I LOVE BTC, and I want to earnestly learn more about it and other projects (Layer 1’s particularly: ADA, SOL, ETH, etc…)
But damn is it hard navigating the BS. I can’t seem to find any social media personalities that aren’t WILDY optimistic about their chosen project and it just comes off as shilling.
I want to know what the risks and rewards would be for a chosen project, and I want to hear it honestly. There has got to be some people out there that you feel speaks like that! Would you share them with me?
Don't do shitcoining. IT'S A SIN. Learn about Bitcoin: https://bitcoin.page https://lightning.how
When you finish reading these pages you will realize that you are wasting your time with shitcoins. There's only Bitcoin that matter all the rest are shitcoins (aka cryptos).
reply
You are right shitcoining is a sin. They succeed because of mass delusion lead by a group of gaslighting thieves. They exist only because of their ability to inject marketing energy into the organization, denominated by their coin much like stock, then when their game has reached a climax, they pull the rug and walk away with fiat. Altcoins are shell corporations with a stock issuance schedule controlled by software which is a publication of bylaws. He who controls the software, controls the bylaws. Altcoins have no value, regardless if they are proof of work, not because no energy has been expended to issue the coin. On the contrary, they have no value because that energy is expended on software that is not controlled by the holder of the coin. Bitcoin has successfully shifted the governance of the source code to the majority of the "shareholders" (full-node operators) which is a style of "proof of stake" where fraud and unauthorized changes to the "bylaws" are immediately detected and can be corrected through consensus.
reply
My brother in Christ, the majority of full nodes doesn't decide anything in Bitcoin. Bitcoin was explicitly designed to resist Sybil attacks, yet one of the most common misconceptions in the space is that a majority of full nodes can enforce consensus. There is no voting in Bitcoin, except in the sense that hash power represents a vote. (Per the whitepaper, one CPU, one vote. Now, one ASIC, one vote.)
Any number of full nodes can activate a fork if there is a failure to achieve consensus. The number of nodes involved has nothing to do with the mining hash power or economic value of that chain.
reply
You are right about this. My parenthetical comment was inaccurate due to my conflation. Each node will check and store each block, but they don't have influence over mining.
reply
I would encourage you to pick up a podcasting app and listen to shitcoin insider and a bunch of other guys like the unhashed podcast, that have long since debunked these projects. Since these projects have an economic incentive to oversell what they can do they will only promote the "good" side of it and try to ofuscate their obvious flaws like the lack decentralisation, the trending towards more centralisation, the mass overuse of data resources to manage their chain, the double spend issues they introduce with bridges and cross-platform assets, the list goes on
I know you might feel bitcoiners are dismissive but having to deal with 6 years of this nonsense repeated over and over gets tiring. Personally if you want to shitcoin go ahead, get stuck in burn yourself, listen to their lies and ask the shitcoiners how this and that works, you'll quickly see the cracks if you constantly ask about attack vectors
They will spew word salad at you to confuse you or get you to keep quiet.
reply
Don't follow celebrities, but try to follow devs of the specific projects or security/privacy researchers. Especially devs that complain about how things work :)
reply
I can’t seem to find any social media personalities that aren’t WILDY optimistic about their chosen project and it just comes off as shilling.
Occam's Razor suggests they're shills: celebrities aren't technologically sophisticated and all humans experience the self-serving bias, therefore it's hard to believe a celebrity endorsement of a technological phenomena. (aka, follow the money)
IMO, learn about bitcoin to the extent that it's useful/beneficial to you, but no further.
As you travel the rabbit hole, your worldview will likely be adjusted. You (we all) need to learn how to adapt your behaviors to correspond to that adjustment. In the case of many Bitcoiners, that has meant lowering their time preference and building businesses and networks that take advantage of the technological benefits of Bitcoin.
I believe that trading shitcoins to make money is immoral, but i don't believe that the technologies they explore are invalid.
Good luck.
reply
Buy bitcoin, self-custody it and study it. It is that simple.
reply
I feel your struggle. There's a distinct lack of people in the space that can put aside their biases and present the bull and bear case for each and every asset.
But I think it's valuable to understand how these shitcoins work and where they fall short (as well as the tradeoffs they've taken to exceed at one thing or another).
The best way to learn is to identify the bias in other's opinions as quickly as possible, take what they say with a grain of salt, and seek as many perspectives as you can.
But I'd seriously recommended digging as deep as possible into BTC before looking too much into anything else.
reply
Take everything with a grain of salt. Also, like the others have stated shitcoins won't bring you anywhere. Read up on them sure, but transform your fiat into btc.
reply
Be honest, be a voice of reason, speak up when bullshit arises or the circlejerk becomes ridiculous, don't get emotionally involved - it isn't worth your time to get riled up. And chill.
reply
Don’t trust, verify?
Read the white papers, learn to code. As soon as you start taking someone’s word with a project, you’ve lost all objectivity.