He can't say I didn't warn him not to make such pronouncements (did he really call for $300K price for Monero  I doubt it.) and handhold investors in HODLing during the downturn.

They need a market case. Maybe the game coin idea (but not understanding why game players want an anonymous coin). Maybe the idea that when the first fungibility violations hit the newswire, then investors will start flooding in (but I argue against TPTB shooting themselves in the foot). Maybe investors wanting their gains to be anonymous given the war on cash coming (just seems like most investors are complacent on this point at this time).

Thank you very much. It is the second pic I've seen of Szabo which reaffirms the first.

It seems reasonable, and afair TPTB have cracked down on exchanges for game currencies because they do realize this threat.

Is Monero ready to resist such crackdowns? Does it have decentralized exchanges? Can the authorities not track down IP addresses and make examples to discourage others from subverting a ban?

Might work.

My idea is an area that is more targeted to the market of those who need anonymity and thus might be more willing to fight. Not sure if game players want to pick an unnecessary fight with the government.

Has Bitcoin already captured a few % of its final market? I say yes, because it appears to be limited to helping Paypal & friends (Goldman, etc) do a global obfuscated reserve takeover of traditional consumer (or B2C) transactional banking only. And realize that most of the world's population is unbanked or already has a Paypal account (and I consider Bitcoin = Paypal = Coinbase = Circle already it is just a matter of releasing what is already in the cards).

Will Bitcoin ever be mined regularly by all humans? Is there any market for that?

Will Bitcoin ever be used in decentralized micropayments? Is there any market for that? (Coinbase et all won't be able to accomodate the same level of network effects that a decentralized solution would)

Because it was the best coin for GPUs to mine for a while after ASICs banished them from Bitcoin (so all that BTC discarded hardware value was infused into Litecoin), then afaik the speculators piled on to the ramp up (remember people looking for leverag over BTC in the 2013 run), and when that ended (and with ASICs for Litecoin) afaik it cratered (haven't been watching lately).

And this is a critical point. If you can move the worlds CPUs into your coin decentralized, you can beat Bitcoin because you can move more hardware value into your coin. Especially if you can give the mined morsels to be so small that no one sells and they instead circulate those morsels on a use-case that Bitcoin can't do.

Why do you think I expended so much effort perfecting a CPU (ASIC/GPU resistant[1]) hash that I believe is far superior to Monero's (you can verify or refute if ever it is released).

[1] I mean not more than 10X efficiency advantage for an ASIC.

I have to disagree with rpietila. The whales can't sell until the masses come in. There isn't typically enough liquidity until then. The market can sniff their moves out because they are simply too large. Only the masses are too stupid not to sniff it. The wealth effect is illusionary until the float is filled with those buy high and sell low. Or until you've converted the SoV into a UoA by bringing the masses sufficiently into it in small enough morsels (checking account not brokerage account balances) that they don't need to stampede sell.

Do you approach all your investments as lifetime or multi-decade HODL?

I thought investing into stores-of-value was a process of buying low and selling high?

If you bought gold in 1980 and I bought bonds or stocks, you'd be a relative pauper by now.

Changing stores-of-value is the normal mode. The abnormal mode is HODLing too long. September is the time to prepare to sell bonds (and in 2017 sell stocks).

I assume your point is bounded on stores-of-value that compete directly with Bitcoin for the same exact market as Bitcoin. In that case I agree with you that the chances of an upstart overtaking a market leader with Bitcoin's momentum are nil. And the chances of a negative wealth efffect on Bitcoin at this juncture are nil.

That is why put my sentence in red, bold that the only real chance for an altcoin to obtain escape velocity is to uptake markets that Bitcoin can't touch.

Monero's problem is there  is no real ecosystem (circulatory, network effects) use for its anonymity that doesn't also involve Bitcoin. So any network effects tend to accrue more to Bitcoin as the dominant market leader.

Edit: one very important point I have learned from this discussion is that the worst thing an altcoin can do is allow too many coins to fall into the hands of indifferent speculators, because they will surely sell to arbitrage back into Bitcoin. Your whales will need to understand how you intend to generate a long-term superior return over Bitcoin and that trading in and out is more risky.


