There was no greater surprise in 2021 than Tesla announcing they bought $1.5 billion bitcoin.

Until then, Elon Musk was this other figure in other spaces, especially in space itself. Our paths had crossed, he was spammed about ‘etherium’ as he initially called it by Twitter bots, but he was not a cryptonian.

When he became one, it also eventually became difficult to balance the support of the world’s richest man for crypto, with his big megaphone and his willingness to opine without necessarily considering just how it might come across.

‘I’m new here and I’m here to fix bitcoin,’ was one of the regurgitated meme by some coders when Musk suggested that bitcoin could be changed in this way or that way.

Then Tesla stopped accepting bitcoin, just two months after it began accepting it. They were “concerned about rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions.”

Ouch, that did hurt. It crashed the price, after pumping it, and in the meantime Musk had gone from this model entrepreneur driving forward other industries – a clear ally if there ever was one. To our crypto boy. To… well, he was under pressure by alt-leftish loud environmental based criticisms for Tesla accepting bitcoin.

Gradually however he went on to actually dis bitcoin in matters unrelated to the environment to the point bitcoin maxis and Musk were publicly fighting, and crashing the price. To the point he said:

“Bitcoin is actually highly centralized, with supermajority controlled by handful of big mining (aka hashing) companies. A single coal mine in Xinjiang flooded, almost killing miners, and Bitcoin hash rate dropped 35%. Sound ‘decentralized’ to you?”

We wondered at the time what were his motives, and even speculated:

“If anyone has benefited from the way things are it of course has to be the richest man because he obviously won and thus has a clear stake in fiat printing. Unconsciously or consciously therefore, in that position, disrupting the would be disrupters would make sense.

Yet without some concrete evidence it wouldn’t be easy to jump to such conclusion, but it would be easy to paint a picture of Musk trying to destroy the institutional investors and corporate bitcoin treasuries narrative because whether he knows it or not, that is what he has attempted.”

Tesla did later sell some bitcoin, but not at the time, and some cryptonians suggested ulterior motives were highly unlikely.

Musk got bored of bitcoin anyway. He became the Dogecoin CEO or TechnoKing or whatever meme, and so the yellow currency mooned and mooned, crashed and mooned, crashed and crashed, mooned, then we had all these Dogecoin copies like Shiba Inu which also mooned on Musk tweets, with it all great fun until Anonymous had enough.

In a widely watched video, Anonymous accused Tesla of buying the bitcoin with government subsidies, among many other things.

“Don’t kill what you hate, save what you love,” Musk said at the time, with it closing the episode as Musk kind of stopped crash tweeting, went to some crypto conferences which helped change the narrative back to crypto boy, bitcoin mooned again and Musk kind of moved on to other things.

Starlink

Prior to the invasion of Ukraine, when there was that whole debate over he will or won’t, we suggested that if he does there would be protests in every city, the internet would galvanize, Musk would rush Starlinks, etc, etc.

We were right. The Berlin protest at the time was the one that took even us aback with 100,000 showing up.

Musk did rush the starlinks. Crypto boys donated and bought tractor NFTs. Great ‘fun’ in a very serious matter.

And Musk was, not necessarily a hero but our boy in regards to Ukraine. We got this cool tech, Musk is part of the team, we even winning. Then he goes off and seemingly parrots Putin with a ‘peace’ offer.

Fine, why is he talking to Putin though if he is, as it is still allegedly, but he did say when asked if he is talking to other parties involved in the war: “Quite a few. Trying to do the right thing, which is not always clear.”

Well, the right of a democratic nation to stay free and democratic is very clear, but anyway, whatever, we can be nice and put it down to his ‘etherium’ moment, or ‘I’m here to fix bitcoin,’ except he did go on to say some other things and then there were reports he was denying some starlink services to Ukraine in the occupied Ukrainian territories. Now:

“Documents obtained by CNN show that last month Musk’s SpaceX sent a letter to the Pentagon saying it can no longer continue to fund the Starlink service as it has.

The letter also requested that the Pentagon take over funding for Ukraine’s government and military use of Starlink, which SpaceX claims would cost more than $120 million for the rest of the year and could cost close to $400 million for the next 12 months.”

In reply to Jason Jay Smart, a Special Correspondent at the KyivPost, who said the stoping of this donation “comes days after Ukrainian Ambassador Melnyk Andrij told Musk to ‘fuck off,’” or rather rejected the ‘peace’ offer in that way, Musk said:

“We’re just following his recommendation.”

