If you're under 53 years old, you have never once been alive while a human was farther than 250 miles from Earth. Tonight, four astronauts are heading 252,000 miles out. That's a thousand times farther than any person has gone in your lifetime. The 250-mile ceiling is where the International Space Station floats. Every astronaut since December 1972 has been stuck in that zone. Spacewalks, science experiments, cool photos from orbit, sure. But nobody left the neighborhood. The last crew to go farther was Apollo 17. December 1972. Nixon was president. The internet didn't exist. Cell phones were 11 years away. The youngest member of that crew is now 90 years old. The farthest any human has ever been from Earth is 248,655 miles. The Apollo 13 crew set that number in 1970, and they didn't mean to. Their oxygen tank blew up, and the emergency route home took them farther out than anyone before or since. Tonight's crew will break that record on purpose. And the crew itself. Victor Glover becomes the first Black astronaut to leave Earth's neighborhood. Christina Koch becomes the first woman. Jeremy Hansen, a Canadian fighter pilot, becomes the first non-American to do so. When they come home, they'll slam into the atmosphere at 25,000 mph, faster than any human has ever traveled. The Moon's south pole has ice. Water ice, sitting in craters so deep that sunlight hasn't hit them in billions of years. A 2024 NASA study found way more of it than anyone expected. You can split water into hydrogen and oxygen, which gives you rocket fuel, breathable air, and drinking water, all made on the Moon instead of hauled up from Earth. George Sowers at Colorado School of Mines calculated that Moon-made fuel could shave $12 billion off a single trip to Mars. The Moon is a gas station on the road to Mars. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced last week a $20 billion plan to build a permanent base at the South Pole over the next seven years, with landings every six months. China is developing its own lunar lander and spacesuit, aiming for a crewed landing by 2030. The Artemis program has burned through $93 billion so far, and the first actual surface landing is penciled in for 2028. There's a real question of who gets there first this time around. Harrison Schmitt walked on the Moon in December 1972 as part of Apollo 17. He's 90. Asked about it this week, he sounded pretty relaxed. "Mars is attainable," he said. "We're humans. That's what we've always done."

This could be the offramp the world needs. You can think of it as the best outcome for everyone, under the circumstances. (1) From MAGA’s perspective, if Trump declares victory here and moves on, the US won’t waste yet more blood and treasure in the Middle East. It won’t invade Iran. It also won’t take all the blame for the ongoing global supply chain crisis. It just pulls out and lets everyone work out the regional security equation for themselves. Trump can say he’s fulfilled both his campaign promises: stop Iran from getting a nuke, but also no endless Middle Eastern wars. (2) From Israel’s perspective, Iran has now been shown to be quite hostile to its neighbors, and its military has been substantially degraded. Stopping now is good. Otherwise there’s a danger of overreacting to Oct 7 as Americans overreacted to Sept 11. Israel can stand back and call it a win, because after a US pullout, Iran will have much less excuse for holding the Strait hostage. (3) From the Iranian diaspora’s perspective, it’s unfortunately clear that the current war isn’t going to result in liberalization. Further attacks would push Iran further into fundamentalism, making it even harder to eventually do a liberal reformation. (4) From the long-suffering Iranian people’s perspective, ending the war now would also save countless lives. Otherwise they’ll get hit by friendly fire and drafted by the regime to fight for fundamentalism. (5) Finally, from the world’s perspective, once the US declares victory and goes home, substantial diplomatic pressure will be applied to Iran to simply open the Strait of Hormuz and allow ships through. Iran’s leadership has shown, perhaps surprisingly, that they care about global public opinion…and they would be on the hook for the suffering of billions of people if the Strait remains blocked. TLDR: if Trump declares victory and leaves, Iran no longer has any excuse for blocking the Strait and holding the global economy hostage. Let the matter be worked out diplomatically with pressure from all the 100 affected countries on Iran. America shouldn’t have to spend a single cent more, or send a single soldier more, to the Middle East.

The greatest post of all time... $BTC 300 days of price action, mirrored perfectly.

