thetrocro
Troy Cross

Philosopher. Bitcoiner.

Public Key

npub1n3sjlzmhpu8rl56umtptc4lua6zkretq2p82yhytnmlcuq639vlqd0te5l

NIP-05 Address

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsfccf03dms7r3l6dwd4s4u2l7waptpu4s9qn4ztj9ealuwqdgjk0spzpmhxue69uhkummnw3ezuamfdejsz9rhwden5te0wfjkccte9ejxzmt4wvhxjmcpp4mhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mqw3dyws

Publishing to

nostr.wine

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1n3sjlzmhpu8rl56umtptc4lua6zkretq2p82yhytnmlcuq639vlqd0te5l

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Last Notes

2026-05-21 03:38:40 UTC

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Cool I used a 3-step process and it left me with toxic stuff I didn’t know how to dispose of. Bought the silca chain stripping stuff but $$$. Better just to skip the line step in the factory, surely, now that everyone is waxing.

2026-05-18 21:46:47 UTC

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Couldn’t agree more. Wax>oil in every scenario except prolonged wet riding.
Right now the process of waxing is kind of like tearing apart a miner and building it into your machine, with custom firmware for heating. Totally unnecessary step in the process. Eventually shimano will sell pre-waxed chains but right now they’re >$100 from specialty companies who have to degrease then wax.
#nevent1q…vdzp

2026-01-15 01:19:21 UTC

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“Lamentations of a philosopher” makes a great title for a blog that “accomplishes nothing.”
#nevent1q…hqdq

2026-01-15 01:09:24 UTC

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🤣

2026-01-13 17:22:52 UTC

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Design phase!

2026-01-13 17:19:14 UTC

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Awesome. The idea still holds up.

2026-01-13 07:00:06 UTC

If you’re a bitcoiner, reply and I’ll follow you.

2025-05-21 21:20:07 UTC

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It’s getting off zero, yes

2025-05-21 21:18:41 UTC

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We have self custody numbers for bitcoin not gold: coming soon

2025-05-20 16:57:50 UTC

Nostr: “4 in 5 Americans can’t possibly want the U.S. to swap > 0% of their gold for bitcoin. You are full of shit!”
Meanwhile, more Americans own bitcoin than gold.
https://blossom.primal.net/f9136b5a9a0b56abfdef4a4adb7584bf18ca45ac996f03d2653c7bb75dca0c17.jpg

2025-05-20 05:46:42 UTC

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Learn to take a win!
nevent1qqsdyd928ehurfv2nucpnzflgd54f4pnrrqp7p859fn5dme38ru7vacpzemhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuurjd9kkzmpwdejhgw9yrvu

