Yes.  However, what does this mean ?  There are two possibilities:

Initially, there was a HUGE consensus amongst miners to apply the HF.  This is why only a small flock of miners continued on the old chain.  Otherwise, there is no "weak chain".  This can, or cannot, agree with the user preferences.

1) If ALSO the users have HUGE consensus for the HF, then there's only a very small minority of the users not in agreement with the HF, and the non-forked chain being attacked, dying and so on is not harming most of the consensus.

2) If the users are much more divided, say 40%-60%, then, as a miner, you would be an idiot to WASTE your mining hash rate on attacking the chain *where a lot of money is to be made*.  Indeed, if a small minority of miners went to the old chain, and you are a miner, instead of WASTING your hash rate on attacking it, you better JOIN THEM and get a lot of rewards.  If the users decide to allocate 40% of the market cap to the coins you're reaping in right now with the small minority of miners, that's much more profitable than wasting your hash rate to kill it.
Note, that's EXACTLY what happened to ETC, and that chinese guy, what's his name, claiming he would destroy ETC with his hash power... only to join ETC mining soon.


Because mining a chain with a smaller amount of miners than its market cap is very profitable.

Not at all.  Hard fork means that the chain is now two independent chains.  On each of these two independent chains, there is consensus.  There's no interaction any more between the two chains, they are now two different crypto currencies.  The market cap of the original chain will now be split over both prongs.  Of course, users and miners might all flock to one of the chains, and abandon the other one.  Or not.  In the end, the users will decide upon the market cap split, and the miners will follow.


That is exactly democracy: the majority imposes its will on the minority.  What you call "democracy" is what is called "consensus".
As long as the soft fork doesn't have a majority OF MINERS behind it, it doesn't impose its will on the others.  Once it does, there's NO FURTHER OPTION.  

What is important to realize, with a soft fork, that is are not the *users* but the *miners* who impose their majority on everyone.  With a hard fork, even if only 10% of the miners continues on the old chain, maybe 90% of the users prefer the old chain, and the old chain coin will get 90% of the market cap.  This is extremely lucrative for the 10% of miners, and the miners that chose the new pron (90% of them initially) will revert to the old chain because it is more lucrative.  In the end, the mining distribution will follow the market cap, determined by the users (they determine, on exchanges, how they value the new coin versus the old coin, of which they hold, initially, equal amounts after the hard fork).

This is not the case of a soft fork.  When a majority (51%) of miners, and miners only, whatever users think, applies the soft fork, it is imposed on everyone: the minority of miners have to follow, there is only one chain, and the users have only one token and cannot "vote with their money" as there is no other token to buy.

Soft forks ARE democratic.  They are not consensus.  51% agreeing imposes a soft fork on everyone, with no escape.   A hard fork will keep consensus on both forks, a soft fork makes the minority shut up and obey, which is the definition of "democratic".

No, those 49% will not continue to waste their hash power on orphaned blocks.  They will join the 51% or loose all their blocks.  They have no choice.  The situation you indicate only happens as long as the 49% don't know that the 51% blacklisted X.  Once they find out, they'll blacklist X too, to avoid their blocks being orphaned.

Well, what does that mean, blacklisting ?  Does it mean: (1)"not including your transaction" or does it mean (2) "not building on a previous block including your transaction" ?

Because (1) is not effective.  It would need perfect collusion of ALL miners.  If your transaction is waiting in the mem pool, sooner or later, a miner that didn't blacklist your transaction will include it in a successful block.  And as long as it isn't included in a block, it stays on the mem pool.  So the only thing that blacklisting by a FRACTION of the miners implies, is a very long delay for your transaction.
However, (2) is an effective soft fork.  If a majority of miners applies it, your transaction will never be included, because those miners that include it, will get orphaned blocks because of it.  So it is sufficient that 51% of the miners applies this effective soft fork, and you're censored.  When the minority of miners not censoring you learn about this, they have no choice: they have to censor you now too, or they will regularly lose blocks that get orphaned.  The majority always imposes a soft fork on the minority.

Note that this doesn't need to be officially in the node software to be effective.  It is sufficient that a majority of miners applies it in one way or another, when picking their mining strategy.  The non-mining nodes don't care.  They can run "non-soft-forked" code.  They won't even notice that your transaction doesn't get included.  It will live forever in the mem pool.  This IS a soft fork.

