Bitcoin discussion and news

[NoXion]

Whether it is a tale of hubris and commuppence or a demonstration of humility makes no real difference.
The point is that the powers mortal humans have has limits.

So who created crypto then? What about the smart contracts you're so enamoured with? Was it humans? I bet it was humans.

It is you know.
The points on the elliptic curve have been there since forever. Satoshi just harnessed them.

This is a claim without evidence and can thus be dismissed without evidence.

How? How are you going to regulate bitcoin, how are you even going to know if Alice sends Bob a bitcoin or not?

Well that's the great thing about living in a society, rather than living as the kind of atomised and alienated individual that the pushers of crypto tech assume/want us to be. There are people who specialise in finding out such things and applying that knowledge to the relevant fields. Maybe they can leverage the transparency of bitcoin transactions to help ensure things remain above board. Whatever the solutions may be, there are people with more knowledge and better training than either of us who can apply them.

No, I'm suggesting that they cant because I have spent over a decade deeply immersed in bitcoin and I dont have a clue how you could enforce anything that wasnt on-chain. I mean you can have RegFi, where entities agree to enforce extraneous rules (implimentation of US sanctions is an example of that), and people can use that if they prefer, but you cant stop people using non-RegFi

You don't have a clue because you don't want to have a clue. You've uttered more than enough batshit proclamations to reliably inform the rest of us that you're up to your neck in the more utopian/culty end of the crypto space. And you're too far gone to even see it.

People get banged up for all kinds of things that challenge the power of rich people. Thats nothing new.

Being a money launderer, fraudster, or an unregulated speculator isn't "challenging the power of rich people". Plenty of rich scumbags involved in crypto, does the name Elon Musk ring a bell?

Nope, it doesnt need humans.

Yes it does. Smart contracts wouldn't even exist in the first place without humans creating them. They're created by humans for purposes that serve humans. Otherwise they would be a complete waste of computing resources, not even toys, since that implies that they would be amusing at least one human. Those trading bots you mentioned earlier? They're making money for someone, not themselves.

In the case of eth (btc has no smart contracts on mainnet), once a node is spun, it will run until it breaks, esp if you put continency software in place. Only two are required, so it only requires human intervention once every node except two has gone down....so good few decades at least.

You are delusional. Smart contracts cannot account for every change that might occur beyond its code, since that would require literal omniscience on the part of the smart contract's programmer(s). So unless its codebase is actively maintained by human beings, there's going to be a point where the mismatch between programming and reality becomes big enough to functionally break the smart contract. And what about the hardware all this shit is running on? Somebody's gotta be paying for that. Humans are still needed to construct, maintain and expand the physical networks. If nobody is benefiting from these smart contracts operating, then why would they be wasting computing resources on them? This idea that software constructs can just perpetually operate as if they exist in some kind of parallel universe just goes to show how estranged from physical reality crypto bros have become.

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

How is someone even going to know if I give someone a tenner? Ergo fiat currency is impossible to regulate.

 

[StakerOne]

So who created crypto then? What about the smart contracts you're so enamoured with? Was it humans? I bet it was humans.

A smart contract stands or falls on it's actual code. Who wrote the smart contract is moot unless the code itself makes that a cause for concern.

 

[kabbes]

It’s like the last 300 years of what we learned about social structures, laws and sociopsychology all never happened. We have a new toy so none of that could possibly apply any more

 

[BigTom]

It’s like the last 300 years of what we learned about social structures, laws and sociopsychology all never happened. We have a new toy so none of that could possibly apply any more

Away with your social sciences! This is just code, it's pure hard science, we just observe it and make use of it, it exists beyond us writing to the blockchain eternally, pure and chrome.

It still boggles my mind that someone on reddit tried to argue with me that bitcoin was a currency but it had nothing to do with economic theory because satoshi was a coder not an economist.

