Twain’s revival is all the more remarkable because Queen of Me is only her second studio album since 2002. Giddy Up!, its thumpingly infectious second single, features a cute nod to the decade in which Twain began her imperial phase: “I got a fast car with the ’90s on,” she sings. And what an imperial phase it was: in the US, Twain remains the only female artist in history to have three consecutive albums certified diamond for sales of 10 million apiece. Twain’s white-hot streak began with 1995’s The Woman in Me, then continued with 1997’s Come On Over and 2002’s Up!. The latter was so designed with global domination in mind that Twain released it in three different versions: “red” with pop-focused production, “green” with a country twang, and “blue” with an international flavour. It was a move that oozed confidence.
However, the jewel in Twain’s crown is undoubtedly Come On Over, an era-defining blockbuster that is still the best-selling LP of all time by a solo female artist. On its way to shifting an estimated 40 million copies worldwide, it yielded two country ballads that remain radio and karaoke staples to this day: From This Moment On and You’re Still the One. It also spawned two unstoppable pop-crossover hits with indelible music videos. If someone asked you to picture Shania Twain, you would probably imagine her hitchhiking across the desert in a hooded leopard-skin suit – her signature look from the That Don’t Impress Me Much video, which is now on display in the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville. If not, you might visualise her in the empowering Man! I Feel Like a Woman! promo: here she rocks fishnet stockings, a black corset and a top hat as she marshals an all-male backing band in a gender-reversed homage to Robert Palmer’s Addicted to Love.
Both Man! I Feel Like a Woman! and That Don’t Impress Me Much showcase what Muna characterise as a “highlight” of Twain’s songwriting style – namely, “the importance of being funny and playful”. “OK, so you’re Brad Pitt,” she deadpans on the latter before delivering the iconic payoff: “That don’t impress me much!” During her imperial phase in particular, Twain was never afraid to punctuate her song titles with idiosyncratic exclamation marks and parentheses. I’m Not in the Mood (To Say No)! from Up! is quintessential Twain: you can tell it’s her from the title alone.
Her particular songwriting gifts
This utterly unselfconscious exuberant streak is one of Twain’s many gifts as a songwriter. Another is her ability to express universally relatable sentiments in a way that feels fresh and definitive. When she sings “You’re still the one I kiss goodnight” on You’re Still the One, she is essentially crystallising an entire relationship into just eight words. She also has a nifty turn-of-phrase, as exemplified by the way she gently scolds a jealous lover on Don’t Be Stupid (You Know I Love You): “You even get suspicious when I paint my nails, it’s definitely distracting the way you dramatise every little small detail.” In this sense, Twain is arguably the Fleetwood Mac of the 1990s and early 2000s, though her own songwriting style is generally lighter.
At times, however, she has released darker and more cathartic music, most notably on her 2017 comeback album Now. Penned by Twain without co-writers, it features several downbeat songs about the breakdown of her marriage to music producer Robert John “Mutt” Lange, who worked with her on The Woman in Me, Come On Over and Up!. “Poor me this, poor me that, why do I keep looking back?” Twain sings on Poor Me. “Still can’t believe he’d leave me to love her.” The “her” she is most likely referring to is Twain’s former best friend and secretary, Marie-Anne Thiébaud, with whom Lange had an affair.
2016 was T-Pain’s Twitch channel’s inaugural year, and it’s also the first time Pain remembers getting trolled. “At the time, my music career was kind of on a downward spiral,” he says during our Zoom call this Monday. “People were coming into my chat and telling me stuff like, ‘You’re only streaming because you don’t have any more music money.’ It wasn’t true, but it kind of hit home because I was thinking that same shit.”
T-Pain is now the CEO of Nappy Boy Gaming, a passionate piece of his 2006-founded media empire Nappy Boy Entertainment. He runs and selects the members of its stream team, which includes BigCheese and Granny. When NBG started, he wasn’t used to getting trolled. But he does have experience with backlash—you might remember some of it from when you knew him best, when he was the guy on the radio singing with Auto-Tune.
Born Faheem Najm in Tallahassee, Florida (his artist name means “Tallahassee Pain,” because he struggled while living there), T-Pain started making music as soon as his 10-year-old hands would let him. He was only 20 when his debut single “I’m Sprung,” certified platinum in 2006, came out. That song makes Pain’s voice glossy with extreme pitch-correction, and later hits like 2007’s “Bartender” and “Buy U A Drank (Shawty Snappin’)” feature the same Auto-Tuned vocal cascades.
He was always committed to the art of it. He used to sample games like Streets of Rage 2 and GoldenEye007 (he reminisces about working with the former back in “oh my God, 1998, this was way back,” he says, laughing). In using Auto-Tune, he never sounds robotic (“Kids today wouldn’t understand what it’s like to sing into a fan and try to sound like T-Pain,” says a YouTube comment with over 20 thousand upvotes), he sounds like T-Pain, pleasantly metallic, the sound you get from clinking together a couple of $400,000 diamond necklaces. It became a covetable sound, reproduced by other 2000’s club rulers like the Black Eyed Peasand Kesha, and even still by huge rappers and alt-pop stars, like Travis Scott, Lil Yachty, and Charli XCX.
But, in the beginning, Pain’s peers were unwilling to give him credit. Usher, at one point, told him that he fucked music up, and Jay-Z bitterly called for “D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune)” with his 2009 song (“this shit violent / This is death of Auto-Tune, moment of silence”). The collective backlash led to a depressive period “that left [T-Pain] unmotivated to make any more music,” a New Yorker profile from 2014 says, but the fog lifted around that time, which happens to coincide with when Pain was first exposed to Twitch streaming at a PlayStation event in 2013.
He became attached to “this feeling that I wasn’t alone,” and realized streaming was a social, gratifying alternative to gaming alone in his room, or being stuck on a plane or stage without another human being to connect with.
He tells me he “took the reins into [his] hands” in 2016, starting his own channel and eventually forming his own stream team because he felt like it.
“I saw Markiplier watching BigCheese,” T-Pain says, “and I immediately got this feeling that I need to create something where I can use my name and my platform to get this guy seen. I need to get more eyes on this guy. I was like, ‘I need to create a gaming organization.’”
“It was kind of on a whim,” he admits, but he sticks with it partially because he likes being on his stream team, too, and protecting the sense of wonder that video games give him.
It was difficult initially. It turned out that internet commenters inherited Jay-Z’s objections to T-Pain’s career.
“The negativity sticks out so much,” he says about receiving his first round of hate comments. “I was screaming in my house, and I was getting mad at my wife for nothing because these fucking assholes on Twitter talking shit. Telling everybody, ‘don’t talk to me today, this one guy on Twitch said I was a fucking has-been.’”
But he learned, as everyone online must learn, that the anonymous losers in your comments section can’t be trusted.
“This is when I was getting 200 viewers, like, that was my top, that was big for me. When a lot of those viewers were saying ‘you’re on the stream because you don’t have money anymore,’ […] I started feeling like that. […] But I realized that those were just terrible people.”
Once he came to conclusion that “fuck those guys. Nevermind. Back to our regularly scheduled program,” like he says, he committed to streaming and nourishing that wonder. He cites TimTheTatman, Moistcritikal (“that’s the fucking homie”), and virtual YouTuber CodeMiko (“there’s a whole $10,000 system sitting in my game room doing nothing because I found out [motion capture] was more instructions than I thought it was”) as streamers he’s a fan of. It’s obvious that he loves streaming as a discipline.
You can also tell from decades of interviews, podcast appearances, and music—I noticed it, too, during our call—that T-Pain loves laughing. He slips into booming ha ha ha!’s as cheerily as you wiggle off a sweater when you’re warm, which could be why he found so much success on Twitch, where he now has close to 900 thousand followers. He is palpably nice.
Tabloids and DeuxMoi have mostly trained us out of believing celebrities can be so nice, no strings attached, but T-Pain exudes undeniable charisma. He has so many interesting stories to tell, and I’m happy to sit and let time pass as I listen.
Like, in 2021, he told his viewers about meeting Prince’s bass player. He called him on the phone so that T-Pain and Prince could introduce themselves, but Prince instead shouted “where the fuck you been at, man, we’ve been trying to jam for an hour!” as soon as he picked up.
The bass player “said ‘hey man, I’m sorry about that, but, man, I got T-Pain right here.’ Prince said, ‘I don’t want to talk to no motherfucking T-Pain,’” T-Pain recalls, cackling so hard he needs to rip his headphones off for a second. It starts a chain reaction—everyone in the room is cracking up, and so is everyone watching at home. “I was like, ‘bro, it’s fine!’”
He talks to viewers like we’re all at the bar together; he doesn’t operate with the untouchability of someone who influenced two decades of popular music, though he’s willing to demystify that world for everyone. He does it a lot—he just streamed for six hours the other day, scrolling through YouTube and analyzing his music while chat asked him innocent questions, children talking to their teacher. “What’s your favorite music video?”
He’s willing to entertain in infinite ways, giving subscriber insider looks at how he makes music, playing Battlefield 1, Fortnite, racing games with a steering wheel controller, Call of Duty…whatever he can get his hands on, really. The NBG team is similarly eclectic, playing Red Dead Redemptionin full grandma drag or, like Cardboard Cowboy, showing viewers hours of custom animations before finally deciding to play The Last of Us.
That impulse T-Pain had once, to support and amplify creators he admires, has proven to be long lasting. It continues to guide Nappy Boy Gaming. When it comes to adding new streamers to NBG’s roster, “I still look for people who would otherwise not be seen,” he says.
T-Pain likes streamers who seem like pure fun. Good people. “I scour Twitch, and I watch people, and if I stumble upon you and see you may need some help, or you got low views, and I feel like you deserve more…there you go. That’s how you get signed to Nappy Boy Gaming.”
“You don’t have to be really good at games [to get signed to NBG],” he continues. “You just got to be a good person that likes to make people laugh and lift people up. Just don’t be a dick.”
