Martin Armstrong Discussion

[r0ach]

Lol, forum mod raging at me because I called bitcoin a currency and not money:

If you think that Bitcoin is just a currency, you don't know what you're talking about. Cut the analysis bullshit and go back into your metal bagholding forums. You can't sell me such stories.

I guess you did not get the hint when they named it cryptocurrency instead of....cryptomoney.  It is a currency; it's not money.  Currencies are generally always a bad investment on a long timeline and there is no reason to own them unless you actually use them.  Once the market cap tops out, whether that's at $1200 a coin, $200 a coin, or $10,000 a coin, everyone who was attempting to use it as a store of value is going to flee the ship to the base of Exter's pyramid (metals) since they are a superior store of value, while the only people that continue to hold coins will be the people who actually use it as a currency.  

The number of people using it as a currency will obviously be factored by it's throughput (TPS).  To have a high market cap as a currency, TPS would probably have to be drastically higher than it is now with something like a functioning LN and 5000 TPS.  At that level it could probably float a large market cap as a payment processor, but I do not see a currency functioning well at low TPS with 1 MB blocks and no segwit or LN since low TPS is counterintuitive to how a currency is supposed to function (high turnover, not based on being a store of value or generational investment).

[1714919507]

1714919507

[jbreher]

The fact that bitcoin can be so called "upgraded", which really just means changed, means it's not anti-fragile by default.  

On this point, you minsunderstand the definition of anti-fragile. By definition, in order to be anti-fragile, a thing must be able to evolve.

No, it does not.  Money is supposed to be boring - it's not supposed to "evolve" ...

Stay on point. I did not say 'money needs to be able to evolve', I said that the definition of 'anti-fragile' necessarily is imbued with the ability to evolve.

You can claim that something needs to be unchanging if you want. While I disagree with you on this point, it is not a conversation I wish to carry out with you. You have a lot of monetary ideas which I think are just plain wrong, but they are axiomatic to you, and I don't care to tilt against that windmill.

However, when you appropriate a defined term, and claim a use for it exactly opposite of its accepted definition -- such as your misappropriation of anti-fragile -- you can expect to get called out on it.

[r0ach]

However, when you appropriate a defined term, and claim a use for it exactly opposite of its accepted definition -- such as your misappropriation of anti-fragile -- you can expect to get called out on it.

The term (anti-fragile) in the textbook definition provided does not apply to either bitcoin or gold, so like I said, everyone solely uses the term in colloquial manner on this forum.  It wasn't me that popularized that term in the bitcoin ecosystem, so don't pretend like it's my fault.  In an evolving language, the colloquial definition would likely take over that supposed real one since the real one is more hypothetical and meaningless than anything.  Words tend to be superfluous and of no use if they have no application, so I expect such a word would just wither away and die otherwise.

[r0ach]

Pretty interesting article on what the bankers have been attempting over the last 45 years.  Apparently they've spent this entire time trying to demonetize gold and force SDR notes on people while forbidding other CBs from purchasing gold at all, yet China and Russian CBs are both buying it by the boatload now.  They've been working on trying to force this completely top down controlled "cashless" monetary system devoid of real money longer than people imagine.  If you attempt to buy or use gold as a CB, you become an enemy of the Zionist monetary regime run by the IMF and BIS, and they use their military arm (the Zionist occupied United States) to attack you:

[cellard]

I think you are over complicating things.

Right now I can buy a bunch of stuff with 1 bitcoin, and I have the certainty that I will still be able to buy a bunch of stuff with 1 bitcoin in 10 years, even more stuff since I expect it to go higher in value.

I can buy goods and services in exchange of bitcoin, or converting to fiat then to bitcoin.

That's all. It meets the requirement of money.

And if we go deeper, it is the best money we have to date:



To me r0ach sounds like someone that sold a while ago and now he's scared he will miss on massive networth increases.

[r0ach]

Right now I can buy a bunch of stuff with 1 bitcoin, and I have the certainty that I will still be able to buy a bunch of stuff with 1 bitcoin in 10 years

In other words, you believe the exact opposite of the creature known as Satohi's own words.  The more you know about bitcoin, the more skeptical you are of it's future.  The dumb money speculators are always the most optimistic, while people that actually worked on the thing like Gavin you could always tell were surprised if it didn't blow up at random and increased at all.  