 

[Storm Fox]

I'm involved in them because I want to push the boundaries of what this tech can do because we have to move away from fiat as quickly as we possibly can and accelerate into whatever the fuck future lies beyond the petrodollar, because the petrodollar is killing us all.

Petroleum producers use Dollars as that is the most interchangeable indication of value. If Crypto becomes mainstream, then Petroleum companies, arms dealers etc, will start using crypto. And especially for arms dealers, with it being unregulated and with services like tornado.cash making selling and anti-personnel mines and cluster munitions much more untraceable. To avoid regulation.

CDBCs make the rich richer, (its what they are designed for), CDBCs facilitate an inhuman(e) system of control.

also

People who are deeply obsessed with crypto are very likely to already have a level of wealth beyond their needs/lifestyle already. If they are active in web3, its not unusual to be gifted tokens to the value of tens or even hundreds of dollars a year.

Bit in Italics: https://www.researchgate.net/figure...7#:~:text=In a December 2021 study,al, 2021) .


Bit in bold: but without regulation, how is this prevented in the Crypto space. This has already been hinted with Axie Infinitly and other Play to Earn games?

 

[q_w_e_r_t_y]

So who created crypto then? What about the smart contracts you're so enamoured with? Was it humans? I bet it was humans.

It was initiated by Satoshi, who is broadly assumed to be human, yes, based on about a decade of research into cryptographic money.
Smart contracts are usually written by humans, but ChatGPT4 can produce simple working smart contracts.

This is a claim without evidence and can thus be dismissed without evidence.

Euclidean mathematics has been a broadly accepted framework for millenia. The points on the elliptic curve werent invented by humans, they just exist.

Well that's the great thing about living in a society, rather than living as the kind of atomised and alienated individual that the pushers of crypto tech assume/want us to be. There are people who specialise in finding out such things and applying that knowledge to the relevant fields. Maybe they can leverage the transparency of bitcoin transactions to help ensure things remain above board. Whatever the solutions may be, there are people with more knowledge and better training than either of us who can apply them.

You can know very easily that 1DFeQM4sYqCBimyCp85Fcmp9tWnZP8zQCz sent 1FWQiwK27EnGXb6BiBMRLJvunJQZZPMcGd
2.65482314 BTC.
But thats not the question, the question is how you know Alice sent Bob bitcoin...and you cant. You just cant...no matter how much knowledge or training you have, you cannot know this unless Alice and Bob reveal that they are the owners of the relevant addresses. There are solutions that can confirm that Alice and Bob own an address that they claim to (oracles, chainanalysis, KYC etc), but unless they reveal it, it cannot be known.

You don't have a clue because you don't want to have a clue. You've uttered more than enough batshit proclamations to reliably inform the rest of us that you're up to your neck in the more utopian/culty end of the crypto space. And you're too far gone to even see it.

You wanna see my bookmarkets! I tone it down for on here.

Being a money launderer, fraudster, or an unregulated speculator isn't "challenging the power of rich people". Plenty of rich scumbags involved in crypto, does the name Elon Musk ring a bell?

Ah, I forgot there's no money laundering, fraud or speculation in fiat, my bad.

Yes it does. Smart contracts wouldn't even exist in the first place without humans creating them. They're created by humans for purposes that serve humans. Otherwise they would be a complete waste of computing resources, not even toys, since that implies that they would be amusing at least one human. Those trading bots you mentioned earlier? They're making money for someone, not themselves.

At the moment thats almost universally the case, but not exclusively. It will not continue to be the case.

You are delusional. Smart contracts cannot account for every change that might occur beyond its code, since that would require literal omniscience on the part of the smart contract's programmer(s). So unless its codebase is actively maintained by human beings, there's going to be a point where the mismatch between programming and reality becomes big enough to functionally break the smart contract.

This is where oracles come in - they link the material world with the on-chain world. Once IoT becomes more widespread, a whole load of things will go onchain very reliably.

