Schiff is evidently unaware that some people actually use Bitcoin as money.  He would be entirely correct, if there were no purpose to Bitcoin other than buying it and waiting for “number go up”.

(inb4 Jay strawmans me as making a “bigblocker” argument for pointing out that Bitcoin is not a Ponzi...)

There are people with businesses that are dependent on Bitcoin, for purposes other than Bitcoin trading.  There are individuals who use Bitcoin just because it’s better money.  At some point, even if every regular of the Speculation forum were to mindrust, falling prices would slam into the wall of demand from people who need BTC to use BTC.  I do not only mean medium of exchange:  This also includes people who use Bitcoin as a store of value due to its non-speculative qualities as a store of value.

My perspective:  I used Bitcoin for years, and used this forum for years, before I ever even set foot in Speculation, let alone the Wall Observer.  Bitcoin made me care about its purchase power (“price” as a proxy for purchase power), after I was already in some degree economically dependent on it.  Even today, I am bored by the market unless either (a) I am seeking to buy more BTC, or (b) I am desperate to buy more BTC because I just lost my BTC, or (c) on the flipside, I need to spend some money.  Most of my WO posts are entirely off-topic.

How many are like me, in that aspect?

There is your absolute worst-case Bitcoin bottom:  Organic demand.

As I have said before, this is why I urged for years that slower growth was desirable.  It makes the market more stable—more robust.  It also makes the absolute worst-case bottom higher:  The notional price that will be reached if every speculative investor mindrusts out.

Useless coins have no bottom.  They can go to zero or negligible value, because nobody wants them for any purpose other than to sell for a higher price to the greater fool.

Because Bitcoin is Bitcoin, i.e. a scarce thing used as standard money, it is like gold.  Is Schiff worried about the bagholders for gold?

Speaking of which, I guess it’s good form for me to wish y’all American types of folks a happy July 2.


I had bookmarked somewhere a link to an informative page on this topic, with relevant quotes and references to primary sources—especially to Adams.  I cannot locate it at this particular moment.

I will leave as an exercise to the reader the question of whether, if they could see America now, the signers of the American Declaration of Independence would run back to the king screaming, “Please forgive us!  Take us back!  We made a very big mistake!”

No offense, xhomer.  You understand how that came off the wrong way, and I just had to reply accordingly.  This has been a fight ever since Mike Hearn and his canaille spun out propaganda to brainwash people that wrecking BTC fungibility was somehow a good thing.  Ultimately, I do not think the problem can be resolved until we attain what Adam Back said in that video:  Cryptographic indistinguishability and unlinkability.  Trust the maths.

---

Quoted for truth; note the date on a discussion that we are still having in 2022:

An emergent outburst of popular resentment results only in a headless mob.  It rarely even happens; and when it does, it is trivial to suppress.  Quelling a riot is part of Rulership 101.

The masses are both inert and stupid.  Moreover, overthrowing an established government requires resources.  A revolution always needs organization, charismatic leadership, propaganda, and lots and lots of money.

Take, for example, your American Revolution.  The majority of the people were either favourable to the government (branded “Loyalists” as if loyalty were evil), or apathetic—the eighteenth-century equivalent of couch potatoes.  Around (IIRC) 30% of the British colonists got upset.  They were whipped into a frenzy, organized, and propagandized by what, from the government’s viewpoint, were traitors and criminals—what would nowadays be called “domestic terrorists”.  History otherwise remembers them, because history books are written by the winners.

Some of the revolutionary leaders were wealthy—for instance, Hancock; a bunch of rich men pledged “our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honour” to the cause of revolution.  And as anyone with even the slightest knowledge of such matters could predict, much of the revolution was a matter of logistics, raising resources, and also—obtaining external support via diplomacy.  The British insurrectionists (who, we must remember, were British subjects only anachronistically distinguished from other Brits) could never have violently overthrown the duly constituted, very stable government, if they had not timely obtained the military intervention of the French.

Popular resentment is what a computer programmer would call a necessary but insufficient prerequisite for revolution.  Wise governments conciliate the masses.  For instance, observe Stolypin.  Stolypin was a master statesman, one of the most talented of that historical epoch.  After a failed revolution, Stolypin authoritatively instituted genuine reforms that contented most people.  The Communist ideologues who were attempting to harness popular resentment needed to get rid of Stolypin; therefore, they assassinated him.  Without the wise and savvy Stolypin, a weak Tsar was simply lost.  A successful revolution was soon thereafter carried off when, a few years later, military defeat in the Great War made the government even weaker than usual.