BREAKING: The Strait of Hormuz is no longer closed. It is no longer open. It is something the world has never seen before: a permissioned corridor run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, priced at $2 million per vessel, payable in yuan. Three ships transited in the last 24 hours. Three. Out of a pre-war average of 60 per day. Total throughput: 310,000 deadweight tonnes. Three percent of normal. Four hundred vessels are waiting outside the strait right now. One hundred and fifty tankers. One hundred and twenty bulk carriers. One hundred and thirty others. Waiting for permission from the IRGC Navy to enter a 5-nautical-mile channel between Larak and Qeshm islands inside Iranian territorial waters. This is how the gate works. A vessel operator contacts approved intermediaries with IRGC connections, submitting full documentation: IMO number, ownership chain, cargo manifest, destination, crew list. The intermediaries forward the package to the IRGC Navy’s Hormozgan Provincial Command for sanctions screening, cargo alignment checks that prioritise oil over all other commodities, and geopolitical vetting. The toll is approximately $2 million per tanker. For a VLCC carrying 2 million barrels, that is $1 per barrel. Preferred currency: yuan. If the vessel passes, the IRGC issues a clearance code and route instructions. Upon approach, VHF radio hail, AIS verification, patrol boat escort. One ship at a time. Through the narrowest channel of the most important waterway on Earth. Iranian crude is still flowing. Approximately 1.1 to 1.5 million barrels per day, mostly to China, at near pre-war levels. Iran’s own oil transits the strait it controls. The blockade applies to everyone else. Iran is simultaneously the gatekeeper and the primary beneficiary. The toll funds the IRGC. The IRGC maintains the gate. The gate generates the toll. The circle is self-sustaining. Now look at what is NOT transiting. Fertiliser. Gulf nations supply 49 percent of the world’s exported urea. Ammonia requires the natural gas that Qatar declared Force Majeure on and that Iranian strikes disrupted at South Pars. Effectively zero fertiliser vessels have received approval through the permissioned corridor. The IRGC is prioritising oil because oil generates revenue. Fertiliser does not. The molecules that feed four billion people are trapped behind a gate that only opens for molecules that fund the gatekeeper. The yuan preference is the structural shift that outlasts the war. Every tanker that pays in yuan instead of dollars establishes a precedent. Every precedent weakens the petrodollar architecture that has governed energy trade since 1974. The IRGC is not just blocking a strait. It is building an alternative payment rail under live fire. The $2 million toll in yuan is not a fee. It is a proof of concept for a post-dollar energy settlement system, stress-tested in the most extreme conditions imaginable: a three-front war with the world’s largest military. The world’s central banks are trapped by the same strait: the Fed cannot cut, the ECB is hiking, the BOJ is tightening. Six countries are rationing fuel. Japan’s 10-year yield hit a 27-year high. Slovenia has QR codes at the pump. South Korea is barring government vehicles one day per week. And behind all of it, 400 ships wait outside a 5-nautical-mile channel for a clearance code from the IRGC Navy, payable in a currency that is not the dollar. Twenty percent of the world’s oil supply. Controlled by a VHF radio call and a yuan transfer. The strait did not close. It changed ownership. open.substack.com/pub/shanak…

Solution of straight of hormuz

Atoms are harder to come by these days. $DCR PoS reward has drifted below 1 full coin for the first time since 2022.

