Replies (56)
They've all been raised on the Libertarian Bible, where "greed is good".
Nobody pays me to be here, so you get to find out what I really think.
So in this position, it's that we're subject to the control of the whales correct? So we built our little parallel economy on sats or smaller units, but it fails to bring us the promise if the whales determine the value relative to goods and services.
That's a tough realization I handn't though about.
so, what is better than btc? i do agree that the scenario where as many people as possible have some, but im surrounded by people so far in debt that they use all inflows to service the debt or spend each month..
it has gotten to the point it does not matter really, btc is the most liquid thing that exists still, and barring being completly outlawed, people will use it as such. (which means spending it).
it is not in the interest of anyone, even large holders to manipulate the price to zero if it causes it to 'die off'
Yeah, but not everyone realizes that. I still buy Bitcoin. I still spend Bitcoin. I still get paid in Bitcoin.
But I have lost all illusions. This train is going nowhere, fast. People are beginning to exit and the number of wallets is declining. That means the wealth is becoming more concentrated.
There is a reason why Saylor is the headliner at every damn Bitcoin conference.
Just saying.
the revolution will not be well funded
It is, if they work for the government and are close to the fiat spigot.
They couldn't break Bitcoin. But they could just buy it all up and take it off the market. Even if they never got a return on it, killing it would drive people into other assets, which they already own, pushing up the price of those.
I think my generation were raised that way. Unfortunately my gen has taught the kids not to understand reality. I am sorry
We need a debt jubilee, probably.
This is a natural phenomenon, so recognized, in fact, that it is in the Bible, known as the Matthew Effect, but you can find it by other names - power to the powerful, rich get richer, heavy tailed distributions.. whether it is capital accumulation, city densities or neural connections.
Any lively (pointing at something specific) process accumulates a sediment over time, and calcifies into these power law distributions.
Not to push a resigned "well there's nothing to do about it because it will happen anyway"
A seemingly unfortunate situation is that capital becomes a totalizing force - enabling anyone at the top to be the top of any other resource.
But I'd argue that capital's utility comes in allowing exchange between unfamiliar/adversarial parties - an anchor that both parties can agree on even though they don't care for each other's best interest. But for communities that are closer, there can be many mediums of exchange, because trust is there. If we're all physically, emotionally, spiritually detatched from one another, the best medium of exchange becomes the one we can all verify without trust.
Sure, your assumption that velocity will be low seems reasonable.
But I doubt that whales will just hold onto their BTC through all time.
I instead assume that at different increasing valuations, most large holders will eventually become sellers of at least a part of their stash.
Because the value is at some point so high (measured in touchable goods), that possession of some of the touchable goods is more valuable than keeping _all_ BTC.
And because Bitcoin (thankfully) doesn't earn interest, anyone that wants to benefit from the increased value by having some touchable goods _must_ spend.
Sure, we can assume, most whales/rich folks usually have other sources of capital/income to spend on buying stuff, but if they never sell BTC, they never actually benefit from its increased value, right?
And as to the scheme of dumping and crashing the price and buying back at a lower price, is there evidence of that actually working?
I mean, as long as there are many stubborn DCA'ers out there who just don't stop buying, they should set a pretty solid price floor and they also stack more when the price drops and they DCA for constant amount of fiat/time.
If Bitcoin is theoretically infinitely divisible, with a fixed supply, then even if there was 1 Sat left, surely that could be divided into an infinite number of “Micro-Sats” for anyone to use (and so on).
If Bitcoin does eventually become a major “unit of account”, then the volatility likely becomes slightly more invisible to the people using it as a medium of exchange (like in the @joenakamoto documentaries about the mountain village in Peru).
Plus, at that point, if a whale dumps, surely the market will rush to absorb the released cheap Sats…
Food for thought.
💯😥
Also, aren't we early?
As in: most regular human BTC holders are not 70/80/90 years old ..
.. but in 30 years many will be.
I'd assume that if someone's using BTC as savings account and even if they're using it for speculation/leaving legacy, they at some age will spend some of it to "get" something out of it before they go to the grave.
Let's say they're doing that .. then either ..
