I'm realizing more as I get older that cringe is not something that gets fixed easily. Generally, it's an indicator of immaturity and sadly, fiat money makes maturing unnecessary.
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#Bitcoin Tech Talk #377
Altcoin Redux
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In a way, the ordinals scam is an excellent sign. Altcoins have long been associated with Bitcoin through the moniker of "crypto" and have used Bitcoin's good name to scam people through pump and dumps.
But as we've seen, this narrative is no longer what it used to be. There are enough people that have recognized the pump and dump nature of altcoins as well as Bitcoin's continued rise that there's a distinction made in the peoples' minds between Bitcoin and altcoins. One is sound money, the other is fiat 2.0. The scam of altcoins, in other words, is starting to fade and the returns aren't like they used to be.
That's why ordinals and BRC-20 are becoming more popular. There's little chance of escaping the "shitcoin" moniker by releasing a token on Ethereum or Solana now. The gulf between Bitcoin and altcoins is too wide and crossing that chasm, to scam newbies has become that much harder. But by releasing a token on Bitcoin, now there's a lot more room for confusion. They can claim to be supporting Bitcoin through fees while running the same scam. It's changing names and disguises so you don't get caught. This is the snake oil salesman leaving one town to get a bunch of suckers in the next town.
But this is where we need to be even more diligent. The people that are scamming are picking up the verbiage of the people that know what they're talking about. They're going to scam people by looking and sounding like the real thing. They can talk about sound money, self-sovereignty and property rights and even sound pretty convincing doing it. Except, of course, that token they want you to buy.
The time to separate the Bitcoiners from the Spamcoiners is now. They are running pump and dumps, just doing it with a new rationale like a new disguise and name. And they'll fool a bunch of people. Indeed, the people they seem to attract are the very people that pumped altcoins in the past. Altcoin-land is a scorched earth they've left behind and they want to run the same policies on "top of" Bitcoin.
Don't let them take over. Reject these charlatans and shame them for their chicanery. And if you're someone that's throwing up their hands and saying there's nothing to be done, you're wrong. You can do something by calling these things out for what they are. They're scams and the faster they fail, the better it will be for Bitcoin. And as we saw with altcoins in the past, ignoring them doesn't make them go away. Calling them out and relentlessly exposing their grift is what's needed.
Working with your hands is good for your soul.
Centralized crap always dies, sometimes very quickly.
bottom up community standards are a good thing. they motivate people to act justly.
it's the centralized imposition of standards that allow for much evil.
Nostr and Bitcoin are pillars of a new digital order.
This is the way to combat clown world.
Those that would waste your time are really stealing from the limited scarce amount of time you have left to live.
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Bitcoin Tech Talk #376
Here's why there are deep incentives for a Bitcoin fork with the Ordinals people.
Ordinals/BRC-20/Inscriptions are now VC funded. And they're going to be pressured to keep growing, no matter what. Yet the hype around their stuff will inevitably fade. And whatever profits they had will dry up. So what will they do?
There are two paths. One is to increase revenue, the other is to reduce costs. The first will be very difficult to do without some new narrative. And they might try that, but it's going to be very difficult on Bitcoin... At least as it currently stands. They could move to another chain, but then, their whole reason for existence, being built on Bitcoin will be no more. Hence the incentive to create new narratives around their stuff and to add "features" to generate interest means some sort of fork.
The other path is to reduce costs. The most obvious cost is the fees being sent to miners. And to reduce that, you need to increase block size or make the blocks more frequent. Either way, this is incentivizing a fork.
The point is that once VC funding entered the picture, the path was set. There will be a conflict of visions and a "peaceful coexistence" was never going to be the outcome.
Just when I think it couldn't get stupider... Grown men simping for ordinals.
An Argentina free market in money would be interesting to observe. I think dollars would take the early lead before succumbing to Bitcoin.
Stablecoins, assets that are centralized already really should be Chaumian e-cash. Why bother with a cumbersome database like a blockchain when the trust model is fundamentally the same?
I talked to Korok Ray about Academia and all the problems generated by high time preference fiat money
https://rumble.com/v425e02-bitcoin-fixes-this-116-academia-with-korok-ray.html
There will be a lot of trades, there will be a lot of wrecked people and a few that make many multiples.
