Citidel Dispatch w/ Odell + Jack Dorsey \ stacker news ~nostr

pull down to refresh

Citidel Dispatch w/ Odell + Jack Dorsey primal.net//e/note17nlz85lxsflp5kpg5aumhjygnsmxppexnc32myhtpmrw4krk7v4s2h83c7

792 sats \ 9 comments \ @elvismercury 10h nostr

I'll count this episode as the event that fully purple-pilled me into the symbiotic relationship between nostr and btc. It moved me from "that's a neat idea, but not for me" to "these things will either both be prominent in most people's actual day-to-day lives, or neither will."

Also the best interview I've ever heard w/ Jack, by far. I kept hearing about how the guy was a deep thinker, and his actions with Block/Spiral suggest as much, but I'd never heard an interview where it came out. Was cool to hear.

I may listen to this again, that's how full of thoughts it was. Implications for social interaction online, media, life in the modern world. Much to noodle on.

view all related items

232 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 9h

I don't know enough about the technology under nostr to reach such a judgement.

Bitcoin has all these brilliant mechanisms in place that make it self correcting. Are there analogues to that with nostr?

My big question is, does it have to be nostr or could something else come along and do those things better?

That was my big hurdle with bitcoin, too.

48 sats \ 0 replies \ @siggy47 10h

I'm definitely going to watch this. I use nostr. People are disappointed in its growth, but the development work being done is incredible. NWC is one example.

227 sats \ 4 replies \ @k00b 9h

these things will either both be prominent in most people's actual day-to-day lives, or neither will.

I can't tell if this is a compliment to nostr or an insult to bitcoin or both. I like nostr and I've seen lots of promising things emerge from it, but I begin to boil when people compare it to bitcoin. Bitcoin has about as much as common with XRP as it does nostr. Yes, bitcoin is another extremely stateful and expensive networked protocol that requires abnormal responsibility on the part of consumers, but bitcoin has incentives and doesn't work without them.

115 sats \ 3 replies \ @elvismercury OP 8h

Here's my thinking.

I have always been obsessed with the grounding problem in btc -- if I had more time I'd unearth some ungodly number of posts and comments I've made on this topic. The question for me is, what is bitcoin grounded in? How does it tie into reality? It is a distributed ledger -- so what?

The danger, for me, has always been that it is a pure abstraction. It doesn't feel like anything. Its money-ness thus seems tenuous to me, and fragile. Right now it exists almost entirely in the NGU magical universe of pure abstraction. SN is a weird sample bc we're all zapping the hell out of each other, but I'd wager that 99% of human beings who 'own' any btc have never 'used' it beyond having it sitting in an exchange or, at best, in their own wallet, inert. They check to see how far the N has GU, and that's the end of it.

Can btc be 'successful' in these terms? I think so -- it's already successful. I don't think it will walk back that far unless something really bad happens. But I was careful in my original phrasing, that you quoted:

these things will either both be prominent in most people's actual day-to-day lives, or neither will.

The next stage of moneyness, where the thing feels like money, will (I'm now convinced) be grounded in the kind of social interactions that nostr (and SN) provides, and connecting the interaction to money is key. The gravity of civilization is leaning in the direction of online, and decentralized. Information doesn't always want to be free, but we're in a cycle where it does. I suppose the form that takes wouldn't have to literally be nostr, but that's what's on offer.

I didn't mean to make your blood boil, and I welcome any pushback on my newfound religion :)

227 sats \ 2 replies \ @k00b 6h

I recall being confused when we discussed grounding because I never spent much time exploring metaphysics. I need to spend more time on it I guess.

grounded in the kind of social interactions that nostr (and SN) provides

To the extent that I understand grounding, our desire for money (aka a ledger) is grounded in our desire for coordination or social interaction. Is that what bitcoin is grounded in then? And gold, was it grounded in that when it served as money? If so, I'd agree that money is grounded in our sociality.

Most of us, and certainly I, tend to think about what causes bitcoin to be a good money and less so what grounds bitcoin, because whatever grounds bitcoin, if bitcoin is money, should ground the moneyness of anything that's served as money.

I might still be confused about grounding but if I'm on the right track, gold's moneyness isn't grounded in its rare, divisible, durable atoms. The ledger of gold may be grounded in gold's atoms, but money is (to me at least) a platonic ledger, an ideal we've evolved to have, an abstraction that has only psychological grounding.

I'd say money is a ledger is grounded in social interactions is grounded in psychology. And, bitcoin is a ledger is grounded in social interactions is grounded in psychology.

Is that right or is your religion teaching something else?

1772 sats \ 1 reply \ @elvismercury OP 1h

Grounding means lots of things and has accrued nuances over the last ~2400 years, (usually considered to have begun in a Socratic dialogue about virtue and the gods) so there's no definitive take. I use the word to mean: how do we understand one thing in terms of another [1] but a more approachable entry point might be Harnad (1990). [pdf]

Grounding is relevant wrt btc in that money gets bootstrapped from something. Money can achieve its coordination function via transacting only after market participants have the felt sense that it is money, otherwise there is no reason to transact it. You will recognize this as a differential equation: as it becomes to be felt to be money, it begins to be used in limited ways as money, which increases the felt sense that it is money. The "feeling of money-ness" is a result of the grounding process playing out, cyclically. And so:

gold's moneyness isn't grounded in its rare, divisible, durable atoms.

Gold's moneyness is grounded in people valuing gold, wanting the stuff out of some primitive acquisitive impulse; and then, with that desire in place, what turns out to be the quite nice properties of gold allow it to transition to a practical, working money. My assertion is that, absent that initial grounding -- the appeal of gold, and then the auto-catalytic bootstrap of memetic desire -- its moneyness would have remained concealed.

(Or "withdrawn" in Heideggerian terms, which I believe to be a good lens that is never applied.

I'm also dicking around with an account that talks about btc as a signaling hormone vs as an "asset" -- the "asset" language is largely nonsensical, at least without abusing the intuitive idea of what "asset" means -- which brushes against some of these strands of argument. One day.)

Anyway, in summary, btc has acquired some minimal money-ness, grounded in speculation -- thanks to that, some smallish number of people have the felt sense that it's money-enough because they can sell it to get the kind of money you can buy things with directly [2] -- something close to this is George Selgin's view on btc. Although maybe it has evolved in few years since I heard him discus it publicly.

Going back to the original point, if you want to throw a rock, and have whoever you hit with that rock be someone who interacts w/ btc and feels it to be money, a more tangible bootstrapping into something is required. I think social is that thing, and due to the forces loose in the world, a de-centralized social layer with money built in seems like how it will be instantiated.

[1] Note: in the interests of readability I didn't hedge the shit out every statement with "I propose" or "I believe" or "in my opinion" etc., but it's worth being explicit that these are very non-standard takes about the philosophy of money, the cognitive science of value abstraction, etc.

[2] Yes, I know, circular economy etc etc. A rounding error.

54 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 38m

I think I understand what you mean now. Thank you!

27 sats \ 0 replies \ @NovaRift 10h

I'm new to Nostr, going to check this out. Thanks.

27 sats \ 0 replies \ @dingding541 10h

Meant to catch it yesterday, thanks for the reminder 🔔