Since the advent of states, about 5000 years ago, we never had.  But only rarely we realized this.  And the few people realizing it were then "enemies of the state" (witches, communists, terrorists, .... name them, each epoch has its favourite enemy of state name).

This is ridiculous.  If you think that bitcoin core is "the master", then you already conceded that bitcoin is a totally centralized entity.  If you think that there are bitcoin cardinals and a pope, then bitcoin is already dead.  If you think that a few guys in a room are deciding on the fate of bitcoin, it is entirely over.  Then bitcoin core is just the FED board and everyone seems to accept that.

The bitcoin software is open source, and just anyone can propose a change to it.  This has BTW already been done, with BU.  So bitcoin's community has the tool to push the can somewhat further down the road.  If BU is not used, it is not Core's fault - and if you think it IS core's fault, then that means that you think that bitcoin IS centralized.

No, what is REALLY happening is the immutable consensus dynamics at work.  There's simply no way to change bitcoin.  You can nail some guys to the cross and blame them of all the sins of the world, but it is not their fault.  In as much as they COULD do something, it means that they were in charge, and that bitcoin was centralized ; in as much as bitcoin is really decentralized, what they can do is IMMATERIAL.

Bitcoin is what it is, and it has a hard limit in it.  This problem was there from the beginning, it is a design error, and immutability makes that it cannot be changed.  So yes, bitcoin is running into one of its fundamental problems, and that was unavoidable.  And there's nothing that can be done about it, because of its consensus mechanism.  Period.

Now, why can it not be changed ?  The immutability comes from the antagonist nature of many players, and the fact that they cannot collude.  If ever they collude, it means that the system is, after all, centralized.  The hard limit of the blocks was a technical matter that could have been changed LONG AGO, when no player had any incentive in opposing it.  Consensus over technical improvements which do not alter economic relationships is possible to find.  But now, this window of opportunity is closed, as the block size is now an economic parameter that determines the "fee market".  It is now a scarcity parameter of the same quality as the total number of bitcoins emitted.  Nobody would think that one can still change the 21 million of bitcoins to be emitted: that's part of the immutable consensus.  In the same way, the block size limit is a scarcity parameter now.  It will be protected by the immutability mechanism in the same way.  Because there are sufficient antagonists that have their advantage with it.

The only way to "save bitcoin" is to centralize it.  This can happen in two ways.  "important people collude" and set up a kind of cartel, deciding about everything in the future (including the 21 million coins).  Or, bitcoin's block chain becomes "vault gold" and a banking layer (say, LN / ETF / ...) takes over actual usage of bitcoin IOU.

In short: in principle, yes.  In practice, not for the moment.  But it is not "unthinkable" and it is exactly what was done with ethereum.  Only on ETC, this was not done (and the ETC/ETH split came exactly about because of this).  ETC was possible, because the change required a hard fork.  But if it is done with a soft fork, and a majority of miners adopts it, there's nothing that can be done about it. 

In other words, if tomorrow, there's a soft fork in bitcoin that doesn't allow blocks to accept transactions with *your* UTXO, and a majority of miners accepts that, your UTXO are dead, and there cannot even be a fork of bitcoin where this is not true. 

I think this is positive.  If these weapons are out there, they will eventually also be used against government targets.  As such, there won't be a desire any more by government to keep leaky hardware and software: they've lost their competitive edge that way, and are now part of the victims.  So they will not hamper a cure any more.
It would be fantastic if horrible things happened to the government by their own tools in the hands of enemies.  It would be fantastic if the government felt powerless in the face of their own tools.  Then they will stop pushing for holes in the system (and maybe refrain from developing even more stuff that will eventually be used against them).

The NSA and the CIA have been on the wrong leg all these years (no wonder, they are government agencies).  In stead of being on the defensive side, and helping the population, companies and so on, to develop secure, tight systems, they have been lobbying for holes everywhere, so that they could develop their offensive capacity.  But now they are themselves full of holes, and the enemies have their weapons ; and they have equipped their citizens also with equipment full of holes, open to the attacks by their own tools in the hands of enemies.   They have rendered the government, and the entire population and economy, fully vulnerable to foreign attacks, with tax money.  