Trading is a zero-sum game and most of the time you're going to be on the negative side.
Altcoins Don't Lead to Bitcoin
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There's a persistent myth that Bitcoiners are made through altcoins. The argument goes something like this:
1. Someone hears about NFTs, a BRC-20 token or some yield-producing DeFi project.
2. They get curious and get into said altcoin.
3. They then find out about Bitcoin.
4. They recognize Bitcoin as sound money and start using it as such going forward
There are many criticisms of this argument, but let's start with one of marketing. The order here matters. The contention is that these people *hear* about an altcoin first before Bitcoin. While this may be the case for a few people, for the vast majority, they hear about Bitcoin first. The people investing in an altcoin almost certainly are people that know about Bitcoin already. It's extremely rare that *new* people come into an altcoin, without any knowledge of Bitcoin at all.
Second, there's a persistent idea that mere *exposure* to Bitcoin is enough for people to start adopting it. That somehow, hearing about Bitcoin, whether through commercials, ATM signs and Bitcoin Accepted Here stickers, that it's enough to send them down the rabbit hole of Austrian economics, incentive systems, the nature of money and so on to get to the place where they become Bitcoin holders.
Of course, this is ridiculous on its face. I'm sure someone, who was already inclined toward sound money principles through time-preference, has become a Bitcoiner this way, but for the vast majority of Bitcoiners, exposure to the *brand* was not enough. They were exposed to an *argument* for why Bitcoin is superior as money, more moral, better for civilization or better for wealth accumulation. Exposure to an altcoin very rarely exposes people to the best arguments for Bitcoin. It's very much in the altcoiners' interest to make Bitcoin seem worse in comparison. The arguments that they *are* exposed to are the easily refutable and require Olympic-level mental gymnastics to believe, usually a token around a centralized decentralization of something that makes little sense to decentralize. Thus, they might get a little more exposure to the brand, but the arguments for Bitcoin are something that they won't get in altcoin-land.
In other words, the people involved in these altcoins have very different motivations and the marketing makes this very obvious. The hope is always the price rise in the token through further marketing. There's nothing about these that point to Bitcoin's advantages over fiat money.
And the experience of Bitcoin Maximalists is clear evidence to the contrary. Many have had some time with altcoins in the past, but that's generally way before they finally "get" Bitcoin. In large part, that moment when they get Bitcoin comes *after* getting rugged in an altcoin, not *because* the altcoin somehow made Bitcoin's virtue more obvious.
Far from bringing "people into Bitcoin," altcoins actively tempt would-be Bitcoiners into a path of gambling and rent-seeking. This is precisely what takes people away from providing value and using Bitcoin as savings and puts them in a very fiat mentality of trying to get something for nothing.
This is why it takes most Bitcoiners years to really "get" Bitcoin. Adoption does not happen through airdrops or ads. Adoption happens through each individual understanding what Bitcoin is for. What altcoins do is confuse the issue because altcoins make Bitcoin seem more like "crypto," or a speculative gamble. Indeed, this is what altcoiners and nocoiners have in common. They don't or won't understand that Bitcoin is a better money. For them, it's a better or worse lottery.
Let's dispense with this idiotic narrative that altcoins somehow benefit Bitcoin. They're leeches of the system that confuse people with their obviously flawed arguments on the need for a token for their project. Altcoins are a morally corrupt evil.
I didn't get into Bitcoin so someone in Nigeria can now gamble more efficiently online. I got into Bitcoin because that same person can keep more of their wealth by not having their money continuously stolen from them. The altcoiners deserve all the vitriol that they're getting. At best, they are naive and overestimate their economics knowledge. At worst, they are scammers that are rent-seeking off of Bitcoin's success. Either way, this argument needs to die.
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#Bitcoin Tech Talk #375
There's nothing more insufferable than a guy that got lucky thinking he's smart.
One of the things I'm looking forward to as the dollar loses its reserve status is the decline of the venture capital industrial complex. These are blowhards that are worse than journalists in terms of how much they're listened to versus how much they know.
Real expertise will get rewarded instead of the fiat knowledge that these guys spout.
Gotta love the people moralizing on how other people should behave as if Bitcoin is a centralized system.
There are friends and enemies, incentives and consequences. Let's just say these haven't played out yet.