Bitcoin Forum

Prosperity is in general the result of the working of free markets. The one caveat to this observation is that market participants have to be responsible. It doesn't matter so much if they are intelligent or not, it doesn't really matter if they're good christians or devout muslims or anything else, but they do have to be responsible.

When some people behave irresponsibly the result is that they lose their money, which flows, albeit indirectly and circumvolutedly but nevertheless unerringly, to more responsible participants.

When a small majority* of participants behave irresponsibly however the net result is not just pain to their own fortunes, but pain spread across the board. All of a sudden you have to be very intelligent, and very experienced, and very well informed to manage to keep your money safe, and often enough even that's not going to suffice.

Giving over half a million bitcoins to a random idiot has the unpleasant effect of creating a high powered idiot. He can now wreak havoc on the exchange rate, which increases volatility and on the long term hurts everyone involved in bitcoins, because volatility is, much like inflation, an indirect tax on users.

Giving over half a million bitcoins to a random idiot has the unpleasant effect of creating half a million bitcoins' worth of valueless receipts, which are pretty much indistinguishable to the naked eye from valid receipts. Thus, if you pay on anyone's credit you are basing your judgment not on actual fact, but on an unknown and pretty much unknowable mixture of fact and hogwash.

Giving over half a million bitcoins to a random idiot is a bad idea. There are people whose personal responsibility in this matter is greater than that of most everyone else, people who have in effect acted as lieutenants for the random idiot. This thread is a convenient spot for all of them to avoid the indignity of being called out, and instead freely and willingly admit their mistake, and by admitting it learn from it. Specifically, learn that they aren't nearly as qualified as they thought to play the "banker", and by this make one step towards maybe one day actually being bankers.

The wanna-be bankers are not alone in their hour of humiliation. There are plenty of others who spend their entire day spouting nonsense on this forum, either under the guise of being "journalists" for some monthly magazine that does a couple issues a year or just as random internet experts in everything. Obviously they won't be learning anything on this opportunity as they haven't learned anything on any of the previous ones in their lives. That's after all fine, what would a mining town be without the drunks and general scum?

Aside from these practical considerations, there are some more general points to be taken home by anybody who wants to be a little smarter today than last month, and possibly have a little better shot at actually making money than before.

1. Learn the pecking order. All opinions are not equal. Some people are to be respected. Learn who. Some people are irrelevant and easily ignored. Learn who. More importantly than the who, learn why. Is it just because "everyone else seems to think so"? That's no good, forget it. Is it because they were right when everyone else was wrong? That's perfect, especially if it occurs with any sort of consistency.

2. Business means something very specific. Only the permanently poor imagine business = "anything to do with money". There's no business without a business plan. If something purports to be a business but "it can't" or it just won't share its business plan it is not a business. This means you can't be investing in it. Sure, you can throw money at anything you wish, as for instance the toilet bowl, Ponzi scams or scantily clad girls. However, in order to invest you absolutely need a business first.

3. Learn how to deal with your own mental limitations. If you think you don't have any you find yourself most likely in the situation described here (http://gagne.homedns.org/~tgagne/contrib/unskilled.html):


In short: if you're not aware that there's anything wrong with your judgment of "business", "finance", "investing", "money" and so forth that is almost certainly due to the fact that you are very weak on all of these topics, likely significantly below average. You should spend a good deal of time reading and a greater deal of time testing things out methodically before you promote yourself mentally to "average", or even "crummy". This means years. Years.

The advantage of BTC is that it's a very cheap and very clean way to learn about finance. The disadvantage (if we can call it that) is that it's much akin to falling in love: very, very, very hard on the knees. Vitriolic to the ego.

4. Step outside of your ideology. You might have been brought up in a very repressive social milieu in which some particular ideological slant was drilled into you. This is working to your disadvantage, get rid of it. Are you sticking up for your friends because they're your friends rather than because they have a point? Great for facebook, horrible for BTC. You will lose money. Are you following the crowd like a welfare state lemming? Great for the white collar slave, horrible for BTC. You will lose money. Do you think form is above content and as such it's okay to invade foreign countries and slaughter civilians just as long as nobody says shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker or tits on TV? Great for being an American, horrible for the free world. You will lose money.

5. Re-read this entire post. It probably didn't fully sink in on the first pass. Seriously. Alternatively it is always easier to just not like me. You will lose money.

---------
* This term of... art, let's say, will go down in BTC history.

This lecture coming from a porn website operator is to be very well received by the community.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=102333.0

So what did you try to say again?

The above snippet of the OP is very well said.

~DonShrents

You're right. There is porn on there. Oh no.. There's also porn on the other parts of the internet.

You should probably quit the internet and do us all a favor.

The porno business is not known for his high moral standards. But you and this scumbag believe otherwise.
Looking at your forum nick, I'm not surprised.

Talking about personal responsibility, do you have comments on that ? :

http://whois.domaintools.com/btcst.com (http://whois.domaintools.com/btcst.com)


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=106394.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=106394.0)

+1

What's wrong with being The Electronic Rap Ghost?

You don't like black people/black culture? I didn't think racism was still so popular.

He's trolling you.

This is a pretty good post. I particularly like the reference to the overconfidence game. More people should know about the overconfidence game.

wouldn't it be best to also show a disclaimer that you manage a fund that trades shares of mpoe, where mp on that is the op?

