Amethyst just passed 160,000 lines of code. #help

Some people have grown cynical with democracy (and various types of representative government broadly, e.g. including constitutional democratic republics that enshrine certain rights to protect liberty against the masses), viewing this method as promoting short-term leadership with bad incentives.

I have a different take.

Prior to the printing press and then the telegraph and radio, running a democratic society over long distances wasn’t even feasible. The concept of having people democratically participate in their government relies on people being relatively connected information-wise so that they can use their access to information to know what’s happening and to then select between different options, which you couldn’t do across the entirety of a country before people were literate and election materials or other publications could be mass produced. In the pre-press age of handwritten books, making written documents was expensive, and so literacy was a niche skill.

So, that era was ruled by kings and queens, council oligopolies, and so forth. Representative government, to the extent that it existed, only applied to small city states where people could literally gather in a town square, or to “elites” in a capital. There was literally no way to run an election over very broad distances on a regular basis. The printing press helped change that, and then the telegraph, radio, and other tech further reinforced it.

But ironically, as I discuss in Broken Money, those technologies also started to break our money. The printing press and telegraph allowed the transaction layer (the movement of IOUs between individuals and entities) to grow exponentially more efficient both domestically and globally, while our settlement layer (gold) remained basically unchanged. This broadening gap between fast transactions and slow settlements was increasingly bridged with centralization and credit, and the gap eventually became so wide that every nation dropped the settlement layer of gold almost entirely, except as a reserve asset.

So the same technologies that enabled widespread representative government also enabled the proliferation of softer money. Prior to these technologies, broad democracy wasn’t possible. And after these technologies, sound money was too slow to keep up. Oof.

But over a long enough timeframe, our technology became good enough that we finally figured out how to do fast settlements as well. Bitcoin. People can send value to each other quickly over long distances, in ways that no central entity can prevent or reverse, and with a unit that no central entity can debase. The first sound money of the Information Age.

If Bitcoin is successful over the coming decades and becomes a much larger and less volatile money, than it is now, fully entrenched in society, then that would be the first era where technology is at such a state where broad democracy and fast sound money can coexist. Or put more universally, it will be the first era where information spreads quickly without breaking the money, and thus both fast information and good money could coexist.

I, for one, would be curious to see how that develops.

android doesn’t have local notifications? Weird

hmm weird. we don’t have push notifications yet, still waiting on apple to approve that (for 6 months now 🙄)

Apple is having test flight issues within the last hour. Our timing is terrible 😅 nostr:note1kvdthj7hrecupga62380wr8hdp6t0705mxnz3yqdxaemkp36p0wsqee7v0

You are as annoying as you were before. You are the devil I know than a stranger. I'll take it. Ahhahhaahahha

The house would have outperformed Bitcoin with respect to every asset in the universe.

Say 1 Bitcoin = 0.00000001 Sun (if we use stars as currencies)

1 house would be 0.0000001 Sun

After 2 years

1 Bitcoin = 0.00000002 Sun

1 house would be 0.00000024 Sun

I don't even know where to start ahahahaha

Bitcoin will be less and less deflationary going forward. We will have better tools to hold and spend our sats. Bitcoin is a fixed supply currency.

Currencies with inflation will go out of fashion.

By being valued at 12 Bitcoins. That means the house has outperformed Bitcoin.

When the house was bought:

1 Bitcoin = $100k

1 house = 10 BTC = $1m

After 2 years

1 Bitcoin = $200k

1 house = 12 BTC = $2.4m

That means the house has outperformed Bitcoin. Even if there's no dollar in the world anymore, the house will have outperformed Bitcoin if the exchange rate is 12 BTC instead of 10

Solve this Math problem

Q: Imagine you have a rug with dimensions 100 cm × 100 cm. You need to make 70 knots in every 7 cm. How many knots are needed to complete the rug?

Under the Bitcoin standard, people will still borrow Bitcoins to buy houses or other assets. These loans will be cheap, like 0.5% rather than 5% and they will have high liquidation penalties.

Example: You have 5 Bitcoins and you want to buy a house worth 10 Bitcoins. The market value for this house right now is 10 Bitcoins. The loan issuer will happily accept the house as collateral and give you the loan. You both agree to use a market analyst who estimates the value of the house at any time. Right now it is 10 Bitcoins. And you agree to liquidate the house if the debt value + liquidation penalty (say 1 Bitcoin) > the value of the house.

You are now 5 Bitcoins in debt with 5% interest rate.

You are right to assume that the value of the house COULD go down in value with respect to Bitcoin over time if the value of Bitcoin keeps going up. In 2 years, say the market analyst says the value of the house is 5.5 Bitcoins and you are still 4.5 Bitcoins in debt. You made a bad investment.

So this triggers a liquidation where the issuer sells your house for 5.5 Bitcoins and will keep the entire amount as the penalty is 1 Bitcoin.

I don't see a problem here. Do you?

Ideally you do not want to buy a house by borrowing Bitcoin unless you believe the house will outperform Bitcoin in 10 years. Which might happen by the way, Bitcoin cannot keep going up with respect to every other asset in the world. Some real estate will definitely outperform Bitcoin once it reaches the $100T range.

Now, why would you take a loan in Bitcoin? Because there are no other currencies in the world still standing. The issuers will only issue loans in Bitcoin. Because the issuer does not want to hold any other currencies.

The Bitcoin standard will fix everything. Ahahaha

Relatively low for the size of the country. People like cash dollars and gold.

Not relative to inflation: “sticky wages”.