As 2023 comes to a close, and we enter 2024, I want to take a moment to reflect on what’s been an extraordinary year, and set the stage for what I’m confident is going to be the most significant year of my life to date.
Reflections on 2023.
At the outset of this year, I decided that I was going to put all my focus on bieng a “content creator”. I told myself: “ok - it’s Twitter, Substack, I’ll write at least 3 books and really lean into this part of my life”
It started off solid. I wrote 80% of The Bushido of Bitcoin in a one-month sprint. Got up at 5am every day, and just wrote. But once that larger chunk was out of the way, my entrepreneurial itch needed a scratch.
ChatGPT was all the rage, and like many others, I was intrigued. Partly because I had decided to focus my life around writing. I had discussed GPT-2 with a friend in early 2022, and seeing how far GPT-3 had come, I thought maybe there is something here.
I decided, considering the pace of things, to just dive in. Do my 1000 hours and understand what all of this was about.
An idea formed in my head. Could we take these base models and adapt them to personalities so you can speak to people or mentors, alive or dead, and get life advice? From this question, “Mentar AI” was born (Mentor + Avatar).
Cool idea. In fact, Character AI jumped on a similar concept and raised at a billion dollar valuation, despite being less than a year old as a company. Crazy shit ensued.
I set out to see if this was possible. Turned out, while a cool idea conceptually, (a) it was not feasible for a few reasons:
Technical: Fine-tuning and embedding is not a good enough approach to give a model a really unique model of the world, and therefore a deep enough personality. To really do this you need to build bespoke models, and we’re just not there yet with transformer tech, unless you’ve got tens of millions to burn. And even the result is not great.
Philoso-technical: People are unique because they are human, have agency, and can therefore guide you or have a conversation with you. No matter how good a model is, it can’t really tell you anything unique - UNLESS, #1 above is solved to such a high degree, then perhaps. But even then, I’d put my money on a human. If you want run of the mill, boring, regurgitated advice, then sure - but that’s not why you’d go to the mentor list we had in the first place.
Solution looking for a Problem: Let’s assume you could get these ‘Mentars’ working..what then? We built the app, but I found that even I couldn’t be bothered using it. The whole experience was a bit weird. Like: “Hey Jordan [Peterson], what did you have for breakfast? There’s just something about speaking to a real human versus a program. Who knows. Maybe I’m just old school.
In any case. We pivoted because we realised that these LLMs were really just conversational search engines - and we found a narrow use case that could benefit from everything we’d learned building Mentar.
Enter… Spirit of Satoshi.
I won’t say too much here except that we spent the balance of the year working on this and have closed out the year with a couple of wins:
1. SatoshiGPT
CustomGPT on the OpenAI marketplace, that can:
✅ Answer any Bitcoin question
✅ Give you the Bitcoin price (current & historic)
✅ Estimate the Halving
✅ Retrieve Bitcoin Mining & Hashrate Data (thanks to NewHedge)
✅ Check Bitcoin transactions on Mempool (thanks to Mempool)
✅ Find Bitcoin merchants (demo below, courtesy of BTC Map)
✅ Summarise current Bitcoin News (via feeds from Bitcoin News and No BS Bitcoin)
And - much of this data it can visualise in graphs and charts.
2. Code-Satoshi
An assistant that can help Produce, Correct and Explain code to engineers who are working with and on Bitcoin & Bitcoin-related languages, protocols and frameworks.
3. Nexus Report
We also published the Nexus Report. The first annual Bitcoin <> AI industry report. it’s packed full of interesting data, and some myth busting. You can download that for free by clicking on the heading.
There’s more to add, but this is not a Satoshi blog.
Couple mentions before I get to what I REALLY wanted to say in this quick write up.
Bushido
The book is on it’s FIFTH draft 😂😂
I promise it will come out next year. I finally found an editor who I can genuinely trust to help me get this across the finish line. Mr
himself!I can only promise that it will be well worth the wait.
Aiming for Q2 release.
A little glimpse of the internal artwork:
Bitcoin Times
If you’ve been following me here, you’ll know about The Bitcoin Times. We published the Energy Edition this year, and it was once again…a beautiful thing. I also wrote what I think is one of my best essays ever. At least in the top 5. If you’ve not read it yet, here you go:
Milei
He won. And I am inspired. I’ll talk about this later in my hare-brained long term plan.
For me, Psyops aside, I think he represents a significant shift in the energy of leadership and if he continues the way he has started, Argentina will become a world superpower before the end of this decade.
2024
This is going to be a MASSIVE year.
I have many, many things planned, professionally:
More on the way with the Satoshi project.
Bushido will be released.
Bitcoin Times will take it up a notch.
Kicking off a new Podcast.
More Remnant Chronicles (I have 3 incredible pieces in draft)
Launching a Nostr-based project, which may just become the Facebook of this emerging protocol. I don’t often like to use hyperbole, but I believe we are onto something big.
A series of smaller side projects, tba.
If get the time (unlikely) I may look to complete the “Remnant” book that I have an early draft of..but we’ll see.
Personally speaking, I have one big goal, that God-willing, shall be achieved. My wife & I would like to bring a life into this world. It’s about time I began the most low-time-preference of all projects.
All in all, 2024 will be a year of Shipping.
