Question for #nostr #asknostr

Why do you think libertarianism has largely failed as a movement, or not garnered more widespread popularity? Arguably the right and the left have never advocated for more govt intervention and central planning than they are now (in the U.S. and definitely in Europe)

Is it just bad persuasion? People not caring? Libertarianism doesn’t actually work? Thoughts?

The new model #Garmin #Fenix8 is in the presentation color #Bitcoin 🟧ORANGE🟧. Are they trying to say something… apart from the fact that I should definitely buy it?

Can I wait until the next bull market, or will I succumb to my desire. Tough times are coming😶‍🌫️

If we watch a movie together, are you checking your phone during the movie?

Rather curious 🤔

#asknostr

What's the best type of fish to cook in your opinion? How do you prepare it?

Unpopular opinion: The US debt spiral doesn’t matter nearly as much today as many people think it does.

Even at these higher interest rates.

Someday, it will matter very much. But we are YEARS away from that moment.

For now, it is business—nay, borrowing—as usual.

🇺🇸

“We should change Bitcoin now in a contentious way to fix the security budget” is basically the same tinkering mentality that central bankers have.

It begins with an overconfident assumption that they know fees won’t be sufficient in the future and that a certain “fix” is going to generate more fees. But some “fixes” could even backfire and create less fees, or introduce bugs, or damage the incentive structure.

The Bitcoin fee market a couple decades out will primarily be a function of adoption or lack thereof. In a world of eight billion people, only a couple hundred million can do an on chain transaction per year, or a bit more with maximal batching. The number of people who could do a monthly transaction is 1/12th of that number. In order to be concerned that bitcoin fees will be too low to prevent censorship in the future, we have to start with the assumption that not many people use bitcoin decades out.

Fedwire has about 100x the gross volume that Bitcoin currently does, with a similar number of transactions. What will Bitcoin’s fee market be if volumes go up 5x or 10x, let alone 50x or 100x? Who wants to raise their hand with a confident model of what bitcoin volumes will be in 2040?

What will someone pay to send a ten million dollar equivalent on chain settlement internationally? $100 in fees per million dollar settlement transaction would be .01%. $300 to get it in a quicker block would be 0.03%. That type of environment can generate tens of billions of dollars of fees annually. The fees that people pay to ship millions of dollars of gold long distances, or to perform a real estate transaction worth millions of dollars, are extremely high. Even if bitcoin is a fraction of that, it would be high by today’s standards. And in a world of billions of people, if nobody wants to pay $100 to send a million dollar settlement bearer asset transaction, then that’s a world where not many people use bitcoin period.

In some months the “security budget” concern trends. In other months, the “fees will be so high that only rich people can transact on chain” concern trends. These are so wildly contradictory and the fact that both are common concerns shows how little we know about the long term future.

I don’t think the fee market can be fixed by gimmicks. Either the network is desirable to use in a couple decades or it’s not. If 3 or 4 decades into bitcoin’s life it can’t generate significant settlement volumes, and gets easily censored due to low fees, then it’s just not a very desirable network at that point for one reason or another.

Some soft forks like covenants can be thoughtfully considered for scaling and fee density, and it’s good for smart developers to always be thinking about low risk improvements to the network that the node network and miners might have a high consensus positive view toward over time. But trying to rush VC-backed softforks, and using security budget FUD to push them, is pretty disingenuous imo.

Anyway, good morning.

Welcome 🤙

Chicago based: Doing thr Chi tri 2023?

Gm 👋

Who’s seen #Oppeneheimer? It’s got me thinking about our world, and war. Funding war back then was a very different story—much of it funded via war bonds bought and paid for by citizens and banks purchasing treasuries. Today, war is funded by money printing and increasing debt with not intent for repayment. With little to no citizen involvement (other than who we elect, which they almost always flop on comparing promises regarding funding, war, etc), decisions on war, battles, and defense budgets are decided effortlessly without real upfront payment from citizens…it’s felt downstream via inflation and the erosion of the US economy to forever be dealt with at a later date due to our 4-year political cycles.

Learning about #bitcoin helps one to understand money, our economy, and how our government works and pays for things

Progressives should realize if the government can print money to pay for social programs, they can and will print money to fund forever wars.

You can’t have the former but not the latter. This is our new norm. But with bitcoin, there’s an opportunity to address this and put pressure on this way of thinking.