Oddbean new post about login | logout FOR WHOM? I don't really have any Bitcoin. 😂 I didn't get rich. I was bullish, this morning, because it felt like I was part of something important, and now it's like, Well, the prices that are going down anyways will go down slightly faster and we can zap. 🤦♀️
no, it isn't about so much how it affects us but who can't any more use their control of the money supply to influence everything it means less war, less stupid boondoggles, less elitism, less decline of the middle class and a growing underclass, so many things that are not obvious until you realise that controlling a deceitful monetary system affords you ultimate power and eliminating anyone's access to that benefits the most people in total
But ownership is highly concentrated and we don't even know who the whales are. They could be nation states or reinsurers for weapons manufacturers or whatnot.
that's fud
We know that nation states are buying, at least. Even the Saudis want to get into it, now, to diversify out of the dollar.
that's the beauty of the game theory of it, eventually that's gonna be all they have
The most compelling argument for Bitcoin, to me personally, was making charging interest on loans very unnattractive and moving to equity investment, collatoralized loans, and contractual profit-sharing. If they just need a slightly higher rate (or not even, as some people are already paying over 20%) to keep tying people down with debt, that actually makes Bitcoin less interesting to me. Same as fiat, but with extra steps and somebody gets a lambo. Depressing.
Because people will tend to prefer debt. It is the easiest thing. Just go get a loan, bro. Don't need to pay it back for 5 years, bro. And then it's all yours, pure profit, bro.
yeah, and that is all fraud, bro, they are lying and the simple fact of bitcoin's price tracking as a contrary indicator to the profligacy of central banking and government debt financing is becoming more and more obvious, to the point where politicians who want to get more votes are using it as a lure, even Trump! look at Millei..., look at El Salvador and here in Madeira a similar thing bitcoin is proof of the fraud, and a way for those who recognise it to move ahead saylor and all those ETFs are not going to think of bitcoin as hard money, and that means that ultimately they will not come to prevail, because the game dynamics of a hard currency favors those who defend and promote this benefit of eliminating cheating
People are going to end up indentured to the people who already hold a lot of Bitcoin because making money off of money requires little effort or talent.
you mean the bitcoin autist bros? bitcoin is primarily fuck you money and loot from shitcoinery, people who adopted it early don't want it to become central bankers, you are confusing this with the shitcoiners, who literally act like central bankers to their little fiefs of adoring cult drone fanatics ethereum is cosy with WEF and all the rest, but bitcoiners are not, and there is enough outside of their control to make it implausible that a new feudalism will emerge out of it, because that's not how you use fuck you money, you use fuck you money to get the fuck away from nosy socialist politicking nutjobs
Doggie coin helps with this
But, whatever, dream deferred. GN
the main thing i agree with you on is that it's not just about the money there has to be a lot of wisdom spread in the population that is adjunct and ancillary to bitcoin bitcoin empowers those with the knowledge and desire to do this, and at worst it just levels the playing field, it definitely changes the balance of power, we know this for sure because of the constantly increasing frequency of the mention of bitcoin from politicians, they will at minimum try to use it now to bludgeon their authoritarian competitors and it's working
Charging interest will always be attractive to those making the loan, as far as I can see. The difference is that under a sound money standard, paying interest on unproductive debt becomes completely untenable. This is partially a result of misunderstanding what money is. Debt as money is a terrible perversion of the concept of money as a ledger of deferred consumption. A sound money economy makes a lot more sense once you start thinking of money as equity, rather than debt and fiat. If you had to take out a loan of Exxon shares and repay it in Exxon shares + more Exxon shares, the bar for profitable use of debt goes up. https://open.substack.com/pub/f0xr/p/money-as-equity?r=3i492j&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
This was what I don't get about the "we just keep using debt" argument. Let's say you live in Podunk, Missouri, and the town is split by a river with a ferry. The people of the town get fed up with the ferry and decide they want a bridge, but it'll cost 50 Bitcoin. No one person has that much and nobody outside the town wants the bridge, so a group of them decide to ground a Bridge Building Society and they pool their money (40 Bitcoin) and get some discounts on building materials from the local carpenter and stonemason (3 Bitcoin worth) and some volunteers to help with the construction (7 Bitcoin worth). In return, they grant themselves and their immediate families and supporters/volunteers the right to use the bridge free of tolls for 20 years and those who contributed money are to receive whatever toll-money is netted at the end of the year, for 20 years. To speed up receipt of tolls, they quickly build a wooden bridge and start collecting, while the steel/stone bridge is being built slowly over 5 years. My argument was that the tolls probably wouldn't return the full 40 Bitcoin, within any reasonable amount of time, and that the Bitcoin payers would be fine with that because they get to use the bridge. But I was told that they would just borrow the 40 Bitcoin and pay 10% interest for them and then pay the 40 Bitcoin back with interest after 5 years, which would be 60 Bitcoin. And those Bitcoin each contain more potential purchasing power than the originally invested ones because 6 years have passed. And I think most people would just rather keep riding the ferry. 🤷♀️ The tolls already didn't cover the 40 Bitcoin investment because it's a bridge out in the swamp and not over Chesapeake Bay, and now you've added 20 Bitcoin on top. I can't get an explanation for where the 20+ Bitcoin come from. Most large loans have no explanation for where the interest comes from, under fiat, and that seems even less plausibel under Bitcoin. People who want a bridge will just pay for a bridge.
