Oddbean

As Bitcoin becomes more and more a part of the system it was designed to overthrow—because people would rather see 'money go up' than stick to its original cypherpunk manifesto and bake in privacy at a protocol level (as Snowden has been cautioning the devs to do for years). Similar to election cycle gas price manipulation, I am confident that this ATH bull run was not an accident. I am reminded of the parade scene from Batman, where the Joker attempts to lure the citizens of Gotham by throwing money at them in a sinister plot, just before he gasses everyone. https://file.nostrmedia.com/p/4eb88310d6b4ed95c6d66a395b3d3cf559b85faec8f7691dafd405a92e055d6d/cfe016cd1d300dfe3adac4cc42ee7d01e2686d1dd98b6771f5db5137296bcf1f.mp4 Don't get me wrong, I am a Bitcoiner. It has proven to be an historically well performing commodity/asset, and has certainly been a benefit (mostly on an individual level) in countries with high inflation or unstable currencies. However, I have the awareness to see what is happening—and I am not alone in this sentiment—which is why I also believe in and USE #Monero—a true privacy-focused digital CURRENCY.

IMHO, Bitcoin going into the system as a ‘victory’ for the system is just the Trojan horse playing out. Folks that need greater privacy have ramps between privacy coins like monero, and bitcoin, and there are newer developments (such as FROST) that provide greater privacy as well. The only way that fiat can be destroyed is by it infecting the system and making it eat itself from inside out.

@Snowden is a hero but he just handwaves about “baking privacy at the protocol level.” You can’t have privacy and decentralization and a modicum of scalability all at once. Privacy will come once people earn their coins instead of buying them from cucked exchanges.

ELI5 how incentivizing institutional adoption results in "infecting the system and making it eat itself from the inside out" (whatever that means) and NOT regulatory capture of the network and de facto criminalization of sovereign usage.

A new (to me) concern is that institutional/state control of a large percentage of utxo’s provides them an opportunity to use a subset of miners and effectively isolate those coins to their approved and kyc’d network. They just don’t broadcast txns outside their domain. A network fork I guess.

Andreas was talking about this sort of thing years ago it seems unlikely to be valuable to create a walled garden within the network but regulatory capture is a real thing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSv0J4bfBCc

Interesting, I’ll watch this tonight. But right now, I think it’s uncomfortably likely. They don’t need to overpower the existing network. Once they have say 10 million to 14 million btc under control, they just start using a subset of nodes running their own validation filters. And only sending txns within their network. If they never spend to an unauthorized address then those coins are effectively lost to the existing/organic network. They use their own chain fork going forward. I guess the original network could keep going, but it would be stunted.

@Kanzan bullseye. Yeah, that’s what I’m concerned about. I was also against etf’s for some of these reasons plus some or all of them are going to try the paper bitcoin game. Didn’t realize he was saying this 6 years ago though.

How would we get privacy at the base layer? Is it worth risking inflation that we can't see, or can it be done without that risk? And what about the utxo set bloat - I mean, I get that lightning reduces utxo bloat, but that's not a permanent fix, it will still get unmanageably bloated. Would love to hear some real ideas, and not just more influencer hand waving.

How do I learn more about it? I can google it if there's nothing specific I should look up. Unfortunately I'm not techy enough to know these terms. All I really know is the economics, and whatever the influencers tell us about, which is usually pretty basic even for me.

Well said. The more people give up privacy in exchange for promises of wealth, the less likely they are to get either. As Bitcoin continues to get adopted by banks and state interests, including it in their corrupted systems, your potential for accumulating wealth will go down or be slowed significantly, since you are playing against traders in a game you don't understand and are significantly disadvantaged in by design. nostr:note1l6h52mup5hqrmnpdtqlgm0htpye665nachepjtpraqckm3l6g86s4xqchv

Bitcoin doesn’t give a fuck about what we all think, it is just doing its thing. It was always going to be coopted, it’s sound money in a corrupt fiat world. It is a powerful tool for everyone. It is the paradigm shift, bigger than any of us.

It's okay to worry, but it's part of the fiat disease. #Bitcoin is a life of it's own at this point. And, those that want to take advantage of it will get their hearts ripped out at some point. Sounds harsh, but Bitcoin will self correct ANY corruption over time. Gold was doing this but Gov/fiat learned to cheat. Any Layer 2 protocol that does NOT comply with Bitcoin will be wiped out as fast as the Tulip Mania. We all would do well to sit back, buy Bitcoin DAILY (not the ETF). Move to COLD STORAGE every few grand. HODL 10+ years but learn skills to add REAL value to others (gain energy/Bitcoin) and spend a little Bitcoin to live. Super easy process, but very hard to stick with us humans.