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Without land, you're a serf.
And with land, it gets taken.
Or at the very least, you get told you can continue to call it "yours" as long you pay homage or taxes.
What the hell does "land ownership" even mean, at a fundamental level?
That is funny. I'm arrogant about my ignorance.
The only thing we can be sure of is that we can't be sure of anything.
Do you face all of your problems by inventing supernatural stories?
Sure, people do this. But it shouldn't be accepted and embraced by an advanced society. It's a mass delusion. Such things usually lead to negative outcomes, eventually.
Case in point: the worst atrocities in history usually had a religious motive.
Just because something makes us feel better, doesn't have any impact on its veracity.
I'm not certain, but I can speculate.
I think we lost something very important in the aftermath of the Blocksize War. I think a lot of momentum was lost there. I think many Bitcoiners underestimate how many great minds and members of the community stayed on the BCH-train TO THIS DAY.
These are people who would be the voice for Bitcoin as MoE, instead of only Gold 2.0.
I think Roger Ver has a lot of good points about Bitcoin losing important MoE momentum, giving fiat-based digital payments time to catch up (CashApp, Zelle, etc...).
We lost a lot of good people, who no longer support the cause.
I fear we could face a similar situation if we lose guys like Mechanic because of the Knots stuff.
Honestly, there's way more I'd like to go into in order to answer your question. I'm just spitballin' off the top of my head in a very tired state tonight. This would be a good discussion topic for a whole new post, maybe.
or is it bitcoin itself that's broken?
Bitcoin is not threatening the fiat system in any tangible way. Therefore, Bitcoin (more accurately humans using Bitcoin) is broken. Period.
If I simply wanted to store value across time/space, I could just buy gold.
The world doesn't need Gold 2.0. It needs a replacement for fiat. When the Bitcoin community forgot about that goal, and embraced NGU nonsense, Bitcoin broke.
This was always about shutting down energy production in western countries
The best deceits are shrouded in truth. While I agree there has been a large psy-op here, there is also a lot of reality in it. The science of it is not very complicated.
Denying climate change is a lot like denying evolution. It's a lot like being a flat-earther. The science isn't complicated for these things. The deniers are so ignorant and under-educated, fueling conspiracy theories and group-think.
There is a massive, "illuminati" psy-op, using climate change as the boogie man. Climate change is a serious problem humanity will eventually have to face. Both can be true at the same time.
Yup. I completely agree.
What's sad is, we are talking about the influencers. The people who are supposedly the "real", "hardcore" Bitcoiners. They talk about the evils of fiat, but do nothing to stop it.
I used to love watching Simply Bitcoin. But now I can't stand the hypocrisy.
Would you consider it "destroying capital" for an individual to take out the maximum loan possible to buy a huge house during times of extremely low interest rates?
I see it as a very similar concept. If a company has the ability to issue shares in order to buy Bitcoin, they should, even if they are cash-flow negative. It's the broken system that even allows such a thing to happen.
Shit, as long as we're living in a fiat-denominated world, I'm not sure that I even acknowledge the concept of "destroying capital" as a real thing. It's all manipulated. Winners and losers are chosen arbitrarily. There is no such thing as "capital" in such a system at all.
So what's wrong with a company taking advantage of such a broken system?
"Real economics" already stopped being relevant the second we allowed a central bank into the U.S.
That is a tension the Bitcoin ecosystem will need to resolve ...
It's simple. The more of us who only accept Sats to settle B2B receipts, the easier it gets for other companies to justify holding Sats, even through rough times.
Every time a Bitcoiner goes out of their way to support a Bitcoin-only business, they reinforce the idea that Bitcoin deserves to have "sustained institutional respect".
As long as the Bitcoin community continues to use fiat (cuz muh convenience, bro), there will be "repeated boom/bust cycles driven by flashy but unsustainable plays".
The tension you speak of will not be resolved until the community itself decides to be pioneers and revolutionists. After all, if we can't even do it, I think it's safe to say the rest of the world will never do it either, and this is the most bearish thing for Bitcoin I can think of.
When Danny talks about m-Nav, he's talking about DOLLARS.
I think this is what's so offensive to Saylor.
We continue to frame Bitcoin as though it's just an investment, and we don't use it for trade or real-world transactions. Then, we wonder why the price is so suppressed and the retail public has given up on the premise.