And here's the thing I really don't get: The loan is only worth it to the person taking out the loan, if he can earn 60 BTC in today's money from the tolls. If it's been 6 years and deflation in consumer prices was 10% per year, then you have to actually pay back the equivalent of 80 back-then BTC. Who in the world would take that loan? That is madness. And, now, imagine deflation is over 10%... What am I missing here?
The project might not be a good allocation of resources. Under a sound money standard, that becomes obvious quickly. If it can't produce enough profit from tolls to repay the loan, it's a poor use of resources. The market is telling you that people value something else more than they value the bridge. Maybe adding a second ferry to reduce the wait time is a better allocation of resources? We've been brainwashed by fiat economics to see any infrastructure or any business that "makes money" as productive. Without the ability to finance those things through inflation by issuing debt, only projects that provide a lot of real value will be able to get financing. Anything else will have to be paid up front, by someone who values the project for other than purely economic reasons.
That was my point, but it got shot down. I was like, maybe renovating a church building won't net money, but the people in the church would still be willing to pay for it because they want to be in a building where the roof doesn't leak. Maybe the town wants to have a nice bridge, for the prestige and to drive more traffic to the town, so that they make money indirectly. A lot of the stuff people currently get loans to do wouldn't net enough money to make lending profitable, but people could keep doing them. You can see that on here. We all keep sinking hard money into the development, but nobody is willing to go into debt for it, even under fiat, because you can't make money off of Nostr. But we want to build it all, anyway, so we just swallow the cost and hope for the best. Imagine if the developers all had to repay the Bitcoin to OpenSats, with interest. 🤢
But, again, you're assuming that, if the people who drive over the road won't pay high tolls, then it's a poor use of resources. But the people building the bridge do not think it's a poor use of resources, that's why they want to pay themselves, to have it built. Using resources well doesn't always require someone else's willingness to pay me money to do something. Nobody has to be willing to lend me Money to eat a sandwich and I don't need to charge people to watch me eat it, for it to be worth eating. I'm hungry. I want a sandwich. I lose the money on the sandwich, but that is okay because I'd rather lose the money on a sandwich than stay hungry or eat plain bread. Do I need to prove that a house or a car is worthy of a loan? No, I can just save up money and spend it, building a house or driving a car. Once you look around, you will see that most things that currently receive loans will no longer receive them. Or so I thought. 🤷♀️
Almost everything done is for consumption or common use, and not for profit.
Even a lot of businesses only exist because the person who owns them or the people who financially back it want it to exist. There is no expectation that the business will turn a profit, often just that the running costs are covered. People just want to have a nice gathering place in the town, a small grocer in the village, a relay everyone can write to, or a school canteen with healthy food for the children.
