I have not thought of the word "schwing" in years... ... 'till today.



Daily looks damn good too.  Volume also looks decent.

That's a Monero ASIC, right?

It's been a while since I gave a insiders (I work in healthcare, specifically informatics) Covid update... this made me think about it.

We have seen a marked, CONSISTENT drop in all numbers since the last surge.  Our confirmed Covid patients has dropped to a little more than 5% of admissions which is WELL under where we were in either surge (~60+%).

Positive test results are an order of magnitude below what we saw at the peak.  But testing has become very routine and nearly universal.

Mortality has continued to remain technically in the noise.  So low that it is not statistically dense enough to get relevant data from the numbers other than the mortality has been insignificant in the big picture.

Most notably both infection rates as well as mortality have both continued to go lower even during the second surge.
 They did rise 2-3 weeks after the surge peaked, but much less so than the first surge which implies we are seeing immunity emerge.

We are currently just starting the period of time where *some* return to school will be causing a predictable third surge.  But so far this one seems to be holding back and not emerging quickly, which also implies we are seeing immunity emerge.

To me (non-clinical) we are seeing the very best case scenario we could hope for.

Therefore the continued hysteria is either overly careful, or politically motivated.  I think the second.  I am not really a conspiracy type, and it always bugs me when people act like the whole thing was made up.  Tell that to the people who suffocated because of it.  But although the pandemic is no doubt real, and has posed a real risk, it is now being used by the powers that be to control us more than anything.  Especially considering that at this point we have a VERY clear picture of who is at risk, and that subset is much smaller than we had originally thought.

Also, along with herd immunity we also seem to have herd movement... people who wear masks have many motivations.  Personally I feel fairly safe but will still wear a mask in public for the sake of those who are at risk.  But everyone's fear and actions are definitely motivated by herd instincts and it's interesting to watch.

Property is one of the assets in which we will see inflation (brr) really having an impact.  This will be true of all value stores (gold, collectibles etc) and a certain class of consumable items (healthcare, education, ammo).  Where as other consumables (cheezeburgers, toilet paper) will not be hit by inflation as much.  And Fiat will be the very most dangerous place to store value.  Unless all you intend to buy is cheezeburgers and TP. 

I would think selling your house to have "money in the bank" is most likely a TERRIBLE strategy (not saying you don't realize this) at this time.  UNLESS you "house" is commercial real estate... then selling is a different story, I'd think. In fact now buying a third house would be a more compelling idea for you, I'd think.

Sorry buddy.  I already got that one in Dec 17.  It pays to be early.

Just a few fun observations...

• Currently we are ~2x the number of monero transactions being made than when it was at it's USD ATH in Jan 2018
• That number has steadily grown for four years and shows no signs of dropping yet. https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/monero-transactions.html
• Hashrate has remained steady near the ATH since the RandomX fork.
• Hashrate has shown no clear signs of hidden ASIC development since that time as well.  https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/monero-hashrate.html I believe the recent obscene spike can only be explained by a lot of cloud power (AWS, Azure?) temporarily pointed at mining XMR briefly as new ASICS have no incentive to shut off whereas cloud computing has a LARGE incentive to shut off.  It is very curious as to who/why.  This could even be a test run at a server provider using idle CPU to see what could be achieved as a proof of concept, IMO
• Transaction fees remain near historical lows, even as blocksize rises
• Monero continues to have more real world use (Dark Markets) than the vast majority of blockchains

Just some food for thought.

It's been a long time since Monero did one of it's old fashioned upward rips that it used to be famous for.

I'd love to think it has gone one in it still

Yeah I often can tolerate most of the list until I see f&c($%@ ripple.  Ripple's existence is a stain on the entire sector.  Luckily neither Monero or Bitcoin care at all.

No, I really think this is a normal corrective impulse in the middle of a bullish bitcoin trend.  And I think Monero is also Bullish/BTC right now as well, and it doesn't seem to be taking part in the correction as much.  To be honest I would love to know the rationale of the selling pressure.

USD is rallying.

The election is a known risk.  What is likely contributing to this is continued speculation around covid, and the more immediate political risk threat posed by the Justice Ginsburg situation that happened over the weekend.

That's the only sense I can make of it at least, lol.

I actually think Bitcoin (and by extension, Monjango) are at less risk, than Gold currently.  I would be a little worried about Gold as it is testing it's 50MA.  But whether that means a bear move, or a great dip to buy?  I am as clueless as ever.

(eidt - oh and I am fairly certain the markets heard me bragging on XMR holding up during all this tanking... I had barely hit post when it fell alongside it's peers... *sigh* my bad...)

Little Monero bucking a pretty strong trend.

I gotta say it has been acting fairly lit up recently.

Hmm.  We did not quite come up as far as I had hoped before the next dip... The right shoulder looks a little sad and hunched, but let's see if this is the right shoulder...

To be able to do it for an asset which no one controls, nor can change the issuance of, as opposed to slaving away for an asset that is controlled by a party (The Fed) who does not have our best interests at heart ultimately.

