I don't see this as a pointless argument. My goal is to determine whether bitcoiners are able to exert more influence on the outcome of a fork via selling their fork coins than if they were to simply yell and scream about how evil the fork coin is.

It is a very widely held belief among bitcoiners that in the event of a fork all the hodlers will awake from their slumber and crash the side of the fork they don't like by selling their fork coins.

James O'Bierne made exactly this argument recently.

I think bitcoiners are deluding themselves in this belief.

Well, I appreciate your patience in explaining your viewpoint here.

I still disagree that the symmetry isn't relevant.

The forkcoiner made a choice at some point that they would be willing to trade btc for forkcoin.

If Darth's decision to sell fork coin represents a change in willingness to sell fork coin, so too does the forkcoiner's decision represent a change in willingness to sell bitcoin (even if it was made long before Darth's).

And further, if you argue that it is this change in the willingness to sell fork coin causes the price of fork coin to go down, the same logic means that the forkcoiner's change in willingness to sell bitcoin causes the price of bitcoin to go down.

Excluding it from the analysis doesn't make sense to me. Darth's trade relies on the existence of this reservation price. Pretending that the same rules don't apply to it as apply to Darth's trade is not logical.

If Darth's offer to sell forkcoins on the cheap represents an increased willingness to sell forkcoin, so does the fork coin enthusiast's acceptance of the offer represent an increased willingness to sell bitcoin. He wouldn't have sold his bitcoin unless Darth showed up.

At some point, the unrealized offer creator decided they wanted to hold forkcoin more than bitcoin. This was a change in the willingness to sell bitcoin. I don't see why it should be excluded from our analysis.

Following this logic, if both coins have an increased willingness to sell, both coins will have lower prices ... which is illogical.

Did the willingness to part with bitcoin also increase during this trade?

If no, then how does the act of Darth offering forkcoin for sale increase supply? (Isn't it rather the airdrop that increased supply?)

If yes, then why shouldn't the exchange rate of forkcoin to bitcoin also go lower because someone also was willing to part with bitcoin in the trade? (Obviously, they can't both decrease in this example).

Finally, I move that all future conversations about bitcoin should use @DarthCoin as the example.

Right, but this is what gets me: supply and demand is really just demand then -- either not demanding as much as you once did (supply) or demanding more than you once did (demand).

I like this analogy!

The apple is pulling on the earth as hard as the earth is pulling on the apple.

But the apple moves because F = ma and the Earth's mass is relatively much bigger than the apple's. For one-sided acceleration to occur, there must be a difference in mass.

Selling btc for dollars exerts the same sell pressure on btc as the person selling dollars exerts on dollars.

But the price of btc goes down only if fewer people want btc and the next offer to sell btc at that level of dollars doesn't have a buyer. For a price change to occur, there must be a difference in buyers.

Wouldn't it be that the price has moved because people want less bitcoin than they previously held (or more of something else)?

When these holders of btc wanted to acquire something else they had to look longer/harder/offer more btc to find people who were willing to trade with them.

The trades themselves don't move the price. The change in people wanting bitcoin moves the price.

You rang?

I am sure that I have contributed to this confusion quite a bit. Indeed, I find that I'm am still confused (although hopefully not about the terms any longer -- thanks to you and @Undisciplined).

Unfortunately, I'm stuck on this idea of Voskuill's that selling a coin does not decrease its price.

If a trade increases the supply of one item in the trade, it must also increase the supply of the item on the other side of the trade.

If you dump fork coin for bitcoin your trading partner is dumping bitcoin for fork coin. And if you dump fork coin for dollars, your trading partner is dumping dollars for fork coin.

The result from the position of those who think trading increases supply is that each side of the trade decreases the price of the thing they are selling. But how could both things decrease in price (in terms of each other) simultaneously?

Pretty much. I was just writing up a long-winded reply that can be summarized as "Yes."

I particularly appreciate your emphasis on the difference between problems that may emerge later and problems we actually are dealing with today.

But mostly I enjoyed the OP's point that we should keep the rough in rough consensus.

Chesterton fences for the win.

Really enjoyed the patternist series.

Silo and Broken Earth were less enjoyable. If I had to choose between the two, I'd go with broken earth.

Well done!

The shapes of letters are so divorced from whatever ideogram-infancy they had that the shapes really have no connection to the sounds we make when we read them aloud nor to the meaning of the words they form.

Languages, too, are just sounds. Where does the meaning come from? It comes from the network of people who also participate in it. It has the utility that it allows us to cooperate better and organize at a larger scale and transfer meaning across time and so on.

Money is also a network. Lots of people want US dollars because it is a very big network, with very many reasons to think it will persist. (USD is produced by a nation with a fairly stable rule of law, lots of resources, huge economic activity).

You might say the only reason it got to be such a big network is that it also can be redeemed for not being thrown in jail (you can pay US taxes with it). However, this is just another attribute of the network, and not the source of the money's value (if the ability to avoid jail by being used to pay taxes was what gave money its value, you might expect the state with the most draconian punishments to have the most valuable currency).

Like the meaning in language, the value in money is not tied to any physical usefulness of the money, but rather to the network of people who use the money and our expectation of its persistence.

A gold coin is not particularly useful in and of itself (it doesn't rust, but neither does stainless steel; it's shiny, but so is gold-flavored metallic spray paint; it's kinda malleable, but so is play-dough -- and yet gold is valued more highly than all these things). Gold is a big network because it has a long track record and people can be fairly confident there aren't going to be massive changes to the stock.

Cookie codes are only as useful as we think it is likely that the network of people who want cookie codes will persist. If they are offered by a lone grocery store in Hillsboro, NC, they may not be a very good money. If they are offered by Walmart, they may be a better money. I don't think it matters if people want cookies or not.

Bitcoin has value because of the network of people who want the attributes such a money can provide (censorship resistance, fixed supply, digitally native).

I don't think you will get lost. None of it is technical in the software/code sense.

Voskuill does a nice job of linking to relevant terms and articles on the internet.

It's best in small doses, with lots of time to think.

Voskuill maintains libbitcoin (the first alternate implementation of bitcoin, which he and Amir Taaki started back in 2011).

Cryptoeconomics is Voskuill's work on the incentives around the tech Satoshi created. It's not so much a book to read through as a graph of ideas in bitcoin. Voskuill recommends "reading the topics as they were written, as a curiosity."

It is certainly the most thoughtful book I've ever read on bitcoin, and the most challenging -- in that some of his conclusions feel very counterintuitive.

Also, I strongly recommend reading the github version rather than printed.

Well, hey, thanks!

Great rundown. Thanks for taking the time to write it up. You should publish it again next week during US morning hours. Not too many people get to see things Friday evening.

I haven't noticed a difference.

I've been reading it to my kids, but they aren't digging it as much as I expected. Perhaps they are still a little young.