Martin Armstrong Discussion

[InspireTTK]

Did anyone read the blog BitCoin Crash Dec 22, 2017?
It's a Q and A. It says Socrates called the high in bitcoin. Anyone subscribed to socrates and can verify?

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[realr0ach]

Hey Sidhujag, what's your damage control for this ridiculous blunder of logic?  Welcome to bitcoin, where miners use as much energy as en entire country and are being paid billions of dollars, yet the energy use and payment is all completely pointless straight from the mouth of bitcoincore:

God, I'm so sick of people who are supposed to be intelligent just lying their asses off and making up nonsense to try and hide the fact it's not possible to create a decentralized digital currency.  Take this picture for instance. If what miners do don't matter at all, then what the fuck are miners being paid for? LOL.  He's basically saying mining is for distribution only while a shadowy group of authoritarian technocrats are supposed to run the system behind the scenes.



Stop lying you fucktards.  It's not possible to create a decentralized digital currency.  You're just making up lies and bullshit to pretend this is not the case.  The closest thing to a decentralized currency on this planet are the noble metals like physical gold, silver, and copper.  If someone corners the market on one, people just start using one of the others.  Bitcoin is not decentralized.  Never has been, never will be.

[sidhujag]

Hey Sidhujag, what's your damage control for this ridiculous blunder of logic?  Welcome to bitcoin, where miners use as much energy as en entire country and are being paid billions of dollars, yet the energy use and payment is all completely pointless straight from the mouth of bitcoincore:

God, I'm so sick of people who are supposed to be intelligent just lying their asses off and making up nonsense to try and hide the fact it's not possible to create a decentralized digital currency.  Take this picture for instance. If what miners do don't matter at all, then what the fuck are miners being paid for? LOL.  He's basically saying mining is for distribution only while a shadowy group of authoritarian technocrats are supposed to run the system behind the scenes.



Stop lying you fucktards.  It's not possible to create a decentralized digital currency.  You're just making up lies and bullshit to pretend this is not the case.  The closest thing to a decentralized currency on this planet are the noble metals like physical gold, silver, and copper.  If someone corners the market on one, people just start using one of the others.  Bitcoin is not decentralized.  Never has been, never will be.

This is classic example that the genius of satoshi does not exist. Ones interpretation of bitcoin is not the same as anothers. Now that nash aka satoshi is gone we will never know the true direction in all game theoretical pathways which 99 percent would lead to local optima solutions. This is why bitcoin cannot fork. It is what it is and already offers an.edge on current fiat system. Current fiat system already offers an edge over metals so metals are not even a comparison here.

Adam is right its all about incentives but picking and choosing battles on which incentives to back may require this genius that does not now exist. Gavin probably understood this... thinking that one more fork of bigger blocks may be needed which would be last before network affect happened. Now that bitcoin has that gavin now focusing on random numbers which is much needed since he knows the days of trying to change bitcoin fundamentally are now gone.

[realr0ach]

Okay, that was pretty much a non-answer and you shoulda just said, "fuck if I know".  What about the reasons below for why Lightning Network is never going to work except in completely centralized fashion:

LN is an unworkable train wreck without putting all channel closings in the same common permissioned queue (meaning completely centralized).  The fact these systems are built around a finite block size means humans can easily attack that bottleneck by flooding it with channel closings.  Since it can be flooded, you're required to buffer them and either discard low payers or put them at the back of the line just like regular bitcoin mempool.

From that point, you either have to design as a hub and spoke model just like what Mike Hearn claimed, where the Lightning node is a bitcoin bank and everyone who uses it is their peon slaves to extract usury upon, or every lightning node broadcasts a shared queue with each other.  But due to the fact that people can try to flood the queue as mentioned earlier, each lightning node will have their own criteria for what is or isn't spam that they will broadcast to other nodes (meaningly INSANELY PERMISSIONED, cartel coordinated, and usury based).  The nodes might also be incentivized NOT to broadcast and force a hub and spoke model for their own gain.

If a Lightning node constantly broadcasts flood bullshit to everyone, they will likely be blacklisted by other Lightning nodes (lightning banks, whatever you want to call them), so the entire system is based around things like trusted and untrusted members, subjective anti-spam filters, etc.  In other words, for Lightning to work at all, it would probably be the most permissioned centralized piece of garbage ever to exist.  No real difference from having an account at Bank of America, and ironcially, the govt will likely legislate who is and isn't allowed to run these Lightning nodes, meaning Bank of America or Goldman Sachs will run them.

