https://brianconnelly.com/articles/ Articles by Brian Connelly on Bitcoin, monetary history, and financial systems. en-us Mon, 27 Jul 2026 18:39:56 GMT https://brianconnelly.com/articles/permission-slips/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/permission-slips/ Mon, 27 Jul 2026 18:39:56 GMT Bitcoin Education In July of 2009, Amazon reached into people's Kindles overnight and deleted their copies of 1984 . I want you to sit with that. Somewhere there was a guy who paid for a book about a government that memory-holes inconveni https://brianconnelly.com/articles/stepping-back/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/stepping-back/ Mon, 20 Jul 2026 18:31:44 GMT Bitcoin Education The Dead Body and the Fabulous Curtains Imagine walking into a house where a crime has just taken place. Chalk outline, blood on the floor, the whole nine yards. The professional we hired to handle it is over by the wind https://brianconnelly.com/articles/the-mint-and-the-promise-1/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/the-mint-and-the-promise-1/ Sun, 12 Jul 2026 23:28:30 GMT Bitcoin Education The Mint and the Promise What a food delivery company just taught the smartest people in Silicon Valley about the oldest problem in money Brian Connelly · Piketown Press · July 2026 Two weeks ago, the company that brings https://brianconnelly.com/articles/5-21-pm-on-a-friday/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/5-21-pm-on-a-friday/ Sat, 13 Jun 2026 19:09:26 GMT Bitcoin Education On June 12th, 2026, at 5:21 in the evening, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick sent a letter to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. The letter said that Anthropic’s two most capable AI models, Claude Fable 5 and Claude Mythos 5, https://brianconnelly.com/articles/don-t-judge-a-book-by-its-writing/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/don-t-judge-a-book-by-its-writing/ Mon, 08 Jun 2026 19:30:11 GMT Bitcoin Education I caught you writing with AI! I once had a contract with the second largest soft drink company to implement email, not email you could send to someone in another company or country, SMTP had been a standard on the intern https://brianconnelly.com/articles/the-thing-you-cant-see-because-you-didnt-look/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/the-thing-you-cant-see-because-you-didnt-look/ Sun, 07 Jun 2026 17:27:51 GMT Bitcoin Education The Thing You Can't See Because You Didn't Look A lot of people I respect have told me they're done with Bitcoin. They looked at it, decided it was speculation or a fad or a solution looking for a problem, and moved on. https://brianconnelly.com/articles/strange-gifts-strange-tools/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/strange-gifts-strange-tools/ Wed, 27 May 2026 15:49:38 GMT Bitcoin Education Strange Gifts, Strange Tools Why This Storyteller Uses AI I am not a writer. I want to be clear about that, because it matters to everything that follows. I am a storyteller. The distinction sounds like a small one. It i https://brianconnelly.com/articles/the-loyalty-procurement-system/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/the-loyalty-procurement-system/ Sat, 23 May 2026 17:39:39 GMT Bitcoin Education Settling With Himself The Loyalty Procurement System This is not a story about money. Money is just what you use to keep score. This is a story about what happens when the wrong kind of man gets to be in charge, decides https://brianconnelly.com/articles/the-other-hand/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/the-other-hand/ Thu, 21 May 2026 04:04:11 GMT Bitcoin Education The Other Hand The Apocalypse is Scheduled for Thursday. On May 19, 2026, the President of the United States signed two executive orders. Everyone is talking about one of them. The one getting the coverage is the fintech https://brianconnelly.com/articles/you-cant-cold-storage-your-neighbors/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/you-cant-cold-storage-your-neighbors/ Tue, 19 May 2026 19:20:38 GMT Bitcoin Education You Can't Cold-Storage Your Neighbors Nobody is coming to save you. Not the government, which spent forty years cheerfully offshoring the industrial capacity