(A) they burn the keys --> BTC total number is lowered --> less BTC sold --> higher price (assuming demand stays constant)
(B) they dump some amount on the market to crash the price --> price crashes temporarily but DCA'ers quickly consume the excess supply and the price eventually recovers
No?
that would take a massive amount of collusion on a global scale of all governments.. thats part of why bitcoin has stood up so well, is that it takes real energy and capital to attempt to take it over. those that 'work for the government' have a much easier time doing stock market insider trading than mucking around in small market cap btc and having to compete worldwide with others who are playing against them.
*burn* the keys? hahahah, no. sell bitcoin to themselves in a restricted market for diminishing, well publicized prices until the world has declared bitcoin a failure
as the saying goes, "the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent"
use bitcoin as money
It doesn't take a massive amount of collusion. Here are the biggest Bitcoin buyers and holders. Some of them are corporations or governments. Most are from one country.
And how much collusion is needed? They just need to be chasing wealth by purchasing the Bitcoin and taking it off the primary market and putting it into the paper markets. That's what they do with everything. That is their business.
Once it's out of the primary market, you can't use it for cash money. You can only trade the papers, as if it were a bond.
The only way to buck that trend is spending locally in Bitcoin and purchasing power for all increases over time but it can't combat asset centralization. Definitely key conundrum. We have bitcoiners in our community and the mantra to people who've been through a cycle is to consider the value of some in a spending wallet. It is fundamentally individual choice though. Question if what world we want. If 80% owned by whales who are untra wealthy cause Bitcoin is flying in value compared to fiat, those at the bottom getting a few sats for making bread, soaps etc are still seeing their savings and purchasing power increase
Just buy it all up and put it in a fund and declare the dollar as a Bitcoin-backed currency. They know the gold is gone, after all.
But "just buy it all up" doesn't actually work, even though it sounds somewhat simple.
Because it implies, that everyone (people) who currently is also buying BTC would need to stop.
But why would they stop if their goal is to "buy it to save for retirement in 30 years"?
Or why would people who speculate on rising price in 10 years stop buying now, unless they see the price rise to say $ 100.000.000 and think "oh, now's actually a good time to sell, I've reached my goals"?
In which case buying all BTC has become too expensive even for the FED.
in your example you said they could sell it to drive people to their 'other assets'. with the exceptions of blackrock and US govt, which assets would those be? all these companies make way more money off higher fees on a higher price.. they gain more as bitcoin goes up not down, and when there is a drawdown like you said they buy right back..
so, what is the better asset then?
I think the beauty is the tech can be forked and is open source. That means even if someone owns it all, anyone can duplicate it and send it out into the wild. Sure it wont have the same network power and fiat value but if no btc is circulating, a duplication at least could re-establish a circulating supply among plebs. Obviously at this point the project failed and its not ideal but at least options for self sovereignty will always remain now that the option exists.
you're being logical. markets aren't logical. sell a million BTC, wait for the panic selling, then buy it slowly, in dark pools, after it's "dead". by the time the price comes back you'll have a lot more than a million BTC, and you track down the holdouts
here's the step everyone seems to be missing: as long as there are only a handful of markets, and a handful of market makers, bitcoin will not survive
use bitcoin as money
Yes, everyone knows that this is the way of the world.
We could also just move and interface closer together and cut them out as much as possible. We can also use technology to trade one good directly for another, rather than needing a conduit.
Every little bit helps.
That's the thing that kept me going.
But they will also buy up the few sats going to soap and relays, as the people receiving them will often need to spend them to cover running costs. Those sats will then disappear and never return. The money will continue getting sucked out of the system. That doesn't end.
It's the core issue for sure
We also have to be aware that inequality negates the benefit a small hodler has, when the Bitcoin value goes up. So, Person A has 5.000 sats and Person B has 500.000 sats. If the value goes up by 20%, then A has 6000 sats and B has 600.000 sats. They both got wealthier, but the inequality grew from 495k to 594k.
I appreciate your skeptical and rational critique of Bitcoin (even though I buy it mindlessly in small increments, via a dca program, and also sometimes spend it (as opposed to selling it).
I don’t have the technical knowledge to critique or endorse your conclusions, but I “know” that fiat and the corruption that spawned it and that it propagates is the highest form of mortal evil, the funder of many derivative evils.
