A note: I would have preferred to file this post under ~culture; but alas, another ones bites the dust.
I sat down to dinner with a few friends last night, all of them technical heavy hitters who are very knowledgable of the current landscape of bitcoin. Because I stay off Twitter and because I have no original or earned opinions on the bip debacle, this was an opportunity to sit and absorb high quality sentiment.
Here's what I learned:
- all in attendance agreed that a long time ago, the debates around the proposed fork went too far afield and were never recovered in any presentation that made sense
- if a dev proved to be insane recently, it was clocked quietly long ago (this points to what is useful about paying attention to sentiment, though it presents itself in vague shades of grey)
- that bitcoin devs do go insane, and that at an accelerated rate, is known, accepted, understood
- bitcoin core is like capitalism - it's the worst system that works
And all of this is summed up in the one thing I found myself adding to the conversation, to my own dismay, but to final, peaceful acceptance of the fact:
- One in attendance began a sentence: If bitcoin does fail...
- and I interjected to end it: ...it's fine because AI is here.
Those at the table agreed.
Because we see what's been happening: bitcoin projects closing - AI companies starting. And maybe I'm not committed to the principles driving that shift, like I was to the bitcoin principles that got me here, but I guess in that moment, hearing them debrief, I let go of some bitterness I was hanging onto (something that's been actively trying to spin up conspiracies about intent and find reason to distrust). I let some understanding in. And it was casual.
I am truly thankful for my position as someone who doesn't know anything, who holds no chips at the table, who can openly and earnestly observe, not needing to predict or narrate, but simply absorb quietly and learn. I'm truly thankful to be human, there's a lot of value in that.
This is where I find twitter sentiment useful, it gives you something to invert for cross-examination.
If AI sews doubts into Bitcoin, the inversion is that AI raises conviction in Bitcoin.
The latter was sentiment, for little while, but sentiment is bi-polar to extremes especially on xitter
These were all fairly consensus talking points within Bitcoin a year or so ago... now we have their bear market inversion that boils down really to one point:
Crash-outs and shitforks aren't new in Bitcoin, nor related to AI, so not sure how 110 fits in nor why people are so fascinated by it. Anti-110 people seem more obsessed with it than the 110 people themselves. I can only assume this is due to bear-market boredom and/or a distraction from a softening conviction, with virtue stoking to ease the pain. Anti-110 obsessives just seem desperate for a win, and it'll be as quickly forgotten as bcash was with a little price action.
There's been discussion here lately about Bitcoin podcast burn-out, everything is repetitive and lame. That's true and has been for years imo.
I did however, coincidentally last night, stumble on to a Mark Moss episode with someone I haven't seen before. Seems he only started producing Bitcoin content this year, and articulated fairly well my intuitions and why I'm still firmly in the AI raises conviction in Bitcoin camp.
Jordi Visser https://youtu.be/1yg1YzZU9X8?si=ba_RbD5iUeivsWEv
TLDR: Bitcoin is the one thing AI cannot disrupt. The easy part of the AI trade is over, token costs down 90% yoy changes ROI potential on infra investment. AI and tokenization accelerates price discovery of companies. The SaaS-pocalypse is only the tip of the iceberg, multiple compression is inevitable as future cash flows are uncertian in an era of disruption and rapid price discovery. Bitcoin on the other hand is certain.
I mostly see a sentiment shift among people that are chronically on X, a place where inhabiting The Current Sentiment is the entire game. But, indeed, we are witnessing a lot of copycat suicides in bitcoiners and bitcoin projects; wouldn't it be nice to vibe code a slight variation on something that nobody really wants but gets a bunch of retweets/grants/whatever instead of losing money/blood/sweat/tears building self-sovereign banking tech where I actually have to read the fucking code else lose my shirt. AI stuff is awesome, and AI as a technology is not a fad, but I think "working on AI" is a fad. AI should be used to work on the problems we care about (eg freedom money) rather than building yet-another-chatbot-or-harness-but-with(out)-fill-in-the-blank.
AI - the capacity to make everything bad about tech worse, faster
but also, yeah to your point, it's also power to solve problems
that can and should be, rightly, leveraged by individuals
Yes, self-sovereign AI is important, ie individuals should be able to get access, and it's very fun to get more done with the same amount of effort, but folks are getting lost in that sauce.
with this exponential increase in sauce, it takes an effort not to get lost
we all like sauce
until the force feeding begins anyway
Consistent with my status, I'll stay quiet on this fad as I have the others, but it's painful to watch the highly suggestible half of bitcoiners get taken out with the tide again.
This is true in the sense that miners and devs have something to pivot towards so that their economic capital doesn't go to waste.
I don't think it's true in the sense of bitcoin's broader philosophy of a freer and fairer monetary system.
The run up to 100k made lots of people and companies over-lever themselves on the Bitcoin trade thinking it was going to make them rich. Leverage kills.
Vis a vis AI. I think its buildout is being used as one of the ways to delever the post covid bubble and transfer a lot of the wealth that it brought, and its probably the reason bitcoin hasn't fallen too deep. They're going to get their 'soft landing' I think, and nothing will burn or crash like all the podcasters will tell you. Eventually, the guvs will print more money, and if you own some bitcoin, you will be padded from the ill effects that has down the road.
I agree, it is very cool for techie people who can pivot. But luckily, we don't have to choose AI or bitcoin, but we can try to be master of them both. Mere plebian, not a techie, I am, but thankful to sit and learn like you, I will master neither. Eternal September, eternally, for this here guy.
Thanks for keeping your finger on the pulse. Hope you guys are healthy and well.
Now is the time to stack.
AI being here doesn't mean bitcoin failed, it means the devs had somewhere to land, and that's fine. a pivot isn't a replacement though. bitcoin's whole point was never to employ people, it was to be money nobody could print or turn off, and AI can't do that part. the table knows it, they just got tired of defending it