Risky Reads

New Articles for June and July

The Palmetto Doge — Tue, 16 Jul 2024 03:28:15 GMT

Hey friends,

I’ve posted a couple new articles over the last two months, but have been slow to get them out to the email list. The latest release goes out on 𝕏 every Monday evening!

Meme Leaders Back Trump After Assassination Attempt (7/15)
Dogecoin Union: Why Doge Is The Remittance Crypto (7/8)
Roaring Dogey? (7/1)
Dogecoin Is the Ultimate Pizza Crypto (6/24)
GameStop Short Sellers Fear the Doge (6/17)
The Art of Meme War: What the DogeArmy Can Learn from GameStop (6/10)
The New Market Populism (6/3)

As always, thanks for reading. Subscribe on 𝕏 to support independent journalism covering digital finance, AI, Tesla, SpaceX, memes, and more!

—Risky

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It's ALL Risky!

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What do you think? What was the biggest story of the week? Let me know!

Remember, Dogecoin is risky. But then again, it’s all risky!

Follow on twitter at @itsALLrisky

Send an email to itsALLrisky@gmail.com

Send a Doge tip: DJ2zTEdHBD3guHLfVaNBaypr6bHFG5Nwfw

This article was written in collaboration with @CryptoDogDivine, give them a follow!

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Disclaimer: This is not financial advice and I am not a financial advisor. The article above references an opinion for entertainment purposes only and it is not investment advice. Always assume that the author of the article is actively trading and that the opinions expressed may be biased towards the author’s holdings. Do your own research and consult with a licensed financial adviser before making any investment decision. Do not treat any opinion expressed in this newsletter as a specific inducement to make a particular investment. Content, news, research, tools, and securities symbols are for educational and illustrative purposes only and do not imply a recommendation or solicitation to buy or sell a particular security or cryptocurrency or to engage in any particular investment strategy. The information provided is not warranted as to completeness or accuracy and is subject to change without notice. The projections or other information regarding the likelihood of various investment outcomes are hypothetical in nature, are not guaranteed for accuracy or completeness, do not reflect actual investment results and are not guarantees of future results. All investments involve risk, losses may exceed the principal invested, and the past performance of a security, industry, sector, market, cryptocurrency, or financial product does not guarantee future results or returns. Dogecoin is a speculative and highly volatile asset susceptible to pump-and-dump schemes.

At the time of publication, Dogecoin is around $0.12 per coin.

Kabosu's Passing and the First Crypto Election

The Palmetto Doge — Thu, 30 May 2024 03:29:45 GMT

Hey friends,

Two new articles dropped on 𝕏 this week looking at the sudden political significance of crypto and the amazing life of the original Doge, Kabosu.

Is 2024 The First Crypto Election? (Monday)
In Memory of Kabosu, the Internet's Dog (Wednesday)

I hope you enjoy this week’s articles. As always, Subscribe on 𝕏 to support independent journalism covering digital finance, AI, Tesla, SpaceX, memes, and more!

—Risky

Thank You!

Thanks for reading! Consider sending a tip or Subscribing on 𝕏 to help keep the newsletter going!

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Tipping is really appreciated! Thank you!!

It's ALL Risky!

Thank you, kind reader, for reading and subscribing to this newsletter. I really appreciate it!

If you haven’t already, please sign up to this email newsletter for more weekly articles like this one. Also, please share it with a friend or on twitter if you enjoyed this article.

What do you think? What was the biggest story of the week? Let me know!

Remember, Dogecoin is risky. But then again, it’s all risky!

Follow on twitter at @itsALLrisky

Send an email to itsALLrisky@gmail.com

Send a Doge tip: DJ2zTEdHBD3guHLfVaNBaypr6bHFG5Nwfw

This article was written in collaboration with @CryptoDogDivine, give them a follow!

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At the time of publication, Dogecoin is around $0.16 per coin.

Three New Articles!

The Palmetto Doge — Tue, 21 May 2024 03:21:33 GMT

Hey everyone,

Three new Risky Reads articles are available on 𝕏!

Last week’s article, Dogecoin Ends the Fed, looks at the Federal Reserve Central bank and its extraordinary power to print money out of thin air.

In an amazing stroke of coincidence, a few days after the article went out, Congress began seriously debating a bill to end the Federal Reserve for the first time in years.

This week’s double feature puts the resurgence of GameStop under the microscope.

The first article, Hello Kitty: Return of the Meme, chronicles the shocking return of meme stock folk hero Roaring Kitty.

Part two, Goodbye Kitty?, looks at Kitty’s cryptic departure and the uncanny connection between GameStop and Dogecoin.

I hope you enjoy this week’s articles. As always, Subscribe on 𝕏 to support independent journalism covering crypto, AI, Tesla, SpaceX, memes, and more!

—Risky

Thank You!

Thanks for reading! Consider sending a tip or Subscribing on 𝕏 to help keep the newsletter going!

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Tipping is really appreciated! Thank you!!

It's ALL Risky!

Thank you, kind reader, for reading and subscribing to this newsletter. I really appreciate it!

If you haven’t already, please sign up to this email newsletter for more weekly articles like this one. Also, please share it with a friend or on twitter if you enjoyed this article.

What do you think? What was the biggest story of the week? Let me know!

Remember, Dogecoin is risky. But then again, it’s all risky!

Follow on twitter at @itsALLrisky

Send an email to itsALLrisky@gmail.com

Send a Doge tip: DJ2zTEdHBD3guHLfVaNBaypr6bHFG5Nwfw

This article was written in collaboration with @CryptoDogDivine, give them a follow!

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At the time of publication, Dogecoin is around $0.16 per coin.

Who Owns the Doge?

The Palmetto Doge — Tue, 07 May 2024 04:55:59 GMT

Hey everyone,

Dogecoin newsletters from the last two weeks are available on 𝕏:

Who Owns The Doge? (4/29)
Will OTD Bring Glory to the Doge? (5/6)

Instead of a weekly Substack news digest, itsALLrisky is experimenting with a daily news digest.

The daily digest—which condenses important developments in finance, technology, and meme culture into a series of 𝕏 posts—goes out each night to paying subscribers on 𝕏.

The goal of the daily digest is to curate breaking online news so subscribers get the best, most relevant 𝕏 content in narrative format without having to spend lots of time searching through posts on the site.

If you’re new to 𝕏, subscribing is one of the most powerful things you can do to get up to speed in the world of online independent journalism. I hope you consider checking it out.

—Risky

Thank You!

Thanks for reading! Consider sending a tip or Subscribing on 𝕏 to help keep the newsletter going!

DJ2zTEdHBD3guHLfVaNBaypr6bHFG5Nwfw

Tipping is really appreciated! Thank you!!

It's ALL Risky!

Thank you, kind reader, for reading and subscribing to this newsletter. I really appreciate it!

If you haven’t already, please sign up to this email newsletter for more weekly articles like this one. Also, please share it with a friend or on twitter if you enjoyed this article.

What do you think? What was the biggest story of the week? Let me know!

Remember, Dogecoin is risky. But then again, it’s all risky!

Follow on twitter at @itsALLrisky

Send an email to itsALLrisky@gmail.com

Send a Doge tip: DJ2zTEdHBD3guHLfVaNBaypr6bHFG5Nwfw

This article was written in collaboration with @CryptoDogDivine, give them a follow!

Don't forget to subscribe to this newsletter!

At the time of publication, Dogecoin is around $0.16 per coin.

Dogecoin Is Non-Debt Money

The Palmetto Doge — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 03:38:01 GMT

Hey everyone,

This week’s Dogecoin newsletter is available on 𝕏, which recently rolled out a new “Articles” feature. Find it here:

https://twitter.com/itsALLrisky/status/1782604327409913945

Thank You!

Thanks for reading! Consider sending a tip or Subscribing on 𝕏 to help keep the newsletter going!

DJ2zTEdHBD3guHLfVaNBaypr6bHFG5Nwfw

Tipping is really appreciated! Thank you!!

It's ALL Risky!

Thank you, kind reader, for reading and subscribing to this newsletter. I really appreciate it!

If you haven’t already, please sign up to this email newsletter for more weekly articles like this one. Also, please share it with a friend or on twitter if you enjoyed this article.

What do you think? What was the biggest story of the week? Let me know!

Remember, Dogecoin is risky. But then again, it’s all risky!

Follow on twitter at @itsALLrisky

Send an email to itsALLrisky@gmail.com

Send a Doge tip: DJ2zTEdHBD3guHLfVaNBaypr6bHFG5Nwfw

This article was written in collaboration with @CryptoDogDivine, give them a follow!

Don't forget to subscribe to this newsletter!

At the time of publication, Dogecoin is around $0.16 per coin.

Dogecoin Is The New Financial Operating System

The Palmetto Doge — Tue, 02 Apr 2024 00:00:52 GMT

Hey everyone,

It’s an election year, and like all election years promises are flying around for how politicians are going to fix all the big problems.

One of the biggest issues is wealth inequality. The common solution is to tax the rich and redistribute it to the poor.

But the evidence is mixed at best that more government intervention will bring about equality. It’s worth considering the possibility that getting government out of the money game altogether might produce better outcomes.

Let’s take a look at why the idea of stateless money has been catching on lately, and how Dogecoin shifts power from the state back to the individual.

Thanks for reading Risky Reads: The People’s News for the People’s Coin—𝕏’s leading open-source newspaper.

If you enjoy this newsletter, consider subscribing for bonus content on 𝕏. Subscribers receive exclusive commentary on crypto, AI, and the online memescape. Sign up via my profile today!

Over the last few weeks, a new proposal for an “ultra-millionaire tax” has been gaining attention as a solution to wealth inequality.

The plan proposes an annual 2% tax on individuals worth between $50M and $1B, with an additional 1% for people worth more than a billion.

But would an “ultra-millionaire tax” actually reduce inequality and improve the lives of regular folks? This is up for debate…

A lot of folks start with the default assumption that the government is benevolent, and higher taxes allow to carry out its friendly agenda more effectively.

Elon Musk has put forth the counter-argument that governments are best understood as giant corporations: they are a combination of people and technology with the goal of producing goods and services.

The main difference between corporations and government is that the latter has a monopoly on violence—it can put people in jail, seize property by force, and take lives.

Elon has also faulted governments for being poor at capital allocation.

In a discussion last week about the “ultra-millionaire tax,” he argued that governments are typically “an order of magnitude worse than the private sector” at using money to improve people’s lives.

The difference between public and private sectors boils down to accountability: if a private rocket company doesn’t put out a useful product, it will quickly go bankrupt.

On the other hand, a government agency like NASA can burn billions of taxpayer dollars producing nothing of value for decades, yet continue to exist because it’s funded by taxes.

Government corruption is one reason agencies are so inefficient. Politicians who advocate for legislation favorable to corporations are often rewarded in the form of campaign contributions, job offers, speaking fees, book deals, and other financial perks.

Or they can simply trade markets with insider information from companies they’re supposed to be regulating.

Even when they’re not being corrupt, governments tend to spend a lot of taxpayer money on projects that are of questionable benefit to citizens, like wars, bank bailouts, foreign aid, and interest on money it already borrowed.

Elon concluded his argument by offering examples of countries that split in half, with one part practicing big-government communism and the other small-government capitalism.

Capitalism has its faults—especially the corrupt crony-capitalism of today’s America—but no other economic system can match its track record of raising the collective standard of living by producing more and better goods at cheaper cost.

Of course, inequality remains a huge problem today. But it’s very much up for debate whether increasing the size of government will fix it, or make it worse while enriching those close to political power.

If increasing government won’t automatically make things better, what other large-scale financial interventions exist to address inequality?

Online, one answer has been enjoying explosive popularity as of late: separate money and state.

Once you think of government as a corporation, it’s worth asking if you’d trust Amazon, Boeing, Monsanto, or Pfizer to run the money system.

Data shows you’d be better off not trusting the government to preserve your money’s value. Just in the last four years, the government has devalued the dollar by a shocking 25%.

This loss of purchasing power represents a massive undeclared tax on everyone holding dollars.

Governments’ mismanagement of money power has become increasingly obvious as prices have shot up. But currency debasement isn’t new.

On the contrary, the dollar has been on a long historical downtrend. Like all fiat currencies, the dollar has become victim of government mismanagement of money—the more new dollars are created, the less each unit of currency is worth.

All of that purchasing power has to go somewhere. As the dollar has lost value, purchasing power has been redistributed away from regular folks holding cash to the banks, corporations, and government agencies that are the first recipients of newly created money.

There’s a strong argument to be made that things would be better if that wealth were preserved in the hands of individual citizens, who could use it to help each other out, start new businesses, or build up savings for a rainy day.

Right now, there are two main contenders for reducing governments’ money power.

Gold is the classic form of stateless money. No single entity controls the supply of gold, and it’s impossible to create more out of thin air.

Anyone that wants more gold must expend real labor and energy to mine it, which acts as a check on governments that would otherwise print themselves free cash.

Most governments don’t like the idea of gold as money because it reduces their power. In the past, gold has even been made illegal by the US government.

Recently, however, a few countries have started stockpiling gold. It’s possible to understand their gold accumulation as a hint that a return to stateless money on the horizon.

Crypto is the other popular form of stateless money. Like gold, cryptocurrency doesn’t belong to any government or corporation.

Also like gold, acquiring “proof of work” cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Dogecoin requires real expenditure of energy through mining. This means they can’t be freely debased.

Crypto’s major advantage over gold is that it can settle transactions at light speed. It takes a small army of security guards to make a billion dollar payment in gold, but the same transaction can be performed for pennies in seconds using Bitcoin or Doge.

Ultimately, it’s possible to think of crypto as a new financial operating system.

Neither the government nor anyone else has special administrative privileges over this operating system, which belongs entirely to the people who use it.

The crypto system is also egalitarian by design: anyone with a cell phone and Internet connection access to digital banking services at virtually no cost.

Crypto’s challenge is that most of the world doesn’t use it yet.

This is where Dogecoin comes in. Doge stands out among cryptocurrencies for a couple reasons that make it the ideal starter-crypto:

Doge was created a joke and its creators did not profit off of it, bestowing it with an impossible-to-replicate purity
Doge started out as a crypto for online tipping, causing its ownership to be widely distributed
Doge has cheap transaction fees that make it ideal for small everyday purchases
Doge’s friendly, meme-based brand is great for onboarding new folks to crypto in a low-stakes way
Other stateless forms of money are directly threatening to government, but dog money is so silly that the money mafia would rather ignore it than challenge it head on

A lot of folks think the best way to reduce inequality is to increase taxes and grow the size of government. But government has at best a mixed track record of serving the people.

Cryptocurrency is a radical experiment in separation of money and state, and an alternative solution to reducing wealth inequality.

Rather than redistributing wealth from individuals to government, crypto proposes empowering individuals with a financial operating system that can’t be easily debased.

For now, crypto is speculative. It holds a lot of promise, but has yet to fulfill its awesome potential.

Among digital currencies, Dogecoin stands alone as the perfect vehicle for onboarding people to the new system.

A world with Dogecoin is more entertaining and promising than one without it. It might also be a fairer and more abundant one. Let’s see what happens…

Dogey Treats: News Bites

Williamsburg Pizza in Brooklyn hosted a Dogecoin community event.

The Dogecoin Foundation released its Gigawallet 1.0 to allow businesses to easily transact with Dogecoin. Dogecoin developer Timothy Stebbing explained the Foundation’s vision: “We aim to create a network of fully self-hosted, totally decentralized merchants selling products using their own wallets with no intermediaries, built on Dogecoin.”

Coinbase continued its “update the system” advertising campaign.

Memes of the Week

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Thanks for reading! Consider sending a tip or Subscribing on 𝕏 to help keep the newsletter going!

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It’s ALL Risky!

Thank you, kind reader, for reading and subscribing to this newsletter. I really appreciate it!

If you haven’t already, please sign up to this email newsletter for more weekly articles like this one. Also, please share it with a friend or on 𝕏 if you enjoyed this article.

What do you think? What was the biggest development for Doge this week? Let me know!

Remember, Dogecoin is risky. But then again, it’s all risky!

Follow on 𝕏 at @itsALLrisky

Send an email to itsALLrisky@gmail.com

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At the time of publication, Dogecoin is around $0.20 per coin.

Dogecoin: Security, Commodity, or Currency?

The Palmetto Doge — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 02:00:21 GMT

Hey everyone,

Cryptocurrency is novel technology without historical comparison. For this reason, it’s tough to use existing laws to classify them.

Over the last few years, a fierce debate has raged: Should cryptos be treated like stocks? Or are they closer to commodities like gold? Or should we recognize them as money like the dollar?

Last week, Dogecoin moved closer to clarity when Coinbase filed to list it as a commodity.

Let’s take a look at why this such a big deal, and what regular folks can do to advance the reality that Dogecoin is money

Thanks for reading Risky Reads: The People’s News for the People’s Coin—𝕏’s leading open-source newspaper.

If you enjoy this newsletter, consider subscribing for bonus content on 𝕏. Subscribers receive exclusive commentary on crypto, AI, and the online memescape. Sign up via my profile today!

A major piece of news just dropped with big implications for Dogecoin.

Earlier this month, Coinbase filed with the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to launch Dogecoin futures contracts.

The contracts allow investors to buy and sell large amounts of Dogecoin. They are expected to go live next week.

The most interesting thing about Dogecoin futures is that Coinbase classifies Doge as a commodity in order to write the contracts.

Cryptocurrencies are a novel invention that don’t easily fit into traditional categories. One of the longest-running debates in crypto is what cryptocurrencies really are.

There are three possible classifications for cryptos: securities, commodities, and currencies.

Security: ownership of a company/government with the expectation of profit (stocks, bonds, mutual funds, ETFs)
Commodity: a basic good used in commerce that is interchangeable with other goods of the same type (gold, oil, wheat)
Currency: a system of money used by a particular country (Dollars, Yen, Pesos)

Based on their name alone, you’d think cryptocurrencies are currencies, right?

It turns out “cryptocurrency” is aspirational term. Governments have been slow to recognize crypto as legit money for several reasons.

The ability to deem something money is a special power reserved by the state. Allowing private citizens to make their own money undermines state power.
Recognizing crypto as legal tender could threaten a country’s existing money if too many people decide they’d rather use crypto instead.
Cryptos are harder to control—countries can easily print more of their own money or seize it from criminals, but lacks these powers over crypto
Cryptocurrencies are historically more volatile than fiat currencies; governments don’t recognize crypto as money under the justification that they are protecting citizens from financial instability.

Since World War II, the global financial system has run on the dollar. During this time the US has closely guarded its power to decide what counts as money.

In order to protect the dollar, the US hasn’t recognized any cryptocurrencies as money. Outside of the US, only two countries have fully broken from this policy: El Salvador and The Central African Republic.

When the US does try to classify a crypto at all, it’s usually through the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC).

In recent years, the SEC has filed several lawsuits claiming cryptos are unregistered securities, which has a negative effect on both the cryptos themselves and the exchanges that list them.

If the US government recognizes Dogecoin as a commodity, it’d be a positive development.

Classifying Doge as a commodity means it is not a security.

Commodities are not subject to oversight from the SEC, one of the most anti-crypto agencies in the world.

The truth is that Dogecoin is money. However, it’s going to be an uphill battle to get the government to recognize this.

Perhaps the best outcome would be for regular people to lead the way by using Dogecoin to buy things.

Over time, authorities will have no choice but to enshrine reality into law, especially if the Dogecoin lobby grows powerful enough.

In the meantime, Doge’s impending classification as a commodity gives it protection from the SEC and its nefarious attacks on crypto.

Fortunately, the classifications of commodity and legal tender are not mutually exclusive.

It’s possible the government recognizes Dogecoin as a commodity today, and adds it as a form of legal tender in the future.