Most smaller hodlers will soon have to sell their Bitcoin, as they will lose their income to AI and the shrinking economy, and will need the money to buy necessities.
That will then also be hovered-up.
For sure but deflation could counterbalance to a degree. Maybe not a high one but if we were to be off fiat, then maybe those wealthy would not be able to simply use as collateral and would actually have to spend. That would then spread around and there's the possibility that'd acceptable to the wealthy as prcice going up when 1btc=1btc is actually simply reflected as costs go down rather than denominator go up. We don't really know what a deflationary free market looks like and how the second order behavioural effects manifest. Essential serfdom to the late adopters? Yeah, for sure but not long term debt and fiat penury. It's a fairly nuanced change and not sharp and abrupt if it occurs. Centralization if the decentralized certainly seems a part of human behaviour though
There's no point in Microsats. We would just switch to some other currency.
Other crypto, perhaps. USD, itself, or USDC/Tether.
Capitalism is an economic system, not Heaven. It has to have flaws.
Its the every little bit helps that is most important, and resistant part.
We're seeing a movement into these smaller communities. Away from mediated (big tech) communities into mixed relay communities. Relays act as the hub, nostr as one instance acts as the mediating force across communities.
I think the ethic is to move away from anything totalizing, because that creates rigidity. Whatever medium of exchange wins, can win at the global level. Participation is still required, so you hedge where you can for those situations. The local can do what they find best outside the global system.
Specifically, by orienting away from whatever global system wins, the system itself becomes more robust globally while the local becomes resistant to capture.
Fair and quite possibly, but surely that depends on what value Bitcoin ends up at from such a huge supply shock? We’ve never had a neutral asset/global currency with a fixed supply before, so it’s still uncharted territory…
Yes I guess
eventually the rich have to spend when bitcoin is the only payment anybody is willing to accept
Thank you. This is a hard place to be me.
Not that there is any easy place for that...
1) I don't care, if you find me unbecoming.
2) There are lots of other options.
3) I never said that I don't buy Bitcoin.
Maybe not "through all time".
But on a long enough timeline, we are all dead.
> Having a trillion-satoshi business is better long term than just holding a trillion sats doing nothing.
That business would have to beat the value increase on Bitcoin. I think only war does that, at the moment.
So, invest in war. War and Bitcoin. That's the new guns and butter.
Similar to the rest of its journey so far then? Most people thought where it’s at now was a pipe dream or impossible… I suspect we’ll see some interesting and unexpected chapters unfold in the coming years too
Math hurts.
If you run a shoe factory and want to sell shoes, will you sell more if there is one person with €1 million or 10k people with €100? You can maybe get that millionaire to buy a €1000 pair of shoes, but probably not But you could still sell way more shoes to the 10k.
More people --> more velocity.
The market can absolutely stay irrational longer than an _individual_ can stay solvent .. the market cannot stay irrational longer than _people_ can stay solvent ..
If the economic incentives to buy/use BTC continue to exist (which they do unless the CBs return to gold standard), people will continue to buy.
Call me naive, but somehow I don't think we'll ever run out of work .. but that's another topic.
Maybe a bit like Jevon's paradox but for work instead of energy .. we'll use what we have, even when we discover powerful new tools that'd allow us to let capacity sit idle with same output.
This is the endgame
They are just making it more scarce... The people still own the majority.. If I'm not mistaken.
We don't actually know that, we just hope it. I am a very hopium-y type of person, but I do occasionally get frustrated.
And I am a fan of retrospectives. It's not enough to just hope. You have to occasionally halt, look back, and evaluate the trajectory.
I know of so many corporations ready to fire everyone and replace them with robots. No joke. And that, in a country with the highest electricity prices in the world. Human workers are an annoying cost center they are eager to reduce.
People in Germany think that everyone is getting laid off because of the economy or war, or whatnot, but they aren't. They're being replaced with automation, is all.
It's so over. 😂
What will we buy with? We won't own anything and we will be miserable.
You think they will want our EBT or our UBI cards? Those are scrip and they own the company store.
If people get fired, they'll look for a new job .. don't you think that most will find one eventually?
I'm pretty sure there will always be different types of jobs that cannot really be done by robots .. people may just have to move to these .. adapting over a timescale of years is doable.
And if people find new jobs, then they can continue to stack.
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