And what about the hardware all this shit is running on? Somebody's gotta be paying for that. Humans are still needed to construct, maintain and expand the physical networks. If nobody is benefiting from these smart contracts operating, then why would they be wasting computing resources on them? This idea that software constructs can just perpetually operate as if they exist in some kind of parallel universe just goes to show how estranged from physical reality crypto bros have become.

They need constructing, maintaining and expanding yes, but again, doesnt have to be humans.

How is someone even going to know if I give someone a tenner? Ergo fiat currency is impossible to regulate.

Serial numbers? Physical cash is largely fungible, but not perfectly so.

Petroleum producers use Dollars as that is the most interchangeable indication of value. If Crypto becomes mainstream, then Petroleum companies, arms dealers etc, will start using crypto. And especially for arms dealers, with it being unregulated and with services like tornado.cash making selling and anti-personnel mines and cluster munitions much more untraceable. To avoid regulation.

I think you'd be more productive trying to stop the trading in cluster munitions (say) by stopping the movement of the cluster munitions.

Bit in Italics: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Wealth-distribution-in-bitcoin_tbl1_357196737#:~:text=In a December 2021 study,al, 2021) .
View attachment 368978

These are addresses, not people. One person can own many addresses, and one address can have claims from many people. Most of the very large addresses you see here are cold wallets of exchanges rather than people's individual wallets (this is a problem tho, I grant you, which I why I always tell people to move bitcoin off an exchange and into a wallet that they control the private key for.
Many of the medium sized ones will be multisigs, where it is owned by a collective of people who all have to sign to transact.

Bit in bold: but without regulation, how is this prevented in the Crypto space. This has already been hinted with Axie Infinitly and other Play to Earn games?

 

[kabbes]

Once again, we have the same divorcing of specific transactions from the social context they exist in. Alice and Bob live in a society that means they leave a vast data exhaust that tells you everything about their life. Alice is buying things, going places, doing things — if she is using crypto then the whole damn lot is visible on her wallet. Alice is traceable by the state in about 40 seconds. The only people that have the capacity to be truly secretive are organised criminals.

It kind of sums up the whole crypto-dream, really. An analysis of a piece of code that entirely ignores the social context that the code is embedded in.

 

[Rob Ray]

A lot of this stuff, in its attempted restructuring of humanity into bespoke corporate units bent to the shape of the smart contract, reminds me of the "howling wilderness" of mindless competition amidst advanced corporate entities described by Charles Stross in 2005, four years before the founding of Bitcoin:

"Take a human being and bolt on extensions that let them take full advantage of Economics 2.0, and you essentially break their narrative chain of consciousness, replacing it with a journal file of bid/request transactions between various agents; it’s incredibly efficient and flexible, but it isn’t a conscious human being in any recognizable sense of the word.”
- Accelerando

Crypto evangelism has that feel to me, a sort of futurism without wit, an enthusiasm that fails to appreciate its own dystopian core. The sort of person who reads Stross and just thinks "ooh that's so cool and shiny" while lacking the sense to realise that what ultimately becomes obsolete in his tale is us. Or in the most pathetic cases, might actively welcome that prospect.

 

[q_w_e_r_t_y]

Once again, we have the same divorcing of specific transactions from the social context they exist in. Alice and Bob live in a society that means they leave a vast data exhaust that tells you everything about their life. Alice is buying things, going places, doing things — if she is using crypto then the whole damn lot is visible on her wallet. Alice is traceable by the state in about 40 seconds. The only people that have the capacity to be truly secretive are organised criminals.

Oh god, this is so frustrating! You do not have to be a criminal mastermind to enable basic privacy.
Take a look at samourai wallet. Takes less than 10 mins to download and set up. There are many other solutions out there. This is not rocket science I assure you.

It kind of sums up the whole crypto-dream, really. An analysis of a piece of code that entirely ignores the social context that the code is embedded in.

