qecez (@qecez) header
qecez (@qecez) profile picture

Noticing things for a living

Joined February 2015
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ETH as a hedge against economic instability is quite the gaslighting. I don't know of any so-called monetary system that has changed more than Ethereum's. It is the quintessential example of instability in the cryptocurrency world.
Why ETH is the store of value for what's coming We are almost certainly heading into a period of high inflation and extreme economic and social volatility. As inflation and risk erode the purchasing power of nation-state money and many other assets, it will matter more than ever to hold assets that keep or grow their value. Gold and BTC are high-powered money and excellent stores of value. ETH goes further. Not debt-based. Like gold and BTC, ETH is not debt-based or credit-based money. Censorship resistant. Like BTC, or gold and silver held physically, ETH transactions on Ethereum L1 can't be censored. That's true for simple payments and for complex smart contract programs like DeFi, and those programs are guaranteed to execute. Cheap to hold. Like BTC, ETH is relatively cheap to hold and store securely. Cheap to use at any scale. Ethereum is cheap and easy to use whether a transaction moves $1 or billions. Any well-formed transaction is guaranteed to execute. Sound, and getting sounder. ETH is disinflationary and becomes ultrasound, meaning deflationary, during periods of high network activity. Broadly useful. ETH has many uses across the Ethereum economy, and that economy will grow by orders of magnitude as finance, and eventually every industry, moves onchain. Global adoption of the Web protocols in the '90s and '00s transformed the world economy. Ethereum is the foundation of Web3, the user-centric, decentralized web. Collateral money. ETH works as collateral, and collateral that grows in value over time is a powerful thing. Home of stablecoins. Ethereum hosts the bulk of stablecoin activity. Stablecoins serve as payment money and as unit-of-account money. Despot-proof. Like BTC, ETH can't be used by a despot to financially exploit or repress citizens. Over time that should have positive geopolitical effects. Programmable. ETH is programmable money. You can attach arbitrary logic to transactions and build an entire economy on smart-contract-based agreements and business processes (see shodai.network). Transparent or private, and auditable either way. Money and financial instruments on Ethereum can be public or private, and in both cases selectively disclosable and auditable. Privacy tools for retail and institutional users include VPNs, mix networks, shielded and privacy pools, Railgun, stealth addresses, Kohaku, and zero-knowledge proofs in many forms, including on L2s and on private permissioned EVM networks linked through bridgeless synchronous composability. Future-proof. By the end of 2027, or partway through 2028 at the latest, ETH will be quantum-safe and AI-safe money. ETH is the base money of an exponentially growing ecosystem that should keep growing for decades. Its monetary premium will keep rising, because retail, corporate, and government users will all need to hold some. Part of today's premium is speculative: Ethereum dominates smart contract blockchains, but it hasn't fully hit its stride or gone mainstream yet. Machine intelligence will supercharge every scientific and technological pursuit and grow global GDP bigger and faster than any of us can imagine. Ethereum L1 and modular Ethereum L2s will undergird most of the high-value agreements, transactions, payment flows, and complex business processes behind the coming hybrid human-machine decentralized economy.
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I built an open-source chain analysis tool that anyone can use. It requires no payment, no login, and no data you search is ever seen by Tracey’s server. Everything you search in Tracey is processed directly in your browser. All of Tracey’s heuristics are public and have clearly described shortcomings. The entire website comes with tooltips explaining to you what each step does. Most of its clustering rules are pulled from the disclosed research papers, some I wrote myself to be more conservative. I built Tracey for myself, but thought it might be useful to other people as well – especially in light of all the recent thefts of funds. It can’t help you create evidence, but it may help you find some leads on where your money is moving on bitcoin. 1/4 🔽
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Bro is reinventing Bitcoin from first principles
Expanding on why I believe "ETH as store of value (SoV)" makes much more sense to focus on than "ETH as fee-burning token". Three primary reasons: 1. ETH as fee-burning token never was as strong as it seemed 2. Optimizing for ETH as fee-burning token would demand Ethereum and ETH function in ways that are very hard to make compatible with decentralization and capture resistance. 3. Meanwhile, optimizing for ETH as SoV is aligned with Ethereum focusing on its unique strengths (decentralization and CROPS) EIP-1559 (including its burn) is fine and good, we should keep them. But we should not feel sad if fee burn is < 10% of breakeven indefinitely; the value of ETH comes from elsewhere. The core idea: the big thing that people appreciate about Ethereum is decentralization and CROPS. The main pragmatic benefit that these things translate into is stability. SoV is the category where that is not an unneeded extra we merely put effort into for ideological reasons, but rather a pragmatic strength from the perspective of people putting in their assets. And in the era of AI disruption, stability will be highly valued.
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Our enemy: The State.
