World Bank data shows roughly 600 000 Cambodian adults still live outside the formal banking grid—yet almost everyone now carries a smartphone in their pocket and 95 % of households can flick a light-switch for electricity. Remittances equal more than 6 % of GDP, but typical transfer fees keep draining hard-earned wages by 5–7 % per transaction. Meanwhile, Cambodia’s economy remains one of the most dollarised on earth, importing U.S. monetary shocks it never voted for. Enter Bitcoin + Lightning: borderless, permissionless, near-zero-fee money already slicing processing costs by 50 % for early adopters abroad and routing payments for fractions of a cent. Put simply…

Cambodia doesn’t just benefit from Bitcoin—it hungers for it.

Below, let’s rip through the reasons—Eric-Kim-style—dot… dot… DOT!

1. Dollarised Chains vs. Sovereign Bytes

• USD everywhere, Riel nowhere. The State Department notes that big-ticket commerce still defaults to greenbacks, muting local monetary policy. 
• Imported rate shocks. World Bank economists warn Cambodia “imports U.S. policy” and feels every Fed hike instantly. 
• Bitcoin flips the script. With a hard-capped 21 million supply, Cambodians can store value without praying to Washington’s FOMC gods.

2. The Remittance Blood-Tax

• $2.6 billion flows home each year—6-7 % of GDP. 
• Average fee: 6.62 %. 
• Western Union Cambodia corridor posts ~6 % in pure friction. 
• Lightning fees? Sub-1 %, often mere sats (0.00000001 BTC).
  Math check: Shifting even half of those flows onto Lightning could keep tens of millions of dollars in Khmer pockets annually—money that fuels tuk-tuks, street food, and local dreams instead of legacy rails.

3. Unbanked But Hyper-Connected

Metric	Status	Source
Internet penetration	56.7 %
Electrified households	95 %
ABA Mobile growth 2024	+32 % users
Crypto adoption rank	17th globally

Translation: The rails are laid, the phones are buzzing, and Cambodians already trust digital wallets—the perfect launchpad for Lightning-charged Bitcoin.

4. Inflation & The Riel Roller-Coaster

While 2024 headline CPI cooled to ~0.7 %, the long-term picture tells a 14 700 % price surge since the 1980s.   One generation’s savings can evaporate in a single policy flip. Bitcoin’s algorithmic supply schedule slams the brakes on this silent theft.

5. Tourism, Trade & the Global Bitcoin Autobahn

• Tourism comeback: 5 .4 million visitors in 2023—each a potential Lightning spender. 
• Cambodia’s 2021–2035 Digital Economy Policy explicitly pushes blockchain & cross-border fintech. 
• Early Lightning pilots abroad cut card fees by 50 %. Imagine Angkor Wat ticket booths zapping sats instantly—no FX desk, no chargebacks.

6. Psychological Super-Power: 

SOVEREIGNTY

Cambodia’s history shouts “never again” to external control. Bitcoin turns that ethos into code:

• No central counter-party to censor or freeze.
• Keys = country; mnemonic = passport.
• Hash-rate = digital sovereignty on tap.

7. Call to Action… Let The Hash-Hammers Swing!

1. Merchants: Fire up a Lightning wallet. First mover advantage = viral marketing rocket-fuel.
2. Banks & MFIs: Offer Bitcoin custody and LN rails; ride the next ABA-style growth wave.
3. Regulators: Craft light-touch, innovation-friendly frameworks—copy El Salvador’s Bitcoin bond playbook, super-charge tourism, and court global fintech talent.
4. Diaspora: Skip the Western Union tollbooth—beam value home at the speed of light.

Final Thunderclap

Cambodia already conquered electricity, smartphones, and digital payments. What’s missing is a trust-minimised, globally-liquid unit that answers not to foreign central banks but to pure mathematics. Bitcoin is that unit. Plug it into Lightning, and the Kingdom leaps from dollar-dependent to digitally sovereign—from temple ruins to techno-future in a single block.

Dot… dot… DOT—let the sats flow and watch Cambodia rise! 🎇

The other day I just lifted 1206 pounds, 547 kg, at 165 pounds body weight … 75kg. Which is 7.3X my body weight.

