rpietila public diary -- Episode II

[AnonyMint]

Capital Gains Tax is one thing that greatly hinders bitcoins from being distributed, and should be abolished.

Wealth tax and capital gains together could really squeeze you. Socialism doesn't reduce taxes. What reduces taxes is destroying the socialism with competition from a low-tax jurisdiction. See the Heritage Foundation data and sort on Government Spending:

http://www.heritage.org/index/explore

And realize that means the masses are prospering in that low-tax jurisdiction. Not like Bitcoin where the only who are prospering are the early adopters and the masses are not gaining any benefits.

Problem for us as individuals is we will be taxed by our national id, not by jurisdiction. We are marked already from birth.

98% of humanity won't have any bitcoins when it enters a bubble and this is a problem, since these are already the laggards, and by buying at the bubble, they make their situation worse, not better. Any thoughts?

The only potential solution I see is an altcoin which distributes coins continuously to CPU-only miners (while not diluting capitalists too rapidly since the coin is appreciating orders-of-magnitude faster than the small coin rewards). This will also raise the transaction rate (velocity of money), because the bottom 97% have a wealth distribution based on using money as cash, not as a store-of-value:

http://physics.umd.edu/~yakovenk/papers/PhysicaA-299-213-2001.pdf

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[AnonyMint]

I am going to attempt to stop you. I realize you can't see your errors. I am trying to teach, but I doubt you will even read the links I provided above.

As a matter of fact, I met Eric Raymond in Austin where I worked at an AI research company. His comments on democratic politics are interesting. But I am satisfied that economic injustice is solvable by the political process. Not absolutely solvable - just good-enough solvable. In particular, I believe that household purchasing power, when unfairly allocated, can be recognized and fixed by the political process, stemming from the will of the voting majority in democratic jurisdictions, or by well-meaning technocrats elsewhere.

Then you did not comprehend it deeply or did not deeply understand what I wrote about degrees-of-freedom == potential energy. The game theory has no natural equilibrium, rather it is a death spiral into individualizing the benefits and socializing the losses.

There is simply no way to convince a socialist (big government, government can solve every problem). All we can do is get out-of-your-way as you destroy yourselves over and over again in history. How many dark ages, genocides, wars, etc (that all derive from the economic failure of democracy) do I have to cite? Any way, it wouldn't make any difference, because you are unable to hear our logic. You have your ideas fixed in your mind and we minanarchists (small government) have ours fixed in our mind.

Stalemate.

Suppose in some possible world, that the three Trinity College crypto guys are revealed to be Satoshi Nakamoto, and suppose that in 2018 they are bitcoin trillionaires. Would not the UK do something about redistributing their windfall? Or more likely, they would voluntarily distribute the majority of it.

I thus assume you don't get the point. Redistributing money does not decentralize it. It is worse than flushing it down a toilet (worse because it creates the wrong incentives and behavior for the recipients). The only way that capital can be distributed productively is when people produce something for it because they then make local decisions about optimum (i.e. profitable) resource allocation. If you understand fitness and simulated annealing, then you understand everything else is inefficient. Inefficient doesn't reach a less ideal equilibrium, rather it is a death spiral.

Until socialists understand that basic economics, they are perpetually doomed to repeat the megadeath outcomes over and over in history.

Economics is not what you think should be. Morals and ethics have nothing to do with economics. Rather it is what is most efficient. Due Coase's Theorem (which derives from the Second Law of Thermodynamics), nature will route around an inefficiency eventually. Society can obstruct barriers and create imbalances, and the longer they do that with government (centralization), then the worse the implosion when nature goes around the cancer.

Regarding a defense of the Technological Singularity, it is off-topic here. Suffice it to say that I believe all relevant intelligent human behavior, and likewise the behavior of human organizations, can be modeled as learnable skills. My own research, following the advice of Alan Turing, is to create a computer system capable of being taught skills, and then proceed to teach it.

I refuted that logic resoundingly in my blog article which I provided a link to in my prior post. I also studied A.I.. That is where I learned about simulated annealing.

Your blog post mentions human creativity as a counterexample. An important AI skill that I worki on is the ability for the computer to write and modify computer programs. This is the sort of creativity that interests me.

