Some poor people, some middle income people have expressed their disdain towards bitcoin also.  Does that mean all do?  Of course not.  Ditto for "rich" people.   Plenty of rich, middle income, and poor people like the promise of bitcoin.  Plenty of the same don't like it.  It is meaningless to extrapolate from the likes of Buffett to make many conclusions based on his level of wealth.

The reason why is simple:  people have their own areas of expertise and are entrenched in it in many ways.  There were a ton of people in 2009 and 2010 who hated bitcoin, and most of them were tech people who didn't have a deep enough understanding of it to realize the potential.   It has been the same every year since: there are a lot of people who say "tulips", "ponzi" and "scam" and there are plenty of people who understand the benefits and who know that bitcoin has the ability to let people protect their assets from the greedy, grasping hand of politicians of the authoritarian (fascist, socialist, communist etc) stripe.
 
One key point is that many of the people who don't like bitcoin - e.g. Buffett (2 Ts), Soros et al - have a vested interest in the status quo and the ability to have a hidden inflation tax on everyone.  Others (such as Trump) haven't had the benefits properly explained to them and have advisors who don't want to explain the benefits properly.

The next day will be a big day for bitcoin since it looks like Taproot will lock in in about 20-24 hours (124 blocks as of this writing) - barring some craziness.  Like the first halving, lightning etc, I suspect that plenty of people will be watching it closely to mark the occasion.  All in all, this should be a big positive for the ecosystem.

The old adage is:  time is money.  That was of course pre inflated dollars or pounds etc.  But time is not fiat money, but money with objective value. Fiat is inflated away at the whim of politicians and so is consequently a poor store of the value you create with your life.

Bitcoin is protection for the hours of your life.

Who listens to a newbie like Musk?  Apparently lots of people are misguided enough to do so, but his comments have been clearly misguided to anyone who understands bitcoin in much detail.

Maduro was advocating the state backed petro.  Anyone who believed that a socialist/communist/fascist, statist authoritarian would create a crypto that wasn't under their control was naive to the point of being room temp IQ.  I haven't seen news stating he would be willing to use bitcoin, and won't believe it until I see it. Statists don't want money that is outside their control.

As far as a national currency for El Salvador, that is the last thing they need. Bitcoin is independent so that whenever the statists try to retake power, they won't be able to corrupt it.  Looting politicians need stay out of the business of creating money, many of the problems in the world are caused by corrupt, dishonest politicians (redundant) corrupting money. They like to use their power to steal from one group to buy the votes of another, while looting everyone annually with the annual inflation tax. What ES needs is hard, incorruptible money and they have the option with bitcoin.

One would think with his political persuasion and desire to foster top-down control, bitcoin as decentralized and distributed would be anathema to him.

I guess his mercenary urges trumped his principals. 

Anonymity of bitcoin?  Are they new to the crypto space?  At best you get some pseudo-anonymity, just ask the Colonial Pipeline hackers.

The problem is NOT that there is too much anonymity, it is that there is way too little.  Sure, maybe for some people they'll want complete transparency on their finances (you spend $500 on pornhub?  or $500 on LSD?  or $500 at the book store?), but most people know that freedom and anonymity go hand-in-hand.  Anyone who values liberty knows that free speech requires the ability to do it anonymously.  Just ask the protesters in the countries Russia, China, Taiwan, Cuba, Venezuela.  Just ask anyone with an opinion in the US that isn't properly racist - e.g. judging people by the color of one's skin used to be a huge negative.  Today, criticizing overt skin color based racism is grounds for cancelation.

The best thing about this is that it will highlight the importance of privacy and anonymity and the stupidity of projects that attempt to erode it.

Thank goodness that it appears that Taproot and Tapscript etc will lock in late tomorrow or early the next day depending on one's time zone because it will help the anonymity and privacy profile of bitcoin over time.

I agree.  Crypto threatens the totalitarians in the long run, but they can manipulate and use crypto in the short term.



And that is laughable. It is the typical political response:  yes, sure, of course, we will do something, it is just it will be 4 decades from now so it will be someone else's problem to actually do anything meaningful.

I have to say for a somewhat well thought out article, the part about bitcoin being a blocker for carbon neutrality is just stupid too.  There has been discussion ad nauseam about it and that just shows a shallow understanding of the issue.

Bitcoin doesn't require "belief" it only requires one to understand (and perhaps read and understand the code).  No faith or any other hallmarks of religion are required, only math and science.

You are right.  The Chinese communist party doesn't like their citizens to be free. If other countries follow suit, you'll see which ones are following their authoritarian, statist lead.

So more nonsense from the statist authoritarians in China today.  Anyone mining in China should move their (or at least a large percentage of their) miners out of China. 

