"It might make sense just to get some in case it catches on. If enough people think the same way, that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Once it gets bootstrapped, there are so many applications if you could effortlessly pay a few cents to a website as easily as dropping coins in a vending machine."
- Satoshi Nakamoto, 1/17/2009
Sending out the second dispatch of the 2-minute bitcoin newsletter.
We took a bit too long since last time, so this dispatch is unusually large. We aim to keep the dispatch with 3 articles and confined to a 2 minute read.
Sign up here if you haven't! https://www.2minutebitcoin.org/
presented without comment.
Exactly. We think the minimum is just continued education. If everybody in the world understood money, then bitcoin would already be successful - this is with 0 code change anywhere
BITCOIN IS NOT GUARANTEED!
Nothing is guaranteed - missing a key insight can have you waste 1,000 years!
The Native Americans had sophisticated pottery - they knew how to mold clay via a pottery wheel. But for 5,000 years, nobody in the entire continent thought to take the wheel and roll it. They never invented the wagon!
You miss one key insight and that changes the entire course.
Worse, things can be forgotten.
- average life expectancy in Rome around 100 A.D was 72 years! (civilization, sanitation, aqueducts, roads). Then Dark Age happens and it plunges down to 30 years. It only recovers to 70+ years in mid 1900s in the U.S.
- The way Romans created concrete was [lost up until 2017](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2017.22231)! It is stronger than the concrete used today
- The Chinese invented the printing press 2,000 years ago. Gutenberg got it just in 1453.
- 100 A.D. the Romans knew the world was round, then 1,400 years later Europe pre-Columbus thinks it’s flat
As powerful as these ideas are - they can be missed!
There is always the possibility of significant civilizational regression if we ignore learnings we’ve accumulated over time.
We can hurt ourselves by not paying attention at the civilizational and individual level.
This is a sobering reminder that Bitcoin is not in any way guaranteed for success. All the benefits that are so evidently obvious to us can be missed by the greater public if we don't do our part in helping it succeed.
-- parts of this are an excerpt from the Saylor Series Episode 2 - the Rise of Man through the Dark and Steel Ages, its 2-minute version can be found here https://www.2minutebitcoin.org/blog/saylor-series-episode-2-the-rise-of-man-through-the-dark-and-steel-ages-robert-breedlove
Governments have a thousand different ways to tax is - hidden or not…
- direct: income tax, social security tax, VAT
- indirect: inflation, deficit spending eventually weakening the local currency exchange rate
0% taxes and maximum bitcoin versus the local currency
Would we have more prosperity without central banks?
Let's think about it. Money is most critically a signal of the value of something - the price conveys information in real time how hard it is to obtain something.
When we allow unaccountable bureaucrats to print money and cantillionaires to benefit from it, we massively distort the price signal of money.
In the same way a stock certificate is title to company capital, money is title to human time. People sacrifice their time for money, which enables them to trade for commensurate sacrifices from others. When prices are distorted, we are each inhumanely robbed of making fully informed personal choices with our time.
**First**, as discussed, this impairs the fidelity of economy-wide price signals, thereby,
**Second**, inefficiently draws human and capital resources into activities that cannot be lastingly maintained, thereby,
**Third**, drives temporary illusions of relative prosperity in certain economic segments, and despair in others, and therefore,
**Fourth**, leads inevitably, and repeatedly, to booms and busts.
Modern central banking is the cause of severe economic problems. NOT the cure!
-- an excerpt from the Stone Ridge 2020 Shareholder Letter, its 2-minute version can be found here https://www.2minutebitcoin.org/blog/stone-ridge-2020-shareholder-letter
not really bitcoin related but anybody looked into the effects of micro plastics on humans endocrine systems?
For some reason Daniel Krawisz which wrote some amazing pieces we have and are summarising, turned shitcoiner and is dead set on BSV
We truly don’t get it. Do these people have a mental disease ?
Technology is the only meaningful way of increasing prosperity in the world and fixing its problems.
This Tuberculosis White Plague killed a billion people - more than any war! No other political event (World Wars) had a greater statistical mortality rate effect.
Through technology - the discovery of antibiotics and sterilization - we completely solved it.
The impact of technology completely dwarfs every political thing that took place during that time period.
All the activities/ideologies we fought over turned out to not be as relevant as defeating Tuberculosis!
But there’s asymmetry in the history books - for every 1 page about an important event like curing Tuberculosis, theres 100+ pages for the World Wars - despite them being insignificant in relation.
Politics are overrated; Technology is underrated;
Bitcoin is counter-intuitively both - it is a political revolution re-ignited and ultimately enabled through a technological breakthrough.
-- an excerpt from the Saylor Series Episode 2 - the Rise of Man through the Dark and Steel Ages, its 2-minute version can be found here https://www.2minutebitcoin.org/blog/saylor-series-episode-2-the-rise-of-man-through-the-dark-and-steel-ages-robert-breedlove
It’s really difficult to choose what to use nowadays. Almost convinced we need two different phones for different purposes
time to fuel up ✌️
#coffeechain
hopefully we are able to keep it
it seems like purely a function of the amount of people. shitcoinery is like a disease you just can’t escape
Twitter habits die hard
pura vida 🤙