You also posted a reddit propaganda chart that flat out lies and claims bitcoin is fungible, not to mention the part about "secure", "durable" and "decentralized" are not even a given.  And how does the rough consensus attack play into scarcity?  That chart was clearly created solely to try and pump and dump bitcoin and not for any type of education.  

Someone is also probably going to claim "you can't destroy bitcoin with a hammer so it's durable!".  Bitcoin requires a positive energy input to exist at all.  How is that durable?  It's essentially a living organism and all living things die.  Bitcoin is a screen door standing in the way of the truck known as entropy to be run over and scattered to the wind, while things like gold are more entropy resistant (but not proof).  And that is why one is money and one is currency.  Money is supposed to be boring and not mutate into something else or cease to exist at random.

[sidhujag]

I think you are over complicating things.

Right now I can buy a bunch of stuff with 1 bitcoin, and I have the certainty that I will still be able to buy a bunch of stuff with 1 bitcoin in 10 years, even more stuff since I expect it to go higher in value.

I can buy goods and services in exchange of bitcoin, or converting to fiat then to bitcoin.

That's all. It meets the requirement of money.

And if we go deeper, it is the best money we have to date:



To me r0ach sounds like someone that sold a while ago and now he's scared he will miss on massive networth increases.

Bingo, I've watched him go from hey why are the manipulators not letting Bitcoin rise, to hey Bitcoin isn't actually money and it sucks.. gold ftw! Although he claims to have learned enough in that time to do a 360 view on the whole premise of Bitcoin within those few months, I think the only real explanation is the fact that he went in to gold as it dipped down with most of his wealth.

[r0ach]

Bingo, I've watched him go from hey why are the manipulators not letting Bitcoin rise, to hey Bitcoin isn't actually money and it sucks.. gold ftw! Although he claims to have learned enough in that time to do a 360 view on the whole premise of Bitcoin within those few months, I think the only real explanation is the fact that he went in to gold as it dipped down with most of his wealth.

No, that's bullshit. I was all-in on gold at $420, so long before I was into bitcoin.  The only thing that draws me to bitcoin over metals (just like everyone else on earth) was potential upside, but once you get to a state where the potential upside on things like silver is equal or higher than bitcoin, bitcoin becomes a pretty hard sell.  It also takes a long time to figure out all the fundamentals of bitcoin vs metals and how bitcoin could evolve.  

For a while I actually thought they might pull off a 2nd tier payment layer with a zillion TPS and send this thing to the moon, but a currency (not money) with only 4 TPS?  That's a whole different likely orders of magnitude lower market cap.  I mean, it might get stuck at $10k a coin or less.  Is the bitcoin risk really worth that upside?

The truth is, bitcoin is mostly a Rube Goldberg machine that attempts to do what metals do, but doesn't do it nearly as good (maybe failing completely in this mimicking act), while being more inefficient in the process of attempting to do so.  I mean, if bitcoin doesn't actually form a valid Nash equilibrium, remove counter party risk, or act as a permissionless ledger (can't be permissionless if it's not fungible), then what is the point of using it over metals?  Metals would be superior in face to face transactions, and for digital it would generally be the same thing as putting gold or silver in a vault owned by somebody else.

[sidhujag]

Bingo, I've watched him go from hey why are the manipulators not letting Bitcoin rise, to hey Bitcoin isn't actually money and it sucks.. gold ftw! Although he claims to have learned enough in that time to do a 360 view on the whole premise of Bitcoin within those few months, I think the only real explanation is the fact that he went in to gold as it dipped down with most of his wealth.

No, that's bullshit. I was all-in on gold at $420, so long before I was into bitcoin.  The only thing that draws me to bitcoin over metals (just like everyone else on earth) was potential upside, but once you get to a state where the potential upside on things like silver is equal or higher than bitcoin, bitcoin becomes a pretty hard sell.  It also takes a long time to figure out all the fundamentals of bitcoin vs metals and how bitcoin could evolve.  