THEY DID IT. The SEC and CFTC just dropped a landmark document that officially classifies crypto assets. They're actually telling us which crypto assets are securities and which ones aren't - by name! THIS IS SOMETHING GENSLER REFUSED TO DO (he focused on prosecuting crypto out of existence) This rule doc gives crypto many of the benefits of the clarity bill - it lifts us out of the gray market - it gives every asset a path. It's almost like the Clarity act just passed by way of regulator. (of course, the actual clarity act will harden all this into legislation and make it irreversible in the event we get another Gensler, we still want it) This rule says there's 5 categories for crypto assets: 1) Digital Commodities - assets tied to a functional, decentralized crypto system (e.g., BTC, ETH, SOL, XRP, ADA, DOGE). Not securities. (yes, they name them on page 14) 2) Digital Collectibles - NFTs, meme coins, artwork tokens, in-game items. Not securities (fractionalized collectibles may be an exception). 3) Digital Tools - membership tokens, credentials, domain names (e.g., ENS). Not securities. 4) Stablecoins - payment stablecoins under the GENIUS Act are not securities. Other stablecoins, it depends. 5) Digital Securities - tokenized versions of traditional securities. Like tokenized stocks. Always securities. Amazing! This makes so much sense I can't believe it's coming from a regulator. No more enforcement threats to Ethereum developers and crypto exchanges. How about the Howey test? More common sense! If an issuer makes specific promises of managerial efforts from which buyers expect profits, the offering is a security until those promises are fulfilled. Then it's a commodity. The asset itself was never the security, the deal around it was. (E.g. XRP was a security pre launch, became a commodity after). How about stuff like staking and mining? Mining? Not a securities transaction. Staking? Also not a securities transaction, that includes custodial and liquid staking even with LSTs! How about wrapping BTC? Not a securities transaction. Airdrops? NOT SECURITIES. NO MORE GEO BANS PROTECTING AMERICANS from free airdrops. Remember this is a joint doc from the SEC and CFTC, They're actually cooperating on this, no internal strife, this is binding to both. SEC regulates $80-100 trillion assets CFTC regulates $5-10 trillion assets Both of the world's largest capital markets are showing us that crypto assets are here to stay and they're welcome alongside traditional assets. Every country will follow. This is the biggest move toward legitimacy I've seen in all my time in crypto. Maybe bigger than the genius act since is covers all crypto assets. Well done @MichaelSelig and @SECPaulSAtkins. And especially well done to the indefatigable @HesterPeirce. Her fingerprints are all over this, couldn't have happened without her eight years of principles-based curiosity.

Everything has came out to be true …. And not one thing has happened about any of it

BREAKING: MARA just broke the BTC HODL pledge. 53,822 BTC. The second-largest public Bitcoin holder on Earth rewrote its treasury policy in a 10-K filed Monday and told the SEC it may start selling coins off the balance sheet. Not just mined output. The reserves. The ones they swore they would never touch. This is not flexibility. This is the math forcing the hand. Production cost sits at $87,000 per coin. Spot trades at $69,000. Every block mined loses money. Hashprice collapsed to a record low of $35 per petahash. And here is the number that tells you everything about where the conviction actually stood: in 2025, MARA bought 4,267 BTC on the open market at an average price of $111,034 per coin. Those purchased coins are now 38% underwater. The company posted a $1.7 billion net loss in Q4 and took a $1.5 billion write-down on the very asset it built its identity around holding forever. They are not the only ones running for the exit. Core Scientific is liquidating ALL 2,537 BTC this quarter. Its CEO called mining essentially in runoff. Bitdeer dumped its entire treasury to zero. Riot sold 5,363 BTC across 2025. Cango moved 4,451 BTC for $305 million. CleanSpark sold 577 BTC in a single month while producing 7,124 for the year, meaning the treasury is shrinking not growing. Every major public miner is converting Bitcoin into AI data center capital because one megawatt of mining revenue earns a mining multiple while one megawatt of AI cloud revenue earns three to twenty-five times that. The arbitrage is not subtle. It is screaming. Now look at the other side of this trade. Strategy bought 3,015 BTC last week at $67,700. Holdings: 720,737 BTC. Cost basis: $54.77 billion. Saylor is the only large-scale public buyer left standing in a market where every producer is selling. The entities that mine Bitcoin no longer want to hold it. The entity that holds the most Bitcoin has never mined a single satoshi. Production and accumulation have fully decoupled for the first time in this asset’s sixteen-year history. But the blockchain is telling a different story than the filing. Arkham Intelligence shows 13,057 BTC on-chain in identifiable MARA wallets versus 53,822 reported. The rest sits in custodial or off-chain arrangements. And since the 10-K dropped, zero confirmed on-chain movement. The SEC paperwork says sell. The chain says wait. That gap is where the real signal lives. Falsifier: if MARA wallets show no material outflows within 90 days, this was optionality theater and the overhang is phantom. If movement begins into a market sitting at Fear and Greed 15 with BTC already 22% down year-to-date, the reflexive loop activates and every miner treasury becomes a ticking supply bomb. The HODL era for public miners ended the day the halving killed the margin and AI offered a twenty-five-times exit. They were never conviction holders. They were businesses waiting for a better trade. They found it.

$DCR relative strength

Top performing asset, 24h? Decred. Top performing asset, 7d? Decred. Top performing asset, 30d? Again, Decred. $DCR season.

> Over $320k in volume via atomic-swap > Buys are flowing in > Buy wall of 4k $DCR still standing - they need to up the bid! Great day for @BisonWallet & @decredproject EVERYONE should be using this! Zero KYC.