T-Pain has a genuine joy for streaming, but there are materials to be gained from it, too. He told famous jackassSteve-O on his podcast last year that he makes a lot of money on Twitch, and actually, “I’m making more money off of video games than I’ve made in the last four years,” he said. But he’s not sticking to Nappy Boy Gaming—continuously adding streamers to his roster, chatting for hours with subscribers—solely because he needs the money. Not to brag, but he’s good.
“This isn’t, like, my main thing. I have other ways of making money. It’s fine,” he says, though, if he did dedicate all his time to streaming, it would work out to something like $60,000 per hour, he claims, and that doesn’t hurt. But what might matter more to T-Pain is that NBG is helping him fulfill a long quest for overdue legitimization. He says that the NBG accomplishment he’s most proud of is getting recognized by the games industry at large.
“We just did an activation last night with Ubisoft. Just having Ubisoft not say, ‘We got T-Pain to play our game,’ they said, ‘We got Nappy Boy Gaming to play our game,’ you know, to be recognized as an organization and not just having people be like, ‘We’re cool now, we got a rapper to play our shit,’ […] is the crowning achievement,” he says. “It’s not just somebody that we think is famous. It’s not just a celebrity endorsement. It’s Nappy Boy Gaming. That’s the crowning achievement for me, just having that thing be separate.”
Gaming has helped T-Pain, once spitefully shouldered out by his industry, reach an unconventional, but still triumphant, apex. That, in addition to using the fame he kindled anyway for a good cause, is enough for him.
“When I ultimately leave this earth, I want people to be able to say, ‘That was fun. That was a good goddamn dude, he helped a lot of people,” he says, his comfortable laugh rolling out again like spilled marbles.
“That’s really all I want. I don’t really have any other achievements, or anything like that, that I want. I want the people that I helped to feel the way that I feel.”
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
We live in a world where Black excellence is everywhere. Entrepreneurs like Oprah, Rihanna, Michael Jordan, Jay-Z and Beyonce dominate the airways, TV stations and retail outlets. Each of these stars entered the arena in different ways and all managed to embody Black excellence to grow their businesses to unimaginable heights.
But why is it that excellent qualities revered in celebrities are so often overlooked — and sometimes even stifled — within everyday white and eurocentric workspaces? It doesn’t take a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) expert like myself to tell you that Black employees get a bad rap at work. Racism, stereotypes, inequity and cultural clashes make it so that employers and coworkers alike may exclude, diminish and at times target Black workers while downplaying their excellent qualities.
Despite the systemic reasons why some Black workers may retreat and lose their shine in the workplace, there are others who hone in on their excellent qualities, break through barriers and shoot for the moon. Today, we’ll discuss five qualities of Black excellence, how they are cultivated in Black communities and the myriad of ways they manifest in the workplace.
1. Black culture encourages building meaningful connections
In many Black households, family and community are one and the same. One person’s grandmother is everyone’s grandmother and often holds the role of making sure no one is left behind, alone or without guidance. Black entrepreneurs coming from traditional Black households understand that building meaningful connections and looking out for one another is essential to survival.
This shows up in the workplace as Black employees seeking to connect with individuals at varying levels of the organization, networking across departments, social statuses, races, genders and nationalities to build connections that feel reciprocal, meaningful and welcoming. Lifting others up, checking on them and making sure they’re included is a quality of Black excellence that eurocentric workplaces would be wise to recognize and value in their Black employees.
2. Black culture cultivates creativity
When all Black folks had was each other and the hope they would surpass the confines of slavery, Jim Crow and now the prison industrial complex, many folks cultivated a sense of creativity. Whether inventively using food scraps left by white plantation owners during the slavery era or making music and art during segregation, Black folks hadto be creative to find upward mobility, bypass restrictions from the wider society and most importantly, survive.
Black culture encourages us to see obstacles and find ways around them. We’re encouraged to find new opportunities, think outside of the box, and innovate on new solutions–even if the existing culture tries to stop us. Creativity could be the secret sauce to why so many Black entrepreneurs experience success.
3. Black culture invites joy and humor as resistance
Despite all that’s happened to the Black diaspora, many people still find a reason to smile and find joy. Instead of weeping and retreating into sadness, many of us had to find a way through the most difficult parts of our lives and cultivate an inner strength that showed up as joy, humor, and wit.
This isn’t simply a sign of someone who enjoys humor, but someone who is resilient in the face of difficulty and who can turn a hard situation into something joyful. Some who experience trauma in the workplace may exemplify anger, hatred or sadness. But facing triggers and difficulties with satire, improvisation or wordplay to create a humor-filled moment and create something positive is a soft skill that should be recognized in more Black employees.
4. Black culture calls for fairness
The vast majority of folks calling out workplace racism or inequality are people of color, in particular Black folks. Many Black individuals have had to collectively fight for their rights which produced a sense of righteousness and justice-mindedness that’s pervasive throughout the Black culture.
In the workplace, a passion for fairness can look like speaking up when a biased comment is spoken. It can also look like holding leadership accountable for implementing programming and initiatives equally amongst all employees.
Black workers are often passionate and vocal about fairness because it was a necessity in our families and communities. This quality helps us advance diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) across communities, companies and workplaces.
5. Black culture encourages people to project confidence
“Keep your chin up” is a common phrase heard in Black households. The idea is to never let the dominant culture see you sweat. The goal was to work hard and project confidence even if you were feeling low. Freedom, safety, jobs and other opportunities may not always be available, but Black culture tells us to project confidence, stand tall and keep moving forward.
At all levels of the organization, Black folks attempt to show pride in their work. They can strive for excellence in their corner of influence even if it’s not the most powerful position in the company. It can show up as being strong at work even if things in one’s personal life are not in great shape. Demonstrating resiliency and projecting confidence are qualities of Black excellence passed down through the generations and are deserving of recognition.
Final thoughts
Whether it’s Beyonce, Jay-Z, Michael Jordan or Oprah, all of the Black entrepreneurs we know and love have qualities rooted in Black culture. While all Black entrepreneurs are inherently gifted with qualities of Black excellence to one degree or another, some have yet to reach their full potential, while others have truly embraced and embodied them to break through barriers and skyrocket to success. Now is the time for conventional, white, and eurocentric workplaces to finally recognize the unique qualities that come from Black culture and lift up employees who exemplify these qualities.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Breaking down departmental silos was the hottest business trend of the late 2000s and early 2010s.
It was so cliche that it made regular appearances on lists of the most annoying corporate buzzwords of the time, but there was a reason why the business world fell in love with the concept. Previously each department was considered a separate entity, with only a handful of folks at the very top enjoying visibility into how each piece fit together.
Over time, however, it became clear that breaking down the walls between departments was necessary to share ideas, resources and tactics better, inspire innovations, provide more consistent employee and customer experiences, take a more unified approach to problem-solving and enable organizations to act quickly and unilaterally to solve new challenges. As the speed of business gained new momentum, organizations couldn’t afford to be weighed down by interdepartmental misunderstandings and information gaps.
As work moved from the office into the home in 2020, maintaining those cross-disciplinary communication lines fell off the priority list. In a rush to bring productivity into a new, digital space, there was the widespread adoption of collaborative tools that provided teams with everything they needed to work effectively within their departments. Developers are now likely to spend most of their time in an app like GitHub, sales teams in software like Salesforce, engineers in Jira, designers in Figma, and so on.
As team members spent more time on the platforms that were purpose-built for their specific function, they spent less time sharing and learning from other corners of the organization. Suddenly, all that progress toward breaking down silos took its first significant step backward in decades.
Nowhere is this challenge more pronounced than among those who, by definition of their role, need to work across departments. Functions like marketing, for example, need to maintain clear lines of communication with everyone from customer service and sales to product specialists and developers to do their jobs effectively. Knowing the status of various moving pieces, aligning internal goals and objectives to external communications, and maintaining a deep understanding of changing consumer preferences are all necessary elements of the job.
Sure, we have tools that can carry messages between otherwise siloed departments, but seeing the real-time status of workflows and progress toward objectives isn’t the same as getting an occasional update via Slack or email. Furthermore, promptly getting that information out of various teams requires more intentional effort. All of those requests and follow-ups can also serve to breed tension, especially in a remote setting.
This is where collaboration tools like Bubbles come into play. The organizational-wide collaboration software provides an even playing field where team members from all departments can easily share content in various formats. It provides a meta-layer on top of the applications they are already using rather than being sandboxed within those applications. For example, designers can record their screen on Figma, and share it on the productivity application Notion, to discuss product requirements with a product manager that doesn’t use Figma.
Engineers can do the same thing with ads in the project management platform Jira, where they can discuss requirements or clarifications with marketers who don’t know how to use Jira. The same goes for sales teams, who can now share content from customer relations management platforms like Salesforce with product managers without requiring those product managers to be on Salesforce.
Our goal is to enable a flattening of the digital collaboration landscape and, with it, a collaboration between departments without requiring each to gain familiarity with (not to mention login credentials, onboarding, and training for) the platforms on which the other spends most of their time.
Today most organizations rely on tools like Slack, Zoom and Email to provide some kind of bridge between various departments and their technology platforms of choice, even if it is a little shaky sometimes. Bubbles, however, was designed to be a permanent structure that can quickly and reliably carry information from one corner of the organization to the next.
The breaking down of silos between departments was vital in enabling agility and innovation at the start of the millennia when most operated in the same physical space. Now the buzzword everyone loves to hate is making a comeback, with the breaking down of digital silos key to enabling the next wave of innovation in a more remote environment.
The effects of mass media and communication is an area that has been extensively studied by human behavioral experts. Dr Sharon Coen is a media psychologist and senior lecturer at Manchester’s University of Salford. “I think art, paradoxically, has a better chance than I do in getting the message across,” she tells BBC Culture. “If I say it, it will sound like doom. First of all, artists can take a non-traditional, non-scientific approach, which can help us to understand things in different ways. An art piece hits in the heart.”