A crypto holder in France scared off kidnappers by firing a Glock from his window. A court just sentenced him to 30 months in prison. The case turns on where the attackers were when he pulled the trigger. The facts, per French press reports: • The attempted kidnapping happened at La Roche-sur-Yon, in Vendée, on 31 October 2026 • The victim, a 23-year-old identified as Ayman R., fired from a window. He reportedly said he did it out of panic • The attackers fled without taking him and left behind a vehicle reported as stolen • Prosecutors first opened an attempted murder investigation and police arrested him • The sentence is 30 months in prison, plus a 15-year ban on carrying a weapon Prosecutors called the shot revenge, not self-defense, because the attackers were already leaving. French law requires a response proportionate to an immediate threat, and prosecutors argued that once the attackers were running, there was none. France has been hit by a wave of crypto kidnappings, and in April 2026 prosecutors charged 88 people in connected cases. A man scared off his attackers, then got prison for the shot.
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Weekend hack: HackerTube. I was annoyed with YouTube's recommendations so I had Claude filter down 43M comments over 20 years of HN to 6,454 videos that keep being recommended. *Significantly* better viewing experience, ~2 hours with Opus 5.5: hackertube.org/ - Excellent recs without any logins (state is kept in local browser session) - Thumbnail is a representative frame from middle of the video instead of the super duper A/B test hyper-optimized user uploads - Underlying data from the comment analysis as one zip file, point your Claude at it and ask for your own version - HackerTube Longs ✊ A bit more on the process: I use Claude Code (desktop app for Mac), Opus 5.5 on Medium effort as my default. I only talk to Claude and have it do everything, the only "manual work" I helped with in tandem was in the browser (reminiscent of MenuGen): 1) I had to create some kind of API key from Google Cloud UI to query YouTube for video metadata, 2) I booted up a VPS box for serving and 3) I bought the domain name. Once the box was up I gave Claude the IP and told it update, secure, harden, deploy and optimize the code, and it did the whole thing. Many awesome projects that would have normally taken weeks/months even can now be few-shotted for breakfast. What else are we not thinking of.
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🚨Scam alert: @build_on_bob is refusing to return my Bitcoin after a failed BTC->USDT swap, despite advertising its service as NON-CUSTODIAL. "Swap reverted. Your funds are safe." Except nothing arrived to the Bitcoin refund address I provided. And then this:
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Bitcoin returned. Can't help but wonder whether it would've happened without spending hours making noise about it publicly, but alas.
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With a large family, with boys and girls you get to know them both, and you’re invested in them both. Having a large family precludes certain types of ignorance and solipsistic theorizing. You’re invested in the world in a way that ‘politics’ is obviously a poor substitute for.
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qecez retweeted
North Korea in 2031 if DeFi is allowed to exist for 5 more years
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No funds are at risk unless liveness requirements exist like LN*
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everyone is FUDDING AI as an attack vector for BTC, but I have to say, the decision to keep the software simple, the attack surface small, and extensively vet every change looks incredibly prescient right now. if anything, AI hacking the shit out of everything validates the approach BTC Core has taken over the past decade to move slowly and resist adding complex functionality that cryptards said was essential and the absence of which made BTC obsolete.
Everyday is Zeroday
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A digital bearer asset is an incredible invention, but as usual, it seems respect will have to be earned the hard way. I've said for years that altcoins are a liability for bitcoin. Not because of the risk they pose from a competitive standpoint, but rather the widening of attack surfaces for holders due to the slapdash nature with which they were developed. I would not hold bitcoin in any hardware wallet, service, or exchange that does business with shitcoins. Too much complexity, too many vulnerabilities. If you leave the backdoor open, attackers will use it. AI has lowered the bar for hacking and I think it's long past time we insulate ourselves.
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I rooted for coinbase, but OK.
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decentralized currency industry saved by centralized currency issuer. peak larpers
🙏🙏🙏 life saver
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qecez retweeted
Replying to @KobeissiLetter
You didn't replace central banks, you just gave a private company the power to turn off a billion dollars
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BREAKING: World's largest crypto exchange Binance hacked with over $5.6 billion stolen: • $1.45 billion $BTC • $875 million $ETH • $234 million $TRX • $50 million $XAUT • $1.57 billion $USDT • $823 million $USDC • $75 million $WBETH • $88.5 million $RLUSD + $447.5 million additional cryptocurrencies This is the largest hack in crypto history.
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A tale as old as Bitcoin itself. nitter.gq/peterktodd/status/1811…
So about those "dirty" coins that are so "dirty" @VoletCom can't send them back to @giacomozucco... Turns out @VoletCom spent them, mixing them together with other customer deposits! 😂😂😂 Like, OMG, now all their customer funds are CONTAMINATED!!! TELL @VOLETCOM YOU DON'T WANT @GIACOMOZUCCO'S FILTHY COINS SPLOOGED ALL OVER YOUR MONEY!!!
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I'm publicly calling on @build_on_bob to explain how this is compatible with their non-custodial claims and return my BTC.
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If a service can take control of your Bitcoin, freeze it based on undisclosed compliance checks, and deny you access to your own funds, users deserve to know that BEFORE trusting it with their coins.
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BOB’s refund docs call Gateway “non-custodial.” But their technical docs say: “the user's BTC lands in the solver's own wallet.” If a solver can block both payout and refund, what control does the user actually retain? docs.gobob.xyz/gateway/techn…
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