If we think life before and after Bitcoin will be basically the same, why do we bother?
Like... What is the point? Just a get-rich-quick scheme for some computer nerds?
Discussion
I dont think ANYONE that's advocating for use of bitcoin in your day to day life thinks this way. So you'r argument is invalid.
🤝🤝🤝
just a get the world better scheme for free humans
No wonder I can't get anyone else to buy any. 😂
They're like, what is the point?
And, now, I'm wondering the same thing. 🤔
Trade in our fiat mortgages and corporate loans for Bitcoin mortgages and corporate loans and back to work.
“It’s like cash under your mattress instead of in a bank, except its purchasing power goes up in the long run instead of down”
Try that
That's not really compelling, tho. I can always beat mild inflation. That would just reduce my will to build or invest.
Hmm true. Well it hit pretty well for my american friend 😂
while fiat still exists, it is a bet on its eventual failure
after hyperbitcoinization, the benefit is that there is no longer a lever that is held by those with the greatest stack of money and in-group influence in the financial business community who have any unfair advantage
that's the sole and primary purpose of bitcoin and satoshi repeatedly said this
the number of things that improves in our life is easy to underestimate though
it means a return to most people owning property
it means an increase in agricultural production, a reduction in pure fiduciary business in general, and the restriction of government fiscal largesse - they can only spend what they can make a profit on, instead of being a privileged drinker at the front of the spigot of fiat money printing
and that's just for starters
We just said that we'd still lend for interest, tho. Everyone could just lend their Bitcoin to the government. The government always pays.
the government can only always pay if it's in bed with the currency issuer
the government is not the best payer of dividends
that's what high performing entrepreneurs do - spot inefficiencies and set up to leverage them, until the margin declines as everyone follows their lead
Entrepreneurs are risky.
the security of government is exceptionally risky over a long timeline, they waste money and hike taxes constantly for all kinds of reasons, the growth of government into totalitarianism was a direct result of implementing the central banking system, there can be no income tax without monetary surveillance and control of the school system
there is a lot more moving parts to think about than just the money
taking the power of money issuance out of the hands of banks and government changes everything for the better, for the majority of humanity, and it was seized specifically to increase the power and increase the difference between the top most of the economic ladder and basically strip out all the rungs all the way down as far as possible and further if possible, until eventually people burn down parliament
It will be, in a way. Look at who's got some of the biggest stacks. They can join together with the Fed and control the supply.
what role does the Fed have in the absence of a fiat monetary system?
Controlling gold and Bitcoin and underwriting stonks and government debt.
you think that anyone can control bitcoin after the clear history of the last 10 years of attempts to wrest control of it?
then supply is fixed, and if it is hyperbitcoinization then that means no more cozy relationship between money issuer and government
because which government is going to concede to the others to create a cartel big enough to alter the issuance regime?
and isn't that also going to mean bitcoiners abandon that governmentcoin fork?
The efforts were not about using off-chain transactions to manipulate the exchange price by removing information, like they did with gold.
that still depends on them having fiat as the primary money, which is not the case after it fails and enough adoption has led to people generally preferring bitcoin and lightning etc
their control depends on their ability to dictate the interest rate, which should be dictated by the actual market in credit, in a full reserve system
fractional reserve is a fraud, it is counterfeiting, it is a hidden tax, and eventually, like all scams, will become widely understood and any purveyor of it will be shunned and prosecuted
Yeah, fractional reserve is dead.
There are people who bought it for $1 or mined it back then, and now have billion$ worth of it. Even if it crashes 80% they will still be multi-millionaires. However, they don't spend much, if any, of it on development of the space, like l2 and apps, other than promoting it to new buyers.
Even if it keeps going up it mostly benefits a tiny % of holders. If I buy $1m worth of it now, even if 1 bitcoin gets to $1 million per coin, I will only have $14m.
When stonks go up, btc goes up and the dollar goes down. But when stonks crash, the dollar goes up, and btc crashes. Nvidia is similar to stonks in the dot com bubble.
Yeah, Dollar/BTC are an inverse pair.
haha
Life better after.
FOR WHOM?
I don't really have any Bitcoin. 😂 I didn't get rich. I was bullish, this morning, because it felt like I was part of something important, and now it's like,
Well, the prices that are going down anyways will go down slightly faster and we can zap. 🤦♀️
For everyone. Fiat generates unholy amounts of waste and consumption.