Jane Street is one of many. How many of you actually think that ANYTHING in relation to "investments" is real? How can YOU crosscheck and verify that there are LEGITIMATE buys and sells for SP500? You can't, you stupid fuck. You're relying on numbers on a screen to display ALLEGED demand and supply. But how do you EVER know that those numbers are linked to legitimate bank accounts that can deposit or withdraw those figures? Again, you fucking can't. IT IS ALL A MASSIVE BLACKBOX. You know how centralized exchanges function? They do the same shit with vapid orderbooks that you think is backed by legitimate dollars. They know 99% of people will NEVER try to withdraw the money they make, And just like casinos, they'll end up giving it ALL back over a long enough timeframe. That's why the majority of traders are unprofitable. Not because they don't make money, but because they play with the "made" FAKE money until it's all gone. There is no tool [like dexscreener] to see who holds the supply of SP500. If there was, it would 99% supply in possession of THE ELITES and 1% circulating amongst peasants trying to trade. When THE ELITES want to rug-pull the economy, they fucking will. And in the meantime, they can rinse you dry trying to directionally bet on the market. You know what memecoin teams do when their 9-fig runner coins are listed on perps? They fill shorts on perps and then make money on the way down whilst DUMPING SUPPLY ONCHAIN. The SP500 is exact same bullshit. Jane Street utilized the same method described above but for Bitcoin and using PAPER BTC to manipulate crypto markets. Do you know why FTX collapsed? "Yeah, because Alameda Research were using customer funds!" - Sure. The TRUE REASON is because people realized that NOTHING ON IT WAS ACTUALLY REAL. Exactly why some users had "no liquidation" accounts. If they ever NEEDED TO, they could, theoretically, acquire "emergency funds" - but it was too late when the bank-run started and THE NATURE of how it did. SBF had learnt from Marc Gerstein how to utilize counterfeit capital to make LEGITIMATE BILLIONS and then venture into politics. All you need is enough credibility behind your name and no one will doubt you. This entire "contracts game" [which controls EVERY FINANCIAL MARKET] is purely demo. That is why it's HARAM to start with. Read this 100 times over until you understand, dumb fuck. ~ Dr. Axius.

“Bitcoin's scarcity is real at the protocol level but the price discovery mechanism sitting above it has been compromised by a firm that treats privileged access as a profit engine, and the current disclosure framework lets them do it without anyone watching.”

Now liquidate the shorts. $DCR

Part II of my deep dive on @decredproject's privacy implementation. Analyzing $DCR vs $XMR vs $ZEC is all about tradeoffs, which are constantly evolving as these protocols upgrade. As always, any and all feedback is welcome.

John McAfee was so far ahead of the game that he appeared insane to the casual normie.

Raise your targets. $DCR

The purpose of crypto is to build a code-based order, because the rules-based order is unfortunately collapsing. That code-based order covers some of what international law once protected. It guarantees property rights, smart contracts, rule-of-code, privacy, secure voting, and user accounts across borders. Even in the face of debanking and denaturalization, the code-based order means you retain your onchain currency and onchain identity. It is true that the crypto networks that buttress the code-based order are supported in significant part by finance and lotteries. But all 50 states of the US are also supported by finance and lotteries. The question is whether the world gets something better, on balance, for that cost. As nationalism and socialism rise, the code-based order ensures that international capitalism continues. Anyone from anywhere has equality of opportunity on the Internet. You can sign a smart contract across borders with someone without knowing (or needing to know) their race, religion, accent, ancestry, or other likely irrelevant attributes. Similarly, as more companies leave failing states like Delaware and California…the code-based order will protect these corporate refugees. The entities themselves and all their contracts can now be put onchain. They can dock in country X and move to country Y at the press of a button. Redomiciliation becomes as common as incorporation. Moreover, as the politically disfavored emigrate from communist states, the code-based order also protects their property and identity via cryptography. And, if all goes well, it also adds a layer of unbreakable privacy. In short: the West is entering a period of failing states just as the East sees the rise of the all-powerful state. The balance to both of these is the code-based order that Satoshi laid the foundations for. That’s what cryptocurrency was built for. If and when your state fails, or turns against you, the Internet will be there for you.