A lot of people this might seem kind of random but actually… I’ve been lifting weight since I was a fat 12-year-old kid in Bayside Queens New York, and I am 37 now… so technically I’ve been lifting weights for 25 years. Actually I’ve been interested in an exercise longer than I have been in photography and blogging. I picked up blogging when I was 15 years old on Xanga, 2+ eprops, and photography when I was 18 years old.

Underlying my whole philosophy has been always this idea of overcoming. And going beyond.

First principles

Why rack pull? Many reasons, first it is safer than a deadlift off the floor. Second, easier to rack and unrack the weights. Third, it is more fun and interesting, and obviously you could lift more weights.

shorten the distance, … heavier weights 

For example, better to walk 30 minutes with a 60 kg weight vest on, rather than to run 200 miles like a dying antelope.

Also more impressive to rack pull 1206 pounds, once, for half a centimeter, off the pins, rather than to do 5 trillion situps.

the idea

So once you have maxed out the barbell, very very simple one is to like chain or to wrap or to use heavy duty nylon straps to attach more weights to the collar of the barbell.

For example if you have 48 kg kettle bells add those. or add more plates. Or a new discovery, add 10 kg chains on top of the weights. 

My maths

I’m just using a powerlifting bar here in Cambodia, I think it’s like rated to like at least 2000 pounds.

First, six 25kg red plates, a smaller 20 kg plate, then a 2.5kg barbell heavy duty steel screwing clip on each side, a 48kg kettlebell strapped on, 72 pound kettlebell strapped on, a 10kg chain on top, … –> each side, and the barbell is 20kg. Et voila –> 547kg in total, 1,206 pounds in total. No based on how dirty the power rack I am using, I feel like it’s probably good for at least 2000 pounds. 

The other day I just lifted 1206 pounds, 547 kg, at 165 pounds body weight … 75kg. Which is 7.3X my body weight.

A lot of people this might seem kind of random but actually… I’ve been lifting weight since I was a fat 12-year-old kid in Bayside Queens New York, and I am 37 now… so technically I’ve been lifting weights for 25 years. Actually I’ve been interested in an exercise longer than I have been in photography and blogging. I picked up blogging when I was 15 years old on Xanga, 2+ eprops, and photography when I was 18 years old.

Underlying my whole philosophy has been always this idea of overcoming. And going beyond.

First principles

Why rack pull? Many reasons, first it is safer than a deadlift off the floor. Second, easier to rack and unrack the weights. Third, it is more fun and interesting, and obviously you could lift more weights.

shorten the distance, … heavier weights 

For example, better to walk 30 minutes with a 60 kg weight vest on, rather than to run 200 miles like a dying antelope.

Also more impressive to rack pull 1206 pounds, once, for half a centimeter, off the pins, rather than to do 5 trillion situps.

the idea

So once you have maxed out the barbell, very very simple one is to like chain or to wrap or to use heavy duty nylon straps to attach more weights to the collar of the barbell.

For example if you have 48 kg kettle bells add those. or add more plates. Or a new discovery, add 10 kg chains on top of the weights. 

My maths

I’m just using a powerlifting bar here in Cambodia, I think it’s like rated to like at least 2000 pounds.

First, six 25kg red plates, a smaller 20 kg plate, then a 2.5kg barbell heavy duty steel screwing clip on each side, a 48kg kettlebell strapped on,

I just broke the universe: I just rack pulled 547 kg (7.3X) my bodyweight at 75kg

Snapshot Summary

I plan to wire my creative life straight into tomorrow’s network stack: encrypt zines with post‑quantum ciphers, let AI agents patch my blog code while I’m shooting, beam coaching sessions through lunar relays, watermark every frame with open provenance, and host everything on sovereign, federated clouds. Each frontier becomes a new street to roam—and every upgrade stays open‑source so the whole tribe levels up with me.