Then we go back to gold-backing and have a debt reform.
no, it isn't about so much how it affects us but who can't any more use their control of the money supply to influence everything
it means less war, less stupid boondoggles, less elitism, less decline of the middle class and a growing underclass, so many things that are not obvious until you realise that controlling a deceitful monetary system affords you ultimate power and eliminating anyone's access to that benefits the most people in total
But ownership is highly concentrated and we don't even know who the whales are. They could be nation states or reinsurers for weapons manufacturers or whatnot.
that's fud
We know that nation states are buying, at least. Even the Saudis want to get into it, now, to diversify out of the dollar.
that's the beauty of the game theory of it, eventually that's gonna be all they have
The most compelling argument for Bitcoin, to me personally, was making charging interest on loans very unnattractive and moving to equity investment, collatoralized loans, and contractual profit-sharing.
If they just need a slightly higher rate (or not even, as some people are already paying over 20%) to keep tying people down with debt, that actually makes Bitcoin less interesting to me.
Same as fiat, but with extra steps and somebody gets a lambo. Depressing.
Because people will tend to prefer debt. It is the easiest thing. Just go get a loan, bro. Don't need to pay it back for 5 years, bro. And then it's all yours, pure profit, bro.
yeah, and that is all fraud, bro, they are lying and the simple fact of bitcoin's price tracking as a contrary indicator to the profligacy of central banking and government debt financing is becoming more and more obvious, to the point where politicians who want to get more votes are using it as a lure, even Trump! look at Millei..., look at El Salvador and here in Madeira a similar thing
bitcoin is proof of the fraud, and a way for those who recognise it to move ahead
saylor and all those ETFs are not going to think of bitcoin as hard money, and that means that ultimately they will not come to prevail, because the game dynamics of a hard currency favors those who defend and promote this benefit of eliminating cheating
People are going to end up indentured to the people who already hold a lot of Bitcoin because making money off of money requires little effort or talent.
you mean the bitcoin autist bros?
bitcoin is primarily fuck you money and loot from shitcoinery, people who adopted it early don't want it to become central bankers, you are confusing this with the shitcoiners, who literally act like central bankers to their little fiefs of adoring cult drone fanatics
ethereum is cosy with WEF and all the rest, but bitcoiners are not, and there is enough outside of their control to make it implausible that a new feudalism will emerge out of it, because that's not how you use fuck you money, you use fuck you money to get the fuck away from nosy socialist politicking nutjobs
I pray that you are right and I'm not feeding some monetary monster. 🙈
Doggie coin helps with this
But, whatever, dream deferred. GN
the main thing i agree with you on is that it's not just about the money
there has to be a lot of wisdom spread in the population that is adjunct and ancillary to bitcoin
bitcoin empowers those with the knowledge and desire to do this, and at worst it just levels the playing field, it definitely changes the balance of power, we know this for sure because of the constantly increasing frequency of the mention of bitcoin from politicians, they will at minimum try to use it now to bludgeon their authoritarian competitors and it's working
Charging interest will always be attractive to those making the loan, as far as I can see. The difference is that under a sound money standard, paying interest on unproductive debt becomes completely untenable.
This is partially a result of misunderstanding what money is. Debt as money is a terrible perversion of the concept of money as a ledger of deferred consumption. A sound money economy makes a lot more sense once you start thinking of money as equity, rather than debt and fiat.
If you had to take out a loan of Exxon shares and repay it in Exxon shares + more Exxon shares, the bar for profitable use of debt goes up.
https://open.substack.com/pub/f0xr/p/money-as-equity?r=3i492j&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
This was what I don't get about the "we just keep using debt" argument.
Let's say you live in Podunk, Missouri, and the town is split by a river with a ferry. The people of the town get fed up with the ferry and decide they want a bridge, but it'll cost 50 Bitcoin. No one person has that much and nobody outside the town wants the bridge, so a group of them decide to ground a Bridge Building Society and they pool their money (40 Bitcoin) and get some discounts on building materials from the local carpenter and stonemason (3 Bitcoin worth) and some volunteers to help with the construction (7 Bitcoin worth). In return, they grant themselves and their immediate families and supporters/volunteers the right to use the bridge free of tolls for 20 years and those who contributed money are to receive whatever toll-money is netted at the end of the year, for 20 years. To speed up receipt of tolls, they quickly build a wooden bridge and start collecting, while the steel/stone bridge is being built slowly over 5 years.