The thing to remember is that it is irrelevant where mining occurs.  At worst, it slows blocks for a while, and makes it easier for other miners to win the blocks.



https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/21/bitcoin-falls-after-china-calls-for-crackdown-on-bitcoin-mining-and-trading-behavior.html

The thing is that much (I don't think that it has been quantified) of bitcoin mining is mined using spare power - e.g. power that would otherwise be dumped.  E.g. a hydropower station might produce X, but only uses .9X much of the time so that extra 10% would just be lost or wasted, not stored.  

So there are plenty of either intentional falsehoods because people don't want bitcoin to succeed because it will remove some of their power or there are people aren't fully informed who are reposting inaccurate information.

(Proof of) Work provides security to the blockchain.  If you compare, say, the total cost and total carbon footprint of the requirements needed to secure the Euro, the Dollar, the Yuan, or Ruble, you would find that they each vastly dwarf bitcoin.  What is needed to secure the US, China, Europe or Russia and hence their currencies?   (See e.g. nothing at stake etc).  Physically printing currency or electronically creating it is not the only cost.  Without the ability to protect itself any of these places would be overrun and the currency - since all are fiat - would become worthless.

That is definitely untrue.  Look at Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein et al*.  Good little leftists until they suddenly were of no use and were tossed overboard to be devoured by the mob.  They thought that the mob wouldn't come for them and that they were invincible, but the reality was that once they'd outlived their usefulness they were expendable and all their money did no good.

The rule doesn't have to do with money, it has to do with the woke mob.  As long as person X is stating the right things and donating to the right causes and the mob hasn't turned on them, they are fine.  Once the mob comes for them, they are toast even if their offense was jaywalking.  

Look at what happened to Antonio García Martínez (ex-Facebook, now ex-Apple).   He wrote things that people disagreed with and his hispanic-ness didn't save him.  Likewise neither did wealth.  Was it anything criminal?  Doesn't seem like it, but the fascist mob came for him and he was fired by Apple after a few days.  (Freedom of association is a great thing, Apple used it here, but should that be something he's fired for???)


* e.g. Madoff, Allen Stanford, Alfred Taubman, Ellen Degenerate (😂)

Is this another "Bitcoin is dead" moment?  Some people are acting as if it is.

Perhaps ADD or ADHD. Whatever the case, his understanding of bitcoin and the energy stuff is nonsense and shows that he is uninformed.

Rats don't like rat poison, so it is no wonder he doesn't like bitcoin.  On one point, Buffett (and hence Munger) were right when he said bitcoin is "probably rat poison squared".  It is rat poison to cash and authoritarians like him who don't care about the ability of people to keep what they've earned safe from fascists/socialists/communists and any other type of looter who wants to take it.

If the electrical grids really did shut down, we'd have a lot more problems than bitcoin mining.  Air conditioners, doctor's office, hospitals, roadways (no lights), no pumps for gas stations, no pumps for water the internet, etc. would all cease to function.  (And bitcoin mining would just slow down or freeze or migrate somewhere else).   Sure a government could shut down an electrical grid, but the populace would shut down the government.  (Unless it was something like a "One Second After" scenario).

Shutting down the grid wouldn't be a viable way to stop mining.

It depends on your timeframe.  If it isn’t months and is more than 2 years, the bull market has been continuous since 2009.  If things continue the bull market will only end when bitcoin’s fiat price reaches equilibrium and that may be 1 or 2 orders of magnitude in price from here.

If you are worrying about pricing even over less than 24 months, you are missing the big picture:  buy (or mine) and just hold it.

Most of the alts are just get rich quick schemes for some people without the security bought by the market value of bitcoin.  There are a few that have a purpose, but aren't as distributed and don't have the security.  I can at least understand why someone might use some of them.  Small companies should do the same thing as big ones:  whatever is best for the owners/shareholders. 

The decision can be blamed on consumption of electricity and accidents, but they are lying.

Don't believe their excuse.  The Indian government doesn't like gold or bitcoin because it removes people and their assets from the government's control.  There is no excess power consumption with gold, yet there are restrictions on gold in India.  The real thing to note is that they don't believe in freedom and the power of individuals to decide things for themselves.  They want to be able to take "just a small percentage" from each of the 1.4 billion Indians every year through inflation with no one being able to protect themselves. 

Monopolies are bad, but government monopolies on currencies are worse.  It indicates that the governments don't trust the people - or perhaps they do trust the people, but they value their own power and money more than freedom for everyone else.  They want to enslave entire populations and the world to satisfy their own psychological control freak mental issues.  The politicians in Indian (everywhere else too) are NOT looking out for the people of India, they are looking out for themselves.