I think tbh, you are summing up the fiat mindset of capitalist realism.
The state is not omnipotent, it exists in a particular social and historical context, a context that is fraying rapidly.

A lot of this stuff, in its attempted restructuring of humanity into bespoke corporate units bent to the shape of the smart contract, reminds me of the "howling wilderness" of mindless competition amidst advanced corporate entities described by Charles Stross in 2005, four years before the founding of Bitcoin:

No one has to engage with a smart contract and I have no clue what you mean by "corporate units", DAOs are not corporations.

Crypto evangelism has that feel to me, a sort of futurism without wit, an enthusiasm that fails to appreciate its own dystopian core. The sort of person who reads Stross and just thinks "ooh that's so cool and shiny" while lacking the sense to realise that what ultimately becomes obsolete in his tale is us. Or in the most pathetic cases, might actively welcome that prospect.

Bitcoin is literally the only thing that gives me any hope that humanity will survive the next 50 years. Sometimes I genuinely wonder how fiat people manage to cope when they peer into the future. You want dystopia, take a look at emaciated polar bears, dying coral reefs and oil spills.

 

[Rob Ray]

Bitcoin is literally the only thing that gives me any hope that humanity will survive the next 50 years.

I know it is. And I know it's why you so consistently ignore, belittle or "misunderstand" criticism rather than think too hard about it. You've spent ten years at this stuff and have associated your own happiness with its success – a classic case of being too invested to stop. "There are none so blind as those who will not see," as the saying goes.

I do have some sympathy with the general depressive aspect of watching humanity circle drains, and for how thoroughly you've painted yourself into that conceptual corner. I have none whatsoever, however, for your ongoing choice to evangelise crypto to others as a coping mechanism. It makes you part of the problem.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Euclidean mathematics has been a broadly accepted framework for millenia. The points on the elliptic curve werent invented by humans, they just exist.

Perhaps. It's a bit of an esoteric argument to ask whether we invent or discover maths. I tend towards the 'discover' side, but I can't think of any situation where it makes a material difference where you stand on it. Whether you think Satoshi invented or discovered his system makes no odds to its operation. It's a bunch of code whose real-world meaning is down to us and what we ascribe to it in terms of value. We can very easily ascribe the value zero to all of it if we choose. There isn't any outside agent to make it otherwise.

 

[q_w_e_r_t_y]

I know it is. And I know it's why you so consistently ignore, belittle or "misunderstand" criticism rather than think too hard about it. you've spent ten years at this stuff and have associated your own happiness with its success – a classic case of being too invested to stop. "There are none so blind as those who will not see," as the saying goes.

That said, I have some sympathy with the general depressive aspect of watching humanity circle drains, and for how thoroughly you've painted yourself into that conceptual cul de sac. I have none whatsoever, however, for your ongoing choice to evangelise crypto to others as a coping mechanism. It makes you part of the problem.

But so much of the criticism is just so misinformed.

People are confusing the attributes of bitcoin with CDBCs, making wild assertions like you can tell who owns an address which 5 mins of googling could disavow and opinining about impossible things that they believe "should" happen.

There is a schism in the bitcoin community about evangelising. There is a very distinct school of thought that says that "bitcoin finds you when you are ready for it" and that until someone realises the problem they have can be fixed by bitcoin, any discussion is pointless. Those who adopt a bitcoin standard thrive, while those who persist with fiat grow gradually weaker until they do.

I disagree - the quicker we move to a bitcoin standard, the less pain there will be and the more chance we collectively have for survival.

 

[Rob Ray]

But so much of the criticism is just so misinformed.

As I said, a classic case. You're no different in the above to a Jehova's Witness, disagreeing with an Amish person about the best way to approach the Rapture, dismissing criticism as the foolishness of the Unbeliever.

 

[q_w_e_r_t_y]

It's a bunch of code whose real-world meaning is down to us and what we ascribe to it in terms of value. We can very easily ascribe the value zero to all of it if we choose. There isn't any outside agent to make it otherwise.