No, it is not redundant.  It is necessary.  The only thing that is NEEDED on a block chain, is to know that there was a "right to spend" and that there are no double spends.  However, the naive way in which bitcoin's block chain is coded, conveys much, much more information, and this extra information has no monetary function, but is harmful.

It is even monetarily harmful, as it destroys fungibility.  All monetary assets are only fungible, if the ONLY thing you know about them, is that they are one of the monetary assets.  From the moment you know more than that about a monetary asset, they are distinguishable, and hence, by definition, not fungible any more.   This has no monetary consequences, as long as the value of one coin of the asset is not any different from another coin of the asset.  But when things like former owners play a role in the value assignation, or the spendability, fungibility is gone.

But on top of that, it propagates partial out-of-chain real world knowledge.  The fact that one can trace back the transactions of a given coin back to its creation, makes that whenever a previous owner is known at some point, this knowledge is propagated.  If I were to own a coin that was part of Hitler's personal wallet, that would be an unsettling thing, wouldn't it.  It means that I did business with someone who did business with ... with Hitler.  One could even frown upon me to have indirectly accepted value that came from this horrible man.

This is an ACCIDENT of the bitcoin block chain.  This is not needed, and harmful.  It is because the bitcoin mechanism is too simplistic and naive, that all this extra knowledge is visible.  Yes, we need to know that the right to spend was there, and yes we need to know that there wasn't a double spend.  But THAT'S ALL.  All the rest is harmful.  Bitcoin's mechanism is giving out much more information than just "right to spend" is OK and "no double spend".  It gives the god damned history of possession of every coin !  I don't want to know that I hold a coin that came from Hitler's wallet.  And I certainly don't want others to know that I hold a coin that came from Hitler's wallet.  And I certainly don't want the guy who I'm going to pay with that coin, to know that.  But bitcoin fails to hide this.

Most probably.  I won't deny this.  I would like to discover them.  However, you might make the mistake to confuse my "utopic view of how the world should be" , my "theory of how the world is" and "what I'm interested in about this world".  These are 3 totally different, and almost unrelated things, and it is true that from one post to another, I jump between these paradigms.

As you wrote somewhere else, you think that I think that we will get rid of government in one generation.  No, I don't think that.  I think it would be a good thing, but it will not happen.  I think government is an unavoidable, but absolute, evil.  However, my idea is that KNOWING that government is fundamentally evil is a good thing.  I think that the best one could do, is make people see that government is the absolute evil.  But this will not work for most, and I know that, because people are gullible - which is exactly the reason why government can exist in the first place.  I'm absolutely convinced, however, that no good can come from any form of government ; that said, there are governments which are less worse than others, in the sense that some forms of government allow people who understand the system, from not being entirely enslaved, crushed and annihilated by it.  I think that that corner is the niche for "distributed/crypto/...".  But by far most gullible people (90% or more of the population) like to be enslaved, are too naive to understand that they are crushed, and cannot be annihilated because there's nothing to annihilate ; and are hence happy collaborators of the government.  They don't need "distributed", or "crypto".  They are all too happy to be part of the system.  They are hierarchical animals, they already started their loss of individuality and are becoming another species, while the 10% or less of us are individuals.  The hierarchical animals are simply another, dominant, species.  So there is simply no hope for individuals to be the dominant species.  We are like the mammals during the Jurassic epoch: the best we can do is live underground, in the shadow of the dinosaurs.  This is where crypto can help.   We want to live as if we were invisible, ignored by the dominant dinosaurs, only come out at night, and hide underground.  It is the only place where individual freedom can hide.  But hey, the mammals survived the mesozoic era !  So, anonymous, discrete, invisible, unknown, "in-existent", the only way to live freely.

In my case, that is sufficient.  My only goal in life, apart from enjoying it, is to understand as much of the world as I can.  This is something that can be achieved in an anonymous, discrete, invisible, and unknown way.  Unfortunately, there are material and other needs that must be filled in, and unfortunately, those expose you to the dangers of recognition, visibility, and hence, all the hatred, theft and violence that goes with the dominant, government-believing species.  Some interaction is difficult to avoid. 

Is a well-established consensus protocol, working for ages. Also called "religion".

Indeed, this will go sky-high.  Soon, Bill Gates will be washing Evan's car.

This is perfectly normal behaviour for "government" (after all, the violence monopolist).

