| How many of you have money in banks? None of you have money in banks. Please, you’re lawyers. You understand…. Bailment. It’s not your money, you have an “account” which is a legal construct that they give you in exchange for giving them an unsecured loan of your money. So that they can finance credit to their customers. You don’t own legally any of the money that is in your account. You have a legal construct that possibly maybe entitles you to withdraw, at the pace that they want, unless you cross the wrong person, go to the wrong protest, associate with the wrong organization, vote for the wrong party. Sure this might be happening in Hong Kong. But in the almost 200 countries in the world, using money and turning it into a system of control has taken off like wildfire, because it’s every rules wet dream, because it assure that discent can be snuffed out at the bank. |
| A completely flat, peer to peer non hierarchical network, when nobody knows anybody else, where nobody trusts anybody else, we are able to engineer the emergence of a ledger, that records transactions that everyone can trust, that no one has the power to change, to modify after the fact, and that removed trust from the person, to a mathematical construct that is neutral, that process is called consensus, and it is the fundamental invention behind bitcoin. The way to achieve trust at massive scale on a completely flat network, that allows us to achieve such as a level of trust that then we can conduct transactions worth billions of dollars, without even know who the other party is. |
| Bitcoin isn’t a digital currency. It’s a cryptocurrency. It’s a network-centric money. I really like the idea of a network-centric money. A network that allows you to replace trust in institutions, trust in hierarchies, with trust on the network. The network acting as a massively diffuse arbiter of truth, resolving any disagreements about transactions and security in a way where no one has control. |
| Ultimately, and practically in today’s vocabulary, privacy is the right of billions of individuals to not be surveilled. Secrecy is the power of the very few to escape accountability, to have no transparency. |
| Criminals use the most cutting-edge technology because they operate in an environment with very high profit margins and very high risk. In that environment, competition is fierce. Using the latest technology if you’re already taking enormous risks isn’t that big of a deal. And if you win, it gives you an enormous advantage. Throughout history, the most amazing technology is adopted by criminals first. |
| They made the mistaken assumption that if the cost of production is zero, the value of the message is zero. They confused the medium for the message. They made the mistaken assumption that their control over the medium was the source of quality. And long after quality disappeared, they clung to control and thought that control was the only way to achieve quality, and if you removed control, you removed quality. That is stinky, unabashed elitism at its absolute worst. It assumes that the gatekeepers are the source of quality, when all they are is gatekeepers. They assume that the fact that they have the expensive medium means that the message is worth listening to. |
| Now, they mock Twitter as trivial because they Don’t understand the distinction between message and medium. TV was once mocked as a trivial pastime because it obscured the art of cinematography. Cinematography was a trivial pastime because it cheapened and vulgarized the art of the theater. The theater was a vulgar and cheap pastime of Victorians because it trivialized the great dramatic plays of the Romans and the Ancient Greeks. You keep going down this path and You’ll eventually arrive at Aristotle saying that philosophy is dead because nowadays the kids all want to watch dramatic presentations instead of reading their philosophy books. He probably complained about their long hair, too. Every generation mistakes the medium for value and considers the next iteration of the medium—that widens access, that opens availability, that broadens the range of expression—they consider that medium trivial, vulgar, cheapening the message. |
| Cultured meat is undoubtedly the future. Forcing people to go vegetarian doesn’t work. Just like forcing people to switch from diesel/gasoline doesn’t work. Until there’s a Tesla equivalent to traditional meat, meat will prevail. |
| Saying something is a “waste” is a subjective claim. For you as a non users, and beneficiary of that electricity expenditure. For the miners, and Bitcoin users we call it an investment. So what you’re trying to say is that “I am going to substitute my decision of what a market should do for that specific market. And there is a dangerous path. And we have to be clear. When talking about Bitcoin mining, we’re not talking about energy generation, we’re talking about energy consumption, which are two very different things. |
| Energy isn’t a bad thing. Energy produced from polluting sources is a bad thing. But consumption of energy from renewable sources is a wonderful thing. If you invest in a bunch of solar panels then you’ve effectively just lowered the unit cost of solar energy. |
| So it matters where that energy is coming from. So instead of addressing bitcoin mining, you should really address that problem. Let’s decide that some forms of energy production is harmful while other are not. That means taking the externalities of carbon and pricing. And depending on your political leanings, that can either be the worst form of communism, or the libertarian solution of creating markets for carbon dioxide. The bottom line is, the problem isn’t bitcoin, it’s carbon. And it’s so hypocritical saying that bitcoin is wasteful, but decorative lighting, we need that. |
| What do you do when a bunch of companies collude to set prices, fix markets, close of competition, capture regulators, and bribe politicians? We call it a cartel, like the oil cartel. |
| his is the standard altcoiner trope, where they pretend (or actually believe!) they are the victims of anti-innovation luddites, when the reality is that their “innovation” is just accepting bad short-term tradeoffs to pump their trash bag currencies on to hapless retail |
| If you guys are still around in one year… know that you had the chance to join the right side, but chose not to. |
| For every one of us Bitcoin savers, there are a hundred thousand maybe a million people out there that have not ever owned a Bitcoin. Still slowly having their savings eaten up by inflation that they themselves cannot control. But once they see people like us, regular folk, nerds, business, professionals, being able to save our wealth in an non confiscatable and trustless asset like Bitcoin while maintaining if not growing our purchasing power over the long run. How people do you think will flock to our side? join our ranks, and help us defend it. What will governments do when the men and women whose toil powers it, simply exit the system their governments try to shovel down their throats. It’s the most peaceful revolution. |
| In greek mythology there is a story about prometheus, and prometheus had the audacity to steal fire from the gods and give it to men. And as punishment for that, he was tied to a rock,where an eagle would eat his liver everyday, and overnight the liver would regrow just so he would be tortured again the next day. Satoshi Nakamoto stole money from the governments. Not the money itself, but the technology, and concept of money, and gave it to the people |
| Choose between the bankers who brought you the great depression or the geek who brought you the internet. |
| More than anything else, this is a surveillance coin. It’s the worst kind of surveillance coin connected to the worst kind of surveillance company, that exercises the worst kinds of surveillance capitalism |
| Lex Mercatoria – the law emergent, Mediterranean medieval roots. Sea faring medeival merchants, devleope their own laws, rules, and courts because they need quick resolution to disputes. People abide by these institutions because of reputation. The laws are part of today’s commercial code, encodified since. Role of expectations in social interactions, precedes codified law, including workspace, marriage: Law evolve according to expectation |
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