Absolutely!

"Bitcoin is instantiated computer code, a digital organism that pays humanity to keep it alive, as Ralph Merkle so aptly put it. The cumulative work embedded in Bitcoin’s timechain is what makes Bitcoin real and what makes it different from ordinary information. And ordinary computer programs, for that matter. Just like there’s a difference between you and a print-out of your DNA, there’s a difference between the Bitcoin code—the memes that it implements—and the real-world instantiation of Bitcoin.

The Bitcoin network instantiates and validates itself every 10 minutes, block by block, like clockwork. It is these blocks that are the unit of information that is transmitted, and yes, just like with memes, this information is cultural information. The fact that this information is transmitted electronically doesn’t matter; it still embodies the core of the Bitcoin culture, the soul of the network. And just like memes, this information is transmitted by repeated action from one node to another. And before that, from one mind to another.

In the ecological sense, we all transact with Bitcoin, and it transacts with us. If you’ve heard of Bitcoin, if you are aware of the “21 million” meme, Bitcoin transacted with you."

Bitcoin Meme Wars, Der Gigi

For the first few years of its existence, bitcoin wasnt valued at all in monetary terms. You could pick up 5 bitcoin just by completing a capcha. When it did obtain a value 1 bitcoin was equivalent to 0.4 US cents.

Humanity collectively values bitcoin more now than it did 4 years ago, and 4 years ago, it valued bitcoin more highly than it did 8 years ago and 8 years ago, valued bitcoin more highly than it did 12 years ago.

Many people on this thread still value bitcoin at a monetary equivalent of $0. They do not identify any utility for it and see no need for it, but just because you dont need bitcoin, doesnt mean that bitcoin isnt needed.

 

[Rob Ray]

Humanity collectively values bitcoin more now than it did 4 years ago, and 4 years ago, it valued bitcoin more highly than it did 8 years ago and 8 years ago, valued bitcoin more highly than it did 12 years ago.

Humanity collectively valued tulips more in 1636 than it had four years prior, and 4 years prior, it valued tulips more highly than it did 8 years prior and 8 years prior, valued tulips more highly than it did 12 years prior. Just because you dont need tulips, doesnt mean that tulips aren't needed. (Tulip mania: 1554-1637)

Despite your protestations, you eventually fall back on "to the moon," eh.

 

[Storm Fox]

I think you'd be more productive trying to stop the trading in cluster munitions (say) by stopping the movement of the cluster munitions.

You ignored the point about how Crypto needing no regulation, makes it easier to hide certain kinds of transactions. In most countries those transactions would be illegal but those business activities should be unregulated if done on a blockchain.
So you are saying that any problems that are caused by Crypto should be fixed elsewhere because as having Crypto unregulated is more important than any of the massive negatives not having regulation will produce.

These are addresses, not people. One person can own many addresses, and one address can have claims from many people. Most of the very large addresses you see here are cold wallets of exchanges rather than people's individual wallets (this is a problem tho, I grant you, which I why I always tell people to move bitcoin off an exchange and into a wallet that they control the private key for.
Many of the medium sized ones will be multisigs, where it is owned by a collective of people who all have to sign to transact.

Fair enough, but it still means that vast majority of Bitcoin wealth is tied to very few organisations. So there a lot of power held by relatively few people.

 

[Storm Fox]

q_w_e_r_t_y you mention a lot about the indestructibility of the blockchain. What happens if say a large solar storm knocks out the internet links to the USA so that is isolated for a few days. What happens when those links are re-established?
There will now be 2 separate blockchains with different transactions listed, how would this be reconciled?

 

[kabbes]

Your problem, qwerty, is that you think we’re all just more ignorant than you, and if we just understood how it works, we’d be converted. You don’t consider that there is a wealth of expertise in this thread in areas of science, computing, finance, sociology, psychology and politics. Expertise you have no conception of, so want to dismiss because you’re too busy evangelising Christianity to theology students.