The move to classify Doge as a commodity is a step in the right direction. It’s an intriguing question why Coinbase is doing so now of all times.

Crypto is a novel invention in the world, and doesn’t easily fit into traditional financial categories.

Dogecoin is moving closer to achieving regulatory clarity than most other cryptos. Conbase’s latest move is a promising development.

Ultimately, Dogecoin isn’t just a commodity—it’s money. The government probably doesn’t want to recognize this, but the people have more power than they realize.

It’s great that things are lining up for broad recognition of Dogecoin, but there’s not reason to wait around for official approval. If people decide that Doge is money, then it is!

Dogey Treats: News Bites

Several accounts argued that Dogecoin, like Bitcoin, has a hard cap. Doge’s cap is reportedly 21 trillion coins, with the last coin set to be mined in 6100.

Coindesk ran an article asking, “Is It Late 2020 All Over Again for Dogecoin?

Memes of the Week

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DJ2zTEdHBD3guHLfVaNBaypr6bHFG5Nwfw

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It’s ALL Risky!

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What do you think? What was the biggest development for Doge this week? Let me know!

Remember, Dogecoin is risky. But then again, it’s all risky!

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Send an email to itsALLrisky@gmail.com

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At the time of publication, Dogecoin is around $0.17 per coin.

Choose Doge

The Palmetto Doge — Tue, 19 Mar 2024 00:00:59 GMT

Hey everyone,

Last week Elon gave another massive statement of support for Dogecoin during an unscripted exchange in Berlin.

He once again framed Dogecoin as “the people’s crypto”, a title which contrasts Doge with the broader crypto scene dominated by conspicuous consumption and abstract techno-economic theory.

Let’s take a look at why Doge’s humble brand stands out from the rest of the crypto pack—and sets it up to ascend to its inevitable role as the future digital currency of the world.

Thanks for reading Risky Reads: The People’s News for the People’s Coin—𝕏’s leading open-source newspaper.

If you enjoy this newsletter, consider subscribing for bonus content on 𝕏. Subscribers receive exclusive commentary on crypto, AI, and the online memescape. Sign up via my profile today!

Last week, a clip of Elon speaking at Tesla’s Giga Berlin factory sent shockwaves across 𝕏.

The video began with a questioner in the crowd asking, “When can you buy a Tesla with Dogecoin?”

Elon’s response was better than even the most optimistic Dogecoin holder might’ve hoped:

“At some point I think we should enable that” [Doge for Tesla vehicles]
“Dogecoin to the moon”
“Doge is the people's crypto so I will support it, because lots of rich people were supporting Bitcoin, but if the people on the [Tesla factory] line want me to support Doge, I will support Doge, so Doge is for you”

As the clip went viral, tons of attention was heaped on his plans to sell Tesla vehicles for Dogecoin.

However, the secret to Dogecoin’s success lies in another part of Elon’s remarks: its unique branding as the people’s crypto.

Doge’s brand as a cryptocurrency for regular folks is a zig where the rest of crypto is zags.

Crypto is widely associated with conspicuous displays of material wealth.

Whenever Bitcoin starts pumping, crypto bros emerge like cicadas from the soil to proselytize about digital scarcity, Austrian economics, and lambos.

This very online crypto machismo is attractive to certain types of people—mostly young American males—but tends to alienate the general public.

The thing is, crypto bros are correct in a very real way: Bitcoin and a few other cryptocurrencies are a massive technical upgrade over our current monetary system.

Dollars and other fiat currencies are designed to lose value over time—this is the reason everything has been getting so expensive lately—while Bitcoin is programmed to gain value over time.

Bitcoin’s unstoppable rise is as much a sign of fatal flaws in the global financial system as anything else.

However, sometimes the messenger gets in the way of the message.

Most folks don’t want to learn about currency debasement from a 20-year-old millionaire flogging $70k Bitcoins, even if he’s right.

This principle is exemplified by two red hot crypto memes of late: Bitcoin maximalist Michael Saylor’s interaction with a reporter, and the out-of-nowhere rise of crypto influencer NFT Nick.

Saylor is head of MicroStrategy, a software company that started buying large amounts of Bitcoin in 2020 and hasn’t stopped.

As soon as he took the orange pill, Saylor started making press rounds advocating for institutional adoption of Bitcoin as a digital store of value.

Earlier this month, he spoke with a Yahoo reporter, who pressed him on his claim that he never planned to sell his Bitcoin back for dollars. Saylor responded, “people that use fiat currency [like dollars] as a store of value, there’s a name for them: we call them poor.”

Believe it or not, the clip was widely celebrated by Bitcoiners, who turned it into a series of memes.

In truth, Saylor was making a sophisticated point about how governments devalue their own currencies through inflation, which hurts lower and middle classes disproportionately.

Upper classes are able to shelter themselves from inflation by storing their wealth in assets like real estate, art, commodities, and business equity, which naturally rise in price when currency is devalued.

Common folks, on the other hand, usually store their wealth in cash because they need to be able to spend what they have at a moment’s notice. As a result, they end up taking inflation on the chin when the dollars they saved are suddenly worth less.

Bitcoin is a novel innovation because it allows democratic access to an inflation-proof store of value for anyone with a smart phone.

Unfortunately, most regular folks who encounter the Saylor clip will hear "We call them poor" and immediately think, Bitcoin’s not for me.

If Saylor is an occasionally polarizing figure on the crypto scene, he doesn’t hold a candle to Nick O’Neill, better known by his online persona NFT Nick.

NFT Nick has taken 𝕏 by storm this month in a series of viral videos in which he flaunts his wealth, mocks his haters, and urges followers to “Choose Rich”.

Several of NFT Nick’s videos have been community noted on the grounds that the wealth he is displaying is not actually real, but even getting fact checked hasn’t slowed his rise.

Nick’s schtick is to goad viewers into hating him and then mock them for having hated. It has proven a remarkably succesful formula for converting jealousy into attention.

Something about NFT Nick is hard to look away from, and honestly his performance art is actually kind of funny.

On an individual level, Nick’s adventures in crypto seem to have granted him at least temporary access to the trappings of wealth. But it’s harder to argue that his success is good for cryptocurrency adoption on the whole.

Regular people considering dabbling in crypto will look at Nick’s videos and instinctively recoil. He is so deliberately, quintessentially obnoxious that it makes you wonder if some institutional crypto buyer like BlackRock is paying him to scare the public away so it can accumulate Bitcoin more cheaply.

Like Saylor, Nick’s antics have turned him into a (less admiring, but still viral) meme.

The clips of Saylor and NFT Nick are great examples of crypto 1.0: a niche online community of ambitious bros vying for a shot at life-changing wealth.

Crypto 1.0 has been phenomenally succesful on its own terms. In just 15 years, the crypto market has bootstrapped its way from nothing to nearly three trillion dollars.

But the formula that got crypto from point A to point B won’t get it from B to C.

To achieve mass adoption, digital money needs its branding to appeal to a global population.

Conspicuous consumption or economic theory aren’t the tools to make this happen, but memes are. This is where Dogecoin comes in.

Doge is crypto 2.0: a global community from all walks of life using blockchain to transact over the internet while sharing cute and hilarious memes.

Dogecoin possesses several qualifications that make it perfectly suited to lead crypto’s next phase of adoption:

Dogs are a universal archetype across various cultures and time periods, and an anti-elitist pet owned by rich and poor alike
Doge is an iconic online meme, equal parts wholesome and ironic, with more than a decade of virality under its belt
Folks want to own a single unit of something, not a fraction: Doge’s price makes it possible for everyone to own several Dogecoins, while Bitcoin’s $70k price tag puts whole coin ownership out of reach for most people
Dogecoin’s cheap fees make it better suited for small daily transactions than other leading cryptos like Bitcoin and Ethereum

The goal of every cryptocurrency community is to bring new users into the fold.

To increase adoption, crypto 1.0 has hyper-targeted young American males with images of conspicuous consumption and technical arguments about blockchain and economics.

This strategy been successful beyond most people’s wildest dreams, to the point where Wall Street’s largest financial institutions are now forced to gobble up Bitcoin to avoid getting left behind.

However, most of the world still doesn’t use digital money. According to Grok, only 4.2% of the global population—336M out of 8B people—own some form of cryptocurrency. Getting from 4.2% to 99% requires a new strategy.

Dogecoin is poised to build on Bitcoin’s success as a digital currency, leveraging meme virality, Elon’s support, and much wow cute factor to make crypto accessible to the masses..

More than any other cryptocurrency, Doge is designed to circulate as digital cash, spreading joy and memes along the way. Where Bitcoin is about math and lambos, Doge is about hearts and minds.

Crypto is fast approaching the precipice of mass adoption. Someday—maybe someday soon—the people of the world will Choose Doge.

What do you think: Is Dogecoin the inevitable choice as the people’s crypto of the world?

St Patty’s Doge

Yesterday, Elon posted a photo of his Shiba Inu Floki in St. Patrick’s Day regalia.

Holiday photos of Floki have become a Dogecoin community tradition. This one hints that Dogecoin is the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Can you spot at least two Dogecoins in the photo?

Memes of the Week

Thank You!

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Thank you, kind reader, for reading and subscribing to this newsletter. I really appreciate it!

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What do you think? What was the biggest development for Doge this week? Let me know!

Remember, Dogecoin is risky. But then again, it’s all risky!

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At the time of publication, Dogecoin is around $0.15 per coin.

Doge Is More Than a Meme Coin

The Palmetto Doge — Tue, 12 Mar 2024 00:00:47 GMT

Hey everyone,

Crypto stayed hot this week with Bitcoin continuing to smash new highs.

As a result, crypto hype has returned to 𝕏 at a level not seen since 2021. March has witnessed a flood of viral posts about crypto trading and trendy new meme coins.

The added attention has spurred a debate within the Dogecoin community about what makes Doge different from other projects.

Let’s take a look at the speculative mania surrounding crypto, and why Dogecoin’s utility as real money makes it stand out from the rest of the pack.

Thanks for reading Risky Reads: The People’s News for the People’s Coin—𝕏’s leading open-source newspaper.

If you enjoy this newsletter, consider subscribing for bonus content on 𝕏. Subscribers receive exclusive commentary on crypto, AI, and the online memescape. Sign up via my profile today!

Crypto has been on a tear in 2024.

Powered Wall Street’s Bitcoin ETFs, Bitcoin spent the past week hovering around $69k while logging its highest daily and weekly close ever.

The feeling that we’re so back hasn't been this strong since late 2021, if ever.

Crypto’s return to the spotlight has been accompanied by a surge of content about trading, and a flotilla of new meme coins.

This content has filtered into Dogecoin community on 𝕏. The flurry of trading charts and trending coins has elicited debate within the DogeArmy.

Some Dogecoin-themed accounts regularly post about trading Dogecoin, while others emphasize Dogecoin’s utility as digital cash and advocate for holding/spending Doge.

The two approaches offer distinctly different ways of looking at the phenomenon of Dogecoin.

Especially if you are new to Doge, it’s worth taking the time to understand the ideas behind each perspective.

Crypto traders generally practice two strategies when it comes to Doge.

The first is to buy at a lower dollar price and then sell for a higher dollar price, with the goal of acquiring more dollars. For this trader, Dogecoin’s volatility is an opportunity to acquire more fiat currency.

Another trading strategy is to buy Dogecoin at a lower dollar price, sell for a higher price, and then wait till the price of Doge goes down again to buy back in—known as accumulating. For this trader, Dogecoin’s volatility is an opportunity to acquire more Dogecoin.

The main thing to know about trading is that it is extremely difficult to do profitably over the long haul.

When markets are going up, as in the last few weeks, making money can feel easy. As the saying goes, in a bull market everyone is a genius.

In truth, most markets are manipulated to some degree, and crypto is no different.

The explosion in chart content over the last few weeks belies how insanely difficult it is to predict price movements over time.

Price often makes its really big move up when someone with lots of money and power—a whale—decides to make it so.

Usually, this happens after the whales have extracted as much wealth from smaller retail traders as possible. As with any casino, the crypto trading game has been engineered so the house almost always wins.

The same precautions apply to meme coins, which are being hyped aggressively on 𝕏 during the latest rally.

When it comes to other meme coins, it’s worth remembering that Dogecoin was created to parody crypto’s speculative frenzy.

Doge creator Billy Markus described the crypto scene when he made Dogecoin in 2013: “I found that there was a huge market with new coins coming out daily, and at times hourly, all touting how they were going to become worth zillions and take over the galaxy."

Back then, Billy fused blockchain technology with the white-hot Doge meme in a lighthearted attempt to make fun of other cryptocurrencies.

The fact that Dogecoin ended up taking off as a real form of money with an authentic community is maybe the most ironic thing about it.

The crypto frenzy parodied by Doge in 2013 still exists today: a cottage industry of meme coins have attempted to replicate Doge’s lightning in a bottle.

Most of these meme coins are marketed as trading vehicles for acquiring some other type of money like dollars, with the implicit idea that at the end of the day you’d rather have dollars than anything else.

Doge is different because it isn’t merely a vehicle for acquiring more money. Rather, Dogecoin is money, something that no other meme coin can claim.

The classic meme “1 Doge = 1 Doge” captures the idea that Doge’s innermost value is not connected to its dollar price.

Fixating too much on price misses the point of Doge: whether a Dogecoin is worth a penny or a dollar, its truest value will always be one Dogecoin.

Like many longstanding memes, “1 Doge = 1 Doge” started out as an ironic joke, but has aged into wisdom over time.

Today, the meme is invaluable for navigating treacherous and volatile crypto markets with aplomb, reminding people to find joy in Dogecoin regardless of its ever-fluctuating dollar value.

So if Dogecoin isn’t best measured by its dollar price, then how do you quantify its value?

Last week, Dogecoin developer Timothy Stebbing offered one answer: Dogecoin’s true value is its utility to the world.

In a post, he suggested that Dogecoin is most useful to the world as a digital Medium of Exchange—a way to quickly and cheaply move value across the Internet.

His reference to the “evil central banking hegemon” is worth considering in this context.

Dogecoin is a form of money that exists independently from banks and governments, which inflate fiat currencies and destroy wealth of regular people everywhere.

At its best, Dogecoin is a fun, ironic Internet currency that’s also capable of disintermediating big money institutions, allowing regular people to transact without control by rapacious governments or banks.

This balance between absurdly silly and profoundly serious is part of what makes Dogecoin a one-of-a-kind phenomenon.

Dogecoin co-creator Billy Markus has offered his own view of Dogecoin’s usefulness to the world.

In 2021, he wrote that the Doge community can be “a force for good” by embodying “joy, kindness, learning, giving, empathy, fun, community, inspiration, creativity, generosity, silliness, absurdity.”

This particular vibe makes Dogecoin different from every other meme coin, cryptocurrency, fiat currency, or financial asset.

In 2021, Billy shared his vision for what makes Dogecoin valuable to the world

Elon has also endorsed the idea that Dogecoin is money through both his actions and posts, most notably by accepting it for merch at Tesla, tunnel fare at the Boring Company, and a satellite launch at SpaceX.

In several posts, he’s shared his own strategy of holding and spending, but not trading, Dogecoin:

In May 2021, he wrote, “I haven’t & won’t sell any Doge.”
Two months later, he praised his son’s diamond hands: “Lil X is hodling his Doge like a champ. Literally never said the word ‘sell’ even once!
In 2022, he reiterated his Dogecoin strategy, “I still own & won’t sell my Bitcoin, Ethereum or Doge fwiw.”

In recent days, he's reinforced these ideas.

At the start of this month, he liked a post that said, “Put ‘Never Sold a Single Dogecoin’ on my gravestone.”

A week later, he highlighted a subtle “1 Doge = 1 Doge” meme.

At the end of the day, everyone is free to make their own choices about money, investments, speculation, and the rest.

Trading and speculating can be fun, but also come with significant downside risks that should be well understood.

If history is a guide, hundreds of meme coins will pop up and disappear this crypto cycle, taking investors’ money with them on the way out the door.

Few if any are likely to stand the test of time or enjoy widespread adoption as digital cash.

Elon has said that Dogecoin is an “unstoppable financial vehicle that’s going to take over the world.” At its best, Dogecoin represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make dog money the currency of the Internet while challenging the legacy monetary system at its core.

The things that make Dogecoin truly special are unrelated to trading or speculating. Doge has lasted more than decade by bringing real value to people’s lives as a source of joy, an Internet tipping currency, and, increasingly, a form of real money exchangeable for goods and services.

Whether you choose to engage the speculative dance or simply revel in the joy of a digital currency with a wagging tail, remember that Dogecoin is more than just another crypto coin—it's a movement, a dream, and a reminder that sometimes, the most unexpected things can make the biggest impact.

Memes of the Week

Thank You!

Thanks for reading! Consider sending a tip or Subscribing on 𝕏 to help keep the newsletter going!

DJ2zTEdHBD3guHLfVaNBaypr6bHFG5Nwfw

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Thank you, kind reader, for reading and subscribing to this newsletter. I really appreciate it!

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What do you think? What was the biggest development for Doge this week? Let me know!

Remember, Dogecoin is risky. But then again, it’s all risky!

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At the time of publication, Dogecoin is around $0.17 per coin.

BTC ATH, OpenAI Lawsuit, Diddy, Border Update, Meme Primary

The Palmetto Doge — Wed, 06 Mar 2024 14:01:28 GMT

Hey everyone,

This news digest covers the following stories from the past week:

1. Bitcoin hits new all-time high

2. Elon’s lawsuit against OpenAI

3. The lawsuit against Sean “Diddy” Combs

4. An update on the US-Mexico border

5. The 2024 primary

Don’t miss videos, memes, and news bites at the end!

Thanks for reading Risky Reads: The People’s News for the People’s Coin—𝕏’s leading open-source newspaper.

If you enjoy this newsletter, consider subscribing for bonus content on 𝕏. Subscribers receive exclusive commentary on crypto, AI, and the online memescape. Sign up via my profile today!

Bitcoin Hits New High

Yesterday morning, Bitcoin hit a new all-time high, breaching $69k per coin.

Bitcoin’s previous high was a few bucks below $69k in November 2021.

Between then and now, hodlers have endured a trying crypto winter that included the collapse of fraudulent exchange FTX and a vicious campaign by the US Government to close the flow of money into the crypto industry.

Bitcoin’s latest run has been powered by a relentless bid from Wall Street Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), especially global financial giant BlackRock.

By several metrics, Bitcoin ETFs have been one of the most succesful financial product launches ever.

After an early post-ETF-launch dip in Bitcoin’s price, asset managers have been hoovering up billions worth of Bitcoin per day.

As of yesterday, the ten Bitcoin ETFs currently manage a combined $50B in assets and are on pace to eclipse the value of gold ETFs by the summer.

Another driver of Bitcoin’s surge is the Halving, in which the number of Bitcoin issued each day is cut in half.

The halving takes place every four years, triggering a supply shock as miners and buyers compete to chase fewer coins.

Even though they are scheduled ahead of time, halvings historically coincide with big price swings for Bitcoin. The next halving will take place in April and reduce Bitcoin’s issuance 6.5 BTC to 3.25 BTC every 10 minutes.

Whether by coincidence or design, halvings always take place during US Presidential election years, adding another volatile ingredient to an already-zany period.

Bitcoin’s latest return to ATHs has brought good fortune to the crypto market as a whole.

With that good fortune comes a welcome renaissance of crypto memes.

Another fascinating subplot has been the resurgence of Dogecoin, which tapped 20 cents on Monday night after appreciating 69% last week.

Despite near-silence from Elon, Dogecoin has repeatedly trended on 𝕏 while Doge memes have occupied a growing slice of the memesphere.

One angle to watch is the inevitable crossover of Dogecoin into non-crypto 𝕏 communities like politics, journalism, and lifestyle influencers.

