Bitcoin Forum

Hilarious post from Daniel Krawisz- Working in the Bitcoin world is like working for a drug addict with bipolar disorder - Can't stop laughing!


Working in the Bitcoin world is like working for a drug addict with bipolar disorder. There are brief periods of astonishing, irrational exuberance followed by long periods of deep existential dread over basically nothing. During the good times, nothing can damage Bitcoin’s spirit. But for most of the time, bitcoiners are a bunch of namby-pamby worry-warts who wet their pants over everything.

The Bitcoin world is neurotic in the way that fear dominates it. If there is not enough merchant adoption to satisfy them, they worry about hoarding and a liquidity crunch. If there is too much, they worry about downward selling pressure. If Bitcoin adoption happens too quickly, they complain about volatility and bubbles, and if it happens too slowly, they complain that no one cares about Bitcoin. If the financial world ignores Bitcoin, people worry that people are not interested, and if it pays attention, people worry about regulation.

I find it unbelievable how consistently the Bitcoiners reinterpret everything good as some kind of problem. The Silk Road is bad for Bitcoin’s image, as if Bitcoin needs to worry about image. Bitcoin’s volatility—a reflection of its extraordinarily rapid growth—is seen as something that will make Bitcoin unrespectable. Bad press of any kind is feared, when with Bitcoin there is almost no such thing as bad press.

Every month or two, a new crisis emerges. Mt Gox dies and it’s going to destroy Bitcoin. China bans Bitcoin and it’s going to destroy Bitcoin. A mining pool gets too much hashing power and it’s going to destroy Bitcoin! Every so often a new supervillain jumps up from under a rock. Not long ago, Mike Hearn was going to destroy Bitcoin. with redlists and Then there was the legion of evil behind CoinValidation, who wants to track all Bitcoin users. Recently Ben Lawsky has emerged as the latest moustache-twirler out to destroy Bitcoin with his bitlicense superweapon.

The idea that anyone could ban Bitcoin is a joke. Any attempt to do so would be monumental hubris. As if the police are somehow going to stop people from carrying private keys around and connecting to the internet. Bitcoin is too useful for people to worry about whether it is legal or not, and it is also too useful for government agents to put a serious effort into trying to stop it.

You know what’s going to destroy Bitcoin? Nothing, that’s what. Maybe a nuclear war or a giant meteor could do it, but not much else. The problem with Bitcoiners is that they think Bitcoin is fragile when it is really antifragile. It is no coincidence that Bitcoin keeps surviving every crisis. It survives because it is immortal.

As long as there is profit to be made in the Bitcoin network, Bitcoin will mow down attackers. For every outside force which threatens Bitcoin, there are many internal forces building the tools required to counter it. These countermeasures aren’t necessarily always visible in the news, but everyone in Bitcoin has the incentive to protect their investment, and therefore has the incentive to develop tools to counter any problem. The sum effect of all these invisible innovators is that Bitcoin acts like an aikido master to deflect and absorb the forces that act against it.

This all requires a little bit of faith to keep in mind because one has to believe in something that is not always visible, based on the rational expectation of its existence. But this is not so different from ordinary life: we know that the news gives us a biased sample of reality and we know that we must pay attention to what is seen and unseen. The only difference is how extreme the Bitcoin world is, how much pure FUD there is everywhere, both innocent and deliberate. This has to do with the fact that the Bitcoin economy changes so rapidly in scope and nature, that it is difficult to keep up with what is real and easy to get away with telling falsehoods.

Bitcoiners, take a chill pill. Any time something happens, think to yourself, “How likely is it anything happening now is going to matter a month from now?” The answer will nearly always be “not at all”. You are sitting on perhaps the most wonderful secret one might expect to find in this mundane world and yet you can’t find a moment of contentment. Sit back, close the web browser, have a nice glass of wine, and then take a long nap.

or "How I Learned to Quit Worrying and Love the Volatility."

As long as there is profit to be made in the Bitcoin network, Bitcoin will mow down attackers.
Very good post, the best I read recently in this forum.
But, I'm concerned about this one point you also mentioned in your post: if there is profit to be made in the Bitcoin network...
You know, regarding money, people mostly don't think rationally but emotionally.
So, if the trend of loosing value of bitcoin continue, and ''big'' merchants will still hesitate to accept bitcoin, we may see that many users will stop using bitcoin and will lost their confidence in this project.
Bitcoin will not die but can lose chance to become relevant and important.

source: http://bitcoinist.net/bitcoiners-stop-worrying-about-everything-2/
as well as: http://bitcoin-news-today.blogspot.de/2014/11/bitcoiners-stop-worrying-about.html

They both include the reference links OP forgot to copy.

In a crisis there are three kinds of people:
The ones who panic.
The ones who take countermeasure.
The ones who think, somebody else will take countermeasure and do nothing.

Totally agree, Bitcoin is big, but comparing to financial services world wide, a dwarf. So it's market cap is small and can be maniplated fairly easy by hedgefunds, investing companies etc. This is what's happening to btc at the moment, but it will change, stay strong!