That window is quickly closing. The Circles, Paypals, are preparing to close it, at least in Bitcoin's current market as a speculation on the potential for a global ledger and money transfers without being tied to one behemoth (e.g. Paypal). Bitcoin is really a way of scaling Paypal to everyone while pretending it isn't (obfuscating that is) owned by Peter Thiel et al. Bitcoin is a reverse takeover of global banking by pretending it is open and fair. Bitcoin is the way you force national governments to accede to an international banking regulation.

By what metric do you assert it has worked well so far?

I see failure on that point in every measurable facet that can portend a trend:

1. Hashrate and topology of the network is becoming more centralized.
2. Behemoths are driving most of the new wallets (or will soon).
3. Scaling now requires moving to IBLT centralization of mining.
4. Pools have demonstrated the Tradegy of the Commons leads to 50% concentration. You Whack-A-Mole it with concerted political effort while Bitcoin is small, but as the behemoths take over the economics will rule (even if hidden behind a Sybil attack).

The so called decentralization of the pools can't portend anything due to the inability to measure a Sybil attack.

I believe it is not the size but rather the quality of the economy that drives unit-of-account dominance. When you have fixed expenses, salaries, and budgeting then unit-of-account is paramount unless you can afford the carrying cost of hedging to the various units you account in. When the economy moves towards innovation and knowledge then fixed expenses are rather irrelevant. (I spend $1000 a month on myself and personal innovation could spontaneously generate 10 - 100X that). I'm having a difficult time fathoming how we don't move to a bifurcation of the global economy where those people who are unwilling to enter the knowledge age, vest themselves in the old world paradigm and the NWO of old world capital trying to hang on to all that it knows how to do. The only way I visualize it won't happen is if we fail and end up trapped in a horrific Dark Age.

Bitcoin seems to be predicated on the Moldberg unit-of-account dominance theory "there can only be one winner". The more I dig, the more I see in every facet it is morphing into the NWO coin and the supporters here are fixated on the oxymoron of unenslaving humanity by way of global, total dominance with one ledger. Do they not even consider this defies the trend of entropy (they create a very low entropy outcome that is a vacuum that can't be stable long-term). I suppose one can argue that the network effects from this low entropy spawn a lot of high entropy, thus offsetting my objection.

The market must be ripe for altcoin or altcoins that fulfill the knowledge age requirements for meritocracy, fungibility, decentralization, permissionless, adaptability, resilience, etc.. But perhaps if we wait too long, the network efforts of Bitcoin will be too great to overcome.

Note I predicated my assumption against a negative wealth effect on Bitcoin at this time with the assumption that TPTB are not stupid enough to cause a stampede into an anonymous coin too soon. I expect they won't ramp up the draconian shit until after the masses are already into Bitcoin. After 2017, the negative wealth effect can occur with the masses (majority) taking the losses. That is why I say you can gloat for a while then be left standing there arms-in-arms with the greater fools.

By that time it might be too late for those who might want an anonymous solution to gain critical mass and reach network effects. The TPTB would have won and can drag the world into a Dark Age global Technocracy. I am not asserting that is the only possible scenario.

Bitcoin could succeed at being the NWO ledger and an anonymous solution could succeed at being the free market's ledger. But what if the free market doesn't want to give too much power to one ledger because it decides that true decentralization is competing options? What if unit-of-account is less important than meritocracy in this new knowledge era?

It seems you all are fixated on the concept that we need a global revolution into a single ledger. Why? What advantages would it offer to humanity? If the goal is simply to get crypto-currency spread out to most of humanity, we can not presume that the gridlock of "one size fits all" pooling of capital into groupthink catfights is the most efficient.


Nobody cares. What software did you write that we are using? Results are measurable. Claims on education are not.

I agree. This is another factor that prevents altcoins from reaching escape velocity instead of profit taking arbitrage back to BTC.

This is why I say new markets are critical if you want your altcoin to reach critical mass.

When it will be too late to do anything. The Coinbase, Circle, Paypal, etc will already own Bitcoin by then and you will not have the means to fork away. The smartmoney will have been long gone into the anonymous altcoin (assuming one can present the necessary oomph of network effects soon enough). And you may find you've missed most of the wealth effect by that juncture. Who would want to trade back to BTC from an anonymous coin when the wealth effect is headed in the other direction and they would have to comply with KYC by that juncture.

Investing is about foresight. Place your bets now. Religious desire for safety and continuity is not the function of an astute speculator.