I thus believe you missed my point. The salient reason is that AI can never exceed the entropy we have, which I reasoned in great detail in my blog even covering Kurzweil's rebuttals on the genome. That is fundamental. The best you could hope for is to reproduce life itself. You will not exceed life. Any machine you produce, humans can leverage it. You will not enslave the humans in unpredictability (an entropy regime) that does not already exist, as the Technological Singularity claims.

[AnonyMint]

This concludes my replies to all posts of this thread that I wanted to comment on.

99% of people are relatively poor - its not the purpose of Bitcoin to change that.  As long as people have excess food and good housing, there is no reason to be concerned about the fact that wealth is concentrated in 1% of the population.

Bitcoin devalues the western financial system by 1000000000x or so. That is the same as declaring war on the masses.

They have more guns than you do.

[rpietila]

I thus assume you don't get the point. Redistributing money does not decentralize it. It is worse than flushing it down a toilet (worse because it creates the wrong incentives and behavior for the recipients). The only way that capital can be distributed productively is when people produce something for it because they then make local decisions about optimum (i.e. profitable) resource allocation. If you understand fitness and simulated annealing, then you understand everything else is inefficient. Inefficient doesn't reach a less ideal equilibrium, rather it is a death spiral.

You do have the skill to make everything sound bleak  Great post, still.

[Peter R]

The Robo ATM is going to require a palm scan and a face scan with government-issued photo id.

They have a RoboCoin ATM in Vancouver and my friends and I have used it many times.  It *only* requires a palm scan and this is just for Canadian AML/KYC compliance.  You do not have to give the machine any other information.  It does not scan your licence, require your name, and you could wear a paper bag over your head and still buy coins, if you were so inclined.  In fact, I bet you could buy a cadaver's hand from a crooked mortician and use that!  Seriously, it is pretty low key and relaxed.  

[farfiman]

AnonyMInt:

  I have read everything you wrote in this thread and the other "sidetracked " one. I think that when it comes down to it you will get the opposite effect of what you are looking for. Instead of people heading your warnings it will encourage most to expand their investment into bitcoin.  You come off as VERY intelligent and someone that knows what he is talking about. Combine that with the words  bitcoins and millions and above and you got yourself a recipe for the opposite of what I think you intended.

[AnonyMint]

I don't know why you think my short-term goal is to cause people to invest less in Bitcoin. I have even stated the opposite in Risto's other thread. Perhaps it is because I have mentioned that I think it is very risky from a tax perspective for large wealth to invest in Bitcoin.

My long-term goal would be to fix the problems I've identified, and having more people with BTC ready to trade is an advantage.

[Siegfried]

The Robo ATM is going to require a palm scan and a face scan with government-issued photo id.

They have a RoboCoin ATM in Vancouver and my friends and I have used it many times.  It *only* requires a palm scan and this is just for Canadian AML/KYC compliance.  You do not have to give the machine any other information.  It does not scan your licence, require your name, and you could wear a paper bag over your head and still buy coins, if you were so inclined.  In fact, I bet you could buy a cadaver's hand from a crooked mortician and use that!  Seriously, it is pretty low key and relaxed.  

Are you serious?

It will not remain so casual. All small things look great, and as they become more widespread society expects certain things.

I listened to the interview with the principle of that company and he said the design requires all those 3 I mentioned to comply with KYC laws.

The operators of each machine decide, based on guidance from the company. So it is possible that operator is being more lax, but the government can clamp down at any time. The government would be wise to wait until the Robo ATMs are widespread and depended upon, before clamping down and requiring the full capabilities of the design.

If that is the case, I imagine other people who are not concerned about their privacy would be willing to use their information to buy bitcoins from the ATM and then transfer them to you for a small fee.

[AnonyMint]

The Robo ATM is going to require a palm scan and a face scan with government-issued photo id.

They have a RoboCoin ATM in Vancouver and my friends and I have used it many times.  It *only* requires a palm scan and this is just for Canadian AML/KYC compliance.  You do not have to give the machine any other information.  It does not scan your licence, require your name, and you could wear a paper bag over your head and still buy coins, if you were so inclined.  In fact, I bet you could buy a cadaver's hand from a crooked mortician and use that!  Seriously, it is pretty low key and relaxed.  

Are you serious?

It will not remain so casual. All small things look great, and as they become more widespread society expects certain things.

I listened to the interview with the principle of that company and he said the design requires all those 3 I mentioned to comply with KYC laws.

