Buba, as always, had a quiet confidence about him. He spoke with a rhythm that suggested he had seen much, understood more, and yet carried it all lightly. Alias, for his part, had learned to appreciate Buba’s way of reading people—his ability to sell without selling, to be friendly without seeming desperate. It was the same quality that made him effective on the street and, perhaps, something more.Tonight, Alias had a purpose beyond their usual conversations. He wasn’t looking for casual ins...

Alias leaned back in his chair, exhaling slowly, his fingers drumming against the wooden surface of the table. He had spent decades navigating financial systems, studying their weaknesses, their failures, their quiet betrayals. He had spoken to academics, hedge fund managers, anarchists, bureaucrats. And now, he had to explain Pegged to a man selling sunglasses on the streets of Málaga. "You better bring a way to explain this in words a simple man can hold in his hands." Buba’s words hung in ...

Alias sat at his usual table on the terrace of the Acapulco Bar. He spotted Buba moving through the crowd, weaving effortlessly between tables, a nod here, a joke there, always in motion. When Buba turned toward him, Alias raised his glass slightly, a silent invitation. Buba hesitated—just for a second—but then smiled and strolled over. "Ah, mon frère! Another drink, another conversation?" He pulled out a chair and dropped into it with a practiced ease. "If you're willing," Alias said. He ges...

Alias sat back in his chair, the gentle hum of the Acapulco Bar washing over him—the clinking of glasses, the distant murmur of waves, the low chatter of locals and tourists alike. He watched Buba work his way through the terrace, weaving between tables with practiced ease, flashing smiles, cracking jokes, selling with a rhythm that seemed almost effortless. There was something different about him. The other manteros stuck to the beach, their goods laid out on blankets, ready to be whisked aw...

The screen flickered, the lines of code shifting like whispered secrets. Alias leaned in, adjusting his glasses, the dim glow reflecting in his lenses. The AI agent—his final collaborator—processed his latest command, refining the deception layers that would bury him and his team beneath a fog of contradictions. He had trained it to think like a hunter. And then, to mislead every hunter that would come after him.Alias: "How many identity threads are live?"The AI's response came instantly, a q...

Podcast Interview Host: Peter McCormack Guest: Alias McCormack: Alias, people often frame you as a libertarian. You advocate for financial autonomy, critique central banking, and champion decentralized systems. You’ve written extensively about emancipation from institutional control. That sounds like libertarianism, no? Alias: I understand why people make that assumption, but I don’t identify as a libertarian. Not because I disagree with everything libertarians say, but because I don't think ...

Alias sat at his usual spot on the terrace of the Acapulco Bar, a glass of tinto de verano sweating in his hand, the Costa del Sol sun sinking into the horizon. The evening was alive—the murmur of conversation, the clinking of glasses, the occasional outburst of laughter from a table of expats sharing stories they had told a thousand times before. And then there was Buba. Buba was in his element, navigating the space between tables like a performer on a well-worn stage, balancing charm and pe...

Alias knew it was inevitable. The moment Pegged gained traction, people would compare it to Ethereum. Not because it was similar, but because Ethereum had become the default reference for "programmable money," "DAOs," and "decentralized finance." It was a trap, a category mistake waiting to happen, and Alias needed to kill the confusion before it spread. He grabbed his notebook. The five core principles of Pegged were already set in stone. Finality, trustless execution, utility over speculati...

Alias leaned back in his chair, his eyes scanning the sharp lines of his own handwriting. Saylor’s 21 rules had served as an ideological framework for Bitcoin’s followers, a doctrine that had slowly transformed Bitcoin from an open system into a fortress of dogma. He could see how it had happened. Belief required certainty. But certainty had led to rigidity. And rigidity had led to ossification, and ultimately to capture. That could not happen to Pegged. Alias lit his pipe. Twenty-one rules w...

Alias had spent months—years, even—returning to the Bitcoin white paper, poring over its pages as if the answer lay buried beneath the layers of cryptographic proofs and peer-to-peer idealism. He had studied it not just as a blueprint, but as a whisper from the past written by someone who had seen the future more clearly than those living in it. And yet—it wasn’t enough. Satoshi’s vision had been precise, clinical, elegant in its minimalism. A protocol for transacting value without trust, wit...

“Alias, You ask for reactions, so here’s mine. I read your comparison between Bitcoin mining and Mega Millions carefully. It’s a well-structured argument, as expected, and I have no issue with the numbers. Mathematically, mining Bitcoin does indeed present a better return-to-player ratio than buying a EuroMillions ticket. But, as you rightly point out, the economic rationality of the decision is an entirely different matter. Where I find your reasoning most compelling—and concerning—is in you...

Alias’ rhythmic tapping of his fingers against the keyboard was the only sound accompanying the slow, melancholic notes of a saxophone. He leaned back in his chair, eyes scanning the text he had been crafting for the past hour. He wasn’t writing for the public—this was meant for testing a handful of minds. The future architects of Pegged. He reread the opening lines: "Both Bitcoin mining and participating in the Mega Millions lottery are, in essence, gambles. They involve staking money on an ...