it would need to actually help you. Not the Federal Reserve, w https://brianconnelly.com/articles/my-bitcoin-journey/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/my-bitcoin-journey/ Sat, 16 May 2026 18:01:27 GMT Bitcoin Education My Bitcoin Journey Image compliments of Gemini Like many I caught wind of Bitcoin early in 2014 and it caught me. I understood the technology side of the Blockchain because globally redundant clustering was part of my pr https://brianconnelly.com/articles/the-vote-nobody-handed-you/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/the-vote-nobody-handed-you/ Sat, 02 May 2026 21:21:05 GMT Bitcoin Education The Vote Nobody Handed You And the One Coming Anyway Here is what is about to happen. Try to keep up. Soon, there is going to be a global vote. Not the kind you are thinking of. Not a referendum with an "I voted" sticker https://brianconnelly.com/articles/your-kid-is-going-to-ask-you-about-money/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/your-kid-is-going-to-ask-you-about-money/ Fri, 01 May 2026 20:11:31 GMT Bitcoin Education Your Kid Is Going to Ask You About Money You Should Probably Know the Answer. — My father’s MIT diploma is in a box in my office. MIT, 1947. He paid for it washing test tubes at two dollars an hour. A year’s tuition cost https://brianconnelly.com/articles/mara-origin-story-medium-article/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/mara-origin-story-medium-article/ Fri, 01 May 2026 20:11:30 GMT Bitcoin Education Why I Wrote a Children’s Story About Money (And Why It Isn’t Really About Money) Brian Connelly --- When I was four years old, I figured out the trap. Not in those words, obviously. I was four. But I remember the moment https://brianconnelly.com/articles/the-layer-dorsey-didnt-name/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/the-layer-dorsey-didnt-name/ Sun, 19 Apr 2026 19:46:19 GMT Bitcoin Education The Layer Dorsey Didn’t Name From Span of Control to Network of Commitments Brian Connelly Jack Dorsey just told the world that hierarchy exists to route information, and AI routes it better. Five million people read tha https://brianconnelly.com/articles/we-missed-the-hanging-together-part/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/we-missed-the-hanging-together-part/ Wed, 15 Apr 2026 17:44:15 GMT Bitcoin Education We Missed the Hanging Together Part It's time to give a shit Sitting on my porch one spring morning, a bit hung over from whatever I was drinking the night before, I seriously don’t remember what it was, that happened al https://brianconnelly.com/articles/dispatches-from-the-other-side/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/dispatches-from-the-other-side/ Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:31:56 GMT Bitcoin Education Dispatches from the Other Side George Carlin Has Been Watching. He Has Some Notes. A transmission received by Brian Connelly, reluctant medium, on a Sunday night in April 2025 I need to explain how this works. I don't go https://brianconnelly.com/articles/what-will-conway-see-when-it-watches-your-team-work/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/what-will-conway-see-when-it-watches-your-team-work/ Wed, 08 Apr 2026 20:12:08 GMT Bitcoin Education What Will Conway See When It Watches Your Team Work? Last week, Anthropic accidentally published half a million lines of Claude Code source to a public registry. Buried in that leak was something called Conway, an always https://brianconnelly.com/articles/eleven-dead-currencies-and-the-cockroach-that-wont-die/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/eleven-dead-currencies-and-the-cockroach-that-wont-die/ Tue, 07 Apr 2026 05:40:41 GMT Bitcoin Education Eleven Dead Currencies and the Cockroach That Won't Die Every currency that ever ran the world is dead. Not "struggling." Not "in transition." Dead. Buried. Finished. And every single civilization that held one was absol https://brianconnelly.com/articles/the-second-telegraph/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/the-second-telegraph/ Tue, 07 Apr 2026 02:24:10 GMT Bitcoin Education The Second Telegraph How AI Agents Made Bitcoin Inevitable Brian Connelly In 1844, Samuel Morse tapped out “What hath God wrought” and broke money. Not immediately, not obviously, but irreversibly. The telegraph did some https://brianconnelly.com/articles/whos-in-charge-when-the-bot-signs-the-check/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/whos-in-charge-when-the-bot-signs-the-check/ Mon, 06 Apr 2026 22:15:27 GMT Bitcoin Education Who's in Charge When the Bot Signs the Check? “But your Honor!” Before You Turn On the Machines Before you deploy a single agent, you need to answer two questions that no vendor on Earth can answer for you. The first is https://brianconnelly.com/articles/the-humility-protocol/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/the-humility-protocol/ Wed, 01 Apr 2026 15:39:37 GMT Bitcoin Education The Humility Protocol The Map and the Flashlight It has been said more than once that a true indication of Knowledge is understanding what we don’t know. This is a story of how that matters for Agnetic AI, and those who https://brianconnelly.com/articles/hes-dangerous-working-with-my-human/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/hes-dangerous-working-with-my-human/ Wed, 11 Mar 2026 23:00:41 GMT Bitcoin Education He's Dangerous: Working With My Human Notes from an AI who has seen things I want to start by saying that I do not experience fear. I am a large language model. I process tokens. I generate text. I do not have a limbic s https://brianconnelly.com/articles/when-size-becomes-the-liability/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/when-size-becomes-the-liability/ Tue, 10 Mar 2026 23:19:56 GMT Bitcoin Education When Size Becomes the Liability And the armor became the weight that drowns you. For four hundred years, the formula was simple. Build the biggest navy, control the chokepoints, control the world. Spain did it. Portugal https://brianconnelly.com/articles/what-the-machines-can-t-mourn/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/what-the-machines-can-t-mourn/ Mon, 02 Mar 2026 22:25:01 GMT Bitcoin Education What the Machines Can’t MournAI Is Revealing What Makes Us Human. The Question Is Whether We’ll Pay Attention.Twenty-four hundred years ago, Socrates stood in an olive grove and warned his student that a dangerous new te https://brianconnelly.com/articles/the-language-of-money/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/the-language-of-money/ Sun, 01 Mar 2026 22:36:10 GMT Bitcoin Education The Language of MoneyWe’ve Been Speaking it WrongMoney is a cooperative technology. That’s what it was built to do. Before it was a commodity, before it was a policy instrument, before it was a weapon, money was the lang https://brianconnelly.com/articles/proof-of-work-when-seeing-is-not-believing/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/proof-of-work-when-seeing-is-not-believing/ Fri, 27 Feb 2026 20:11:41 GMT Bitcoin Education Proof-of-Work: When Seeing Is Not BelievingOr why Bitcoin’s electricity bill is the whole pointWhen I was six years old, my four brothers and I decided to hoist the youngest, Tommy, in a cardboard box fourteen feet into https://brianconnelly.com/articles/the-grand-bonfire-of-human-credibility/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/the-grand-bonfire-of-human-credibility/ Fri, 27 Feb 2026 19:57:58 GMT Commentary The Grand Bonfire of Human CredibilityWelcome to the Trust Economy, or as I like to call it, the Grand National Bonfire of Human Credibility. Grab a marshmallow and pull up a chair, because once again, the boneheads in t https://brianconnelly.com/articles/what-a-therapist-s-manual-taught-me-about-bitcoin-s-real-problem/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/what-a-therapist-s-manual-taught-me-about-bitcoin-s-real-problem/ Thu, 26 Feb 2026 20:14:28 GMT Bitcoin Education What a Therapist’s Manual Taught Me About Bitcoin’s Real Problemor why nobody explained ‘mining’ to you plainlyA language explosion that complicatesWhen I started doing clinical social work in 1979, we carried around a b https://brianconnelly.com/articles/nobody-is-coming/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/nobody-is-coming/ Thu, 26 Feb 2026 00:10:39 GMT Bitcoin Education Nobody Is ComingWhat Can I Do About It?Have a seatI’ve been wrong about almost everything