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Tim Draper @TimDraper
I bought Bitcoin at $4. Or so I thought.
Peter Viscenne had offered to mine it for me. He bought some fast mining chips from Butterfly Labs, but rather than delivering them to him, they used them to mine their own bitcoin. Then when Peter finally got the chips, Bitcoin was over $30. So he mined what he could. Then we lost all our Bitcoin to Mt. Gox when they “lost” the money.
Since Bitcoin didn’t drop much on the Mt.Gox news, I did some research.
It turned out that Bitcoin was being used for remitting money, paying unbanked employees, and creating economies where there weren’t any.
So when I heard about the US Marshall’s auction, I bid over market at $632 and bought all nine lots offered.
Got on Fox Business in 2014 and said Bitcoin would hit $10,000 in three years.
The host looked at me like “Why did we have this guy on the show?”
Three years to the day, Bitcoin hit $10,000.
After that, my predictions have not been so prescient, but I have reason to believe that Bitcoin will reach $250k in 18 months… and eventually I expect the number to be higher as Bitcoin rises and the dollar falls to inflationary pressures.
ESSAYS
© A Mighty Girl
Susana Trimarco disguised herself as madam and walked into brothels across northern Argentina, searching for her missing daughter among women trapped in sexual slavery and in the process, she sparked a movement that would free over 3,000 sex trafficking victims. It began in April 2002, when her 23-year-old daughter, María de los Ángeles Verón, left for a doctor’s appointment in their city of San Miguel de Tucumán and never returned home. Frustrated by a police investigation she believed was deliberately sabotaged by corruption, Trimarco obtained the names of known pimps and sex traffickers from police files and launched her own search.
She posed as a buyer interested in purchasing the captive women and girls – some as young as 14, who could be traded for about $800. One rape victim told her she had seen María drugged, with swollen eyes, in a trafficker’s home that doubled as a holding place for newly abducted women. But by the time Trimarco could follow the lead, her daughter had been moved. Though María was never found, Trimarco’s relentless pursuit transformed her into one of Argentina’s most powerful human rights activists and forced sex trafficking onto national agenda. “The desperation of a mother blinds you,” she says. “It makes you fearless.”
Through this dangerous work, Trimarco discovered the full scope of sex trafficking and corruption within the police and judiciary that kept women trapped in forced prostitution. “The police would hand [the trafficked women] back to the criminals,” she recalls. “They used to say: ‘Don’t leave me. Take me with you.'” Trimarco ended up becoming the personal guardian to 129 survivors of sex trafficking, sheltering them in her home and helping them reunite with their families.
Trimarco’s relentless advocacy forced change at highest levels. Her work helped lead to first law, passed in 2008, making human trafficking a federal crime; the subsequent reforms have led to thousands of people being rescued from sex traffickers. These successes, however, have come with high personal cost to Trimarco: she has suffered many reprisals over the years including countless death threats, having her house set on fire, and several attempts to run her over in street.
As more trafficking survivors and families of trafficking victims reached out to her for help, Trimarco says, “It came to a point where I just did not have capacity to help them all. That is when I decided to open a foundation.” In 2007, she founded Fundación María de los Ángeles, a non-governmental organization focused on helping people escape from trafficking and lobbying for legislation to prevent it. Her efforts focused on her daughter’s disappearance eventually resulted in trials for 13 people, including several police officers, in 2012; all 13 were acquitted, a ruling that prompted outrage by many and led to impeachment proceedings against three judges.
In December 2013, Tucumán Supreme Court reversed acquittals and convicted ten of defendants, who received sentences ranging from 10 to 22 years in April 2014. But despite it all, Trimarco still hasn’t found out what she wants to know most: what happened to her daughter. Some witnesses say she was murdered – although her body has never been found and others say she was taken overseas.
Twenty-three years later, Trimarco’s work continues in her daughter’s name and for all survivors. Her foundation remains at the forefront of the country’s fight against human trafficking, recently helping to dismantle trafficking rings in 2024 and 2025. In recent years, the foundation has expanded its role as a legal plaintiff in trafficking cases, ensuring survivors have representation throughout the judicial process. Now in her seventies, Trimarco remains internationally recognized for her work, though her search for answers about María’s fate has never ceased. “Every woman I help somehow helps María,” she reflects. “They represent hope in this new life of mine.” © A Mighty Girl
At 17 years old, she had to face an impossible choice: marry her rapist or live in shame forever. She chose a third path—and changed an entire country.
ORIGINAL https://x.com/yvan_theriault/status/2043680088760201359
At 17 years old, she had to face an impossible choice: marry her rapist or live in shame forever. She chose a third path—and changed an entire country.
Franca Viola was a teenager in Alcamo, Sicily, in 1965. When she ended her relationship with Filippo Melodia, a man tied to the mafia who refused to accept the rejection, her life turned upside down.
On December 26, 1965, Melodia and a group of armed men burst into the family home. They beat her mother until she was unconscious and abducted Franca along with her eight-year-old brother, Mariano, who desperately tried to protect her.
Mariano was released a few hours later. Franca, however, remained captive for eight days. During that time, she was assaulted multiple times and subjected to constant pressure to accept just one thing: marry her attacker.
In 1965, this wasn’t just a social norm in Italy—it was written into the law. Article 544 of the Italian Penal Code allowed a rapist to escape any conviction if he married his victim. It was called matrimonio riparatore—a “reparative marriage.” A perverse logic according to which marriage would “restore” a woman’s honor, considered destroyed by the crime.
The victim’s “honor” was prioritized… over the severity of the crime.
This wasn’t the Middle Ages. It was 1965—the era of the Beatles and the space race. Yet, in a modern Italy, rape victims were trapped: marry their attacker or become outcasts.
When Franca was freed, everyone expected her to follow tradition. But she looked this fate in the face and said one word: no.
With the support of her father—who chose his daughter’s dignity over his reputation—she refused the marriage. Then she did the unthinkable: she filed charges and dragged Melodia to court.
The reaction was immediate. Her family was shunned, their lands set ablaze. In Sicily, where codes of honor and mafia influence held strong sway, defying traditions was dangerous. But Franca didn’t back down.
The trial became a national shock. Newspapers covered every hearing. Millions of Italians learned of a law that protected attackers.
In 1966, justice came down: Melodia was sentenced to prison. Franca became the first woman in Italy to publicly refuse a “reparative marriage” and see her rapist convicted.
The impact was immense. President Giuseppe Saragat received her, as did Pope Paul VI—a quiet but powerful sign that mindsets needed to change.
In 1968, she married Giuseppe Ruisi, a childhood friend who saw her as a whole person, not someone “broken.” Their union was a revolution in itself.
But the law took longer to change than attitudes. It wasn’t until 1981 that the Italian Parliament abolished Article 544, definitively preventing rapists from escaping justice through marriage.
Today, Franca lives quietly with her family. She never sought fame. She simply wanted justice.
But history remembered her.
She proved that a woman is not defined by what is done to her, but by her strength and her refusal of injustice.
In 1965, as the law and tradition demanded her submission, she said no.
And because she did, the world changed.