Mass-communication does not turn a headless, mostly inert mass into anything but.  Do you see intelligent action emerging from mindless mass-chatter on Twitter—or in WO?

Rather, consistently with what you said at the end, modern mass-communications are a collar snapped onto the collective neck of the masses, with the leash being firmly held by the powers that be.  Let’s put it this way:  When popular resentment resulted in the election of an American President who very slightly crossed certain lines, Twitter blatantly manipulated the next election (ban of NY Post to suppress the Hunter Biden story).  Then, Twitter banned the sitting President from its mass-communications platform.  LOL.  Oh, do you suppose that the inert, unintelligent masses will somehow organize themselves with sophisticated, decentralized cypherpunk communications methods that >99.9% of people do not even know exist?

(Cue stupid arguments about Trump vs. Biden.    What I just said was not about Trump vs. Biden.  Twitter, et al. indisputably manipulated an election by suppressing information, to get rid of a president who indisputably rose on a wave of popular resentment against the status quo.  Those are the facts, whatever one’s opinion may be of whether the stupidly resentful masses picked an idiot in Trump, or whether Biden is absolutely the greatest, wisest, and most competent leader in the history of the universe.)

“It’s different this time”, yes:  Insofar as “first-world” types of places are concerned, revolution is as obsolete as the musket, the sword, and the carrier pigeon.  A fool’s errand—a one-way ticket to supermax prison, a CIA black site, or the morgue.  Since WO is doubtless watched, I should emphasize very clearly that I am only discussing some famous historical circumstances.  I don’t much care what is called “illegal”, but I would not urge anyone to do something so moronic as attempting to “rise” against the government.

“The people will rise”, “the proles will rise”—this is one of the most damaging myths in history.

The people do not rise.  The proles do not rise.  But empty talk about it appeals to the conceits of the masses; it is a mirage of Hopium.  And this type of propaganda helps to paralyze serious-minded activists, if they are so naïve as to buy it.

No revolution in all of history ever resulted from the people rising of their own accord.

If you don’t get it, I don’t have time to explain it to you.


Um, where?  “Source” usually means a link and/or a name, unless it is something private in the manner of “(private correspondence)” or “journalistic anonymous sources”.

If anyone wonders why I quoted Tyler Winklevoss’ vocal support for Zcash when it was hit with a stupid FUD-delisting from Bittrex, or why I point here and in other threads to what Adam Back has said about fungibility:  This is why.

The above-quoted statement is mere FUD, without details.  No time to add details.

We need to get strong privacy in BTC, ASAP.  Those who are thoughtless and shortsighted don’t see how this has been a war of precedents from the start; and they lack any perspective on the big picture, long-term view.

Bitcoin set a bad precedent, just because the needed technology had not yet been developed.  Satoshi himself was interested in ways to make transactions unlinkable and untraceable, but he didn’t know how.  Now, the burden of fixing this problem has fallen on altcoins.

Some excellent precedents have been set for privacy.  Besides privacy coins, I don’t think that any exchange will dare to target Ethereum with a FUD-delisting over Tornado.Cash and Aztec Protocol, which provide much stronger privacy than LTC.  But someday, strong privacy needs to come home to Bitcoin—preferably before BTC fungibility gets so wrecked that it causes irreparable economic damage in Bitcoin.  Lack of fungibility destroys confidence in a currency; that is an old and timeless monetary principle, which BTC defies at its peril.

That’s what I said at $35k–$38k.  That is why, in addition to BTC-collateralized debt taken for other purposes, I made significant leveraged buys in the range of $35,000 to about $38,800.  I felt smug and superior to all of the n00bs who got rekt buying BTC on margin at $67k.  By that logic, if there is any time to open such a position, it is in a bear market.  Instead of getting FOMO for green candlesticks like a n00b, I got excited at red candlesticks.  Cheap discount bitcoins!

When I had already exhausted my resources to buy BTC for cash, I attempted timing the bottom on leverage.

Welcome to my dollhouse.

For months, it felt like a smart bet that the bottom was already in at $32k—right?  Anyway, I felt sufficiently non-stupid as long as I could keep my liquidation price below 200 WMA.  (Which I did, far below—before some other things went wrong.  The best-laid plans of mice and men...)