While Coen recognises the negative effects that mass media can have, she feels positive about the human ability to recognise the dangers. “There are a lot of alarmist attitudes, feelings of ‘Oh my God, we’re screwed’,” she says. “Actually, the more I talk to people and observe my surroundings, I realise that we are very strategic. With ‘doom scrolling’, some people get sucked in and they spend hours and hours looking at terrible stuff online. But guess what, how did we learn about doom scrolling? Because people realised they were doing it and said ‘Oh, this isn’t good.’ So while it is a problem, I don’t think we should underestimate ourselves.”
Coen traces the fear of collective cognitive decline to long before the internet was formed, and even before the visual overload of television. “A lot of my peers have a tendency to blame the internet and say it’s the origin of all our problems,” she says. “I keep telling them, more than 2,000 years ago Socrates hated writing. Why? Because he was saying we were going to become stupid and not be able to remember anything. He thought our cognitive functioning would change. But in writing we save mental space that we would use in trying to remember everything, and we can use that for other things. It’s always a balance.”
Many of today’s artists have one eye on the trailblazing names who came before them, and the other on future developments that loom on the horizon. “I loathe the idea of the metaverse,” says Holder, “but it seems as if this is the way that the mega-cyber corps want to take us, creating a virtual layer of reality, a simulation of life. Grandiose claims are being made about it. That it will help improve mental health, reduce crime rates and save the planet, but I’m sceptical, and think that the opposite will also be true. I think we should give up on the idea of trying to create a copy of the world in digital form, life is far too complex, it can’t be simulated.”
The road to becoming a successful entrepreneur is a lot less bumpy when someone who has been down that path is guiding you. In this webinar, two-time Emmy Award winner Mario Armstrong will elaborate on the profit-first mentality that led him to become the successful entrepreneur he is today.
Mario Armstrong is a two time Emmy Award Winner, Entrepreneur, Public Speaker, TV and Podcast Host. He teaches Creators & Entrepreneurs how to build their brand, monetize their passions and build profitable businesses. He’s the Creator and Host of the Emmy Award Winning Never Settle Show filmed at Nasdaq studios in Times Square. Mario is an NBC TODAY Show Contributor and appears regularly on NPR, Inside Edition & more. He is a public speaker with Daymond John’s Shark Group’s Speaking Division. His new podcast “Parents Making Profits” is available on the HubSpot Podcast Network. Mario’s latest venture is the Never Settle Academy, which provides creators and entrepreneurs the blueprint to closing sales and getting paid brand sponsorships.
Adapted from The Cabin at the End of the World, a novel by Paul Tremblay, Knock at the Cabin sees Shyamalan returning to the apocalyptic concerns of two of his earlier films, Signs and The Happening. They’re timely concerns, considering how anxious so many of us are about pandemics, wars and the climate crisis. And the question of what you might sacrifice for the sake of the planet is a fascinating one. But Knock at the Cabin ends up being no more than a passably tense, low-budget chamber piece that doesn’t do justice to its Old Testament conceit.
The problem is that almost everything worth knowing about the film is in the trailer – and indeed in the plot summary in this review. Shyamalan establishes within half an hour that there are only two likely ways for the story to go: either the strangers are lying, and the business about the apocalypse is nonsense, or else they’re not lying, and a sacrifice really is necessary to save humanity. What that means is that the viewer spends most of the running time sitting and waiting to learn which answer is the right one (and anyone who’s seen the trailer will have a pretty shrewd idea). The Shyamalan who made The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and The Village 20-odd years ago might have blindsided us with a further twist which flipped our understanding of the whole situation. But in this film, as in his last one, Old, he puts all of his energy into setting up an intriguing premise, and none into moving on from that premise and into unexpected places.
He and his co-writers, Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman, allude to a couple of interesting issues, such as the homophobia of the religious right, and the 21st-Century phenomenon of people making online contact with others who share their outlandish beliefs. But the screenplay doesn’t give any of these issues more than a passing mention, nor does it comment seriously on the existential threats that face us in the real world. It feels as if the filmmakers are workshopping various different themes, without ever committing to any of them.
They don’t commit to terrifying us, either. Bautista proves, once again, to be a sensitive dramatic actor, rather than a wall of muscle, but Leonard and his crew are too relaxed to convince us of the urgency of their mind-boggling ultimatum. They don’t seem crazed enough to be telling the truth about the apocalypse – and they don’t seem crazed enough to be faking it. In fact, almost nothing in the film seems real. Stuck with one-dimensional characters and functional dialogue, the hostage-takers and their hostages sound more like school debate teams than desperate people trying to save their lives and / or the human race.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
The Ernst & Young 2020 Global Private Equity Report found that 74% of private equity firms under $2.5 billion did not have set targets for ethnic diversity and had no plans to set any.
While this might come as a surprise to those with no history working in private equity or hedge funds, this statistic and the recent media attention Soo Kim has received regarding the TEGNA takeover, unfortunately, come as no surprise to me.
As a former employee of Standard General, one of only a handful of Black Americans working in the hedge fund sector and an immigrant founder, I’m appalled at the lack of diversity in this space. However, I can firmly say that it would be a lot worse without Soo Kim’s contribution — but we need more than just him to join the cause.
In February 2022, Soo Kim’s Standard General, with funding from Apollo Global Management announced a deal to acquire TV station owner TEGNA for roughly $8.6 billion. TEGNA is the second-largest local TV broadcaster by revenue, operating 64 TV stations and two radio stations across various markets in the U.S. Contrary to large TV consolidation mergers, this particular deal has drawn a number of vocal objectors.
Ostensibly, the critique has come from a union — The NewsGuild — that purports to be concerned about jobs, despite the public commitments that Standard General made to preserve local station employment. While concerns about jobs are admirable, the publicly filed comments from these groups include statements that, in so many words, say that Soo Kim’s ownership of this station group would do nothingto advance diversity as understood by the civil rights community and public interest.
Is there a “wrong” type of minority?
These commenters continue to say that Soo Kim was not barred by his race from becoming a successful entrepreneur.
As a fellow New Yorker and both graduates of Stuyvesant High School, I can speak to our experiences. Using his Asian ancestry against him is exactly the kind of short-sighted hateful rhetoric causing so many issues for Asian communities across America. I have seen this in all aspects of American life, from Wall Street firms to my days at West Point and in Baghdad.
When there’s a flag draped over your coffin, there is no “wrong type of minority.” Yet we seem to treat immigrant founders and founders of color like there is such a thing as a “wrong” type of minority.
The indivisible nature of the United States is our greatest strength, but that strength is weakened by the belief that Soo Kim being Asian makes him unqualified to pursue the commercial principles that our country was founded on.
However, what worries me more than anything is that Kim hasn’t been treated fairly by anyone throughout this deal. Are these political letters and criticism influencing the regulators whose judgment the closing of this deal depends on? I know firsthand how hard it is for founders of color to access the capital to pull off deals of this magnitude. An adverse outcome here would have a chilling impact on minority ownership of broadcasting assets at the very least. Perhaps this is what the objectors want.
While the thought of that is troubling at the very least, I believe what’s been so impactful and appalling to me throughout this entire debacle has been the fact that I know Soo Kim. I’ve worked with him, I have represented him on public company boards and I’ve seen what he stands for. It’s unimaginable to me that he could be on the receiving end of such racism when he so clearly stands for justice and equality.
As the founder of Standard General, Kim has been tireless in his commitment to diversity: from hiring to using his power to change companies to better reflect what America really looks like. More importantly, he didn’t limit his search to just Asian professionals. Black, Asian, Jewish and white employees all were represented in the 12-person team at Standard General while I was there. He has also consistently appointed women and people of color to the boards of his companies throughout the years.
I have seen the good he does in his companies and how hard he works to provide equal access to opportunities regardless of race or gender.
And, because I am the diversity and inclusion officer for the MediaCo board of directors, which owns the radio stations Hot 97 and WBLS (which has a management team that is over 50% diverse and a staff that is over 70% diverse overall), I would say that it is precisely Kim’s unique background that could help improve TEGNA own documented diversity issues.
If other leaders follow Kim’s lead, we can slowly but surely change the diversity problem. But we all have to actually commit.
How the TEGNA deal compares to other acquisitions
Just to drive my point home, I believe it’s important to take a look at how this TEGNA deal compares to other similar acquisitions.
Recently, the TV industry has seen a surge in big deals. For example, Gray Television acquired Meredith’s and Quincy’s local stations with virtually no opposition from across the aisle. Scripps bought ION Media Group and Nexstar Media Group also added to its empire by snatching up Tribune Broadcasting — moves that heavily concentrated power in this industry space.
All of those prior deals did not face any of the scrutiny and criticism from this deal, which is curious because the TEGNA deal shrinks the company with the concurrent sale of a number of stations to Cox Media Group, and does not require any statutory divestitures or regulatory rule waivers as each of the above did. And yet, with Standard General’s deal, the informal 180-day “shot clock” for a regulatory decision has long passed.
The point? The lack of opposition to other similar deals shows young entrepreneurs and immigrant founders that even when you try to play fair as a person of color in this industry, you just can’t seem to win.
In one interview, Kim said that after the takeover, TEGNA would get a “company with a minority owner, run by a woman, that’s committed to serving diverse communities. We think that’s good business.”
It is good business, and I am delighted to see that Kim and Standard Media CEO Deb McDermott have received letters of support from legislators, civil rights groups and minority media groups. I applaud these groups for speaking up in defense of Soo Kim and other minorities in this space. I, too, am doing my part to speak up against these racist attacks. However, that isn’t enough anymore.
The system has to change — and it changes by not allowing these types of attacks, comments and ideals to persist in any way, shape or form. We must stop entertaining the idea that these types of comments are valid or even acceptable. We have as a nation all experienced the heartache of watching videos of racially motivated violence against people of color from all walks of life. Racial oppression takes place in the business world just as it does in the streets, just without the same visible evidence but the same indelible impact on those persons of color involved.