The operators of each machine decide, based on guidance from the company. So it is possible that operator is being more lax, but the government can clamp down at any time. The government would be wise to wait until the Robo ATMs are widespread and depended upon, before clamping down and requiring the full capabilities of the design.

If that is the case, I imagine other people who are not concerned about their privacy would be willing to use their information to buy bitcoins from the ATM and then transfer them to you for a small fee.

And due to public ledger, they can thus be compelled by the authorities to reveal the identity of every person they transfered these BTC to or otherwise face culpability for all downstream transactions for these coins.

You guys are ignoring the very serious issue of tainted coins in Bitcoin.

I have thought about this deeply and refuted core dev gmaxwell on this.

[Wekkel]

I think of Hypertiger.

[rpietila]

My long-term goal would be to fix the problems I've identified, and having more people with BTC ready to trade is an advantage.

I think Bitcoin is not even close to the bleak future:

- The 20 years until mining rewards fall below gold's inflation rate is actually a very long time
- Political decision-making is very slow, and there will not be uniform 100%+ tax on bitcoins in every country ever, rather I would expect tax competition between countries and blocks, and CGT-free zones like Germany currently is
- Instawallet type services can keep almost complete anonymity, because you don't divulge personal information in any step (not exactly know about IP stuff)
- Generating altcoins is easy
- People do not want to be controlled, which severely limits the opportunities to use the control material against them (illegitimacy problem). Smart people will not want to work for oppressive govt, limiting its potential. Govt also gets only a fraction of things done per man-hour because of its design.
- USA is getting more and more isolated, it is not impossible that the outcome will be a peaceful implosion like USSR.

Others: how would you increase the number of bitcoin users in the next 18 months? I have given everyone of my friends who ask, BTC0.25 in Facebook. If you give too little, they will forget about it or not interested in receiving. If you give too much, they will feel uneasy towards you and are prone to sell it. Giving in general does not work, for the reasons AnonyMint outlined above. Only if people give real value in return, will the exchange increase general well-being by making both parties better off. (With half-forced giving, you never know if either party is better off afterwards. Same with tax, you lose definitely, but in most cases also society loses.)

[ErisDiscordia]

Others: how would you increase the number of bitcoin users in the next 18 months?

Christmas season is coming up and since I detest the ritual of going out and buying (mostly useless) stuff to show my acquaintances that I care about them on a predetermined day I am thinking about printing up some paper wallets, filling them with a modest amount of BTC and giving them out to my friends, together with instructions how to spend them, back them up and all that other stuff.

The most effective way to increase the user base imho would be to support merchant adoption in any way. Either by offering your products and services for BTC yourself - and thus blazing a trail through the local regulatory landscape and hopefully inspiring more people to do the same, when they see that it can be done. Or by asking merchants if they accept BTC and helping them set up the technology to do so.

Bitcoin thrives on the network effect, so every new user and every new "Bitcoin accepted here" create more and more new users.

Other than that, I travel a lot and create Anarchists, Bitcoiners, Couchsurfers and Discordian popes wherever I go 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Cheer up! Don't fall for the FUD.

Distribution is only a problem when there's a power center to maintain the severe inequalities. Saying that wealthy won't spend their hoard is silly. As Risto knows, it's no fun to be rich if you don't live it up. And in fact most wealthy bitcoiners are not preselected as being great investors or money managers, so they will likely fritter it away like most people do (see most lottery winners). And if you think pitchforks will come out, just do what other wealthy people do: become famous for your philanthropy. Or send 90% of your coins to the CoinEater address, making everyone else's more valuable.

[AnonyMint]

If Bitcoin takes over the world, i.e. "there can only be one due to network effects" theory (which I think is FUD), then Risto's net worth will exceed $10 billion. He can't spend that much in the remainder of his lifetime, unless he just writes huge checks for no reason whatsoever or tries to purchase an African village or something similarly bizarre. Distributing money any way other than a better designed coin will always be less efficient and less effective and more horrific.

