Libra has forced people to seek out and clarify their thinking in a hurry.

Most rational people once past 'drugs and terrorism' start to see some virtues. Almost everyone in these recent hearings who's opined on Bitcoin did not come out with this tired old crap.

Well, it don't exist, nothing's set in stone and it hasn't even begun so it's fair enough.

The Libra bloke was a bit of a windbag who didn't come out with a great deal of precision. The people who came after were vastly more clear. And cutting.

Instead of a podcast or the radio everyone should stick it on in the background and have a listen. Lots of interesting stuff.

Hearing done. The Chairwoman even broke with protocol and asked for a round of applause from the witness types.

Overall that was very positive for 'real' crypto. The overarching sentiment regarding it was about not driving it abroad and finding ways to keep its innovations inside the US. At the same time they made it very clear that Libra is a potential shitshow and time bomb and nothing to do with the real deal.

I think in retrospect this Libra proposal is going to be looked back on as the thing that pushed Bitcoin over a particular hump. It has forced an awful lot of influential people to pause and consider what crypto actually is when they hadn't bothered before.

Throughout these hearings there's been a definite paucity of disdain for BTC.

Least expected bit - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf1dym16poc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-ZTkCNW0w8

More financial services committee fun. It's been a good watch so far. It's obviously Libra focused but plenty of sense being spoken about 'actual' cryptocurrency too.

We got a congressman questioning the difference between Bitcoin and shitcoins.

This is secondary to how much the US government and others loathe Facebook. As it stands I well and truly cannot see them permitting Libra to happen in the form they're proposing.

The man who deletes his predictions that fail to materialise.

A few weeks back it was 100 grand by the weekend.

Here's my prediction what you can take to the bank and cash - it won't be as bad or as good as squealing babies would have you believe.

Funnily enough I think Bitcoin will have rather a lot to thank Facebook for in the coming years. Libra is going to consume government hate for quite some time to come while BTC continues to do its thing.

Libra arrived like a chucked hand grenade. Bitcoin's progress is way more subtle and harder to upend. Facebook is so universally loathed that Bitcoin looks like a wholesome and entirely neutral thing in comparison.

Insecure and authoritarian economies will continue to make noises about BTC as they always have. They'll look like utter fools eventually.

10 minutes? Never?

Don't get married to one price.

That's his pizza from lunchtime.

Then he saw the price and it made a surprise reappearance.

Now he's going to have to eat it again as that's all the budget allows.

There's a better iteration - bulls take the stairs, bears take the window.

And yet is life for the average human any worse than it was in the 1960s when there were less than half the numbers there are now? No doubt it's still shit for plenty but probably no more or less shit.

If you'd told people a few decades back the population today would be more than double they could not be talked out of a vision of the world as an utter wasteland yet it's still ticking along adequately.

All the same nothing on this planet is infinite. The best thing we can do is make everyone educated and prosperous and then they tend to stop breeding so furiously. By the time large swathes of the world start to live a more 'developed' lifestyle a lot of technologies will have advanced enough for that lifestyle to be way, way less harmful and profligate than it is now.

We may be not too far off peak population.

Wirex have been hassling me every time I go near it about this token recently. At no point whatsoever have they mentioned anything about it being 'free'. Someone's taking the piss there and it won't be them.

I've been watching all the recent feeds. There is absolutely nothing to suggest they're changing the stance they've always had which was lots of the usual regulation for services, and don't be a bad boy.

The current crop of excitement has primarily been a vehicle for the government to tell Facebook how much they fucking hate them over and over again.

https://www.banking.senate.gov/hearings/examining-facebooks-proposed-digital-currency-and-data-privacy-considerations

Here's the Libra crew apologising for their existence.

Do you know - Who they are. What their security practices are. Who regulates them.

I can't find anything.

If a total stranger walked up to you in the street with a bag over their head and said 'give me several thousand dollars of your cash for safekeeping. I promise everything'll be fine' would you do it? Because this is the EXACT same thing with an even less personal touch.  

As it stands things are easily kept in line. Most people have no interest in hiding their money for the sake of an easy life. Most businesses are desperate to stay on the right side of the government so there'll come a time where in most first world countries you won't be able to find anywhere that's not compliant even if you want to.

What really needs to happen is for the loop to be closed and the need for fiat and conventional banking to fall away. There'll always be tax bills to pay but there may be large enclaves of people who use their borderless unstoppable money to lead borderless unstoppable lives.

'Promising' doesn't matter. It's effectively random what pumpers will latch on to. They may go for pure shit and ignore stuff that's hard working and innovative. There is no rhyme or reason to any of it. It's pure gambling and always has been.

Seconded, then again everyone sees what they want to see.

The gist I got was the same it's pretty much always been - play nice, don't be naughty, anyone who does get balls deep is on their own and that's all fair enough.

I think it's great too. Sadly hardly anyone else agrees.