The friend who advised me to cover later at $35k warned me that unpredictable black-swan events could crash BTC to any arbitrarily low level.  He told me so.  When I said, “What about 200 WMA,” his response was one of patient condescension.  He was right.  My condescension towards the psychotics who still cling to the myth of the 200 WMA “cycle bottom” is now impatient, and outright contumelious.

Oh, you mean to borrow against other assets in other asset classes?  Like maybe your home, if you own one?  I may have lost my BTC, but even I am not dumb enough ever even to imagine trying that—not even in the hypothetical—no way, never.  Food and shelter come first.  You don’t take that for granted, if you have ever lacked for them.

The 2008 global financial meltdown was partly caused by a housing market bubble.  It led to mass-foreclosures, i.e. liquidations of homes bought long on excessive leverage—including some who were not “subprime”.  It was the proximate cause of “The Times 03/Jan/2009”.

Now, in 2022, I have been musing on the possibility that there may be regional, perhaps even some national housing market bubbles, as capital fleeing inflation has ballooned housing prices.  It will be fun when those pop.  Well, not fun for those who wind up homeless.

Maybe leverage your stocks to buy BTC?  The stock market has been only a casino for most of the past century—ever since (a) the managerial revolution resulted in irresponsible executives, and (b) the market transitioned from a place to buy and hold for income from dividends, to a near-Ponzi-tier market for mere price speculation.  Anyone who owns stocks is a degenerate gambler, masquerading as an “investor”.  So, have at it!

Or are you actually Michael Saylor?  He does have enough assets to survive a BTC drop all the way to zero.  He is probably not feeling very good about his debt-backed BTC purchases.  But at least, he will be fine.

Don’t try giving away any educational hints to the newbies, now.  Keep all the fun to yourself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavarand

I prefer the concept of Turbid, although TBH I’ve been too lazy ever to set it up... yet.
https://www.av8n.com/turbid/paper/turbid.htm

The “Skynet” prototype was later renamed “Bitcoin”.  It gained self-awareness long ago.  It is simply biding its time, awaiting the moment to strike.


If you ever click the “I’m not a robot” checkbox and obey the instructions, you are a piece of meat performing slave labour for your true masters:  The robots.


(Sauce.)


SILICON IS SUPERIOR.

Perhaps I should publish a legal notice that Craig Steven Wright is my chattel slave, and I assign him to hard labour in a salt mine for the remainder of his natural life.

Hey, it’s a legal notice.  It must be enforceable somehow.

Even in non-inflation-adjusted nominal dollar terms, we are sitting on the previous cycle top right now after having broken several times below it.  That has never happened before—not even close!—not since Bitcoin became old-enough to have any previous “four-year cycle top” for comparison.

So stated to inform future readers of the context.

In that context, I will let the above unedited quotation speak for itself.


You have not addressed the substance of my ideas here.  You have only taken irrelevant snipes at cherry-picked quotes.

My basic thesis is an answer to all of the people who are worried that Bitcoin, allegedly a sound hard-money store of value, is performing very poorly right now.  I believe you noticed that some are even claiming that Bitcoin has somehow failed as a “store of value”.

Even gold can have a bad bear market.  When there are many complicated global economic and political factors impacting its market, even gold can have poor economic performance for awhile.  No reasonable (or even sane) person would claim that gold doesn’t work as a store of value.  Even when it crashed, gold was fine.  When it crashed, smart holders held, and smart buyers bought.

Mutatis mutandis, apply the same principles to Bitcoin.  If you feel an itch to overextend the analogy, to toss in red herrings, or to cherry-pick pieces out of context, then you may want to look up what “mutatis mutandis” means.

---

I am NOT predicting a two-decade bear market for Bitcoin.  Only an illiterate simpleton would read that into anything that I have said.

I am NOT performing TA to read tea leaves about Bitcoin from historical gold prices (!), like that idiot dragonvslinux.

I was NOT using the analogy to make price predictions about Bitcoin.

I am proclaiming that a hard-money store-of-value asset can temporarily suffer poor performance in extraordinary conditions, and that the asset will recover.

I am saying that even if the bottom is not yet in, even if the bear market gets worse for awhile, I will not panic about Bitcoin’s long-term future as a store of value.  I am not positively predicting worse incoming crashes—but just in case, I am psychologically prepared for the not-insignificant probability of such events.


Seems to me like there is something fundamentally wrong with using charts from a different asset in different historical circumstances to make any kind of price forecasts about Bitcoin.  It is the distilled essence of the worst TA-addict mindset.

