this was AI generated
Do you understand money?
Look no more than this 2016 2-minute read: https://2minutebitcoin.org/blog/bitcoin-is-about-the-money-not-the-blockchain-technology
Slowly but surely, we are coming for Bitcoin Magazine's spot. We will inevitably become the biggest Bitcoin publication around.
Money is just a shared hallucination. Its value is whatever we all agree it is.
This explains why you can't replicate Bitcoin’s value by replicating the technology. You would have to also replicate the hallucination (network effect), which you can’t. You’ll have two blockchains, but only one of them has a shared hallucination. This makes one of them valuable, the other worthless.
If that seems like a strange claim, think about the alternative: it means that it should be possible to create value for essentially no work. Every new blockchain ever produced was built on the premise that you can create a valuable investment that offers no income for the fixed cost of copying Bitcoin with alterations.
Money may be little other than a bunch of people attributing value to something without much direct use.
It doesn’t matter if this sounds ridiculous; if there is a behavior that corresponds to this belief which benefits people, then they will keep behaving that way.
-- an excerpt from It's Not About The Technology, It's About The Money (2016), its 2-minute version can be found here: https://2minutebitcoin.org/blog/bitcoin-is-about-the-money-not-the-blockchain-technology
More Twitter censorship… sigh
Ethereum and Bitcoin compete in being money - they both solve the double-spend problem.
Do Ethereum's smart contracts give it a serious advantage over Bitcoin?
It is hard to see a way that Ethereum’s smart contract system would tend to bring in opportunities to unload ethers which are superior to the opportunities provided by Bitcoin, especially powered by Lightning.
No matter how cool smart contracts sound, they make Ethereum just another appcoin, and as with other appcoins, people will reduce the risk of holding them by not holding them, or holding them for as short a time as possible, in order to get the utility they can out of them.
This will drive their price down until they are useless in trade.
-- an excerpt from It's Not About The Technology, It's About The Money (2016), its 2-minute version can be found here: https://2minutebitcoin.org/blog/bitcoin-is-about-the-money-not-the-blockchain-technology
Bitcoin won't be eagerly adopted by everybody - it will be **forced upon** them by economic reality.
People will be forced to pay with bitcoins because no one will accept their **worthless fiat** for payments. Good money drives out the bad, and this has already started as a small fiat bleed.
-- an excerpt from the 2-minute version of Speculative Attack (2014): https://2minutebitcoin.org/blog/bitcoin-speculative-attack-on-the-dollar-2014
“There is an infinite amount of cash in the Federal Reserve.” – Neel Kashkari, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis
March 22, 2020
When a regional Fed President brags in March about having “an infinite amount of cash,” he toxically undermines the American virtue of thrift, dangerously decouples risk-taking from the consequences of risk-taking, and epitomizes the influence of absolute, centralized power.
All of this is anti-American.
This legend got paid 32 bitcoins to wear this hat and hold this sign in January 2011.
The foundational fallacy is that people try to explain money in physical terms when it is purely a sociological phenomenon.
Gold is not valuable because it is durable, fungible, portable, and scarce; it is valuable because of a beneficial and **self-sustaining tradition** in which it has a special place. Its properties enable this, but don't guarantee it will arise.
The same applies for Bitcoin.
-- an excerpt from It's Not About The Technology, It's About The Money (2016), https://2minutebitcoin.org/blog/bitcoin-is-about-the-money-not-the-blockchain-technology
something we learned from Saylor again: Bitcoin is the first time in history we managed to brand an asset via cryptography.
thinking more about Bitcoin as a brand - it is something you can trust more than any other brand. The media may be trying to paint a negative picture on it right now - but we're early.
With each passing block, Bitcoin earns the trust of everybody. A consistent brand.
“There is an infinite amount of cash in the Federal Reserve.” – Neel Kashkari, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis
March 22, 2020
When a regional Fed President brags in March about having “an infinite amount of cash,” he toxically undermines the virtue of thrift, dangerously decouples risk-taking from the consequences of risk-taking, and epitomizes the influence of absolute, centralized power.
- an excerpt from the 2-minute version of Stone Ridge 2020 Shareholder Letter https://www.2minutebitcoin.org/blog/stone-ridge-2020-shareholder-letter
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Naturally, there must be a limit to the growth of money's value. As the value of money increases, eventually the individual benefits of holding more of it will go down.
This happens as the market cap of currency becomes a larger and larger fraction of the whole economy.
There are only so many errors that the economy produces for a cash-holder to take advantage of, and only so many tangible goods.
The economy becomes saturated with money once there are enough investors sitting around with piles of money such that they are able to catch all the errors that are financially worthwhile. (STAN: Is this because anything worthwhile is being caught already? i.e the supply is met by the demand the moment it comes, hence the value cannot grow)
At that point it is no longer individually beneficial to hold more money even if the value of money has gone up. This prevents the value of money from going up further until more people or businesses are added to the economy.
-- an excerpt from It's Not About The Technology, It's About The Money (2016), its 2-minute version can be found here: https://2minutebitcoin.org/blog/bitcoin-is-about-the-money-not-the-blockchain-technology
did you follow a pleb today? #plebchain
Sillicon Valley says don’t do anything unless it’s more than 100x better.
Railroads were that - carrying 5 tons of stuff from New York to California is 1000x faster and stronger with railroads.
-- 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
> “How did you go bankrupt?"
> Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”
> - Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
Gradually, then suddenly, is also the way:
- government-backed currencies hyperinflate
- people come to understand Bitcoin
- an excerpt from the 2-minute version of Gradually, Then Suddenly (2019) https://www.2minutebitcoin.org/blog/gradually-then-suddenly-bitcoin