Don't tell me you all will fund cancer research, etc.. because you don't have a clue about those industries and you will waste it just the same, probably be scammed as well. I've seen what happens to guys who centralized capital, [redacted]

I guess you missed the point that centralizing wealth destroys capital and that redistributing from centralized overgrown adolescents doesn't decentralize it again. The lost entropy is not reversible, instead the capital is destroyed and new smaller things will take their place yet all the large rotten oaks trees will die first before the benefit of the new saplings take hold. Those collapsing rotten economies tend to crush many people. You can reread my post which Risto quoted for the game theory and at least he is smart enough to recognize the game theory (i.e. logic and math) point. Of course I have empathy too, which is precisely why I don't want to destroy more capital by centralizing it for no gain. We should be using early adopters to drive the marketing to bring the masses in. Risto has been trying to bring in the little guys, but he is fighting against a coin supply curve which was designed by someone who was either ignorant or evil (and I doubt very much "Satoshi" was ignorant since he foresaw everything including that the mining would become centralized).

Now if your point is that redistributing from a larger number of adolescents than a fewer number of elite, the elite have time and time again demonstrated they are better at managing the masses, because they always win against you. And it is easy to see why, because they understand that they are going to reset everything so letting you all contribute to centralizing and destroying the remaining wealth means you really didn't deserve the talents in the first place.

Others of us will try for a real solution.

[AnonyMint]

I accomplished my goal which was to get readers (especially Risto since I observe him to be a capable, empathetic, level-headed leader in the community) to think more seriously about the necessity of an altcoin. It could be orders-of-magnitude more efficient and effective than giving Bitcoin away in gifts.

I accomplished my Steve Jobs "Reality Distortion Field" marketing ploy.

Now I want to share a theory I have about how brilliant Satoshi might have been.

I am imagining this guy (or group) that was tasked by the NSA to create a honeypot to trap the goldbugs and anarchistic hitech millionaires.

I cite again the self-claimed 155 - 165 IQ Eric S. Raymond, the creator of "open source":

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=3335

World Without Web
Posted on 2011-06-18 by esr

Technological change has a tendency to look inevitable in retrospect – “It steam-engines when it’s steam-engine time.” Likely this is true in many cases, but I often think we underestimate the alarming degree of contingency lurking behind ‘inevitable’ developments. To illustrate this point, I’m going to sketch an all-too-plausible alternate history in which the World Wide Web never happened.

The divergence point for this history is in 1983-1984, when the leadership of DARPA lied through its teeth to Congress about who was being allowed access to the Internet. The pretense being maintained was that only direct affiliates of government-sponsored, authorized research programs were being allowed on. DARPA knew very well this wasn’t true; they had a broader vision of where the Internet might lead, one that wouldn’t be realized for another ten years. They viewed the yeasty, chaotic culture of casual use by all manner of ‘randoms’ (unauthorized people including, at the time, me) as what would later be called a technology incubator – a vast Petri dish from which amazing serendipities would spring in due time.

So in my mental sketch Satoshi designs this Bitcoin with the flaws I have outlined, knowing full well this appears to hand the world to the elite. But he could have realized that he was actually outsmarting his bosses. He probably would have faith in his "tribe" (i.e. hackers) that there were at least a few astute hackers who would see the flaws soon enough and fix them to create a competing altcoin.

Perhaps he was so clever to make the initial coin supply appeal to the hard money folks, while also pitching it to his bosses as being the perfect way to bring the dystopian outcome. Yet knowing in his heart, the hackers would rise to the challenge before the end game comes to Bitcoin by 2033 or so.

We will probably never know... yet it is a noble way to pay honor to the "person" who gave us the key technological insight and breakthrough...

...maybe anything I or others (who beat me to it) might create was what he really wanted to create but couldn't at the time...

...what sucks is we can't reuse such a good name "bitcoin" in a better altcoin...

I suggest also reading Eric Raymond's short Engineering History article.

[Rampion]

Anonymint: some people is saying that you are a paranoid, but it looks painfully obvious to me that you are quite the opposite: extremely naive (no offense intended, I enjoy your posts because they are intelligent and interesting).

You are depicting Bitcoin as the ultimate "freedom killer", which is simply ridiculous because your freedom was already killed for good a long time ago. No need to kill something that is already dead.

You are giving away your privacy evert day by using cell phones; by using the lnternet; by using the money THEY mint.

The world is already owned by the elites. The elites finance the rulers who are just proxies, the elites have total control of your bank accounts and thus they already know everything about you. They can tax you to death, they can confiscate your wealth by freezing your bank accounts and if you happen to have a bunch of cash under your mattress they can simply confiscate that wealth too by the means of inflation. Just as they have been doing for decades.

