I'd agree with most that there's no way Twitter accepting Bitcoin payments would itself lead to mass adoption, but I wouldn't undermine it's effect either. Recall that Doge surged 35% when the Twitter deal with Musk finalized: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/27/dogecoin-surges-40percent-as-elon-musks-twitter-deal-approaches-close.html

I'm aware that Doge is nothing more than a joke of a cryptocurrency that took off -- my point is that there'd be a positive effect if Twitter were to begin accepting Bitcoin that's larger than people might realize. I wouldn't expect a wave of adoption or some monumental shift in the price, but at the least a move in the right direction.

I don't think there's much any regulation would do except to limit the crypto industry. You need to understand that when the government introduces regulation under the guise of consumer safety, they won't merely approach the matter with a light hand -- you give even the slightest leeway, the government will be more than happy to take that opportunity to create industry gutting regulations.

Most regulations that are being introduced aren't doing anything for consumer protections regardless. They're just looking to limit crypto's growth because it exploded over the last couple of years. Combine this fact with the inflation rate of most currencies being near double digits, if not surpassing double digits, the government institutions will look to protect their own interest, and that includes regulating crypto into the dirt to scare away investors and ordinary consumers. Don't fall for their tricks, regulation is NOT a good thing.

It wasn't just the banking institutions that the government bailed out, they were happy to bail out other industries too. I understand why the federal government would want to keep the banking institutions from collapsing. After all, it's the government that aimed at creating more home owners in the first place which ended up incentivizing the creation of sub prime mortgages. In any event, with how incestuous the relationship is between the government and banking institutions, their bail out was a given.

I'm generally not in favor of using tax payer money for the government to pick which industries are worthy of saving. Jobs are at risk when these companies collapse, but it seems to me a recovery is quicker when the businesses that can't responsibly manage themselves are taken out of the market for newer businesses to form.

These climate conferences never end up successful because it's just another form of global wealth distribution under the guise of climate change action. Take larger and developed countries and force them to sacrifice their cheap energy production while developing countries are allowed to use cheaper energy forms for development of their own country. Even if the carbon emission reduction goals are met, there aren't any guarantees that there'd be a reduction in global temperatures anyways. And of course, that's making the stipulation that these countries meet their reduction goals. No penalties are ever instituted for agreement violations.

China won't be at the table, they're the world's largest polluters. They just laugh at the rest of the world while they continue to strengthen their economy.

Free speech was never meant to protect speech that people already agreed with. Free speech is intended to protect speech that is unpopular. There wouldn't be any need of free speech if you said things that were universally accepted as being true or popular. Protecting speech is really something the government should be doing anyways, not a private platform like twitter. Elon made the argument, which I agree with, that Twitter acts as the public town square where ideas and conversations occur in a digital world -- restriction from these conversations is akin to being denied the entitlement to free speech. You're more than welcome to say things that are hurtful or unpopular, you nor anyone else is required to listen.

And by the way, you're able to maintain decorum my just muting or blocking any account you're not inclined to listen to.

10 years ago I'd agree that hate speech shouldn't be included in free speech on private platforms. The idea of hate speech has transformed into "speech I disagree with" unfortunately.

The chinese chips are terrible compared to TSMC chips. If there was patent infringement, it's not like it matters. There is no global patent police that has jurisdiction.

It takes years and billions of dollars to build these factories. The U.S. tech sector could eventually catch up if they're inclined to do so, with impending Chinese invasion of Taiwan awaiting. TSMC obviously doesn't want the U.S. to become independent on their chip production because it would lessen the reliance U.S. companies have on them. If the U.S. does not have a reliance on Taiwan, there is no incentive for the U.S. to protect them from invasion.

It's interesting that Iran needs to scapegoat Saudi Arabia for the regime protests happening in Iran. They're alleging that Sauid Arabia are involved in some nefarious way and they're plotting an attack as retribution.

Iranians finally having enough of the Islamic and theocratic fascism so they revolt against the police and the government. Iranian women taking off the hijabs and throwing it in the dirt. They've had enough. The regime won't tolerate it.

By caring, they're going to have to start paying employees more. I haven't dug down into the reasoning of employees leaving, but I can only assume it's compensation related. Wages aren't keeping up with inflation in most countries so it would make sense why people would leave their job for more lucrative opportunities. Companies will either churn through employees or be forced to pay a wage that's competitive.


That's a good point. Inflation being one metric, the fuel costs associated with commute (along with rising fuel costs) probably play a huge role too. Many companies are asking workers to return back to the office, I didn't consider that.

The problem of civil forfeiture is that it is within itself a civil matter, not a criminal matter. Meaning, the owner of the seized property does not need to be criminally convicted for the property to be seized or sold by authorities.

I wouldn't have a problem if it was guilty people that had their assets seized, this happens all the time with preexisting law in most jurisdictions. A drug dealer gets caught, assets seized, drug dealer gets criminally convicted and they're sent off to prison without retaining any of their illegally obtained assets.

I don't trust the government to apply their arbitrary evidence threshold that's required to seize assets. If you want to dispute them, then you're on the hook for some absurd amount of legal fees for the crime of wanting to get back property that was taken by the government without just criminal cause.

I consider myself to be a capitalism absolutist within the context of currencies, whether it be fiat or crypto -- I think exchanges have their place. It's my hope that people don't rely on them or need them, but I'm not an advocate of forcing other crypto currencies to cease operations through anything other than consumer choice and market forces. So unless some governmental agency comes in and stops them (I don't see fiat phasing out entirely any time soon either) it's entirely probable that exchanges will exist and continue to operate as they have been.