Just because I do not write the TCP packets for this message, nor do I own the fiber network over which it travels does not mean that I am not transacting on it.  Why are not layer 2 transactions not at their root (settlement) a part of Bitcoin transactions?

 

I like where you are going.

But since the requirement for validating nodes is kept low it would continue to be in EVERYONE's best interest to run one. Even if I am not directly writing data to the block chain I would benefit by monitoring those who do.  In fact monitoring the whale moves of banks, governments, and retired WO members would be of great sport and interest.  Not just for security, but for knowledge.  I used to think the Whale Alert accounts on twitter were a novelty, but they are actually an indicator.  

People ran Seti@Home even though they got no green stamps from Martians for doing it, and same thing with the folding app for the genome.  And I would say validating one of the most important ledgers on the planet would command MUCH greater incentive.  Bitcoin is for enemies after all.

And as layer 2 is currently being built out people who run lightning nodes are STRONGLY incentivized to run a corresponding Bitcoin node.  I think as second+ layer solutions are developed we will see more and more interest in that among a much wider group than the hobbyists (like me) who do now.

On top of that I think we will see mining hardware possibly become commoditised.   As energy production changes BITCOIN is poised to soak up a lot of spotlight.  This will most likely decentralize even MINING nodes.  People with solar energy systems may be able to choose to sell excess energy to the grid, or instead use it on commodity ASIC hardware to produce Bitcoin.  And by that time  the price of energy will be at least joined at the hip with BTC production if not outright dictated by it.

What do you think?

Luckily we have a while before it's 2010 again.

But why did I unmute your idiotic ass???

That as a possibility is implicit in my thoughts, I'd say, yes.  

I am not saying it's the only way forward for Bitcoin.  I also think a block size increase is possible, though may be hard to do from a political standpoint.

It kind of HAS to be one or the other of those things.  And if it is the former then it follows that transactions managed off chain will be how the majority of transactions take place.  Either as Finney suggested (though I do not see that the "banks" have to create a currency... they could instead just let you trade "bitcoin" on their private ledger) which is a trusted model, and/or using trustless models like lightning.  Or some other invention that is one or the other or in between...

But there is a difference. Bitcoin is bitcoin.  And if a bank or anyone issues something else it is not bitcoin anymore. 

Let's use Cash App as an example.  When they make bitcoin transfers between accounts a thing, then they can do this with little to no fees because they are the custodian.  I give Torque .5 BTC, and it shows up in his account and is debited in mine.  Torque wants to get his BTC out of @Jack's hands as quickly as possible, and does a withdrawal, pays a fee and poof is in custody of his own bitcoin.

Why does this not work?  Any differntly than banks do now.  Aside from being faster and more convenient.

Will this mean there is counter party risk?  KYC/AML?  Risk that funds can be frozen... yes yes and yes.  And no one will force the mountain men like you and I to hold any meaningful amount of Bitcoin there.  But the masses most definitely will.

There IS a difference.  It is easy to withdraw bitcoin.  It is hard to withdraw gold.

I agree with this entirely.  Where I see nuance is in the realm of the definition of "bank".  Taken as a whole banks perform several ultimately essential functions.  Essential as in "somebody's gotta do em".  It's like plumbing.  Something we take for granted entirely, but an age old trade without which the world as we know it would not even be CLOSE to being able to exist.

Just as email replaced some of the functions of the post office, it did not replace them all.  And other functions like package delivery became MUCH more important in the internet age thanks to Amazon, EBay et al.

So the successful banks for the future will be the ones that isolate the still needed functions that work as the "plumbing" of digital society.

-Payments
-Security
-Contracts

I think these are the areas where banks will need to focus.  The first one scales bitcoin.  The second keeps it safe, and helps it remain legitimate.  The third?  Well that's the really fun one.  All kinda of conditional financial instruments will be coded into banking PLATFORMS.  Ethereum has the mindshare on this, but many will realize that a blockchain is actually NOT where we want to do contracts.  Contracts will be anchored in Bitcoin and run atop using proprietary trusted systems, just like it is now.

As those systems emerge, the ones that are proved to be needed, and can be replaced safely and efficiently in the FOSS world will be.

Ethereum has it backwards, IMHO.  It's a hammer looking for nails.  The tools we need will be developed FOR the needs, and most likely rooted into the security of Bitcoin.
 

Lol.  I am great.

I didn't meant to be overly whiny a couple days ago... I am a musician... one of my gifts is expressing emotion.  And I was so tired of my job that day.  And I know I am not the only one here, that even though we know where we are headed, are like a little kid in the car on the way to vacation. WHEN WILL WE GET THERE?!??!

But yeah... I was up at 0530 this morning because I could not sleep because of a change I put into the Electronic Medical Record for a 16 facility hospital system that had a small, but not insignificant error.  So I had to get up super early on Saturday to fix it.

My job is kinda stressful.  In some ways it's like being an air traffic controller for healthcare.

I still look forward to handing in my resignation. Although i REALLY REALLY appreciate, and for the most part enjoy my job.

Sometime in the next 5 years, I believe.

How are YOU doin?