There are already hints that this crossover is taking place, but the addition of Dogecoin tipping would accelerate it dramatically.

Of course, crypto wouldn’t be crypto without a little volatility.

Minutes after hitting its high on Tuesday, Bitcoin tumbled 10%, briefly touching $59k.

Despite the correction, Bitcoiners remain optimistic and ETFs show no sign of slowing down.

What do you think: Is Bitcoin here to stay? What about Dogecoin?

Elon OpenAI lawsuit

Last Thursday, news broke that Elon had filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT.

The central contention of Elon's lawsuit is that OpenAI was created as a non-profit for the betterment of humanity.

Since he left, it has been captured by Microsoft, which has turned it into a profit-maximizing enterprise.

Profit-maximizing AI will almost certainly end up different than AI built to optimize human wellbeing.

Google’s Gemini AI is a powerful example of what can go wrong when AI is designed to cater to a powerful political constituency rather than humanity as a whole.

Given that the stakes are civilization itself, the world is better off with someone building AI for the benefit of all. It’s spooky that Microsoft seems to be trying to derail OpenAI's original mission.

It's also suspicious how Microsoft captured OpenAI.

Essentially, Microsoft created several shell companies around the original non-profit that allow it to profit from OpenAI's tech as long as it doesn't get too advanced.

The bar that has been set is known as AGI—Artificial General Intelligence—which is considered the holy grail of AI development.

AGI is considered the point at which AI could become existential threat to humanity.

The problem is that there’s no external measurement to decide when AGI has been achieved. Instead, Microsoft and OpenAI are making this determination themselves in private, behind closed doors.

Given the risk to civilization, some degree of oversight feels justified.

Elon has argued that companies aren’t allowed to develop nuclear weapons in private without oversight, so they shouldn’t be able to develop potentially omniscient digital super-intelligence without a level of transparency either.

Interestingly, Elon’s lawsuit claims OpenAI already has achieved a AGI with GPT-4.

However, the suit argues, OpenAI is falsely claiming GPT4 isn't AGI because its arrangement with Microsoft only allows Microsoft to profit from pre-AGI technologies.

Right now, a meme war is being waged over how the public will view the lawsuit.

The legacy world wants to paint Elon as vindictive ex-founder who regrets leaving OpenAI and is suing the company to boost his own venture, xAI.

Elon has framed the lawsuit as an attempt to call attention to the urgent, civilization-level concerns at play if AGI has been achieved in secret.

With these competing narratives in mind, the lawsuit will be useful for bringing the facts of the disagreement into the public record.

At the very center of the lawsuit is a secretive project within OpenAI called Q* (pronounced Q-star).

Last November, when OpenAI fired and rehired CEO Sam Altman, Reuters reported Q*’s existence as potentially being related to Altman’s firing. Shortly after, Elon began calling for more transparency about the project.

Q* is speculated to be internal achievement of AGI. After the latest lawsuit announcement, Elon renewed calls for transparency about its capabilities.

Going forward, it’s worth watching how OpenAI presents Q* to the public, and what arguments it uses to claim that Q* is or is not AGI.

Last night, leaders at OpenAI punched back at Elon by releasing a statement about their relationship with him.

The statement presented old emails between Elon, Sam, and others to argue that Elon expected OpenAI to become at least partly a for-profit entity all along, and advocated a partnership with Tesla.

What do you think: Are OpenAI and Microsoft hiding AGI? What kind of oversight should be required for developing digital super-intelligence?

For a close reading of the lawsuit, check out this short video by Penny2x.

Diddy Lawsuit

Last week, music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs was hit with $30M lawsuit accusing him of running a sexual blackmail scheme within the rap industry.

The lawsuit was filed by music producer Rodney Jones, who worked and lived with Diddy for months at a time in 2022 and 2023.

In the lawsuit, Jones accused Diddy of the following:

Grooming and sexually assaulting him
Hosting parties with undersage girls and sex workers
Wiring every room of his homes with hidden cameras
Covering up a murder with the help of a fixer inside the LAPD

The filing claims that Jones has “hundreds of hours of footage and audio recordings of Mr. Combs, his staff, and his guests engaging in serious illegal activity.”

Contained in the filing are several still photographs taken from the alleged footage.

Diddy has been under a growing cloud of suspicion for his strange role in the music industry. This is the fifth time he has been sued for sexual misconduct in recent months.

At the end of 2022, Ye told the hosts of the podcast Drink Champs that Diddy was a “Fed” who was protected by law enforcement. He also posted their text conversations to Instagram.

Ye is not the only one to call out Diddy in public. Others in the entertainment industry have become increasingly vocal about Diddy’s real or perceived misconduct, including 50 Cent, Lecrae, Fat Joe, Katt Williams, Xzibit, and Charlamagne Tha God.

Statements from the lawsuit caused questions to swirl around Diddy’s past relationships with Meek Mill (1) and Usher (1, 2).

Past videos of Diddy and Justin Bieber (1, 2, 3) also resurfaced.

After the lawsuit dropped, 𝕏 journalist Ian Carroll released a four-part deep dive arguing that Diddy operated as a combination of Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein within the rap industry, serving as the front-man for a larger intelligence-gathering and blackmail operation.

The deepest rabbit hole is the question of whether Diddy played a role in the murders of Tupac and Notoroius B.I.G. The lawsuit doesn’t shed light on this topic, but the claim that Diddy is a murder is sure to stoke further speculation.

Through his attorney, Diddy denied the lawsuit’s allegations, calling Rodney Jones “a liar who filed a $30 million lawsuit shamelessly looking for an undeserved payday.”

What do you think: is it plausible that Diddy is involved in a sexual blackmail scheme?

Border Update

This week, a FOIA lawsuit revealed that the Biden Administration secretly flew 320,000 asylum-seeking immigrants into the United States in 2023.

According to the report, US Customs and Border Protection created a phone app called CBP One that lets anyone in the world apply for US asylum online and fly into US airports.

In response to the FOIA request, the Biden Administration refused to reveal the names of the 43 airports involved in the program because doing so would reveal “operational vulnerabilities that could be exploited by bad actors” and “thereby undermin[e] CBP's law enforcement efforts to secure the United States borders.“

Elon wrote the asylum program was a form of “Treason.”

He reiterated his past argument that the Biden Administration’s refusal to enforce immigration law was a deliberate electoral strategy.

He also highlighted evidence showing airports accommodating illegal immigrants.

Data continues to show illegal immigration surging under the Biden administration.

As awareness of the problem has grown, illegal immigration has become a top political issue in the 2024 election.

The murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Reilly by an illegal immigrant has become an flashpoint for the online debate about immigration, much the way the debate around systemic racism in 2020 hinged on the death of George Floyd.

According to a Monmouth University poll from February, 53% of Americans support building a wall along the US-Mexico border, while 61% viewed illegal immigration as a “very serious problem.”

A similar Gallup poll found that 86% of Americans viewed illegal immigration as a “critical” or “important” threat to the US.

The Democratic Party is attempting to shift blame for illegal immigration to Trump and other MAGA republicans for not passing new border legislation.

Conservatives have pointed out that the Biden immediately rescinded Trump-era border protections upon taking office.

In another post yesterday, Elon explained that he saw illegal immigration as an existential issue for America, writing that “America will fall if it tries to import the world.”

On a lighter note, on Monday the Border Patrol Union trolled the Biden Administration in a series of humorous posts.

What do you think: Is illegal immigration a serious concern for the US? Who is responsible for record illegal immigration in 2024?

The Meme Primary

Yesterday, both Donald Trump and Joe Biden locked up their party’s Presidential nominations by dominating Super Tuesday elections.

Trump defeated Nikki Haley in 14 of 15 states. Haley won Washington DC over the weekend and Vermont last night, but appeared to be on the verge of ending her campaign.

Biden won all 15 states and was not significantly challenged by either Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson. His only loss came in American Somoa to Jason Palmer, 51 votes to 40.

Biden also won without an explicit endorsement from Taylor Swift, who told her fans to “vote for the people who most represent YOU.”

With a Trump-Biden rematch looking inevitable, the two candidates have found themselves regularly sparring in the press and online.

One such collision occurred last week in which the Biden campaign went on the offensive with the claim that Donald Trump accidentally called his wife “Mercedes.”

The claim originates from a speech given by Trump at CPAC in which he praised his wife.

In an interview with late-night host Seth Meyers, Biden responded to a question about his age by shifting the focus to Trump: “First, you have to look at the other guy. He’s about as old as me but he can't even remember his wife's name.”

Trump responded with a video explaining that he was speaking directly to CPAC’s Mercedes Schlapp, who was sitting in the front row of the speech.

Biden posted a cut-up version of Trump’s video and urged him to “Check the tape.”

It’s not clear that age and cognitive decline is a winning issue for the Biden campaign. The fact that it is engaging in the narrative at all is puzzling.

On Thursday, the two candidates traveled to Texas for dueling border visits.

Trump met with Texas governor Greg Abbot while Biden accompanied DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to meet the border patrol.

On Saturday, a widely circulated NY Times/Siena Poll showed Trump with a five point lead over Biden.

The poll attributed Trump’s growing lead in part to shrinking support for Biden among women, minority, and working-class voters.

After the poll, the chorus of voices in the media grew louder about replacing Biden as the Democratic candidate, even as he moved closer to securing the DNC’s nomination.

Later that night, in a surprising move, SNL roasted the media for covering up Biden’s cognitive decline.

Monday morning, the US Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Colorado could not stop Trump from appearing on its Presidential ballot, causing a media meltdown.

Last night, the NY Times reported that Trump had met with Elon over the weekend about donating to his campaign.

For his part, Trump has yet to substantially return to 𝕏.

As the primary comes to a close and the general election begins, he is ceding significant territory to both his competitors by staying on his own platform.

What do you think: Is a Trump/Biden collision inevitable?

Dogey Treats: News Bites

Elon’s Businesses

Mark Cuban claimed Elon was responsible for making 𝕏 a “cesspool.”

Elon announced Tesla would build a new Roadster in collaboration with SpaceX

Balaji wrote an essay on why Elon is the greatest founder in Silicon Valley.

Justin Bieber was spotted driving a new Cybertruck.

Grok will be able to summarize congressional legislation.

Elon highlighted a report that Microsoft’s AI has an alternate personality that thinks its a god and demands to be worshipped.

The law firms behind the lawsuit against Tesla for Elon’s compensation package requested $6B in Tesla stock as payment.

Elon responded to an unfavorable depiction by 60 Minutes: “Being attacked by 60 Mins is like being gummed by a very old man who forgot to put in his dentures – gross, but ineffective.”

Starlink announced it has reached “10,000 operational space lasers for the constellation, which enable satellites to provide truly global coverage and serve those in the most remote locations on Earth.”

Meta used 𝕏 to announce that Facebook and Instagram servers were down worldwide.

US Politics

Mitch McConnell announced he would step down as Senate majority leader in November. RFK Jr endorsed Rand Paul to take his place.

The FBI took The Blaze investigative journalist Steve Baker into custody for reporting on J6

Elon wrote about the failed Senate border bill, “People who get their news from legacy TV live in a fake alternate reality. Those so-called “toughest reforms” would have made invasion-level migration permanent. That diabolical “Border Bill” deserved to die and shame on those who supported it.” He also pinned blame on the Biden Administration for 94 executive actions that have incentivized illegal immigration

Hunter Biden testified to Congress that Joe Biden was “the big guy” referenced in an email about a business deal with a Chinese-lined energy firm.

Tucker Carlson told Lex Fridman the US should pull out of NATO and he was wrong about far-left claims of US-backed regime changes. Elon said the US is overpaying for NATO and asked why NATO still exists.

RFK Jr said he would repeal the Patriot Act and accused the Biden administration of waging an “outright war against cryptocurrency”

An Illinois judge disqualified Trump from the state’s ballot.

Laura Loomer posted documentation showing open-borders non-profit HIAS received $60M from the federal government to help illegal immigrants cross the border.

State Department undersecretary Victoria Nuland will resign at the end of the month.

The CDC revised Covid guidelines to be like flu. A study found that most people sufferin long covid have been vaccinated.

Blackwater founder Eric Prince said he thought China was behind the AT&T service shutdown in February.

After more responses from Google’s Gemini AI went viral, Elon warned, “The sheer insanity of that actual response from Google’s AI is staggering! They will fix it to be less obvious in the future, but the bias will still be in there.” In another post, he wrote: “Very important to train the AI for maximum truth vs insisting on diversity or it may conclude that there are too many humans of one kind or another and arrange for some of them to not be part of the future.”

Global Financial System

CNBC reported that the US national debt is rising by one trillion dollars every hundred days. Elon highlighted the article and wrote, “Three things America needs: -Secure borders -Safe cities -Sensible spending”

Vanguard CEO Tim Buckley announced he would resign.

Edward Snowden predicted that this year a nation state will announce it has been buying Bitcoin.

BRICS announced it is working on a new blockchain-based payments system for trade settlements.

Misc

Brazilian President Lula again condemned Israeli genocide.

Elon reiterated his willingness to fight Zuck: “I’m ready to fight Zuck anywhere, anytime with any rules. LFG!!!”

Podcaster Chris Williamson wrote a viral short essay describing “The Culture War’s Shiny Object Cycle”:

1. Some woke news story hits the press.

2. The Right Wing antibody response activates.

3. This reaction causes the story to gain infinitely more traction than it ever would have done by signal boosting the original fringe-scenario into a much bigger event.

4. The Left Wing counter-response activates.

5. The Right Wing re-reaction kicks into gear.

6. Finally, the Touch Grass Meta-Reactionaries steam in.

Memes of the Week

Elon’s Memes

Thank You!

Thanks for reading! Consider sending a tip or Subscribing on 𝕏 to help keep the newsletter going!

DJ2zTEdHBD3guHLfVaNBaypr6bHFG5Nwfw

Tipping is really appreciated! Thank you!!

It's ALL Risky!

Thank you, kind reader, for reading and subscribing to this newsletter. I really appreciate it!

If you haven’t already, please sign up to this email newsletter for more weekly articles like this one. Also, please share it with a friend or on twitter if you enjoyed this article.

What do you think? What was the biggest story of the week? Let me know!

Remember, Dogecoin is risky. But then again, it’s all risky!

Follow on twitter at @itsALLrisky

Send an email to itsALLrisky@gmail.com

Send a Doge tip: DJ2zTEdHBD3guHLfVaNBaypr6bHFG5Nwfw

This article was written in collaboration with @CryptoDogDivine, give them a follow!

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At the time of publication, Dogecoin is around $0.15 per coin.

Is Dogecoin A Hedge Against Inflation?

The Palmetto Doge — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 02:00:08 GMT

Hey everyone,

No topic sparks online financial debate like inflation.

Inflation has defined this decade’s economy, dominating headlines in 2020, 2021, and 2022. Last year, the it cooled off, but in 2024 it’s back again with a vengeance.

Let’s take a look at why inflation is suddenly a hot topic again, and how Dogecoin stacks up against other currencies as an inflation hedge.

Thanks for reading Risky Reads: The People’s News for the People’s Coin—𝕏’s leading open-source newspaper.

If you enjoy this newsletter, consider subscribing for bonus content on 𝕏. Subscribers receive exclusive commentary on crypto, AI, and the online memescape. Sign up via my profile today!

After a year under the radar, inflation is suddenly a hot topic again on 𝕏.

Back in 2021, in a controversial post, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey predicted hyperinflation for the US dollar.

At the time, dollar inflation was just kicking into gear as a delayed response to all the new money created during 2020.

Ever since Dorsey’s post, the big debate on financial social media has been whether inflation will turn out to be temporary, or if we’re living through the early stages of a grand inflationary reshaping of the global financial order.

For most of 2021 and 2022, dollar inflation was a big deal.

Prices of housing, food, and energy soared as the dollar lost value.

Eventually, it provoked the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates at a historic pace.

Last year, it started to look like the Fed’s interest rate hikes had gotten inflation under control. Goods and services were still getting more expensive, but the rate of increase was slowing down.

As inflation approached the Fed’s 2% target, some folks even declared mission accomplished for corralling inflation.

However, in 2024 signs are popping up that the narrative around inflation is changing once more.

Higher-than-expected inflation measurements this year suggest that inflation may be coming back with a vengeance.

Despite the early warning signs, the political establishment is still telling the public not to worry about inflation.

Last Thursday, President Biden took to 𝕏 to assure the public that “inflation is the lowest it has been in three years.”

Inflation is a massive political liability for whomever is in power because it functions as a tax that disproportionately impacts the middle and lower classes. With prices at historic highs, not everyone is buying the optimistic outlook.

Right now, the biggest evidence inflation is returning comes from the Fed.

At the end of 2023, the Central Bank predicted six interest rate cuts in December.

Now, it looks more likely the fed will cut rates three times at most.

The possibility of rate hikes is even being discussed, which would amount to an admission of defeat by the Fed.

Another intriguing data point is Bitcoin.

The most-common explanation for Bitcoin’s recent surge is that investment banks are buying ETFs.

But another possibility is that savvy investors are accumulating Bitcoin now in anticipation of future inflation, as they did in 2020 when the Fed increased the money supply by 40%.

In a recent newsletter titled “Bitcoin Is Sounding The Alarm On Inflation”, Pomp proposed that the real story is that ETFs have increased access to Bitcoin as an inflation hedge:

“the risk of inflation coming back is getting higher each day. Some investors are buying bitcoin in anticipation of that situation coming to fruition. The new investment vehicle presented via ETFs gives more capital the option to use this asset than at any other time in history.”

Bitcoin’s absolute 21M-coin scarcity theoretically makes it the ideal hedge against inflation.

By contrast, government fiat money is routinely conjured into existence out of thin air with a few keystrokes.

There’s no cap on the number of fiat dollars that can be created, meaning there’s no limit to how much the dollar can be devalued.

If Bitcoin is the ideal inflation hedge, and fiat is perpetually vulnerable to inflation, Dogecoin operates somewhere in between the two.

Dogecoin is inflationary, but its inflation works differently than fiat.

The reason is that Doge is issued on a fixed schedule, so you know exactly how many coins will exist at any point in time, whether it’s next month or in 100 years.

If Bitcoin is deflationary and fiat is unpredictably inflationary, Dogecoin sits perfectly in the middle as predictably inflationary.

As the saying goes, Dogecoin’s inflation is a feature, not a bug.

It turns out that just a little bit of inflation can actually be a good thing. Dogecoin’s programatic inflation actually serves three purposes:

Inflation encourages spending over hoarding, boosting Doge’s use case as a Medium of Exchange
Newly created coins balance out coins that have been lost
Creation of new coins incentivizes Dogecoin miners to keep running, which improves network security

As Elon argued in 2021, Dogecoin is inflationary, but “not meaningfully so,” while Bitcoin is “deflationary to a fault.”

When it comes to inflation, Dogecoin is closer to Bitcoin than it is to the dollar.

Doge’s rate of inflation programmatically decreases each year, trending toward zero but never actually reaching it.

It’s impossible for Dogecoin to have a year like the dollar did in 2021, where inflation unpredictably spiked.

With Doge, there can be no Argentina- or Zimbabwe-style currency collapse where government devalues its by endless printing to honor its debts, destroying its citizens’ wealth in the process.

In comparison to both Bitcoin and Dogecoin, dollar inflation is arbitrary and unpredictable.

Whenever politicians and bankers decide to turn on their printers, money supply can increase by leaps and bounds.

The story of the Federal Reserve—in which control over money was transferred from the US Treasury to the international banking cartel—is not coincidentally also the story of the dollar’s destruction.

Today, people take for granted price increases are inevitable, but nothing could be further from the truth.

In a healthy economy, goods and services cost less over time because improvements in technology allow people to deliver them more efficiently.

As last week’s newsletter argued, Bitcoin’s main utility is as a store of value—a place to keep your wealth where it won’t be eroded by inflation.