My argument was that the tolls probably wouldn't return the full 40 Bitcoin, within any reasonable amount of time, and that the Bitcoin payers would be fine with that because they get to use the bridge.
But I was told that they would just borrow the 40 Bitcoin and pay 10% interest for them and then pay the 40 Bitcoin back with interest after 5 years, which would be 60 Bitcoin. And those Bitcoin each contain more potential purchasing power than the originally invested ones because 6 years have passed.
And I think most people would just rather keep riding the ferry. 🤷♀️ The tolls already didn't cover the 40 Bitcoin investment because it's a bridge out in the swamp and not over Chesapeake Bay, and now you've added 20 Bitcoin on top.
I can't get an explanation for where the 20+ Bitcoin come from.
Most large loans have no explanation for where the interest comes from, under fiat, and that seems even less plausibel under Bitcoin.
People who want a bridge will just pay for a bridge.
And here's the thing I really don't get:
The loan is only worth it to the person taking out the loan, if he can earn 60 BTC in today's money from the tolls. If it's been 6 years and deflation in consumer prices was 10% per year, then you have to actually pay back the equivalent of 80 back-then BTC.
Who in the world would take that loan? That is madness.
And, now, imagine deflation is over 10%...
What am I missing here?
And how long does he have to collect the tolls and repay the loan? 20 years?
While he's collecting it, Bitcoin is causing more deflation...
The project might not be a good allocation of resources. Under a sound money standard, that becomes obvious quickly. If it can't produce enough profit from tolls to repay the loan, it's a poor use of resources. The market is telling you that people value something else more than they value the bridge. Maybe adding a second ferry to reduce the wait time is a better allocation of resources?
We've been brainwashed by fiat economics to see any infrastructure or any business that "makes money" as productive. Without the ability to finance those things through inflation by issuing debt, only projects that provide a lot of real value will be able to get financing.
Anything else will have to be paid up front, by someone who values the project for other than purely economic reasons.
That was my point, but it got shot down.
I was like, maybe renovating a church building won't net money, but the people in the church would still be willing to pay for it because they want to be in a building where the roof doesn't leak.
Maybe the town wants to have a nice bridge, for the prestige and to drive more traffic to the town, so that they make money indirectly.
A lot of the stuff people currently get loans to do wouldn't net enough money to make lending profitable, but people could keep doing them.
You can see that on here. We all keep sinking hard money into the development, but nobody is willing to go into debt for it, even under fiat, because you can't make money off of Nostr. But we want to build it all, anyway, so we just swallow the cost and hope for the best.
Imagine if the developers all had to repay the Bitcoin to OpenSats, with interest. 🤢
But, again, you're assuming that, if the people who drive over the road won't pay high tolls, then it's a poor use of resources.
But the people building the bridge do not think it's a poor use of resources, that's why they want to pay themselves, to have it built.
Using resources well doesn't always require someone else's willingness to pay me money to do something. Nobody has to be willing to lend me Money to eat a sandwich and I don't need to charge people to watch me eat it, for it to be worth eating. I'm hungry. I want a sandwich. I lose the money on the sandwich, but that is okay because I'd rather lose the money on a sandwich than stay hungry or eat plain bread.
Do I need to prove that a house or a car is worthy of a loan? No, I can just save up money and spend it, building a house or driving a car.
Once you look around, you will see that most things that currently receive loans will no longer receive them. Or so I thought. 🤷♀️
Almost everything done is for consumption or common use, and not for profit.
Even a lot of businesses only exist because the person who owns them or the people who financially back it want it to exist. There is no expectation that the business will turn a profit, often just that the running costs are covered. People just want to have a nice gathering place in the town, a small grocer in the village, a relay everyone can write to, or a school canteen with healthy food for the children.
Under the current system, the interest for loans comes from new loans. That's why M2 only goes up to the right, and any pause collapses the entire financial system.
That's a consequence of the debt/fiat system based on the fraud of usury, where banks charge interest to loan out money they don't have.