Shipping everything from products, to features, to side hustles, to essays, to books, to publications to a child. All of it. Whatever it takes!
Beyond
This decade will be one of major transition. I am convinced that we are not only “going to make it”, but that we are going to win so hard that maybe only a few of us can fathom the magnitude.
Clown world is not just stupid, but it’s self defeating. We are better, smarter, stronger, more virtuous and more powerful, by the very definition of those words. They might have most of the economic resources (for the moment), but this decade will see the economic centre of gravity swing to our side with the rise of Bitcoin (specifically - NOT crapto).
So while some choose to bitch, scream and whine about how dumb everything is, some of us are building, creating, writing, producing, planning and forming what
recently wrote about: A New Knighthood:I believe that 2030 onwards (maybe a bit longer, who knows) will be the beginning of a new heroic age. This is actually the central theme of my Bushido book.
This new era will require a new playbook. In the current paradigm, winning requires cheating, lying, stealing and getting as close to the monetary spigot as possible. It’s not about producing anything, but about being a devious and conniving (or simply useless) bureaucratic leech. A drain on human productive capacity.
As the world transitions, as economic consequence localises (Bitcoin) and as the Wolves, Lions and The Remnant wake up, we will find that winning requires a new set of rules. This new “rule book” is essentially a set of principles, or a code of virtue. In other words, a Bushido or a Knighthood.
For now, Mark’s article above can expand on what that is, and when Bushido comes out, I promise you a first attempt at that guide.
So…with that in mind, I’m going to note a few things that I want to bring to life and do in the decade ahead. It might sound fanciful to some, but I’m putting it out there for my own benefit more than anything else.
When I look back on this piece a decade from now, I’ll either be proven an idiot, a prophet, or somewhere in between. Time will tell.
1. Macedon
Before the decade is out, I plan to do what Milei did in Argentina, in nOrTh mAcEdOnIa (losers are such losers they couldn’t even keep their name). I will change the name to MACEDON and set the stage for a new age, that echoes its ancient glory. I will turn it into a powerful, technologically advanced city-state, whose economic and political backbone is built on Bitcoin & The Virtues of Bushido.
There are many reasons why this is a big (and good, and necessary) idea. I’ll explore this in future essays. Suffice to say, I have an entire idea forming in my head and I am playing the long game.
Marching on Macedon. Courtesy of
2. Movies
Modern Movies are an abomination. They are an affront to humanity and all that is beautiful about life. This must be fixed, and I want to make my mark on this, in the same way Howard Hughes did.
For example. Oliver Stone’s Alexander was the most pathetic film ever made. A matter made worse because it was about the Greatest man who ever lived. Desecration.
Before I die, I want to make a proper epic about Alexander. A full 3-film series like Peter Jackson did with Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.
I know little about making films, but I also knew little about Bitcoin at some point. My skill is in figuring out how to solve a problem. I will find the money, the best people, the best story tellers, and we will do it.
I also want to create a proper series for Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. I’d love to do Clavell’s Shogun, a real epic for Atilla, for Caesar, for Napoleon, and do a series for Wilbur Smith’s Courtney series (incredible - I suggest you add to your reading list). Also Dan Simmon’s Hyperion.
Neal Stephenson’s books deserve some films, but I’ll let
lead and direct those.3. Aviation
Finally. Aviation. Which has truly become Gayviation.
Not only are we still flying around in planes with 50yr old jet technology, but the level of service, the comfort, the amenities and the entire experience has been absolutely debauched. You are treated like cattle, not a customer.
It got slowly worse post after 9/11 - but damn man - since 2020, there’s no other way to describe travel other than as a “disgusting experience”. Even business class is no longer enjoyable.
The only people who still do it well are the Arabs.
Aviation needs to be fixed.
Space & comfort
Beautiful stewardesses,
Charismatic captains,
Beautiful lounges,
Fast, safe planes and more.
In fact, we need to bring back Zeppelins!!!! Imagine crossing the Atlantic. A week or two above international waters. What an experience.
We will Bring Back the Blimp!
These are a few of the mark’s I’d like to make on this world, before it’s my time to pass.
I understand if you’re asking yourself:
“why did his guy write this?” or
“who really cares what you want to do?”
And that’s fine. Because the answer to both is, (a) I wrote it for me, and (b). I care. In fact, if you also care, then maybe we are kindred spirits, and perhaps we will at some point work together on one of these hare-brained ideas.
I was born to two hard-working, completely incompatible, Macedonian migrants - that came to Australia after escaping a collapsing ex-communist country. We grew up with little. I moved out of a broken home at a young age. I had very few handouts, I was always ambitious. I always had big ideas, and today, I can feel the visions of my youth consume me once more.
I made every mistake in the book, but with each one, I found my way over, around, through and I learned. I have beat the odds all my life, and God-willing, I will continue to do so.
Most of all: “I refuse to die an un-lived life”
I wrote this to remind me why I am here, and perhaps also to inspire you to dream bigger.
So…
Let’s see if these are the ramblings of a delusional madman.
Or if there’s something to it.
Talking time is over. Back to building.
See you all in 2024!!
Aleksandar Svetski
Future Philosopher King of Macedon
The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades. 😎
Anyone who has accomplished anything worthwhile knows the value of Declarations, particularly public ones. Good luck.