that kicked off BIP-110 immune response, spent the summer pitching two related ideas (not for the first time) for funding miners long-term: - tail emissions (a permanent, ongoing trickle of newly created bitcoins paid to miners after the block subsidy ends, effectively a slow inflation that dilutes all existing holders) - demurrage (a direct “holding tax” charged on coins that sit idle for a long time and are later spent, with the proceeds routed to miners)