As a business leader, here’s how you can enact systemic change:
When making hiring decisions, stop going with your gut. Newsflash, your gut always leads you to the most comfortable choice. Instead, create a list of metrics you will hire for and focus on hiring someone that meets those metrics. Blind auditions eliminated discrimination in the world’s greatest orchestras. Imagine what it could do for your business.
Be aware that there are challenges diverse individuals face in business that you don’t see or experience. Do your best to factor those in when evaluating candidates. They may not have Goldman Sachs on their resume, but can you see evidence of ability in past academic performance or in other areas like military or community service?
As the great Martin Luther King Jr. said, “An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
WEST HOLLYWOOD, CA—Updating the company’s terms of service, live-entertainment giant Ticketmaster announced Wednesday that it would soon be requiring customers to purchase round-trip tickets to cover the cost of both entering and exiting a concert venue. “Round-trip tickets will only be required in cases where the attendee wishes not only to be admitted to a show, but also to be permitted to leave once the show is over,” said Ticketmaster spokesperson Brenna Winfield, adding that there would be a limited number of tickets available for any given departure time, so customers who wanted to be among the first to leave a concert should expect to pay a higher fee. “Ticketmaster customers worried about the additional costs associated with exiting a venue should know that rates drop significantly on slower days, so if they attend an event on, say, a busy Saturday night, they can typically save up to 15% by extending their stay in the completely dark, empty arena until Tuesday or Wednesday. Another option is to leave the show before it ends, but please be aware we charge a $200 ticket-change fee for concertgoers who decide they want to go home early because the band sucks.” At press time, several hundred Taylor Swift fans had reportedly been trampled to death in Arizona after Ticketmaster’s demand-based pricing system pushed the cost of exiting State Farm Stadium to more than $10,000.
Decentralized social networking protocol Nostr is now officially live on Apple’s app store.
Nostr spiked in popularity after former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey became an enthusiast of the technology, later making a 14 bitcoin donation to its creator. The enthusiasm caused the protocol’s most popular mobile app, Damus, to hit its beta testing limit of 10,000 users –– which would prompt its developers to apply for a formal listing on Apple’s app store. Today, Damus was approved, and a full release is now available on the App Store for anyone to download.
Dorsey took to Twitter to comment on the news, saying the launch was “a milestone for open protocols.”
Nostr, an acronym for Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays, is, at its core, exactly that. Users create an account purely by generating a key pair –– one public and one private key –– through a client application. The public key is the user’s “ID” on the protocol, while the private key is akin to the user’s password. The user can broadcast a message to the protocol by connecting to a relay and signing the message with their private key. Anyone can message a specific user by referring to their public key. Leveraging asymmetric cryptography, users can message each other privately by encrypting their message with the destination user’s public key, which ensures only the private key corresponding to that public key can decrypt the message.
This dynamic is similar to Bitcoin. A Bitcoin transaction ensures, also through asymmetric encryption, that only the rightful recipient can “decrypt” the received funds –– aka spend them in a future transaction. Bitcoin has since evolved from the simple send-to-public-key dynamic used by Nostr, but the core of the idea is still there.
Nostr is still a niche project, as the protocol is very much in its infancy. Bitcoin, which is now 14 years old, is yet to be adopted globally, and Nostr has but a fraction of that established history. Nevertheless, the technology is promising, given it’s an open, censorship-resistant and permissionless communications protocol. With Damus’ listing on the App Store, Nostr can now reach much more people than previously possible.
This bigotry has helped suppress from the mainstream historical record a whole queer subculture. And there are some compelling real-life stories that have been all but forgotten – that would surely make for brilliant novels, films, plays or otherwise.
For example, there’s John Cooper, the 18th-Century Englishman who dressed up as his drag alter ego Princess Seraphina and frequented London taverns known as “molly houses”, flaunting himself through the streets with a remarkable degree of openness for a time when gay sex was punishable by execution. Cooper is widely accepted to be the first drag queen in English history – sorry, herstory – or at least the first man for whom dressing up as a female alter ego was a key part of his identity.
Then in 1880, a drag ball took place at the Temperance Hall in Hulme, a district of Manchester. This was attended by 47 men, half of whom were dressed in women’s clothing, all of whom gained access by whispering the code word “Sister”. But the venue was raided by the police and all the men were arrested, prosecuted, and named and shamed in the press. Many of them were ruined. Imagine telling this story to modern-day audiences – imagine the empathy it could ignite, the emotional impact it could make.
Despite fierce persecution, drag culture blossomed around the world. In Berlin between the late 19th-Century and the 1930s, countless cross-dressing balls – known as Urningsballs or Tuntenballs – took place at various venues. The star queen of the scene was Hansi Sturm, whose act as Miss Eldorado culminated in him throwing his fake breasts into the audience.
In the US, the first person known to describe himself as a “queen of drag” was William Dorsey Swann, a former slave born in Maryland. In the 1880s, Swann hosted several drag balls in Washington, DC, at which he’d be accompanied by his partner, Pierce Lafayette. But after a police raid in 1896, Swann was convicted and sentenced to 10 months in jail.
It was during the early days of these balls that the term “drag” started to be used, although its origins are uncertain. It may have been inspired by the dresses worn by male performers wanting to exaggerate their expression of femininity, wearing dresses that were so heavy they literally needed dragging across the floor.
One story that is widely known is that of 19th-Century English drag queens Fanny and Stella, which was turned into a 2013 bestselling non-fiction book by Neil McKenna – and subsequently, a stage musical. Ernest Boulton and Frederick Park spent years dragging up to perform and sell sex on the streets of London. But in 1870 – after a wild night at the Strand Theatre – they were arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit sodomy. The trial whipped up public outrage, although Boulton and Park were eventually found not guilty because of a lack of evidence that sodomy had occurred.
From millions in real estate to jet-setting around the globe, the world’s richest dog is rolling in the dough.
Gunther VI is a German Shepard with a net worth of $400 million. It sounds too good to be true, but Gunther is the heir to his grandfather Gunther III’s fortune, also a German Shepard, who was owned by mysterious German countess Karlotta Leibenstein. Before the countess died in 1992, she left her $80 million estate in the paws of the pooch — she didn’t have a living heir after her son’s tragic death.
Although we know German Shepards are among the smartest breeds, it’s unlikely a dog can be trained in finance. So the countess left Gunther’s fortune in the hands of Italian pharmaceutical heir Maurizio Mian — a friend of the countess’ late son.
Now, 30 years later, Mian has built a lucrative and lavish empire for Gunther’s descendants, including a $7.5 million Miami mansion he purchased from Madonna on Gunther’s behalf, which was then sold for a profit at $29 million.
Under Mian’s care, Gunther’s original $80 million inheritance has grown to a whopping $400 million, but not without cost.
Netflix is set to unpack the unbelievable tale and the questionable handling of Gunther’s assets in a new four-part investigative docuseries, Gunther’s Millions, premiering on February 1.
Keep scrolling for more details about Gunther and the new documentary.
Who is Maurizio Mian?
Before Gunther’s bloodline fell into the hands of Mauizio Mian, the Italian entrepreneur was known as the heir to the successful pharmaceutical company Istituto Gentili, which was instrumental in developing a treatment for osteoporosis, according to the Daily Beast.
After going to medical school, Mian became a university professor before assuming the position of Gunther’s handler. Under Mian’s care, the Gunther Trust was established and now owns several businesses and corporations, including The Burgundians, an entertainment group comprised of rotating aspiring models who sing and dance for the lucky dog.
However, The Burgundians fell apart after Mian allegedly conducted “science experiments” to study happiness, according to the outlet. He went on to buy several sports teams including the Pisa Sporting Club and formed another music group, The Magnificent 5, with the purpose of procreating and birthing ideal humans, according to the outlet.
Based on a glance at Maurizio Mian’s suspicious resume, the entrepreneur’s credibility is questionable. As it turns out, the story behind Gunther’s riches is a farce that Mian created to avoid Italian tax laws, according to the Daily Beast.
Furthermore, Fox Business notes that there is no evidence that a countess ever existed, and other reports claim that there might be more than one Gunther among us.
Additional reports also show that Mian tended to inflate and change his stories to the press over the years.
Although Gunther’s past might be made up, Gunther IV is very much real and currently lives in Italy.
“He has a very nice life and is very well taken care of,” Emily Dumay, executive producer of Gunther’s Millions, told Fox. “Throughout the years, there were multiple Gunthers. Obviously, Gunther does not necessarily travel or do all the activities — that’s something the caretakers do,” she added. “So, sometimes they will have stand-ins. They will have a stand-in if they feel it’s not appropriate to bring Gunther due to safety reasons. They’re also very protective of him.”
While it’s not exactly clear how Gunther amassed his great fortune, or how he swipes his credit cards with his paws, he definitely isn’t roughing it.
The hound has an entire staff that waits on his needs, including a private chef who presents him with gold-flake-covered steaks, and both a legal and public relations team, per Forbes. He is also protected by a security team and often visits a high-end groomer, Fox Business found.
Additionally, the film’s executive producer told Fox that Gunther’s handlers are always looking to expand his empire, and they are currently discussing “a digital collection” that will allow fans to digitally interact with the pooch.
Furthermore, Gunther is said to own multiple mansions and villas, and he prefers to fly private over commercial flights.
This is an opinion editorial by Jimmy Song, a Bitcoin developer, educator and entrepreneur and programmer with over 20 years of experience.
We need work and work needs us.
Labor is what takes a harsh, brutist and difficult world and turns it into a livable, enjoyable and even meaningful place. Work is how we contribute to our civilization, our communities and, of course, our families. Work in a normal, functioning market provides value.
