gm,

I didn't see it yesterday, but there seemed to have been an AI summit in Paris that was mostly for the politically ruling class. Here is JD Vance's speech: https://youtu.be/MnKsxnP2IVk?si=TLurSA0pz3WcLaUr, Sam Altman was there too, and Ursula von der Leyen.

Been recently looking a bunch into options trading and I thought this video was actually incredible: https://youtu.be/0x-Pc-Z3wu4?si=m2Ub3TNbUvf-Bs3L

It shows how you can be right statistically, but wrong on individual trades by predicting the stock market eg a few minutes or days into the future. It‘s a really cool idea. I‘d love to get better at quantified trading, not just investing

Interesting that the AI summit happens in France, I guess that's because of the EU.

Speaking of France, it's so based how what they did after the WWII. In about 40 years they grew their automotive industry (Peugeot, Citroen), started producing world-class fighter jets (Mirage), airliners (Airbus), built bullet trains (TGV), constructed multiple nuclear power plants, built their own aircraft carriers (!), and up to this date the world's biggest construction company outside China is French (Vinci).

What's interesting, a lot of tech advancement in that period was led by the state, as they heavily invested in modernizing the economy and R&D. Wondering what went wrong in all these years that today most EU tech projects are far from that efficiency.

Attention!

Today is one of those days where there is clearly an Ethereum psyop happening, targeted at demotivating builders and investors.

The main stories that are being propagated are:

1. That Railgun is being used to "launder" stolen funds: https://x.com/officer_cia/status/1889642583971733983

2. That Polymarket is a bad and illegal website (Polish government): https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Polymarket-illegal-in-Poland?index=0x67adbe426e13056db217462b62b1491570dac639ff5efa3ff44a77deba4d7ca0391bc4f8

In the context of making Ethereum a platform where we build towards a more positive future, I think that this is a multi front attack on our ideas. The rebuttals:

1. Railgun is built with the intention to enable financial privacy for consumers. Consumers have the right to privacy in many countries around the world. Privacy is normal. Railgun includes a lever to exclude malicious actors from gaining privacy. It was added as a reaction to Tornado Cash being used by North Korea. We are reacting to waht is happening and we're trying to improve our systems! Vitalik explains the Railgun mechanism: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/@vitalik.eth:-how-Railguns-privacy-pools-filter-criminal-deposits?index=0x67add400bb19dc7f272a327ed6757d7d20d58aa6cfbc974715ebd101f2947dc56b787c62

2. The Polish government's reaction to domain-block Polymarket is a misuse of their capability. If they think that online gambling is bad, why not just block Polymarket users from being able to engage on Polymarket, but leave the page online to allow reading the predictions? I'm making the argument here: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories?index=0x67adbe426e13056db217462b62b1491570dac639ff5efa3ff44a77deba4d7ca0391bc4f8#0x67ade6fd30d1fc421ff0b4fc55bfdebf0e517b30ddb896c76c41301941463c08d1d255fe

Overall:

Honestly, I'm just sick and tired of these psyops against Ethereum.

I now understand that other parties (maybe governments? Other L1s?) want to reduce the usefulness of blockchains/Ethereum to memecoin trading only. But this is not what we want.

In fact, memecoin trading is the most boring use case of blockchains and their greatest potential lies in serving the various Ethereum visions which are constantly being attacked:

1. Financial privacy: "Funds terrorism"

2. Soulbound tokens/ POAPs: "Chinese social credit system"

3. Polymarket: "Degenerate gambling with no value to society" => Illegal! Ban it!

4. NFTs/Digital Art: "Low effort scam"

5. Network states: "Neo colonialism"

We have to push back against these memes. Words and intentions are put in our mouths and in our actions. This is repression and we should not allow to get bullied!