Decent debate about the utilitylessness of most cryptos

An insightful interview on Michael Saylor's realization of the power of BTC. He's has a great perspective from a CEO that is the last man standing in his industry.

Thank you very much. I found the second hour especially interesting. By the way, Saylor describes a marvelous example of "Soros Reflexivity" in the second hour.
 
I've got The Alchemy of Finance, and was a little confused after the first read. Read it again, and still felt a lot of this was silly bull. Decided maybe someday I'll try it a 3'rd time because I may be missing the obvious.

Then I read one of Taleb's books where he tore Soros's book apart, and I realized that Nassim was bringing the same points up that were troubling me all along.
 
The one reason I believe in cryptos is because the negative arguments I hear are very similar to those made against Tesla and TSLA allowed me to retire at 57.

In every Ponzi system there are winners and losers.

I can only see that, from the people who liked your post, nobody was able to retire already thanks to crypto's.
At least one is even losing money. If things don't change he might even be forced not to retire at the normal age but will have to continu working.

From all BTC adresses 99.64% are smaller than 10 BTC. So these adresses have surely not enough money to retire.

Big numbers have statistical value, small numbers have no statistical value.
 
The Bitcoin Standard by Dr. Saifedean Ammous

I saw that book earlier today, but because of this thread I decided to grab it now for curiosity. In the meantime I just have the problem of getting enough time to read it.
 
I saw that book earlier today, but because of this thread I decided to grab it now for curiosity. In the meantime I just have the problem of getting enough time to read it.

It's an eye-opener for me on the history of money and the its role in the society and civilization and the powers in-control

I'm pragmatic about it, especially with Bitcoin and cryptos now available to us, can choose to be aware and not suffer... for me and my family

Audible has been an awesome tool for me, finished many books in the last few months, last one is the "The Fish that ate the Whale" which I highly recommend

Listening to a book is not as good as reading, though, imho. I find it's not as easy to remember many details, but I guess I can always go back and re-listen
 
It's an eye-opener for me on the history of money and the its role in the society and civilization and the powers in-control

I'm pragmatic about it, especially with Bitcoin and cryptos now available to us, can choose to be aware and not suffer... for me and my family

Audible has been an awesome tool for me, finished many books in the last few months, last one is the "The Fish that ate the Whale" which I highly recommend

Listening to a book is not as good as reading, though, imho. I find it's not as easy to remember many details, but I guess I can always go back and re-listen


Nick Szabo's article on the History of Money is a great one and should be included in the discussion;

https://nakamotoinstitute.org/shelling-out/
 
I've got The Alchemy of Finance, and was a little confused after the first read. Read it again, and still felt a lot of this was silly bull. Decided maybe someday I'll try it a 3'rd time because I may be missing the obvious.

Then I read one of Taleb's books where he tore Soros's book apart, and I realized that Nassim was bringing the same points up that were troubling me all along.

Re: Taleb, I used to be a big fan but no longer a fan for more reasons than him being a bitcoin-hater

Taleb is on the foreword of the original "The Bitcoin Standard" but has been replaced by Michael Saylor on the new one. I may purchase the new edition hard copy of the Bitcoin Standard just for that reason

Saifedean is also from Lebanon which is why he let Taleb do the foreword, even though Taleb obviously did not read the book. Saifedean was very upset about that

There are twitter posts from over 2 years ago telling Taleb that the financial system in Lebanon was in danger of collapse, but Taleb attacked everyone saying they're idiots for thinking that and Lebanon banking system is safe

Taleb cost a lot of family members, friends and followers in Lebanon to be financially ruined. They could have just bought Bitcoin

PS: Taleb also attacked Lyn Alden with insults even when she was respectful in presenting her counter-arguments. Eventually, Taleb like a child blocked Lyn
 
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I admit I don't know much about crypto, but I have some observations and a few questions. And I want Y'all to correct me if these "observations" are not correct, and, maybe if you can, answer my questions:

1) Seems the original idea was to use crypto to facilitate commerce below the radar, so to speak. Kinda like deal'n in cash and having any government reporting obligations conveniently slip your mind.

2) But did the increasing cost of "mining" new "coins" cause the value of the coins to increase? Did that attract investor types and increase demand? And did that, in turn, attract the trader types and cause the volatility that makes crypto useful for gambler sorts -- more politely said: "speculators"?

3) Now, it seems to me, that other than for transactions flying below radar, crypto is kinda useless for its originally intended purpose, i.e. darkfield commerce. I mean how are you going to buy and sell goods or services using a "currency" that fluctuates wildly in buying power from one moment to the next? (Or is that what "stablecoins" are really about?)

1) It's a "decentralized" distributed ledger, nothing more. It's essentially an evolution of "shadow banking" aka eurodollar system, but now accessible to anyone willing. Code & internet eliminating the centralized middlemen in this structure is MAJOR value.

2) If you are talking about BTC, Proof of Work is an idiotic & wasteful system. It's also very limiting on the supposed intention of Satoshi's whitepaper & writing. At the end of the day, the creators of BTC saw that there is much more money to be made & with much less work via "Number Go Up" strategy

3) Stop using so much common sense, it no longer applies, LOL. But yes, and even Satoshi's whitepaper & communications repeatedly hammered the same point. Multiple other cryptos have attempted to focus on the payment system factor, and still try. Noone really cares.
At the end of the day, USD system reigns supreme.
 
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