Bitcoin discussion and news

[teqniq]

That's the guy mentioned on the previous page - he is quite good on this I think. That headline is a bit of a misrepresentation of his views though I'd say, as far as it was meant to be 'radical' it's a very right-libertarian sort of radicalism.

He talks about that here:

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

He talks abou that here:

View attachment 352493

Yeah that's about right. The headline, especially on somewhere like Novara, implies a bit more of a leftish intent I think which has never really been there.

 

[Storm Fox]

I think it's hard to work out the original intention of crypto. To make their founders a fast buck is the primary intention in many cases. Regarding the original, bitcoin, it often feels like it was a prank that got out of hand.

In the first case a bit like Scientology.

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

I think it's hard to work out the original intention of crypto. To make their founders a fast buck is the primary intention in many cases. Regarding the original, bitcoin, it often feels like it was a prank that got out of hand.

Yeah I think it's obvious profiteering in all the recent cases, or outright piss-taking for the like of Dogecoin.

The motivation for the original Bitcoin is a bit more opaque definitely. I'm sure they couldn't have predicted the ridiculous surge in value (I don't think it was actually set up as the pyramid scheme it's become), or the quasi-religious weirdness. I'd guess a large element of 'because I can and it seems cool' informed by a general right-libertarian sensibility tbh.

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

I couldnt have said it better myself!!
These are interesting times. A spiritual battle is ongoing between fiat and crypto and its playing out in the soul of bitcoin (the alpha and the omega).

On the one hand you have fiat people. They care about number go up, because the only value that crypto has for them is how much fiat money they can aquire by having bitcoin. They can aquire fiat money from btc in one of two ways - sell it for fiat, or borrow fiat against the fiat equivalent value of the crypto.

On the other you have crypto people. They care about what crypto can do, because they generate value from utility, and as the network effect takes hold, that utility increases. They often require fiat money to pay for things that havent been build yet in Web3 to build the things in Web3 that can take us out of the fiat system altogether.

Value right now is measured in dollars, people who want to capture value think in dollars, people who want to build value dont and they want to keep the value within the crypto system.

I can’t work out if you actually believe this guff or are now doing some top class trolling.

 

[NoXion]

I can’t work out if you actually believe this guff or are now doing some top class trolling.

It's both. Cultists are well-versed in doublethink.

 

[Supine]

I can’t work out if you actually believe this guff or are now doing some top class trolling.

Spiritual battle…
The alpha and omega…

Obvious trolling!!!

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

Spiritual battle…
The alpha and omega…

Obvious trolling!!!

Or someone deep down the rabbit hole

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

If it's trolling it's massively overshooting the mark. The aim is to make people shout at you and go 'I can't BELIEVE you think that!!!!' not look at you and go 'yeah, I actually can't believe you think that.'

Tbh the startling thing about it isn't how far out it is, it's how vacuous it is. It's like if cheesypoof had a cult.

 

[8ball]

That's the guy mentioned on the previous page - he is quite good on this I think. That headline is a bit of a misrepresentation of his views though I'd say, as far as it was meant to be 'radical' it's a very right-libertarian sort of radicalism.

Wasn’t aware “radical” had to mean “left-wing”.

 

[8ball]

If it's trolling it's massively overshooting the mark. The aim is to make people shout at you and go 'I can't BELIEVE you think that!!!!' not look at you and go 'yeah, I actually can't believe you think that.'

Tbh the startling thing about it isn't how far out it is, it's how vacuous it is. It's like if cheesypoof had a cult.

I disagree, I think it’s really good trolling. Different posters have v different interpretations of what’s happening.

 

[q_w_e_r_t_y]

There is no “value” outside of what humans do. “Value” is a human construct. Animals don’t place value on things. Plants don’t place value on things. They just experience the world directly. Humans experience it mediated through symbols, including the powerful symbol of money.

See this is just pure human supremacy.
Of course animals place value on things. Stick a carrot and a rock under the nose of a rabbit, and you will soon see which it values.
Watch a plant turn to the sun and away from the shade, and you can see that it is placing value on the sunlight.
Animals and plants dont just sit there chucked about by the whims of circumstances, experiencing the world directly, they have agency and modify the world by amplifying things of value to them. They dont have money, but there are incidences of currency, gift economies, collective ownership and exchange in many species.

As such, monetary value is measured in human activity. The currencies people use are a placeholder for that activity. The actual currencies we use reflect how our societies are organised. This is also what defines the relative values of each subunit of the overall money system — what activity is taking place using each part of that organisation.

Humans measure value with money, yes, but that doesnt mean its the only, or even the best way to measure value. Energy is the key, money has always simply stood in because we cant measure crystalised energy transfers (eg putting a lot of work into carving a nice stool, embedding labour energy into the stool) directly, so we use money as a proxy.

These are the physical real-world limits on the system and it’s what Bitcoin is trying to fit into. It can’t “build value” outside of what people want to do because there is no value outside of what people want to do.