I don't think that these "evil practices" are new.  Government, since its inception more than 5000 years ago, has always been a lying, cheating, violent fraud full of hypocrisy about their caring for the "common good".   The latest joke is that we may "vote" for it, so we now think that we have something to say, which makes us "responsible" for their actions.

There are only two dangers with government:

- believing their caring for the common good
- believing they are all mighty

These two erroneous beliefs are the basis of their power.

I knew your non-sequitur arguments were going to end up here

Your argument against "time bombed obfuscation" is exactly the same as the argument that tells people not to encrypt anything, that way it will not be cracked one day.  Use http, not https, because it might get cracked.  Don't use encrypted passwords, they will get cracked.  But in the same vein, don't use digital signatures, they will be cracked too.  And then, you cannot use it to prove your ownership of coins, because others can do that too.

In other words, your arguments against using cryptography, because one day it may get cracked, are valid for ALL cryptography, including using encrypted communication, encrypted data, and, of course, crypto currencies, including bitcoin.

So the argument that cryptography shouldn't be used, because it is not safe (a bug, a powerful attacker, advances in crypto analysis, an error of principle....) also invalidates the value of bitcoin.   If you think that, say, 6 years from now, all bitcoin addresses can be cracked and their digital signatures obtained, then bitcoin should not be used as its monetary belief is based upon the digital signatures being safe.  If you think that just any sophisticated hacker can get into just any computer to steal secret keys, then bitcoin will not be usable either.    So the argument that cryptography will be cracked and should not be used, is an argument that makes bitcoin worthless too, and you shouldn't any form of crypto currency.

With that problem resolved, we accept that cryptography works (or we get out of crypto currencies).  The chance of the cryptography of ring signatures being broken, is of the same order as the chance of digital signatures being broken: it is more or less similar cryptography.  So if one can deanonymize the ring signatures, that comes down being able to deduce digital signatures if one knows bitcoin addresses too.  If bugs can happen, they can happen in any piece of code, so in bitcoin's code too.

Once we accept that ring signatures are just as safe as bitcoin signatures, there's nothing that makes that transparent block chains are more "certain" than digitally ring-signed block chains.  In both cases, you accept that the signature proves cryptographically the correctness of the underlying claim.  In the case of a bitcoin signature, you accept that the signature was produced by *the* owner of the unspent transaction output address secret key.  In the case of a ring signature, you accept that the signature was produced by an owner of an unspent transaction output address.  The ring signature cannot be produced correctly if the unspend transaction output was, in fact, spend (the rest of the block chain would signal that), in exactly the same way as you verify explicitly in the bitcoin block chain that this unspent output was, well, unspent.  The ring signature doesn't work if it was spent.  So you know it wasn't spent.  The only thing you don't know is WHICH ONE it was.  But that shouldn't matter.  The only thing you need to know is that AN unspent output was used, and that this very signature is going to signal now that this output is not going to be able to make another ring signature.  Exactly as with bitcoin.

Now, if you think that the cryptography is not working, then you shouldn't believe either, that the digital signatures of bitcoin work.  Why would you believe digital signatures of bitcoin, and not ring signatures of monero ?  And the cryptography is such, if you accept it, that only one single previous unspent output can produce the right ring signature, and by doing so, will signal that this output cannot be re-used for another ring signature.  That's all that is needed.   It is because Satoshi didn't know enough cryptography that he showed the explicit outputs and inputs.  But the only thing that he needed, was the proof that an output was spent only once.  Ring signatures prove this in the same way that digital signatures prove ownership of the secret key.

So, in summary:
- if you start from the idea that cryptography cannot be correctly implemented, will always contain essential bugs, and/or will always end up being cracked, then you shouldn't, ever, use cryptography, not for monero, nor for bitcoin, nor for https nor for passwords.
- if you start from the idea that no electronic device will ever be safe, then: same conclusions.

If you think that one can use bitcoin's code, cryptography, and secret keys, then there's no reason not to accept the cryptographic proofs of no double spend by ring signatures or the proofs of possession by secret key by ring signatures.  That's the only thing a block chain is used for: proving the absence of double spends and prove the right to spend using digital signatures with secret keys.

In other words, in as much as you accept cryptography, the monetary functions of cryptography on the monero block chain are the same as those on the bitcoin block chain (proving "right to spend" and proving no double spend).  And in as much as you think that cryptography is a failure, then you shouldn't use nor monero, nor bitcoin.