Imagining a Bitcoin standard is tough right now, because we're in a brief blip with Bitcoin rapidly appreciating in value as in gets monetized. Eventually that process slows down and stops. At that point Bitcoin deflates at the rate of economic growth. That's a lot slower than the current value appreciation. At that point loans become possible, as long as it's for a genuinely productive use that beats the overall rate of economic growth. Loans don't go away, but massive misallocation of capital does.
The only thing I could imagine that meets that limitation in Podunk is to take out a loan to build only a very cheap wooden bridge, and then try to squeeze the drivers for high tolls, to pay back the loan before it collapses.
Yeah I think a bridge in some little town that only gets local traffic is exactly the kind of unproductive investment a sound money standard will kill. Imagine how that project gets built today. Massive debt issuance by the state, or taxes on people who will never use the bridge.
I see the fact that these projects under a Bitcoin standard either don't happen, or get fronted by a wealthy local benefactor, as a really good thing. I don't want my taxes and the inflation of my savings building bridges in Podunk Missouri. Let's use that to build SMR's or desalination plants or something really worthwhile.
Well, my original example assumed that there was no state and no taxes. Only private enterprise and only Bitcoin.
I was trying to prove that people might still build bridges and roads in smaller towns, even if there was no "third party" to pay for them and even if there wasn't enough traffic over the bridge to pay for the bridge. Bridges to small towns are hugely beneficial to those towns, so the people in those towns will just have to pony up the dough and pay for it, themselves, or deal with having no bridge.
But it was like, just take out a loan. Why would I take out a loan for something like that? I'd pay double for it, in the end, and be tied to the debt.
But the counterargument is that, otherwise, people willing to be benefactors of a bridge would own the bridge, through the building society. So, rich people would pay for many/most of the public infrastructure and businesses, and everyone else would depend upon their largess. Whereas, if one person could just go get a loan from a bank, he would be the person owning the bridge in the end, after all, it was his idea. And then everyone in the town would bleed tolls out of the nose or take the ferry or build a second "town bridge".
But the bridge probably still remains unprofitable, so the benefactor is now the rich financier lending for mysterious reasons, rather than the rich building society people who just wanted a bridge to drive over themselves, and there is a builder trying to pay back 100 BTC for a bridge (no more discounts and volunteers, after all). How is that better?
Something like, get a 10 year fiat loan for 125% of the bridge cost. The extra 25% goes into Bitcoin. Tolls pay the fiat loan payments. At some point before the ten years, the Bitcoin is worth enough to pay off the loan early. I haven’t done the math but that’s one strategy, in principle.
No fiat involved. This is all after hyperbitcoinization.
I don’t personally agree with the premise of hyperbitcoinization, because I don’t think it’s necessary. I expect a world where people save long term in Bitcoin, medium term in the best stablecoin denomination (dollars, at present), and spend and borrow short term in local fiat.
Happily, local fiats will be far harder than at present, because Bitcoin brings such rigor and competition to fiat currencies. My .02.
That may be, but adding different currencies into the mix negates the premise that the loan will be in Bitcoin and that such loans will be (or not be) attractive. Which is the discussion.
As soon as you have an inflationary or even stable currency to get credit it, everyone will use that and take the loan.
Regardless, I have confidence that the Wizards of Wall Street will figure out how to leverage it and loan it.
Not that energy consumption itself is bad. Energy consumption for space travel, good. Energy consumption for porn, bad. Fiat has perverted our priorities as a species.
Porn used to just be harder to get and not as immersive.
I hope Bitcoin can bring us as a species closer to God. It's brought me closer. The closer we are to God, the harder porn will be to access. We have an abundant supply.
how or why did it bring you closer to God?
Maybe it's coincidence. Money is a representation of our time/energy/labor. I had a lot of exploration in to my own epistemology and came to the conclusion that the Christian God is the best source of our moral knowledge as a species. When we use a money that is true, we start to intrinsically/subconciously better under what the truth actually is. I started to see the major immorality of fiat. From there I explored my own spirituality more, which in turn brought me closer to God.
thanks for the info. I wasn't sure if it's the bitcoin influence or radio waves beaming in from outer space but I also feel that strange appreciation for Christianity that I didn't have before. it's odd to me because I would normally think an obsession with financial things like Bitcoin should be a distraction from religion/spirituality but the two seem to make room for each other somehow.
I only noticed Bitcoin because I'm Christian. I didn't really care about this stuff, before.
I haven't always been a Christian.