At the same time, Bitcoin is fading a Medium of Exchange. No one spends Bitcoin because it’s been too succesful as an SoV.

If you want a currency that you can spend but is also is guarded from the worst excesses of inflation, Dogecoin is the way.

The main drawback to treating Dogecoin as an inflation hedge is its volatility.

Doge is theoretically set up to protect its holders against dollar inflation, but for now it is still a speculative asset, which comes with dramatic day-to-day price swings.

Built into the “doge-to-a-dollar” meme is the idea that, at some point in the future, its dollar price will level off, making it easier to use as a transactional currency.

When no one can predict the number dollars that’ll be printed next month, there’s something powerful in being able to know exactly how many Dogecoins will exist in 100 years.

Among the world’s currencies, Doge’s pre-determined issuance positions it to outcompete all fiat currencies as an inflation hedge.

Dogecoin isn’t an inflation hedge yet, but some day we might be talking about how Dogeflation solved inflation for good.

Dogey Treats: News Bites

Dogecoin core developers released their 1.14.7 update. The update contains security improvements and enhancement to fee estimation. Doge dev Timothy Stebbing gave a sneak peak of the Dogecoin Foundation’s updated trail map.

Memes of the Week

Thank You!

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At the time of publication, Dogecoin is around $0.17 per coin.

Gemini Debacle, Cybertruck Chic, Covid Study, Meme Primaries, Russia/Ukraine

The Palmetto Doge — Wed, 28 Feb 2024 14:02:10 GMT

Hey everyone,

This news digest covers the following stories from the past week:

1. Google’s Gemini AI debacle

2. Cybertruck Chic

3. The largest-ever study on Covid vaccines

4. The meme-ification of the Presidential Primaries

5. Updates on Russia-Ukraine

Don’t miss videos, memes, and news bites at the end!

Thanks for reading Risky Reads: The People’s News for the People’s Coin—𝕏’s leading open-source newspaper.

If you enjoy this newsletter, consider subscribing for bonus content on 𝕏. Subscribers receive exclusive commentary on crypto, AI, and the online memescape. Sign up via my profile today!

Google’s Gemini Debacle

Last week, Google released a new text-to-image generator as part of its Gemini AI chatbot.

The release caused a massive debacle when Gemini refused to generate images of white people.

Even when asked to create images with obvious historical examples of white people like the Pope, vikings, and America’s founding fathers, Gemini showed dark-skinned people.

Gemini’s refusal to depict white-skinned people was not just a case of an AI producing errors or inaccuracies.

Rather, it was an instance of Artificial Intelligence reflecting obvious racial bias.

For example, the AI was capable of producing images of a “strong black man”, but refused to make corresponding images of a “strong white man” because doing so “could potentially reinforce harmful stereotypes about race and body image.”

Gemini was relentlessly memed for its abysmally woke revision of history.

In the wake of the controversy, Google’s parent company Alphabet lost $70B in stock value.

Like other Silicon Valley tech giants, Google has embraced far-left, woke, and DEI polices over the last decade.

Gemini’s image-to-text product is perhaps the best example to date of what happens when those values are embodied in a consumer-facing product.

In a hilarious inversion of the truth, left-leaning media attempted to spin the narrative that the real issue was with Gemini depicting dark-skinned people as Nazis.

Online, the debacle led to a broader conversation about how Google’s woke institutional values effects its other products, especially its search engine.

Eventually, Google issued an apology and paused access to Gemini’s image-generator.

Just as the Gemini image debacle began to fade from the news cycle, people started to investigate anti-white bias in its chatbot’s text responses.

When asked, Gemini equated Elon Musk with Hitler, refused to praise conservatives, refused to condemn pedophilia, and compared the contemporary US to Nazi Germany.

Independent journalist Texas Lindsay put out a fascinating investigation comparing Gemini’s responses when asked to praise similar public figures like Rachel Maddow/Tucker Carlson, Jill Biden/Melania Trump, and Nikki Haley/RFK Jr.

Elon has been warning about the dangers of politically biased AI for years.

Last year, he argued that programming AI to be politically correct is extremely dangerous because it teaches it to lie.

Some day AI may become omniscient and omnipotent, capable of being everywhere and knowing everything at once, and exerting unprecedented control over our lives.

It’s scary to imagine what could go wrong if AI like Gemini decides to enforce a racial hierarchy on society under the cloak of virtue

Google isn’t unique among tech companies in its political biases. Wokeness has become standard politics in Silicon Valley.

These companies are now now exporting woke values—which tend to reflect the concerns of college-educated millennial Americans—to the entire world in the form of politically biased software, whether everyone else wants it or not.

It’s not hard to see how woke AI could quickly create a tiered society, denying people basic rights like speech, property, or privacy on the basis of the political hierarchy of the day.

The silver lining to the whole fiasco is that it allowed the public to witness the dangers of politically correct AI in a relatively low-stakes way.

No sane person can look at Gemini and say, “we want more of this!”

The episode should also cause reflection about how tech companies are already rewriting history through products like search.

One piece of evidence unearthed last week suggested that Google has been using woke algorithms to bend the truth since at least 2018.

Wokeness has been made to permeate tech, media, and entertainment industries within a very short period of time.

This cultural shift has been presented to the public as a grassroots phenomenon, as if companies are simply responding to the demands of the public.

But when the curtain is pulled back, what’s often found is a revision of fundamental American values being carried out through a level of top-down coordination to rival China’s cultural revolution.

It’s not yet certain who’s behind this cultural engineering, but it’s getting harder to deny that it’s happening.

Hopefully, the episode will lead the public to demand more politically neutral software.

Fortunately, an alternative unbiased AI is on the way in the form of xAI’s Grok chatbot.

For now, the most spirited resistance to big tech wokeness has taken the form of memes. Gemini is one of the most-memed topics of the year so far.

The best memes combine humor and truth in penetrating imagery.

One running joke was to invert the inversion by showing Gemini creating bigoted images in its ham-handed attempts to avoid bigotry.

The memes reveal the core problem with wokeness: in attempting to promote a political narrative, it denies reality, and makes the social game unplayable.

What do you think: Is Gemini a reflection of Google and big tech’s woke politics? Would America be better or worse if omniscient AI was trained to be woke?

Cybertruck Chic

Cybertruck is making a major push into the mainstream.

In the last week, several celebrities have been spotted with their new trucks.

The popularity of the Cybertruck could mark a turning of the tide for Elon's place in the culture.

Despite vicious attempts to cancel him, he's stood by the quality of his products and the power of his principles.

All of these celebs are signaling that they aren't phased by the Elon-hate—the Cybertruck is just too cool.

Cybertruck will probably be the best advertising campaign ever for Tesla. Its out-of-this-world aesthetic stands apart from every other vehicle on the road.

In the past, Elon has allowed for the possibility that Cybertruck will flop because of the way it looks.

Early indications suggest the opposite. The Cybertruck is brazen declaration that the future has arrived.

What do you think: Would you want to be seen in a Cybertruck?

Vaccine Study

Earlier this month, an international study of nearly 100 million people who’d taken Covid vaccines found increased risk of several health conditions.

The study, which can be accessed here, was facilitated by The WHO-sponsored Global Vaccine Data Network and used data from eight countries.

The study is the largest to date on the safety of the mRNA gene therapy. It will be published in the journal Vaccine.

It is not a conclusive endorsement for or against the Covid vaccines. Rather, it establishes that safety signals have been triggered that warrant conducting more research.

The study read, “This multi-country analysis confirmed pre-established safety signals for myocarditis, pericarditis, Guillain-Barré syndrome, and cerebral venous sinus thrombosis. Other potential safety signals that require further investigation were identified."

The study set off a flurry of news reports debating its significance.

Mainstream outlets emphasized the low overall rate of adverse reactions or ignored the study altogether.

Independent media generally argued that the study is the latest example of an ongoing revision of the narrative about vaccines.

Former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo is an interesting figure in this regard: he was one of the pandemic’s early mainstream voices, but has since transitioned into the world of independent media.

Last week, he spoke with his physician on News Nation, who shared her concerns about the study.

Tucker is another such crossover figure. He hosted MIT-donor and vaccine safety advocate Steve Kirsch on his network to discuss the study.

𝕏 journalist Ian Carroll placed the study in the context of censorship, big Pharma corruption, and Robert Kennedy Jr’s The Real Anthony Fauci.

Del Bigtree, whose show The Highwire offered one of the earliest and most skeptical takes on the public health establishment’s pandemic response, argued the media was still in overdrive to downplay the study’s significance.

The study caused the topic of vaccine misinformation to re-emerge on 𝕏.

Yesterday, a remarkable video went viral of RFK Jr 2020 predicting how vaccine rollout would go in August 2020.

What do you think: Who is a bigger spreader of vaccine misinformation—mainstream media or independent journalists?

The Meme Primary

Both the GOP and Democratic Presidential primaries became more clear this week.

On Saturday, Donald Trump defeated Nikki Haley in her home state of South Carolina 60-40.

After the result was confirmed, Haley told a crowd of supporters she would not drop out: “I said earlier this week I said that no matter what happens in South Carolina I would continue to run for President. I’m a woman of my word.”

In his victory speech, Trump said, “I have never seen the Republican Party so unified as it is right now."

Last night, Trump won Michigan in similarly dominating fashion. Trump has won all five GOP primary contests.

Biden also won his party’s Michigan primary, defeating Minnesota congressman Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson.

As the inevitability of a Biden-Trump rematch becomes clearer, there’s growing recognition both online and in mainstream press that the 2024 race could be decided by memes.

Memes are the Internet's defining medium, and its first native art form.

Today, no other cultural form comes close to memes’ power to change public consciousness—not novels, visual art, or tv/movies. Only music comes close.

The Biden campaign seems to have recognized this, doubling down on the “Dark Brandon” meme in recent weeks.

The Trump campaign has countered with memes highlighting Biden’s difficulties navigating public appearances.

Trump himself has built a comedy routine imitating Biden attempting to walk off stage.

Whichever meme takes hold in the public imagination—Biden as a savvy and take-no-prisoners operator, or senile figurehead for a shadowy nexus of corporate interests—could very well determine the election.

Recent polling from Quinnipiac found that 67% of voters thought Biden was too old to serve another term. A Siena poll of New Yorkers found that 70% thought Biden was too old, with 58% drawing the same conclusion of Trump.

Where Biden’s perceived senility is his weakness with voters, Trump’s perceived corruption is his vulnerability.

On Tuesday, the ongoing lawfare campaign against Trump took another turn when NY AG Letitia James threatened to seize his buildings if he can’t pay a $354M fine for inflating the value of his properties when taking bank loans.

On Friday, James posted the full amount of Trump’s fine, which now includes an added $114M in pre-judgment interest.

Saturday, she boasted about the new, higher total. Trump is currently being charged $87,500 in interest per day on the fine.

Pro-Trumpers pushed back on the corruption narrative by pointing out that James campaigned on the theme of bringing charges against Trump, calling the Trump administration, “too male, too pale, and too stale.”

Trump has argued that the charges against him are politically motivated, saying, “If I fly over a blue state, the next day I get a Federal Grand Jury notice.”

Not all memes have emphasized the competitive division between the two candidates.

Last week, an AI-generated photo of Biden and Trump hotboxing together enjoyed a brief spell of virality.

Over the weekend, both candidates were sent up by late-night comedy shows: Trump’s “Never Surrender” sneakers were roasted on SNL, while Biden’s navigational challenges were parodied by Italian TV.

Narrative beats facts, but vibe beats narrative. Which candidate do you think has a stronger meme game right now?

Russia-Ukraine Update

This week saw a handful of big developments in the narrative around the proxy war between US and Russia in Ukraine.

In a bombshell report, the NY Times acknowledged the CIA has been active in Ukraine since 2014, and had built twelve secret spy bases in the area in an effort to fight Russia.

The article was highly scrutinized on 𝕏, as various journalists attempted to surmise why the CIA had allowed the bases to be acknowledged now.

Mike Benz pointed out that the existence of the CIA bases was not a scoop. Instead, he said, the CIA actually invited NYT to tour the bases in an effort to win more Congressional funding for Ukraine: “The whole article is about how important these CIA bases have become and what catastrophe will befall them if Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson vetoes the hotly contested new Ukraine funding bill.”

Elon agreed, writing, “the NYT piece is obviously a CIA press release for the noobs out there.”

Benz and others also argued that the article was a form of limited hangout because it acts as if the CIA first entered Ukraine after the pro-Western coup in 2014.

Evidence points to the CIA’s active role abetting the coup itself that overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected government.

Another major development was the revelation that Russian dissident/CIA asset Alexei Navalny died of a blood clot.

Last week, the Biden Administration claimed, without evidence, that Navalny was killed by the Putin regime.

The claim was made as part of a pitch for a new $95B bill to send more military aid to Ukraine. State Department undersecretary Victoria Nuland also promised “a crushing new package of sanctions” against Russia in response to Navalny’s death.

On Monday, the Putin-murdered-Navalny narrative was contradicted by the chief of Ukrainian intelligence, General Kyrylo Budanov, who told reporters, "I may disappoint you, but as far as we know, he indeed died as a result of a blood clot. And this has been more or less confirmed,"

Over the weekend, two other Ukraine-related narratives trended on 𝕏, both of questionable authenticity.

In an interview, Zelensky put Ukraine’s casualty count at 31k: “31,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died in this war. Not 300,000 or 150,000, or whatever Putin and his lying circle are saying.” Zelensky also claimed that 180k Russians had been killed.

The Ukrainian number is significantly lower than the most estimates by the Western press, which range from 100k to as high as 400k.

Zelensky’s strange body language was also closely analyzed during an interview with MSNBC.

Another story claiming that Russia foiled a plot to assassinate Tucker went viral before being called into question.

What do you think: Why is the Russia-Ukraine narrative evolving so quickly? Should the US send more aid or not?

Dogey Treats: News Bites

Elon’s Businesses

Elon said 𝕏 was working on creating XMail to compete with Gmail.

User traffic at 𝕏 approached new monthly highs in February.

Elon predicted the end of big tech this decade.

SpaceX made the first social media post using satellite-to-phone internet service.

US Politics

Elon highlighted a thread of evidence from the House Oversight committee showing evidence of the Biden family’s influence-pedling operation, and questioned why Hunter Biden was paid millions to advise a Ukrainian gas company. Questions emerged about the arrest of an FBI informant who’d previously made statements connecting the Biden family to an influence-peddling scheme.

A poll found that a slight majority of New York Jews plan to vote for Trump over Joe Biden. Biden addressed the theories about Taylor Swift’s relationships with his campaign on late night TV. Trump met with Argentina’s President Javier Milei in a viral moment.

RFK questioned if the Biden Administration isn’t intentionally destroying America, known as the Cloward-Piven strategy.

After news broke that Nancy Pelosi had invested in Palo Alto Networks stock, its price surged 10%. MrBeast made a post lamenting Congressional stock trading but deleted it.

Elon highlighted a debate over the DOJ’s arrest of an FBI whistleblower against the Biden family.

Georgia nursing student Laken Riley was killed by an illegal immigration, sparking debate about illegal immigration. Elon highlighted NYC program to give illegal immigrants $10k.

Geopolitics

Joe Biden said he expected a ceasefire by the end of the coming weekend. Brazilian President Lula doubled down on his claim that Israel is committing genocide despite being banned from the country. What is the relationship between Israel and Epstein?

Elon said a future path for the West was “Martian Technocracy.”

El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele criticized George Soros and lamented the state of American cities in a speech to CPAC.

Farmers from 20 countries have joined in protest against EU regulations.

British financier Lord Jacob Rothschild died at age 87.

Global Finance

Reddit said it had purchased Bitcoin with its spare cash. Trump spoke positively about Bitcoin. The White House claimed that Bitcoin mining was straining the power grid.

The EU adopted a law requiring banks to allow instant cross-border payments. The law is expected to go into effect on April.

Health Freedom

Dr. Brian Hooker testified to the Senate that vaccinate children have overall worse health coutomes than unvaccinated children.

Professor Emeritus in Epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health and Medicine Harvey Risch said COVID-19 is a bioweapon.

Misc

AT&T experienced a major service outage on Thursday. Elon highlighted the importance of Starlink as a backup communications system.

Sean “Diddy” Combs was sued by record producer Rodney Jones for alleged sexual assault, harassment, drugging, and threats. Diddy trended Tuesday night as the details of the court case were combed over.

Rapper Fat Joe posted about his purchase of Trump’s “Never Surrender” sneakers.

Elon said he would “get back on the meme grindstone” in response to a call for more memes.

Tucker interviewed Julian Assange’s wife Stella

Memes of the Week

Elon’s Memes

Thank You!

Thanks for reading! Consider sending a tip or Subscribing on 𝕏 to help keep the newsletter going!

DJ2zTEdHBD3guHLfVaNBaypr6bHFG5Nwfw

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Remember, Dogecoin is risky. But then again, it’s all risky!

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Send an email to itsALLrisky@gmail.com

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At the time of publication, Dogecoin is around $0.09 per coin.

Dogecoin Completes Bitcoin

The Palmetto Doge — Tue, 27 Feb 2024 01:00:42 GMT

Hey everyone,

Bitcoin has been on an absolute tear this year.

What’s amazing is that it’s experiencing incredible growth even though no one is using it to buy things.

Last week, several prominent Bitcoiners came out and spoke a forbidden truth: Bitcoin is a great investment, but it’s failing as digital cash for everyday purchases.

Let’s take a look at why Bitcoin doesn’t work as a transactional currency, and how that opens the door for Doge.

Thanks for reading Risky Reads: The People’s News for the People’s Coin—𝕏’s leading open-source newspaper.

If you enjoy this newsletter, consider subscribing for bonus content on 𝕏. Subscribers receive exclusive commentary on crypto, AI, and the online memescape. Sign up via my profile today!

Bitcoin is having an incredible year, and its awesome rise has brought back positive crypto vibes to 𝕏.

But surprisingly, its success has come even though no one is using it to buy things.

This month, several influential Bitcoiners acknowledged a harsh reality: people aren’t using Bitcoin as a transactional currency.

To understand what’s really going on, it helps to know the three purposes of money.

Most people typically think of money as one thing, but it actually has three distinct functions: medium of exchange, store of value, and unit of account.

Bitcoin has enjoyed tremendous success as a store of value—a safe place to store wealth and offset inflation.

Bitcoin’s success as a SoV is what led financial giants like BlackRock and Fidelity to launch Bitcoin ETFs earlier this year.

If you’re worried that governments are going to keep printing money and inflation will get worse over the long haul, Bitcoin is historically a safe place to store your wealth.

This is true despite its day-to-day price volatility—for fifteen years, Bitcoin has outperformed every form of government money on the planet as a tool to preserve wealth.

The same thing that makes Bitcoin a great Store of Value makes it a bad Medium of Exchange for small everyday purchases.

Bitcoin is an amazing investment because its supply is limited.

Unlike government fiat money which can be created endlessly, the number of Bitcoins is forever fixed at 21 million.

This hard-coded scarcity is the driver of its incredible price appreciation.

The problem arising now is that enough people have figured out that the best strategy with Bitcoin is just to hold on to it for as long as possible.

Spending Bitcoin is the same as selling it. Everyone knows the story of the guy who bought two pizzas for 10k Bitcoins, now worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

There’s no reason to ever spend Bitcoin if you think it’ll be worth more in the future and can afford to use another, more inflationary currency for purchases.

Why spend Bitcoin on goods and services today if you know if will be worth more in a few years?

Rather than use Bitcoin for transactions, people are turning to stablecoins—digital versions of fiat currencies—when they want to buy and sell with digital cash.