To reiterate, my answer was that your theory against arbitrage and profit taking back to BTC, required both a positive wealth effect on the altcoin and a negative wealth effect on BTC. I don't see that negative wealth effect being viable, because the masses will be buying what the smartmoney is selling. Your avalanche can only occur under two circumstances:

1. Negative wealth effect possible because the influx of the masses into BTC has peaked after 2017 (or the smartmoney shifts to the altcoin before the masses start flooding back into BTC circa 2016 - 2017).

2. Negative wealth effect unnecessary because the altcoin drives a new market of mass adoption that is orthogonal to the one Bitcoin already claims (and will dominate because of Coinbase, Paypal, Circle, Facebook, etc) and this market has no desire/utility to arbitrage to Bitcoin.

Btw, I am aiming for a combination of the two.

For those who gloat in joining that morass and the BTC gains that are coming from joining forces with the TPTB in enslaving the masses (under the ideological lie of decentralized banking, etc), I would cognizant that this system is a cancer on itself and it will likely find a way to expropriate and clawback those gains.

I will take my chances (hedge against possible negative outcomes with Bitcoin) on the concept that the true knowledge age will adopt a money system that has the ideological qualities to sustain:

1. Freedom to produce

2. Freedom of speech

3. Personal permissionless property

4. Meritocracy free market thus not malinvestment and destruction of capital

Those who follow the true path won't get to gloat in 2017 when you Bitcoin HODLers are stacking your 10+X gains (though we might be stacking better gains than that already because smaller things grow faster), but we might (hopefully if we achieve our technological goals) still be standing with our 100+X gains when you all have potentially fallen into the abyss with the cancer.

Since no one can guarantee the future, this is what makes a market. Place your bets.

Justus, you are so spiteful and disingenuous. Rather we prefer freedom to choose over "one size fits all". Your 0 entropy world is hell.

The knowledge age is going to kick slavery money to the curb. That is precisely what we are trying get rid of.

Zangelbert, where did you get your concept of the entire basis of money? Yes the basis for money has been to support usury, fixed rates of return, accumulation by capitalists of stored claims on fungible labor and fixed capital infrastructure (which results in an Iron Law of Political Economics collusion with the State, which the masses enjoin because there is no alternative). Isn't that the non-meritocracy the Knowledge Age and non-fungible knowledge production is killing?

I must thank all of you for the latest comments. Indeed this explains your angst against altcoins.

Since you have shared frankly. May I also without offending you?

The Knowledge Age cares about meritocracy more than it does for non-active knowledge workers to accumulate stored claims on the knowledge of those workers. The Industrial Age required your stores-of-value due to the economy-of-scale required for large fixed capital mass production. We are moving away from mass production towards individualized production and direct sales of knowledge to consumers of knowledge, thus economic decoupling of production from the requirement for stores-of-value.

Most of you stopped following Armstrong right at the time he told you gold would decline from $1600 to $1150 (as a first stop on the way to < $1000 probably $850ish). That was right about the time he started to ridicule hard money followers as tinfoil hats. You tuned him out because you didn't want to hear that your concept of money is all wrong.

Money is what ever society values most in the quality of money. It has never been the case that there was one exclusive store-of-value in the universe. I don't know in what absurd bubble of unreality you all could even fathom such a hypothesis?

Even the dollar has not been a universal money and store-of-value, although it has been a dominant one (but not forever). The NWO one-world reserve currency will not be the only store-of-value nor money used on earth.

You are conflating store-of-value with legal tender? Or what? Goldbugs spew so much nonsense it is exhausting to disentangle their delusions (especially when I am sleepy).

Edit: a shared unit-of-account is important when liquidity is paramount, profit margins are small, and fixed rates of return dominate. National currencies sufficed because direct B2B and B2C international trade has been insignificant. In a knowledge investing economy, there may be other attributes of money that are more important, such as the inability of money to interfere with freedom-of-production and meritocracy. I assert Bitcoin is losing this fundamental tenet, and as that becomes clear to the knowledge workers, they will leave Bitcoin for money which delivers the qualities they demand.

Were you one of those who said that the 2 times before when BTC was $600s and I said it was going to $300 (first time) and $150 (second time)? If not, get ready to be one of those soon.

Arrogant and correct. Would you prefer kiss ass and wrong? I am as humble as you are. If you want to have a rational, calm discussion, we can. If you want to fight, we can. It is your decision. I am your mirror.