“Who’s left holding the bag as the dollar becomes increasingly worthless? Easy: Americans. The only people on earth who are actually obligated to use the US dollar, thanks to an obscure law passed in 1862 as a wartime emergency that nevertheless managed to stick around for 151 years.
So Americans have no choice: unless you swapped your dollars for gold, or Bitcoin, or goats, you go down with the ship.
What happens to those Americans? A falling dollar drives up the price of everything that comes into America. But it also drives up the price of anything traded on world markets. Meaning the raw materials and imported components that drive American factories and sustain American consumers.”
Central banking ain’t what it used to be.
“As part of our action plan to incorporate climate change considerations in our monetary policy framework, we decided to tilt corporate bond holdings towards issuers with better climate performance, through the reinvestment of redemptions starting in October 2022. Our climate-related financial disclosures showed last month that this effort was helping reduce the carbon footprint of our corporate sector portfolios. In addition, we are adjusting the collateral framework, introducing climate-related disclosure requirements, and enhancing risk management practices.”
https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/key/date/2023/html/ecb.sp230414~48b38bc71c.en.html
““The U.S. possesses a distinct advantage: given that such a large amount of Bitcoin is held by U.S. residents, we stand to disproportionately benefit from its monetization…
…“bitcoin is a clear and present threat to China’s strategic ambitions for the e-RMB as well as its efforts to enforce capital controls,”…
…“Even if the U.S. didn’t stand to itself directly benefit from Bitcoin’s technological innovation, energy incentives, and value growth, we indirectly gain from the constraints it places on China.
The existence of Bitcoin is a severe complication for China’s CBDC ambitions, presenting an attractive store of wealth and effective cross-border payment system to those BRI nations that China seeks to entangle with the e-RMB.””
“With the current industry-adopted mining protocol Stratum V1, the handful of mining pools participates in transaction selection, which makes bitcoin more prone to censorship. Stratum v2 is an updated protocol, which ensures that transaction selection is done by miners themselves.”
“It seems like OPEC+ and BRICS nations are trying to exercise their control of energy production and distribution in the face of western central bank policies that attempt to control interest rates and sanctions. …the knock-on effect is going to demonstrate the lack of control that policymakers have over the price of fiat currency.”
“With competition between nation states for capital and talent on the rise, the mobility of capital and people has the potential to transform the way we think about citizenship and national identity…”
“Bitcoin challenges the status quo of the traditional financial system, offering an alternative that is more transparent, democratic and inclusive.”
It's coming to that time again where the #Bitcoin halving discussions will happen, and whether such a thing can be priced in.
Parman has the logic laid out for you, plain and simple...
https://armantheparman.com/the-fundamentals-of-bitcoins-price/
“The price of Bitcoin TODAY represents the price of an asymmetrical bet on the future that Bitcoin will become money. It has the risk-reward properties similar to an option call without an expiry date.”
https://armantheparman.com/the-fundamentals-of-bitcoins-price/
Everything is fine….
“…the governor said banks and non-banking financial institutions could not be expected to hold ever larger liquidity buffers to cover unforeseeable 'Black Swan' events, and said it was preferable for central banks to have tools to act with "temporary and targeted interventions".”
“If we really do go back to ultra-low interest rates it could mean a reinflation of the bubble economy. But do we really want to go there? With last month’s banking crisis – which is not necessarily over – we have seen what havoc it can create when investors come to take low interest rates for granted and are then caught out when rates rise even to modest levels.”
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/interest-rates-cant-go-back-to-being-as-low-as-they-were/
“They dislike bitcoin because they cannot control bitcoin. If you haven't noticed the "green transition" is the tip of the spear of a political movement dead set on cattle herding humanity into a tightly controlled, hyper-connected digital panopticon. Bitcoin completely throws a wrench in that movement because it allows people to transact in a peer-to-peer fashion outside of the purview of the panopticon.”
https://tftc.io/martys-bent/issue-1334/?ref=martys-bent-newsletter
"I've always wanted to get rich slow and I have a lot of fun along the way."
The world has never had a dominant global money like Bitcoin before so the problems of the gold standard may not be repeated under a Bitcoin standard.
Gold - limited supply but not portable at scale with privacy maintained.
Bitcoin - limited supply and portable at scale with privacy maintained. This portability combined with privacy will make it easier for people to migrate away from unjust states. Also, the p2p nature of Bitcoin will make it easier for people to trade amongst themselves and bypass tyranny.
People are ethically impacted by the monetary system they operate under. Fiat is unethical and therefore spreads unethical behaviour amongst its users. Perhaps the opposite will hold true under a Bitcoin standard.
It’s possible that if Bitcoin goes mainstream this will be accompanied by en masse refusal to comply with the dictates of governments who try to re-impose fiat money by force.
"We want to stick with what we know works, and it's clear that war is where the real money is," the editorial continued. "Think about it: wars create demand for weapons, infrastructure, and reconstruction. There's always a winner and a loser, and the winner gets to claim the spoils of war. It's a win-win for us and the US defense industry."
https://the-bitcoin-bugle.ghost.io/new-york-times-regrets-pumping-bitcoin-price/
“Developers are exploring the use of hierarchical channels to help speed up and make the Lightning Network (LN) more scalable. Hierarchical channels allow for flexible off-chain resizing of channels, enabling quick and cheap resizing, without on-chain transactions which add delays and costs. In contrast, resizing channels on-chain can cause delays of several months and increases fees.”
“Bitcoin is designed to fix the problem of money printing, but nothing of value comes without cost. Bitcoin’s 21 million fixed supply is secured by energy, specifically power.”
Today, even if 99% of your wealth is in the current system (real estate, pension funds, stock markets, bonds, bank deposits etc.) and only 1% is in Bitcoin, it’s only the latter which has a real chance of contributing to systemic change tomorrow.
William Hazlitt on philosophers who do a disservice to philosophy:
“Their chief aim is to make you wonder at the writer, not to interest you in the subject; and by incessant craving after admiration, they have lost what might have been gained with less extravagance and affectation.”
Extract:
“Today, participants on Lightning experience high failure rates, slow transactions and are often unable to send and receive large amounts. Additionally, it’s technically challenging to connect to the network, continually monitor liquidity and execute payments.
Lightspark’s enterprise-grade infrastructure removes the complexity, making it easy to connect to Lightning and bringing you access to low-cost, instant payments at scale for your business.”