During my time in Africa, while advocating for the Lightning Network, I faced a cold, hard realization. Despite my efforts, I found that more people were interested in dealing with USDT rather than Bitcoin. They desired USD, even if they were synthetic versions.

Yes the weaponization of the payments system is bad. But the real problem isn't bad people doing bad things (that's eternal), it's that the payments system should not be capable of such easy weaponization.

"It's a coordination problem" sounds sexier than "It's about politics" - but is this really any different?

*DOJ TELLS PROSECUTORS TO DROP CHARGES VS NYC MAYOR ADAMS: NYT

Ford President & CEO Jim Farley touched on two Chinese EV products: the #XiaomiSU7 and the Li Auto EREVs on yesterday's Q4 2024 earnings call. Here are some highlights of what he said: On Xiaomi, Chinese competition and subsidies: The level of subsidies that these companies have in China is very material, as well as these are digital vehicles with digital footprints and really deep into people's digital life. So, we have to have the right policies around privacy, the right policies around national security, because these are not the cars of old, they're data collection machines. On the kind of unfair part or the subsidy part, I think we will have to sort that out as a country, because they're part of the competitive environment that when you list the kind of advantages the companies have, it's like a page long. What I learned after 40 years in this industry is the company has to stand on its own, toe-to-toe with the cost of those companies and the product appeal of those companies. We need to work with our government partners to make it a level-playing field as much as possible. But in the end of the day, it's management's responsibility to beat the SU7 straight up in a street fight. On EREVs: When you have a chance to spend time with Li Auto, some of the best EREV companies out there, and their customers, what's interesting for me when I started -- when we started to absorb this leadership team is we were really impressed that the customers thought of these vehicles as EVs. They do not think of them as hybrids or plug-ins. These are electric vehicles. They use 95% of the miles as electric and they plug them in every night and the satisfaction is even higher because they're more affordable for people. The batteries is so much smaller with 150 mile range versus these huge batteries and three-row crossovers for 300 and 350 mile range. You're talking about tens and tens and tens of thousands of dollars. So, for the customer, you're able to buy an electric vehicle that's fully comparable to an ICE vehicle in terms of cost. And because there's no transmission, and no gears, no drive line, there's no axles, duplicate axles, there's no duplicate powertrain, the incremental investment of fitting that combustion engine in there is very minimal to the customer. I think at the consumer level, Americans love their big cars. They love their big trucks. That's what we do. We drive these big vehicles and -- but some people would love to feel that instant acceleration. They'd love to be able to drive by a gas station all the-time, they love the feeling of electric, but they just can't get it. It's $30,000, $40,000 too expensive for these big vehicles. So, this technology gives them the electric experience without the range anxiety. Now, it's not perfect. If you tow, it's not a good technology. The batteries have to be too big. So, it's not a panacea, but I think how we look at it is, given we're number three in hybrids, the Pro Power Onboard thing really surprised us. People love hybrids for more than just fuel economy. And I think we see this in more degrees of hybrid and PHEVs as a solution for customers, EREV for certain kinds of vehicles, heavy vehicles that don't tow, and then pure EV for commercial are very affordable. Let's get it on! ⚡️⚡️⚡️