Under the current system, the interest for loans comes from new loans. That's why M2 only goes up to the right, and any pause collapses the entire financial system. That's a consequence of the debt/fiat system based on the fraud of usury, where banks charge interest to loan out money they don't have. Imagining a Bitcoin standard is tough right now, because we're in a brief blip with Bitcoin rapidly appreciating in value as in gets monetized. Eventually that process slows down and stops. At that point Bitcoin deflates at the rate of economic growth. That's a lot slower than the current value appreciation. At that point loans become possible, as long as it's for a genuinely productive use that beats the overall rate of economic growth. Loans don't go away, but massive misallocation of capital does.
The only thing I could imagine that meets that limitation in Podunk is to take out a loan to build only a very cheap wooden bridge, and then try to squeeze the drivers for high tolls, to pay back the loan before it collapses.
Yeah I think a bridge in some little town that only gets local traffic is exactly the kind of unproductive investment a sound money standard will kill. Imagine how that project gets built today. Massive debt issuance by the state, or taxes on people who will never use the bridge. I see the fact that these projects under a Bitcoin standard either don't happen, or get fronted by a wealthy local benefactor, as a really good thing. I don't want my taxes and the inflation of my savings building bridges in Podunk Missouri. Let's use that to build SMR's or desalination plants or something really worthwhile.
Well, my original example assumed that there was no state and no taxes. Only private enterprise and only Bitcoin. I was trying to prove that people might still build bridges and roads in smaller towns, even if there was no "third party" to pay for them and even if there wasn't enough traffic over the bridge to pay for the bridge. Bridges to small towns are hugely beneficial to those towns, so the people in those towns will just have to pony up the dough and pay for it, themselves, or deal with having no bridge. But it was like, just take out a loan. Why would I take out a loan for something like that? I'd pay double for it, in the end, and be tied to the debt. But the counterargument is that, otherwise, people willing to be benefactors of a bridge would own the bridge, through the building society. So, rich people would pay for many/most of the public infrastructure and businesses, and everyone else would depend upon their largess. Whereas, if one person could just go get a loan from a bank, he would be the person owning the bridge in the end, after all, it was his idea. And then everyone in the town would bleed tolls out of the nose or take the ferry or build a second "town bridge". But the bridge probably still remains unprofitable, so the benefactor is now the rich financier lending for mysterious reasons, rather than the rich building society people who just wanted a bridge to drive over themselves, and there is a builder trying to pay back 100 BTC for a bridge (no more discounts and volunteers, after all). How is that better?
Something like, get a 10 year fiat loan for 125% of the bridge cost. The extra 25% goes into Bitcoin. Tolls pay the fiat loan payments. At some point before the ten years, the Bitcoin is worth enough to pay off the loan early. I haven’t done the math but that’s one strategy, in principle.
No fiat involved. This is all after hyperbitcoinization.
I don’t personally agree with the premise of hyperbitcoinization, because I don’t think it’s necessary. I expect a world where people save long term in Bitcoin, medium term in the best stablecoin denomination (dollars, at present), and spend and borrow short term in local fiat. Happily, local fiats will be far harder than at present, because Bitcoin brings such rigor and competition to fiat currencies. My .02.
That may be, but adding different currencies into the mix negates the premise that the loan will be in Bitcoin and that such loans will be (or not be) attractive. Which is the discussion. As soon as you have an inflationary or even stable currency to get credit it, everyone will use that and take the loan.
Monday blues
Someone just burst my bubble, in a big way, is all. 😏
If it's Vinney he seems to genuinely appreciate your intelligence want to start over, fwiw
Not that energy consumption itself is bad. Energy consumption for space travel, good. Energy consumption for porn, bad. Fiat has perverted our priorities as a species.
Porn used to just be harder to get and not as immersive.
I hope Bitcoin can bring us as a species closer to God. It's brought me closer. The closer we are to God, the harder porn will be to access. We have an abundant supply.
I was talking like that earlier and just got screamed at for being a religious nutjob. 😏
how or why did it bring you closer to God?
Maybe it's coincidence. Money is a representation of our time/energy/labor. I had a lot of exploration in to my own epistemology and came to the conclusion that the Christian God is the best source of our moral knowledge as a species. When we use a money that is true, we start to intrinsically/subconciously better under what the truth actually is. I started to see the major immorality of fiat. From there I explored my own spirituality more, which in turn brought me closer to God.
thanks for the info. I wasn't sure if it's the bitcoin influence or radio waves beaming in from outer space but I also feel that strange appreciation for Christianity that I didn't have before. it's odd to me because I would normally think an obsession with financial things like Bitcoin should be a distraction from religion/spirituality but the two seem to make room for each other somehow.