For a while I actually thought they might pull off a 2nd tier payment layer with a zillion TPS and send this thing to the moon, but a currency (not money) with only 4 TPS?  That's a whole different likely orders of magnitude lower market cap.  I mean, it might get stuck at $10k a coin or less.  Is the bitcoin risk really worth that upside?

The truth is, bitcoin is mostly a Rube Goldberg machine that attempts to do what metals do, but doesn't do it nearly as good (maybe failing completely in this mimicking act), while being more inefficient in the process of attempting to do so.  I mean, if bitcoin doesn't actually form a valid Nash equilibrium, remove counter party risk, or act as a permissionless ledger (can't be permissionless if it's not fungible), then what is the point of using it over metals?  Metals would be superior in face to face transactions, and for digital it would generally be the same thing as putting gold or silver in a vault owned by somebody else.

What if you had the ability to use LN and they figured out the routing mechanism so that it actually worked? so then you have VISA level TPS and its offchain but still with inherent benefits of cryptocurrency.

[r0ach]

What if you had the ability to use LN and they figured out the routing mechanism so that it actually worked? so then you have VISA level TPS and its offchain but still with inherent benefits of cryptocurrency.

Yea, that's the problem.  Even if they get LN to function in some manner, segwit still isn't approved so it might require a large price crash before miners adopt it, then it goes back up.

[sidhujag]

What if you had the ability to use LN and they figured out the routing mechanism so that it actually worked? so then you have VISA level TPS and its offchain but still with inherent benefits of cryptocurrency.

Yea, that's the problem.  Even if they get LN to function in some manner, segwit still isn't approved so maybe it requires a large price crash before miners adopt it, then it goes back up.

Sigwit won't be an issue, soon as they start seeing things like schnorr sigs ready and implemented in libsecpk256k1 by peter and LN integrated in staging or elements repo it will quickly get voted in, the technical and political issues are 2 seperate things, politically those that don't know the technical side will be won over.

[r0ach]

Sigwit won't be an issue

I'm not sure.  The Chinese tend to hold a grudge and believe Luke Jr has "dishonored" them lol.  I think the current low participation of segwit is a part of that.  Maybe it will change in time, no idea.  Chinese are very mule-headed people.  Last time I checked it appeared the Chinese were trying to push BU instead.  It's like watching a train wreck.  On-chain scaling is useless, and they don't even have a valid LN implementation, so it's a choice of fail A or fail B at this point in time.  

I believe the current market price is just starting to equal or get ahead of bitcoin's actual capabilities as well.  If it required 2 years to have some type of working increase in scaling, the price could top out and then decline from there in the meanwhile, but it seems like 2 years would even be optimistic at this point.  LN requires all types of infrastructure and wallet changes and there's no working LN to begin with.

[sidhujag]

Sigwit won't be an issue

I'm not sure.  The Chinese tend to hold a grudge and believe Luke Jr has "dishonored" them lol.  I think the current low participation of segwit is a part of that.  Maybe it will change in time, no idea.  Chinese are very mule-headed people.  Last time I checked it appeared the Chinese were trying to push BU instead.  It's like watching a train wreck.  On-chain scaling is useless, and they don't even have a valid LN implementation, so it's a choice of fail A or fail B at this point in time.  

I believe the current market price is just starting to equal or get ahead of bitcoin's actual capabilities as well.  If it required 2 years to have some type of working increase in scaling, the price could top out and then decline from there in the meanwhile, but it seems like 2 years would even be optimistic at this point.  LN requires all types of infrastructure and wallet changes and there's no working LN to begin with.

BTCC is already pro-segwit now, f2pool is pro segwit aswell

[marcus_of_augustus]

I think it's becoming pretty clear that the roach is the troll formerly known as jstolfi returned in another guise.

The whole rabid foaming-at-the-mouth nazi ruse and bitcoin banger to win his creds was quite well played, a long game troll. But still a nasty troll.

[r0ach]

Sigwit won't be an issue

I'm not sure.  The Chinese tend to hold a grudge and believe Luke Jr has "dishonored" them lol.  I think the current low participation of segwit is a part of that.  Maybe it will change in time, no idea.  Chinese are very mule-headed people.  Last time I checked it appeared the Chinese were trying to push BU instead.  It's like watching a train wreck.  On-chain scaling is useless, and they don't even have a valid LN implementation, so it's a choice of fail A or fail B at this point in time.  