But, the letter to the Pentagon was sent last month, not last week when he sparked controversy.

So, this is about money, and this is his way of negotiating the money? The world’s richest man controversies war and peace over $100 million dollars when his networth is $215 billion?

And with that focus he doesn’t even care to Bitcoin Maxis v Musk, but with Ukraine?

It would be better than some sudden Putin fanboy transformation though, although maybe he thinks his way out of paying that donation is to give Putin whatever he wants. To sell out the sovereignty and democracy of millions, not to mention risk future wars all the way to Berlin as that’s where Putin wanted Nato to roll back, for some dum pennies.

The timing is also not great, just as Ukraine is winning, but it is unlikely to change much on the ground as these are of course very serious matters. Serious enough arguably to even one off tax Musk specifically through some emergency decree if he does anything that in any way endangers Ukrainian life.

Not least because Starlink currently is a monopoly, and thus the usual rules of capitalism do not apply, as only Starlink can currently provide this service.

Jeff Bezos of Amazon, the second richest man, is launching Project Kuiper. They say:

“Our first two satellites—Kuipersat-1 and Kuipersat-2—will be completed later this year, and we are now planning to deploy both satellites on the first flight of United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) new Vulcan Centaur rocket in early 2023.”

So not quite available currently. There’s also the European Eutelsat and OneWeb, which are merging, but they’re smaller.

The Ukrainian Army in addition are used to Starlink, and so this can even become a question of: to what extent the US government can order Musk in this matter, including potentially even under threat of prison?

You’d think to the full extent if it was absolutely necessary, but this may also more widely open a debate in regards to subsidies and whether they have been sufficiently diversified.

In regards to buying Twitter and taking it private, now the government might have to block such bid, because it may give Musk far too much power which he has shown to not be too careful in using.

However, he has claimed he has Aspergers, described as “a form of Autism Spectrum Disorder. Young people with Asperger’s Syndrome have a difficult time relating to others socially and their behavior and thinking patterns can be rigid and repetitive.”

Rigid and repetitive, which may explain his combative side in making the situation even worse by criticizing more clearly, instead of being a bit diplomatic.

Ukraine perhaps should bear that in mind, but one way to address that is to bring Musk down from his horse, a bit like anonymous did so that some of the idolization veneer comes off.

Ukraine however is obviously very busy. There has been an information blackout for more than a week now, and it is perhaps a bit surprising just how disciplined the soldiers appear to be in abiding by it, but we have gotten sort of livestreams of the battle fronts, although in clips.

These are just some of the footages of the frontline, bringing the war effectively live. Musk should watch some of them and understand just how serious the matter is.

Which he might not, as an autist, but if it’s just about pennies then it’s not clear why he would make it a public issue as the public can well say that maybe he should be paid through the withdrawal of some of the subsidies.

The public hopefully has also gotten a better understanding that this may also just be a bit Musk’s nature.

He seems to love the spotlight and more importantly he seems to put his own business first, with everything else done to advance it. If it means dissing bitcoin to protect Tesla, that’s what you get. Dissing Ukraine for some pennies, all green.

That it might rile up people? Well, maybe that’s a bonus or he isn’t able to quite see it until consequences, which is obviously how we all learn how to relate to others socially.

Hopefully however he can move very quickly from Ukraine to find whatever other thing to grab attention, to then just ditch it soon after, because there won’t be much patience when it comes to Ukraine and in war and peace matters, the government has even absolute power and authority.

The good news though is that the Lions of Ukraine do not seem to be affected by any of this or by playgrounds. Kherson is being evacuated. There’s some suggestions the Ukrainian Army is just 12 miles from the city. Some probably widely optimistic estimates are that the city could even be liberated within a week, while Ukraine aims to do so by Christmas.

The best of luck to them, and a thanks will be due in due course, to both the lions and god, for saving liberty in our day.

A poem, our very own. Short, but we like. It’s called the Lions of Ukraine:

Let the drums beat hard,
in fields so wide,
for the lions come
to claim their land,
with humvees and maxim guns,
British Ms and Merican hmm.

Let the drums beat hard,
in fields so wide,
for lions come,
to claim our land
as the world one shouts:
Slava Ukraini! [montage, from Boris Johnson in parliament to some smiling person carrying water in some village].

And then repeat refrain with higher and higher tone to the beat of drums:

(refrain) beat the drums so hard,
in filds awide,
lions come,
to take our land.