I only noticed Bitcoin because I'm Christian. I didn't really care about this stuff, before.
I haven't always been a Christian.
Never have been, never will he.. Considering there is string evidence that suggests computers existed 1000s of years ago.. Likely 10-100's of thousands of years ago.. The bible is laughable..
responding to : the Bible is laughable I honestly wish it were. I wish I had a better grasp of other ancient texts to compare them. I hold the Bible in too high regard perhaps from inculcation as a child. I only know Book of Mormon to a certain degree as another religious text. I wonder if Bitcoin is becoming a thing in the Mormon community
I always figured that Christians appreciate bitcoin for these types of reasons. https://image.nostr.build/914b617bde653b17d998b7db276482e4b6e1087682cf6501599fc839e248ebbc.jpg
this also highlights the "fuck you money" aspect of the early adopters of bitcoin https://i.imgflip.com/8u5xoj.jpg
was it the book "thank God for Bitcoin" or something else that made the connection for you?
No, it was Gigi and his article upon Bitcoin being time.
thank you. I am now reading "Bitcoin is Time " by Gigi
Yeah. It's sort of funny reading his older articles, now, because the philosophical concepts were groundbreaking and now they're just consensus and it's hard to imagine everyone not already thinking that way. It's become a historical data point, in a way.
I first heard about it on the Keiser Report, tho. From Max and @0815ff97
I have to tune Max Keiser tweets out because he's so good at making me feel like I need to move somewhere else. I need a Ven diagram of what places will survive bitcoinization, the pole shift, this years' elections... and hopefully have some good bike protected lanes.
The Alps.
just make sure you stock up on at least 3-5 years of wood at a time
or wait, are you saying that the Alps are going to be repositioned in the tropics? if so, that sounds like a fun ride
yeah, if the pole is in the carribean then they move to subtropical it's just not a good place to be now in the absence of a functioning grid or logistics network
i wonder where Central America is going in this scenario. I'm thinking Guatemala is the best place to move as it's close to El Salvador to benefit from their policies and economics but may be less expensive
yeah, yucatan i have heard is quite nice too and yeah, a transitional plan might make sense, to be more ready to make the harder move you want to do later when needed with a lower short term cost though i personally am happy with western balkans as my choice, it is well situated and already pretty comfortable
so if the Alps move to warmer climate, that would be great. kinda like this book about the elephant that transported the grandma's house from cold snowy climates to Florida, after eating all the pickles. https://m.primal.net/IqgJ.jpg
Not Maine, but yes Maine because bike lanes aren't such an issue when everyone but the richest are out of gas
For everyone who hasn't read this modern classic: https://dergigi.com/2021/01/14/bitcoin-is-time/ nostr:nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzphtxf40yq9jr82xdd8cqtts5szqyx5tcndvaukhsvfmduetr85ceqqsxtz0q0f7f82pa80v0zf4sllaqt3t96kf3v3j647k6mghelusfyectadsly
This is also what did it for me
I really love clocks. 🙈😂 There's something so nearly-metaphysical and ephemeral about time. Fascinates me. A time-based money just seems so... brilliant.
Nick Szabo wrote a really good one about time and church clocks and employment and its role in the economic and cultural rise of Europe
Always amazing when you go someplace that doesn't have church clocks and you can't get anyone to show up on time.
one of the first signs you have a wanton sinner on your hands is tardiness
Well, or they're autistic or have ADHD and have gotten mentally lost in some project, again.
Blew my mind that one.
https://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/rob/Courses/InformationInSpeech/CDROM/Literature/LOTwinterschool2006/szabo.best.vwh.net/synch.html
Also really like this one https://nakamotoinstitute.org/library/shelling-out/
Here it is, as an audio version https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/bitcoinaudible/episodes/Shelling-Out---The-Origins-of-Money-Nick-Szabo-e2ndom
@TheGuySwann is on fountain, too, but I need to go do something, so I don't have time to look.
Any article by @Gigi is gold. I truly appreciate the time he takes to create them. My favorite? Bitcoin meme wars.
