What an interesting conversation between three respectful gentlemen. Thanks for keeping it family-friendly. Much appreciated.
I live off-grid. I haul drinking water uphill from the spring when there isn’t rain water caught in buckets from the roof. I have split a lot of wood by hand. There are some things that are unavoidable - vehicles, for example - and obviously I do have access to the internet, since I’m listening to this interview, but it’s only a smart phone which is my only link at home.
I went without a bank account for 20 years, but got one again a few years ago to cash checks. I don’t write checks. I don’t use credit or debit cards or any other kinds of virtual payments. I do use dollars, although I don’t like participating in a fiat currency. I say that if I’m going to use another currency, it needs to be MORE real than federal reserve notes, not LESS real.
I have known for most of my life that there was going to come a time when people would not be allowed to buy or sell without “the mark,” and that something coming in the future was a cashless society. As time passes, it becomes more and more clear how that will happen. To me, digital currencies are leading toward that reality, as were/are credit cards.
I have not looked into bitcoin because I’m not a bit interested in it, but to me it seems like something along the lines of a Ponzi scheme. It’s a way to try to increase wealth without effort or labor. Yes, I see the benefits of the ease of transactions. But what IS bitcoin or any other digital currency? Fundamentally, I mean. It is nothing. It is thin air. Who made it up? How did he convince people to buy electrical pulses? Without power, it is useless, or disappears. It seems to me to be a set-up for control over everyone and everything and every transaction. I do not see any way to avoid that.
I am opposed to people trying to gain wealth by not working. This includes the stock market, which is rich men’s gambling. It also includes digital currencies.
Because I believe in the God of Israel and the Scriptures, I believe that precious metals do have some inherent value. Yes, they could be stolen, but there is no competition for me between what God created and things of men’s imaginations. I’ll stick with the real stuff. Yes, land. And things from the land.
Ultimately, all the world is a Ponzi scheme, but we minimize the bubbles in economies when resources are used efficiently. Bitcoin can only succeed if it uses energy more efficiently than in the status quo.
Yes, metals have inherent/intrinsic value because they can be used in other ways. This is usually a sliver of their trade (fiat conversion) value. And using metals for banking means not using them for other technological purposes. To me, that's a sign of a primitive economy.
I understand your concern, but I don't understand why Bitcoin would be more of a Ponzi scheme than the current reserves, which are digital dollars with a centralized controller. A store of energy (in the form of cryptographic and game theoretic protection of the ledger) seems like a vast upgrade, to me to both a central banking system and also a fiat system.
"Fundamentally, I mean. It is nothing. It is thin air."
Would anyone describe a ledger that way? "It's just numbers on paper. Thin air."
The use of energy for the purpose of security is much more than thin air. It is how the world organizes stable systems. I am not unaware that there are "stable criminal syndicates," but that's also why we shouldn't leave Bitcoin to the criminal syndicates.
At the end of the day, I would suggest that we worry more about what happens if we continue to let the oligarchs master technology and make it asymmetric. This is what has led us to the control grid.
"I would suggest that we worry more about what happens if we continue to let the oligarchs master technology and make it asymmetric. This is what has led us to the control grid."
I think a lot of the pessimism comes from the idea that this is inevitable / unavoidable. I don't think it is, but I understand why many feel that way. One of the reasons I took such an interest in Bitcoin scaling is because I believe that people will only want to reverse this process if they feel like they can have a real stake in it. I think it's a lot easier for people to understand a medium of exchange than digital gold. (How many people understand Gold to begin with?)
If I was leading the charge to radically improve Bitcoin, I think there are some important, but controversial places to start.
1) Acknowledge that mining nodes != all full nodes
It's crucial to reassess how the network wants to encourage non-mining participation. Doing so would actually push away many of the things that give people a sour taste these days. This does have real consequences because hard forks are decided by mining but soft forks are decided by full nodes.
2) Take a long hard look at what the future PoW algorithm will be
These discussions seem to be already rolling thanks to hype around quantum computing. There is a real opportunity to knock out multiple problems at once if changes to the consensus mechanism are being evaluated. Other coins have shown resistance to mining consolidation in ways that would be advantageous to adopt.
