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153 sats \ 4 replies \ @elvismercury OP 9h \ parent \ on: On relative earliness bitcoin
I wonder if part of the problem is that really "early-ness" is a vector and not a scalar. Like, in some ways we are clearly not early.
Component 1: Trump talks about bitcoin in public and is doing stuff related to crypto. It is a macro-geopolitical conversation, it's not neckbeards hacking Lisp and talking about homoiconicity. From this perspective, btc is super late.
Component 2: But, as you say: I know vanishingly close to zero people who have ever made a btc transaction that was not just putting a buy order in Coinbase. From this perspective, btc is super early.
A question I have is if the magnitude of the vector will ever approach what it could be if it had non-trivial magnitude in its components. Can we ever get beyond "early" in component 2, really? Can component 1 maintain its magnitude if component 2 stalls out here?
Can we ever get beyond "early" in component 2, really? Can component 1 maintain its magnitude if component 2 stalls out here?
I think so and no.
Imagine how much more open to accepting bitcoin in commerce someone would be who already owns some investment bitcoin (especially when NGU).
It's the Jonathan Haidt persuasion thing: people are like elephants (emotions) with riders (reason). If we can get more of the elephants leaning our way, it'll be easier for the riders to steer that direction.
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With regards to 'component 1'...
https://cointelegraph.com/news/trump-world-liberty-financial-buys-more-eth
"Trump’s World Liberty Financial buys another $10M worth of ETH"
In other words, they just bought more air-tokens.
It's not 'crypto' it's a scam. And he has done virtually zero with Bitcoin but has released memecoins.
Mr Trump and those around him have either have deliberately scammed people (likely?) or have completely missed the point as to what Bitcoin is and derives its value from - decentralization and proof of work.
Eventually they'll figure it out... but the fact they haven't figured it out yet suggests to me that we're still early to the educational-process which in my opinion is desperately lacking among the public.
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I don't deny that Trump is a scammy opportunist douche, but he has literally talked about btc, gone to btc conferences, courted the community, even issuing a pardon on day 2 for a btc hero.
The fact that the actual president of the USA has this much awareness, and that mainstream media is talking about it all the time on television, and that policy decisions are being made to curry the favor of this interest group, would have been unfathomable not long ago.
That's a giant-ass component 2. You don't, however, have to like any of it.
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Let me play the Devil's advocate.
Mr Trump (or his associates more likely) released a Memecoin.
Does this help Bitcoin education? No.
What about the thousands of 'new coins' created daily on Solana. Do they help BTC education? No.
What about the Trump-World-Defi-Liberty people (scammers IMO) by buying Ethereum do they help the Bitcoin educational-mission? No.
What about Mr. Trump's sensitivity to Bitcoin's use as a MoE or to 'pay for things'?
Well he hasn't said anything about that... but to the extent it becomes apparent that Bitcoin competes with the US dollar in some capacity, would he support it then?
Hell no. He wants a moat around the US dollar (threats of tariffs) and industry (with actual tariffs).
What about 'coinmarketcap' and all the coins listed there... 99% or more are not proof of work, meaning they go to zero and are scams. Yet they are still listed. Why? Because of a lack of education as to what makes Bitcoin special (proof of work and decentralization).
I don't think this is a 'bitcoin' problem so much as an educational problem. Many people believe that "making money" in "crypto" is about buying some random unregistered securities on a 'trading' website and then... trading them with other knuckheads while they all go to zero.
And is there any -
- Proof of work involved. Nope
- Or Decentralization? Nope.
And then there are predictable rug pulls and scams associated with many of these tokens and websites because of the lack of 1 and 2. But all of this could have been prevented if people just studied Bitcoin and stayed away from everything else.
I believe there have to be enough scams and melt-downs like FTX for people to finally 'get it' and go Bitcoin-only. Then we'll see Bitcoin's maturation and development when it is the only crypto but right now there's a lack of education and people haven't been burned bad enough.
Hence the coinmarketcap nonsense. And the posts on Reddit.
Red days in 'cryptocurrency' are great days, because the 'alts' go to zero and Bitcoin survives which is all it needs to do.
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