ETFs and the banker directed narrative they support is what has seen Bitcoin redefined as largely a speculative commodity. Yes its a TRAP. This is what they want as it renders Bitcoin relatively harmless...and prone to capture and control.

In the Chinese context this would be appropriate as well- as the Chinese place huge importance upon the increase in acceptance of their CBDC eYuan. Jack Ma was sidelined to emphasise that nobody will challenge the eYuan and its crucial role in the tertiary layer of the Belt and Road model.

At current rates most Bitcoin will be held by US domiciled institutional custodians within 5 years. I do not think that is a good thing BTW!

There is little difference between Blackrock and the CCP.

All property 'ownership' is largely dependent upon the states support...

States have developed precisely to uphold and enforce property rights.

Agree it seems unlikely the CCP would allow it- but it would be impressive if they did.

Am less critical of their economic performance to date- sure there have been mistakes like the property market bubble but China has directed far more fiat debt sourced capital toward actual productive investments than the west- in fact Fiat is not all bad if it is primarily directed toward productive purposes- and Chinas real productive economy is impressive- they have beaten the wests manufacturing giants at their own game with a mix of piracy (reverse engineering western factory blueprints) scale, planned infrastructure and huge emphasis on engineering. Engineering in China is like what it was in the west 80-100 years ago- quasi religion- very important and highly valued- most of the poliburo are engineers.

Engineering combined with Keynesian capital direction is a potent combination...see the west 1930s-1960s and China 1980- present day.

Keynesian capital issuance combined with neoliberal bankster cronyinsm is a mongrel - and the wests current, possibly terminal, disease.

Belt and Road is a serious global empire project...directly challenging the wests 500 years global hegemony.

Yes they would struggle with the freedom of capital movement that Bitcoin would give citizens although if wrapped into ETF format that could be controlled.... Much like how the wests bankers/govts have captured and controlled the protocol into a relatively harmless speculative commodity...;)

Libertarians naively dismiss the significance of the nation state and its power projection in the creation of the wealth of nations...

The real estate crisis was in large part due to the lack of choices for Chinese people to invest their savings into. The Chinese government needs to give its citizens more credible savings options and Bitcoin could be one.

The Chinese government will nevertheless struggle to accept Bitcoin anymore than they have to. It is almost completely diametrically opposed to the ideology of the CCP.

Here in NZ we once had a prediction market where you could put money on your opinions about future events- it was established by the Statistics department of one of the universities- I think Massey but not 100% sure- anyway these prediction markets can definitely be of value and are not simply gambling. It was called ipredict and was so successful that a subsequent right wing government closed it down...or to be more accurate I believe it was forced to move offshore but have not heard of it for several years so they effectively shut it down in NZ- note polling is a strategic asset for political parties and the right wing government that shut down ipredict is closely aligned to several private polling companies....

However, aside from avoiding meddling politicians, these prediction markets need some degree of technical depth to provide the best results.

I have only so far tried Bitcoinpredictionmarket and find it needs to improve its method of allocating risk reward- currently there is zero incentive to place an early bet n any event and total incentive to wait until the last minute before the event closes. If you are making a prediction a long time in advance of any event the reward should be greater than closer to the event.

Bitcoin already allowed me to retire...but once you can retire you still want to do stuff - I suspect Bitcoin has empowered a lot of interesting projects to happen!

Lubuntu is good too.

Whatever I would never go back to the corporate spyshitware that are Microsoft and Apple.

Don't expect freedom and integrity to be convenient- it rarely is.

Not saying China did or didn't orchestrate the sabotage- we can only say they did gain from its results. Yes there are probably many aspects we have not covered and we might never know the truth about who was behind the Nordstream sabotage - all we can do is speculate based on what we do know and accept its hard to know the truth. Its certainly a fascinating topic given the broad proxy war that is now ongoing between China and the west and which is barely acknowledged in most narratives and news streams.

How can we know? China is unlikely to admit it, if they, or proxies, were responsible. My point remains that China is the biggest gainer from the sabotage.

Yes Debian is the best, although Ubuntu is perhaps easier for people new to Linux.

I would never go back to the corporate spyshitware that are Microsoft and Apple.

Yes China has been supporting Iran for many years ignoring the US sanctions. Russia only invaded once they had signed a mutual support pact with China. There will be many different perspectives and opinions on what is 'right or wrong'.

Fact remains - China has gained significantly from the sabotage of the Nordstream pipelines.

So just under 5 BTC is enough to retire on?

I prefer Debian.

Gas is expensive to ship - it is prone to being captive to a limited market/s within the reach of available pipelines.

With Nordstream pipeline/s closed combined with western sanctions, Russias strategic gas production income is now mainly dependent upon sales to China.

China gets Russias oil and gas exports at discounted prices. It pays a similar below market price for Iranian oil.