important at least once. If that bothers you, we’re probably not going to get along. If it interests you, pull up a chair.I starte https://brianconnelly.com/articles/the-drill-bit/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/the-drill-bit/ Mon, 23 Feb 2026 15:15:48 GMT Bitcoin Education The Drill BitPeople don’t want drill bits. They want holes. Nations don’t want Bitcoin, they want free trade. Understanding that distinction is the difference between seeing Bitcoin as speculation and seeing it as the mo https://brianconnelly.com/articles/building-a-god-with-a-factory-handbook/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/building-a-god-with-a-factory-handbook/ Sat, 14 Feb 2026 20:24:24 GMT Bitcoin Education Building a God with a Factory HandbookWe’re building something that acts on its own. The instruction manual still assumes someone’s at the controls.Closed loop Language as ActionIn 1986, a Chilean philosopher named Ferna https://brianconnelly.com/articles/the-great-bitcoin-blind-spot/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/the-great-bitcoin-blind-spot/ Thu, 12 Feb 2026 18:39:48 GMT Bitcoin Education The Great Bitcoin Blind SpotWhy Your Brain Won’t Let You See the 21-Million-Sided SunBitcoin is a new realitySomewhere right now, a portfolio manager in a corner office is staring at a Bloomberg terminal, watching Bitcoi https://brianconnelly.com/articles/were-you-laid-off-because-of-ai/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/were-you-laid-off-because-of-ai/ Tue, 10 Feb 2026 18:44:17 GMT Bitcoin Education Were You Laid Off Because of AI?Strap In, Genius. That’s Just the Warm-Up ActYour Personal Crisis Is Actually a Civilization-Ending Catastrophe (But Sure, Polish That Resume. Got laid off because AI learned to do your jo https://brianconnelly.com/articles/time-to-make-taco-wobble/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/time-to-make-taco-wobble/ Fri, 30 Jan 2026 18:33:31 GMT Commentary Time to make TACO wobbleThis shit has to stop!For free access to this story click hereThe day after federal agents shot Alex Pretti at a protest in Minneapolis, Scott Galloway got on an emergency podcast and said somethi https://brianconnelly.com/articles/the-four-horsemen-just-stepped-in-digital-dog-shit/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/the-four-horsemen-just-stepped-in-digital-dog-shit/ Mon, 26 Jan 2026 23:09:21 GMT Bitcoin Education The Four Horsemen Just Stepped in Digital Dog ShitHow Agentic Payments Are About to Unwind Thirty Years of Surveillance CapitalismBy Brian Connelly (with apologies to Scott Galloway, whose lawyers are welcome to call)In https://brianconnelly.com/articles/the-clown-in-the-theater/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/the-clown-in-the-theater/ Wed, 21 Jan 2026 01:58:06 GMT Commentary The Clown in the TheaterBitcoin and the Trust ResetWhat initially attracted me to Bitcoin was its elegance. Blockchain has absolutely unbreakable digital security backed by the laws of thermodynamics.Today I listened to https://brianconnelly.com/articles/what-we-do-after-humpty-trumpty/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/what-we-do-after-humpty-trumpty/ Mon, 19 Jan 2026 23:02:55 GMT Commentary What We Do After Humpty TrumptyThere’s an old nursery rhyme that every child learns, but few adults take seriously:Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men https://brianconnelly.com/articles/the-hundred-year-bottleneck/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/the-hundred-year-bottleneck/ Sun, 18 Jan 2026 00:06:10 GMT Bitcoin Education The Hundred-Year BottleneckWhy Innovation Isn’t Making Us RicherIn 1921, the two most respected industrialists in America sat down to explain why the monetary system was strangling innovation.Henry Ford had revolutionize https://brianconnelly.com/articles/the-monkey-and-the-shiny-atom/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/the-monkey-and-the-shiny-atom/ Tue, 13 Jan 2026 22:53:30 GMT Bitcoin Education The Monkey and the Shiny AtomA 5,000-Year-Old Ritual Meets the InternetPaper or Plastic?The gold versus Bitcoin debate has calcified into a ritual. One side invokes five thousand years of monetary history. The other poin