3) (Beats drum) A lot of investment needs to go into reassessing lower levels of the technological stack. I've seen some interesting nostr grants, but I liked your suggestion in our talk about "bare metal" Bitcoin devices, which can be advantageous in a wide variety of ways. It's possible that there are already many optimizations that can be made at lower levels (or with novel math) to address existing concerns.
---
Those are really just the ideas I've settled on, I'd be very open to others sharing alternative proposals, given the significant lack of "silver bullets"!
I don't think Bitcoin is a ponzi but I do think the ecosystem needs to take addressing problems a lot more seriously. The bigger players getting involved only increases the urgency of the work required to maintain it's symmetry (or asymmetry in the right direction).
I don't believe a medium of exchange can be achieved without winning the Gresham's law contest, implying that digital currency can't rise above the status quo without becoming digital gold.
What is not a Ponzi scheme? Buying or producing something of value, either useful objects or expended effort to accomplish something. Buying something made up out of someone’s imagination that doesn’t exist is the next level Ponzi scheme.
What were the people that originally “bought” bitcoin buying? What was the inherent value? Were they buying things or labor/time? Or were they just buying into a scam that only has value if other suckers fall for it after them and they benefit by being first? Who is the guy that got all the money from people to buy into his scheme?
I just can’t be convinced that this makes any logical sense. It’s like the old “send a dollar” letter scam, modernized for the computer age. It is dishonest from the very start.
Okay, I'm calculating this is the reply box that will catch Mathew, Gabe and lilac dragonfly. I watched this over time and some parts twice, inadvertently but usefully. I'm still trying to wrap my head around computer-generated currencies so tell me if my assumptions are correct: 1) They're mined by computers using large amounts of energy for no other purpose. 2) They belong to whoever owns the computers and pays for the energy. 3) They're sold for one of the imperial currencies, at whatever the market will bear. 4) They then fluctuate in value, like a stock does, relative to an imperial currency based on recent sales. 5) Like the stock market, they have no intrinsic value and aren't backed by anything.
The words Ponzi Scheme were also occurring to me, lilac dragonfly.
It seems, Mathew, it wouldn't change anything about how the oligarchs control us. Perhaps the people in your network could use Bitcoin to buy a house and some land outright. But for the other 99%, they're struggling to pay their rent or mortgage as the noose tightens. I think the PTB are definitely drying up the money in circulation. So what to do with extra money, to preserve its value, only changes oligarchic control for a few. For the rest, the bankers are still owning their houses, lives and labor through the mortgage.
I'm thinking to do an episode called Bitcoin vs. the Caret, that contrasts the two, in areas like scams and theft but also the most important one that dragonfly brings up--how do we enhance wealth, which is the ability to control your own labor and produce real goods, rather than money, which is the ability to take the labor of other people without giving back an equal share (or any share) of your own.
However, from my research, the 'God' of Israel and the Bible is the originator of taking the products of other people's labor and giving nothing in return. Gold, beyond its use value, is another fiat currency. Coins were stamped at a higher value and then taxed in it, forcing people to enslave and conquer their neighbors just to survive. Israel is an occupying army on someone else's land, which is the logical outcome of a 'God' who gives some the right to rule over others.
I enjoyed this and I always learn a lot from you both, Mathew and Gabe. And I enjoyed reading your thoughtful replies, dragonfly.
"It seems, Mathew, it wouldn't change anything about how the oligarchs control us."
(1) They would no longer be able to constantly inflate away your savings,
(2) They would no longer be able to launder [entirely] invisibly using the reserve currency,
(3) They would no longer be able to engage in dark market activity [entirely invisibly] using the reserve currency (which is >90% of laundering needs),
(4) The weakening of the incentives for organized crime mean a substantial weakening of dark markets, which are the primary mechanism by which criminals engineer outsized profits that can be rotated into governance and control,
(5) The fluctuation in dollar/BTC is only the process of getting the kite to fly. Once the kite is in place, its fluctuation will relate to the winds of capital demand in the most basic way, a return to nature, so to speak,
(6) There will be no imperial currencies once BTC ascends. They will suffer the fate of Thier's law, Zimbabwe dollar style. Remaining currencies will then be based on a stock of BTC in a treasury, with a publicly viewed address, or possibly something natural and fundamental such as an education market.
