The draft that I referenced earlier:
Ok? and? What's your point? Another point is that trading is not a zero sum game, it can help in a lot of ways including price discovery, provides liquidity, allows for the creation of more financial tools which thereby motivates larger and larger players to get into the space.
Thanks, but I have also read the Wikipedia-level rationalization.
You couch your statement as an objective fact, whereas it is an expression of a philosophic worldview based on assumptions that most people never examine. Proceeding to argue it would invoke critiques of capitalism—which, in turn, would undoubtedly attract the ire of someone who believes that reading Ayn Rand makes one an expert on the subject. Besides being annoying, it would also be a waste of time when I recently declared my intent to be a “ruthless mercenary capitalist”. As such, I will happily exploit the zero-sum game for my personal profit, in accord with its established rules.
I am trying to describe what is... and you were trying to denigrate trading and traders... <snip>
In the portion to which you replied, I described trading. My description was accurate, objective, and stated without any moral value judgments. Although I have said before that I frankly have a “cordial contempt” for the whole concept, your statement about “denigrating” traders grossly misrepresents what I said here—even as you quoted it:
Profitable trading definitionally requires “buy low, sell high” (same for shorts in the reverse order). I think that mathematically, the only way to profit from “buying low, selling high” when the price sits still is to exploit some kind of a spread—either intra-market (market maker), or inter-market (arbitrage). Those types of traders attempt to minimize the relevance of price volatility to themselves—in the extreme case, executing (or attempting to execute) risk-free trades with no exposure to price movements. Others need volatility, for even a unidirectional price movement cannot bring them profit: If the price only goes forever up to infinity, or forever down until it hits zero, then the only way to profit without leaving money on the table is “buy and hold” (or short and never cover), not actively to trade.
I believe that is a concise and cogent description of how traders profit.
Perhaps I should stop writing forum posts, and write some code.
Not a bad idea, especially if you believe that bitcoin is deficient in various ways (which seems to frequently underly several of your ongoing talking points). Then if you can get your code merged into bitcoin, that might NOT be a bad thing.
I could say.. "I used to know him back when he was a perpetual whiner. Now, he's a superstar, but still doesn't seem to know shit about personal risk management." . hahahaha
Good projects don’t need yes-men: They need people who passionately care about the project. Bad projects are where I’d expect to be attacked by shills for daring to suggest, earnestly wishing to help and not hurt, that the project is not already absolutely perfect in every way. But set that aside.
If this were bitcoin-dev or Core’s GH, then it may be appropriate to say “patches welcome” in the traditional open-source way. But this is a general Bitcoin discussion—one where developers and non-developers alike may offer opinions, wishes, and constructive criticism—one where, incidentally, I have been
not-so-subtly seeking a productive meeting of the minds with anyone who would fully understand the post hereby linked—
or this one. As it stands, if you want to call me a “whiner”, I don’t mind asking how many lines of quality open-source code
you have contributed to the Bitcoin ecosystem—or asking if you want to give me money, to encourage me to meet your coding expectations.
I do want to go and develop a Bitcoin ecosystem project that’s on my mind. Instead, once I am done for now with this little posting spree (more or less frustrated procrastination when I’m stuck with
no good way to avoid more immediate wreckage if BTC soon dips below 200 WMA), I will probably ignore WO for awhile as I wander off to Solanaland.
Why? A moneymaking robot that I already have partly developed is my best short-term prospect.
Don’t like it? I will not stay poor for the sake of some misguided notion of moral purity, when I have an honest prospect to make reliable money without risk in any market condition. Given the amount of time that I have spent on this forum, making thoughtful contributions that others appreciated
while never wearing a paid signature under any account, I will damn well tell any critics here to STFU.
Why there? It is the only place I know where I can make this type of a bot—other than KYC exchanges.
I refuse crypto-exchange KYC, period. And this wouldn’t work as well on a CEX, anyway.
Am I angry at what Solana’s founder said about Bitcoin, energy, and POS?
Furious. Short-term, my best revenge is to make money on his chain, buy BTC, and store the BTC in my wallet on Bitcoin’s gloriously energetic POW blockchain. Extra points for devising clever ways to bot money out of the SOL market and every other VC shitcoin market there, to buy BTC. Some people work jobs they hate for corporations they despise, and buy BTC; I’ll do at least a bit better, working for myself on something which, in itself, I enjoy!
Time to be a ruthless mercenary capitalist.
How’s that for a pragmatic, cut-and-dry business attitude towards money?
When I have attained the financially stability to self-fund spending my dev cycles purely as I please, then I can think about shifting focus. I’d love to do a Bitcoin ecosystem project—for Core, or with something built on Bitcoin.
As for my financial risk management skills—I don’t know what you got out of my posts for the past month, but you do not know me. I did fine for years. You would call me “overinvested”; I simply say that it shows how much I believe in BTC.
I am willing to be financially dependent on Bitcoin. No long-term fiat savings in the bank—losing my BTC means losing my shirt—no escape hatch, if Bitcoin truly dies someday. That is a matter of consciously choosing my life priorities, not a lack of risk management skills. And I was doing fine.
Then, I did something foolish and out of character. It spun out of control to the point where I very rapidly made every newbie mistake in the book.
Trying margin “just once” turned out for me to be like the fate of some people who try doing drugs “just once”.Desperation to salvage the situation only made it worse. I have
no talent for placing manual trades under pressure—none! and no prior experience with that circumstance! My usual way of managing money is to think things over, sleep it over, and
then act. I am not a gambler, your assumptions and misrepresentations to the contrary notwithstanding.
If I stick to what I’m good at, and don’t do anything else foolish and out of character, then I will again be fine—miserable for awhile, but fine. After the hell that I have put myself through here, and the 2
256 times I have berated myself
“why did I do that!?”, I think that I have adequately learned my lesson about playing n00bish chicken-games with margin.
I dearly hope that my sorrows here will be a salutary lesson to others—those who
don’t know better, which I
did, which only makes it worse for me.
Poll