I believe the current market price is just starting to equal or get ahead of bitcoin's actual capabilities as well.  If it required 2 years to have some type of working increase in scaling, the price could top out and then decline from there in the meanwhile, but it seems like 2 years would even be optimistic at this point.  LN requires all types of infrastructure and wallet changes and there's no working LN to begin with.

BTCC is already pro-segwit now, f2pool is pro segwit aswell

Which still leaves the hard part of creating a functioning LN and getting everyone to switch before the bitcoin price completely overwhelms it's actual capabilities and transaction fees get to $1-2.

[OROBTC]

...

I am frankly surprised that the miners & lead developers did not see these problems coming (low capacity, small block sizes, etc.).  In many ways, BITCOIN was designed for the very long-term...  It's curious to see all the infighting over problem-solving happen.

I wonder that after they "solve" this/these, whether or not we will see problems down the road that, wait for it........., "they did not see coming."

*  *  *

For anyone wanting a break from the Segwit vs. BU vs. , I offer up the latest from Armstrong:

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/europes-current-economy/europes-visa-war-with-usa-may-terminate-all-travel/

Will Europe cut off its nose to spite American face?  That would be stupid, but hey...  Italy & Greece would not like having huge losses of American tourists.

[sidhujag]

Sigwit won't be an issue

I'm not sure.  The Chinese tend to hold a grudge and believe Luke Jr has "dishonored" them lol.  I think the current low participation of segwit is a part of that.  Maybe it will change in time, no idea.  Chinese are very mule-headed people.  Last time I checked it appeared the Chinese were trying to push BU instead.  It's like watching a train wreck.  On-chain scaling is useless, and they don't even have a valid LN implementation, so it's a choice of fail A or fail B at this point in time.  

I believe the current market price is just starting to equal or get ahead of bitcoin's actual capabilities as well.  If it required 2 years to have some type of working increase in scaling, the price could top out and then decline from there in the meanwhile, but it seems like 2 years would even be optimistic at this point.  LN requires all types of infrastructure and wallet changes and there's no working LN to begin with.

BTCC is already pro-segwit now, f2pool is pro segwit aswell

Which still leaves the hard part of creating a functioning LN and getting everyone to switch before the bitcoin price completely overwhelms it's actual capabilities and transaction fees get to $1-2.

Nope it doesnt.. too many applications being built on bitcoin its almost become a protocol. Even at high fees it will just push people to LN and.settle only when needed. I dont think its a matter of if LN will work but when.. and theres other new versions of LN type.things springing up that could work better

[r0ach]

First time I've ever seen a woman talk about economics and didn't sound ridiculous.  She inadvertently backs up my thesis as to why we will head back to somewhat of a dark ages (not full dark ages, but just no more advancement and maybe decline for a while), because civilization is forced to revert back to the lowest common denominator or average:

http://ourfiniteworld.com/2017/02/20/oops-the-economy-is-like-a-self-driving-car/

[iamnotback]

Armstrong said California would collapse and appears social collapse is already underway:

http://www.infowars.com/shock-video-exposes-tent-city-crisis-in-failing-california/

[CoinCube]

Nice article from Charles Hugh Smith

It's What's Happening Beneath the Surface That Matters: Moral Decay and Rising Inequality

These disintegrative forces are easy to see but elusive to pin down. Nobody defines themselves as self-serving, greedy and lacking in virtue. Everyone feels trapped in the system.

With the media's hyperactive three-ring circus blasting 24/7, it's easy to forget that everything consequential is happening beneath the surface, out of sight and largely out of mind.

What's going on beneath the surface is structural and systemic--for example, the 4th Industrial Revolution that is transforming the global economy and social order, regardless of political ideologies or our wishes.

Centralization--the "solution" to every problem since 1940--is now the problem.Centralization generates corruption, privilege, rentier skims, institutionalized rackets and pushes one-size-fits all failure down the chain of command.
...

The rest of the article can be read here:
http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2017/03/its-whats-happening-beneath-surface.html?m=1