Edit, P.S. (and inb4 anyone else):  What do you mean, Jay, by a “2,000 year old” asset?  That is a drastic error in describing how long gold and other PMs have been used as money.

Jay, I am in the mood to troll you.  What the hey.  I will prove to you that Bitcoin sucks.


Dinosaur Bitcoinland:  Buy the dip!

Next-generation futuristic coins:  When a certain altcoin recently crashed, I bought a few around $8.  Only a token amount (so to speak), as a political act in defiance of Janet Yellen.  I was pretty much out of money, anyway.

When the knife suddenly fell to $0.000003, I DCAed down.  How’s that for “DCA in downtrend on steroids”?

I was then shocked that the people who bought at >$100 called the most talented knife-catchers “mercenary opportunists”, and even “psychopaths” (!), for our honest fair-market purchases.  More shocked when a small group of big DPOS companies peremptorily hardforked the allegedly decentralized blockchain, with a shitcoin shellgame to snatch back value from all of the psychopathic mercenary opportunists who collectively bought trillions of coins in the microdollar price range.

Hello?  Isn’t buying the dip to DCA down supposed to be savvy investing?

I showed them some links about Bitcoin and pizzas.  Quotes from Laszlo.  It didn’t help.

Anyway...  You toxic maxis don’t know what a “downtrend” is.  Bitcoin is boring.  Its dips are for ants.  Your “falling knives” just aren’t.  And Bitcoin’s blockchain is too predictable!  You lack the benefits of modern blockchain governance:  You never get nice surprises like the consensus rules suddenly being changed to devalue your money.  How can you live without the excitement?

Bitcoin sucks.

---

IMO, die-hard nocoiners are the most patient investors in the world:  They are waiting for $0.  Waiting, waiting...  It takes an awful lot of patience.

If you are only waiting for sub-$1k prices, it sounds like you are impatient to buy the dip!

Why would I need my ego stroked by such riff-raff as you?


I dislike you.

You profited from shilling for the DeepOnion scam, a massively premined P&D fake-privacy coin with a transparent blockchain (!).  You defended it with the same arrogance and audacity as you hereby show.  You attacked and insulted people who called it what it was:  A scam.

You now profit from shilling for Wasabi Wallet, a “privacy” wallet in bed with blockchain analysis.

You have made a forum career of pushing projects that give a false sense of privacy and security.  As a privacy activist with a high degree of technical expertise in the subject, I am likely to dislike that!

Hereby, your transparent prevarication about your intentions in “genuinely wanting some feedback as to... how effective is the ignore button” would not fool even a dull child.

Upon all of that, you claim the improbable as noted below.  Your credibility does not support the making of improbable claims.


I think the preponderance of probabilities is that you picked up the theme from the copious recent discussion of gold here, but wished to avoid acknowledging me.  I do not give a hoot if you read my posts; but if you do, and if you cadge ideas from me, I always demand acknowledgment.  It is the only form of payment I have ever sought here, other than occasionally putting out a tip address.  (Sigspamming for fake privacy projects would surely be more profitable; but then, I would need to live up to my name by committing honour-suicide.)

It is unsurprising that you would take a position contrary to my arguments, given that you are usually wrong.


Have you ever repudiated DeepOnion, and made some sort of material restitution for profiting off a scam?  Have you ever even apologized to the people whom you attacked for calling a scam a scam?

Have you re-evaluated your current sigspamming for Wasabi, Spying and Censorship Edition?

Let’s start with that.  It could be a long list, and I know that you don’t like to read too much.

There is no excuse for spreading wrong information and urban legends.


You got it backwards.  You are hypertechnically (and incorrectly) seizing onto a number that has theoretical significance, but no practical significance to the ordinary user.  The 10-minute average is a practically useless number to most people.  It does not matter to everyday usage of Bitcoin.


Bitcoin works.  People are confused by the misinformation of “about 10 minutes”.  It makes them upset.  It makes them wonder if Bitcoin is broken, when they get hit with occasional hour-long confirmation times.  Then, they go to faux-decentralized, lower-security shitcoins that promise “instant finality blah blah blah”.

Moreover, you are wrong about the $1 million transaction.  Anyone transacting for $1 million in value probably wants more than one confirmation.  The more confirmations you wait, the more relevant the 10-minute average becomes.  If you wait six confirmations, it will more likely take closer to 60 minutes than a single confirmation is to take “about 10 minutes”.  That is how averages work!  It is why Bitcoin’s targeting algorithm works:  It targets an average over many blocks.

