Bitcoin and Crypto Thread

[chance vought]

The most common theory I read was actually that the words "Satoshi" and "Nakomoto" in Japenese roughly translate to "central intelligence" in English. Thus, there is some belief among "conspiracy theorists" that all crypto is just owned by the CIA and this is one of those hidden in plain sight moves.

Obviously, that doesn't mean that it has to be true or that people haven't been making great money off of crypto. FWIW, this post on Linkedin tries to debunk those claims.

Unmasking Satoshi: Does a 1996 NSA Study Hold the Key to Bitcoin’s Biggest Mystery?

The true meaning or inspiration behind the pseudonym “Satoshi Nakamoto” – the mysterious creator of Bitcoin – has long been a subject of intrigue. One particularly interesting line of speculation is that the name itself contains hidden wordplay or cryptographic clues linking it to a 1996 National Se

www.linkedin.com

If Ghengis Khan had invented calculus, or if George Soros came up with the internet HTTP protocol....would it matter?
If some Jews invented nuclear weapons -- DOES IT MATTER?

The fact that a bunch of Jew scientists came up with the A-bomb, doesn't matter. As a nation, you either have nukes, or you are subjugated by a nation that does. That's it. The creators of the technology are completely irrelevant.

The Byzantine Empire, under Constantine XI, refused to adopt a new technology from a Hungarian engineer named Orban: bronze cannons. Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II accepted and funded those cannons, and Constantinople fell.

Technology exists. It doesn't matter who created it. The fact that it exists is the only thing that matters.

Bitcoin is a fundamental technology, like electricity -- it was first used for motors and electric lights, but it can be used for things that Thomas Edison couldn't dream of -- video calls across the world, and computers that can automatically land airplanes, pinpoint navigation systems that work anywhere in the world, even at the north pole.

Bitcoin is just a tool for humanity, like electricity.

 

[chance vought]

Having all your assets in such speculative asset is retarded. What if you’re wrong? You can have all the conviction in the world and you might get lucky. But what if you’re wrong? What if the timing is wrong? Maybe BTC goes to a trillion 5 years from now but what if you’re 80yrs old and BTC goes to $500 and you lost all your retirement savings?

I would love for bitcoin to become a world reserve currency. Something no Jew could devalue. I have some bitcoin. If price moons, I’ll benefit. If it goes to zero, I’ll be just as fine.

The lack of planning is what concerns me.

Besides gold, bitcoin is the only form of private money. Everything else is government paper. So yeah, it might make sense to have some gold to be more diversified, especially if you are close to retirement. The problem with gold is security, liquidity, and transaction friction. It takes a long time to liquidate, its expensive to validate, and security is expensive.

Bitcoin is planning. I can leave on a flight tonight, and go anywhere in the world with most of my wealth intact, enough to buy a residency or citizenship in a lot of places.

When the welfare state collapses, good luck with your brokerage account, cash, property, whatever else you think you own. Force majeure will be as common in parlance as fiat is today.

 

[chance vought]

Other than trading back and forth here and there playing swings I'm not a bitcoin guy and I don't think it's the future of anything. But I know a lot of guys here do and I don't like you guys losing money because you're the guys I want to actually have money, I hope it recovers for you guys and this is just a blip and not a correction.

It always does recover, and since I'm still working, I appreciate the dip. This is actually quite exciting, I wasn't sure it would get to these levels again.

Bitcoin is the only money I see, and the number I have is getting bigger -- those numbers on the bank account website aren't really money, so I don't think I've lost anything!

 

[KomnenAl]

Besides gold, bitcoin is the only form of private money. Everything else is government paper. So yeah, it might make sense to have some gold to be more diversified, especially if you are close to retirement. The problem with gold is security, liquidity, and transaction friction. It takes a long time to liquidate, its expensive to validate, and security is expensive.

Bitcoin is planning. I can leave on a flight tonight, and go anywhere in the world with most of my wealth intact, enough to buy a residency or citizenship in a lot of places.

When the welfare state collapses, good luck with your brokerage account, cash, property, whatever else you think you own. Force majeure will be as common in parlance as fiat is today.

I noticed that your fantasy doomsday scenario must have very precise parameters: just catastrophic enough to negate brokerage accounts, cash, property, whatever else I think I own (will they get my lighter?), but not catastrophic enough to negate the internet or electricity. Any scenario outside this very narrow window makes bitcoin irrelevant.

A less catastrophic scenario makes bitcoin irrelevant and land, guns and ammo, machinery and (above all) community the only valuable commodies to have. No one in a SHTF situation would sell you anything that matters for a bunch of ethereal "coins".
A more catastrophic scenario makes bitcoin irrelevant, because there is no internet or electricity.

 

[chance vought]

I noticed that your fantasy doomsday scenario must have very precise parameters: just catastrophic enough to negate brokerage accounts, cash, property, whatever else I think I own (will they get my lighter?), but not catastrophic enough to negate the internet or electricity. Any scenario outside this very narrow window makes bitcoin irrelevant.

It happened and is happening, all over the world. Just ask @GoodShepherd

recent: Venezuela, Iceland, Cyprus,

Nazi Germany, UK in 1914, USA 1933

A less catastrophic scenario makes bitcoin irrelevant and land, guns and ammo, machinery and (above all) community the only valuable commodies to have. No one in a SHTF situation would sell you anything that matters for a bunch of ethereal "coins".
A more catastrophic scenario makes bitcoin irrelevant, because there is no internet or electricity.

In what possible scenario is there no electricity or internet? When the sun becomes a red giant and boils the oceans?

Yes, bitcoin is irrelevant if a meteor strikes and causes a mass extinction.

It is very relevant in the age of bankrupt, grasping, collapsing welfare states.

 

[scorpion]

"The Great Taking" is one of the dumbest and most incoherent conspiracy theories ever, as it would require the complete collapse of even the pretense of the rule of law and property rights, which would be the end of civilization as we know it. And given that an enormously outsized amount of property in the West is already owned by the same elites who are named as the likely instigators of this crime, we are asked to believe that these people are so dumb that they would willfully and knowingly destroy themselves and all the advantages they've accrued for no reason. It would be like if you were winning a game of Monopoly with 90% of the assets under your control and you suddenly flipped the table and instead offered to settle the game with your opponents by a single roll of the dice.

Confiscating private property at that level is a recipe for total social and economic collapse, well beyond anything achieved by any twentieth-century communist regime, and is basically a Mad Max scenario without the need for nuclear weapons. If that's your fear, no financial asset - including Bitcoin and physical gold/silver - will mean diddly squat. In that case you should be hardcore prepping, becoming as off-grid and self-sustainable as possible in some remote location, stockpiling massive quantities of guns and ammo, and establishing close relationships with similarly prepared and likeminded neighbors.

Or you could just take a deep breath and realize that none of that is remotely likely to happen in the first place.