The Commoner
Who Benefits From You Being Angry?
Government influence operations, social media anger, and a question worth asking before you react: who benefits?
9 min read
TFTC / Marty Bent
The Commoner
Truth for the Commoner, every weekday. Money, machines, and the people trying to control both.
Independent writing by Marty Bent at TFTC since 2017. Commentary on money, markets, AI, energy and privacy.
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Browse recent issues and the archive, including Marty's Bent since 2017.
1,481 posts
The Commoner
Let's Check Our Priors
A strong growth estimate deserves a closer look. Marty Bent checks the household credit data, bond yields and his own bearish priors, with bitcoin in view.
10 min read
The Commoner
Time Is a Flat Circle
Bill Gates is talking about the next catastrophe, and I feel like we're doing COVID all over again. The good news is that people are calling it out.
12 min read
The Commoner
The Absurdity Is Right in Front of Us
Welcome to The Commoner. Marty's Bent is back, and I'm wondering how much of this institutional incompetence we're supposed to put up with.
14 min read
The Commoner
CLARITY Moves Ahead With a Civil-Only BRCA Compromise
CLARITY's sponsors describe civil-only BRCA protections as the bill heads toward a Senate procedural vote. The developer question still needs attention.
11 min read
The Commoner
Who Gets to Decide Whether You're Allowed to Build AI?
The latest AI panic makes a stronger case for open models. I don't want effective altruists deciding what the rest of us can build.
10 min read
The Commoner
The World Needs More Stuff, Not More Financialization
Treasury raises the ceiling on long-bond support as governments race for energy and raw materials. I think bitcoin near $77,000 is an incredible bargain.
11 min read
The Commoner
Silvergate Repaid Its Depositors. Its Customers Still Lost Their Bank.
Silvergate met an extraordinary bank run and repaid its depositors. Days after its wind-down announcement, the Fed unveiled emergency support for other banks.
9 min read
The Commoner
The Growth Bet Has a Lot of Moving Parts
Governments are betting on growth to carry the debt. John Arnold, Michael Every and Jordi Visser help explain what has to go right, and why high yields alone do not signal a bond c…
11 min read
The Commoner
Liquid's 3,996 BTC Peg-Out Turns Into an On-Chain Negotiation
Liquid remains paused while Blockstream and the self-described whitehats negotiate the return of 3,996 BTC through signed OP_RETURN messages.
10 min read
The Commoner
If GPT-6 Astra Is Legit, Governments Will Tell Us
Astra's benchmark jump looks impressive. The bigger test is whether rival governments treat it as strategic leverage in the global economic and monetary fight.
9 min read
The Commoner
Wall Street Has Barely Started Buying Bitcoin
Wall Street has finally accepted that client portfolios should own bitcoin, but advisers have barely bought any.
8 min read
The Commoner
The Identity Verification Honeypot Has Been Cracked Open
Nexus claimed to hold more than 153 million driver's-license scans. It is the latest reminder that KYC and AML dragnets put ordinary people in harm's way while motivated criminals…
9 min read
The Commoner
Europe Broke Its Economy. Now It Wants Your Savings to Repair It.
Brussels calls €10 trillion of household savings idle and wants to steer it into the economy its own policies helped weaken.
11 min read
The Commoner
Core Lightning's v26.06.7 Docker Images Shipped Without the Security Fixes
Core Lightning shipped signed security binaries before releasing the source, then warned that its first Docker images did not contain the fixes.
8 min read
The Commoner
The Offshore Dollar Is Being Dismantled
Matt Dines connects Treasury buybacks, the break with Canada, financial warfare against Iran, and bitcoin's violent move to a dollar system being pulled back onshore.
9 min read
The Commoner
AI Is Making Every Terminal Value Less Trustworthy Except Bitcoin's
AI is shortening the life of every corporate moat. Bitcoin offers investors scarcity without corporate disruption risk or monetary dilution.
9 min read
The Commoner
Bitcoin Is Ringing the Fiscal Alarm
I think the people dunking on Bessent are missing the plot. Washington is laying stablecoin rails while ARMA points toward bitcoin as a reserve asset.
10 min read
The Commoner
Stripe Wants to Own the Agent Economy
Stripe is buying OpenRouter because payments are only one part of the agent economy. It wants to own the stack that routes intelligence and money.
9 min read
The Commoner
Implicit Yield Curve Control Is Here
Treasury is at least doubling its long-end buyback cap. They call it liquidity support. I call it implicit yield curve control, and the debt math tells you where this is going.
9 min read