 

[q_w_e_r_t_y]

You ignored the point about how Crypto needing no regulation, makes it easier to hide certain kinds of transactions. In most countries those transactions would be illegal but those business activities should be unregulated if done on a blockchain.

Who gets to decide who gets advanced military hardware?
Ever heard the government say "yeah, we'd love to bomb Iraq, but we just dont have the money to buy the bombs right now". Of course not, because they just print the money that they need to buy the bombs.
With bitcoin, yeah, you could use it to buy bombs, but you cant print it to buy bombs, you need to enter the arms race to obtain bitcoin first.

So you are saying that any problems that are caused by Crypto should be fixed elsewhere because as having Crypto unregulated is more important than any of the massive negatives not having regulation will produce.

Yes. (although bitcoin, not crypto)

Fair enough, but it still means that vast majority of Bitcoin wealth is tied to very few organisations. So there a lot of power held by relatively few people.

Yes, and thats a problem.

Coinbase for example holds vast amounts of bitcoin estimated at 2m or around 10% of the entire supply. People trust coinbase because its a regulated company and people think that regulation protects them because anti-crypto folk whine on about regulation. It doesnt. Get your bitcoin off exchanges, keep it in a wallet that you control the private key for.

q_w_e_r_t_y you mention a lot about the indestructibility of the blockchain. What happens if say a large solar storm knocks out the internet links to the USA so that is isolated for a few days. What happens when those links are re-established?
There will now be 2 separate blockchains with different transactions listed, how would this be reconciled?

I find it hard to conceive of such a scenario, but lets say the US becomes isolated from the rest of the world, and US miners are only processing US transactions while the rest of the world is not processing US transactions (no need for days, a couple of hours would do). That would lead to a fork in the chain, you would have bitcoin and bitcoin-usa. Anyone who held bitcoin pre-fork would now have 1 bitcoin and 1 bitcoin-usa. US miners who mined during the isolation period would only have bitcoin-usa, those who transacted in the US during the fork would have been transacting bitcoin-usa, and would still have their bitcoin, while miners in the rest of the world would have been mining bitcoin and those who transacted would still have bitcoin-usa.

Similar scenario to the 2018 block wars where miners couldnt agree about the block size, so some miners followed a different consensus mechanism and the chain forked, resulting in Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash.

If its simply that the US internet was knocked out though the US would now be unable to transact bitcoin on the internet, the rest of the world would just keep going....every 10 minutes a new block would be produced same as ever. Suppose the internet was knocked out everywhere on earth. There are nodes running in earth's orbit, the blockchain would continue to run, people could continue to transact by satellite. To knock out the bitcoin network you need to take down every single node.

Your problem, qwerty, is that you think we’re all just more ignorant than you, and if we just understood how it works, we’d be converted. You don’t consider that there is a wealth of expertise in this thread in areas of science, computing, finance, sociology, psychology and politics. Expertise you have no conception of, so want to dismiss because you’re too busy evangelising Christianity to theology students.

I dont know if you'd give up your fiat addiction or not. But what I do know is that you cant fully evaluate bitcoin unless you properly understand it.
Several of your posts demonstrate that you simply do not understand some of the key fundamental principles behind it.

 

[gosub]

Space Force major to Pentagon: Mine Bitcoin!

www.politico.com

US government already has 41000 BTC, though glad to see there is some thinking about what happens to the petro$ as people stop driving petrol driven cars

 

[Storm Fox]

I find it hard to conceive of such a scenario, but lets say the US becomes isolated from the rest of the world, and US miners are only processing US transactions while the rest of the world is not processing US transactions (no need for days, a couple of hours would do). That would lead to a fork in the chain, you would have bitcoin and bitcoin-usa. Anyone who held bitcoin pre-fork would now have 1 bitcoin and 1 bitcoin-usa. US miners who mined during the isolation period would only have bitcoin-usa, those who transacted in the US during the fork would have been transacting bitcoin-usa, and would still have their bitcoin, while miners in the rest of the world would have been mining bitcoin and those who transacted would still have bitcoin-usa.