The vast majority of people in the banking system will have to get new jobs. They'll have to provide value in ways that do not support the criminal banking syndicate. They'll have to provide value aimed at something other than laundering money or running the "free checking" front for money launderers.
The working poor will have a better chance to save generational wealth. Instead of paying 35-40 percent to the banks in remittance fees, they'll pay a single BTC tx fee, saving thousands of dollars per annum for each working sending money home from a wealthy nation. The poor nations will become wealthier and harder to push around.
No longer will the world be stripped to mine so much metal.
Energy sources that are not currently worth developing will be developed. Stranded gas that isn't currently used will become the backbone for most of the mining economy. The net use of current energy supplies will likely be negative when you consider how much energy the finance/banking industry uses [including their lifestyles, large houses, boats, private jets, etc.].
Nations will still look for ways to tax people, of course. They might also run mines (some do already), reducing that burden. But there will be less need for military (see the "Softwar" theory that takes "soft power" to a greater extent).
This doesn't solve everything, but it's a pareto improvement, and one that aligns incentives.
Thanks for this reply, Mathew, and for knowing that my disagreement with ideas comes wrapped in abundant affection and respect for you as a person. I love your thinking and I don't know if you caught my comments on your interview with Doc Malik exclaiming over how much your enthusiasm for teaching math delighted me.
I'm also trying to lure you. I have a masculine brain that operates on logic and numbers but a feminine purpose of empowering families equally. The mothers, who resonate with my purpose, often say, 'My brain doesn't work like that' on the logistics. So I'd love to work through the logistics of my caret system with someone whose brain also finds it a pleasure to play with numbers. And certainly 'Math-you' ;-)
I will leave it to you, Catherine Austin Fitts and others to figure out how people with large sums in savings can preserve the value of their money relative to essentials like housing, energy and food. I don't dismiss that as a goal, since I'm months away from living entirely on my savings and pensions like social security. The banker-led system has made hoarding money into a necessity, and also gambling with it. Bitcoin, gold, stocks, funds, and real estate are all speculative values that can go up or down. 'Stable coin' is an oxymoron because it's a gambling chip that people are betting will go up because others will buy it for more. We shouldn't need to gamble to have 'security.'
So I'll put your measuring sticks into my article comparing Bitcoin to the Caret: inflation, laundering, dark markets, organized crime, lack of fluctuation, imperial currencies, gov't treasuries that reward oligarchs, building generational wealth, economic migration, mining, exploitation of 'poor' nations by rich 'nations' aka banker-owned corporations, beneficial development of energy supplies, taxation and military aggression. And your final point of aligning incentives in the direction that would solve everything. I started to put that in quotes, but I really mean solve everything.
I think that any declaration of Bitcoin as "speculative" with an implication of volatility should come with a discussion of Metcalf's law and whether anything like "price instability" would remain after mass adoption. I very much doubt it, and yet the talking point remains even as BTC's volatility sinks and sinks and sinks. I believe that if BTC becomes the reserve, it will be the least volatile reserve in history. Was the Sterling less volatile in the years leading up to its adoption as reserve? The dollar? Any of them?
Yes, alignment of incentives should be a larger part of the conversation.
Unfortunately, I do not have the energy to have much conversation on the topic. Lately, I feel as if I've been sick for a long time (since exhausting myself with DMED 2.5 years ago, then getting sick last year), completely drained.
Oh I'm sorry to hear about you feeling depleted, Mathew. I hope that turns around.
I think we should analyze volatility as both relative to the dollar (or other imperial currency) and relative to the local cost of housing. I assume you want Bitcoin to be volatile in a positive direction as the dollar devalues, but stable relative to housing.
I posted elsewhere that I wanted to know what it means if Trump uses Bitcoin as part of the US Treasury. Would he use Treasury bills to then buy Bitcoin? Who would he buy it from? Would the Treasury bills be redeemable in dollars? Would he use gold to buy it?
