I should have mentioned The Network State too in my last post. Balaji not being here kind of ruins it for me though, TBH. Even if he wanted to use Nostr to sling shitcoins, I'd have a little more respect than for his current indifference. What is happening here is nothing short of a revolution across multiple disciplines. It is a new paradigm in software development, software architecture, communications technology, network topology, artificial intelligence, information warfare, journalism, marketing, content curation, information security, intelligence operations, and identity management. What am I missing?
Discussion
I’ve heard Balaji mentioned here, including that title you mentioned
but from his Twitter posts always felt like a shitcoiner ngl
No *cryptocurrency* is necessary, none of it
It’s an extreme view but it’s true
POW is the only workable consensus mechanism
And competing currencies aren’t necessary
Money wants to be one
Gold won for a reason
Does Balaji understand this? Sincere question as I know his rep is legendary
To be clear, we had a bimetallic standard, silver was then replaced by paper gold, and the state then seized the remaining stock of privately held gold. It's hard to say that gold won, except from the perspective of the state.
https://github.com/libbitcoin/libbitcoin-system/wiki/Reservation-Principle
I mostly agree with you. Solving the Byzantine Generals problem is even more momentous than I think many of us realize. PoS does not even compare. That said, I do believe that there can be more than one implementation of Bitcoin with atomic swaps between them. This is a similar notion to the bimetallic standard.
https://github.com/libbitcoin/libbitcoin-system/wiki/Substitution-Principle
Money does have a tendency to converge on a single network, but this effect is much weaker than it is for communication networks.
https://github.com/libbitcoin/libbitcoin-system/wiki/Network-Effect-Fallacy
The convergence tendency is counterbalanced by the utility threshold.
https://github.com/libbitcoin/libbitcoin-system/wiki/Utility-Threshold-Property
Agree 💯 with all you said here
Was generalizing when I said gold won - should have said ‘gold won the game until central banks were invented’
When society learned how to make paper IOUs out of it, and ppl trusted that, was beginning of end for gold
Gold is basically fiat now because of this financialization
IOW the inception of central banks destroyed the beauty and elegance of metal coinage
Appreciate all the information you’ve posted here I’ll dig into it!
Once paper money has run its course, I expect there to be a return to metal coinage alongside digital currency. I don't really see an inherent elegance to coinage though because of the problem of standardization. You have to trust the mint to some extent or melt down a random sampling of coins to assay them. Counterfeiting could be an issue with private mints.
Yes much to ponder on this
GN fellow pleb, pura vida, catch you manana!