Thanks to Bitcoin I actually have something to greatly look forward to next year when the stock market crashes, not worried at all!

The current crowd is, at best, amateurs.

It will change. Also agree 100% about the article above.

I hope it's around the same time Counterparty's Medici shows up.

Mwahhahahahahahaaaaaa :D

As an old timer, I do remember thinking Bitcoin can be banned at any moment. When Gox had their dwolla seized I thought that was it, everything was getting seized. Today there is nothing that can stop Bitcoin.

American voters are bipolar too. One day they're like "Obama is great", then the next day they're like "Obama sucks!".

That American voter guy....so crazy.

What? That might consist of different people with different viewpoints? A whole group is not the same person? Huh!???!

I can kind of see his point. I was like this when I initially got into bitcoin as I guess many people are, but I soon learned to get over it. IF you don't it can become very stressful very quickly. Now I'm just chill and passing the time because I know bitcoin will probably become less eratic in the near future.

Relax, i bought a bunch of namecoins at 5$ and it went down crashing to under 1,  :'(

but i still holding long term 10+years , even after you can see the sorry state of the namecoin community.  ::)

Bitcoin have many reasons for optimism!
  :D ;)

I actually kind of miss the excitement of being scared occasionally.  Now we are all just bored, trading some chop and waiting for the next bubble so that we can use our earnings to start the next round of Bitcoin companies.

Isn't that the same with any President/Prime Minster/Political Party though? Normally they say a lot of shit and promise the world to get into power, then when they do they either don't do it or get bogged down in regulations that they can't implement what they promised. Happens all the time.

There is nothing to worry about. It's great to be part of such an innovation.

Just relax and enjoy this ride, people who do worry probably bought high and now they are frustrated.

Ooops... after reading so much about bitcoin, u r telling me I need to invest in Counterparty ?

Well, Counterparty is making over Bitcoin into Etherium, it will have Turing complete language to perform automated tx, and Counterparty tokens are recycled BTC, I think it was 1 BTC burned per 1000.

Anyway, CP takes the complete "smart currency"/"smart contract" wishlist and makes bitcoin do it. Overstock.com is in this corner, having been scammed by the stock market in past, and wants to push the whole of Wall St onto the blockchain.


In the main, bitcoin is like a slow motion avalanche, we're way past the first few pebbles shaking loose, they've knocked into the baseball size rocks and those in turn have got basketball sized rocks moving, they're loosening chunks the size of cars, it's pretty freaking difficult to stop now, when the big rocks start to slide it will be unpossible, it's just gonna scour the side of the mountain and get halfway down the valley, will take years for dust to settle.

You cant do much about the ups and downs, what you can do is control yourself. In case you are a technical / semi technical person and you have doubts watch the trailer for "Rise and Rise bitcoin"  and listen to one of the Dev forums of the new development that is happening or in the pipeline. Read one of the BIP. By that time you may start to feel good.

This is gentelmen.

Whether bitcoin goes to moon. or goes to dump I  ain't going anywhere..becoz the truth is I am a Nerd and it feels home!, will hang around for life

The point is that when there is a large group of people in a group, pointing out different viewpoints expressed by members of that group at different times does not equate to "bi polar disorder".

A group cannot have multiple personality disorder if the group is made up of multiple personalities.

A group is not a single person. This should be obvious.

From your lips to God's ears!

Great post.
 

Haha! Loving this reference... I'm about to go on a Kubrick binge this december... gotta catch up with all those references

Want the next bubble to happen... buy some BTC. It's that easy.

like that.  :)

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

Kubrick is still a guilty pleasure though I no longer worship his work. I don't think he would have made a film about the subject even if a good screenplay were written. Still, if he had, it would have been epic.

Wow.

I'd like to give you something like reddit gold... If there only was some way of showing your appreciation for something over the Internet by wiring some tiny amount of money or something...

Exactly!
Every word, every idea has an energy signature - it's the feeling that comes along with it.

Bitcoin feels very friendly, shiny, somewhat round and big, yeah it smells gold too :)

You can love it too.

Some will always see a cage in any freedom, others will see a freedom in every cage.
That's the ultimate choice, the ultimate freedom.

Self referencing is not a valid argument.

This is an educated version of HODL

No one complains about volatility when the price is rising.

That doesn't mean that, at some level and for some people, it is a problem.

I'm even long on Bitcoin but I realize this. That said, a problem is fixable, and volatility certainly won't mean the death/end of Bitcoin. It sure as hell hasn't affected gold, silver, platinum...

I am not worrying. Because all this fuss is not going to solve any problem.

They will now, now shorting is possible :D

How can one love volatility unless you are a trader with inside info?

The average joe (99%) is supossed to use Bitcoin as a payment method. Do you think a payment method will be used for daily needs with such high volatility?: let me answer that for you: Nope.

Those with Google fu would know it's a parody of Dr. Strangelove. How can anyone not live in absolute terror when thousands of nuclear warheads are aimed at them and threaten to destroy all human life at any moment?