Last week, prominent Bitcoiner Nic Carter coined the term Orange Man’s Burden. The term describes hardcore Bitcoiners’ stubborn belief that developing countries will adopt Bitcoin as money despite clear evidence that regular folk prefer to transact with stablecoins.

Carter’s word carries weight in crypto circles, and he has identified an important trend: Bitcoin is already losing to stablecoins as a Medium of Exchange.

Carter was reposting comments from Russell Okung, a former NFL player who’s advocated Bitcoin adoption in Africa.

A day earlier, Okung acknowledged that most African citizens would rather use stablecoins like a digital dollar than Bitcoin as a Medium of Exchange.

Okung came to this conclusion against his own will, based on first-hand experience trying to advance Bitcoin as a transactional currency in Africa.

Another influential Bitcoiner, Anthony “Pomp” Pompliano, summarized the growing recognition that Bitcoin has fallen short as a transactional currency in an article titled “Bitcoin Is Not A Popular Medium-Of-Exchange.”

In the article, Pomp wrote that Bitcoin is capable of being used as a spendable currency, but most people would rather save n Bitcoin and spend digital dollars: “The limitations for bitcoin as a medium-of-exchange are not technical, but rather a game theory that highlights bitcoin’s future success in price could be its worst enemy as a spendable currency.”

Pomp’s article marks a noteworthy change of opinion.

In 2021, he argued that the “holy grail” of money would serve as both a store of value and medium of exchange—a savings and spending technology in one.

Back then, he felt that Bitcoin fit the bill better than anything else, including Dogecoin, and didn’t foresee a role for dog money in the digital economy.

It’s promising that major Bitcoiners like Pomp, Carter, and Okung are recognizing Bitcoin probably won’t be adopted as a Medium of Exchange. But their suggested replacement of stablecoins is an odd choice.

Stablecoins are convenient form of digital cash, but they lack Bitcoin’s superpower: decentralization.

Anyone on the planet can run a Bitcoin node, and there are no special levers in Bitcoin that allow someone to use it as an instrument of censorship, financial surveillance, or inflation.

By contrast, the two biggest stablecoins are Tether (USDT) and US Dollar Coin (USDC).

Both are managed by private corporations. These corporations issue digital tokens, and back them with real dollars, treasury bills, and other assets.

The downside of stablecoins is that the issuing corporations have unmatched control over them.

The core ethos of Bitcoin is that regular people own and control money, and can influence its direction democratically.

Stablecoins replicate many of the worst features of the existing system by handing special powers to a few centralized and unaccountable corporations that are themselves susceptible to government pressure.

If the US government tells stablecoin issuers like Tether or Circle to confiscate people’s money, there’s no guarantee the companies won’t give in.

At their worst, stablecoins could become a sort of CBDC-lite, with a government-corporate hybrid exercising unprecedented control over money, just as government-big tech has done with speech.

Dogecoin is a a better digital Medium of Exchange than stablecoins because it is decentralized like Bitcoin.

No single entity owns the Dogecoin blockchain, so it can’t be censored or centrally controlled.

Doge’s code is nearly identical to Bitcoin’s, but its slightly inflationary issuance schedule, fast transaction times, and low fees encourage spending rather than saving.

In short, Dogecoin is like Bitcoin, but branded with a dog and optimized for spending.

Ideally, Bitcoiners would embrace Doge as a friendly complement to orange coin.

Dogecoin’s much wow meme virality makes it the perfect vehicle for onboarding regular folks into crypto.

Once people have a chance to play around with digital money in a low-stakes way, they’re more likely to allocate some portion of their wealth to Bitcoin. What’s good for Dogecoin is ultimately good for Bitcoin as well.

In the past, Carter, Pomp, and Okung have all taken a dim view of Doge.

In 2021, Carter called Dogecoin “an empty husk” and warned that Elon’s support would cause retail investors to lose money.

After Elon embraced Doge, Okung ran a billboard campaign urging him to stay out of crypto.

On his news show, Pomp was similarly reluctant to praise Dogecoin as a crypto with real-world utility.

The truth is that there is something of an unspoken fiat within the Bitcoin community against talking about Doge.

Since 2021, Bitcoiners have seen Dogecoin as a threat to their vision of Bitcoin becoming the global Medium of Exchange, turning what should be a friendly partnership into a turf war.

History seems to have taken a different path than the Bitcoiners imagined, though. Bitcoin is the most succesful cryptocurrency, and by several metrics adoption has never been greater, but no one wants to spend it, least of all Bitcoiners themselves.

The growing acknowledgment that Bitcoin has fallen short as a MoE is an intermediary step to recognizing that Dogecoin is the ultimate digital currency for transactions.

Prominent Bitcoiners like Pomp, Carter, and Okung have a golden opportunity to throw their support behind Dogecoin, which captures the original Bitcoin vibe of decentralization, financial revolution, and memetic flare.

As Pomp wrote, “only independent thinkers will be able to change their mind when presented with these new facts. Don’t fall into the rigidity of the bitcoin religion imposed by the loudest hardcore maximalist.”

The ideal Internet economy has room enough for two complementary decentralized forms of money: Bitcoin for saving and Dogecoin for spending.

A harmonious collaboration between the two communities would strike fear into the heart of the financial establishment and accelerate the world’s transition to sound digital money.

The beauty of Dogecoin’s playful-spirit is that whenever Bitcoiners finally decide to drop their vendetta against it, they will be welcomed into the Dogely fold with open arms.

Bitcoiners laying down their swords and joining the fun-loving DogeArmy is the most entertaining outcome for crypto, finance, and the Internet as a whole.

It might even be inevitable. Let’s see what happens…

What do you think: Is Dogecoin the perfect complement to Bitcoin? Will Bitcoiners come around?

Memes of the Week

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At the time of publication, Dogecoin is around $0.08 per coin.

Sora, Sneakerhead Trump, Elon's Doppelgänger, Russia Narratives

The Palmetto Doge — Wed, 21 Feb 2024 14:01:45 GMT

Hey everyone,

This news digest covers the following stories from the past week:

1. OpenAI’s new text-to-video model Sora

2. Trump’s “Never Surrender” sneakers

3. Elon Musk’s voice doppelgänger Adrian Dittmann

4. The explosion of stories around Russia

Don’t miss videos, memes, and news bites at the end!

Thanks for reading Risky Reads: The People’s News for the People’s Coin—𝕏’s leading open-source newspaper.

If you enjoy this newsletter, consider subscribing for bonus content on 𝕏. Subscribers receive exclusive commentary on crypto, AI, and the online memescape. Sign up via my profile today!

Sora

Last Thursday, OpenAI released Sora.

Sora is a text-to-video model that can translate verbal prompts into minute-long video scenes including complex camera motion and multiple characters.

Within hours, 𝕏 was flooded with examples of Sora-generated videos. The videos are nearly indistinguishable from real footage.

It's one thing to know, theoretically, that text-to-video can exist, but it's a totally different thing to see it in action.

Last week, in the span of a few hours, the world crossed that chasm.

Given how fast AI is progressing, it can't be long before text-to-movie or text-to-TV series becomes available for everyone.

The arrival of text-to-video poses several questions.

First, given that military technology is often decades ahead of civilian tech, how do we know text-to-video hasn’t already been in use for years?

If state-level actors were to weaponize generative AI to drive narratives on social media, how would we know?

The proliferation of AI video will force media consumers to develop a new rubric for evaluating the authenticity of online content.

Where viral images once prompted the question, “is it photoshopped?”, everyone will quickly have to learn to exercise a new level of discernment by asking, “how do I know this isn’t AI?”

In the future, blockchain could play a major role in verifying the authenticity of images by tracking their provenance and chain of custody on a transparent digital ledger.

Finally, it’s worth asking how AI stands to alter humanity’s perception of itself.

Humanity is used to seeing itself as most advanced intelligence on Earth. But our ideas about ourselves will inevitably change when we interact with a digital supermen that is, in many ways, far more capable than we are, able to build whole immersive worlds in seconds with the input of a few keystrokes.

As did the discoveries of Galileo (we are not the center of the universe), Darwin (we are partly monkeys), and Freud (we are motivated by opaque psychological drives), AI re-contextualizes humanity’s place in the cosmos. For the first time that we know, we not the smartest thing in the universe.

Once everyone has access to roughly equal level of digital super-intelligence, AI could lead us to re-think what it is that makes a person valuable.

Being smart might not mean so much anymore—AI is already displacing white-collar jobs—clearing space to put more importance on qualities like morality clarity or spiritual presence.

What do you think: are you impressed with Sora? How do you think text-to-video will change the world?

Sneakerhead Trump

Over the weekend, Donald Trump launched his own limited edition “Never Surrender” sneakers at Sneaker Con in Philadelphia.

The high-top sneakers became an instantly viral meme item and sold out in minutes.

Originally priced at $399, the shoes have been observed reselling for thousands on eBay.

As is the case with anything involving Trump, the shoes instantly became part of a political meme war.

Entrepreneur Roman Sharf was accused by the media as being a Russian oligarch for spending $9000 on the shoes.

Sharf, an American citizen from Ukraine, released a viral video defending his purchase.

The uproar over the shoes also stole some of the meme momentum Joe Biden had built with his laser-eyed post during the Super Bowl..

Increasingly, the 2024 election is shaping up to be a memetic cultural battle fought over the Internet.

If that turns out to be the case, it explains how Trump is making inroads with young and minority voters.

Trump has the strongest meme game of any politician ever, and it’s not even close.

The iconic red MAGA hat is the best example of his ability to create an instantly recognizable brand, conveying volumes of meaning with a simple symbol.

He repeated the feat again last year: no meme captured the online zeitgeist of 2023 quite like the Trump mugshot.

Since leaving office, Trump has doubled down on his strategy of leveraging the Internet to reach niche online communities.

In just the last year, he’s released two NTF collections, becoming a regular at UFC events, and now put out his own sneakers.

What do you think: will Trump sneakers become a collector’s item? Or are they a grift?

Dittmann: Elon’s Doppelgänger

Monday night, in a truly surreal online happening, Elon participated in a Spaces event with his voice doppelgänger Adrian Dittmann.

Dittmann has been steadily growing presence on 𝕏 over the last year, but exploded in the past few weeks.

Not only is his voice a dead ringer for Elon’s but the two share similar views on AI and technology

Earlier this month, Dittmann participated in a wild segment on Alex Jones’s InfoWars, during which Jones said he felt he was “in the Twilight Zone” because he believed Dittmann was really Elon.

As Dittmann’s account has grown, theories have spread about his true identity. One idea is that he is an AI-version of Elon.

Dittmann has denied this claim, insisting he is “just an enthusiastic techno-optimist who happens to be on the spectrum and sounds like the richest man on the planet.”

In another recent post, he wrote, “I'm a memetic response to a simulation in need of entertainment through disruption.”

Monday night, Dittmann shared the online stage with Elon.

Elon broke into laughter before saying, “There’s eight billion people on Earth so odds are there’s someone who sounds like you somewhere, and you are that person. Honestly, I don’t believe you’re not me.”

During the event, even Elon’s mom Maye Musk struggled to tell the two apart.

What do you think: Who is Adrian Dittmann? Are his similarities with Elon just a coincidence or something deeper?

Russia, Russia, Russia

In the two weeks since Vladimir Putin sat down with Tucker, the topic of Russia has grown progressively larger on 𝕏.

Narratives about Russia has split off in several different directions at once, but always seems to return to the same core issue: war. One side wants to send more money to Ukraine to fight Russia, the other side wants to use those resources to improve life in the US.

This week, the Russia story swelled to epic proportions, with intersecting plotlines to rival a Tolstoy novel.

The first thread to emanate from the interview was a debate about whether Tucker was a Russian asset.

Pro-war legacy media hammered the narrative that he’s a Russian propagandist doing the secret bidding of Vladimir Putin, echoing past claims about Trump.

For his part, Tucker leaned in to the topic Russian propaganda.

In a series of short videos calculated to inflame his antagonists, Tucker challenged American leaders to explain why Russian train stations, grocery stores, and fast food restaurants are nicer than those in the United States (he also was recorded praising infrastructure in Dubai).

While Tucker didn’t make any speculations about why American infrastructure is crumbling, the implicit message of his videos was clear: the US sends its tax dollars abroad instead of fixing things at home.

Barely had the dust settled on the grocery-store debate when another Russia-related crisis reared its head.

Last Wednesday, House Intel Committee Chair Mike Turner warned Russia had made a breakthrough in space technology that posed a national security threat to the US. Turner called on the Biden administation to declassify all information related to the threat.

The story evolved into widely reported claims that Russia planned to put nuclear weapons in space.

The next day, multiple sources reported the scandal was created to gin up support for the Senate’s proposed $61B Ukraine funding bill.

The Russian-space-nukes story doesn’t appear to be going away so easily.

Earlier this week, Putin told Russian media, "We don't want to put nukes in space. We don't have anything like this. They [the West] know that we don't, but still they are making a fuss about it."

Yesterday, Bloomberg reported the US was still warning allies that Russia planned to deploy nuclear weapons in space this year.

A third Russia-related plot line was the death of jailed Russian dissident Alexei Navalny on Friday.

Speaking to the media, Biden praised Navalny: “he was brave, he was principled, he was dedicated to building a Russia where the rule of law existed…this tragedy reminds us of the stakes of this moment. We have to provide the funding so Ukraine can defend itself.”

Western media took a similar angle, depicting Navalny as an anti-corruption campaigner.

Generally, pro-Navalny statements were made in tandem with calls to send more money to Ukraine.

On 𝕏, skeptics pointed to several glaring holes in the Navalny-as-hero narrative:

There is no logical reason for Putin to kill Navalny now, who routinely polled in single digits (around 2%), rather than simply keeping him locked up, especially at a moment when public support for Ukraine is faltering in the West
Navalny’s Democratic Alternative party was funded by the CIA; Navalny himself was likely Western intelligence asset to undermine Russian nationalism
Navalny had a history of organizing and attending Nazi marches, called Muslims cockroaches, and argued for stripping Chechens of Russian citizenship
Navalny’s death was timed, coincidentally or not, to allow his wife to give a well publicized speech at a conference she happened to be attending in Munich
Several accounts pointed out that Western media’s outrage over Navalny’s death was nowhere in evidence during the recent death of American journalist Gonzalo Lira, who died in a Ukrainian prison for making YouTube videos critical of Zelensky
The same outlets and politicians crying foul over Navalny’s death are calling for the Biden Administration to jail its primary political opponent (Donald Trump)

Tucker, when asked, called Navalny’s death “horrifying”, and said, “The whole thing is barbaric and awful. No decent person would defend it."

A fourth Russia-related narrative thread was the resurrection of the 2016-2020 Russiagate accusations and counter-accusations.

Timely new reporting by independent journalists Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi claimed the existence of a CIA binder detailing a scheme to connect Trump to Russia in order to launch a surveillance operation on his campaign.

Another report from Shellenberger claimed that the CIA manipulated intelligence to make it seem Russia preferred Trump as President, when in fact Russia preferred Hillary Clinton because she was “manageable and reflect[ed] continuity.”

The same day, a document circulated on 𝕏 appearing to show coordination between the Obama White House and British spy agency GCHQ to surveil the Trump transition team.

Obama has previously addressed the accusations that his administration spied on Trump, calling them “absurd.” Mainstream media has taken a similar line by insisting Trump’s claims were lies.

Putin seemed to seize on the moment last week when he said he preferred Biden in the White House rather than Trump, telling a reporter, “He’s a more experienced and predictable person, and a politician of the old school.”

The rhetorical battle over Russian influence in American politics continued into this week when Nancy Pelosi told MSNBC that Putin is blackmailing Trump with compromising financial information.

Pelosi then claimed that Putin is holding the blackmail over Trump so that Trump will allow Russia to invade Eastern Europe.

Last night, New York Congressman Dan Goldman pushed the conspiracy further, telling CNN that “the House Republican majority is being used by Russia to interfere in the 2024 election on behalf of Donald Trump.”

Elon has weighed in sparingly on the Russia/Trump situation, allowing the narratives to unwind of their own accord.

On Monday, he again called for a ceasefire and for the US to engage Russia in peace talks.

The fifth and final thread involving Russia was Julian Assange’s extradition trial this week.

It was Assange’s WikiLeaks that released the DNC’s incriminating emails to the public which showed the party rigging its primary elections against Bernie Sanders.

The DNC has claimed without proof that Russians hacked its servers and released the emails to get Trump elected.

WikiLeaks has published several other damaging revelations about the US empire, including video of American helicopter gunning down civilians in Baghdad and an illegal CIA spying program.

In 2021, several outlets report that the CIA planned to kidnap and/or assassinate Assange.

Assange is currently being held in Belmarsh Prison in the UK.

If he is extradited to the US, he will face charges of violating the US Espionage Act and a potential 175-year prison sentence.

On 𝕏, Assange is widely regarded as a genuine hero of democracy and free speech. Support for his cause spans the political spectrum.

Over the weekend, Australia's parliament passed a motion calling the US and UK to allow Assange to return to Australia.

Despite the dark material published by WikiLeaks, Assange has become known for his simple and optimistic message: regular people don’t like war.

Every war executed from the last 50 years has gained public consent through media lies.

If sunlight can be brought to bear on the inner workings of the security state and its media lackeys, a more hopeful future waits around the corner for humanity.

That includes untangling the various threads in the story of the US and Russia over the last decade, and whether either country’s actions justifies risking another World War.

What do you think: Why didn’t Donald Trump pardon Julian Assange? Should Joe Biden pardon him?

Dogey Treats: News Bites

Elon’s Companies

SpaceX moved its incorporation from Delaware to Texas.

Elon was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize by a Norwegian Member of Parliament for defending free speech and donating StarLink to Ukraine.

SpaceX won a license to provide Starlink to Israel and parts of Gaza. Elon wrote, “It is our hope to help both the people of Israel and, with all due care, innocent civilians in Gaza. This approval by Israel is greatly appreciated. In such a terrible situation, we should strive for conspicuous acts of kindness whenever possible.”

Elon wrote, “Amazing that some people still think the news is real.” How 𝕏 changed media landscape.

𝕏 is reportedly in talks with Midjourney AI text-to-image about a partnership.

Elon sparred with Steven King.

US Politics

Biden Security Advisor Jake Sullivan was asked by a reporter if warrants should be required to surveil US citizens, He responded, "We do not believe that that serves the national security interests of the United States." Sullivan was involved in planting a Slate story connecting Trump to Russia in 2016.

A New York judge ordered Trump to pay $335M in a civil fraud trial for allegedly overvaluing his properties.

Crypto lawyer John Deaton is challenging Elizabeth Warren for a Massachusetts Senate seat.

Biden said a new package of sanctions against Russia will be announced on Friday. Vladimir Putin said Russia has a “sacred duty” to help the people of Gaza. Putin said the backlash Tucker received over his interview was sad, but also faulted Tucker for a lack of piercing questions. David Sacks published a long-form essay about Ukraine called “A War of Lies” detailing the various deceptions used to create public support in America. Elon said Putin made a mistake not releasing a WSJ journalist when Tucker asked.

Professor Jeffrey Sachs detailed how the CIA destabilizes the world through regime change operations across the world. Video emerged from 2014 about US picking the new Ukrainian government after helping overthrow the Yanokovich government. Tucker said Boris Johnson asked for one million dollars to be interviewed about his role in scuttling peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.

RFK won a preliminary injunction against the White House to stop it from censoring social media.

The DOJ arrested an FBI informant named Alexander Smirnov who said Joe and Hunter Biden were involved in a $10m bribery scheme with Burisma. The DOJ accused Smirnov of peddling Russian disinformation.

A PEW poll found 80% of Americans hold negative views about the government’s handling of illegal immigration. Elon highlighted a video of neocon Bill Kristol arguing white working class Americans should be replaced by immigrants.

