Edit: s/people/quants/, to emphasize that I speak not of uneducated, undercapitalized day-traders who seek trend lines like finding faces in the clouds. (Original.)
Jay, thanks for the info. (Especially, timestamp cites in videos I will peruse later; I do not usually watch videos.)
A quick response, with a point on which I will elaborate in the other thread:
Whoops, now how did that extra zero sneak into that formatting tag?I think that I inadvertently confused some others (maybe even to some degree you) with my labelling this “Fork Wars 2.0”. This is an
external threat—or at least, it starts that way, although you had better start considering what will happen
if when some large institutional BTC investors
decide announce they want POS.
Bitcoin is the king of “crypto”, but it is still tiny. An order of magnitude smaller than the gold market—three orders of magnitude smaller than the global equities markets. “King Daddy” may give zero forks about what little retail buyers want, but I urge that uie-pooie should be cautious about such bravado when a $600 billion market potentially faces opposition from $trillions in collective capital wielded by quants with PhDs in mathematical finance,
and from the powers of government.
Underscore this:
I have full confidence that Bitcoin will prevail, if and only if Bitcoiners act positively and intelligently to protect it. I am a long-term BTC bull: I account each 1 BTC I recently lost as a >$1 million reduction of my future net worth as measured in dollars! I am not here to FUD Bitcoin: I am here to awaken the slumbering, dreaming Bitcoin power that we really do need right now. Drop the bravado and the Hopium. Get realistic about threats. Proactively defend Bitcoin.
There are now parties involved who can,
if they so choose, trash the Bitcoin market as they pump POS alts to the moon
and flood the mass-media with pro-POS coin, anti-Bitcoin agitprop. Meanwhile, the POW/POS divide is factionalizing politically along right/left lines. That’s bad: Bitcoin’s strength rests on its foundations as a nonpolar, nonpartisan system. I applaud Ted Cruz, the Heritage Foundation, et al. for standing up for Bitcoin. I also want to remind the left that Bitcoin stands for fairness, equality, and human rights—that its fair-distribution POW system, which
forces rich miners to divest themselves on thin profit margins so that others can get a chance, is not “rich get richer” POS—and that Bitcoin is the answer to the problems that Occupy Wall Street entirely failed to solve. If the situation were not so serious, it would be funny to watch the left fight for VC profits, big banks, and Wall Street sharks—while Ted Cruz shows first-class leadership in defending the bastion of fairness, equality, and human rights, i.e. Bitcoin.
On a related note— I used to advocate less excitement about the price, hopefully slower market growth, with more focus on mass-adoption first. My reasoning was conceptually similar to why
Satoshi asked Wikileaks not to take Bitcoin donations too early on: A firmer foundation is required to take on larger challenges. A market that’s interesting to Blackrock, Citadel, Goldman Sachs,
et al. plus a headline political issue in the U.S., E.U., and elsewhere is a
much larger challenge than taking donations for a single controversial website! I gave up because people are shortsighted, and they don’t want to hear any talk about slower growth and firmer foundations: They want moons.
Well, we have what we now have. (And golly darn it, I seem unable to make a “quick” reply.) Bitcoin grew fast. Much of its growth was driven by speculation and “investing”, rather than the more solid, less fickle foundation of adoption for
use as money. Now and ever, it faces challenges. Bitcoiners must defend it—
for we will never have another chance like this. Bitcoin
can prevail, and it
must prevail. Jay, if you think I seem pessimistic now, you have no idea how I will personally redefine the whole concept of “pessimism” if Bitcoin fails. The world needs Bitcoin.
Please don’t incite the wannabe sleuths around here to start guessing which account is his.
On the other hand, it
is an awful coincidence that I started sounding the alarm here in WO about POS being a serious threat to Bitcoin—and then, Saylor tweeted about it. By wannabe-sleuth standards, that amounts to proof that I am Saylor’s super-secret Bitcoin Forum account!
oh gawd!!!!
Is the idea really
that ridiculous? “Asking for a friend”—well, not for
my friend.
My friends are not wannabe-sleuths who shoot off their mouths over irrelevant non-issues based on a few coincidences.
My friends are not possessed of such pettiness and poor judgment.
Needless to say, I myself am aware that the idea is ridiculous. Nonetheless, rules are rules!
Pursuant to my strict policy in such matters, I neither admit nor deny the rumor that I am Saylor’s super-secret Bitcoin Forum account.