Crypto s challenge the tribal super dominated fed reserve fractional banking controligarch scam... to a certain inexorable voluntarist degree No financial asset is pluperfect it or ideal...the original cyber punks knew ..in some cases..less than an ashtray about serious investment profiting Some matriculated out of pie in the sky neo globalist false idealism...no one forces anyone with a metaphorical gun to your head to buy crypto s ..then again ..permitting tribal
controligarchs to impoverish everyone except the tribe.. might be cause for deep reflection and consequent action... Just don't permit the tribe to make a god out of
I used to believe bitcoin was a grassroots project to overturn the central banksters. Now I suspect it is part of the march towards technocracy. I agree with Matthew that bitcoin and trump are likely to take the blame for the controlled demolition of the dollar. So I expect it to appreciate significantly with respect to fiat currencies. But I don’t expect it to lead to liberation. It’s possible it’s the next reserve currency. It’s also possible its main utility from the bankster point of view is to depress the value of gold while the banksters continue to accumulate gold, which they plan to revert to eventually. Interesting times!
I don’t believe Russia and China are outside of the control of the powers that be. I think they’re just shifting to a new base of operations that has prototyped their new technocratic paradigm.
I agree that they are largely under control of the Empire that went invisible. The narratives are designed to trap us in a Matrix illusion.
They are shifting and negotiating, perhaps. Perhaps simply transforming into new machinery.
I still think that their purchases of gold may in fact be taxation to the overlords.
Did you see the deal where Australia tried to screw China on gold laced with lead a few years ago? That's oddly bold of Australia, assuming the dominant narrative of things.
I made lot of money since election with btc and alt coin. and now i feel like i'm gonna get out of the market before it do what it was meant to do... crash and control. that' my feeling. but meanwhile, if i made cash, i guess LOTS of people made some. i have the FOMO tho because it was obvious dogecoin would rise and i didnt even put a little 100$ in it. nada gives nada and it went 260%. i would have made quite a gain with another of elon doge bubble, sad stuff. OSM one small town could be an elite pilot project maybe, thats my feeling of it. That discussion was MUCH interesting. thank you. lots of brain into this live great stuff =) btw i found really interesting the work of France Leaders on the DOGE.
if i could ask crypto related question, here is one and it fits with the elitist thinking of it:
- whats your opinion on Joseon Mun, its a coin made by mark karpeles and since the guy is a lil genius that made quite a story(i will link that) and joseon is the history of the last korean empire...that mark is base in japan and japan ended controling part of korea when this joseon empire came to an end.
Now we got this coin, suposedly the first unbannable one in a different category symbolising something quite deep and having this karpeles as director of this virtual-nation. I got spidey-sens on that all over my spine but i dont have the genius like all of ya to understand half i just said.
whatcha think? another Ftx on the way? a past Ftx from 2015 that will rinse and repeat? A man who paid is due made is name and a safe project? I dont think so but what do I know.
And i've been checking lots of wiz kid in crypto...many are dead in weird way's. So i find it even more suspicious when one of them doesnt die after making that of a rufus: exemple Sam Bankman
You three really delivered on this episode. Thank you for taking the time.
I recently was introduced to Aaron Day's writings, including his book The Final Countdown. He includes some step by step ways to enter purchasing crypto and also how to use it day to day.
I was poised to purchase some Bitcoin earlier this year, but listened to the caution and was also uncomfortable with the information I received from my tax accountant that explained the IRS requirement to report any holdings. Anyway, as you indicated, it behooves us to learn more, which is what I am doing. This podcast was essential to that goal. I might not have been able to understand it a year ago, but now I do. Thank you.
Thanks Gabe, Mathew, and Hrvoje. Great thought and action provoking discussion. Blessings.
What an interesting conversation between three respectful gentlemen. Thanks for keeping it family-friendly. Much appreciated.
I live off-grid. I haul drinking water uphill from the spring when there isn’t rain water caught in buckets from the roof. I have split a lot of wood by hand. There are some things that are unavoidable - vehicles, for example - and obviously I do have access to the internet, since I’m listening to this interview, but it’s only a smart phone which is my only link at home.
I went without a bank account for 20 years, but got one again a few years ago to cash checks. I don’t write checks. I don’t use credit or debit cards or any other kinds of virtual payments. I do use dollars, although I don’t like participating in a fiat currency. I say that if I’m going to use another currency, it needs to be MORE real than federal reserve notes, not LESS real.