At least this is my understanding of the problems one has to overcome to create such system.  The fact bitcoin is not decentralized and it's impossible to create a decentralized digital currency in the first place, also means anyone claiming Lightning is going to be "decentralized" is a complete idiot when it's built on top of bitcoin.

[sidhujag]

Okay, that was pretty much a non-answer and you shoulda just said, "fuck if I know".  What about the reasons below for why Lightning Network is never going to work except in completely centralized fashion:

LN is an unworkable train wreck without putting all channel closings in the same common permissioned queue (meaning completely centralized).  The fact these systems are built around a finite block size means humans can easily attack that bottleneck by flooding it with channel closings.  Since it can be flooded, you're required to buffer them and either discard low payers or put them at the back of the line just like regular bitcoin mempool.

From that point, you either have to design as a hub and spoke model just like what Mike Hearn claimed, where the Lightning node is a bitcoin bank and everyone who uses it is their peon slaves to extract usury upon, or every lightning node broadcasts a shared queue with each other.  But due to the fact that people can try to flood the queue as mentioned earlier, each lightning node will have their own criteria for what is or isn't spam that they will broadcast to other nodes (meaningly INSANELY PERMISSIONED, cartel coordinated, and usury based).  The nodes might also be incentivized NOT to broadcast and force a hub and spoke model for their own gain.

If a Lightning node constantly broadcasts flood bullshit to everyone, they will likely be blacklisted by other Lightning nodes (lightning banks, whatever you want to call them), so the entire system is based around things like trusted and untrusted members, subjective anti-spam filters, etc.  In other words, for Lightning to work at all, it would probably be the most permissioned centralized piece of garbage ever to exist.  No real difference from having an account at Bank of America, and ironcially, the govt will likely legislate who is and isn't allowed to run these Lightning nodes, meaning Bank of America or Goldman Sachs will run them.

At least this is my understanding of the problems one has to overcome to create such system.  The fact bitcoin is not decentralized and it's impossible to create a decentralized digital currency in the first place, also means anyone claiming Lightning is going to be "decentralized" is a complete idiot when it's built on top of bitcoin.

It may bottleneck but there are ways to make it work. You keep getting hung up on the transacting processor part where btc is a settlement layer. Exters pyramid will have alts right above btc at the bottom. I have for example a way to make LN work in a more scalable way horizontal to userbase. Schnorr also helps with multisig and p2sh transactions. You seem to not have your engineering hat on again.

[thejaytiesto]

r0ach you are a broken record. Gold is absolutely useless when it comes to sovereign money or any concept of freedom at all. Need to cross a border with your gold? good luck with that. Need to make financial transactions of any relevance? (beyond your local community) good luck with that.

If crypto cannot deliver in it's promise to store and move wealth from A to B permissionless and borderless (and Bitcoin is delivering so far... when was the last time you saw a transaction got censured, or someone got caught with BTC trying to cross a border?) then we are fucked, simple as that. When you see a Bitcoin transaction that's going to a certain person getting censured by a certain government or 3 letter agency, or when you see people not be able to cross borders carrying Bitcoin, then you can say Bitcoin is done for. In any case, gold isn't going to cut it.

[tominsoto]

Anonymint, good to see you're still around. Ethereum was a joint effort with many people involved from the beginning. I did my part as did Vitalik and the rest; apparently, the Ethereum org doesn't want to call me a founder thus I guess my role was minimal, but it was a lot of fun. It is true Mint and I had many discussions about finance both during my time at Invictus and after. My memory fails to recall all the things that were said, but I do like his outside of the box thinking and also love of Scala. Although I'm still a Haskell man

[sidhujag]

Anonymint, good to see you're still around. Ethereum was a joint effort with many people involved from the beginning. I did my part as did Vitalik and the rest; apparently, the Ethereum org doesn't want to call me a founder thus I guess my role was minimal, but it was a lot of fun. It is true Mint and I had many discussions about finance both during my time at Invictus and after. My memory fails to recall all the things that were said, but I do like his outside of the box thinking and also love of Scala. Although I'm still a Haskell man

What the fuck is this.. i dont understand these accounts popping up and saying the same thing over and over. And yes gold sucks. Dyor.

