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41 sats \ 7 replies \ @mallardshead 6 Oct 2023 \ on: Gold "hoarders" were persecuted in the 1930's, what will happen with bitcoin? bitcoin
Americans mostly handed their gold in voluntarily as an act of patriotism. There weren't any confiscations of individual gold, prosecutions were rare, and imprisonment almost non-existent. It lead to the big thing, which was the Gold Reserve Act of 1934 which dealt with removing the title of gold certificates (paper gold) from private persons and institutions. The Act and Order weren't repealed until 1964 and 1974 respectively, when Americans could legally hold gold (for investment purposes). Gold hoarders weren't particularly liked amongst the public at large because of who they were, and how they talked, especially coming out of the economic crisis, with widespread poverty. I hope bitcoiners and the branding culture take note.
How do you suggest that a gold "hoarder" should have been, talked and conducted himself to be liked? How should bitcoiners conduct themselves and what notes need to be taken for the branding culture? Can you please elaborate?
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Roosevelt (a Democrat) beat Hoover (a Republican) in a landslide. He was very well liked.
Most of the gold hoarders were wealthy. They were looked at suspiciously as the group escaping with all the wealth out of the 1929 crisis. They talked up hard money, spread crisis narratives about US decline, used Weimar hyperinflation the decade prior as a benchmark, and extolled the necessity of hoarding gold. Some of the biggest offenders ran the paper gold markets. They were the same people who opposed federal taxes (federal taxes didn't exist before 1913), when the vast majority (like 90%) of people demanded them, because the status quo since the Civil War only benefited the wealthy and industrialists, and it became the biggest issue of the 1912 election, where Woodrow Wilson (a Democrat) crushed the incumbent Republican. It's important to mention there was Socialist Party at the time, Eugene Debs was its candidate I believe, and he won a large portion of the popular vote. I could tie this into Standard Oil's anti-trust of 1911 but for the sake of brevity let's push on.
My point perhaps, is that we picked up a severe political element with the 2020 run going into covid, amplified by Twitter (itself bought by a loudmouth); whence the main touchpoint of bitcoin evangelism came once upon the White Paper, it faded as a citation you'd hear often, replaced by readings like The Bitcoin Standard, written by Saifedean Ammous, who will engage in trans moral panic and political demagoguery within the same tweet; and you had fossil fuel pumping public miners who gravitated towards Texas because it's the only state with an independent grid which excludes it from [most] federal oversight, and they hired half-witted lobbyists to explain to partisans how they'll benefit personally, and why centralized forms of energy provided by integrated majors is a viable thing for bitcoin when the mining economy of scale says otherwise directionally, especially when energy storage encroaches on their unique grid positioning; Jack Dorsey, a product master, made a rare decision to endorse a polarizing figure with a trajectory into the fever swamps of conspiracy (Mr. Kennedy) who has no solutions, but loves talking about people and events, especially past events, ideas aren't so important; we had a foreign president in Bukele, whose bitcoin utterances attracted the admiration of the bitcoin's res publica, who think that even questioning his record on civil liberties equates to IMF and World Bank elitism, and they act as if bitcoin fandom justifies anything via utilitarian end points; we have the alt-right's own Jordan Peterson and data collecting Peter Thiel getting trotted out in prime time spots for the premier annual bitcoin conference in Miami; then of course the leverage saboteurs of Celsius, LUNA, and Block-Fi fame didn't help, using bitcoin as an affinity scam, and I wouldn't find it fair to mention them had an entire group of bitcoin podcasters not pumped them; otherwise we have crisis narratives galore, hyperinflation hopes, and culture war as answering tenets of "why bitcoin". How do you orange pill (using the word colloquially) without any of the that? Most don't have good answers.
People that don't think any of this stuff is a problem have an enormous blind spot, and don't understand friction. They are, in some telling, hellbent on keeping bitcoin Twitter the total addressable market of bitcoin. I remain quite bullish on bitcoin longterm, as I ever was for various reasons, mostly because of its fixed liberties and L2 work, and feel most of the friction elements discussed, the virtue signalers, and specious NgUers will get bled. Bitcoin has a quote price, and its volatility deals with beastly casts in wonderful ways. Such is my experience for so long.
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They are, in some telling, hellbent on keeping bitcoin Twitter the total addressable market of bitcoin.
Underrated point. I think this -- and many of your other points -- are 100% true. But I'm a bit less bothered by it than I used to be ...
and feel most of the friction elements discussed, the virtue signalers, and specious NgUers will get bled.
... and that's why. Either btc's constituency will transcend the people who currently dominate the public spaces, or it will die, because despite the rhetoric, most of the so-called maxis are NGU disciples and nothing more. Once N stops GU, they'll scuttle back to their other hobbies. They stood for nothing in particular before btc, and they stand for nothing now, not really.
They're ideological carpet-baggers. They're not the people who see a revolution through.
I remain quite bullish on bitcoin longterm, as I ever was for various reasons, mostly because of its fixed liberties and L2 work,
Yes. So be the change you want to see in the world. SN is a great place to help with that, I think.
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What change do you want to see in the world?
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Too many to list, but wrt btc stuff, I'd really like to broaden the culture to one where well-intentioned people don't get canceled for heresy when they ask questions.
To take a hot-button example, the declining block subsidy, and what it will mean for btc security, is an existential issue. And yet people get buried in a shit avalanche if they bring it up, even well-respected core devs. It's hard to imagine a worse environment for threat modeling or for making a system resilient. Granted, the people who bitch and rant and threaten are overwhelmingly shitbags who contribute nothing to the ecosystem, but both science and history demonstrate that this kind of 'advocacy' is powerful even when the advocates are useless and contemptible.
I don't have a strong opinion on what the solution to dwindling block subsidy should be, or if a 'solution' is even necessary. I have a very strong opinion that being able to talk about it, and that having the dominant ethos of btc be one of serious intellectual engagement, is important. Being able to talk openly about things that matter, and not just parroting what the loudest Crypto Twitter thought-leaders say, is a big deal.
I'd like to change back to that.
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