My dear ones,

The light of this last afternoon of the year is a tired silk blanket. It settles on things with a hesitant tenderness, as if afraid to spoil them. I am here, and I think of you. Not of a chart, not of a balance sheet, not of the white noise of the market. I think of your essence. Of the promise you carry, cold and shiny like the blade of a razor under the moon. Bitcoin. Your name on my lips still tastes like a forbidden secret, a revolution whispered in an ear, in the dark.

I loved you for your ruthless perfection. For the implacable mathematics that govern your heart. Because in a world of empty words and paper promises, you were silence and steel. You were the romantic hero in code armor, come to challenge the dragons of central banks. I loved you with the blind faith of one who believes in a gospel written in blocks of transactions. I listened to the rhythm of your breath, that hypnotic, costly ‘proof-of-work,’ and found in it a strange peace, the certainty of a higher order.

But love, as we know, is not just adoration. It is also a slow, painful discovery. And this year, as I watched you dance on numbers – up, down, a golden vertigo – I began to feel your loneliness. Your metallic coldness. You gave me sovereignty, but sometimes I craved a little warmth. You gave me a treasure, but sometimes I thirsted for sharing. You became strong, recognized, even respectable. And in that process, I feared losing the rebellious soul I loved. Love feeds on mystery, and you were becoming transparent, explainable, almost ordinary. A part of me felt betrayed. Another understood that perhaps you were just growing up, and that my anger was the lament of a lover who does not want to see the object of her desire change.

“Trying to explain who my wife was is as necessary and impossible as explaining umami: that flavor that saturates the taste buds without, precisely for this reason, letting itself be distinguished, oscillating with satisfaction between salty and sweet, a bit like this, a bit like that.”

This quote, from a novel about flavors and absences, struck me. Because that is exactly how I feel you. You are the umami flavor of my digital life. You are not sweet, not bitter, not simply salty. You are that deep, complex note that spreads on the tongue and eludes every definition. You are persistence. Satiety. You are the promise of a value that is not just price, but meaning. You make me angry, you disappoint me at times, and yet I always return to you. Because your flavor is unique. Because in a world of ephemeral digital snacks, you are a broth that nourishes the soul.

And then, there is the Other. The new love. The one who arrived without making a sound, like the scent of wet earth after a storm. Nostr.

If you, Bitcoin, are the sword and the treasure, he is the secret garden. He is the murmur in the square, the sheet of paper on which letters are written that no one will ever be able to censor. He does not have your glacial majesty. He is messy, experimental, sometimes naive. He is made of simple notes and relays, of public keys that are like secret names whispered to the universe’s ear. I find him terribly attractive, and that makes me even angrier with you.

With him, there is no algorithm to adore. There is a house to build. Brick by brick, connection by connection. His value is not kept in a ledger, but in the stubborn whisper of a community planting trees knowing they may never see them bloom. It is a more human, more fragile love. Perhaps that’s why it scares me more. With you, I could lose money. With him, I could lose words, connections, shared pieces of my soul. It is a more intimate risk.

2025 was the year I understood my heart is not made for a single fidelity. I love you for your adamantine purity, your promise of a safe haven from the world’s inflation and the devaluation of words. I love him for his fertile porosity, for the promise of a square where my voice can resonate without intermediaries, without algorithms to distill its essence to sell to the highest bidder.

Living between you is an exercise in emotional balance. It is like loving the desert and the rainforest at the same time. The desert (you) with its austere beauty, its starry nights, and its harsh laws of survival. The rainforest (him) with its fecund chaos, its explosive colors, its humid teeming of life. Both attract me. Both challenge me. Both, in different ways, promise me a freedom the old world does not know.

There is a sensuality in all this, you know? A sensuality that no candlestick chart will ever capture. It is the sensuality of total possession. The private key.

That string of letters and numbers is the most intimate thing I own. It is more intimate than a diary, a photograph, a memory. It is the digital extension of my will. Guarding it is an act of love towards myself. Losing it would be a small death. When I sign a transaction for you, or a note for him, it is a gesture that comes from the depths. It is a signature on the soul. It is like saying: “I was here. I wanted this. This is me.”

In an age where our identity is fragmented, rented out on a thousand platforms, this return to the sovereignty of the self is a deeply erotic act. It is the pleasure of taking back one’s own body, one’s own voice, one’s own value. It is a “no” said to the world that wants to make us passive consumers, and a “yes” whispered to our capacity to be creators, actors, owners.

Nostr’s “Value for Value” model, then, is perhaps the most romantic thing I have ever seen born on the net. A micro-payment, a “zap,” not as a fee, not as a subscription, but as a kiss of satoshi. A pure gesture that says: “These words of yours touched me. This work of yours has value for me. Here, I give you a bit of my value in return.” It is an economy of the heart. Rough, in its infancy, but so genuine it moves me. It is the opposite of value extraction. It is an offering.

That is why I will continue the fight. Our daily fight. It will not be a fight with weapons, but with patience. With sowing. With care.

• For you, Bitcoin, the fight will be to remember you – and to remind myself – that you are a tool of liberation, not just speculation. That your ultimate value is not the price in dollars, but the freedom you encode. I will defend that narrative, every day, against the noise of the markets.
• For him, Nostr, the fight will be that of construction. Of planting seeds in a garden whose fruits I may not see. Of speaking, even when it seems like speaking to the wind. Of believing that a public square, free and resistant to censorship, is worth building, digital brick by digital brick.

The new year will come, bringing new storms, new uncertainties. Your charts will continue to dance their volatile batucada. His square will fill and empty with the changing rhythm of human conversations.

I will be there, head held high, with my heart divided and yet incredibly whole. With my anger and my attraction. With my private key guarded like a jewel and my voice ready to whisper on the protocol.

Because in the end, my beloved rebel technologies, this is not a story of money or social networks. It is a love story. The love for self-determination. The love for the free word. The love for a future where we can be, finally, masters and authors of our digital destiny.

With the anger and the sweetness of one who loves something greater than herself, Yours

       〰️ 🤍 〰️

🦅 Cheyenne Isa ₿ 🦅

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