[STT]

r0ach you are a broken record. Gold is absolutely useless when it comes to sovereign money or any concept of freedom at all. Need to cross a border with your gold? good luck with that. Need to make financial transactions of any relevance? (beyond your local community) good luck with that.

If crypto cannot deliver in it's promise to store and move wealth from A to B permissionless and borderless (and Bitcoin is delivering so far... when was the last time you saw a transaction got censured, or someone got caught with BTC trying to cross a border?) then we are fucked, simple as that. When you see a Bitcoin transaction that's going to a certain person getting censured by a certain government or 3 letter agency, or when you see people not be able to cross borders carrying Bitcoin, then you can say Bitcoin is done for. In any case, gold isn't going to cut it.

Gold is very effective at transporting value for the masses of the population.   Its an extremely compact form of value and can be combined with various metals if need be.    You are telling me someone cant just put their gold into a candlestick or something innocous and transport or send it without much problem.

Obviously crypto is much more transactional and quicker and in theory it should be lower spread due to be processed by machines, at present its failing in that value component so no instrument is perfectly obviously.   Gold will and is used universally pretty much and I dont doubt this will continue alongside any more recent innovations in value and technology.  I welcome both.

There is the famous tale of the Nobel Prize winner during ww2 who fled the Germans.  To keep his prize, he as a chemist disolved the gold into a liquid solution and placed it on a shelf in his lab.   After the war he returned and reformed his gold medal back to its original form, its a very adaptable metal and perfectly usable now

[realr0ach]

No point even responding to people who claim "HERP DERP GOLD IS BAD AND CRYPTO IS BETTER BECAUSE YOU CAN DUMP CRYPTO FASTER".  For fucks sake, you can send and dump USD fiat jew notes faster than either of them, it doesn't make those good either.  I also noticed Sidhujag has 0 answers to any of those Lightning Network problems I listed for why it won't work.  He also did not address the fact that so called Lightning nodes probably have incentive to FORCE the system into a hub and spoke model INSTEAD of broadcasting transactions to other nodes, that way they have a captive audience to practice usury on.

[sidhujag]

No point even responding to people who claim "HERP DERP GOLD IS BAD AND CRYPTO IS BETTER BECAUSE YOU CAN DUMP CRYPTO FASTER".  For fucks sake, you can send and dump USD fiat jew notes faster than either of them, it doesn't make those good either.  I also noticed Sidhujag has 0 answers to any of those Lightning Network problems I listed for why it won't work.  He also did not address the fact that so called Lightning nodes probably have incentive to FORCE the system into a hub and spoke model INSTEAD of broad casting transactions to other nodes, that way they have a captive audience to practice usury on.

Sure I did you just gotta learn how to read.

[CornCube]

I have for example a way to make LN work in a more scalable way horizontal to userbase. Schnorr also helps with multisig and p2sh transactions. You seem to not have your engineering hat on again.

Show me the details (sufficiently summarized because I don't have time) and I will show you that you are incorrect. I find that you often make technological claims in this thread without sufficient peer review.

Btw, I tried to send my son $100 for Xmas and I told him to give me a Bitcoin Cash address because I didn't have any BTC right now and because the transaction fees are too high. And I told him to be careful because BTC and BCH addresses are not distinguishable algorithmically. He said he had Coinbase and then I remembered Coinbase had recently suspended BCH because of some insider trading investigation (presuming that their acceptance of BCH is what lead to the recent pump to $4000). He opted for me to have a check mailed from my Wells Fargo bank even though it would be 5 days delayed.

Crypto is still not ready for prime time. It's too difficult to use, too many caveats and snafus, and too many centralized large players with too much dominance over the market. But probably these are just growing pains, not catastrophic, because some project will deliver on decentralization at sufficient scale.

