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Bitcoiners talk a lot about low time preference and high time preference thinking.

I would argue that while plenty of bitcoin maximalists consider themselves as having a low time preference, the majority of their discussion is actually high time preference thinking, ending with hyper bitcoinization, and the assumption the world will continue to work as is with bitcoin as the money.

I’m curious if that is actually true, or what will in fact change as a result of such events. Many comment about how the military industrial complex will not be able to afford perpetual war, but not about what the military will be able to afford.

Seldom do I hear discussions within the bitcoin community about the post hyper-bitcoinization world and how it will operate effectively with bitcoin at the base layer. Majority of discussions end at hyper-bitcoinization as if that is the end goal.

Consider hyper-bitcoinization as a given.

How many satoshis will the US Mail service charge for a single stamp?

What will it cost in satoshis to mine metals, create steel, manufacture refineries, refine oil?

What would the average salary of a McDonald’s owner be in satoshis? What will the robots cost that make the hamburgers

What about an AI developer?

Answering these questions will allow the value for value economy to understand its position relative to the future, and understand the arbitrage of time within bitcoin history.

Bourbonic Plague 2y ago

If anyone could make such predictions then Bitcoin wouldn’t be useful because central planning would work and we’d all live in the communist utopias.

Bitcoin won’t lie and distort the value of all those things. That’s the prediction.

With honest and transparent money, the market can do honest and transparent price discovery. Problem solvers can respond to incentives and adjust to new realities as they emerge and Bitcoin will communicate that information to the market in as close to realtime as possible.

Without honest and transparent money civilizations eventually collapse.

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Discussion

🐢 2y ago

The world has never truly had a world wide currency. Even during the days of gold, the east and west were far away and commerce was difficult and tragic, communication sparse and delayed.

There can certainly be discussions regarding the topic of a world wide interconnected economy, where commerce is instant and frictionless, and the forever shrinking distance between individuals and time needed to complete txns.

There will be hard times finding the end of the road, but those discussions can be imagined and thought through.

Bourbonic Plague 2y ago

Yeah, but talk is overrated. Better to watch for opportunities to build circular economies wherever your skills and interests take you and then you will be one of the people defining what that unknown future will look like.

Talkers don’t bring about change, doers do. Bitcoiners should spend more energy and time building businesses that provide value and they should look for opportunities to exchange that value for Bitcoin as often as they can.

🐢 2y ago

“Circular bitcoin economies” are currently just an opportunity for forex arbitrage. As the input costs are one currency with the output value in another. Bitcoin miners must pay their electric bills in fiat.

A true circular bitcoin economy values energy inputs as bitcoin. As such, a metal miner or electricity provider, needs to evaluate their costs in bitcoin.

What are those actual costs? Todays world is just calculating an exchange rate. Where is the circular economy in that?

Can we not calculate the energy required to output a single block today, and assume that as input and 6.25+fees btc as the output, and calculate the energy required to perform tasks, and make assumptions about how much value individuals are providing in bitcoin terms?

Bourbonic Plague 2y ago

My strategy is simple. I stack sats now so I can frontrun the transition to ∞/21M.

When others are scrambling to acquire ever more precious sats, I’ll be able to use my stack to purchase goods and services I need at a premium giving me a chance to jump to the front of the line. I’ll also be able to trade Bitcoin to my tribe at a heavy discount to help them manage the transition they aren’t yet prepared to accept.

If the transition happens too quickly, that strategy probably won’t work great. But I’m hopeful that Bitcoin will act as a pressure relief valve that will let people opt out gradually as the problems become obvious to them at different points in time. I hope that lets us avoid a sudden catastrophic hyperinflation event that causes everything to collapse suddenly.

Maybe someone will come up with an Eric Weinstein style gauge theoretic formula to help us calculate things before the transition happens, but I’m not sure how that would change my strategy.