Unless everyone doing business with MicroStrategy demands payment in #bitcoin , MicroStrategy will effectively be an attack on bitcoin. What do they even buy? Will that bitcoin ever be circulated as money? How?
Michael Saylor is an agent of the state, attacking bitcoin. Prove me wrong.
I like posts like this. We need more diverse thoughts. You make a strong argument. I find Bitcoin has many use case scenarios and only time will tell what an individual or entity decided to use it for. I intend to use it as both a store of value but also a medium of exchange. Who knows microstrategy's plan may evolve.
Too much hinges on the goodwill of one guy. And he could have perfectly good intentions and still represent an attack on #bitcoin if mstr acquires enough btc.
If they hold forever, or lose their coins, it is a pro ratadonations to the rest of the network. If anything the longer they hold the more valuable YOUR stack becomes. I don't understand the logic you are employing here.
The more btc they hold, the easier it is for them to raise the USD to acquire even more. This is only shorting the dollar if everyone else does it. If not, then we get a world where one or a few entities hold all of the power. You may be set up for life because of your savings, but the economy is the billions of transactions every day, the person with no savings asking for a loan to start a business, and then making payments on that loan. If MSTR becomes a bank, all btc flows back to MSTR. They effectively become the government. How is that better than the current world?
The dollar is infinite the BTC is not. Who will sell their BTC for dollars in this paradigm? The limit is where MSTR asks how many dollars for your sats and you say no. You are projecting your current view of the dollar onto the worthless digits it will become. If you never sell, and only you and MSTR have BTC you are equally empowered.
I am not the entire economy. I also am not concerned only with myself. I want to be free, and I want everyone else to be free too.
How free are you when you must make payments to a bank? How free are you when one entity has practically infinite buying power while yours is finite?
If the BTC held by mstr and these funds never circulates, but instead only accumulates into a few pools, then btc can only be a reserve asset. It does nothing to empower people.
The finite supply is a genius mechanism to disperse it over time to smaller and smaller utxos. But that doesn't happen if you can pay your bills in fiat. These funds pay salaries in USD. They raise more btc with USD. They never use their btc. It never leaves them.
Right now you can just go buy btc on an exchange. Do you think that will always be possible? I don't. Where's the bitcoin economy when you can't buy btc and you can't work for it because its all held by entities that never sell?
This isn't a problem that we can resolve by simply buying things with btc. That just makes our savings available for mstr or etfs to lock away. When it's all locked away, what's left? Fiat. We'll just be back to fiat.
Or we'll have new masters that are even worse than the previous ones.
A lot of assumptions are made here. I hold BTC (theoretically) unless I trade them for goods I will always have them. Anyone else who abhors fiat as I do will accept BTC in exchange for goods as well. This is an economy. The fact that I can take worthless fiat (in my opinion) and trick an exchange or other BTC holder into giving BTC to me is short lived.
I know eventually people will only exchange BTC for material goods or labor. In that paradigm MSTR has to make a decision:
Start using their treasury for capitalist ventures (loans, MSTR business expansion, buying property) or hold their treasury and expand circulated BTC value.
Loans will carry high risk unless borrowers collateralize with other assets. Even then interest on loans maybe antiquated/obsolete. Instead only staked loans will be given. I.E. someone opens a new business with BTC loan MSTR gets a 10% stake in the business for a term in lieu of interest.
I also don't see how buying assets, goods, or labor with BTC would somehow flow back to MSTR. When BTC is the monetary heavyweight, no one will be exchanging USD for BTC (which is required for MSTR to acquire it.)
So, I hope this assuages the fears. Although I can't logically assuage a feeling of jealously because it is an illogical emotion.
I don't assuage my fears. It amplifies them. You're a smart dude, I already know that. If you can't see the scenario that could play out, then the scenario is even more likely because others also won't see the danger.
I'm not okay with living in a world where everything is owned by mstr. Or 10 mstr-equivalent entities. Bitcoin ownership must be sovereign and unencumbered at the lowest level.
Okay, I'll assume I am wrong. What is the suggested remedy? What flaw is MSTR exploiting? What is MSTR doing that is impeding your or anyone else's sovereignty?