2025-05-20 05:43:44 UTC

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Many of you are skeptical of our finding, released this morning that 4 in 5 Americans would convert some US gold reserves into bitcoin.
"Yeah right! You must have done your survey at a bitcoin conference!"
We were also surprised. But results are results.
The internet doubted us last year when we saw that bitcoiners were all over the political map, and extreme liberals were well represented among owners.
Many other surveys have since vindicated what we found: in politics and in many other ways, American bitcoiners look much like America itself. We are confident that our results this year will also hold up in future polling.
Here's how we collected our sample and here's the precise prompt that led to our result.
1. Data.
Our survey consisted of national sample of 3,345 respondents recruited in partnership with Qualtrics, a survey and data collection company.
No sample is perfectly random. This was conducted online and participants were paid. But, we asked Qualtrics to match US Census distribution in terms of age, genders, race, income, education, geography, etc., as closely as possible. As you will see in the full report, we approximated the US population pretty well.
Many of our results very closely tracked last year's results in ways that confirmed the quality of our sample. The sample did not show unexpectedly high rates of bitcoin ownership (more in the report) or high rates of bitcoin sentiment (more in the report).
2. Timing.
We opened the survey at the end of February and ended data collection mid-March.
3. The prompt.
"Assuming the United States was thinking of converting some of their gold reserve into Bitcoin, what percentage would you advise they convert?"
Respondents were provided a slider used to choose between 0% and 100%.
4. Related question.
We also asked, in the wake of Trump's tweet on March 2, just as our data collection was getting underway, whether people approved of the formation of the Strategic Crypto Reserve (the 3/6 SBR Executive order had not yet been issued). We got a less enthusiastic response to that proposal: 66% of respondents were neutral-to-positive.
5. Framing.
We suspect framing effects are powerful here given how novel the idea of a reserve is. There are many ways of asking similar questions, some of which will elicit more positive, and some more negative responses. Such is the nature of surveys. But the fact remains: when given a slider and asked to advise the US government on the right proportion of bitcoin and gold, subjects were very reluctant to put that slider on 0% bitcoin and 100% gold. Instead, they settled around 10% bitcoin. Make of that what you will.
6. Average.
The median bitcoin conversion recommendation was 10%, but the mean was actually 20.3%. That sounds even more pro-bitcoin, and even more outlandish. But that was also the actual result.
7. Age.
As you can see from the graphic, the recommended proportions of bitcoin drops significantly with age. Not surprising to us, given the inverse relationship we found last year between age and bitcoin ownership/sentiment.
8. Gender.
Women recommend smaller bitcoin allocations than men, also in keeping with previous findings. However, older men (60+) were the most likely to recommend all gold, whereas older women were more leery of 100% gold exposure. So, men were more extreme in their recommendations at both the high and the low end.
9. The report.
It's a really rich data set, as we asked a comprehensive panel of questions, just like last year. I could go on with politics, race, and other factors related to just this question. But this thread is a preview. The full report is coming as fast as we can produce it.
Thanks for your skepticism--we welcome it, always!--and your patience in reading this long post.
Bottom line is that 4 in 5 of the people we surveyed recommended that the US diversify some of its gold reserves into bitcoin.
An amazing stat, we think! It's very different from the consensus in DC and apparently different from the nostr consensus too. Just like last year's result.

2025-05-19 15:27:40 UTC

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We were too. This question was asked with a slider from 0 to 100. Most people clustered around a 10% allocation.

2025-05-19 15:00:41 UTC

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We have data on that too from the same survey. It’s well into the 90s actually.

2025-03-09 03:29:30 UTC

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If I had the wealth to do it I’d endow the Troy Cross Chair of Philosophy, and as a condition of the gift also demand to occupy it. Then I’d introduce myself as Troy Cross, the Troy Cross Chair of Philosophy at such-and-such university. I’d also make everyone else refer to me by the full title and laugh at them every time.

2025-03-09 03:24:06 UTC

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Yessssir

2025-03-01 05:21:38 UTC

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2025-03-01 05:14:00 UTC

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Yes

2025-02-25 16:10:25 UTC

GM nature is healing.

2025-02-23 14:56:32 UTC

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Social contagion is a hell of a drug.

2025-02-13 08:17:09 UTC

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You don’t have five seconds. You’re dead by the time you read the instructions.

2025-02-13 08:12:31 UTC

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My favorite conflicting advice;
1. Don’t fight the tape.
2. Be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy.
Also, the two versions of the gambler’s fallacy. When you are on a winning streak you “have the hot hand” but when you are losing, you’re “due” for a win.
These things precisely cancel and we invoke them as needed to do what we want with a nice rationalization.

2025-02-13 08:07:25 UTC

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> 2 years without drinking now. Not going back.

2025-02-10 19:44:04 UTC

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True. The gold isn’t manufactured. But its rate of discovery is a function of technology and demand. Bitcoin’s is pre-set. That constantly trips people up when they think of mining. Dhruv’s way of thinking about it is better. The network already has the bitcoin: they just haven’t sold them to the miners yet in exchange for hash.

2025-02-10 19:41:29 UTC

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Analogy is good but I don’t like the idea that the value exists before issuance. The bitcoins exist, but their value is yet to be decided because they haven’t touched a market. But their quantity has already been fixed.