Work, in a very real sense, is what we contribute to civilization. The output of our labor is a legacy we leave behind. Our collective work is what builds everything around us, from the buildings we live in, to the roads that we travel on, the computers we type on, the electricity that we use, and pretty much everything else.
Yet this very basic equation of work — productive labor in return for money — is not working that well. You can see this in the massive layoffs that are currently happening all over the economy, particularly in tech. What is going on? How is it that tens of thousands of people in different companies can be let go and things still function? What were they all doing? Making inane TikTok videos?
In this article, I’m going to answer those questions and place the blame where it belongs. As usual, it’s fiat money’s fault.
Work Lets You Specialize
Markets work because people are willing to pay for goods and services they find valuable. Someone pays because it would cost them more in some way otherwise, say in convenience, quality, price or something else. Money, or the common medium of exchange that we all employ, allows us to specialize and do what we’re good at.
A fisherman can catch lots of fish, far more than he can eat. A cobbler can make shoes, far more than he can wear. But through trade, they can leverage their own skills to get everything they want and need. This is why fishermen are not making their own shoes and cobblers are not catching their own fish.
Civilization gets built because of this specialization of work. And, in a sense, everyone optimizes for value provided per time worked while minimizing the unpleasantness of the task. More colloquially, we try to make the most money we can while doing things that we dread the least.
This last point is important because there are things that pay very well, but people are loath to do, like collecting garbage or truck driving, which can offer a better per-hour rate than other tasks but with unpleasantness that keeps many away. The price of labor goes up to compensate for its unpleasantness. Similarly, rare skills are compensated better because fewer people can do them. Labor is like any good in the market, where the usefulness of what you produce and its relative rarity determine price. The people that make the most money should be the ones doing the work that’s most difficult and/or least desirable to do.
Clearly, something is wrong because many high paying jobs are definitely not that difficult (think tanks, administration, etc.) and many are very desirable (board member, venture capitalist, investment banker.) There’s something about our economic system that rewards the wrong things.
Fiat Adds Meaningless Work
Fiat money throws a wrench into a beautifully efficient market by adding another buyer. By creating money out of nothing, fiat money allows governments to create all sorts of work that does not add value. These are what we call rent-seeking jobs.
Money in a normal market pays for value provided. Inefficiencies are punished through less profit or even loss. Labor, therefore, has to create value. But in a fiat economy, there’s another buyer, who’s not particularly price-sensitive, the money printer. Generally, the people in power buy conspicuous consumption, national prestige, make-work jobs, bribes to loyalists and so on. These add less value than Roger Ver.
For the money printers, labor isn’t connected to creating value anymore, but to satisfying their desires, usually to maintain power. In a democracy, the money printers might spend to create valueless jobs, like the proverbial digging and filling back in of a ditch. In a military dictatorship, the money printers might spend more money on buying votes and paying for weapons or even social programs. Even jobs in such a government can be a thin veneer for bribes and nepotism. The money gets printed and used to staying in power and not creating value for anyone.
As the money printer in a fiat economy becomes a large customer of everything in the economy, almost all work gets mingled with fiat rent seeking. Work that’s valuable gets mixed with work that’s not. The further along the money printing path we get, the harder it is to disentangle what provides value and what doesn’t, what’s beneficial to civilization and what’s not. Rent-seeking has spread like fungus on an old sandwich.
For example, many large companies have human resources departments that specialize just in employment compliance. In typical bureaucratic fashion, each employee has to complete cringe-worthy training, whether they be on sexual harassment, race discrimination, interview questions that are allowed to be asked and so on. These are almost certainly unrelated to the business they’re in but nevertheless each new employee is forced to waste valuable time on them. These compliance requirements may not be monetary taxes, but they are time taxes. As such, our labor gets split between productive and non-productive work. In the last 50 years, the non-productive part has grown so much that entire positions are non-productive, even in very profitable companies.
Is it any wonder, then, that Twitter, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and many other profitable companies can lay off so many people and have everything run just fine? Layoffs are the equivalent of chemotherapy, surely hurting the companies that do them, but also excising the cancer underneath.
Fiat Friction
The blight of rent seeking slows down the economy, the same way a flat tire does to a car. Fiat money’s ubiquitous entanglement with politics is one of the many ways in which productive work gets slowed down, adding less value. The work that people strive for is not in providing value, but in becoming middlemen to valuable transactions. They slash tires and inconvenience everyone so they can sell more tires.
As a result, in a fiat economy, even if you wanted to, it’s difficult to provide value. There’s a lot of rent-seeking friction that needs to be overcome and these barriers prevent people from providing value. How hard is it to start a business in most places? How hard is it to open a bank account, get the right permits and comply with the many rules that enrich rent seekers? These are all taxes on not just entrepreneurs, but on civilization itself.
So why is rent seeking so hard to eliminate? The problem is that rent seeking is very attractive to most people. It’s a lot less volatile than the market and the income is guaranteed through the government in some way. There’s much less dealing with difficult customers, changing market conditions or ambitious competitors. Most people would take less money to have this long-term certainty. As a result, even those providing value slide toward rent seeking very quickly.
The Slippery Slope To Rent Seeking
Not all rent seekers start out that way. Many fall into rent seeking slowly and almost unnoticeably. You can see this in some of the most “successful” tech companies of the last 20 years. Amazon, Facebook and Google were very good services. Of course, part of why they were perceived that way is because they sold their goods and services at a loss. In the case of Amazon, it lost money on a lot of sales early on. Facebook and Google gave their services away for free. Incidentally, this was only possible because of the large amount of money available for investment, which is a side effect of an inflating fiat currency. Thus, the services that you got for the cost were a great deal for customers.
But that was part of their long-term strategy. Like a drug dealer giving the first hit for free, their convenience hooked the users. Then they started selling ads to “monetize” their audience. Monetizing is really a euphemism for becoming middlemen in transactions that their users want to engage in. Thus, Amazon, Google and Facebook started becoming brokers for third-party merchants, either through ads or through becoming monopolistic platforms.
As soon as the users were hooked, they made the terms attractive for the other side of the transaction, the merchants. Lead generation on Facebook or Google were much cheaper than what existed before. Soon, merchants became addicted to their platforms and then they were exploited to monetize further. Auctions for ads were manipulated and fees for listing became more expensive. They used fiat money to be middlemen in a market they entirely controlled. At each step, these companies inserted themselves deeply in the value being provided to capture the profit. In other words, they became rent seekers.
What’s worse is that this was their plan all along! This is the plan for nearly every startup and has been for many years. Grab a lot of users, grab a lot of merchants and become the middleman. Every venture capitalist talks about this as a desirable outcome: to capture lots of value and be able to defend that monopoly. This is the path to profitability that every venture backed startup strives for and hence why there’s so much emphasis on growth.
This is not an isolated story since 1971. Once Nixon ended the gold standard and every currency pegged to the dollar suddenly became fiat currency, the market incentives changed. Rent seeking was much more profitable and unsurprisingly, we’ve gotten a lot more rent seekers. There are few businesses that are creating significant value anymore. Many large businesses rely on some form of government spending, fiat loans or both. Many tech companies relied on a lot of venture capital (VC) money which are really, fiat loans, to become rent seekers. The fiatization of the economy has been ever-present and growing for the past 50 years and even the most productive companies have become infected.
Glorifying Rent Seeking
Why is it that so many people coming out of business school now want to be wealth managers? Because they’re imitating the Warren Buffets of the world. He’s a guy that hasn’t created anything in his entire life, he has just managed other peoples’ money. He’s the ultimate rent seeker which has made him fabulously wealthy. Because of the primacy of money, rent seeking has become extremely prestigious. The heroes of this generation are guys like Buffet and not Thomas Edison or Nikola Tesla, who actually made things.
Bitcoin, thankfully, starts shaming rent seekers for who they are. Altcoiners are so obviously rent seeking and creating no value. Hence they’re rightfully condemned strongly by Bitcoiners. You can see the obvious rent seeking in the “free money” altcoins use to bribe people to market for them. The main attraction of altcoins is that they let you be a rent-seeker without the gatekeeping of top-tier business schools, political connections or media approval. It’s really rent-seeking for all, which really means no one’s doing any real work.
In a sense, altcoins are the natural end of fiat rent seeking. They are all completely non-productive and have no redeemable quality whatsoever. The aspiration is that you can make money for doing nothing valuable. That’s what’s so attractive, but also what’s so unsettling. Most people can sense that there’s something extremely wrong about people making money for doing nothing. Something doesn’t add up and even a 5-year old can sense it. The value has to come from somewhere and hence there’s always a bit of dread with most altcoiners. Even in bull markets, they know at some level that they’re playing with house money that they didn’t earn. So many altcoiners go broke like lottery winners because deep down, they know they didn’t provide any value.
Indeed, the value being extracted by all this rent seeking is from the capital that civilization has built up over many generations. In Western countries, there’s a culture of trust that’s starting to disintegrate. Trust is a capital good that takes a long time to form. Trust is why you saw an economic miracle in Japan and Germany after World War II but not one in the Soviet block. Abusing that trust for monetary gain reduces communal trust. These rent-seeking frauds are eating our seed corn.
Adding Value
Thankfully, there’s no rent-seeking in Bitcoin as there’s no centralized entity that can hand out rent-seeking positions. Bitcoin is building up capital again because Bitcoin rewards people who add value. The toxic maximalism that everyone complains about is really just a reaction against rent-seeking, value-subtracting behavior. VCs are experts in being rent-seeking middlemen. Influencers are as well. These are the people who, when they come in trying to extract value from Bitcoiners, get roasted.
Bitcoin companies are harder to create than any other because there’s no room for rent seeking. The Ethereum Foundation isn’t giving you a grant, nor is the “crypto” VC going to give you money because you don’t have a new token they can pump. But that’s what makes for better, more honest companies and why Bitcoiners are much more likely to support them. The value add is obvious because there’s no fiat or altcoin subsidization.