With how the fees are, one could anticipate more P2P currency exchanges rather than going through an intermediary once crypto becomes more popular than it already is. That might reduce people's dependency on them.

I don't disagree. It baffles me that people are still taking COVID vaccines despite the evidence that you still get COVID anyways, and some evidence that vaccinated people can get infected at elevated rates due to antibody dependent enhancement. I'll repost this article on ADE that describes it - https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-022-03207-0

Given that we're more than two years out, nearly everybody has already gotten the disease, to which point natural immunity will do its job. Taking the vax + having natural immunity is pointless - no upside, just potential adverse effects from the vaccine. There are still the "Covidiots" that choose to take a booster every 6 months and continue masking -- it's best that these people just self isolate for the rest of their lives if they're going to take that much precaution. Consider it to be a branch of nosophobia.

Recession's probably already here. Companies are anticipating a recession and modifying their business operations as such. Q3 GDP reports for the U.S. showed unexpected growth but I expect it's an anomaly as two previous quarters were negative GDP growth. If the U.S. economy is struggling, and Europe is battling with high energy prices, it spells trouble.

Also consider the U.S. federal reserve has announced yet another interest rate hike, 0.75% increase: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2022/11/02/fed-interest-rate-hike-live-updates/10561495002/

It seemed that their strategy was to ease the gas on the money printing, incrementally increasing interest rates and hoping the inflation rate for USD would come down. Obviously, they recognize recession is unavoidable so they're aggressively hiking up the interest rates with the acceptance that GDP will slow down into a recession.

If the U.S. economy is in recession, the global economy is in recession.

CBDC's were just meant to "officially" digitalized currency that hasn't had any new innovations since conception. I use innovation loosely, of course, because CBDC's are to the detriment of the consumer. Most banking is done online anyways so it's not as if the government needs to digitalize the currency in the first place. They already have the central and private banks within grip.

I speculate the reason is merely to allow even greater control over money supply than they already have -- essentially being able to generate tokens or deduct them from a person's holdings without having to jump through any hoops.

The only relation between COVID-19 vaccination and adverse effects directly to women are menstrual cycle issues: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/study-confirms-link-between-covid-19-vaccination-temporary-increase-menstrual-cycle-length

Funny enough, I remember at the end of last year there was clear data that women were having menstrual issues that were just being written off as conspiracy theories. It took the NIH long enough to recognize there were adverse effects between the vaccine and menstrual cycle that were not immediately clear. I think the LNP's were theorized to be the culprit, I'm not sure.

I haven't seen any causal associations between the vaccine and death, let alone the death of pregnant women.

https://theintercept.com/2022/10/31/social-media-disinformation-dhs/

Leaked conversations from Dept. of Homeland Security show folks at Facebook and Twitter routinely communicated with government officials to drive what sort of content was permissible on the platforms.

Included in these monthly communications/meetings was Vijaya Gadde (now fired), head of Twitter's head of Legal, Trust, and Safety, among other heads of companies from Facebook, Microsoft, etc.

When they laid out perma bans for the COVID "disinformation," part of it was government bureaucracy detailing what sort of conversations are and aren't permissible.

Per The Intercept:


Right, because the U.S. government should be dictating to all the big tech platforms how the rest of us should think on these controversial and contentious topics.

Elon can have his first amendment/pro-free speech outlook on twitter if he'd like, but if the government steps in and forces regulation then he has no option but to comply. I can only assume that he's in the cross hairs.

It seems rudimentary to not print an endless amount of money in order to stimulate the economy, yet nearly every developed country in the world decided to shut down their economies in 2020 and print money in lieu of people working. And there are people surprised that the inflation rate for most currencies is ballooning to rates not seen before.

Twitter is ran by political radicals that are inflicting their own personal politics, which is out of tune with most people, and imposing it on a platform that has too much control on U.S. elections. He could not have fired them sooner. Watching the meltdown and protest this garnered from the U.S. press was amusing. It's as if the monopoly they've held on big tech having come crashing down is somehow going to destroy the democratic institution that is the United States republic. How hyperbolic. When Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post, it was celebrated by the same folks who disavowed Elon's Twitter takeover.

I don't think centralized social media platforms should be used to drive discussion and ultimately decide elections, nor do I think a billionaire like Elon should be put in charge of such a powerful tool. But, I'm willing to make exception given who Musk's predecessors. He can't be any worse, even if he tried.

I've traveled to some remote villages in 3rd world countries in the past around west Africa -- I can tell you that the luxuries the developed world takes for granted instill a sense of complacency that people are not aware of. These villages do have some electricity but issue is with the food supply and healthcare. Ironic that some folks in the developed world can have so much food that they eat themselves to death that they rely on the healthcare infrastructure to keep them alive.

The only time people do a bit of self reflection is when these luxuries are taken away.

Well, the U.S. economy is backed by an entire military industrial complex that is prepared to defend its own sovereignty and the sovereignty of its allies at a moment's notice. It's not entirely a conspiracy or anything, a currency is backed by the government's solvency and that solvency includes a military ready to defend a country's assets.

I'm not suggesting that the U.S. military will go out and invade a country for pure profit motive, war's are expensive. USD has long drifted from the gold standard and even some of the looniest conspiracy theorist will say that Fort Knox doesn't have the gold anymore. Without dispute, USD isn't backed by anything anymore.

All assets go down in a recession, Bitcoin isn't going to be immune to the effects of a recession. The recovery of Bitcoin along with the global economy will be robust, so you shouldn't worry about your funds going up in flames, but in the event you need to liquidate your investment while the economy is still in recession, you're probably going lose money. It depends on how stable your country's currency is during recession, I suppose.


The purchasing power still varies, though. 1 unit currency will always equal 1 unit currency when talking about fiat too.