Jay, please stop misinterpreting my words to the opposite of what I said—even as you quote me!  (Highlighting has been added to internal quote above.)

What I said, very obviously, is that I admittedly go too far.  I am so paranoid of coming off like a beggar that I shoot myself in the foot.  I have been reconsidering that.  Seriously.  WTF am I doing to myself?  I damn well know that there is a world of difference between honour and masochistic self-abnegation.  But I self-conscious about it when I fear being perceived as needy; if nobody knew my financial circumstance right now, then I would already have a tip address.  I have put out tip addresses before, which I deleted when I leaked info that I thought may give the perception of my being needy.

As you probably know, a Core developer on staff moderating the technical forum (formerly knightdk) has had a tip address in his signature for years.  I respect him highly.  theymos has a tip address in his signature.  Do you suppose that I am accusing them of begging?  If not, then why do you suppose that I “speculate” that you are begging?   back atcha.

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Re funding for Core development:

The major substance of your post proposes what, in substance, would be an endowment.  It is a good idea.  However, it would require much more sophistication (and accordingly, higher administrative overhead).  I had been thinking more simply:  Raise money, spend it.  I will think about this further.  I do not foresee immediate action on it, anyway.  Besides any other questions, jumping into such a project in a bear market with no advance planning is not a very good approach; I’m not the one saying so.

Some of your guesses about numbers are pretty good, though I don’t want to say more about that right now.

I will think this over; I may reply further if/when it makes sense to write a long post on this particular topic.  Whether to bounce around more ideas, or beyond that.

Something else that’s been on my mind:

I like what e.g. MIT-DCI does with Wladimir.  Per-project grants are good and necessary; paying someone’s full-time salary gets a different type of long-term result.

I observe that, to the best of my knowledge, there is a lack of sufficient opportunities for strongly anonymous/pseudonymous developers.  Satoshi himself would be unable to obtain the position that Wladimir has with MIT-DCI.  But a part of Bitcoin’s resilience is the active contribution of parties who cannot be identified IRL—to be blunt, those who can merrily ignore any frivolous lawsuits from Craig Wright, who are immune to public harassment, etc., etc.  This is not merely a theoretical concern—not cypherpunk “paranoia”!

Given that I am strongly pseudonymous, and I never intend to be otherwise, it is interesting to me that there is probably a niche with unmet needs for funding developers who refuse to be doxed for any reason whatsoever.  “By their PGP-signed commits shall ye know them.”