So... How is that Bitcoin is the ultimate power tool for those who already have absolute power?

I'm not saying BTC is not a trojan horse - it could be, and it would be stupid to rule that option out. But IMO your logic does not stand, financial elites rule the world de facto and there's not much more for them to gain from BTC, best case to support your theory is that they are "changing things so everything stays the same".

[AnonyMint]

Anonymint: some people is saying that you are a paranoid, but it looks painfully obvious to me that you are quite the opposite: extremely naive (no offense intended, I enjoy your posts because they are intelligent and interesting).

I appreciate your appreciation and respect and I accord you the same. Hey I don't actually think everyone is an idiot, I was just driving a beachhead through the groupthink so I could reach the readers' individual consciousness.

The core theory in my blog writings is the value of diversity and decentralization. So how could I then think everyone is an idiot. I value everyone when they think individually. When they think as a group, that is when they lose their effectiveness. Discussing as a group is good, thinking monolithically is not.

It can appear that someone is naive, because you don't know eveything that is their mind. And you think you have a way of viewing the situation which that "naive" person hasn't thought of.

But with high IQ individuals, there is a higher probability they have thought of what you are thinking about  (not always, I very much value input and discussion and I love absorbing information from others) so it is wise to at least ask under presumption they will be honest and credit you when they didn't realize. I try to always admit my mistakes. Etlase2 caught me in a logic error a few weeks ago and I immediately credited him in public and thanked him.

So... How is that Bitcoin is the ultimate power tool for those who already have absolute power?

1. A means to corral, identity, and destroy most of their anarchistic enemies in one honeypot.

2. A viral way to bring about a global digital currency to avoid problems with vested interests within their lower ranks (e.g. Visa, Mastercard, central banks, national governments, etc).

3. A means to worsen the coming implosion to add to the chaos, which they will offer to solve with their world government resolutions, currency resets, Brenton-Woods type of consultations and reorganizations of the financial system.

Power brokers have to do creative destruction too, to clear the path of all the friction they created. They are smart enough to realize they can't accomplish sweeping change top-down within their own rigor mortis.

Many here tend to view only the inept lower ranks and become very boastful about how decentralization destroys the lower ranks, without considering how the upper elite might be using decentralization too.

Also realize that most things in life are not black and white and thus I of course also recognize the benefits Bitcoin brings along the way of potentially the horrific end game outcome I presented. And that is why I also presented a theory in my prior post that perhaps "Satoshi" planted a "[good] Trojan inside a [bad] Trojan" (credit this quote to someone who PM'ed me before reading my prior post).

Any way, it is all conjecture and fun exercise for the mind.

Enjoy!

P.S. so now where is that overgrown adolescents party? I don't want to miss the fun Too bad I stopped drinking, I had some great parties through the years. Still love socializing.

[Rampion]

l

So... How is that Bitcoin is the ultimate power tool for those who already have absolute power?

1. A means to corral, identity, and destroy most of their anarchistic enemies in one honeypot.

2. A viral way to bring about a global digital currency to avoid problems with vested interests within their lower ranks (e.g. Visa, Mastercard, central banks, national governments, etc).

3. A means to worsen the coming implosion to add to the chaos, which they will offer to solve with their world government resolutions, currency resets, Brenton-Woods type of consultations and reorganizations of the financial system.

Power brokers have to do creative destruction too, to clear the path of all the friction they created. They are smart enough to realize they can't accomplish sweeping change top-down within their own rigor mortis.

Many here tend to view only the inept lower ranks and become very boastful about how decentralization destroys the lower ranks, without considering how the upper elite might be using decentralization too.

Also realize that most things in life are not black and white and thus I of course also recognize the benefits Bitcoin brings along the way of potentially the horrific end game outcome I presented. And that is why I also presented a theory in my prior post that perhaps "Satoshi" planted a "[good] Trojan inside a [bad] Trojan" (credit this quote to someone who PM'ed me before reading my prior post).

Any way, it is all conjecture and fun exercise for the mind.

Enjoy!

P.S. so now where is that overgrown adolescents party? I don't want to miss the fun Too bad I stopped drinking, I had some great parties through the years. Still love socializing.