There is an absolute tonne of it, but your human supremacy wont allow you to see it.

Look at Terra0, a self-owning forest - plants which talk directly to robots. This is our future. Humanity needs to learn humility. Things will come along and be smarter than us, because they see the wisdom in the things that humanity has written off as dumb.

I can’t work out if you actually believe this guff or are now doing some top class trolling.

<sigh> I really dont know how to convince you that I am genuine.

Yeah sometimes I exaggerate a little for comic effect, and I'm aware that most who read what I write are at least skeptical, if not downright hostile to bitcoin.

I could do the whole measured argument thing: point out the fallacies around the energy consumption issues, reassure people around the cryptography, pointing them to papers that they will make no effort to understand, but dismiss anyway, offer them some sats so that they can try bitcoin out for themselves, highlight the risks of CDBCs which is an orwellian nightmare that is approaching us fast....and I do all these.

But what I really want is for people to believe in bitcoin for its true nature and the full spectrum of possibilities that upgrading money can have.

 

[NoXion]

See this is just pure human supremacy.
Of course animals place value on things. Stick a carrot and a rock under the nose of a rabbit, and you will soon see which it values.
Watch a plant turn to the sun and away from the shade, and you can see that it is placing value on the sunlight.
Animals and plants dont just sit there chucked about by the whims of circumstances, experiencing the world directly, they have agency and modify the world by amplifying things of value to them. They dont have money, but there are incidences of currency, gift economies, collective ownership and exchange in many species.

None of those except humans are economic actors. Rabbits like eating carrots (except not really), but they not only don't give a shit how much it costs to grow or buy one, they are fundamentally incapable of grasping the concept and thus cannot participate in what we humans call an economy.

 

[Storm Fox]

Look at Terra0, a self-owning forest - plants which talk directly to robots. This is our future. Humanity needs to learn humility. Things will come along and be smarter than us, because they see the wisdom in the things that humanity has written off as dumb.

<sigh> I really dont know how to convince you that I am genuine.

terra0 is total wank. Firstly it's an art project. Their white paper and talk about. The introduction is:

terra0 is a self-owned forest; an ongoing art project that strives to set up a prototype of a self-utilizating piece of land. terra0 creates a scenario whereby a forest is able to sell licences to log trees through automated processes, smart contracts and Blockchain technology. In doing so, this forest accumulates capital. A shift from valorization through third parties to a selfutilization makes it possible for the forest to procure its real exchange value, and eventually buy (thus own) itself. The augmented forest, as owner of itself, is in the position to buy more ground and therefore to expand. terra0 is a project originally developed in the Digitale Klasse at the University of Arts, Berlin by Paul Seidler an Paul Kolling. This concept paper is written by Paul Seidler, Paul Kolling and Max Hampshire.

So it's about money and not the value of the ecosystem. It's about logging and not creating a sustainable ecosystem.

The white paper contains gems like this which even states that its reference is about gardens and not woodland management :

B. Nature & Culture The diametric opposition between nature and culture is inherent in the concept defining culture. Everything that humans themselves affect and produce is defined as an aspect of culture (from the Latin 'cultura': treatment, or care), whilst nature is defined as everything else, i.e. that which is by itself, simply 'as it is'. However, the natural can only be described via cultural technologies, like art and science. The concept of 'nature' thus takes, as a demarcation, a function in the cultural apparatus and cannot be separated therefore from it. Nature is influenced directly and indirectly by society, and is defeated therefore by its logic of utilisation. Vilém Flusser describes this contradiction in his book 'Dinge und Undinge' (1993), via analysis of the function of a garden.

The easy way to do this would be to gift the land and get someone to manage it as a rewilding project like Knepp and make money from the animals. It doesn't need a blockchain.

 

[kabbes]

A rabbit has no concept of the “value” of its food. It merely eats food that is available. It does not conceptualise food symbolically, to be able to abstract the meaning of food from its physical presence. It cannot conceive of “future food”. It cannot reflect on “past food”.

Even the notion of “human supremacy” contains within it a symbolic abstraction of existence that is uniquely human — a categorisation, an abstraction, a value. Rabbits can’t conceive of “rabbit supremacy”. The idea of value is intrinsically human.

And rabbits certainly don’t give a shit about bitcoins, I can tell you that for nothing.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

A rabbit has no concept of the “value” of its food. It merely eats food that is available. It does not conceptualise food symbolically, to be able to abstract the meaning of food from its physical presence. It cannot conceive of “future food”. It cannot reflect on “past food”.

Even the notion of “human supremacy” contains within it a symbolic abstraction of existence that is uniquely human — a categorisation, an abstraction, a value. Rabbits can’t conceive of “rabbit supremacy”. The idea of value is intrinsically human.

And rabbits certainly don’t give a shit about bitcoins, I can tell you that for nothing.

I'm going to be bold here and say that all organisms have a way of evaluating value. You can't survive as an organism without it.