Its not what they're doing now, its an exercise in finding the market tolerance for a risk.
The remedy is they disburse their holdings to holders of mstr because if btc is money, then having the money should be preferable to a stock that represents the money. Short of that, the danger is that btc can't be used as money.
The danger isn't binary - the usability of bitcoin is endangered by it not circulating, which is a progressive danger. My original question was, at what percentage of total btc do we start to see mstr as deleterious to the economy of btc? But the same question leads into the values we champion as bitcoiners. There is some point where mstr's and the etfs' accumulation makes btc unusable for p2p money. Maybe its 100℅. But I think it's less. How do we find the limit?
I'm asking an economics question. I am unfortunately not that great at providing answers to my questions.
Your assertion seems completely backwards to me. 🤨
See other relies ; I want to respond, but my finger's stamina has limits.
I think the biggest risk (if there is one) is they can move the market. If on the extreme end they held 99% of the BTC cap, then they can sell all, or a large portion, of their coin and drop the BTC/USD price. Other than that I don’t really see a risk. I may be ignorant but just my thoughts.
No, that would be good for us. There are two attacks - 1 is an attack on our values, the other is an attack on the currency aspect of btc.
We value freedom. Political freedom and economic freedom are closely linked. Economic freedom is far more pressing to most people. Most people have no btc savings. We could succeed in making btc the work currency but fail completely at rebuilding economic empowerment. If these funds become banks that never sell except to make loans, then all btc flows back to banks. They effectively own the world.
If they remain only funds and people speculate on dollar prices, fiat wins. All btc disappears into these black holes. We become rich, but we failed the world. Btc will be a settlement mechanism but not a currency. No one will care, node runners will quit, all nodes will be run by governments or etf companies, and they'll choose a ruleset to their liking. We get a CBDC. Humanity is enslaved... We're already enslaved, so I guess that's the point where we go full socialist and exterminate the leftover people.
There's only one way to get what we want, broadly speaking - we have to get the funds to pay out the btc. They can't be black holes.
Isn't bitcoin already well distributed, and the idea of 10 holders in total highly unlikely? Even if 10 were trying to be all-owning there would be at least 1 more out there not selling their bitcoin - you. And I recall 74% of all bitcoin hasn't moved in months since the ETFs. Might want to fact check that, but overall the meglananiacs will be limited by refusal to sell for any amount of fiat shit.
We have a catch-22 situation. 10 or 20 or 100, doesn't matter. If bitcoin is only used as a savings mechanism, then fiat wins because its still the currency and still funds tyranny. But if we have a vibrant bitcoin economy, meaning it becomes currency, then the etf's and any other traded fund that derives value from holding btc will have a supply to buy with fiat, continually removing btc from the market until none is left.
The second scenario may appear favorable because we can (supposedly) soft fork in more decimal places and then "its going up forever, laura." Or whatever her name was... But that scenario is an argumentative point to prove absurdity, like Schrödinger's cat. BTW, it's insane how many people take that cat as simultaneously alive and dead... The point was to prove absurdity. Its like in most math problems, at least the ones grounded in real world scenarios, you have to discard infinity solutions. So, this isn't that, but I think I'm justified in assuming "infinity" isn't going to happen.
What breaks? Idk, but something... It also reminds me of the credit cycle - you can see the credit cycle has topped by looking for yield inversions, assuming the yields referenced are actually the relevant numbers (might not be anymore, but theory is still good). Once you can say for sure the credit cycle is topped, meaning new businesses are getting negative returns on every dollar borrowed, then a "deflationary event" has to happen. You can't predict where it will happen, that would be another absurdity, but you can be sure it will happen. So bringing it back to bitcoin - what will happen? Something that brings a sensible equilibrium between the infinity the funds hold and the actual value traded outside the funds. It'll crash. Repeatedly. Forever. And boom repeatedly. Forever. As long as fiat exists.
The problem is, I don't see anything actually wrecking fiat. Fiat is designed to wreck. Forever... And it never dies because states exist. Its like the monster Mao, the handsomest man in China (I heard that in China) said : "power grows out of the barrel of a gun." Real power is the market, but violence controls markets. States are violence.