P.S. Finally got an MRI and I have numerous 0.5 - 1cm cysts on my liver, spleen, and left kidney. The Tuberculosis is entirely cleared from my lungs. So probably I need surgery to remove the cysts. Apparently the chronic fatigue and brain fog (which has so severely restricted my productivity) will abate immediately after surgery. Hopefully surgery in January if a quick change in diet, exercise intensity, and intravenous vitamin C is not able to cause the cysts to spontaneously burst or diminish. Apparently those cysts have been there since at least 2016 when the ultrasound revealing roughed gut organs, but the stupid doctors here never mentioned the possibility that the ultrasound could be indicating cysts. They should have ordered an MRI back then! I actually had to demand the MRI because the doctor here was wanting endoscopy instead! It's all about how they make the most money I think (the MRI is done by a radiologist, not them). I've been told that the politics of the hospitals here is more dysfunctional than the politics of the government! And boy have I suffered and lost a half-lifetime of productivity because of it! The gut effects started after the acute peptic ulcer ER hospitalization in May 2012. I have to find a surgeon I can trust (not some Asian doctor like the one who blinded my eye) and that I can afford (no health insurance, pre-existing condition)

Anonymint, good to see you're still around. Ethereum was a joint effort with many people involved from the beginning. I did my part as did Vitalik and the rest; apparently, the Ethereum org doesn't want to call me a founder thus I guess my role was minimal, but it was a lot of fun. It is true Mint and I had many discussions about finance both during my time at Invictus and after. My memory fails to recall all the things that were said, but I do like his outside of the box thinking and also love of Scala. Although I'm still a Haskell man

What the fuck is this.. i dont understand these accounts popping up and saying the same thing over and over. And yes gold sucks. Dyor.

Somebody apparently is trying to pretend that Charles Hoskinson is writing anonymous messages. It's probably some parody on me of some sort, implying that I'm delusional or something of that sort. It's referring to the time before Charles started Ethereum and he and I had some brief interactions. But Charles (of IOHK, ADA, Cardero, etc) is big time now Mr. Haskell  (Edinburgh University, Philip Wadler, etc) of crypto. For those of you who understand programming language design (so then you understand Wadler is a significant person), could try to understand the significance of something I wrote this week. Haskell will not become the next mainstream programming language. Lucid might. Btw, click that link to Wadler is a significant person and you get a little surprise.

[CornCube]

Of course gold is fungible.  You're trying to apply externalities such as government that are irrelevant to the definition at hand.  Yes, the govt can make a law outlawing oxygen too. Does it mean oxygen is not fungible now?  No.  The periodic table does not recognize the authority of a man claiming to be god (govt).

Breathing is decentralized. Mediums-of-exchange and stores-of-value are not, as they depend on the consensus CONFIDENCE of even a significant minority of the population.

Gold is a highly inferior medium-of-exchange. It's store-of-value function is suffering from the changes in technology and surveillance which make it nearly impossible to transport it without suffering extreme risk. Used to be you could hop on a boat and take your gold with you (with sufficient hired security). Now you need permission from government to do it, else you're at extreme risk of being thrown in some sort of Guantanamo Bay prison.

Fungibility is really not the relevant FUD any more. The issue is that no currency nor store-of-value operates outside of government. And thus cryptocurrency at least offers the ability to do jurisdictional arbitrage. This will work until the NWO world goverment is formed (because the Zionists want us to subvert the nation-states!). I told all of you that the Zionists created Bitcoin in order to force the nation-states to demand a world government because Bitcoin subsumes the authority of any one grouping of nation-states.

Bitcoin is a bottom-up subterfuge of sovereignty (both nation-state and personal sovereignty are eventually destroyed at their end game).

By not investing in crypto, you're missing out on the massive transformation of world from nation-states to a NWO world government model. You can't stop this outcome with your silly precious metals fetish. The elite have been quoted as stating, "we will burn the fingertips of the goldbugs up to their armpits". You gonna learn the hard way @roach.

[Zertae]

It really does feel as though Christmas is being used an excuse not to do anything! Volumes have been poor for a while but recent trading questions whether we really need to open five days a week. No-one expected the BOJ to light the fuse and that was reflected in todays price movement. Early losses were erased by the afternoon resulting in an almost unchanged session for the Nikkei. It was the KOPSI declining 1.7% that focused peoples attention.

[CornCube]

Anyone who speaks in terms of an "end" goal is ignorant of the fact that the Universe must be relativistic and without a definable end goal, lest we wouldn't exist in any sense other than a prescripted recording. I've explained why numerous times in my archives.