Bitcoiners need to start living what they preach. Stop obsessing about the fiat-based macro environment. The fiat based metrics. The fiat itself. Start using Bitcoin, and the world will improve.
I'm also only a quarter of the way through it.
I think Bitcoiners, in general, continue to call dollars "money" and talk about dollar "profits/losses", and continue to treat Bitcoin as ONLY an "investment".
The way we talk about treasury companies exemplifies this. We don't talk about, or criticize, the companies who hold zero Bitcoin. Our community seems to act as though Bitcoin is a speculative investment. That is the backdrop of Danny's questions, and I feel like Saylor is trying to re-frame it so Bitcoin is the money, not dollars. If a company is cash-flow-negative, holding real money is probably the best thing they can do. If they can issue shares to do so, isn't that the smartest possible thing?! Someone is willing to buy their worthless paper with worthless paper, to buy something real.
It seems to me that Saylor is the only logical one here, actively trying to get the world to move to a Bitcoin Standard. While the Bitcoin community, generally, holds on as tightly as possible to their fiat paper.
The unwillingness of Bitcoiners to actually move to a Bitcoin Standard, is really bothering me. Lots of lip-service about it, but zero real effort.
Yes, I understand that revolutions are contentious because they challenge deeply entrenched systems.
That's why revolutionists do what they do on principle, and on faith. They know the odds are against them, yet they move forward anyway.
Many revolutions, in history, have succeeded against impossible odds. Many have not.
Within the Bitcoin community, there simply is no revolution against fiat. Bitcoiners have nothing more than talking points and narratives. But they DO NOT live what they preach. They love to preach how bad fiat is on shows like Simply Bitcoin, right before pitching a fiat-focused ad from Fold, or spending an hour focused on NGU garbage.
I understand that we aren't going to upend the fiat system over a short period of time. But what I do not understand is why we aren't building more Bitcoin circular economies. Why we aren't building new communities together where Bitcoin is the monetary blood for trade. Why are we, as Bitcoiners, accepting fiat as a "necessary evil"?
You are describing to me why the world isn't moving to a Bitcoin Standard. But I'm asking, "Why aren't Bitcoiners moving to a Bitcoin standard?". See the difference?
BTW, I have visited Madiera, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Roatan etc..... I have spent a lot of Bitcoin at hundreds of vendors. I know there are some places trying to work on this problem. But where is the revolutionary spirit within the US and Europe? Where are the people building communities? Where are the Bitcoiners who are actually trying to use Bitcoin as money? Because if we aren't doing it.... what makes us think the rest of the world EVER will? It will remain nothing more than an "investment" if there aren't brave people who stand up and fight. The idea of a "peaceful revolution" in Bitcoin is just a cope.
I believe bitcoiners are generally wishing for #2, where people adopt bitcoin and ditch fiat.
Really?
Then why do I still see the "$" symbol at all of the Bitcoin conferences? Even Bitcoiners constantly use the words, "$x,xxx amount worth of Bitcoin", instead of using Sats as their base terminology?
Why are Bitcoiners cheering and advertising fiat credit/debit cards?
Why are we almost two decades into this "revolution", and there is still no credible threat to the fiat system because of Bitcoin's existence?
The Bitcoin narratives of the past decade are starting to sound silly. It has become an "investment" in the eyes of 99% of the Bitcoin community, and for 100% of the normies.
Bitcoiners generally claim to believe the dollar has been hyper-inflated, and yet they continue to use it, happily. It Bitcoiners aren't making the switch today, what makes you think they ever will?
Bitcoin is failing, and not even hyper-inflation in fiat-land will be able to save it at this point.
Yes, we have the tech now to use Bitcoin as money in daily life.
What's the problem with Bitcoin? Nothing.
The problem is the Bitcoin community. Obsessed with dollars and fiat valuations. There is no reason to use Bitcoin as currency because they can get Sats back if they use their fiat debit/card instead.
Even Bitcoiners, apparently, don't seem to understand why fiat is so bad. (But it makes a great talking point when selling the idea of Bitcoin to normies).
Even "the ones who get it" aren't fighting very hard to end fiat. They accept fiat as a necessary evil.... and make excuses for why it doesn't make sense to switch to using Bitcoin for anything other than hodling.
I agree.
But even Bitcoiners are using fiat more often than they use Bitcoin. They aren't making a big deal about using permissioned money, so why would anyone else? Especially when that permissioned money is even faster/cheaper to transact with.