I would of course show a disclaimer if there were some kind of financial conflict of interest. But I fail to see one relating to this post. If I missed it, please point it out to me so that I can make a correction.

I second the sticky request.

Should be required reading.

We really need to sticky the OP. Expecting personal responsibility doesn't mean we condone criminal activity or shun police involvement in crimes.

Well so maybe a forum mod reads this and stickies it.

nice post.

except for this:


this part made me lol.

youre right, its cheaper to let them slaughter their own civilians.

They got any Siamese amputee midget lesbian porn? If so, can I get a free login?

1)   ciuciu - your attempt to discredit an awesome post fails.  Like you don't jerk off to porn?  like you have a moral objection with it?

2)  I heart JoelKatz like alot

3)  OP rocks pretty hard.  Pretty damn good advice.  +1 on "please don't send a guy 500k BTC because it fucks it up for the rest of us"

I sure hope you're going to be doing an interview with Matthew once this is all over.

I have a moral objection to underage porn which the OP hosts. You can defend it if you want but it just makes you look like  a pedo.

Do you have any idea what you are defending ?

If OP hosts kiddie porn, I don't condone it.  

the OP's OP has nothing to do with anything other than this scam, and the thoughts contained in it are valid

Someone writes an awesome post that has some damn good advice. Yes, he is hosting a pornsite. Those are two completely different things.

What the fuck is wrong with this community? Pirate steals 500k BTC and you are flaming a pornsite owner who is trying to talk some sense into you morons.

QF Mutha-fuckin' T

+1 Sticky

This is a "community" where you can scam and nothing happens to you and I have no interest in being nice to a child pornographer.

If someone reputable wrote that same post you and others would be givind +1s to it. Cut the crap already, there is no child porn in this thread so it has nothing to do with OPs post.

And who doesnt enjoy jailbait every now and then  :D

http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ad-hominem

srsly

Really? There is no value at all in OP's rumblings. I wasted 5 minutes reading a repetitious and bloated essay that can be expressed with a single line.

I think this point is quite obvious in the recent hashking debacle, for instance. Yes, it fucks it up for the rest of us.

Can you lend me 2 btc at 10%/wk so I can pay for 10 minutes of a live show? I'll pay you back next week. Swear to god.

Dude, that's not going to work since you told what the coins are for.

The OP should be stickied.

I'm curious.
Are you impying that Pirate is both random and an idiot?

Sigh, i wish i was that successfull and random idiot.

http://i704.photobucket.com/albums/ww47/monomeric/PirateBender.jpg

I'm not implying it, I'm saying it. Any one of ten thousand famished Nigerian adolescents could have done the same.

Hmm, i don't think so.
Famished nigerial adolecents propably don't write IRC bots that say stupid shit.
They also propably don't speak english that fluently.
Honestly, i think pirate is neither random nor stupid.

The people invested in him o.t.o.h.
(facepalm)
There were sooooo many signs.

Meh,
Expressions of anger by rambling about how you find other people stupid and you will teach them a lesson should not be sticky.

Good point, but you shouldn't judge the OP by the replies.

I judge the OP by the OP.
I think it's unnecessarily arrogant.

I like the op, well written and insightful.  Most of all, I think the community would benefit from following some of these points.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=109130.0

Absolut shockingly orgasmproducing awesome OP to be stickied in the hall of fame !!!!

This is zykloogish in english !!

Never thought that english in any way could produce such a heart - opening feeling, which frees the mind of any sorrows about the intellectual mediocricy of this forum !


Thank you MPOE and make the holy - spirit  read this post and the world will be blessed as a whole by all the bitcoins crossing only tangentialy your honorable soul ;)

Cheers Zyk

Aah, the feeling of short lived self-delusion.
Sheer beauty....

This could use a bump right about now.

I agree on perma-bumping this...

Great post.

What happened to fart, turd and twat?

Someone married them?

Necro thread bump. tl:dr, what does all of this mean?

caveat investor.

beware of investor sounds like good advice to me!

Heh... investor beware, actually. Latin is funny like that.

why do you pretend to be a girl speaking for yourself?   Did your therapist suggest this?   Come on, it is 2013, you can come out we can accept it.

It means eventually somebody was bound to confirm the value of OP by asking the question you asked.

Dude, seriously. It's been done to death. I'm a girl, ask around.

OP is very very warren buffett'ish

I'm not around regularly enough to have caught this post when it was new.  Having just discovered it, I bump it.   


Frank

Personal responsibility you say... https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=102333.0   ::)

What reading material do you suggest?

Trilema's bitcoin category (http://trilema.com/category/bitcoin/)'d make a good springboard. And hanging out in #bitcoin-assets (https://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=bitcoin-assets) on IRC will give you fly-on-the-wall perspective on some of the more important discussions in this space.


Yes. This includes reading and understanding something before you link to it.

Wise words as usual MP.

Excellent advice.

Yes, furthermore, someone who is affected by mental illness, particularly someone with a severe psychotic disorder, will not and cannot be expected to act rationally.

Brilliant read.

I want more. Let me drink of that stuff again! And how come this is still not a sticky? Note to self: thinking that the moderators are here to create an environment where the the small majority can get better is a defective mental process.