2025-02-10 12:03:01 UTC

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Yeah that’s exactly the kind of weird auction it is.

2025-02-10 08:02:26 UTC

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Alex, what a shot!!

2025-02-10 07:50:10 UTC

Been thinking about Dhruv Bansal’s idea that bitcoin are not produced or generated — wrong way of thinking about it induced by “mining” metaphor — but rather all bitcoin existed from the moment the network was launched, but are auctioned off to miners as a whole, in exchange for hashes (compute), on an auction schedule of 140 years or whatever it is.
Each miner decides to take the network’s offer or not, by running their machines or not. Collectively, they determine how much that latest round of auctioned bitcoin is worth, in hashes and/or in energy.
Then there’s another market on top of this one which is coincidental but distinct, and that’s the market for block space, where the sellers are individual miners and the buyers are would-be transactors and of course that’s sat/vbyte.
I really do think it’s more accurate than thinking of bitcoin miners as “producing” bitcoin the way a manufacturer produces a product like cars or even discovered like gold miners discover gold. The bitcoin, all 21 million exist, just not on the ledger, from the get go. They only need to be auctioned, like treasuries. We don’t think the bidders on treasuries produce the 10-year! It’s just a weird auction mechanism where you have to prove work and your odds of winning the auction are proportional to your work / the total work by bidders.
I do get it and I think it’s right and I think it helps with a lot of misconceptions once you grok it fully. And as Dhruv says it shows you the formula for how bitcoin disrupts everything which is by making markets where there weren’t any, and building layers of distinct markets, including lighting and eventually the internet.
So, good job Dhruv.
But… it is not so easy to communicate is it? This thing is bloody hard to explain, as someone said once.

2025-02-10 03:59:43 UTC

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I got 3 copies but haven’t had the time to crack em open yet!

2025-02-06 14:42:48 UTC

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Welcome to my world

2025-02-05 21:39:08 UTC

Obsessions and manic work episodes. Yep.
#note18y2…kukg

2025-02-05 21:34:00 UTC

Bitcoin needs paranoid freedom nerds. https://www.btcpolicy.org/articles/meet-the-fellows-troy-cross
https://m.primal.net/OSDP.jpg

2025-02-05 03:00:22 UTC

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lol

2025-02-04 07:11:30 UTC

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🤣🤣🤣🤣

2025-02-04 06:53:56 UTC

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Lolololo

2025-02-04 06:31:42 UTC

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💪

2025-02-04 06:29:32 UTC

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This is the best

2025-02-04 06:27:18 UTC

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Always apt

2025-02-04 06:10:18 UTC

I woke up this morning from a dream in which I noticed I had re-sprouted a full head of hair. In fact, my hairline was actually too low, like encroaching on the eyebrows.
What does it mean.?
Will zap all interpretations.

2025-02-02 21:36:56 UTC

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We haven’t had such an asymmetric advantage for the virtual. (Arguably, Amazon paying no sales tax was similar.)

2025-02-02 19:10:26 UTC

Something is going to break as the physical economy becomes hyper-localized and borders regulated while the virtual economy becomes borderless and impossible to control.
Anything that ships to your house will either come from the US or being taxed heavily. But what you download won’t be subject to that tariff (unless we surveil you heavily) because there’s no customs at a border.
Likewise, tariffs plus immigration restrictions means you can’t outsource production to cheaper labor markets and you can’t import the labor either. But… you can pay someone for their labor while they remain overseas, by streaming them sats.
So something will give. Either we’ll get draconian surveillance and control of the digital domain or accelerated virtualization as we can achieve efficiencies there from free trade and cheap labor that are not available in the physical domain.

2025-02-01 16:39:07 UTC

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Have never played but listened to a lot of

2025-02-01 16:38:43 UTC

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I think so

2025-02-01 04:20:24 UTC

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Bounties were well-designed. Reachable, but also added real value.

2024-06-14 18:03:12 UTC

Words are not coming. If I keep writing they must! Right? Right?
https://m.primal.net/IklL.mov