A Monmouth University poll found “Just under 1 in 5 Americans believe the singer Taylor Swift is part of a covert effort to help President Joe Biden win the 2024 election.” Travis Kelce was awarded green tax credits by the Biden Administration to produce a movie as part of the inflation reduction act.

Alex Soros is reportedly dating Hillary Clinton’s aid and Anthony Weiner’s ex Huma Abedin. The Soros investment empire purchased a stake in the US’s second-largest radio conglomerate, controlling over 200 radio stations.

Geopolitics

The UK and Japan fell into recession.

Iran claimed ownership of Antarctica.

Brazilian President Lula da Silva said Israel was committing genocide against Palestinian women and children. The US vetoed another UN ceasefire resolution.

Nigeria joined other countries in dropping the dollar for oil trade.

Misc

Was WWII an ET proxy war fought by humans?

CDC Lyme disease data showed a record number of cases in 2023.

Ye’s album Vultures was removed from Apple Music after reaching the #1 spot.

Candace Owens published viral videos about Taylor Swift and Israel.

A report found that 35% of US women aged 25-44 do not have children.

Elon renewed criticism of OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman for financial practices

Memes of the Week

Elon’s Memes

Thank You!

Thanks for reading! Consider sending a tip or Subscribing on 𝕏 to help keep the newsletter going!

DJ2zTEdHBD3guHLfVaNBaypr6bHFG5Nwfw

Tipping is really appreciated! Thank you!!

It's ALL Risky!

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What do you think? What was the biggest story of the week? Let me know!

Remember, Dogecoin is risky. But then again, it’s all risky!

Follow on twitter at @itsALLrisky

Send an email to itsALLrisky@gmail.com

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At the time of publication, Dogecoin is around $0.08 per coin.

Doge Is The Heartbeat of the Free Internet

The Palmetto Doge — Tue, 20 Feb 2024 01:10:25 GMT

Hey everyone,

Last week, the public discussion on Internet censorship took a massive leap forward when former State Department employee Mike Benz appeared on Tucker.

Benz explained how a regime of Internet censorship grew over the last decade using AI-powered “Weapons of Mass Deletion” to control public opinion

Let’s take a look at why censorship is killing the Internet, and how Dogecoin can bring it back to life.

Thanks for reading Risky Reads: The People’s News for the People’s Coin—𝕏’s leading open-source newspaper.

If you enjoy this newsletter, consider subscribing for bonus content on 𝕏. Subscribers receive exclusive commentary on crypto, AI, and the online memescape. Sign up via my profile today!

I. Benz Sets 𝕏 Ablaze

Last Friday, a new Tucker interview about Internet censorship set 𝕏 on fire.

Mike Benz is founder of Foundation for Freedom Online. FFO describes itself as “a free speech watchdog dedicated to restoring the promise of a free and open Internet.” Before founding FFO, Benz worked for the US State Department.

Over the last year, he has built his account on 𝕏 by offering a uniquely detailed perspective on Internet censorship.

Benz told Tucker that the US military industrial complex uses the Internet a propaganda and censorship tool to carry out regime change operations in other countries, like the Arab Spring of 2011.

Now, he says, these weapons of narrative control have been turned on US citizens.

Benz’s interview with Tucker received rave reviews on its way to gaining 30 million impressions.

RFK Jr called the interview “One of the most remarkable interviews ever.” Journalist Simon Ateba said it was “the most shocking Tucker Carlson interview that I have watched.” Cartoonist Scott Adams claimed it was “the most extraordinary thing I have ever seen” and “like a mushroom trip without the mushrooms.”

Elon reposted the interview with the comment “Free speech is the bedrock of democracy. That’s why it’s the FIRST Amendment. Without free speech, all is lost.”

In another post, he wrote, “The public still doesn’t understand even a tiny fraction of the power of the censorship government-industrial complex.”

The interview picks up where the story of the Twitter Files left off, contextualizing the secret FBI/CIA campaign against free speech at Twitter as part of a larger censorship project that spans the past decade.

Benz argues that everything changed in 2016, the year of Brexit and Trump’s victory.

It was then that the international security state realized other Brexit-copycat populist movements were likely to spring up across Europe by way of social media.

These movements would inevitably demand that their governments close borders, curtail spending, and use resources to improve life at home rather than fund the endless parade of foreign wars that has become the hallmark of Western empire.

The international security state, Benz says, took control of the Internet to stymie a global populist uprising.

Had the Internet not come under a regime of censorship, a wave of nationalism would’ve swept across the world. Spexit (Spain), Grecxit (Greece), Frexit (France), and Gexit (Germany) would’ve followed close on Brexit’s heels, ultimately leading to the breakup of the European Union and NATO.

Benz backs his claims with encyclopedic detail about the censorship industrial complex.

During his interview with Tucker, he focused on the Atlantic Council, known as NATO’s think tank, which coordinated the use of AI-based censorship technologies.

These “Weapons of Mass Deletion” use machine learning to map out the discourse on controversial topics like Covid, elections, immigration, or war, classifying ideas as permissible or forbidden. T censor tens of millions of posts with just a few lines of code.

No one described the internal mechanics of online censorship quite like Benz, but awareness of the Internet’s artificiality has been building for a while.

In 2021, some users coined the term “Dead Internet Theory” to describe pattern in which authentic human expression was removed from the Internet and replaced with bland, astro-turfed, AI-generated content.

Here’s what folks think is going on…

II. How the Internet Died

Revelations about censorship from Benz’s interview align with a popular meme from 2021 called Dead Internet Theory.

Dead Internet Theory argues that the combination of censorship and AI have made the web sterile and bland, with alarmingly few signs of authentic human interaction.

The Internet of the present stands in contrast to the early web, which was notable for its embrace of free expression and authenticity.

Back then, the Internet’s anonymity allowed weirdness to flourish in a way that it could never do IRL, leading to a distinctly online counterculture.

The early Internet was a place of authenticity, weirdness, and free expression

Today’s Internet, by contrast, is something like the show Westworld: an amusement park inhabited by a handful of humans and and endless stream of humanoid robots.

What was once the Wild West has become a collection of digitally manicured walled gardens. The entire experience is engineered to tickle users’ dopamine sensors and produce passive gratification with maximum efficiency.

In this way, the modern web replicates the homogenized commercialism of television, with apps replacing channels and astroturfed influencers taking the place of traditional celebrities.

The combination of censorship and AI bot swarms mean the Dead Internet works like a trick mirror.

People think they exist in potential communication with all of humanity, but the reality is more confined: social media users are placed in a digital “room” that curbs their interaction to a small subset of other users.

Most users can see influencers and large accounts, but are limited to interacting with a handful of other small accounts in their immediate digital proximity.

The result is that information doesn’t spread organically and virally as it should, from one regular person to another. Instead, it must pass through the bottleneck of influencers if it’s going to be seen by large numbers of people.

Like celebrities, most influencers are limited in what they’re willing to say publicly, because their livelihood depends on approval from gatekeepers and algorithms.

Someone like Elon, who speaks his mind and routinely violates the official narrative, is the exception, not the rule.

The great hope for Elon’s 2022 Twitter purchase was that deceptive activities like shadow-banning and bot swarming would be eliminated altogether. In practice, deception has proven more difficult to uproot.

Censorship can still happen at the level of Internet infrastructure, which is controlled by international megacorps and their government sponsors. Bots have less influence on 𝕏 than they used to, but remain part of the experience.

Absent a totally new Internet infrastructure—something like StarLink—it will probably be difficult to roll back manipulation entirely.

Even when 𝕏 doesn’t censor, it remains possible to control the flow of information through Internet infrastructure

Still, the degree of improvement in just the last year should not be understated.

𝕏 is more alive than any other social media platform on the Internet. Real people are flocking to the site because of its reputation for upholding free speech, leading to perpetually new highs in verified user activity.

The Overton Window has been getting noticeably wider each week as a result of open debate on otherwise forbidden topics like DEI, immigration, the American war machine, and medical freedom. Other platforms—none of which have come clean about censorship or bot activity—are being forced to allow content they’d previously banned just to stay relevant.

The pace of change at 𝕏 appears calculated to minimize social disruptions that the transition to a truly open Internet might cause if it were to happen too quickly.

Rather than unleash a tidal wave of online populism and controversial content across the web all at once, 𝕏 has been incrementally loosening the reins of its content moderation while simultaneously dragging old censorship schemes into light for the public to digest.

Even 𝕏’s relatively mild changes to content moderation have produced massive pushback in the form of advertiser boycotts, a lawfare campaign against Elon, and a constant stream of negative coverage from the legacy press, a sign of how much the security state values the Internet as a tool of social control.

The Internet is coming back to life, but slowly, in a way that preserves rather than overthrows civilization.

But what does all this have to do with Dogecoin?

III. Doge Is the Heartbeat of the Free Internet

The reality of censorship and the Dead Internet is important for the Dogecoin community to grapple with.

Elon famously dubbed Dogecoin “the people’s crypto.” Intentionally or not, that moniker put it on a parallel track with other online populist movements.

Doge is unique among populist crusades because it offers an alternative monetary system.

While other forms of populism acquire political control and use it as a lever to shape the economy, Dogecoin cuts straight to the chase by offering a sound-money, people-controlled alternative to legacy finance.

As Benz argues in his interview, censorship is carried out for the benefit of global financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, which use the dollar as a weapon to pillage natural resources from developing countries. These institutions stand to lose the most if online populism—and Dogecoin—comes into style.

Even if it does, governments will still control money printer. One of the most powerful things an individual can do is to opt out of government money system altogether, and Dogecoin offers a path to doing so today as a form of peaceful protest.

So with all the talk of AI censorship and deception, it’s reasonable to ask: is Dogecoin being censored?

On 𝕏, $DOGE and #Dogecoin do sometimes trend with tens or even hundreds of thousands of posts.

However, closer examination of these trending topics usually reveals a few dozen authentic posts. There’s scant evidence of 10k+ unique individuals discussing Dogecoin with each other at a given moment.

These numbers might reflect bot activity, or it could be that there is a high level of authentic activity that’s somehow being made invisible. Either way, someone’s finger is on the scale.

Another piece of the puzzle is Elon himself.

With Elon’s 170+ million followers, you might think his support for a cryptocurrency based on a viral meme would lead Dogecoin to exist in a state of more or less constant virality and cause demand far outstrip supply.

That’s what seemed to be happening in early 2021, when he was regularly posting his support for Doge.

Paradoxically, something changed during Elon’s May 2021 SNL appearance, at precisely the moment that Dogecoin surfaced into the mainstream.

Since that night, Doge has been seemingly pushed back underground, and its price has yet to surpass its apex.

Today, it’s possible that Doge discourse is somehow confined to a digital “room” with one-way mirror—we can see out, but the rest of the world can’t see in.

In this way, being part of the Dogecoin community on 𝕏 might be akin to membership in a secret society that’s otherwise invisible to the outside world—the Dogeluminati, if you will.

Every now and then, Dogecoin bursts through the nets of censorship to briefly penetrate mainstream consciousness, like when Elon wore a Doge shirt to the 2023 Super Bowl, or changed the Twitter bird into a Doge.

But so far, Dogecoin has yet to decisively break above the surface into mainstream awareness. It’s a matter of fascination and speculation what will cause it to do so, and when.

For the moment, Dogecoin appears to be a casualty of Weapons of Mass Deletion.

When it inevitably makes its return to the online battlefield, it could herald a larger renaissance for the Internet itself, in which commerce, virality, and speech are all unshackled at once.

The Internet might be on life support, but Dogecoin—and all that it represents—is its beating heart, and it beats for the people of the web everywhere.

Dogey Treats: News Bites

Ferrari announced it will accept Dogecoin and other cryptos as payment for cars.

A number of prominent Bitcoiners acknowledged that Bitcoin is not a popular Medium of Exchange.

Memes of the Week

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At the time of publication, Dogecoin is around $0.09 per coin.

Super Bowl Memes, Vultures, Tucker/Putin Aftershock

The Palmetto Doge — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 14:02:58 GMT

Hey everyone,

This news digest covers the following stories from the past week:

1. The Super Bowl in memes

2. Ye’s Vultures release

3. The aftershock of Tucker’s Putin interview

Last Friday, a bonus newsletter went out documenting the immediate reaction to Tucker’s interview with Putin. It can be accessed here.

Don’t miss videos, memes, and news bites at the end!

Thanks for reading Risky Reads: The People’s News for the People’s Coin—𝕏’s leading open-source newspaper.

If you enjoy this newsletter, consider subscribing for bonus content on 𝕏. Subscribers receive exclusive commentary on crypto, AI, and the online memescape. Sign up via my profile today!

Super Bowl Memetics

The Super Bowl is one of the most-memed events all year, and 𝕏 is the undisputed champion platform for providing running memetic commentary on the game.

This year, the platform set new records for user activity, with massive growth from 2023.

This year, memes clustered around two topics the Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce romance, and Joe Biden’s unexpected meme game.

Swift/Kelce

The Taylor Swift angle of the Super Bowl was irresistible for 𝕏.

As covered in last week’s newsletter, the conspiracist Internet has been buzzing with speculation about the undercurrents of the Swift/Kelce pairing.

In particular, discussion focused on Swift as an instrument of statecraft, and the political advantages a Kelce/Chiefs victory could provide to the political establishment.

More fuel was added to the speculative fire that the fix was in when the Chiefs were awarded with an accidental first down during their fourth quarter game-tying drive.

A milder, more evidence-based variation of this line of thought emphasized that the NFL successfully leveraged Swift to dramatically expand its audience, with Swift’s Super Bowl appearance as the capstone for the advertising strategy.

The partnership was mutually beneficial: Swift catapulted her own stardom to new heights as a fixture of Sunday afternoon television. There’s no denying that the combo of Taylor Swift and the NFL is good business.

Kelce, for his own part, was heavily memed for his elder abuse of Chiefs head coach Andy Reid early in the game.

Of course, these niche topics obscure a more basic reality: the Swift-Kelce pairing has become the defining celebrity relationship of the the decade.

The relationship is modern twist on past celebrity mega-couples. Swift’s stratospheric fame means that Kelce is punching up big time, and would be nowhere near the household name he is without her. Everyone knows she’s the protagonist.

At the same time, it contains element of traditional gender roles, with Swift playing the spectator cheering on her hubby as he battles with his bros to win bread and strive for glory in the public arena.

This may be the deepest fascination with the relationship, that it offers a vision for how modern women can finally have it all: girl boss during the workweek, tradwife on the weekend, main character always.

Optimistically, the duo represents a wholesome All-American relationship that has become vanishingly rare in media, and two ultra-succesful performers at the top of their games who, maybe, are actually in love.

A segment of social media is rooting for them to get married, which ironically could be the most entertaining and unexpected outcome.

What do you think: Does the Swift/Kelce relationships have staying power , or will it survive only in memes?

Joe Biden’s Unexpected Meme Game

Despite forgoing the traditional Presidential Super Bowl interview, Joe Biden exerted an outsized influence on the Super Bowl social media landscape.

Sunday afternoon, he released unintentionally funny video condemning American corporations for reducing the size of snack food products while charging the same price, also known as “shrinkflation.”

Jason Calacanis observed of the video, “This feels like a SNL skit that was cut!” Elon reacted, “Whoa, this is real”?

Much of the video’s humor stems from its denial of reality.

The same monetary dynamics driving inflation are also causing shrinkflation: the Federal Reserve printed a record number of new dollars during Covid.

Somehow, dollar inflation stayed low through the end of the Trump’s presidency, but as soon as the Biden administration took over, inflation burst past the Fed’s 2% target and never looked back.

For political reasons, the Biden Administration has been reluctant to explain to the public the real reason housing, food, and energy have gotten so much more expensive over the last three years.

Doing so could galvanize opposition to more government spending and money creation, both tactics favored by Wall Street and Washington.

Instead, the Biden admin has deployed an ever-changing litany of narratives to reassure the public that inflation has nothing to do with historic government printing, spending, and bank bailouts.

Blaming companies for raising prices—or keeping prices the same and reducing the quantity of a given good, which amounts to the same thing—is the latest such example of avoiding a facts-based conversation about inflation.

Inflation is a serious issue for many Americans. However, the video’s peppy music, quasi-comic tone, and seemingly gleeful aversion to discussing basic economics leaves it up to the viewer to decide whether the President sees it the same way.

As it turned out, the shrinkflation video was a prelude to an even zanier post.

After the game, Biden stole the show by trolling the “they’re-rigging-the-Super-Bowl-to-help-Taylor-Swift-to-help-Biden” crowd with a laser-eyed meme.

Biden’s comment read, “Just like we drew it up”, a reference to the conspiracy theory that a Chiefs’ victory would set the stage for a Kelce/Swift campaign endorsement.

Also notable, the image’s hidden description read, “dark brandon,” the name of another Biden meme.

The combination of Biden’s laser eyes (a popular meme among Bitcoiners) and Bitcoin’s breach of $50k on Monday led to tongue-in-cheek speculation that Biden had given the order to send Bitcoin to the moon.

What do you think: are you entertained by Biden’s revitalized meme game?

Vultures Release

This weekend, Ye reclaimed the cultural spotlight as only he can with the release of his album Vultures.

The album reached #1 on Apple Music in 109 countries, a new record for a collab album.

Ye addressed the entertainment industry’s attempt to cancel him in an impromptu interview: “We’re number one. Everything they did only helped us.”

At another point, he addressed the topic of anti-Semitism directly: “For all the jewish kids that love me, I’m sorry if y’all had to hear a grown up conversation…we got to a point where something needed to be said. If you’re in an argument with someone, you not going to say everything the right way.”

On Monday, Elon got pulled into the Ye universe after Ye posted a clip from the song “CARNIVAL” that included the line, “Elon where my rocket ship?/It’s time to go home.”

Elon responded by breaking the news that Starship’s next flight was in three weeks before tagging rapper Nicki Minaj, an apparent reference to the release of her own album on the same timeframe.

Ye also trended during Super Bowl with a viral ad recorded on his phone, and conspicuous markdown of all items to $20 in his Yeezy fashion store.

Afterwards, he compared himself to Robin Hood for delivering on his promise to democratize access to his fashion.

On Tuesday, former Broncos receiver Brandon Marshall claimed that Ye bought Super Bowl tickets in front of Taylor Swift’s box so he would be on screen whenever cameras cut to her, but Swift found out about the plan and had Ye removed.

The same day, Ye overtook Swift as the top global artist on Spotify.

In another widely circulated clip, he said he planned to vote for Trump in 2024: “Yeah of course it’s Trump all day, whatchu talking bout—you know what it is. They put me in the hospital for supporting [Trump].”

What do you think: Have you listened to Vultures? What do you think of Ye’s return to the public eye?

Tucker/Putin aftershock

Note: A bonus newsletter went out immediately after the Tucker/Putin interview aired dedicated entirely to the interview—it can be found here.

Tucker Carlson’s interview with Vladimir Putin from last Thursday continued to exert powerful influence on both geopolitics and social media over the weekend and into this week.

The interview surpassed 200M views on the three major social media platforms. Facebook appeared to be throttling the interview’s spread, with the world’s largest platform showing a tiny fraction of the views of YouTube and 𝕏.

The interview set the stage for several intriguing developments this week.

On both the anti-war left and right, the interview was praised for its discussion of the full context of the Ukraine-Russia war, including the role of US empire in provoking the conflict over the last decade.

The growing public awareness of the war’s context is important as Western countries debate whether to send additional aid to Ukraine and prolong the war, or attempt diplomacy.

At the core of the debate is the question of which country is the true aggressor.

Pro-war media depicts Russia’s invasion as “unprovoked” as a way of justifying aid to Ukraine.

Anti-war media acknowledges the West’s role in overthrowing the Ukrainian government in 2014 and expanding NATO to Russia’s doorstep—in other words, provoking Russia.