You have no grounds to conclude that the universe is not prescripted. Our existence as prescripted entities would in no way negate our validity or our intrinsic value.

There are definitely reasons to believe that the universe actually is prescripted

See:
The Illusion of Time : Past, Present and Future all exist Together
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vrqmMoI0wks

and

Time is NOT real: Physicists argue EVERYTHING happens at the same time
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.express.co.uk/news/science/738387/Time-NOT-real-EVERYTHING-happens-same-time-einstein/amp

How much time has passed from the perspectives of a single photon travelling outward from the moment of the Big Bang?

Answer: None our moment and the moment of the Big Bang are identical from that perspective.

I don't have time to watch those videos. But what they theorize is a circular argument. Yes an omniscient being which has a total ordering perspective, could see the Universe as prescripted.

But never we will have nor measure a totally ordered perspective. Because if we could, then we could not be inside the prescripted world.

@CoinCube, I disagree with the claim that top-down morass is a requirement for, or even a provably more, long-term competitive strategy. Go ahead and tie all your shoelaces together with your brethren.

I believe I showed mathematically that top-down control is a requirement to be competitive.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=365141.msg4897280#msg4897280

You showed that some partial top-down orders must exist. That doesn't prove that everything must be totally ordered.

I pointed out to you numerous times since then that a decentralized system can be composed of a plurality of top-down orders. Think fractals. The structure of top-down orders within partial orders is infinitely detailed zooming in and out of the fractal structure of containment.

[thejaytiesto]

r0ach you are a broken record. Gold is absolutely useless when it comes to sovereign money or any concept of freedom at all. Need to cross a border with your gold? good luck with that. Need to make financial transactions of any relevance? (beyond your local community) good luck with that.

If crypto cannot deliver in it's promise to store and move wealth from A to B permissionless and borderless (and Bitcoin is delivering so far... when was the last time you saw a transaction got censured, or someone got caught with BTC trying to cross a border?) then we are fucked, simple as that. When you see a Bitcoin transaction that's going to a certain person getting censured by a certain government or 3 letter agency, or when you see people not be able to cross borders carrying Bitcoin, then you can say Bitcoin is done for. In any case, gold isn't going to cut it.

Gold is very effective at transporting value for the masses of the population.   Its an extremely compact form of value and can be combined with various metals if need be.    You are telling me someone cant just put their gold into a candlestick or something innocous and transport or send it without much problem.

Obviously crypto is much more transactional and quicker and in theory it should be lower spread due to be processed by machines, at present its failing in that value component so no instrument is perfectly obviously.   Gold will and is used universally pretty much and I dont doubt this will continue alongside any more recent innovations in value and technology.  I welcome both.

There is the famous tale of the Nobel Prize winner during ww2 who fled the Germans.  To keep his prize, he as a chemist disolved the gold into a liquid solution and placed it on a shelf in his lab.   After the war he returned and reformed his gold medal back to its original form, its a very adaptable metal and perfectly usable now

How is gold compact?

Like I said, you could form a local community (like the amish or whatever) and use it as currency, but that is all, you can't do global commerce with gold, it's impossible. Any relevant amounts cannot be moved across borders. You can't expect your amount to be transported smoothly all over the world. You can't call having to trust some people to carry your gold around more decentralized and secure than crypto with straight face.



If you want to move relevant amounts (that's like $10 million) good luck crossing borders carrying that brick. Even $1 million would be impossible. This is not the 1900 anymore, they have scanners, they will see where you hide your gold. Meanwhile bitcoin holders just have to carry a pendrive, or just temporarily host your encrypted wallet online while you take a plane so you don't have to carry anything (chances of anything wrong happening during this limited time are really low). If you don't see the value in this then you have no hope.

[STT]

The gold is fungible, I dont have to carry the brick 10,000 miles across borders.    I sell my gold in one gold store this side of the Atlantic and the gold smith on the other side Atlantic gives that value gold to my creditor.   He doesnt care because its the same value both sides, he only wants to receive the value in the transaction so moving the physical item is not really needed especially.
   If neither the seller not creditor are in a state of war, security is feasible and normal in many transactions, I'm not seeing a problem here.  The real war is a kind of cold war on value lost, unstated with unsurfaced consequences.  Venezuela transported their gold physically back home under guard but it did no good as their problem is ongoing policy failures, they neednt have bothered because it all needs to be sold anyway.   The world has ongoing policy failures, value is lost and diverted to government just like Venezuela suffers but not as obviously.

