How long was your journey to come to this realisation?
Discussion
I opened a Coinbase account in 2014 and started dollar-cost averaging ethereum. I became fans of the Bankless guys and was persuaded to “stake” all of it a few years ago… My orange-pill moment was when Saifedean went on Lex Fridman’s podcast and described ethereum as “the mother asshole from which all shit-coins are shat” (or something like that). The way he explained what he meant by that connected the dots for me. This was just over a year ago. I’ve been Bitcoin-only for six months or so.
Wow. So after 7 years believing in Ethereum Saifedean orange pilled you by being offensive against the thing you believe in. It takes a lot of humility to let that happen. Good for you!
It’s funny that this podcast was a huge part in my orange pilling process too. Nic Carter and Robert Breedlove at Lex Fridman were equally responsible, and obviously The Bitcoin Standard too. I remember the phrase about Ethereum being the mother of all shitcoins. I found it a bit offensive, but his confidence made me curious to dig deeper.
Staking Ethereum wasn’t the worst investment for you though. Could you unstake everything already?
Most of that seven years I was focused on other things tbh.. It was when things were ripping in 2020 that I really started to pay attention to Bitcoin and “crypto” again. Started panic buying things like GBTC.. :-/ ..and similar instruments with ethereum as the underlying asset.
Yes, Saif pulls no punches!! One of the things I love about him..
Yes, I did well on ethereum.. I attribute that to luck, not skill. Yes, I was able to un-stake thru some kind of wrapped ether instrument.. I would not be able to describe how I did this.. It was a little nerve-racking at the time.. And I’m sure I paid exorbitant fees..
💪🏽
I think another factor in my orange pilling was just the sheer number of “alt” coins out there.. Hence the second line in my OP (which by the way I did not come up with).. At some point I was like “wait, I could just create my own coin: MarkCoin (or whatever)”..
A friend was getting into some coins I’d never heard of. I kept telling him “Just buy Bitcoin and ethereum, 50/50.” But he felt he’d “missed the boat” on those..
Now, of-course, I tell people “Just buy Bitcoin; dca on a Bitcoin-only app (like Cash app).”
Did you go down the privacy (no kyc and coinjoin) rabbit hole yet?
Mm I got into a little bit of a back and forth with a Monero proponent on Twitter.. Where I landed is that there may be a use case for something like that on a transactional basis.. i.e. exchanging some bitcoin for enough Monero to purchase something the government does not want you to have.. But not as a store of value. What are your thoughts?
In general, because bitcoin is an open ledger where all transactions are recorded forever, it is a honeypot for surveillance.
On a personal level, it's crucial that no one knows how much BTC you have, especially no database (like exchanges) that could be hacked. You could become a target if your name is attached to your stack.
The more people use coinjoins, the better the privacy for everyone.
So imo everyone should use coinjoin solutions like Whirlpool or Wasabi. And if possible, everybody should buy no kyc.
Okay, will look into those.. 👍🏻🙏
Check out Sparrow Wallet for Desktop. It has Whirlpool implemented and is a very nice wallet. BTC Sessions has plenty of videos on how to use it. Also this guy. Love his videos. No blabla straight to the point.
You know, the biggest part of all the little things that helped to deliver the orange pill to me was the understanding of why PoW is necessary. Every Bitcoin Maxi said it is necessary but it was quite hard for me to understand why. I gave PoS the benefit of the doubt. I remember that it took me like 2 or 3 months in which I was trying to figure out why PoS doesn’t work. Once it clicked (thanks to #[3] & Jason Lowery) all pieces fell in place.
I stumbled across and read something by #[2] a week or so ago and was blown away by it. I’ve been meaning to get back to his collection of blog posts and binge my way thru them!