Bitcoin builds capital through making work about adding value again. And work is harder, but less scammy. In other words, instead of being scammy rent seekers, we can do honest work again.
Reject rent seeking. Build.
This is a guest post by Jimmy Song. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.
This is an opinion editorial by Joakim Book, a research fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research and contributor to Bitcoin Magazine, HumanProgress.org and the Mises Institute.
Finding fault with Bitcoin and Bitcoiners is easy. Every schmuck, stick, know-it-all pundit, wiseass and establishment elite has a handful of complaints readily available. Bitcoin uses too much electricity; its fixed money supply schedule makes interventions from a benevolent central bank impossible; it doesn’t have enough inflation for a growing economy; it is used by pesky criminals; and its mean, technobabbling users hurt my brittle feelings.
The objections get tiresome about as quickly as they get recycled.
One fantastic example is the doomspeaker economist Nouriel Roubini, known for his bombastic and bearish declarations — frequently nicknamed “Dr. Doom” by the financial press. In his own mind, he is merely “realistic,” which every madman would say about himself when queried. In his latest book, “Megathreats: The Ten Trends That Imperil Our Future, And How To Survive Them,” he insists that most people overlook something about this infamous nickname:
“Those who label me Dr. Doom fail to see that I examine the upside with as much rigor as the downside. Optimists and pessimists both call me contrarian. If I could choose my nickname, Dr. Realist sounds right.”
The Bitcoin obituaries site 99bitcoins.com lists our beloved economist hater 12 times, but Googling finds plenty more Bitcoin denouncements from this outspoken character — in every outlet that’ll have him, it seems, from Twitter to the Financial Times.
To Roubini, bitcoin was a bubble in 2013, a “Ponzi game” and “not a currency” in 2014, a “gigantic speculative bubble” in 2017, almost all transactions were fake in 2019 and, most tastefully, in 2020 a little bit of everything:
What his new book does so well is outline the world’s many macroeconomic troubles. For five mesmerizing chapters, he describes the debt problems, the demographic impossibility that is the bankrupt Ponzi (sorry, “pension”) schemes of Western nations, the easy money disaster and the boom-bust cycle that it gives rise to. Stagflation in the 2020s did not come as a surprise to him, and he locates the blame precisely where it should be: “We poured massive amounts of money and fiscal stimulus into a financial and economic system already awash in cash and credit.” With a short-term view and politically-captured central banks, we get disastrously easy money because “that is what voters want and leveraged markets need to avoid crashing.”
He even comes down on the correct side of the 2022 blunder to use the dollar payment rails to sanction a G8 economy: “This sort of weaponizing of currency for the pursuit of national security goals is the latest frontier of the mission creep of central banks, starting with the Fed” (ignoring that the Federal Reserve doesn’t make sanction decisions).
As a rule, whatever Bitcoin’s flaws are — as a money, as a protocol, as a usable tool, as a community — it gets better, relatively speaking, when the incumbent monetary system gets worse. Whatever your position on Bitcoin was three, five or 10 years ago, you must look at it more favorably today: the monetary system in place has gotten so much worse, with inflation, anti-money-laundering bureaucracy, clown-world behavior and frozen accounts being just the worst offenders. All is not well in the world of money; that makes Bitcoin a more tempting prospect, all things equal.
So, is Roubini a Bitcoiner now? Has the ultimate Bitcoin bear, diligently at it for a decade, finally come around? Seeing clearly the monetary madness of the world, it wouldn’t be the strangest thing for Dr. Doom to at last tone down his criticism of Bitcoin.
Instead, we got Groundhog Day.
The single chapter dedicated to financial instability spends a dozen or so pages on Bitcoin, unbelievably dedicating most of them to “crypto,” “DeFi,” “stablecoins” and central bank digital currencies. Sigh.
Still, even here we had potential: The rise of crypto, explains Roubini, “exposes our collective wilting faith in the ability of governments to back the money they issue.” Hear, hear.
Queen Taylor Called
“Ugh, so he calls me up and he’s like ‘I still love youuu’, and I’m like ‘I just… I mean, this is exhausting, you know? Like, we are never getting back together. Like, ever.’”
If you are to critique Bitcoin — something youcertainly, certainly can do — here are some things you should do:
First, get your monetary attributes in order.
There are three — store of value, unit of account, medium of exchange — not five. You can’t invent new ones and duplicating previous ones isn’t useful. Roubini introduces “single numeraire,” which is exactly the same thing as a unit of account, and splits store of value into stable value against “market value” and against “an index of the price of goods and services.” Try carving out a difference. This is silly word play.
Second, make sure your criticism is levied against Bitcoin, not “crypto.”
Most people think of bitcoin as merely the first “cryptocurrency,” the most famous among tens of thousands of scammy shitcoins. It’s not. What holds and happens in the la-la land of vaporware tokens rarely has anything to do with Bitcoin: Sam Bankman-Fried’s shenanigans, Terra’s implosion or the Cryptoqueen scam do in no way detract from Bitcoin’s core, its principles or operations. When Roubini cites “BaconCoin,” quotes LoanSnap’s founder or reports negative comments by DogeCoin’s creator, he does not undermine Bitcoin’s promise.
Bitcoin is a one-off monetary invention, separated from every other money or “crypto” by a Great Wall of categories and concepts: it doesn’t have a company or founder running it, like every other shitcoin does; it doesn’t have counterparty risk nor is it subject to censorship like every other fiat currency. Bitcoin has no CEO and no marketing department; it has the strongest Lindy and the highest hash rate.
Third — and this is a hard one — make sure your points haven’t already been debunked, answered and relegated to the dustbin of unimpressive, erroneous jabs at Bitcoin.
Repeating an outdated accusation makes you look stupid, not Bitcoin. Roubini goes for the vast wealth inequality in Bitcoinland, believing it to be “worse than that of North Korea.” It’s not, and as flawed as these investigations are, UTXO ownership seems to become less and less unequal over time — as you’d expect for an emerging money that gets distributed in use.
Unsurprisingly, it uses too much energy, as much as a small country and therefore “will blunt urgent climate initiatives to slow down global warming.” It doesn’t and it won’t: if anything, Bitcoin unlocks stranded energy, contributes to balancing the grid and miners are more renewable than most major economies.
Fourth, make sure that the property of Bitcoin that you’re attacking isn’t worse in the legacy system.
Warren Buffet often makes this error, thinking that hacks, fees or the fact that bitcoin doesn’t generate “yield” dooms it to failure. Nevermind that paper money doesn’t either (unless you count seigniorage to the central bank); nevermind that his ridiculing of bitcoin as a Ponzi applies equally well to apartments or Uncle Sam’s pension schemes.
The most absurd accusation arrives with Roubini’s silly soda shitcoins: If you need Coke coins to buy Coke and Pepsi coins to buy Pepsi, how could you ever establish (relative) value?! How could you ever know what either of them are worth?
Makes you wonder how Americans could ever buy things when they’re abroad, how pound-based customers (i.e., British residents) can ever acquire anything sold in euros or spend their melting currency on Fifth Avenue. There’s a publicly-displayed market price for you to “convert” value into the monetary system that you’re familiar with; and there’s a publicly-traded market that the banks on either side of your and your vendor’s transaction can trade and settle such that international trade works.
Fascinating.
His currency risk examples are illustrative — and disingenuous. Apparently vendors can’t “price” goods in bitcoin since “an overnight fall in value might wipe out the [seller’s] profit margins.” That’s true as far as it goes, but holds equally so for any cross-currency transaction in the legacy world: imports or export or any supply chain more complicated than your local currency area. Besides, if you worry about the currency exposure in your sales, there is a liquid market that provides hedges for you. Many stores that accept bitcoin through various third-party solutions instantly exchange them for dollars, thus mitigating the risk.
In the very next sentence, Roubini considers the downside of the opposite risk:
“Were someone to write a mortgage with principal and interest in bitcoin, a spike in the value of bitcoin would cause the real value of the mortgage to skyrocket. If default then likely occurs, the lender loses money, and the borrower loses her house.”
I suppose no American therefore owns property in New Zealand or Mexico, no European has debt contracts in USD-dollars. These are not novel risks, but ordinary financial risks that firms and households deal with already.
What’s so fascinating is Roubini’s lack of symmetry: If margins can get obliterated by an overnight drop, then margins can also be doubled by an equal overnight rise. Symmetric risk. If bitcoin’s exchange rate for dollars falls — which Roubini is so certain it will — a bitcoin-denominated mortgage will wipe out itself by becoming easily repayable with appreciating dollars. This isn’t to say that he’s wrong to point out these risks, but that they’re reduced to what economists call “risk aversion.” Unhedged bitcoin transactions or debt contracts are bad if households worry about the downside more than the upside — which, in the real world, seems to be true only to some extent.
The honest conclusion isn’t Roubini’s “bitcoin is incapable of being money,” since many established currencies with volatile values between one another can serve that function, but that an emerging bitcoin economy would have this added, minor layer of business risk.
It’s like Roubini went out of his way to be up to date on all his other macro worries, only to lay forth criticism of Bitcoin that was outdated by the time he first voiced it in the mid-2010s.
Most devastatingly of all: Can anyone really be taken seriously when they slap a plural “s” on the uncountable noun “bitcoin”?
The better you understand the faults of the current way of doing monetary things, the better Bitcoin looks.
When you look at the many macro ills that Bitcoiners are so well attuned to, the pit of your stomach should churn in anxiety. When you look at the debts (public and private) that rampage the system, you should be feeling nauseous. All of this Roubini captures expertly, and much of his writing could even have been featured on these pages. Our beloved economist hater gets the problem, better and more vocally than most. Still, no dice.
It’s unfathomable that someone so attuned to the world’s catastrophic macro problems as Roubini cannot see the master-key solution that is Bitcoin.
This is a guest post by Joakim Book. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.