**A little Saturday read inspired by your post... I will merit you, but I just dumped all my merit on Hal Finney.  You can't be mad about that right?***

This is a very hard thing for the old school bitcoiner to accept.  And some will reject it outright. In fact that is why Roger Ver went the way he did.  I think CSW is an actual pathological conman, but I think Ver fell in love with a version of Bitcoin that he began to see as doomed, ironically as it began to become successful. But I want to put forth a couple reasons I think what you said above is important and inevitable.  

1.  The banking infrastructure  and concept is STILL useful.
2.  We actually NEED it.

The first bitcoin transaction I did in 2011 was to a poker site (bitco.in, as Seals with Clubs did not even exist yet!)  The whole reason I went to the trouble to get my hands on some bitcoin was to play online poker with it.  But like so many of us, along this path I suddenly saw what being able to transact value without a middleman FELT LIKE.  The lightbulb turned on... one pill will make you smaller, etc.  And it stuck.  My poor wife.  She has had to listen to a decade of it.

For some reason it is not as hard for me to accept as it seems to be VER.  It is inevitable.  Bitcoin, if it does indeed begin to serve the world as even a semi-niche store of value will grow to magnitudes of it's current resource usage.  And I am not going to crank the blocksize debate up again, but to put it simply we can either keep bitcoin validation decentralized and thereby enforce the consensus, or we can let it be taken over by a small minority, and end up with a digital panopticon that would make most fundamentalist evangelical's vision of the "mark of the beast" look like Monopoly.  The fight is over which resource use grows... and the market has, in some way against all odds, chosen correctly: Fees.

I agree with the market here and I realize the future is not what, even Satoshi, seemed to have seen.  Although Hal got it.  And WAAAAAY back then too...


2010, y'all!

And we are watching this unfold right under our noses.  But most people don't really see it yet.  There are a lot of contenders, and people tend to look at the exchanges and talk about them being the bitcoin banks... and behold JUST THIS WEEK the news hit that Kraken was granted the whatever-it-is regulatory powers to become a BANK.  But even more than that, I think the underestimated and EXTREMELY Savvy @jack is already a little ahead of them in some ways with Square/Cash App. Not only is it one of the best places to buy bitcoin, but he is laying the groundwork for all commerce to be done using his application.  They just introduced some sort of payroll feature.  This makes Wells Fargo look like a fucking brontosaurus looking at the curious bright streak coming through the sky called Cash App. "Oooh pretty!"

And then we have Jack Mallers, the grandson of one of the founding fathers of the Chicago Board Options Exchange who is doing one of the most interesting projects laying down a REAL, WORKING payment layer for Bitcoin using the lightning network.  This ultra laid back hoodie wearing millennial (Gen Z-er?) stands to create an even bigger legacy than either of his ancestors.  He is quietly laying the groundwork for a bulletproof bitcoin payment network, that SETTLES on the main chain.

Boom.

Credit card terminals are not going away.  Banks are not going away. Loans and mortgages and myriad other financial instruments are not going away.  The vision of each bitcoiner living in a citadel guarding his 8 of 15 multisig seed word stashes served by his farm of nodes all running mixing protocols and so on is a "Mountain Man Fantasy".  And some of those mountain men will doubtless exist.  But in reality the VAST majority of humans could never handle that amount of responsibility.  They want to pay someone else to guard their value for them.  Someone who is an expert in the kind of security needed to safeguard value, and now with the added wrinkles and challenges presented by cryptography.  Perhaps someone who offers insurance against a failure or theft. Someone who does all the dirtywork behind the scenes so you can buy your iconic cup of coffee without having to remember a 19 character password.  

Those someones are called "banks".  Or, at least that's what they used to be called.  This level of disruption is big enough that they COULD end up with a different name.


That was a very wise man seeing the rise of Cash App, Strike, and Kraken back when everyone else was just wanting to figure out how to get around all the regulations that made it hard to play online poker.  Insert Ver's scrunched up face here as he foams at the mouth taking about PEER TO PEER CASH!!! AND I AM SORRY I JUST GET SO EMOTIONAL!

No one can stop you from using the chain.  Ever.  That is CERTAINLY one of the things that makes bitcoin a "zero to one" invention.  But if you really want to compete for the kind of VALUE that Bitcoin will command and REQUIRE for on chain transactions??? ...better get that business plan ready.  And there are some fairly smart folks out there with a good head start on you already.  Bitcoin is not replacing credit cards... Bitcoin is replacing FedWire.

If we want Bitcoin to be successful then this is where we are going.  And we should really be glad.  It might not look like what we all thought it would 10 years ago (or 7 or 3 or last week), and part of the reason for that is our vision is limited.  We get hung up, like Ver, on shiny things that look more important than they are.

That feeling you got when you did your first few Bitcoin transactions?  It's not going away.  It's just changing form.  And you are one of the lucky ones that got to experience that first.  Most people will have the much more ho-hum feeling of just watching the mover and shakers roll out the new world for them...

-Greg Maxwell around the BTC all time high Dec 2017. https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2017-December/015455.html

Happy Saturday!