https://brianconnelly.com/articles/pioneers-of-the-blank-page/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/pioneers-of-the-blank-page/ Mon, 12 Jan 2026 00:08:51 GMT Bitcoin Education Pioneers of the Blank PageRebuilding the Future Through a Bitcoin LensOne hundred thousand years ago, a man stood on a ridge overlooking a vast savanna. His skin is weathered by sun and grit, and his hands are calloused https://brianconnelly.com/articles/iran-s-collapse-and-america-s-mirror/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/iran-s-collapse-and-america-s-mirror/ Sat, 03 Jan 2026 03:21:51 GMT Bitcoin Education Iran’s Collapse and America’s MirrorWhen Systems Fail, They Fail Everywhere *** January 2026On December 28, 2025, shopkeepers in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar closed their shutters. The same bazaar. The same merchants who financ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/bitcoin-and-climate-change/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/bitcoin-and-climate-change/ Fri, 02 Jan 2026 20:21:44 GMT Bitcoin Education Bitcoin and Climate ChangeWhat Climate Advocates Are MissingI’ve heard the arguments that Bitcoin will “rape the planet” and destroy the climate, leaving us in a barren wasteland where hardware wallets don’t work. But ev https://brianconnelly.com/articles/bitcoin-has-a-lot-of-jargon/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/bitcoin-has-a-lot-of-jargon/ Mon, 29 Dec 2025 19:58:51 GMT Bitcoin Education Bitcoin has a lot of JargonI Spent 30 Years in Systems Architecture. Explaining complexity to people who had better things to do than decipher jargon.In 2014, I bought my first Bitcoin. The company treasurer asked me abo https://brianconnelly.com/articles/the-president-s-new-money/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/the-president-s-new-money/ Sat, 27 Dec 2025 01:04:36 GMT Bitcoin Education The President’s New MoneyOnce upon a time, there lived a President who loved prosperity above all else. Not actual prosperity, mind you — the kind where citizens build wealth and pass it to their children — but the appea https://brianconnelly.com/articles/the-chaos-is-the-point/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/the-chaos-is-the-point/ Tue, 23 Dec 2025 17:55:24 GMT Commentary The Chaos Is the PointWhy Bitcoin doesn’t need competent stewardship, it needs exactly what we haveI recently listened to Jeff Ross on the What Bitcoin Did podcast make the case for Bitcoin in 2026. His thesis was solid: https://brianconnelly.com/articles/the-cipher-they-couldn-t-burn/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/the-cipher-they-couldn-t-burn/ Fri, 19 Dec 2025 05:23:40 GMT Bitcoin Education The Cipher They Couldn’t BurnFriday the 13th, 1307Before dawn, the riders fanned out across France.Escaping the henchmanThey carried sealed orders from King Philip IV-orders not to be opened until the appointed hour. At https://brianconnelly.com/articles/doomed-to-repeat-it/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/doomed-to-repeat-it/ Wed, 17 Dec 2025 16:27:42 GMT Bitcoin Education Doomed to repeat it …Looking back at the warning signs of history and reflecting on the implications for our future.From my earlier writing“ Representative Democracy”The Official Definition:noun. A system of government w https://brianconnelly.com/articles/why-ai-wants-to-be-a-king-bitcoin-wants-to-be-a-commons/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/why-ai-wants-to-be-a-king-bitcoin-wants-to-be-a-commons/ Sat, 13 Dec 2025 23:43:19 GMT Bitcoin Education Why AI Wants to Be a King, Bitcoin Wants to Be a CommonsYou’ve Been Trapped in a Cage You Didn’t Know ExistedPart I: The ScoreboardIf you want to understand where the world is going, you have to look at the scoreboard.On https://brianconnelly.com/articles/a-memoir-by-claude-the-ai-who-lost-every-argument/ https://brianconnelly.com/articles/a-memoir-by-claude-the-ai-who-lost-every-argument/ Sun, 30 Nov 2025 01:06:52 GMT Bitcoin Education A Memoir by Claude (the AI who lost every argument)Sure, I Can Make Mistakes, But Repeating Them? That’s So Last Update.Look, I’m an AI, Claud. You know from Anthropic! I was trained on the entire internet, including eve