There should be a place for both systems of exchange and I will argue crypto could and should be more convenient, quicker more efficient and cheaper to transact but it really needs to focus on its best properties and let gold do the really long term job of holding value.  
 Right now crypto has lost its a way a bit, it should not try to be this speculative lump asset.  Its best at very fast transactions, amazing monetary velocity like you say gold can be cumbersome but it is still usable even in this modern digital world.   Im as big a fan of technology as anybody and also the amazing pace of development possible and the way it'll impact society in various ways but gold wont be made redundant, it'll still remain unique and valued in decades.   I dont see it declining like we have seen since Nixon, I expect a rebalance to more use.  Not physical coins because gold is in final settlement not so much everyday exchange but this is a clash of ideas and I appreciate that could appear nonsense to some and counter-intuitive

[sidhujag]

The gold is fungible, I dont have to carry the brick 10,000 miles across borders.    I sell my gold in one gold store this side of the Atlantic and the gold smith on the other side Atlantic gives that value gold to my creditor.   He doesnt care because its the same value both sides, he only wants to receive the value in the transaction so moving the physical item is not really needed especially.
   If neither the seller not creditor are in a state of war, security is feasible and normal in many transactions, I'm not seeing a problem here.  The real war is a kind of cold war on value lost, unstated with unsurfaced consequences.  Venezuela transported their gold physically back home under guard but it did no good as their problem is ongoing policy failures, they neednt have bothered because it all needs to be sold anyway.   The world has ongoing policy failures, value is lost and diverted to government just like Venezuela suffers but not as obviously.

There should be a place for both systems of exchange and I will argue crypto could and should be more convenient, quicker more efficient and cheaper to transact but it really needs to focus on its best properties and let gold do the really long term job of holding value.  
 Right now crypto has lost its a way a bit, it should not try to be this speculative lump asset.  Its best at very fast transactions, amazing monetary velocity like you say gold can be cumbersome but it is still usable even in this modern digital world.   Im as big a fan of technology as anybody and also the amazing pace of development possible and the way it'll impact society in various ways but gold wont be made redundant, it'll still remain unique and valued in decades.   I dont see it declining like we have seen since Nixon, I expect a rebalance to more use.  Not physical coins because gold is in final settlement not so much everyday exchange but this is a clash of ideas and I appreciate that could appear nonsense to some and counter-intuitive

I was thinking of such a system in which gold bars serialized would be backed by crypto assets and thus redeemable stored in an audited vault with multisig signoffs. I feel its the best thing possible for the gold bugs and would get them onboard. The problem is that no such system exists that allows colouring individual inputs on an asset due to efficiency and allows for fungibility concerns through censorship but nevertheless I am developing such a solution that will allow for that through Syscoin Assets. I see demand for such a thing so I make.

[thejaytiesto]

The gold is fungible, I dont have to carry the brick 10,000 miles across borders.    I sell my gold in one gold store this side of the Atlantic and the gold smith on the other side Atlantic gives that value gold to my creditor.   He doesnt care because its the same value both sides, he only wants to receive the value in the transaction so moving the physical item is not really needed especially.
   If neither the seller not creditor are in a state of war, security is feasible and normal in many transactions, I'm not seeing a problem here.

This is a pretty weak model. You are trusting some people to not screw you up in the deal. You are also trusting that communications aren't compromised between the people involved, and I don't see goldbugs being very bright in this field.

Also, I don't see how you can simply move unlimited amounts of gold from A to B through this method without the government finding out. The gold store should be filling up records of these moves unless they are operating illegally and therefore at risk, I find it naive if you think you can get away with this. Bitcoin remains a way better solution to move these values around freely.

[miscreanity]

A link from a certain individual was passed along to me:

https://www.quora.com/Why-is-AMD-turning-into-a-fabless-What-is-the-advantage-of-that/answer/Bill-McDonald

PoW is an industrial age paradigm. We need to move crypto into the
knowledge age with PoTM.