I have known for most of my life that there was going to come a time when people would not be allowed to buy or sell without “the mark,” and that something coming in the future was a cashless society. As time passes, it becomes more and more clear how that will happen. To me, digital currencies are leading toward that reality, as were/are credit cards.
I have not looked into bitcoin because I’m not a bit interested in it, but to me it seems like something along the lines of a Ponzi scheme. It’s a way to try to increase wealth without effort or labor. Yes, I see the benefits of the ease of transactions. But what IS bitcoin or any other digital currency? Fundamentally, I mean. It is nothing. It is thin air. Who made it up? How did he convince people to buy electrical pulses? Without power, it is useless, or disappears. It seems to me to be a set-up for control over everyone and everything and every transaction. I do not see any way to avoid that.
I am opposed to people trying to gain wealth by not working. This includes the stock market, which is rich men’s gambling. It also includes digital currencies.
Because I believe in the God of Israel and the Scriptures, I believe that precious metals do have some inherent value. Yes, they could be stolen, but there is no competition for me between what God created and things of men’s imaginations. I’ll stick with the real stuff. Yes, land. And things from the land.
What is NOT a Ponzi scheme?
Ultimately, all the world is a Ponzi scheme, but we minimize the bubbles in economies when resources are used efficiently. Bitcoin can only succeed if it uses energy more efficiently than in the status quo.
Yes, metals have inherent/intrinsic value because they can be used in other ways. This is usually a sliver of their trade (fiat conversion) value. And using metals for banking means not using them for other technological purposes. To me, that's a sign of a primitive economy.
I understand your concern, but I don't understand why Bitcoin would be more of a Ponzi scheme than the current reserves, which are digital dollars with a centralized controller. A store of energy (in the form of cryptographic and game theoretic protection of the ledger) seems like a vast upgrade, to me to both a central banking system and also a fiat system.
"Fundamentally, I mean. It is nothing. It is thin air."
Would anyone describe a ledger that way? "It's just numbers on paper. Thin air."
The use of energy for the purpose of security is much more than thin air. It is how the world organizes stable systems. I am not unaware that there are "stable criminal syndicates," but that's also why we shouldn't leave Bitcoin to the criminal syndicates.
At the end of the day, I would suggest that we worry more about what happens if we continue to let the oligarchs master technology and make it asymmetric. This is what has led us to the control grid.
"I would suggest that we worry more about what happens if we continue to let the oligarchs master technology and make it asymmetric. This is what has led us to the control grid."
I think a lot of the pessimism comes from the idea that this is inevitable / unavoidable. I don't think it is, but I understand why many feel that way. One of the reasons I took such an interest in Bitcoin scaling is because I believe that people will only want to reverse this process if they feel like they can have a real stake in it. I think it's a lot easier for people to understand a medium of exchange than digital gold. (How many people understand Gold to begin with?)
If I was leading the charge to radically improve Bitcoin, I think there are some important, but controversial places to start.
1) Acknowledge that mining nodes != all full nodes
It's crucial to reassess how the network wants to encourage non-mining participation. Doing so would actually push away many of the things that give people a sour taste these days. This does have real consequences because hard forks are decided by mining but soft forks are decided by full nodes.
2) Take a long hard look at what the future PoW algorithm will be
These discussions seem to be already rolling thanks to hype around quantum computing. There is a real opportunity to knock out multiple problems at once if changes to the consensus mechanism are being evaluated. Other coins have shown resistance to mining consolidation in ways that would be advantageous to adopt.
3) (Beats drum) A lot of investment needs to go into reassessing lower levels of the technological stack. I've seen some interesting nostr grants, but I liked your suggestion in our talk about "bare metal" Bitcoin devices, which can be advantageous in a wide variety of ways. It's possible that there are already many optimizations that can be made at lower levels (or with novel math) to address existing concerns.
---
Those are really just the ideas I've settled on, I'd be very open to others sharing alternative proposals, given the significant lack of "silver bullets"!
