Just bought some more gold (in ETF form).
I know I’m preaching to the choir but I gotta admit it feels ridiculous to buy a counterparty risk infested paper on a questionably scarce metal, when I could just be buying more Bitcoin.
Check out this great article for some longer meditations on Moloch:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
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Moloch = the increasingly preeminent mindset of zero-sum or an obsession with a specific prize, that you’re willing to sacrifice your values for.
Liv Boeree is doing a great job describing this ancient idea and applying it to our modern time and I think it’s worth bringing this to #nostr because it is relevant to so many of our core ideas here.
The example she gives is that of the beauty games on social media: Especially young women increasingly prostituting themselves
or manipulating their appearance to look that little bit better and get a few more likes. Many seem to win in the short term but almost everyone loses in the long run.
I would argue that the foundation of the increasingly molochy society we live in, is Fiat money.
Anyone know how I can mine some Dogecoin? I think it’s the next big thing.
European Central Bank in Frankfurt. Who did this?
One of the magical properties of #bitcoin seems to be that those who deserve least to profit from it, seem to understand it last.
Good point. Probably need to think more about the implications of that small scale violence but I imagine there are good solutions. I know some people have put a lot of thought into this.
Summary of the Sovereign Individual hypothesis on the demise of nation states
- Nation states are a relatively new invention in human history terms.
- They were created to project power in more and more influentual ways and compete with other power projecting nations.
- However, in order to persist they need two things: 1) an ideology to unite their citizens under (patriotism) and 2) an ability to extract resources from their citizens in order to project power.
- 1) is crumbling as more and more people rightfully embrace a global perspective.
- 2) can only be maintained through Fiat currency. If governments tried to steal people’s wealth through taxes to the same extent they are currently doing through inflation, there would be a revolution tomorrow.
- Once governments lose their access to inflation to steal from their citizens, their power will quickly deteriorate because they will no longer be able to gather enough resources to project power. As an example, the Vietnam war would not have been possible in its extent without the decoupling from the gold standard.
- “Cybercurrencies” (#Bitcoin) takes the power of inflation out of governments’s hands.
- As nations crumble, there is also a smaller and smaller incentive for other nations to invade them because they know that it’s nearly impossible to subjugate people and take their resources.
- The utopian outcome is a world that is utterly tribal AND utterly global at the same time.
- Imagine living in the city state of London with all its customs and traditions, yet not being tied to an overreaching and expensive national government and being able to take your money and be able to pay with it anywhere else in the world.
Who on earth buys XRP unironically?
Is nostr.build down?
This should just read “Reflexivity of Bitcoin demand”. Needless to say Bitcoin supply is not reflexive. :)
Reflexivity of Bitcoin supply and demand
This is an important aspect of the Balaji bet. Like most here I don’t think we’ll hit 1M in 90 days but imagine for a second we’ll hit 50k by the end of next week. This is still unlikely but not unheard of.
A price move like that could really catalyze a wild rally especially with the Balaji bet and the state of the Fiat system in the back of new market entrant’s minds.
In other words, if price continues to gain momentum, there could be a self-fulfilling, reflexive nature to the bet and I think that’s what he’s banking on, besides just enjoying the attention.
Can you drop their pub keys here please? Btw: I’d be very surprised if Reuters is here :)
While of course I agree with historical cycles, I don’t think they’re set in stone. While we know supply is pre-programmed, demand certainly isn’t and shocks to the Fiat system could lead to additional demand independently from the halving cycles.
My point here is that Fiat players may be incentivized to cover up this additional demand (through some of the practices mentioned above) in order to avoid the reflexivity that arises from strong BTC price signals.
Realize this would probably take a lot of coordination but I don’t think it would be beyond government actors for example once they categorize BTC as a national security risk.
I agree. I’m mainly wondering what attack vector adversaries might have if they do want to suppress the price longer term.
The central bank, treasury and big banks know that if Bitcoin sends too strong a price signal, this could spell further trouble for them.
So I’m trying to figure out if it’s realistic they could try to keep the price levels somewhat suppressed.
Is it possible the price of Bitcoin is being manipulated? There are two ways I can think of that this might happen:
1) Exchanges holding shadow Bitcoin/Bitcoin as fractional reserves thus covering up actual demand (similar to what happened at FTX).
2) Some central actor shorting Bitcoin at a larger scale thus artificially increasing supply in the short term.
I actually don’t think either of these are very likely to be happening at a systematic scale but curious what others think.