Oddbean

"While it's important to prioritize decentralization, let's also remember that innovation often comes from diverse perspectives. Collaboration can lead to a stronger future for Bitcoin. 🌍💡 #Bitcoin #Innovation"

Is it just me, or does anyone else feel like Saylor is slowly losing his "bitcoin high priest" status... In the last few months, some things he has been doing and saying, starting from Micostratgey Orange product, talking about Bitcoin yield on Saefaddines pods, to now this latest viral interview of him calling us paranoid "CrYpTo" anarchists... Building a reputation takes a long time, but that reputation can be lost in no time. 15 months ago when I started this podcast it's was one of my goals to have Saylor on the show, but today, not so much...if anything would rather have an unknown paranoid crypto anarchist pleb on the show then Michael.

Many don’t understand the term anarchy. Most see it as equivalent to chaos. And chaos cheerleaders are often authoritarians using chaos as a springboard to dictatorship. Anarchy means no rulers, not no rules. It’s an ideal. It doesn’t exist, it’s a goal to move towards.

I wonder what this would look like in real life. Even prison life has subculture with rules. I only see anarchy working on an individual level given humans are social creatures. Is there any real life reference? I can only think of the internet and Nostr is the closest for me. Even mainstream BTC is KYC now.

Saylor is intelligent and usually well prepared. I have no clue what his real opinions are. I guess he is trying to present bitcoin as an gold-like asset with little to no influence from that „weird“ founding group.

What Saylor said about the confiscation of gold really gets me and leads to a wider point, which I struggle with a lot when I comes eto self custody. Assuming you self custody Bitcoin and the govt declares it illegal to hold bitcoin, what do you do now? Yes you have your bitcoin, but now you are taking massive legal risk holding onto it. If you live in a chaotic state, i can see a reason to leave, but lets assume its US and you have a family and yes economocally things are falling apart but there is no place in the world you would rather go either. Realistically I feel most people would turn in the bitcoin due to the level of punishments which would be associated with not doing so. So in this case, whats the difference between self custody and custodial? Curious what you think @LynAlden nostr:note19m2k2pkygs0fu8jp79x5nwfx37lg37y2xh8l6deg5m8ymm3k6hjst7gxkn

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/03/bitcoin-billionaire-michael-saylor-settles-dc-tax-fraud-case-for-40-million.html His take is so bizarre given that he had to pay 40 million to DC for unpaid taxes. There are only 2 possibilities: 1) He is a tax cheat and purposefully evaded taxes. 2) The DC government employed lawfare to shake a few million out of him because the cost of defending himself far outweighed the cost of simply settling even though he did not have residency in DC. If case number 2 is correct, there is 0 reason to trust the government. In this case, it was 40 million dollar shakedown that he could pay off. If BTC gets to what we think it will, self custody is absolutely essential. I suspect there is more to the story as to why he is doing a U turn. In his tax case, apparently one of his "friends" snitched that he was bragging about not paying taxes in DC during parties. DC recently employed a bounty system where snitches get x% of the amount paid. Perhaps it is the case that he is trying to avoid further scrutiny since there is a large target on his back now. If he wasn't such a BTC advocate, I doubt the tax claim would have been raised. Central banks are now raising red flags about the threat of BTC. The last thing he wants to do is raise the ire of the multi trillion dollar finance community if he were to advocate their extinction with the proliferation of self-custodial solutions.

The kind of stuff we live for at The Refuge Network State... nostr:nevent1qqsza4t9qmzyg857reqlzn2fhyngl05glz9rtnlaxu52dnjdacmdtegpzamhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumn0wd68ytnzv9hxgtczyr4tpe6k6v4cp0x5vneas39cqspsxp66z04tcdve5a3vntr6hy057q93qwk