In John William Waterhouse’s Circe (1892), there is no question that her power is linked to her seductive nature, while John Collier’s highly eroticised depiction of Lilith (1889), which sees her revelling in the snake that coils around her naked body, couldn’t be further from Rossetti’s portrayal.
Artists as diverse as Gustav Moreau, Gustav Klimt and Edvard Munch all portrayed the femme fatale, and there was rarely any room for ambiguity – these women were dangerous temptresses.
Although most artists relied on biblical or mythical imagery, The Impressionists, as one would expect given their focus on everyday life, transported the femme fatale to the present day.
Modern-day femmes fatales
Édouard Manet’s Nana (1877), which depicts a high-class prostitute in a state of undress with her next client seated on a sofa behind her, is widely thought to have been inspired by Zola’s character of the same name. Nana, who made her first appearance in L’Assommoir before becoming the subject of her own eponymous novel in 1880, destroys every man who desires her before dying her own horrible death of smallpox. The painting was refused entry to the Paris Salon, perhaps because the contemporary setting was a little too close to the bone.
Max Lieberman took an equally contemporary approach in his Samson and Delilah (1902), turning the biblical story into a modern-day battle of the sexes. Delilah, triumphantly holding her lover’s shorn hair above her head with one hand, while crushing him into the bed with the other, is the embodiment of the powerful, sexually confident woman that so unnerved the men of the era.
The femme fatale was also a favourite subject for sculptors. Some particularly striking examples can be seen in The Colour of Anxiety: Race, Sexuality and Disorder at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, which explores the intriguing premise that the increasing use of colour in 19th-Century sculpture was a means of highlighting Victorian anxieties.
Spanish streamer TheGrefg is one of the biggest stars on Twitch, so much so that he recently held his own awards show that drew almost two million viewers. And everyone watching was, for a moment, treated to a big ol’ ASCII penis.
First, some background. TheGrefg has almost 20 million YouTube subscribers. Over 11 million Twitch followers. Even if you don’t know who he is because he doesn’t’ speak your language, the dude is one of the most popular streamers on the planet; we wrote about him in 2021 when he “obliterated the all-time Twitch viewership record” in a clip…revealing his own Fortnite skin:
For years now, Twitch’s record for most concurrent viewers on a single streamer’s channel has been hotly contested, with streamers topping each other in slow-building increments. Today, however, Spanish streamer TheGrefg made everybody else look like they’d been wrestling for discarded peanut shells. As of writing, he topped out at nearly 2.5 million—a new all-time record that beats not just individual channels, but entire games.
The event we’re talking about today—called Premios ESLAND—is actually the second year running that he’s been able to host his own awards show specifically for Spanish-speaking streamers, streaming and related events/stunts. And it’s quickly become a huge event; this year’s show drew 1.75 million viewers, and that’s not counting the folks in attendance watching it live.
Look at this crowd! That’s Mexico City’s famous Auditorio Nacional, and TheGrefg packed it out for the show:
Gaming time Grants two months of access to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which gives you access to Game Pass on your Xbox, PC, and Phone, lets you play online, and even adds an EA Play subscription too, for even more games at under $10.
Anyway, being the second time he’s run one of these shows—and that he lives on the internet—you might think he or his producers would know not to cut to the live chat on the big screen up on stage. Yet this year he did just that, and as you can see in the video below, he regretted it about as quickly as a human can register the sensation:
In the interests of accuracy and truth in reporting, here is the NSFW image:
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Generational diversity is diversity. Diversity is broader than just race and gender. We often oversimplify diversity to attributes we think we can see — like race and gender, yet the richness of diversity goes beyond our skin color and gender identities. Most attributes of diversity are fluid — gender, race, ethnicity and age — they can change over time or people may associate along a spectrum or identity with multiple categories within a dimension.
Age is a fluid dimension of diversity as it’s constantly changing.
Our workforce currently has four generations participating in it. Although there is no formal authority to define generations, generations are commonly defined by birth year:
Baby Boomer Generation: People ages 56 to 75 (born between 1946 and 1965)
Generation X: People ages 41 to 55 (born between 1966 and 1980)
Generation Y (millennials): People ages 25 to 40 (born between 1981 and 1996)
Generation Z: People ages 9 to 24 (born between 1997 and 2012)
Because Gen Z grew up in a time of peak immigration in the U.S., they had more exposure to other racial groups and ethnicities. They also grew up in a more welcoming and accepting environment for the LGBTQ+ community.
Neurodiversity is also a key dimension of difference for Gen Z. Rates of diagnosis for autism, ADHD and other neurodivergence have increased significantly in recent years. With exposure comes a broader acceptance of differences. People have not changed; it is the awareness that has. For organizations that want to attract top talent, addressing the unique aspects of generational diversity is key.
Gen Z expects inclusion
In a recent study by Monster, 83% of Gen Z individuals stated an employer’s commitment to diversity and inclusion is significant when choosing where to work. Another poll found 75% of people in Gen Z said they’d reconsider applying to a company if they weren’t satisfied with their diversity and inclusion efforts. It is common for younger generations to ask about diversity efforts at organizations during the interview process. They want to know if it’s simply window dressing or if it’s authentic and is quick to decipher authenticity.
According to Project Implicit, the most common bias people have is age. Most people have more positive associations with younger people than older people and 93% of older Americans have experienced age bias, one study said. As with many dimensions of difference, there are common stereotypes about age:
Older people are poorly skilled with technology (and younger are better)
Younger people are entitled (and older people work harder)
Older people are more conservative (and younger people are more liberal)
These are just a few commonly held beliefs about people based on age. While biases and stereotypes can be rooted in some truth, it is important that we don’t apply a stereotype about a group of people to an individual. Here are some problematic ageist statements/actions with potential corrections:
Giving the social media project to a young person vs. Delegating the social media project to a person with the most expertise/passion, regardless of age.
“I don’t want to hire them because I am afraid they won’t work as hard” vs. “Let’s have objective criteria to determine fit rather than using outdated stereotypes.”
Thinking “I know who they voted for” based on their age vs. Getting to know the person and their beliefs.
One of the biggest challenges with ageism is that we have a primal fear of getting old. We discriminate against our older selves. In Ashton Applewhite’s Ted Talk, they discuss why we fear getting old and how the stigma of being “old” manifests itself in our culture. This fear can lead to unhelpful behaviors that discriminate against older employees.
In fact, ageism does not make sense. Most research shows that we are the happiest at the beginning and end of life given the data on the U Curve of Happiness. Happiness bottoms out in the mid-40s and often increases with age. Coupled with research on Blue Zones, studies find having a strong community as you age has the biggest influence on longevity.
Ageism is real. It’s often the biggest source of bias. Let’s be careful not to be biased against our younger, current or older versions of ourselves. As conversations on diversity and inclusion continue, expect them to intensify with Gen Z demanding more diverse representation and inclusive behavior in organizations. If generational diversity is not addressed, organizations stand to lose out as younger generations vote with their dollars and feet.
Generational differences are a part of the diversity conversation, yet often overlooked or not included. By including generational diversity in the overall diversity, equity and inclusion conversation you bring more human experiences and potential allies into the work.
This is an opinion editorial by Joe Nakamoto, a pseudonymous Bitcoin traveler and reporter who helped create a recent documentary on Madeira’s Bitcoin adoption.
What is a Madeira? Why do Bitcoiners keep talking about it? Does it come with fries? And why did Pleb Music (aka, Max DeMarco) shoot a Bitcoin documentary on this tiny island?
Answering those questions, a band of high-profile Bitcoiners set out to “orange pill” the Portuguese island of Madeira this summer. Pleb Music brought its Bitcoin story to life in a documentary resplendent with swooping drone shots, storytelling sleight of hand and the agile camerawork of his talented videographer friend, @Cinemuck_. With the Northern hemisphere winter biting hard, it’s worth watching. You’ll drink in a warm mug of life on Madeira and find it to be an up-and-coming Bitcoin base.
But before we get to that, let’s reach consensus on Madeira; let’s explore why this Portuguese isle should now feature on any traveling Bitcoiner’s bucket list.
The Pearl Of The Atlantic
The sunkissed island of Madeira rises up from the Atlantic Ocean some 600 miles off the coast of Portugal. A popular tourist destination thanks to Instagram-ready landscapes, a warm, temperate climate and a rich cultural heritage, it’s a peaceful patch of land. There’s a regular direct flight to New York while low-cost airlines whisk passengers to a handful of European capital cities.
Much like other small island developing states, or SIDS, Madeira’s development is restricted by its area. A burgeoning tourism industry props up the local economy, but natural resources are limited. Madeiran bananas and passionfruit — often spotted in my local supermarket on Portugal’s mainland — are plentiful but not profitable. Madeira also exports just enough tea to keep the United Kingdom quenched for about two seconds, as well as Madeiran wine.
Tourism aside, there’s a smattering of remittance sent in from the many Madeirans scattered across the world (oh look, Bitcoin fixes this!), as well as some trade in its ports.
In the winter months, tourism diversification strategies such as ecotourism and enticing digital nomads to work from the island serve two purposes: one, keeping Madeira’s economy ticking over in the low season, and two, driving down the average age of holidaymakers on the island.
Madeira is home to espetada (loads of Madeiran meat piled up on a skewer like a posh kebab), quality steak and scrumptious fish. It certainly appeals to the average Bitcoiner’s diet; while the vegetarians and vegans can be rest assured that a lot of food is cultivated locally.
Quality red meat and fish are abundant on the island. Restaurant: Lá ao fundo. Source: author.
Madeira boasts an educated population, absurdly fast internet and civil engineering infrastructure that made Greg Foss’ jaw drop more frequently than he deploys the f-bomb on Bitcoin podcasts. Indeed, although the Madeiran economy pretty much relies on tourism, Madeira receives a substantial chunk of EU subsidies to build bridges, roads and even cable cars.
One of Madeira’s many highrise, highway tunnels. Source.