 

[8ball]

I'm going to be bold here and say that all organisms have a way of evaluating value. You can't survive as an organism without it.

I think “evaluating” may be a little anthropomorphic. Not even sure it really works for humans, even. If it did, you could commit suicide by simply holding your breath.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I think “evaluating” may be a little anthropomorphic. Not even sure it really works for humans, even. If it did, you could commit suicide by simply holding your breath.

Cost benefit analysis. You might not know you're doing it, but you're doing it. Otherwise you're dead.

 

[Yossarian]

Bad news, bunnies.

 

[kabbes]

I'm going to be bold here and say that all organisms have a way of evaluating value. You can't survive as an organism without it.

I would say that if you can’t conceptualise what value is then it isn’t value in the sense we’re talking about here. There is no such thing as “building value” from the perspective of a rabbit. It’s too bound up with being able to live in the future and past as well as the present, and that requires symbolic psychological representation of objects.

 

[Supine]

Tbf a rabbit probably values a carrot equally to a bit-coiner who values Terra0. If anything the rabbit has more valid reasons to value the carrot.

 

[tim]

A rabbit has no concept of the “value” of its food. It merely eats food that is available. It does not conceptualise food symbolically, to be able to abstract the meaning of food from its physical presence. It cannot conceive of “future food”. It cannot reflect on “past food”.

Even the notion of “human supremacy” contains within it a symbolic abstraction of existence that is uniquely human — a categorisation, an abstraction, a value. Rabbits can’t conceive of “rabbit supremacy”. The idea of value is intrinsically human.

And rabbits certainly don’t give a shit about bitcoins, I can tell you that for nothing.

Rabbits are thick unlike squirrels who bank nuts for future consumption.

 

[magneze]

How Sam Bankman-Fried Conned the Crypto World - Behind the Bastards

There’s a reason the History Channel has produced hundreds of documentaries about Hitler but only a few about Dwight D. Eisenhower. Bad guys (and gals) are eternally fascinating. Behind the Bastards dives in past the Cliffs Notes of the worst humans in history and exposes the bizarre realities...

pca.st

Behind the Bastards this week covers FTX.

 

[NoXion]

Cost benefit analysis. You might not know you're doing it, but you're doing it. Otherwise you're dead.

There's no analysis going on when I can no longer hold my breath. Even if I were to deliberately hold it for as long as possible using all of my willpower, eventually the conscious part of me would lose control and my autonomic nervous system would take over and cause me to breathe once more. That's a physiological reaction I have no direct control over. Where's the analysis in that? Then there are the things I witness or have happen to me which cause a reaction I don't even have to think about, which come unbidden even though I don't want them to. Like when someone makes me really angry. I can try to tamp down that anger and attempt to remain calm and reasonable, but the feelings will persist even if my more rational side doesn't want me to feel like that.

Instincts and feelings and reactions evolved way, way before any organism evolved anything approaching ratiocination, and the process of evolution itself is not analytical either. It's an unguided, non-teleological process that takes literally billions of years to produce the kind of biological complexity necessary to support the existence of a singular species of ape that eventually invented the idea of economics.

 

[Santino]

When we talk about the value of money, it's not just something that people find important or worth having. It's value is that its worth is recognised universally in our society. A painting is 'valuable' not because of its artistic merit, but because it can command a high price, it can in theory be exchanged for other goods. Value in this sense - not the personal worth of something to us - is possible only within a human (or human-like) society of sufficient complexity.

 

[Combustible]

I think Bitcoin was meant to basically be digital gold, at least in the way libertarians see gold. Gold also has a quasi religious status for many of them, especially a few years ago around peak Ron Paul, and the obsession with the gold standard also largely centered around the idea of money being devalued by fractional reserve banking, with gold representing an intrinsic store of value.

 

[not-bono-ever]

Crypto could have saved the world if it hadn’t have been for those meddling speculators

 

[NoXion]

I think Bitcoin was meant to basically be digital gold, at least in the way libertarians see gold. Gold also has a quasi religious status for many of them, especially a few years ago around peak Ron Paul, and the obsession with the gold standard also largely centered around the idea of money being devalued by fractional reserve banking, with gold representing an intrinsic store of value.

It's easily given away by the fact that the process of generating new bitcoins is literally called "mining", and they are explicitly designed to be limited in number. Just like how there is a limited amount of gold accessible in the Earth's crust.

I've never seen any of these libertarian goldbugs even attempt to properly answer the question of why modern economies abandoned currencies based on precious metals. Apparently "because evil" is a good enough explanation for them.

 

[Boris Sprinkler]

The genius of bitcoin lies within it's giant excel spreadsheet. Or blockchain as nerds like to call it. Because it logs every transaction made. You can follow the money up. See how oligarchs are made. It allows anyone paying attention to see, ah right. That's how wealth gets distributed. ie. It doesnt. It all get hoarded by a few big dogs.

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

Bad news, bunnies.

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Wow. That really took the wrong turn at albuquerque.