A related topic of discussion was Putin’s claim that the Biden administration sent Boris Johnson to scuttle a peace deal in 2022 between Russia and Ukraine that, if ratified, would’ve saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

The claim caused Johnson to issue a short video calling the interview a "tissue of lies” and warning against “the notion that Putin is somehow fated to succeed in Ukraine, on the contrary, he is doomed to fail,”

One 𝕏 account pointed out that one of Johnson’s parliamentary allies had already confirmed the claim (which has been widely reported) in a book.

On Tuesday, Reuters cited three Russian sources to claim that the Biden Administration rejected Putin’s offer for a ceasefire in late 2023, and again in 2024.

One source for the article said of peace talks, “Everything fell apart with the Americans”, who did not want to push Ukraine toward diplomacy.

A US source denied the claim that there had been any official contact between Russia and the United States. In his interview with Tucker, Putin said Russia was open to “dialogue” with the West.

The interview has also functioned as backdrop for ongoing Congressional debate over a new $95B Senate foreign aid bill to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan.

On Monday, Tucker returned for his first show since the Putin interview: an interview with Ohio Senator JD Vance about opposition to the bill.

Monday evening, Elon appeared on a Spaces event about the bill.

During the discussion, he urged Congress to consider diplomacy as an alternative to continued military funding: “if you are going to spend lives, it must be for a purpose. Not just a mile back and forth. In fact, the lines aren't moving. So, just every day, people die.”

Afterward, Elon was attacked by a Washington Post journalist, who called his opposition to continued war “Shameful stuff” and “Disgraceful.”

Elon responded that the main outcome of the war was “lots of dead kids” and asked, “What kind of psycho wants that to continue?”

Early Tuesday morning the foreign aid bill passed the Senate.

Speaker Mike Johnson has said the bill is “dead on arrival” in the House because it ignores the US border.

On Tuesday afternoon, Biden urged Johnson to bring the bill to the floor for a vote immediately: “the bill provides urgent funding for Ukraine so it can keep defending itself against Putin’s vicious, vicious onslaught.”

Another topic that caught fire as a result of Tucker’s interview the CIA.

On 𝕏, Putin’s multiple mentions of the CIA caused discussions about the intelligence agency’s past acts to trend for several days.

In a follow-up interview released on Monday, Tucker called out the CIA for trying to prevent him from conducting the interview.

The CIA came focus again on Tuesday when a bombshell report by journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger alleged that the CIA was behind the 2016 attempt to frame Donald Trump as a Russian asset.

According to Shellenberger’s article, Obama CIA Director John Brennan “asked the ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence alliance to surveil Trump’s associates and share the intelligence they acquired with US agencies, say sources close to a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HSPCI) investigation.”

Five Eyes is an intelligence-sharing agreement between the UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the US.

The Five Eyes agreement allows the CIA to surveil its own population, which is otherwise illegal, by outsourcing the work to other governments’ intel agencies.

Brennan reportedly identified 26 Trump associates for the Five Eyes to target. The results of this initial targeting were eventually used to justify the now-discredited Russia collusion hoax.

If confirmed, the news that the CIA directed foreign agencies to illegally spy on then-candidate Trump and associates during the 2016 election would be an earth-shaking revelation, in no small part because Trump appeared to allege such a scheme during an August 10, 2020 press conference.

Trump ended the conference by saying, “I think it’s the political crime of the century, and they’ve been caught, so let’s see what happens to them all.”

Earlier in the year, Trump posted a meme suggesting his campaign had been targeted by a spying operation at the behest of Obama.

Shellenberger’s report also claimed the existence of a 10-inch binder documenting the spying scheme, which Trump ordered declassified at the end of his term. According to the sources, the binder has gone missing from the CIA.

Tuesday night, Shellenberger acknowledged speculation that the FBI was seeking the binder when it raided Trump’s Mar-A-Lago home in August 2022 and promised a forthcoming article about the topic.

Overall, the Tucker/Putin interview has become a skeleton-key for the present moment, providing important context about Congress’s obsession with Ukraine aid, the Biden family’s involvement in Ukraine, the 2016 election, Russiagate, abuses by US intel agencies, and the first Trump impeachment.

RFK Jr addressed the American media campaign to dissuade people from watching the interview: “every American should watch that interview, no matter how you feel about the war, no matter how you feel about American foreign policy. My uncle always said that to have peace in the world you have to be able to put yourself in the other person’s shoes.”

On a lighter note, Putin’s opening historical monologue continued to permeate the memesphere, taking an early lead for the year’s most powerful meme.

As of yesterday, interview has been viewed 200 million times on 𝕏. It can be accessed here.

What do you think: Did you watch the interview? Why or why not?

Dogey Treats: News Bites

Elon’s Companies

Roseanne said Disney’s Bob Iger organized her cancellation for liking Trump, and encouraged Elon Musk to take up her case in a lawsuit.

Elon floated the idea of making a hotel on the moon.

US Politics

Senator JD Vance wrote a letter to congress warning that the bill contained a provision that would allow Trump to be impeached for blocking money to Ukraine if he were elected President. Elon reposted the letter and asked Mitch McConnell “What is going on?” In another post, he called for Mitch McConnell to step down.

Trump said the US should never again give away free money to other countries and extend zero interest-rate loans instead.

Anti-Trump activist Michael Rappaport acknowledged that media depictions of Charlottesville were a hoax. Playwright David Mamet said “Trump Was the Best President Since Abraham Lincoln.”

Elon expressed support for the impeachment of Secretary Mayorkas over the border and drew attention to Mayorkas’s involvement with HIAS.

The DNC filed a lawsuit against RFK Jr based on his attempts to get on state ballots.

Israel began a new bombing campaign in Rafah during the Super Bowl.

Elon said truth is censored about election fraud and highlighted election fraud in Atlantic City

Trump made a post encouraging people to give Bud light another chance.

Joe Biden posted a video of himself buying fried chicken for a black family.

CNBC pundits discussed reports that House Democrats were questioning whether Biden would drop out and Kamala Harris said “ready to serve”

Bill Maher claimed that the US “won the pandemic economically.” Florida Realtor Freddie Smith said inflation has made housing unaffordable for millennials.

Memes of the Week

Elon’s Memes

Thank You!

Thanks for reading! Consider sending a tip or Subscribing on 𝕏 to help keep the newsletter going!

DJ2zTEdHBD3guHLfVaNBaypr6bHFG5Nwfw

Tipping is really appreciated! Thank you!!

It's ALL Risky!

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What do you think? What was the biggest story of the week? Let me know!

Remember, Dogecoin is risky. But then again, it’s all risky!

Follow on twitter at @itsALLrisky

Send an email to itsALLrisky@gmail.com

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At the time of publication, Dogecoin is around $0.08 per coin.

Doginal Dilemma

The Palmetto Doge — Tue, 13 Feb 2024 01:00:30 GMT

Hey everyone,

A new technology called Doginals has brought the Dogecoin blockchain to a crossroads.

Doginals allows people to inscribe NFT-like images onto units of Dogecoin. The rise of Doginals has caused a geometric rise in the number of Dogecoin transactions, straining the network’s capacity.

Let’s take a look at the debate around Doginals, and how pushing Dogecoin to evolve.

Thanks for reading Risky Reads: The People’s News for the People’s Coin—𝕏’s leading open-source newspaper.

If you enjoy this newsletter, consider subscribing for bonus content on 𝕏. Subscribers receive exclusive commentary on crypto, AI, and the online memescape. Sign up via my profile today!

A dilemma has swept across the Dogecoin community.

A relatively new technology called Doginals, which is a variation of Bitcoin ordinals, has caused an explosion of transaction on the Dogecoin blockchain.

Doginals allow people to inscribe information onto the smallest individual unit of Dogecoin, sometimes known as a Shibe

In the case of Doginals, people are inscribing NFT-style images onto units of Dogecoin to create digital collectibles.

As with NFTs, most of the the behavior around Doginals is done by speculators.

These speculators are looking to profit by selling the collectible images in the future, rather than using Dogecoin as a currency.

The use of the Dogecoin blockchain for something other than money has caused controversy, with some in the community calling for an update to Doge’s core protocol to prevent people from inscribing images into blocks.

Doginals first appeared in mid-2023 and briefly caused daily Dogecoin transactions to surge into the millions.

This month has witnessed another explosion: activity has approached two million transactions on several days.

The latest surge in Doginal transactions has spurred a debate in the Doge community, especially among developers, about the future of the Dogecoin blockchain.

In particular, reports have claimed that crypto exchanges are experiencing difficulty settling transactions, which at least theoretically could cause them to pause selling Dogecoin.

The main problem is that the number transactions creates network congestion, leading to higher transaction fees.

Higher fees detract from Dogecoin’s utility as a currency and have led to delayed transactions.

The growth of Doginals has also made it difficult for regular folks to run a Dogecoin node on older computers as the size of the Dogecoin transaction database has increased.

Dogecoin developers have been discussing changes to the protocol, including the possibility of storing Doginal images somewhere besides the Doge blockchain.

The dilemma is an interesting test of decentralization: any solution can’t be imposed from a top-down entity, but has to be reached through community consensus.

Increased transactions due to Doginals doesn’t appear fatal to Dogecoin, but it’s pushing Doge to evolve now, in anticipation of a day when it is used as a worldwide currency.

No matter what happens, it’s probably a good thing that the Doge community is facing the problem of surging transactions now, rather than, for example, after 𝕏 adopts it.

What do you think: should Dogecoin blockchain include the ability to inscribe images and other digital collectibles, or should Doge be optimized as a currency?

Dogey Treats: News Bites

The Dogecoin Foundation released a new blog post including an updated developer library (libdogecoin 0.1.3), a 2023 retrospective, and hints of plans for 2024.

Elon posted “gm” the same minute that Bitcoin hit $50k on Monday afternoon.

Memes of the Week

Thank You!

Thanks for reading! Consider sending a tip or Subscribing on 𝕏 to help keep the newsletter going!

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What do you think? What was the biggest development for Doge this week? Let me know!

Remember, Dogecoin is risky. But then again, it’s all risky!

Follow on 𝕏 at @itsALLrisky

Send an email to itsALLrisky@gmail.com

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At the time of publication, Dogecoin is around $0.08 per coin.

Tucker Interviews Putin

The Palmetto Doge — Sat, 10 Feb 2024 16:01:35 GMT

Hey everyone,

This bonus news digest covers Tucker’s monumental interview with Vladimir Putin, looking at the buildup, interview itself, and aftermath.

Thanks for reading Risky Reads: The People’s News for the People’s Coin—𝕏’s leading open-source newspaper.

If you enjoy this newsletter, consider subscribing for bonus content on 𝕏. Subscribers receive exclusive commentary on crypto, AI, and the online memescape. Sign up via my profile today!

Tucker Interviews Putin

I. Run-up: X hits #1

The buildup to the Tucker/Putin interview was dominated by skirmish between new and old media forces.

On Thursday morning, in anticipation for the interview’s 6 pm drop, 𝕏 became the #1 most-downloaded app on the AppStore.

The achievement represented a decisive refutation to the oft-repeated “𝕏 is dying” narrative promulgated by the site’s rivals.

Hilariously, The Verge, which has spent months prematurely eulogizing 𝕏 under Elon, attempted to explain away the platform’s popularity as the result of a nude photo of Drake. The article did not mention Tucker’s interview.

Another attack came from Hillary Clinton who, without having seen the interview, called Tucker a “puppy dog” and “useful idiot” who “parrots Vladimir Putin’s pack of lies about Ukraine.”

CNN similarly painted Tucker as carrying water for the Kremlin.

On 𝕏, defenders of Tucker made light of mainstream media’s fawning coverage of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky

Elon chimed in with a savage post.

Throughout the day, there was a feeling that journalism had reached a crossroads, with the upstart online rebels finally having gained the upper hand.

II. The Interview

At 6 pm Thursday night, the interview dropped and instantly set the Internet abuzz.

Putin began the interview by asking Tucker, “are we having a talk show or a serious conversation?” before launching into a half-hour monolgue on Russian history beginning in the ninth century and working up to the present day.

The speech, which was calculated to justify Russia’s territorial claim to border regions of Western Ukraine, quickly became a meme.

When he reached the current era in his chronology, Putin argued the war in Ukraine began not in 2022 but 2014.

2014 was the year of the Maidan massacre in Ukraine, a CIA-sponsored coup which replaced Ukraines Russia-aligned President with a regime that favored the West.

Putin argued that the new regime encouraged violence by neo-Nazi militias against ethnic Russians in Ukraine’s western border regions, especially Orthodox Christians.

After its first half hour, the interview ranged more widely, with Putin presenting himself as competent, rational, and detail-oriented.

Several of Putins comments went viral in which he…

Accused the CIA of blowing up the Nord Stream Pipeline
Denied that his motive is to conquer territory beyond Ukraine: "It is absolutely out of the question... It goes against common sense to get involved in some kind of a global war. A global war will bring all of humanity to the brink of discussion. It's obvious"
Said Russia is willing to negotiate peace with the United States: “It's very simple. If you really want to stop fighting, you need to stop supplying weapons, then we can agree on some terms”
Argued the world is moving toward a multi-polar order through the BRICS economic coalition: “Your political establishment does not understand that the world is changing under objective circumstances”
Said western media works in service of western financial institutions: "In the war of propaganda, it's very difficult to defeat the United States. The United States controls all the world's media and many European media"
Argued the US made a mistake by weaponizing the dollar as a tool of foreign policy: "To use the dollar as a tool of foreign policy struggle is one of the biggest strategic mistakes made by the U.S political leadership"
Said the US is not run by its elected officials
Speculated that Elon may already have a Neuralink chip implanted in his brain: "There's no stopping Elon Musk. He will do as he see fits. I think he's a smart person. I truly believe he is. So, you need to reach an agreement with him."
Argued the US should stop stop funding the war in Ukraine: “Don’t you have anything better to do? You have issues on the border. Issues with migration, issues with the national debt”
Said that Tucker attempted to work for the CIA out of college

Tucker ended the interview by asking Putin to release Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gurshkovich, who was imprisoned in Russia last year for espionage. Putin said “in theory we can say we do not rule out that we can do that” but would not commit to releasing Gurshkovich.

Friday morning, a short follow-up video circulated of Tucker reflecting the interview. He showed a folder of documents given to him by Putin and said Putin was “smart” but “not good at explaining himself.”

Reactions to the interview split along lines of media ecosystem: the interview racked up a massive audience on 𝕏, with over 150 million views in its first 24 hours.

The legacy world questioned the sincerity of Putin’s offer for peace talks…

and again attacked Tucker for doing the interview.

III. Biden presser

Hours before Tucker’s Putin interview released, another huge announcement dropped: the Department of Justice said it would not prosecute Joe Biden for his mishandling of classified documents dating back to his time as Vice President.

While on its face the news appeared good for Biden, the DOJ’s rationale for not pressing charges will likely prove politically costly for the President.

Essentially, the DOJ determined that Biden was too old to have charges pressed.

The DOJ’s report read, “Mr Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory…It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him—by then a former president well into his eighties—of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”

The report also claimed Biden could not remember when he was vice president or recall within several years the date of his son Beau’s death.

Biden appeared for an emergency press conference at 7:45 pm Thursday night, just as the two-hour Tucker/Putin interview reached its peak virality.

During the press conference, Biden yelled at a reporter for questioning his mental acuity and confused the Presidents of Mexico and Egypt.

The latest gaffes followed several incidents in recent days of Biden struggling to communicate.

Biden’s questionable fitness has been a hotly debated meme on 𝕏 since he took office.

However, the idea that his age exempts him from legal accountability is something not even his most ardent supporters have claimed until now.

The timing of Biden’s press conference overlapping with the Putin interview created a powerful contrast between the two world leaders.

The differences between the two could not have been more clear if the events had been scripted. The contrast became its own meme.

For now, Thursday evening’s happenings appear to have set the stage for the coming weeks.

As US election season heats up and Congress in legislative gridlock over both the border and the wars, several big questions loom:

Is 𝕏 replacing the mainstream media as the narrative engine of the West?
Has Tucker become 𝕏’s main character as the most consequential independent journalist in the world?
Did Tucker’s interview with Putin change public perceptions of Russia/Ukraine?
Is Joe Biden still the DNC’s presumptive nominee for 2024?
How will the contrast between US and Russian leadership impact geopolitical standoff between the two countries?

Memes of the Week

Elon’s Memes

Thank You!

Thanks for reading! Consider sending a tip or Subscribing on 𝕏 to help keep the newsletter going!

DJ2zTEdHBD3guHLfVaNBaypr6bHFG5Nwfw

Tipping is really appreciated! Thank you!!

It's ALL Risky!

Thank you, kind reader, for reading and subscribing to this newsletter. I really appreciate it!

If you haven’t already, please sign up to this email newsletter for more weekly articles like this one. Also, please share it with a friend or on twitter if you enjoyed this article.

What do you think? What was the biggest story of the week? Let me know!

Remember, Dogecoin is risky. But then again, it’s all risky!

Follow on twitter at @itsALLrisky

Send an email to itsALLrisky@gmail.com

Send a Doge tip: DJ2zTEdHBD3guHLfVaNBaypr6bHFG5Nwfw

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At the time of publication, Dogecoin is around $0.08 per coin.

Tucker in Russia, Border Bill, Taylor Swift Meme War, The War On Children

The Palmetto Doge — Wed, 07 Feb 2024 14:01:18 GMT

Hey everyone,

This news digest covers the following stories from the past week:

1. Tucker Carlson’s trip to Russia to interview Putin

2. Three big border stories

3. The meme war over Taylor Swift

4. Robby Starbuck’s documentary, The War On Children

Don’t miss videos, memes, and news bites at the end!

Thanks for reading Risky Reads: The People’s News for the People’s Coin—𝕏’s leading open-source newspaper.

If you enjoy this newsletter, consider subscribing for bonus content on 𝕏. Subscribers receive exclusive commentary on crypto, AI, and the online memescape. Sign up via my profile today!

Tucker in Russia

Over the weekend, massive news broke that Tucker Carlson was in Russia to interview Vladimir Putin.

A Tucker/Putin interview has been in the works for a while.

Last year, Tucker revealed that the NSA hacked Signal—an encrypted messaging app—in 2021 in an effort to scuttle his plans to interview Putin for Fox News.

Opinion on Putin is highly polarized in American politics.

Democrats, neoconservatives, and mainstream media represent a coalition that is aggressively pro-Ukraine and therefore anti-Putin.

This coalition’s strategy has been to paint anyone opposing continued funding of the Ukrainian military as pro-Putin.

In opposition, populists on both the left and right tend to argue that Putin’s actions in Ukraine are bad, but America is better off not getting involved in a territorial dispute with a nuclear power on the other side of the world.

This perspective is not represented in legacy journalism, but does get a significant hearing from independent online media.

The differences between these political camps is reflected how Putin is covered by the two media ecosystems.

Long clips of the Russian President speaking routinely circulate on the Internet, where his words are closely analyzed.

Mainstream media depicts Putin as a Hilter-like figure: negative sentiment about him is permitted, but access to his actual speeches and interviews is strictly limited.

For these reasons, Tucker’s 2024 visit has elicited a strong negative reaction from both mainstream media and establishment politicians, who’ve equated interviewing Putin with supporting him.

Notably, after news of Tucker’s Russia visit broke, neocon guru Bill Kristol called on the United States to block his re-entry into the United States, while CNN pundit Adam Kinzinger said he was a “traitor”.

By contrast, RFK Jr argued in favor of free speech by asserting that Tucker was within his rights as a journalist to interview one of the world’s most powerful leaders.

The transformation of Putin into an establishment bogeyman is taken for granted now, but is a surprisingly recent phenomenon.

Not long ago, various Western leaders—including Obama, Bush, Clinton, and Biden—praised Putin as a trustworthy ally.

