Never say never I suppose but the transition would be terrible

I would call what's happening in El Salvador hyperbitcoinization. It's going to take the rest of the world decades to catch up though.

But to what extent does math influence people’s political ideology?

I tend to agree (currently). I think Bitcoin/Lightning becoming the native currency of the internet is more than enough. There's so much potential just in that.

If you are only able to view Bitcoin’s potential for success vis-a-vis the US Dollar, you’re really missing out on most of what bitcoin’s short-to-medium term potential actually is.

Hate me if you want, but I think hyperbitcoinization is currently not in the cards. Never say never. But if that’s what you expect to happen in the coming months and years, I think you’re just completely wrong about that.

At the same time, Bitcoin is going to keep growing and filling in gaps all around the world, where financial access is far more adversarial. It’s also going to revolutionize the reach of global payments, secure identities, and I believe things like Lightning are going to become ways to accept global payments from anywhere in the world for services, tips, and things like zaps!

Many people will convert their payments back into local fiat. Some will save in bitcoin. That’s okay! Measuring Bitcoin’s success or failure in absolute terms just causes serious distraction from what the near-term opportunities are.

Your family (I hope). Calling your dad a racist will provoke the reaction Urban describes. Other examples include: your job, church, club, political party. All of these groups have an orthodoxy that defines them. If you were not an adherent, you wouldn't be there. As it happens, liberalism is one of these echo chambers. Just try defending Hitler and tell me how it goes.

I’m not arguing it’s beyond the reach of the law. I’m arguing the current framework doesn’t work. As far as I can tell many crypto projects are a combination of a company and an open source project which precludes them from becoming registered securities. Do I think such combinations make sense? Personally, no. But I’m humble enough to admit I might be wrong. The only way to find out is to let them exist & the let the market sort it out. But that means they need a regime they can *actually* comply with which probably includes who or what entity can be held responsible in a court of law.

Urban is the Ultimate Liberal, whose values are self-actualization through the removal of constraints on freedom. He makes very good points within this paradigm, but there are huge omissions in his thought process.

Another word for "echo chamber" is "cohesive culture", which is itself a sine qua non of civil society. You need echo chambers, and you need public squares, and you need to not confuse them.

I have a more nuanced take on this. I think what the SEC & lawmakers are doing here is despicable.

They adamantly refused to pass regulations or laws that centralized or more centralized crypto projects could meet. They also didn’t pass regulations or laws requiring disclosure of information that would make total sense for those projects but not traditional securities.

I may think the projects are dumb, but if they aren’t a fraud or a scam, I think the market should figure that out & not force them out via old laws that make zero sense for the current times.

With that being said, this *is* why you want true decentralization. Because then they can’t stop it or regulate it out of existence even if they want to. nostr:note1njhs0r8d6g0u8q4ay6wl50pmaeyppzljqvedq4gcfcfkng97tacqgavnya

ah this appeared in my replies for some reason, for context I thought you were replying to the article I was laughingly posting.. nevermind 🤙

What better way to convince than to have one actually believe it.

“If you look on your right, here we have a crashed extraterrestrial vehicle. Please do not touch or take photos”

My guess is this is all psyops

Prob a distraction from something else going on they don’t want you to know about.

I can certainly appreciate the disdain some have for regulatory oversight, lord knows there's plenty of regulations that have questionable benefit, and in some cases a net harm. I tend to lean libertarian with this sort of thing in that regulation should be limited to no further than protecting the public from a health/safety and/or a consumer standpoint.

An example I can think of in my jurisdiction:

There were city bylaws in place that limited liquor store 1) proximity to schools, and 2) proximity to each other. The first one is well-intentioned and likely a net good in that it protects children from any alcohol related crime or social issues in the vicinity. The second is, bluntly, anticompetitive and likely is a net harm for the consumer - in fact I know of at least one example where a liquor store chain set up a shell of a store to block the nearby Costco from opening one. Fortunately the second one has since been repealed.

With respect to the SEC action, in my mind this is legal action done to crack down on scammers. Do I like or agree with everything the SEC does? Hardly. But I feel like the motivation behind this action is pretty clear - some of these tokens and exchanges have violated securities laws.

I'm really enjoying the apoplexy by some people who seem to think that enforcing securities laws against illegal securities is some mind-blowing, unprecedented state overreach.

If you're one of them, just know this: normal people think you're nuts. They don't care about your fantasies of a post-state world where all of your fairs exist in an extra-legal, extra-jurisdictional fantasy world.

You're living a lie!

The Roman empire existed for a few hundreds years after Rome fell. I'm sure America will be fine. It's borders may change, it may lose some territory but it's unlikely it'll stop existing anytime soon