I just read it. Most of the piece is an account of your direct experience, so there's little to be said about it.

About the rest, I concur: the White Paper needs to be re-analyzed, and perhaps ditched altogether.

I have always argued that BTC is a complete failure as currency because it simply works too well as money. The features and virtues that make it and undebasable, portable, secure store of value make it useless as a payment system for retail commerce.

For (very) large transfers where safety comes first and a ten minute settlement time (or several hours even) is attractive, and fees will always be relatively tiny vs the amount transferred, it should work. To buy lattes? No freaking way, LN or no LN.

The fact that Satoshi explicitly said he was after a P2P cash system doesn't preclude the fact that he also describe an effort to create a form of hard money. Which are two different things.

People trying to use BTC as a currency are looking for a problem to their solution. In this day and age there simply is no retail payment problem in most of the planet. Even bank transfers are instant and free for most people.

And the problem of the elimination of anonymous payments, i.e., cash, which would be the only possible use case for BTC as cash, is not addressed by it, with its public, transparent ledger. By the way, these other "commerce-ready" cryptos that you mention are doomed to the same fate, as are smart contract cryptos, once fully programmable CBDC's enter the scene.

In that situation, the only use case that will be left will be the facilitation of fully anonymous payments. Which, again, BTC doesn't do by default.

At this point, yes, just let go. Not of BTC, but of using it for something it doesn't do well. Use it as it was designed: hard, undebasable money. You can call it dismissively a "savings account". If you want to reduce it to that, OK. But it is THE best and definitive savings account, in any case. I think that's a lot already, and much more important and necessary than being a currency.

It has crept into Europe, and continues to get worse. People routinely talk about 18 year old "children" here now.

I bet you *those* are even closer than the ass-wiping type.

And imagine the amount of backdoors enabling remote control by State actors and corporations these motherfuckers will have. Instead of flinching, I'm shuddering now...

*Not to mention the 30 year long propaganda campaign against zero inflation that the Japanese people have be subjected to, culminating in the current Abenomics aberration in which the government managed to increase the sales tax and purposely created massive inflation.

This is the Japanawse way so far, and I support it. The powers that be, not so much, and the pressure they're putting on Japanese public opinion to make it amenable to immigration is enormous and along the same lines used in Europe -- "who will pay your pension and wipe your dementia-ridden ass?"

It's almost like they all put in place these "public service and pension" unsustainable Ponzi schemes, created the problem, and now insist that they have the solution.

I'm a strong believer in a whole food, high animal, low carb diet, and of all the stupid shit "carnivore" people peddle, the "sunburn is caused by seed oils" conspiracy is one of the most ridiculous.

Well, look at it from the contrarian point of view. If it's basically all women and he manages to find even a small audience, he's set.

In one week, the ETFs acquired eight weeks' worth of mining supply. So in one month at that pace, they would acquire eight months. Doesn't look like their reserves are decreasing that fast.

It's more symbolic than anything.

First, the Saudis will keep taking USD, and most people will keep paying in USD, because the USD remains the preferred denominator and will remain so. They will simply take other currencies now -- if and whenever they want. As it happens now with the touted BRICS "dedollarization", what really happens when they transact say in RMB, is that they agree on a USD price, then convert currencies using USD as the bridge directly or indirectly, and say they paid in RMB. Whatever.

Second, the yearly volume of the USD-denominated oil trade is $3-4 T. Compare that to the total amount of offshore USD (dollar-denominated debt and so on, outside of the US) in the world's economies, which is probably $15-20 T. Obviously 4 trillion vs 15 is sizeable, but it's not like the 4 T are going to zero.

Who are the stupid fucks selling to them and suppressing the price though?

Wow!

Two instances of public action that would be better performed by the private sector.

As a non-techie again, but keeping safety against bad actors (State actors basically) as the main concern, as a function of plausible deniability when they arrest a relay owner, the traffic should be fully encrypted, so the relay owner doesn't even know what's in it while it goes through.

And there's another thing, from the point of view of the lender.

Can you imagine the interest you will have to charge to cover for the risk of default?

You are lending out 1 BTC worth $70k today and possibly $90k in one year. And then the person you lent it to, doesn't pay you back. Now you need $90k to cover for that 1 BTC.

So how much would you charge to make it worth taking that risk?

Probably, until we reach gigantic market caps and BTC's price volatility is basically just the inflation rate plus a tiny premium, BTC lenders will have to charge absurdly high interest, which once again, make it not very attractive.

If I may interject: loaning out BTC doesn't make a lot of financial sense because borrowing BTC makes no sense, as it is an ever appreciating asset vs fiat.

Let's say you borrow 1 BTC for 1 year at 10% yearly. 1 BTC = $70k today, 1 BTC = $90k in 1 year. And you have to return 1.1 BTC. So you will be returning $99k.

Who would do that, if you can simply borrow $70k at 10%, and pay back $77k instead?

Also, borrow BTC to do what with it? Investable assets will continue to be priced in fiat for the foreseeable future.

You borrow 1 BTC to buy a laundromat, for instance. What's the advantage of borrowing BTC to do that? First, you're overpaying. Remember, $70k vs $90k in 1 year. Why not keep those $20k in your pocket?

Second, in most jurisdictions, you can pay in BTC or whatever you want, but as far as the government, banks, insurance, etc. goes, you will have to convert the value into fiat for the record. So why not, once again, just borrow fiat to begin with?

This is why people don't borrow gold either.

Go fuck yourself, freak.

Completely serious answer: hopefully never.

My objective is to hodl and, eventually, borrow fiat against it to invest on yield-producing assets that repay the debt so I don't need to liquidate my BTC.

I'm not saying we have to "cower". It's exactly the opposite. "Cowering" is asking for compliance with censorship laws like this was Twitter already.

"We're not there". OK. As I said, it seems we need to have our own Nostr Ross Ulbricht before people are convinced that, in fact, we are.