Interesting debate. My replies to your points:

1) exactly for these kind of statements you seem naive to me. The elites don't give a shit about their "anarchistic enemies", because the elites won for good a long time ago. There is no war going on, its total domination. Their "anarchistic enemies" are not a threat for the elites, and on the contrary have a clear purpose in the system - to perpetuate the illusion of freedom of thought, and to create the false hope that "the people" has something to say. In the perfect totalitarian regime everything has a purpose, and precisely the dissidents are crucial because just by existing they are giving legitimacy to the system.

The elites need no honeypot. You are willingly wearing a "chip" (Internet) that scans your brain and transmits everything on it to those willing to listen, you are willingly wearing tracking devices (your mobile), you are willingly using their banks to pay for your bills and so on and so on. The endgame for "the people" arrived decades ago, the slaves are happy to be slaves, and for the ones who won there are no enemies left to destroy.

2) the financial elite already controls the money supply, which in a capitalistic society means ruling the world. I don't see how BTC can give the elites a better edge, unless all the early adopters are part of the old elite. In that case we could say that a few dozen persons would possess at least 30% of the total money supply, which is quite an edge. But I tend to think that for the elites is crucial to manipulate money supply, which in BTC is not possible by design.

3) Governments are just a tool for the elites, and the only goal of the elites is to amass more capital - that's capitalism. Money = power. The wealthier, rules. Governments are just proxies, the wealthier already rule, no need for a Trojan horse.

[AnonyMint]

Extreme Conjecture:

1) The elite are conscious of the threat of being one decentralized paradigm-shift away from losing control. Let's hope I will prove to be prophetic "before Christmas".

True anarchists don't waste their time talking, they implement and disrupt, so we (few lurking amongst you all) serve no such useful PR purpose for them.

The internet listening device lacked a tracking of all money trails. Bitcoin provides it.

2) They control a money supply they can't efficiently track the interlinking trail to the personal id level. Too many financial instutions, accounting ledgers, etc.. This AML, KYC stuff is just a stopgap measure to leverage up the single public blockchain economy-of-scale. Remember large wealth needs economy-of-scale. Small shit is a waste of time for large wealth.

3) Agreed and that was integrated into my point. Don't know why you didn't think so.


Fact:

I am becoming technically convinced that Bitcoin is broken and will devolve into chaos (probably not tomorrow though):

http://hackingdistributed.com/2013/11/08/fairweather-mining/#comment-1126388907

Also the media is picking up on Bitcoin's dystopian future and why it can never be a currency:

http://www.valuewalk.com/2013/11/bitcoin-news/

the US has a fairly low savings rate compared with the rest of the world. Americans save between 11-12% of GDP per year. If we were to apply this savings rate to Bitcoin, already knowing the future path of the Bitcoin money supply, a problem starts to emerge–were 11.5% of Bitcoins saved per year, by 2021, 95.3% of the entire supply of the currency will have been stashed away as savings rendering commerce effectively impossible. A system of credit can be built on top of the Bitcoin economy (and most likely will be built), but while this can push back the date at which savings account for too large a share of the entire economy, it can only delay the inevitable. At some point, Bitcoins saved will start to approach total Bitcoins in circulation, making commerce effectively impossible.

Mildy Extreme Conjecture:

Sorry but the more I contemplate this, I think Bitcoin is doomed. Now could possibly be the blowoff peak for Bitcoin price.

Although I think it is much more likely 1 - 3 years from now due to inertia on all factors. Much can come to light in that intervening time. If the core Bitcoin devs surprise me and fix Bitcoin, then my outlook would change. But they can't change the long-term supply curve, although that particular problem is decades away as Risto pointed out.

The elite will likely abandon their Trojan if it is proven to be technically broken. Surely they have competing strategies in play.

[farfiman]

I am having second thoughts about investing even $20,000 in Bitcoin. I am becoming technically convinced that Bitcoin is broken and will devolve into chaos (probably not tomorrow though):

_________________________________________________________

Sorry but the more I contemplate this, I think Bitcoin is doomed. Now could possibly be the blowoff peak for Bitcoin price.

Wow, that was one of the fastest switcharoos I've seen in a long time. Just 24 hours ago bitcoin was going to hit a million bucks (but the owners could possibly be damned) , now bitcoin is doomed.  Actually bitcoin owners are doomed in both your scenarios.