To put this straight, this is the "call the lawyers and the police" version of the story.  This is the "we don't need any crypto, let's do paper contracts and then decide what the contract wanted to mean by a jury".

However, let us not forget what ethereum, long ago, claimed, and was its raison-d-existence: "smart contracts".

They said all over that the usual way of making human contracts, where there's the letter of the contract, and then, the whole environment, that will judge over exactly what that letter of the contract means, in the frame of the law, habits, and a general feeling of what is just, IS NOW OUTDATED, because we have "smart contracts".

In smart contracts, they said, "the code is the law, and nothing but the law".  This was the innovative thing of ethereum: the code is the law and there is NO ROOM FOR HUMAN INTERPRETATION.  No dispute possible: you run the code of the contract, and it says what should happen, and makes it happen.  If you do not agree, then that's your problem, you had to read the code, which is the contract, the full contract and nothing else is the contract.  And NOTHING WILL EVER STOP a contract from doing what it was written to do.  It were *unstoppable contracts*.


Well, as you can imagine, with a new, Turing complete language, people didn't really *understand* exactly what the code actually meant.  So a lot of "smart people" signed up to the DAO, a super-duper smart contract that was going to play venture capitalist.  It said all over "the code is the law".  All these people "invested" in that contract, signing up to it, and to the claim that the code was going to be the law.

Essentially, the DAO was a big fund, that could release part of these funds to undertakings the holders voted over, with a lot of complicated gouvernance rules.

And then, a guy really looked at the code, and understood that the code allowed him to get most of the funds out of the contract using these governance rules.   And he did exactly that: he used the code, which was the sole law, remember, to give him part of the funds in the DAO.   He didn't "hack" anything.  He used the contract as it was written down, and on who everybody had agreed that it was the law.

But the "law" was different than what people, who didn't really understand the code, thought it was.

So they panicked.  They said that this was not "meant to be that way".  That the code is the law, unless one doesn't agree with it.  So then people started calling that person, who got the funds according to the "laws of the contract", a thief.  A criminal.  A hacker.  While the only thing that he did, was to apply fully the adagio of ethereum: the code is the law.

He didn't modify the code, he didn't break into any computer, he simply USED the contract as it was written down.  And that contract said that he could have the funds.  Even though this is not what people thought that the contract said.  Maybe (not sure) not even its authors.

So then, totally panicked, the only thing that the ethereum foundation did, was to "turn back the block chain" with a hard fork.  The actions of the contract were stopped, and reversed by the hard fork.

Some people, a minority, thought that this killed the essential notion of ethereum, which was based upon the notion of smart contract, and the two fundamental axioms:

- the code is the law, and the sole law: if the code does it, that's what should be done
- a contract is unstoppable.

Stopping a contract, reversing it, and calling someone who played by the rules, a criminal, was the worst thing that could happen to ethereum for some.  So they continued with the old ethereum code: ETC was born.

This is the general behaviour of a soft fork: if a majority of miners adopts a soft fork, as a minority miner, you have no choice but to follow, or become insignificant.

Remember the definition of a soft fork: a soft fork is a protocol change, such that all what happens under the new protocol seems still valid under the old protocol, but on the other hand, what used to be valid under the old protocol isn't necessarily valid under the new one.

For instance, a typical soft fork it to black list addresses or to turn back former transactions (what is supposed not to be done, but it can, with a soft fork).  The old protocol allows these addresses to transact ; the new protocol doesn't.  Any new block that contains these forbidden transactions, will be considered valid by the old protocol, but invalid by the new one.  As such, if you are an old-protocol miner, and you make such blocks, it will be orphaned by all new protocol miners.  If they have the majority hash power, it will ALWAYS end up being orphaned.  On the other hand, old protocol miners will build upon new protocol blocks without problems.  They will not orphan new protocol blocks.  This makes that old protocol miners will always end up losing in majority acceptance of a soft fork.  A soft fork accepted by a majority IMPOSES ITSELF upon the rest.

This is totally different with a hard fork.  With a hard fork, new protocol blocks are considered not valid by the old protocol.  As such, if a fraction of the miners applies it, it will make a new chain, on which old protocol miners will never build.   The old protocol miners will continue building the old protocol block chain and will not suffer from the forked chain that the new protocol chain miners are now building.   Even 10%-90% or 90%-10% splits, nobody is FORCED to follow another protocol than what he wishes.  The chain that is being mined is always mined with full consensus, but the price to pay is that there are now two chains (which is normal, there are two non-agreeing consensus groups).  With a hard fork, nothing is imposed upon nobody.  With a soft fork, the majority imposes its will on the minority.