I don't think Bitcoin is a ponzi but I do think the ecosystem needs to take addressing problems a lot more seriously. The bigger players getting involved only increases the urgency of the work required to maintain it's symmetry (or asymmetry in the right direction).
I don't believe a medium of exchange can be achieved without winning the Gresham's law contest, implying that digital currency can't rise above the status quo without becoming digital gold.
What is not a Ponzi scheme? Buying or producing something of value, either useful objects or expended effort to accomplish something. Buying something made up out of someone’s imagination that doesn’t exist is the next level Ponzi scheme.
What were the people that originally “bought” bitcoin buying? What was the inherent value? Were they buying things or labor/time? Or were they just buying into a scam that only has value if other suckers fall for it after them and they benefit by being first? Who is the guy that got all the money from people to buy into his scheme?
I just can’t be convinced that this makes any logical sense. It’s like the old “send a dollar” letter scam, modernized for the computer age. It is dishonest from the very start.
"Buying something made up out of someone’s imagination that doesn’t exist is the next level Ponzi scheme."
I read, "I'm going to rhetorically describe a ledger with security as 'imagination' in order to push the Ponzi scheme notion."
Of course it won't make logical sense to you if you don't learn about what it is.
Yeah..that doesn't mean there isn't short medium and long term profit potential in..btc...
Okay, I'm calculating this is the reply box that will catch Mathew, Gabe and lilac dragonfly. I watched this over time and some parts twice, inadvertently but usefully. I'm still trying to wrap my head around computer-generated currencies so tell me if my assumptions are correct: 1) They're mined by computers using large amounts of energy for no other purpose. 2) They belong to whoever owns the computers and pays for the energy. 3) They're sold for one of the imperial currencies, at whatever the market will bear. 4) They then fluctuate in value, like a stock does, relative to an imperial currency based on recent sales. 5) Like the stock market, they have no intrinsic value and aren't backed by anything.
The words Ponzi Scheme were also occurring to me, lilac dragonfly.
It seems, Mathew, it wouldn't change anything about how the oligarchs control us. Perhaps the people in your network could use Bitcoin to buy a house and some land outright. But for the other 99%, they're struggling to pay their rent or mortgage as the noose tightens. I think the PTB are definitely drying up the money in circulation. So what to do with extra money, to preserve its value, only changes oligarchic control for a few. For the rest, the bankers are still owning their houses, lives and labor through the mortgage.
I'm thinking to do an episode called Bitcoin vs. the Caret, that contrasts the two, in areas like scams and theft but also the most important one that dragonfly brings up--how do we enhance wealth, which is the ability to control your own labor and produce real goods, rather than money, which is the ability to take the labor of other people without giving back an equal share (or any share) of your own.
However, from my research, the 'God' of Israel and the Bible is the originator of taking the products of other people's labor and giving nothing in return. Gold, beyond its use value, is another fiat currency. Coins were stamped at a higher value and then taxed in it, forcing people to enslave and conquer their neighbors just to survive. Israel is an occupying army on someone else's land, which is the logical outcome of a 'God' who gives some the right to rule over others.
I enjoyed this and I always learn a lot from you both, Mathew and Gabe. And I enjoyed reading your thoughtful replies, dragonfly.
"It seems, Mathew, it wouldn't change anything about how the oligarchs control us."
(1) They would no longer be able to constantly inflate away your savings,
(2) They would no longer be able to launder [entirely] invisibly using the reserve currency,
(3) They would no longer be able to engage in dark market activity [entirely invisibly] using the reserve currency (which is >90% of laundering needs),
(4) The weakening of the incentives for organized crime mean a substantial weakening of dark markets, which are the primary mechanism by which criminals engineer outsized profits that can be rotated into governance and control,
(5) The fluctuation in dollar/BTC is only the process of getting the kite to fly. Once the kite is in place, its fluctuation will relate to the winds of capital demand in the most basic way, a return to nature, so to speak,
(6) There will be no imperial currencies once BTC ascends. They will suffer the fate of Thier's law, Zimbabwe dollar style. Remaining currencies will then be based on a stock of BTC in a treasury, with a publicly viewed address, or possibly something natural and fundamental such as an education market.
