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I often think about how insane it is that we use automobiles -- trusting other strangers to not end us with their 2k lbs of metal hurtling in the opposite direction as us at 80mph mere feet to our left...oh, and it's a controlled explosion that powers the whole thing...and there's about a million things you need to keep track of: oil changes, insurance, different juridictions -- and yet they have super wide adoption. "The ability of people to do shit when they really really want to do it is extraordinary." People want to get places.

So, Bitcoin could follow this if it provides something equally compelling. In a way, the thing that bitcoin adoption most needs is heavy handed financial regulations and capital controls. Because then it would shine and people would bend over backwards to learn how to use it.

This seems like a dangerous thing to hope for, but maybe it's the only chance Bitcoin has: we need an incredibly hostile regulatory environment or no one will ever really want to use it.

I often think about how insane it is that we use automobiles.

Mine is sex and drugs -- the ability of people to get sex and drugs, even with the full power of civilization arrayed against them, beggars belief. They will pursue both in the face of death and dismemberment.

This seems like a dangerous thing to hope for, but maybe it's the only chance Bitcoin has: we need an incredibly hostile regulatory environment or no one will ever really want to use it.

One thing that sounds like cope, and that I think both is and is not, is when people say go talk to someone in $COUNTRY who was able to buy a goat / escape political persecution thanks to btc, you privileged asshole!

  • Why it's cope: the absolute value of how much this has actually mattered in practice is de minimus; the amount of value that has flowed through btc for this reason is certainly de minimus.
  • Why it's not cope: the more rich nations trend toward dystopian shitholes, the more this use case will manifest to people who have non-trivial wealth to attempt to preserve, or to transact, and btc will be the best avail option.

Every industrialized country seems to be hurtling in that direction, so I guess that's a bitcoiner silver lining.

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Ironically then, if Kamala had won and Elizabeth Warren would be in charge, we would be at least at $150k now haha

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