Never have been, never will he.. Considering there is string evidence that suggests computers existed 1000s of years ago.. Likely 10-100's of thousands of years ago.. The bible is laughable..
I love the idea that we were more advanced in the past. looking back on today in a few hundred years maybe like us looking back at the dark ages.
responding to : the Bible is laughable
I honestly wish it were. I wish I had a better grasp of other ancient texts to compare them. I hold the Bible in too high regard perhaps from inculcation as a child. I only know Book of Mormon to a certain degree as another religious text. I wonder if Bitcoin is becoming a thing in the Mormon community
was it the book "thank God for Bitcoin" or something else that made the connection for you?
No, it was #[4] and his article upon Bitcoin being time.
thank you. I am now reading "Bitcoin is Time " by Gigi
Yeah. It's sort of funny reading his older articles, now, because the philosophical concepts were groundbreaking and now they're just consensus and it's hard to imagine everyone not already thinking that way.
It's become a historical data point, in a way.
I first heard about it on the Keiser Report, tho. From Max and nostr:npub1pq2ll9l7qdmxsfqyrd5w9gul8c7ftqy9yepcqvc8a2l2ys9zhd6sk42rew
I have to tune Max Keiser tweets out because he's so good at making me feel like I need to move somewhere else.
I need a Ven diagram of what places will survive bitcoinization, the pole shift, this years' elections...
and hopefully have some good bike protected lanes.
The Alps.
just make sure you stock up on at least 3-5 years of wood at a time
I need to also add "warm weather and no snow" to the intersecting bubbles of requirements
or wait, are you saying that the Alps are going to be repositioned in the tropics? if so, that sounds like a fun ride
yeah, if the pole is in the carribean then they move to subtropical
it's just not a good place to be now in the absence of a functioning grid or logistics network
i wonder where Central America is going in this scenario. I'm thinking Guatemala is the best place to move as it's close to El Salvador to benefit from their policies and economics but may be less expensive
yeah, yucatan i have heard is quite nice too
and yeah, a transitional plan might make sense, to be more ready to make the harder move you want to do later when needed with a lower short term cost
though i personally am happy with western balkans as my choice, it is well situated and already pretty comfortable
so if the Alps move to warmer climate, that would be great. kinda like this book about the elephant that transported the grandma's house from cold snowy climates to Florida, after eating all the pickles.
Not Maine, but yes Maine because bike lanes aren't such an issue when everyone but the richest are out of gas
Need to read it again, thanks.
We dont think that.
Well, I didn't think that, but I got taught a lesson today. 😂💀
Its a “get rich slow and steady tech” nowadays. And “dont work till your 60s-ticket”. Pretty fucking cool if you ask me. And after hyperbitconization it will be “if you save in Bitcoin, things dont get more expensive for you” thing.
I’d get a refund on that lesson
im in it for the love.
#modesty
Nothing is ever fixed by rule sets. The rules are an aspiration for how people should behave. If people aren't ready to behave justly they will adopt a broken rule set (black markets etc) that allows the behavior they want.
Rules can only constrain a population that values the goals the rules reflect.
If we want to get rid of usury we need to value discipline, sacrifice, and hard work.
Why bother when the option are get rich and life is the same or life is better? Both options are worth a bother.
To the people who will get rich. Most people won't.
Who thinks that life is going to be the same after bitcoin? Bitcoin is going to change everything whether people realize it or not.
None of the most powerful govts in the world can exist in anything like their current forms without stealing massive amounts of wealth via money printing. Bitcoin directly undermines theft via money printing.
Money is half of every trade, it touches everything. EVERYTHING is going to change.
Your answer.
nostr:note1t0vfhht5ymnr9s2d423wj6puqmas6npw952uxtedujkkw2d84wrsdvl07s
life is the same as before? people can now fuck you all central-planners and dont pay taxes like they have nothing and de facto they have nothing after the boat accident, but without bitcoin one need to choose: have nothing and be free or keep their fiat paper money safe and be a good citizen. For example dont use chat apps that dont comply with EU chatcontrol or we freeze your asset. Life after bitcoin is not the same, for noone, even the nocoiners. Obviously, people that was poor before, if they dont manage to provide value to someone and work for money they will not stack sats, so life will be pretty the same... but not exactly the same.
wait, it was a bait... well, with me worked well😁😂