Because you think your bitcoin private keys are safe then ?

Well, there are altcoins with hard limits, like bitcoin ; there are altcoins with extensible blocks too, without hard limits.  The first ones will face exactly the problem bitcoin is facing, but only when they "get filled up".  The second ones will be able to accommodate until they hit smoother, and more practical, technology-related issues.  Some alt coins have centralized decision infrastructures that can modify things in a centralized way, deciding one way or another.  

But the biggest difference between bitcoin on one side, and altcoins, on another side, is that there's (for the moment) only one bitcoin block chain, and there are MANY alt coins.  While the number of bitcoin chains is limited (to 1), the number of altcoin block chains is essentially unlimited.

So when bitcoin is "filled up" and reaches its limit of transactions (that's about right now), an altcoin can still "fill up".  When that altcoin is "full", yet another altcoin can start filling in.  And so on.

Bitcoin's legendary immutability will make it what it is today.  Exactly the same forceful immutability and consensus mechanism will make it impossible for bitcoin to do anything else but remain bitcoin.  I seriously doubt that the block size will change, that Segwit will get accepted, or that any other important change will ever happen to bitcoin, because of, exactly, bitcoin's legendary immutability.

Bitcoin has a huge first mover advantage, and a huge "moral high ground", which is why, 8 years later, bitcoin is still number 1.  But it is hitting its technical limits, as they were laid down long ago.   Alt coins have been living in bitcoin's shadow for most of this time, even though many of them are now technically superior, because they could implement solutions to bitcoin's shortcomings that bitcoin cannot implement (because of its immutability).  Bitcoin being "full", this will start eroding bitcoin's leadership ; alt coins will be able to fill in the room that bitcoin cannot take.

I'm not saying that a *single* altcoin will overtake bitcoin.  I'm saying that once bitcoin's unique position as first mover is being eroded sufficiently by practical problems (full blocks, high fees, long delays, no privacy, Chinese centralization...), *several* altcoins will fill in the gap, and bitcoin will be a crypto like any other alt coin in the long run, after its first mover edge has been eroded away.

Even though every single block chain will run into capacity problems, *a lot of independent block chains* are able to scale: just add more chains.

We cannot know the value of a crypto as long as there are greater-fool games, and greater fools come in.  The true value of a crypto, in the long run, is the extra value creation in the economy it allows to create, that isn't possible without it.  In other words, the true value of crypto is the competitive edge crypto brings, over fiat, to value producing agents, that bring value to consumers.  This is what the market price will indicate.  At this moment, the market price simply indicates the expectation of finding greater fools in the relatively near future.  This is not an error of the market.  If the market indicates, for instance, that a bitcoin is $1200, it means that there's an equilibrium at that price between new, greater fools coming in, and buying up the amount of coins that are made available, by "older fools" that find this a reasonable benefit to cash out on them.  But that is not the economic value of bitcoin in the long run.  The economic value of bitcoin in the long run is the value creation in the economy that its existence allows, and that couldn't exist without it.

Like the true economic value of a truck resides in the value it creates by allowing transportation that wouldn't have been possible without it (the competitive edge that truck transport has over other means of transport).

As of now, the only clearly established case of competitive edge that crypto has over fiat, is in dark markets.  There is true value creation in dark markets that has become possible with crypto, and that became more and more difficult with fiat.  By far most other applications of crypto haven't brought much economic value creation that wasn't possible with more classical means of payment, or contracts.  The main drive of market cap of cryptos resides in speculative greater-fool games.

But that doesn't mean that, when we run out of greater fools (that is, when all those ultimately interested in crypto, came to crypto, and no other people are interested or will be interested in it), that there will not be other value creation cases.  Only, for the moment, there aren't any on the radar.  

It is only at that point that the market will be able to indicate the true value of crypto: when there's no more hope to sell to greater fools at higher value, when the last layer of "greater fools" has been reached, and there's no specific reason to hodl any coin, because it won't rise because of more demand by more fools, but will only be sustained by the demand for usage in its value-creating use cases.