There was a Carrington-type Solar Mass Ejection just last month, but luckily in the opposite direction from Earth, that if Earth-facing, would have caused havoc.

Carrington Event - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

It may cause problems within the repeaters for undersea fibre optics. Study Warns Internet Fibre Optic Links at Risk from Huge Solar Storm and satellites would be fucked.

For most people, they'd have far more significant issues than a fork in an abstract piece of computer tech; But if there was mass adoption, it would be another massive problem they'd have to deal with.

There will be problems with the current system, but they can re-sync after services are restored.

So bitcoin is not this immutable thing; it fails to be consistent after a short network outage.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Ever heard the government say "yeah, we'd love to bomb Iraq, but we just dont have the money to buy the bombs right now". Of course not, because they just print the money that they need to buy the bombs.
With bitcoin, yeah, you could use it to buy bombs, but you cant print it to buy bombs, you need to enter the arms race to obtain bitcoin first.

Set aside weapons right now. The ability to print money isn't the evil you seem to be making out. The 1929 crash led to the Depression. The main reason it led to depression was because nobody wanted to borrow money any more so the money supply shrank. This led to deflation and whole economies around the world seizing up.

Now you might object to the idea of a money supply based on debt like this. But that's what we have, and one of the reasons we avoided a depression in 2008 was because lessons from 1929 had been learned, and QE was done - 'printing money'. The way it was done, and who that money was given to, was wrongheaded. It was actually an opportunity to take advantage of a crack in the system. But it was missed. The opportunity, though, was to print money and use it to do socially good things.

We invented money. We should use it to work for us. With something like bitcoin, you end up working for it, abiding by its rules. It would see the whole planet burn. Crypto types talk about deflation as if it were a good thing. But money that is worth more in a year's time than it is worth now fucks us all. It would cease circulating, and money that isn't circulating isn't really money at all. And we see with bitcoin in the rates of hoarding that it fails the first test of a currency - that it should circulate.

 

[gosub]

Set aside weapons right now. The ability to print money isn't the evil you seem to be making out. The 1929 crash led to the Depression. The main reason it led to depression was because nobody wanted to borrow money any more so the money supply shrank. This led to deflation and whole economies around the world seizing up.

Now you might object to the idea of a money supply based on debt like this. But that's what we have, and one of the reasons we avoided a depression in 2008 was because lessons from 1929 had been learned, and QE was done - 'printing money'. The way it was done, and who that money was given to, was wrongheaded. It was actually an opportunity to take advantage of a crack in the system. But it was missed. The opportunity, though, was to print money and use it to do socially good things.

We invented money. We should use it to work for us. With something like bitcoin, you end up working for it, abiding by its rules. It would see the whole planet burn. Crypto types talk about deflation as if it were a good thing. But money that is worth more in a year's time than it is worth now fucks us all. It would cease circulating, and money that isn't circulating isn't really money at all. And we see with bitcoin in the rates of hoarding that it fails the first test of a currency - that it should circulate.

No I think you have 1929 wrong...

It was a period of buy the dip cos chart go up, and people did cos they could buy it with borrowed money that had rate less than chart go up. Then all of a sudden they couldn't.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

No I think you have 1929 wrong...

It was a period of buy the dip cos chart go up, and people did cos they could buy it with borrowed money that had rate less than chart go up. Then all of a sudden they couldn't.

Sorry which bit do I have wrong? That there was deflation then depression because the money supply shrank? That's what happened. You may see it said that the depression caused deflation, but it was the other way around. The stock market crash caused a credit crunch, which caused deflation, which caused the depression.

