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.

 

[chance vought]

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

The "elites" is not a single group. If a wild hog gets shot, the other hogs have no hesitations about eating it.

OK...Executive order 6102?
all the other times throughout history, as well as ongoing?

It isn't legally your property. You do not have the title to your stocks.

The money in the bank: not your property - you are a creditor.

Confiscating the property of millions happened just in the 20th century. Not to mention the bail-ins of the European crisis in 2012, and property seizures, civil asset forfeiture, imminent domain....need I go on?

 

[scorpion]

Confiscating the property of millions happened just in the 20th century. Not to mention the bail-ins of the European crisis in 2012, and property seizures, civil asset forfeiture, imminent domain....need I go on?

Nothing close to the scale of what you're proposing has ever happened, and as I said (and which you made no attempt to dispute), if it were to occur, it would mean the complete social and economic collapse of the United States. Your Bitcoin would be totally worthless in that scenario, as would gold and silver. The only things that would matter at that point are food, water and the capacity to inflict organized violence at scale. If you aren't going to the extreme lengths necessary to plan for such a catastrophic outcome, you're just deluding yourself that Bitcoin is going to save you.

 

[chance vought]

Nothing close to the scale of what you're proposing has ever happened, and as I said (and which you made no attempt to dispute), if it were to occur, it would mean the complete social and economic collapse of the United States.

People just accept it because they have no choice. Argentina: banks refused to pay out dollars, and substituted pesos. Most Argentines took a 90% loss on their life savings. Life goes on. It even happened to Michael Saylor's account of $2 million

Your Bitcoin would be totally worthless in that scenario, as would gold and silver. The only things that would matter at that point are food, water and the capacity to inflict organized violence at scale. If you aren't going to the extreme lengths necessary to plan for such a catastrophic outcome, you're just deluding yourself that Bitcoin is going to save you.

No...most people will just get on the cattle car without complaining. Of course there will be unrest but not a collapse. Gen Z will be cheering it on since like you said they have nothing to lose, and some 80 year old boomer that lost their life savings is not a threat to anyone.

 

[scorpion]

People just accept it because they have no choice. Argentina: banks refused to pay out dollars, and substituted pesos. Most Argentines took a 90% loss on their life savings. Life goes on. It even happened to Michael Saylor's account of $2 million

You impugn your own credibility when you equate banking/currency collapse with the deliberate confiscation of all financial assets. These are not remotely the same thing. Currencies are much less important than assets. Currencies come and go like the tides, but assets remain, like boats floating atop the water. The government inflating away your currency is one thing (this has happened countless time throughout history); the government deliberately confiscating everyone's assets (in the process rendering them worthless, thus defeating the entire purpose to begin with) is another entirely. Indeed, the latter can really only be said to have even been attempted in part by the Soviet communists following the October Revolution, and this plan was executed on a society that was economically reeling from years of total war, was largely rural and agrarian, and had very limited financial development and a mostly impoverished population. And still, it went terribly.

Anything approaching a "great taking", if executed in the modern-day United States (a highly financialized, industrialized, and technologically advanced country), would result in the immediate and total collapse of the country in every aspect, to the extent that supply chains and basic utilities would quickly stop functioning. The poor in the U.S. don't own any assets to begin with, and thus there is nothing to take from them. The rich already own an enormous fraction of assets and live like kings; they have little to gain and everything to lose by attempting such a risky gambit. A "great taking" would primarily impoverish the vast majority of productive middle- and lower-upper-class citizens, who are the competent people who show up to work every day and keep the country running, the backbone of the economy. Without their participation, the system would enter an immediate and terminal collapse.

This is why the entire idea of a "great taking" is nonsensical on its face: by taking the assets, you immediately render them worthless, thus negating the entire purpose of taking them in the first place.

 

[Australia Sucks]

This is why the entire idea of a "great taking" is nonsensical on its face: by taking the assets, you immediately render them worthless, thus negating the entire purpose of taking them in the first place.

Yes the more realistic scenario is frog in boiling water. Over a period of decades gradually dial up taxes, capital controls, reporting requirements on assets etc. The only scenarios historically where there are mass asset seizures are when communists take over or when a country gets invaded by a foreign power and they confiscate the assets as plunder.

 

[Caduceus]

 

[chance vought]

the stacks should be the same size though

 

[PurpleUrkel]

I appreciate the dip. This is actually quite exciting...

I think this is the real issue. You find bitcoin "exciting" and this clouds your judgement on the subject. Gambling is exciting which is what makes it addictive and hence dangerous.

As stated many times previously I have no issue with successful men like yourself having some fun with their money and enjoying the fruits of their labor. What I take issue with is exaggerated claims about bitcoin that encourages others to take complicated, unnecessary risks while spending lots of their time in a shekel counting time-sink that could be better utilized by learning a real world skill set like construction or auto repair that can never be taken away from them no matter what happens "out there."

 

[Judoka]

I don't think the people who bought at 126k would find those memes amusing.

 

[chance vought]

I don't think the people who bought at 126k would find those memes amusing.

I bought at 126k.

They are supposed to be more educational than amusing.

If the only bitcoin you ever bought was 4 months ago, and you didn't expect volatility, and think the sky is falling, then that's very short term thinking (but normal, early in the bitcoin journey).

If you are constantly checking the bitcoin price, that is short term thinking. No one who bought bitcoin has ever lost money. People who sell bitcoin, due to not having enough education, lose money. Plenty of people bought at $200 and watched it crash to $30. Or $17,000 and watched it crash to $3,000. $69k to $16k. If they didn't sell, they lost nothing.

Dollar cost average. Think long term. If you don't, that is an education problem.

If someone buys bitcoin, (or buys ANYTHING besides a hamburger) yet can't be bothered to read a book and become educated on what they are buying, then that is again, a fiat, short term thinking problem. Would you buy a car without reading C&D, consumer reports, or watching some youtube videos? Then why would you buy a bitcoin?

Most people are so sure of themselves they can't be bothered to read ONE book about bitcoin. Mostly those are the ones who don't have any. Any sane person that puts a meaningful amount of money into bitcoin wants to learn more.

I think this is the real issue. You find bitcoin "exciting" and this clouds your judgement on the subject. Gambling is exciting which is what makes it addictive and hence dangerous.

As stated many times previously I have no issue with successful men like yourself having some fun with their money and enjoying the fruits of their labor. What I take issue with is exaggerated claims about bitcoin that encourages others to take complicated, unnecessary risks while spending lots of their time in a shekel counting time-sink that could be better utilized by learning a real world skill set like construction or auto repair that can never be taken away from them no matter what happens "out there."

I'm not encouraging anything except this: Read The Bitcoin Standard
or The Sovereign Individual
or Gradually Then Suddenly
or The Big Print

If I have a 1% chance of being right, and you spend 10 hours reading one of these books, it will be the most productive 10 hours you've ever spent. What do you have to lose? @PurpleUrkel you already have plenty of skills, so again nothing to lose.

I'm not encouraging anyone to buy anything. Just to learn about it, as I am trying to share what I've learned.

Everything I've said about bitcoin sounds unbelievable, I know.

Don't trust anything I say, just use the scientific method: try to prove it wrong.