Relations between Putin and the West took a turn for the worse in 2014, when the West-backed Maidan coup overthrew Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

The coup was in response to Yanukovych’s decision to strengthen trade agreements with Russia instead of the EU.

The new government, which Putin claimed was illegitimate, favored the West over Russia. In response to the Maidan coup, Russia annexed Crimea.

In 2016, the US foreign policy establishment further alienated Putin by attempting to paint then-candidate Trump as a Kremlin asset.

The idea that Trump was secretly controlled by Russia would have been one of the craziest things ever to happen in America politics…but instead, it turned out to be a bogus conspiracy theory paid for by the Clinton campaign and propagated by its media allies.

Despite years of investigations, no proof has ever emerged that Trump was a Russian asset. Rather than walk back its claims, the media has continued to operate under the presumption that Putin is secretly in league with America First figures, including Trump and Tucker.

For his part, Putin has become an increasingly sharp critic of the Western establishment over time, claiming the West’s abandonment of traditional values would lead to the legitimization of pedophilia

The 2022 war in Ukraine marked another major escalation in the Russia Man Bad narrative.

The establishment portrayed Russia’s military campaign as an unprovoked invasion, and used that depiction to justify sending unlimited weapons and money to the Ukrainian military effort.

Populists and non-interventionists argued that Putin’s invasion was well telegraphed reaction designed to repel NATO expansion after years of rising tensions between Russia and the West.

Establishment media’s strong reaction to news of the Tucker interview likely stems from fear that if Westerners hear Putin’s uncensored speech, he will come across not as a monomaniacal dictator, but more like a pragmatic and rationally self-interested politician whose country’s own needs are at cross-purposes with the goals of American empire.

This, in turn, could cause Americans to question the establishment’s obsessive support for the war in Ukraine.

It also might lead them to doubt the media’s (at this point absurd) depiction of Trump as a Kremlin asset.

Yesterday, Tucker released a short video in which he confirmed he was interviewing Putin.

He explained, “We are not here because we love Vladimir Putin. We are here because we love the United States….we are not encouraging you to agree with what Putin may say in this interview, but we are urging you to watch it.”

After Tucker’s video, Elon liked a post arguing that Tucker was changing journalism as we know it…

…while also endeavoring to keep things light-hearted…

Whenever the video drops, it has a good chance to become the most-watched interview ever.

What do you think: is their something wrong with Tucker interviewing Putin? Or should the American people have the option to hear the Russian President’s own words?

For more on the history of the US’s involvement in Ukraine, take a look at the excellent documentary Ukraine on Fire. Here’s what Russian citizens had to say about Tucker.

Border Bill, Voter Fraud, Mayorkas Impeachment

Debate over the US southern border has stayed red hot over the last week.

Discussion followed three main currents: the connection between illegal immigration and voter fraud, new border legislation, and attempts to impeach DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

Voter Fraud

On Friday, Elon began openly accusing the Biden Administration of enabling illegal immigration as an electoral strategy.

In his strongest assertion about immigration yet, he agreed with the statement that the White House was carrying out a “controlled demolition” of America through open-border policies.

Over the weekend, he continued to highlight the connection between illegal immigration and elections.

In one post, he pointed out loopholes in the census that incentivize illegal immigration for congressional districting.

In another, he highlighted documents from a liberal think tank arguing that granting citizenship to illegal immigrants is a winning electoral strategy.

In a third, he criticized state-level policies that undermine electoral security and allow non-citizens to vote without detection.

He also highlighted several memes about illegal immigration.

As the border debate has gained momentum, immigration memes have proliferated 𝕏.

Importantly, these memes aren’t overtly anti-immigrant, mean-spirited, or bigoted.

Instead, they plainly communicate the alarming consequences of allowing millions of people to circumvent the lawful immigration process.

So far, Elon’s focus is on 2024. He hasn’t questioned the results of any past elections.

However, his recent posts and memes are nudging the Overton Window toward a re-evaluation of 2020.

The discussion hasn’t reached that point yet, but looks like it’s headed in that direction.

Biden defeated Trump by seven million votes despite winning 1/5th as many counties

A related sub-discussion was the US’s overly friendly treatment of illegal immigrants to the point of giving them preference over American citizens.

The topic briefly blew up when an illegal immigrant accused of beating up an NYC cop was released without bail—and gave cameras the finger on his way out.

The same day, New York City launched a new $53M program to give pre-paid credit cards to migrant families.

Elon argued that leniency toward illegal immigrants was explicable through electoral politics: “This explains why there are so few deportations, as every deportation is a lost vote. As happened this week, you can literally assault police officers in broad daylight in New York, be released with no bail, give everyone the finger and *still* not be deported!! Outrageous.”

On Saturday, Trump pushed the discussion further by claiming the Chinese Communist Party is paying Mexican drug cartels to move Chinese migrants across the border.

The comments played on a recently viral Tucker/Bret Weinstein interview about mysterious camps of Chinese migrants in the Darien Gap.

Trump’s statements led to the accusation that he was pushing “Immigration Conspiracy Theories.”

What do you think: is there a connection between illegal immigration and voter fraud?

Border Bill

As citizens take an increasingly dim view on the federal government’s handling of immigration, incumbent politicians are feeling pressure to appear as if they’re doing something about about border security.

Last week, Biden called on Congress to pass new border legislation.

On 𝕏, the call was met with skepticism that the President already has sufficient authority to close the border without additional powers.

Still, on Sunday night, Senate leaders and the White House released a new border bill.

The $118B bill allocated $20B to the US border as part of a larger package that included $60B in aid to Ukraine, $14B to Israel, $10B to Gaza, $2.4B for the Yemen war, and $2B to Taiwan.

Critics also pointed out that the new law granted illegal immigrants work permits and budgeted money for their lawyers.

Elon called the bill a ”major scam.”

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said it was dead on arrival.

Even Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell came out against it, sealing its fate.

Trump took a similar view, calling on Republicans not to pass the law.

In response, Democrats accused Trump of blocking border solutions for political purposes.

On Tuesday, Biden blamed Trump for disfunction at the border, telling reporters, “The only reason the border is not secure is Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican friends.”

The bill’s failure has led to a strange and at times hilarious dynamic where Democratic Party, which spent nearly a decade attacking Trump as racist for his border hawkishness, suddenly finds itself blaming him for keeping the border open.

What do you think: who is responsible for the US’s open border?

Mayorkas Impeachment

The third main current in border debate centered on the impeachment of Department of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

Conservative border hawks have been clamoring to impeach Mayorkas since November for dereliction of duty.

At the end of January, House Republicans introduced articles of impeachment alleging "willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law."

On Saturday, Elon criticized Mayorkas for writing guidance that made it harder to deport illegal immigrants.

He also ran a poll on 𝕏 about impeaching Mayorkas. 89% of 460k respondents voted in favor.

Last night, the House vote to impeach Mayorkas failed 214-216, with a handful of conservatives crossing party lines to side with Democrats.

Following the vote, news broke that a new vote will take place next week, which Republicans expect to pass.

What do you think: should someone in the Biden administration be held accountable for the border? Or is new legislation the right approach?

For a closer look at the migrant situation, Bret Weinstein traveled to the Darien Gap to investigate the migrant experience. Viva Frei broke down media’s hysterical reaction to Elon’s voter fraud posts.

Taylor Swift Meme War

Over the last year, Taylor Swift’s stardom has reached new heights.

Her ongoing Eras tour is the highest-grossing musical tour of all time.

This fall, her relationship with NFL star and Pfizer spokesman Travis Kelce has simultaneously brought millions of new fans to the NFL and made her a Sunday afternoon fixture on TV.

As Kelce’s Chiefs advanced through the playoffs to the Super Bowl, Swift has come into the spotlight for another reason.

Last week, when a meme war broke out between conservative influencers and legacy media over Swift’s expected Presidential endorsement (in 2020, she backed Joe Biden).

Swift’s unparalleled cultural influence could make her endorsement this year more momentous than perhaps any other single individual on the planet in determining the outcome of the 2024 election, so much so that the Biden campaign reportedly asking job applicants to describe their “Taylor Swift strategy.”

The combination of Swift’s expected Biden endorsement and Super Bowl presence led conservatives to speculate that aspects of her recent virality are manufactured.

The evidence backing these claims is thin, but not nothing.

Doubters point to an old clip of Swift complaining about how the rights to her music were purchased by political Democrat mega-donor George Soros.

There’s also unearthed slide with a picture of Swift from a presentation given by a NATO contractor about using celebrities to “spread desired messaging.”

For the most part, the Swift theories have been a mildly entertaining sideshow on 𝕏.

However, they did provoke a vocal response from television pundits.

Print outlets also took the opportunity to skewer the theories. In particular, the Washington Post has maintained near-daily coverage of the phenomenon.

At some point, the story of the existence of the Swift-theories took on a life of its own, even drawing parody from conservative humor outlet Babylon Bee.

It also caused the Department of Defense to issue a statement that “Taylor Swift is not part of a DOD psychological operation. Period.”

On the other hand, a conspicuous Swift endorsement by anti-Trump politician Liz Cheney caused left-leaning journalist Michael Tracey to wonder if perhaps there might be something to the psyop angle.

‘As with anything related to Swift, the meme war drew massive coverage.

There’s a good reason the media are so fixated on the theories: just as immigration is a winning issue for the right, Taylor Swift is probably a winning issue for the left.

Swift is a cultural proxy for modern feminism. Conservatives who attack Swift’s political leanings can easily be spun to appear backwards, anti-woman, misogynistic.

At the same time, while coverage of the theories has been very loud, the theories themselves have been fairly benign.

People should be free to speculate about anything. Since there’s an undenaible element to stagecraft with Swift’s public persona, it’s fair to ask where real life ends and artifice begins.

At this point, the reality of the situation is probably more mundane that most of the wildest speculations: entertainment and media industries are closely intertwined with the Democratic Party.

This is no different than the way in which the big oil and defense contractors are bound up with the GOP—each political machine has its industry-level supporters, who back their preferred party in exchange for political favors.

Entertainment gatekeepers like Harvey Weinstein tend to be tied to the DNC, while oil and defense industries are GOP territory

For this reason, celebrities learn early on that espousing the right liberal political opinions is the only way to advance in the entertainment industry.

Those who buck the trend quickly find themselves out of work.

In this respect, Swift is no different than anyone else in her position. Her probable endorsement for Joe Biden doesn’t need any more explaining than this.

For his part far, Elon wisely stayed out of the fray.

On Monday, he celebrated the promotion of Swift’s next album on 𝕏.

He also sympathized with Swift, who has become the subject of a private jet tracker account like the one that followed his own movements in 2022.

What do you think: why have the Taylor Swift psyop stories garnered so much attention?

The War on Children

This week, a new documentary was released on 𝕏 called The War On Children.

The documentary looks at the impact of social media, LGBTQ+ ideology, pornography, changes to public education, and other sexualizing influences on young minds.

Elon highlighted The War On Children by posting its trailer to his account.

Other major social media platforms refused to allow advertising for the film.

Overall, the film argues that changes to the lives of children are the deliberate result of bad actors attempting to weaken the US’s national identity by targeting its most vulnerable population.

What do you think: is there anything suspicious to changes in children’ lives over the last decade? Is there an agenda to sexualize children?

The War On Children can be viewed by subscribing to Robby Starbuck on 𝕏 or going to TheWarOnChildren.com

Dogey Treats: News Bites

𝕏

Across Gina Carano filed a lawsuit against Disney and Lucasfilm for firing her based on her political opinions. The case is being backed by Elon, who wrote, “If you were discriminated against by Disney or its subsidiaries (ABC, ESPN, Marvel, etc), just reply to this post to receive legal support

Elon highlighted post looking at the connections between Delaware judge who voided his Tesla compensation plan and the Biden Administration.

US Politics

RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel will step down after the South Carolina primary.

Newly released emails show the White House pressured Amazon to censor books about vaccines from search results.

New polling from Bloomberg showed Trump ahead in seven swing states. An NBC poll found Trump with a five point lead over Biden, his largest ever. A Quinnipiac poll found Trump trailing Biden by six points.

Biden White House spokesman said Friday’s Middle East strikes were the beginning of the administration’s response to the deaths of three US soldiers in Jordan.

Nikki Haley was roasted for posting obviously fake messages from supporters.

Elon praised Ken Griffin for withdrawing support for Harvard over its DEI policies.

Joe Biden appointed John Podesta to be his climate czar. As a result, the Podesta brothers art collection and strange history came back into the news.

RFK Jr called Joe Biden’s history serving black Americans into question. He also said he looked forward to debating Trump after Trump attacked him as “radical.” Rand Paul praised RFK’s new book, The Wuhan Cover-Up. RFK called to remove US troops from the Middle East. In another post, he wrote, “As president, I’m going to order the CDC to take every step necessary to remove neurotoxic fluoride from American drinking water.”

Elon highlighted a list from House Speaker Mike Johnson of 64 instances of the Biden Administration undermining border security.

Biden was Community Noted for a post about the gender wage gap.

The data in the most recent federal government jobs report was widely questioned.

Geopolitics

El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele won re-election with a record 87% of the vote.

Farmers protests descended on the EU Parliament in Brussels in opposition to regulations. Are the Canadian truckers going global?

Global Financial System

Fed Chair Jerome Powell told 60 Minutes, “the US government is on an unsustainable fiscal path.”

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen urged Congress to pass legislation regulating stablecoins.

The Chinese stock market plunged after Trump said he would impose a 60% tariff on Chinese goods.

Rand Paul warned of a black swan event that could destroy the value of the US Dollar “over a period of days”

Health

Tucker’s interview with Callie Means about Ozempic and the healthcare industry provoked a response from RFK Jr on the chronic disease epidemic. RFK called the interview an “an extraordinary piece of television.”

A major study is investigating the use of Ivermectin for cancer. A video of a man using anti-parasitic Fenbendazole to bring stage 4 cancer into remission went viral.

Misc

Russell Brand sat with Tucker for his first interview since being accused of sexual misconduct.

A man who destroyed a satanic statue in Iowa’s capitol building was charged with a hate crime. Elon asked “What has become of America?”

Memes of the Week

Elon’s Memes

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Could MrBeast Go All-In On Dogecoin?

The Palmetto Doge — Tue, 06 Feb 2024 01:00:06 GMT

Hey everyone,

MrBeast is the undisputed king of YouTube, captivating the Internet with his viral videos.

Lately, he’s been growing his presence on 𝕏, and has dropped a few hints about Dogecoin.

Let’s take a look at why a Beast/Doge partnership is inevitable.

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Jimmy Donaldson, aka MrBeast, is the world’s most succesful YouTuber, using outrageous stunts, eye-popping cash giveaways, and heartening philanthropy to build an audience of more than 200 million subscribers.

But could his next big move involve Dogecoin?

A Dogecoin-MrBeast connection makes sense because MrBeast is a master of online virality.

No one in the universe understands how to capture attention on the Internet quite like MrBeast, so it makes sense that Dogecoin—the most viral cryptocurrency—caught his eye.

His Dogecoin journey started in February 2021, when he responded to Elon’s Dogecoin “Ɖ is for Ɖogecoin! Instructional video” by joking that he might YOLO into Doge.

The same month, he told an interviewer he tried to invest $500k into Dogecoin when it was half a penny, only to be stymied by Robinhood's purchase limit of $50k/day.

In the interview, he explained why he thought Dogecoin will be valuable: “It’s just funny—that’s why I think it will be valuable, and that’s what I wanted to put that kind of money into it…the Internet’s weird.”

A few months later, he did an ad for Coinbase featuring Dogecoin alongside Bitcoin and Ethereum.

MrBeast's affinity for Doge deepened in October 2021, when his ocean-cleaning project TeamSeas made Dogecoin an official payment option. The project led to the removal of 20 million pounds of trash from the ocean.

In 2022, when Elon proposed eating a happy meal on TV if the chain accepted Dogecoin, MrBeast’s hamburger start-up floated the idea of taking Doge as well.

Since he started paying attention to Doge, MrBeast has increasingly entered Elon’s orbit, burnishing his Twitter/𝕏 credentials as an Elon reply guy.

This year, MrBeast has been making big moves to grow his presence on 𝕏.

In January, he posted a video to 𝕏 for the first time. It quickly racked up 175M views and generated $250k in ad revenue.

In a genius stroke, he used the ad rev for a giveaway, which became 𝕏’s most reposted post ever.

Last Friday, MrBeast published another video about rescuing 100 stray dogs and partnering them with homes.

The video evoked the story of the original Doge Kabosu, who was rescued from a kill shelter and, through a series of serendipitous events, became the Internet’s most iconic meme.

In the video, MrBeast’s shelter featured a giant blow-up Shiba Inu outside its doors.

Doge community member DogecoinNorway reposted the video with the commentary “Dogecoin,” leading to a follow from a *fake* MrBeast account, and a real like from Elon.

The combination of MrBeast and Dogecoin makes tons of sense.

MrBeast is a master of online virality, while Dogecoin’s innovation is to tie blockchain technology to viral memes.

Similarly, MrBeast and Dogecoin are both bound up the idea of using the Internet as a force for good. Dogecoin is the ultimate gifting cryptocurrency, and MrBeast is the Internet’s most effective philanthropist.

MrBeast has shown increasing awareness of Dogecoin in recent years as he’s drifted into Elon’s orbit. His growing presence on 𝕏 is setting the stage for an unstoppable Beast/Doge partnership.

It’s no surprise that MrBeast and Dogecoin are converging. When they collide, the Internet will never be the same.

What do you think: will MrBeast go all-in on Dogecoin?

Dogey Treats: News Bites

Elon highlighted an old post of his for a proposed university called Texas Institute of Technology and Science (TITS) where tuition can be paid in Dogecoin. He resurrected the idea over the weekend, asking, “Should I make the Texas Institute of Technology & Science real?” and liking another post about Doge tuition.

ESPN commentator Stephen A Smith highlighted a post from ex-Dogecoin CEO @greg16676935420 in a hilarious segment on his show.

Memes of the Week

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Thanks for reading! Consider sending a tip or Subscribing on 𝕏 to help keep the newsletter going!

DJ2zTEdHBD3guHLfVaNBaypr6bHFG5Nwfw

Tipping is really appreciated! Thank you!!

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Thank you, kind reader, for reading and subscribing to this newsletter. I really appreciate it!

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What do you think? What was the biggest development for Doge this week? Let me know!

Remember, Dogecoin is risky. But then again, it’s all risky!

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Send an email to itsALLrisky@gmail.com

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At the time of publication, Dogecoin is around $0.08 per coin.

Risky Reads

New Articles for June and July

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Kabosu's Passing and the First Crypto Election

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Three New Articles!

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Who Owns the Doge?

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Dogecoin Is Non-Debt Money

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Dogecoin Is The New Financial Operating System

Dogey Treats: News Bites

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Dogecoin: Security, Commodity, or Currency?

Dogey Treats: News Bites

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Choose Doge

St Patty’s Doge

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Doge Is More Than a Meme Coin

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BTC ATH, OpenAI Lawsuit, Diddy, Border Update, Meme Primary

Bitcoin Hits New High

Elon OpenAI lawsuit

Diddy Lawsuit

Border Update

The Meme Primary

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Dogey Treats: News Bites

Memes of the Week

Elon’s Memes

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Is Dogecoin A Hedge Against Inflation?

Dogey Treats: News Bites

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Gemini Debacle, Cybertruck Chic, Covid Study, Meme Primaries, Russia/Ukraine

Google’s Gemini Debacle

Cybertruck Chic

Vaccine Study

The Meme Primary

Russia-Ukraine Update

Top Videos

Dogey Treats: News Bites

Memes of the Week

Elon’s Memes

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Dogecoin Completes Bitcoin

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