A stopped clock is right twice a day, and of all people Milton Friedman got this right, even if all his other ideas were terrible.

One explanation that has stood the test of time focuses on the collapse of the U.S. banking system and resulting contraction of the nation’s money stock. Economists Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz make a strong case that a falling money stock caused the sharp decline in output and prices in the economy.2
As the money stock fell, spending on goods and services declined, which in turn caused firms to cut prices and output and to lay off workers. The resulting decline in incomes made it harder for borrowers to repay loans. Defaults and bankruptcies soared, creating a vicious spiral in which more banks failed, the money stock contracted further, and output, prices and employment continued to decline.

https://www.stlouisfed.org/-/media/...on/the-great-depression-wheelock-overview.pdf

What this article misses out is the bit about borrowing. If the private sector won't borrow, governments have to. That was the lesson learned in 2008. National debts are often misconstrued as if they were some terrible burden on us all. But the way money is set up, they're absolutely necessary.

 

[kabbes]

The whole thing is so politically naive, as if money exists separately to power. Governments have bombs — it’s practically the definition of government that they have bombs. Then, the government own the money because they have the bombs, not the other way round. If governments were somehow persuaded to give up all their ability to control the money supply and do things in Bitcoin — as if! — they would still have access to all the bombs the country can make. The power relation that enables it would just be pursued using a different economics.

 

[StakerOne]

It’s like the last 300 years of what we learned about social structures, laws and sociopsychology all never happened. We have a new toy so none of that could possibly apply any more

I know!!!!!!!!

Mobile phones don't take ANY of this into acocunt and neither do car tyres.

 

[StakerOne]

The whole thing is so politically naive, as if money exists separately to power. Governments have bombs — it’s practically the definition of government that they have bombs. Then, the government own the money because they have the bombs, not the other way round. If governments were somehow persuaded to give up all their ability to control the money supply and do things in Bitcoin — as if! — they would still have access to all the bombs the country can make. The power relation that enables it would just be pursued using a different economics.

You'd have to do an awful lot of bombing to break a decentralised network, so much so, you'd have to bomb the entire internet out of existance.

So neither the government nor the banks will control or owns the money and if they want any money it's on the people's terms.

I keep telling you, you won't listen.

There are only two options on the menu.

1. The people control their socieity from the bottom up so the government can't buy the fucking bombs (if we so wish)

or

2. The government has full spectrum control of our lives, with an almost zero cost to controlling each one of us.

There will be no inbetween, the inbetween will be crushed lig bugs by the governments, because everything is there to play for keeps.

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

You'd have to do an awful lot of bombing to break a decentralised network, so much so, you'd have to bomb the entire internet out of existance.

So neither the government nor the banks will control or owns the money and if they want any money it's on the people's terms.

I keep telling you, you won't listen.

There are only two options on the menu.

1. The people control their socieity from the bottom up so the government can't buy the fucking bombs (if we so wish)

or

2. The government has full spectrum control of our lives, with an almost zero cost to controlling each one of us.

There will be no inbetween, the inbetween will be crushed lig bugs by the governments, because everything is there to play for keeps.

 

[StakerOne]

Once again, we have the same divorcing of specific transactions from the social context they exist in. Alice and Bob live in a society that means they leave a vast data exhaust that tells you everything about their life. Alice is buying things, going places, doing things — if she is using crypto then the whole damn lot is visible on her wallet. Alice is traceable by the state in about 40 seconds. The only people that have the capacity to be truly secretive are organised criminals.

It kind of sums up the whole crypto-dream, really. An analysis of a piece of code that entirely ignores the social context that the code is embedded in.

The state has to spend resources going after Alice as it would anyone else, more resources than the current setup.

With CBDCs it would cost next to nothing to shut Alice off from the financial system.

There are all sorts of market places on layer 2 networks that can be kept private away from the state, so no, everybody can have privacy, but from the bottom up, we would also know how many of any asset are in circulation.