I *really* want bitcoin to be the one global currency. But my reasoning ability hit a wall. I think it can only be savings. That's not good enough for me. And that's all I got, cuz I don't see anything better.
The Weimar republic comes to mind. Even if fiat still exists there comes a point where nobody wants it in exchange for real things. As Max Keiser notes, at some point we will be offered 10m for a bitcoin and nobody will bite. The fiat becomes pointless, however easily big players can access its endless pot they won't be able to buy BTC with it.
I think that's how it is going to play out eventually.
There are all sorts of what ifs, like being forced to accept fiat or forced confiscation of valuable hard money etc, but that's a set of issues that implies a governnent is hanging on to power by a thread. That's when a social issue for the people to resolve takes precedent, and concerns for btc as a currency has to sit and wait for an outcome.
I don't think that will affect the broader economy. 10 mil per coin is cheap, BTW. But there's our real challenge - people are blinded by dreams of riches, instead of thinking about how we liberate humanity. I digress... I don't think btc's price has any affect on the usability of the dollar or whatever fiat. If they need to make a 10k dollar note so people can buy a carton of eggs, no problem. That's about what it costs in South Korea, using their won - they didn't start at that point. Wheelbarrows of digits on your credit card is no problem at all. Actually, people would love it, since such high inflation would effectively zero out their existing credit card balance.
But supposing you're right, and the USD becomes unusable because of bitcoin storing a lot of value... Then we have an even worse situation. Anyone doing anything will need a loan from a bank that used to be a btc fund. And loans get repaid with interest. So, ... Oh.
New thought. This is evil... But it might be the solution. So the bitcoin economy is rescued by defaults, which literally have to happen, because interest payments are unpayable with deflationary money. Can't take any chances... We'll have to purposely crash the economy. That's doable. The defaults disperse the btc because businesses pay their suppliers. If the rate of deflation is high enough, or janky enough, no bank can profit on btc... People will suffer, though. Not a good solution, but at least not nothing.
The halving cycle could ripple onwards long after it ends.
Hmm. And I think that means the best business a bitcoiner can be in, other than selling btc, is off grid survival gear.
But it doesn't matter. That's all based on the supposition that saving in btc magically ends the USD. That would only be true if the government couldn't borrow USD. They can always borrow USD. Hyperinflation very well could happen, but plenty of countries have carried on under conditions of hyperinflation.
Well. Stream of consciousness. No point in making it look pretty.
Your point about the economy crashing when the dollar becomes valueless - well, yeah. That's the way of hyperinflation.
The "evil" of the temporary collapse outweighs no collapse of the current matrix system..
Satoshi started dispersing bitcoin as far and as fast as possible, so that the maximum number of people had an instrument to get through a fiat financial collapse. If it had been a hodl technology BTC would never have taken off.
This is all points I remember from Max Keiser btw.
It is becoming clear that if we believe in bitcoin we have to spend it into the general economy. And because it is such a hard asset, whatever it is spent should be put to very good use, hardening the economy as it spreads, reducing the impact of fiat collapse.
Trying to respond just put me back in that catch-22 territory...
Good to air your concerns even if you don't get an answer from someone like me who doesn't know either. I intuit that bitcoin will be a force for good with its main role being to blow the lid on the fiat system. No doubt it will be a rocky path.
Its a force for good. I'm worried about details only.
Cool. So pretty much all hodlers are agents of the state
No. We're still defunding the state. We're still withdrawing our support. And we're still trying to do something as opposed to not trying at all, which is what everyone else is doing.
if holding benefits state interests more than individuals seeking a better monetary system, then YES.
If I sound authoritative, I'm sorry. I'm retarded. Nothing I say should ever be given too much weight. I want to be proven wrong. Gently, if possible.
i for one appreciate your critique.
i do not own a crystal ball.
but i do have a healthy amount of skepticism for Bitcoiner talking points that don't engage with nuance or the potential for governmental capture.
keep thinking out loud, it's good for us all.