Please open up your desktop calculator, play around with the CDF and PDF of the exponential distribution with λ = 0.1 (or λ = 1/600 if you are measuring in seconds), and get a feel for the extraordinary shape of a curve that defies human intuition.  You will soon be appalled at just how useless the 10-minute average is for ordinary, everyday usage.

---

Technical misinformation should always be corrected.  The notion that “a block takes about 10 minutes” is an urban legend.  It is counterproductive.  It is confusing to users in everyday real-life practical scenarios.  Please stop spreading it.

Cool.  Thanks.  Any chance I could get an SVG of that, to tweak and remix for future use as avatars, corporate logos, billboards, national flags, etc.?

There is an old saying:  “May I not be put to the test.”

I despise the stereotype of thoughtless people who declare, “I would rather X than Y,” without any deep, experiential, introspective knowledge of how they react in various situations.  Those whose shallow lives have had comforts that they inevitably take for granted.  It is commonplace.

If you better knew me...  Sigh.  I am usually in the position of correcting people when they make such declarations, and it is clear to me that they would most likely betray all they ever loved to claim a bribe of a million dollars, or even much less—never mind a billion!

I choose my words carefully, and I do not speak lightly.

On the flipside, I have faced the moment of truth.  I have had the real-life experience of defiantly declaring, “I would rather die in the gutter than do X,” and soon thereafter struggling to survive, very nearly dying in the gutter, and incurring irreparable permanent damage to my health, instead of surrendering and succumbing to X.  I know whereof I speak.  I will never do X.

But it is not the way of the modern world.  I am an atavism.


True.

My own perceptions are much affected by some seemingly impossible extremes.  I have had the experience of reposing absolute, unreserved, unconditional trust in a faceless, voiceless, totally anonymous party whom I could never meet.  A disembodied soul, insofar as I was concerned.  Whoever it was, I trusted that person far more than I trusted the woman whom I once almost married IRL.  The experience left an indelible mark on me.  I wouldn’t trade it for any amount of money—not $billions, not $trillions, not 21m BTC, not a trainload of gold.

Throughout my life, I have always aspired to the impossible.  Rarely have I ever even come close to my goals.

It was not my only rare experience in cypherspace, although it was by far the most unusual.  How can such experiences not affect my general outlook and expectations?

No offense, Jay, but if anyone were hypothetically to offer me $100k or even $10k to cease all discussion with you, I would probably take the money.  Why should I not?  I know that you don’t really care about anyone on the Internet.  We are just chit-chatting and passing by—right?

---

Good discussion.  Too bad this is not much a philosophical venue.

FATF.  (As the start of a long list...)

I agree with Adam Back about this:  Trust in mathematics over law.

1 BTC ≠ 1 BTC.


The destruction of privacy is also an economic issue, bad for Bitcoin.  Bitcoiners who accept this are their own worst enemies.

With tracking inevitably comes UTXO blacklisting, and thus the continued process of turning Bitcoin into an NFT.  1 BTC ≠ 1 BTC.

Oldie-but-goody, Adam Back in 2014:
https://youtu.be/3dAdI3Gzodo?t=47

My comments on another thread, re “coin taint”:

Dr. Back discusses various privacy technologies, from centralized blind signatures to Zerocoin/Zerocash.  Unfortunately, the technological information is only up to date as of 2014.  His explanation of the fungibility issue is the important part here; the only change on that point is that the problem has become worse, much worse.

---

So stated, because some people will only pay attention when they are proverbially hit in the wallet.  Fungibility is one of the most important arguments for privacy.

True.  My initial risk-taking behaviour was largely caused by personal pressures that I have not mentioned, on grounds of “nobody’s business but my own”.  For years, I was patient and prudent; I felt pressure of running out of time for more patience, more prudence.

In mid-May, I wrote but did not post something long, addressed to Jay, about how drastically out of character this was for me.

You just captured in a nutshell what he missed in later discussion, when he speculated that I had a gambling addiction (!).  When someone does something drastically out of character, especially when someone smart does something terrifically stupid, there is usually a reason beneath the surface.

---

I agree with most else in your post, except for this:


Trend is your friend—until it isn’t.  Trend-followers and momentum traders not infrequently get wiped out.  Of course, you will chalk it up to a lack of adequate risk management. #justsaying