The vast majority of people in the banking system will have to get new jobs. They'll have to provide value in ways that do not support the criminal banking syndicate. They'll have to provide value aimed at something other than laundering money or running the "free checking" front for money launderers.
The working poor will have a better chance to save generational wealth. Instead of paying 35-40 percent to the banks in remittance fees, they'll pay a single BTC tx fee, saving thousands of dollars per annum for each working sending money home from a wealthy nation. The poor nations will become wealthier and harder to push around.
No longer will the world be stripped to mine so much metal.
Energy sources that are not currently worth developing will be developed. Stranded gas that isn't currently used will become the backbone for most of the mining economy. The net use of current energy supplies will likely be negative when you consider how much energy the finance/banking industry uses [including their lifestyles, large houses, boats, private jets, etc.].
Nations will still look for ways to tax people, of course. They might also run mines (some do already), reducing that burden. But there will be less need for military (see the "Softwar" theory that takes "soft power" to a greater extent).
This doesn't solve everything, but it's a pareto improvement, and one that aligns incentives.
Thanks for this reply, Mathew, and for knowing that my disagreement with ideas comes wrapped in abundant affection and respect for you as a person. I love your thinking and I don't know if you caught my comments on your interview with Doc Malik exclaiming over how much your enthusiasm for teaching math delighted me.
I'm also trying to lure you. I have a masculine brain that operates on logic and numbers but a feminine purpose of empowering families equally. The mothers, who resonate with my purpose, often say, 'My brain doesn't work like that' on the logistics. So I'd love to work through the logistics of my caret system with someone whose brain also finds it a pleasure to play with numbers. And certainly 'Math-you' ;-)
I will leave it to you, Catherine Austin Fitts and others to figure out how people with large sums in savings can preserve the value of their money relative to essentials like housing, energy and food. I don't dismiss that as a goal, since I'm months away from living entirely on my savings and pensions like social security. The banker-led system has made hoarding money into a necessity, and also gambling with it. Bitcoin, gold, stocks, funds, and real estate are all speculative values that can go up or down. 'Stable coin' is an oxymoron because it's a gambling chip that people are betting will go up because others will buy it for more. We shouldn't need to gamble to have 'security.'
So I'll put your measuring sticks into my article comparing Bitcoin to the Caret: inflation, laundering, dark markets, organized crime, lack of fluctuation, imperial currencies, gov't treasuries that reward oligarchs, building generational wealth, economic migration, mining, exploitation of 'poor' nations by rich 'nations' aka banker-owned corporations, beneficial development of energy supplies, taxation and military aggression. And your final point of aligning incentives in the direction that would solve everything. I started to put that in quotes, but I really mean solve everything.
Anything else?
I think that any declaration of Bitcoin as "speculative" with an implication of volatility should come with a discussion of Metcalf's law and whether anything like "price instability" would remain after mass adoption. I very much doubt it, and yet the talking point remains even as BTC's volatility sinks and sinks and sinks. I believe that if BTC becomes the reserve, it will be the least volatile reserve in history. Was the Sterling less volatile in the years leading up to its adoption as reserve? The dollar? Any of them?
Yes, alignment of incentives should be a larger part of the conversation.
Unfortunately, I do not have the energy to have much conversation on the topic. Lately, I feel as if I've been sick for a long time (since exhausting myself with DMED 2.5 years ago, then getting sick last year), completely drained.
Oh I'm sorry to hear about you feeling depleted, Mathew. I hope that turns around.
I think we should analyze volatility as both relative to the dollar (or other imperial currency) and relative to the local cost of housing. I assume you want Bitcoin to be volatile in a positive direction as the dollar devalues, but stable relative to housing.
I posted elsewhere that I wanted to know what it means if Trump uses Bitcoin as part of the US Treasury. Would he use Treasury bills to then buy Bitcoin? Who would he buy it from? Would the Treasury bills be redeemable in dollars? Would he use gold to buy it?
Thanks for your help, Mathew.