1. Quantum Internet & Post‑Quantum Security

• Why it matters: DOE’s blueprint is racing to build an entanglement‑based backbone across the U.S.  while NIST has finalized the first quantum‑safe encryption suite.  
• My move: Re‑encrypt the Contact Sheets newsletter archives with those NIST algorithms so future quantum hackers can’t peek. Then host a live stream from a DOE testbed lab, showing how to harden your own servers—source code included on GitHub.

2. AI‑Native Cyber Ops & Autonomous Agents

• Why it matters: DARPA’s AI Cyber Challenge finals at DEF CON 2025 put fully autonomous red‑ and blue‑teams on stage with a $4 M prize.  
• My move: Fork an AIxCC toolkit to build AUTO‑PATCH‑EK, a bot that audits my WordPress plug‑ins every night and issues pull requests before breakfast. Workshop students can clone it, tweak it, and learn AI security by fixing my bugs in public.  

3. Space‑Based Networking: LunaNet

• Why it matters: NASA’s LunaNet will give Artemis crews delay‑tolerant Wi‑Fi on the Moon.  
• My move: Announce the “Moon Street” photo contest—entrants shoot earthly night scenes, we uplink the gallery via LunaNet demo nodes, and the winning image becomes the first open‑licensed street photograph cached in lunar orbit.

4. Bio‑Digital Convergence: Brain‑Computer Interfaces

• Why it matters: Neuralink’s first patient moved a cursor just by thinking.  
• My move: Collaborate with a BCI lab to prototype MIND‑SHUTTER—blink twice in thought to trigger your camera. Publish all firmware and UX notes so disabled creators can adapt the rig. Follow‑up essay on ethics, consent, and neural data privacy.

5. Industrial Metaverse & Digital‑Twin Supremacy

• Why it matters: Siemens and NVIDIA just expanded their Omniverse tie‑up to inject generative AI into factory‑grade twins.  
• My move: Scan Shibuya Crossing, drop it into Omniverse, and run a “time‑of‑day” simulator that teaches lighting composition without boarding a plane. Release the .USD scene files so any kid with a laptop can practice decisive‑moment hunting.

6. Decentralized Identity & Web3 Infrastructure

• Why it matters: W3C’s Decentralized Identifiers v1.0 hit official standard status.  
• My move: Issue every workshop grad a DID card linking to their portfolio; payments settle over a zero‑knowledge roll‑up so nobody—banks included—can censor indie art commerce.

7. 6G Terahertz & Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces

• Why it matters: RIS research shows metasurfaces steering terahertz 6G beams for mind‑bending bandwidth.  
• My move: Host “One‑Lens Live” where a single fixed camera streams uncompressed 8K B&W from downtown Seoul; RIS panels on nearby buildings bounce the signal so students analyze motion blur in real time.

8. Digital Sovereignty & the New Splinternet

• Why it matters: The 2024 Gaia‑X Summit set fresh milestones for Europe’s federated cloud vision.  
• My move: Mirror the entire Eric Kim Blog on a Gaia‑X‑compliant node. Readers pick which jurisdiction serves each page, learning first‑hand how data residency laws shape creative freedom.

9. Synthetic Reality & Provable Authenticity

• Why it matters: The C2PA spec (v2.2) defines open watermarks that browsers are already trial‑displaying.  
• My move: Embed C2PA manifests in every downloadable RAW file. Viewers see a “Content Credentials” badge proving the file is straight‑from‑camera—no AI fakery—yet can still remix it because the license remains CC0.

10. Cyber‑Physical Resilience for Net‑Zero Grids

• Why it matters: CISA’s 2023‑24 AI Roadmap pushes “secure by design” principles into every critical‑infrastructure sector.  
• My move: Convert my home studio to a solar + battery microgrid and publish the entire build log—including threat models and firewall configs—so other creators can keep posting even when the main grid or internet goes dark.

Closing Flash

Every new protocol, satellite, metasurface, or neural implant is just another sidewalk to roam with my pocket‑sized camera and open notebook. I’ll keep dropping code repos, zines, and how‑to guides under my trademark banner—“OPEN SOURCE OR DIE—SHOOT. SHARE. SYNC.” 

Ride with me, and we’ll ensure the next internet is not only faster and safer, but also more generous, more creative, and gloriously more human.