For the 2021 to 2027 period, the European Commission will invest a whopping 1.9 billion euros in the “outermost regions” of the EU, which includes the Açores and Madeira. The Açores are Madeira’s bigger, colder brothers, hundreds of miles northwest of the island. The EU money is earmarked for improving the connectivity of the islands, transport and, undoubtedly, tunnels.
Without the substantial EU subsidies, Madeira would likely suffer and economic activity may dwindle. And without tourism — as shown during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Madeira’s GDP contracted by as much as 10% — the island may grind to a halt.
However, the ace up this small island’s sleeve is a certain André Loja. Loja, pronounced “Loshja” (no, not “lo-haa,” Daniel Prince), is a proud Madeiran entrepreneur with business interests that straddle tourism, real estate and, crucially, Bitcoin.
Loja (far left) relaxes after lunch at Restaurante Fajá Dos Padres. Source: author.
Prior to developments on the island, Loja was a rather lonely Bitcoiner. Fortunately, and much like many others Bitcoiners who I have the pleasure of calling friends, he’s unhinged. Because rather than simply try to introduce his friends to Bitcoin, Loja thought, “Fodasse, caralho!” — Portuguese for “fuck it!” — “I’m going to orange pill the president of this island.”
A Madeiran Monetary Transition
Loja’s work, coupled with that of Prince Philip of Serbia, Prince and a brief cameo from Michael Saylor, led to an announcement by the president of Madeira, Miguel Albuquerque, at the Bitcoin 2022 conference. During Samson Mow’s keynote, Albuquerque exclaimed, “I believe in the future and I believe in Bitcoin.”
However, contrary to some rather dodgy crypto media reporting, this outburst does not mean that Madeira adopted bitcoin as legal tender. And nor can it.
Madeira uses the euro and is highly unlikely to replace or even complement the European shitcoin with magic internet money any time soon. With this in mind, our visit to the island in June 2022 was an investigation and an aid to the announcement; an ode to “don’t trust, verify.” The mission would uncover what it means for Madeira to “embrace” Bitcoin, and understand how we, as Bitcoiners, can pitch in.
Sidebar: Like all good Bitcoiners, once upon a time, Madeira shitcoined hard. The Madeira Blockchain Association hosts an annual conference, while the coworking space that Loja runs is a favorite for cRypT0pp digital nomad types. You know the sort: jabbering millennials passionate about something that they can’t quite define but will probably, definitely empower everyone online, all the time, cuz WAGMI, Web3, “Yes it does need a blockchain, here’s why.”
I deeply empathize with Loja, who I sometimes picture in his office next to the coworking space, scrolling on Bitcoin Twitter while overhearing conversations and ideas from his cowork tenants. Ideas such as how to decentralize the luggage storage industry or build the next best dapp on Ethereum that, “Trust me, bro it’s more secure than Bitcoin.
The entrance to Loja’s coworking space, Cowork Funchal. Do you think it accepts bitcoin? Source: author.
Furthermore, similar to Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert’s approach to El Salvador, Loja strives to steer the crypto scams and Ponzi schemes clear of his shores. It’s a thankless, unrelenting task. And it’s undoubtedly why not a single Bitcoiner who participated in the Madeira trip could be considered a “shitcoin sympathizer.” Indeed, for a man who lives by the catchphrase, “I don’t know shit about fuck,” the man knows his shit when it comes to organizing a serious batch of Bitcoin advocates.
Orange Pill Dispensers
And so, over the course of 10 days in June 2022, the all-star team set about showing, sending and sharing Bitcoin with locals in Madeira. From surf shops to civil servants, taxi drivers to tax officials and poncha bars to presidents, they spread the word about Satoshi Nakamoto’s innovation. (FYI, “poncha” is the Madeiran drink of choice. It’s potent. Just ask Jeff Booth).
The surf shop owner Foss and I paid bitcoin to (using the Lightning Network, naturally) for surfboard rentals. Source: author.
Thanks to Loja, the group took a Lightning-guided tour of the island and its infrastructure. Not only had Loja spent hours setting up meetings with policymakers and business leaders in Madeira, but he’d also organized the obligatory Bitcoin boat ride (Yes, my private keys are now on the Atlantic seabed); a cable car to a secluded restaurant and trips through more tunnels than there are shitcoins listed on CoinMarketCap. The group got a real taste of Madeira.
Although DeMarco’s documentary underlines that the pinnacle of the trip was meeting with the president, Madeira is simply a must-visit destination. It has all of the ingredients to become a Bitcoin citadel — or a free private city — just ask Peter Young.
With 200,000-ish people, a manageable, fertile land area, warm weather, cheap cost of living and phenomenal internet speeds, what’s stopping you from moving there? Or at least, entertaining the daydream — I often do.
Câmara de Lobos, formerly an impoverished area of Madeira — now it’s Instagrammable. Source: author.
You can buy a house with bitcoin, spend sats at a few merchants and hang out at Bitcoin meetup. The Regional Forum of Economic Education, or F.R.E.E Madeira, is on hand to help you on your journey. Cofounded by Bitcoiners and Madeiran experts, the group hopes to make Madeira one of the new homes for the “new base layer of the new internet,” as Booth explained. And this is just the start.
However. Madeira is not El Salvador. You cannot live on a Bitcoin standard in Madeira. Peer-to-peer interactions, Bitrefill, the Bitcoin Company, FREE Madeira’s assistance and many other Bitcoin workarounds will assist you in using bitcoin on the island, but be aware that cash reigns supreme on Madeira and we are still very early. In this regard, Madeira needs your help.
Ask not what Madeira can do for you, but what you can do…
If you’re reading this, you’re probably a Bitcoin enthusiast or you’re at least Bicurious (no, not the horny kind). I’m going to assume, therefore, that you know 100 times more about Bitcoin than the average Madeiran does. In Madeira, a lot of people have not yet heard of Bitcoin. In my experience, over 95% of the population have not used Lightning and awareness is in its genesis.
Following the Presidential meal, Prince onboarded Madeiran ministers using Muun wallet. Source: author.
Moreover, President Albuquerque is not quite on the same level as laser-eyed President Bukele of El Salvador. The Central American nation executed a top-down Bitcoin adoption strategy when declaring bitcoin as legal tender in 2021.
To continue the El Salvador comparison, while Salvadorans see volcanoes as a source of energy for Bitcoin mining, in Madeira, during our visit, the civil servants at the energy ministry raised the valid question, “How did you know the Bitcoin is here?” The energy specialist had not yet grasped that Bitcoin is digital, and not physical. We are still very early.
The Madeira men in the president’s office. Source: author.
Our conversations with business people, ministers and entrepreneurs were among the first Bitcoin touchpoints. For example, if Madeira was to mine Bitcoin, who would custody the keys? Should it be sold for euros or should it be HODL’d? Is it even legal to do so, and what would the EU think?
To add to this, while the president is fully on board with Bitcoin, how far do his powers extend? It’s worth considering the impact of the EU one day banning Bitcoin mining or the MiCA (markets in crypto assets) regulation on Madeira’s decision to embrace Bitcoin — and to what extent the EU would come down on Madeira, or let it live in a gray area as an EU outer zone.
So, What Can You Do?
First, book your ticket. Take a dip in the natural sea pools, ride cable cars and hike “levadas” (hillside canal walks). Break bread with Bitcoiners and laugh off the clown word we inhabit over a glass of poncha in Maderia’s capital, Funchal.
Consider the cumulative effect of all of these visits and Bitcoin connections on Madeira over the next five to 10 years. It’s a bit like Bitcoin Park in Nashville, or Praia Bitcoin in Brazil or Bitcoin Jungle in Costa Rica. If enough Bitcoiners come down, show interest, set up shop or even relocate to Madeira, the island will reach what Swan Bitcoin has coined the “intransigent minority.”
It’s of course a low-time preference goal, and some ways away. But it’s a future I can get on board with.
In the meantime, I don’t know about you, but shooting the shit with Bitcoiners IRL is far more enjoyable than shitposting on Twitter (or Nostr, sorry). And the best part about this Portuguese paradise? In Madeira, you can do both.
This is a guest post by Joe Nakamoto. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.
Wersching at WonderCon in April 2022Photo: Daniel Knighton (Getty Images)
Actor Annie Wersching, who played the role of Tess in Naughty Dog’s The Last Of Us video game, has died at the age of 45.
Wersching was diagnosed with cancer in 2020 but continued to act throughout her illness and treatment, appearing in series like Star Trek: Picard. As Deadline reports, her husband, Stephen Full, said in a statement:
There is a cavernous hole in the soul of this family today. But she left us the tools to fill it. She found wonder in the simplest moment. She didn’t require music to dance. She taught us not to wait for adventure to find you. ‘Go find it. It’s everywhere.’ And find it we shall.
She is perhaps best known for her role as Renee Walker in the seventh and eights series of 24, though she also made regular appearances on Bosch and Timeless as well. Wersching is survived by her husband and three sons.
Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann wrote, “Just found out my dear friend, Annie Wersching, passed away. We just lost a beautiful artist and human being. My heart is shattered. Thoughts are with her loved ones.”
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As you can see in the video below,Wersching didn’t just provide Tess’ voice, but also acted out the role for motion capture as well
This Go Fund Me is for them. It’s so Steve can have time to grieve without the pressure of needing to work. So he can be daddy to Freddie (12), Ozzie (9) and Archie (4) as they navigate the future without their mom, without sweet Annie. It’s so they can continue to go to baseball games (Go Cardinals!) take music lessons and play little league. It’s to help pay for college. It’s so Steve can continue Annie’s tradition of filling the house with every life-sized balloon that’ll fit in the car for birthday mornings. It’s to give them time to navigate life as a family of four without the burden of paying medical bills or funeral expenses. It’s so they can continue to live life in a way that they know would make Annie proud.
Everyone loved Annie. Everyone. But however much we loved her, she loved her boys more. Let’s help take care of them for her.
