OT:

If you blended all 7.88 billion ppl on Earth into a fine goo (density of a human=985 kg/m3, average human body mass=62 kg), you would end up with a sphere of human goo just under 1 km wide. This is a visualization of how that would look like in Central Park.

© reddit/kiwi2703

and weight of that human goo ball will be 332bn kg ~ 732bn lbs



https://twitter.com/_astroerika/status/1533178823335940096?s=21

The bill text that you linked is incorrect.  It has been explicitly disclaimed by Senator Lummis.  Please be more cautious.

https://nitter.net/SenLummis/status/1530281115247951872


I found that tweet when searching for this about a week ago.  It was linked in a correction to an article by The Block.  The said article also linked to the exact same Scribd page—I didn’t notice earlier that it is the exact same link.


Since The Block failed to fact-check this adequately before publication, I will make a mental note to be more skeptical of their articles (and of the byline “journalist”) in the future.

---

This is not only of interest to Americans.  Just as political pressure on mining in the E.U. affects American Bitcoiners, and just as 1990s-era U.S. export regulations on cryptography affected everyone in the world, I think that major American legislative activity about Bitcoin and cryptocurrency is of more general interest.

With all due respect to Senator Lummis, I’ll just say for now—this could be for better, or for worse.  If the bill released June 7 is anything like that early draft, I think it is overall much for the worse (despite a few improvements to the situation).  However, Senator Lummis obviously did not want to be held to whatever that text said.  Perhaps there may have been some major improvements.

Thanks.  Is there a non-scribd link where a PDF or similar can be downloaded?


I think the capital gains tax exemption for small purchases was expected.  That would remove one of the biggest obstacles to using Bitcoin as money.

I am worried about any possible attempt, by accident or otherwise, to redefine Bitcoin as something substantively different than a currency, for regulatory purposes.  Worst of all, anything that winds up twisting Bitcoin into a security.

Bitcoin has zero equity.  That’s an important feature.  It is also why it is perfectly fair to buy 10k BTC for 2 pizzas, or 1 BTC for $67k.  Bitcoin has no memory of what you paid for it.

(I may elaborate on this sometime, here or elsewhere.  Cryptic here, in a way.  I am deeply concerned about any attempt to redefine Bitcoin in this fashion, especially in the U.S. or other influential jurisdictions.  It would be easy to slip by the public, because most of the public stupidly thinks of Bitcoin as sort of like a stock.  STOP THAT!)

If you skimmed the bill, did you see the legal definitions that would apply to Bitcoin?

He’s more than that.  MicroStrategy is a de facto national intelligence agency for Bitcoin.  Hello, what is their core business?  Their highly profitable business, the proceeds of which they have used to buy all those bitcoins?  Analytics and data mining to guide strategic business decisions.  Business Intelligence.

(This also relates to some points on the POW vs. POS thread, where I will reply later.)

I am dismayed that they apparently got blindsided together with everyone else, as someone out there quietly built up terrifically huge short positions and prepared to execute a multi-pronged trashing of the market, timed to hit right after the big Fed meeting.  But it’s not surprising.  MicroStrategy are no dummies—but (I infer/upon information and belief) Blackrock, Citadel, et al. are no dummies, either.  It is sharks vs. sharks, by analogy to “spy vs. spy”.

(Don’t forget that in mid-2020, Saylor himself very quietly built up MSTR’s initial long position.  IIRC, before he publicly announced it, he managed to scoop up something like 0.18% of the total then-existing BTC supply without anyone noticing.)

Not that timely intelligence on that would mean dumping BTC!  Not for someone who is in it for the long term.  If I had high capital and an inkling that a much higher-capital party was preparing to wreck the market, I would hold BTC long while shorting perps and dated futures, hedging with options, and taking other steps to batten down the hatches and secure my position with the goal of winding up with more BTC and more dollars at the bottom.

FYI, I also take it as highly significant that Saylor and his Business Intelligence company more or less suddenly exchanged their saved-up dollars to bitcoins in mid-2020.  (They essentially switched their savings account to BTC—before they started exchanging some of their ongoing income into bitcoins, and using debt to buy even more bitcoins.)  That is the action of an extremely well-informed investor, who had access to mountains of data that you and I have no idea about.

That’s much more significant than his tweets.  Helpful though those are (thx, @saylor).

Short answer 1:  Not to be snide, but either you are very young, or you have a short memory.  The way you said that—LOLWUT?  Of course, there was and is plenty of hyperventilating about the “evil Internet!!!!”

The Internet ignited political firestorms over free speech, among other issues.  Remember the Blue Ribbon campaign?