Crypto s challenge the tribal super dominated fed reserve fractional banking controligarch scam... to a certain inexorable voluntarist degree No financial asset is pluperfect it or ideal...the original cyber punks knew ..in some cases..less than an ashtray about serious investment profiting Some matriculated out of pie in the sky neo globalist false idealism...no one forces anyone with a metaphorical gun to your head to buy crypto s ..then again ..permitting tribal
controligarchs to impoverish everyone except the tribe.. might be cause for deep reflection and consequent action... Just don't permit the tribe to make a god out of
technology......choose intelligent moral
prosperous self educating freedom
I used to believe bitcoin was a grassroots project to overturn the central banksters. Now I suspect it is part of the march towards technocracy. I agree with Matthew that bitcoin and trump are likely to take the blame for the controlled demolition of the dollar. So I expect it to appreciate significantly with respect to fiat currencies. But I don’t expect it to lead to liberation. It’s possible it’s the next reserve currency. It’s also possible its main utility from the bankster point of view is to depress the value of gold while the banksters continue to accumulate gold, which they plan to revert to eventually. Interesting times!
Are the banksters accumulating gold?
I see gold being sloughed off on Russia and Costco consumers.
I don’t believe Russia and China are outside of the control of the powers that be. I think they’re just shifting to a new base of operations that has prototyped their new technocratic paradigm.
I agree that they are largely under control of the Empire that went invisible. The narratives are designed to trap us in a Matrix illusion.
They are shifting and negotiating, perhaps. Perhaps simply transforming into new machinery.
I still think that their purchases of gold may in fact be taxation to the overlords.
Did you see the deal where Australia tried to screw China on gold laced with lead a few years ago? That's oddly bold of Australia, assuming the dominant narrative of things.
As soon as I get some bandwidth for this convo, it’s on like Donkey Kong. Can’t wait!
I made lot of money since election with btc and alt coin. and now i feel like i'm gonna get out of the market before it do what it was meant to do... crash and control. that' my feeling. but meanwhile, if i made cash, i guess LOTS of people made some. i have the FOMO tho because it was obvious dogecoin would rise and i didnt even put a little 100$ in it. nada gives nada and it went 260%. i would have made quite a gain with another of elon doge bubble, sad stuff. OSM one small town could be an elite pilot project maybe, thats my feeling of it. That discussion was MUCH interesting. thank you. lots of brain into this live great stuff =) btw i found really interesting the work of France Leaders on the DOGE.
if i could ask crypto related question, here is one and it fits with the elitist thinking of it:
- whats your opinion on Joseon Mun, its a coin made by mark karpeles and since the guy is a lil genius that made quite a story(i will link that) and joseon is the history of the last korean empire...that mark is base in japan and japan ended controling part of korea when this joseon empire came to an end.
Now we got this coin, suposedly the first unbannable one in a different category symbolising something quite deep and having this karpeles as director of this virtual-nation. I got spidey-sens on that all over my spine but i dont have the genius like all of ya to understand half i just said.
So here is some link
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/joseon-mun/
https://u.today/joseon-blockchain-ecosystem-introduces-first-ever-virtual-nation-state
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%A9riode_Joseon
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Karpel%C3%A8s#
whatcha think? another Ftx on the way? a past Ftx from 2015 that will rinse and repeat? A man who paid is due made is name and a safe project? I dont think so but what do I know.
And i've been checking lots of wiz kid in crypto...many are dead in weird way's. So i find it even more suspicious when one of them doesnt die after making that of a rufus: exemple Sam Bankman
If anyone thought I was hard on Bitcoin, I am exponentially harder on non-Bitcoin blockchain projects. The fact that it's a network state attempt itself is enough to make me condemn it by default, for the reasons outlined here (https://libresolutionsnetwork.substack.com/p/tools-of-the-technocracy-12-network)
So my spidey sense werent wrong heh 🕸️🕷️🕵️♂️ thanks for the link 🙏
You three really delivered on this episode. Thank you for taking the time.
I recently was introduced to Aaron Day's writings, including his book The Final Countdown. He includes some step by step ways to enter purchasing crypto and also how to use it day to day.
I was poised to purchase some Bitcoin earlier this year, but listened to the caution and was also uncomfortable with the information I received from my tax accountant that explained the IRS requirement to report any holdings. Anyway, as you indicated, it behooves us to learn more, which is what I am doing. This podcast was essential to that goal. I might not have been able to understand it a year ago, but now I do. Thank you.