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Kalzumeus Software

I'm Patrick McKenzie. Your engineering team knows me as patio11.

The broad through line of my work is systems thinking applied to businesses. I think the social organization of the Internet and its impact on the world are underestimated by almost everyone, including Silicon Valley. Everything important to you in the world sits atop several infrastructure layers; I am a storyteller for some of those layers and the people who build them.

My weird hobbies include writing Bits about Money (a biweekly-ish newsletter about financial infrastructure), cryptocurrency skepticism, and running national shadow vaccine location information infrastructure. (The pandemic has been weird for everyone, right?)

My self-assigned score is median value created for software people (engineers & entrepreneurs, principally) times number of software people impacted. Most is due to telling engineers to Charge More™ and accelerating software startups through my public work. I love talking to software people.

I am a tiny angel investor. I lived in Japan (travel recommendations) for 20 years and am presently in Chicago.

I am an advisor to Stripe. Opinions expressed on this site are my own.

If you have a credit card charge from Kalzumeus Software that is overwhelmingly likely to be a Bits about Money membership. If you still have questions, email patrick@kalzumeus.com .

Best Work

I've written extensively (3.6 million words and counting) since 2006. I curate a list of my best public work. The most important thing I've done is probably founding VaccinateCA (see the oral history I wrote of it). Here's the condensed version of my personal story.

Recent Essays

Tether's Troubles in November 2022

Tether's November 2022 attestation, even if believed, strongly suggests it blew up (again) during the recent crypto route.

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Tether Required Recapitalization In May 2022

Tether's March 2022 attestation, even if believed, shows that it became insolvent during the May 2022 crypto downturn.

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App Store Payments Will Have Increased Competition

Apple's App Store is reforming their guidelines about taking out-of-band payments. This will be very interesting for developers, especially in the games industry.

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