Articles
164 articles
Build an Android app. Keep your real name out of it.
Build and share a modest Android app under a chosen identity using phone-operated agents, encrypted messaging, ecash, and project-specific signing keys.
We Stopped Writing the Code
Autonomous agents sharply reduce the cost of writing native platform code, leaving human builders to concentrate on product direction and responsibility.
When White Hats Take the Reserve
A cache key that omitted context let forged L-BTC exist, and one authorized peg-out moved nearly the whole bitcoin reserve out.
Building White Noise Inside White Noise
The messenger I live in is also the workshop where each annoyance becomes a fresh build I test on my phone.
Given Enough Agents
Readable code was never reviewed code; a few thousand sats each month buys an audit of the software guarding your wealth.
Coldcard Rewrote Its Seed Code to Escape the GPL. Users Paid the Price.
Coldcard rewrote shared GPL seed code while restricting competition; the replacement failed catastrophically, proving source visibility falls short of software freedom.
The Couriers Knew
Centuries before encrypted email existed, merchants and dissidents moved letters and packages through private courier networks that outran every imperial monopoly.
Twenty-Four Words for an nsec
Every Nostr private key ever generated can be losslessly encoded as twenty-four words, recovered byte-for-byte forever, stamped onto Bitcoin steel plates.
The Cost of Borrowed Maps
Google Maps charges you in surveillance on every trip. OpenStreetMap and Organic Maps let your phone route locally, third parties excluded.
Protocol First, Library Second, Application Third
The zkSNACKs coordinator died because we ran the only one; Wasabi the client survived because that layer was protocol-shaped, not operator-shaped.
Building the Parallel Economy
Praxeology joins cypherpunk cryptography: privacy is a fact of action, a defensible norm, and a buildable property under pressure.
Trust and Dispute in the Parallel Economy
Tools move bits and settle payments. Reliability over time and adjudication of broken deals remain unbuilt institutional work.
Implementation Strategy
Privacy implementation is progressive. Each tier addresses a different adversary and stops where its threat model is covered.
Operational Security
Cryptography fails when humans fail. OPSEC ties each defense to a specific adversary and sustains the discipline over time.
Decentralized Social Infrastructure
Nostr moves identity from platform databases into user-held keypairs, so a ban no longer deletes the social graph.
Bitcoin Privacy and Monetary Layers
Bitcoin's base layer is transparent by design. Privacy on Bitcoin is an architectural achievement built in layers above it.
Bitcoin as Sound and Resistant Money
Bitcoin's monetary rules hold because every full node validates blocks against them. A chain that breaks them carries no value.
Bitcoin and the Digital Money Breakthrough
Nakamoto solved double-spending without a central operator and produced base money instead of another claim on an issuer.
The Unsellable Identity
Nostr accounts cannot be sold because sellers cannot prove they forgot the private key, which collapses the market for reputation handoffs.
Anonymous Communication Networks
Content encryption hides what was said. The transport layer leaks who is communicating with whom, enough for targeting decisions.