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0 sats \ 5 replies \ @028559d218 26 May \ parent \ on: Darknet Market Maximalism bitcoin
I think a more nuanced way to think of cryptocurrency (or even Bitcoin) markets is of white, gray, and dark. All of these exist and co-exist... and they all need it other. Hence they all persist.
This is an oversimplification and is not true.
If the state had wanted to crush Bitcoin they should have done it 10 years ago. They didn't. Now look what happened? Bitcoin is an alternative (widely available for self-custody) as an alternative to government bonds and debt. If people "choose Bitcoin" instead of governments bonds then the State can't borrow and their economic power is reduced... is there any greater power than that?
Don't you think... this is a bit of an oversimplification?
Within only several years, Saylor has hijacked Bitcoin to the point where he has become the defacto leader despite his vocal distancing from the libertarian philosophy cryptocurrency was built on.
Saylor knows exactly what the boating accident is. He specifically referred to it in another video and laughed about it (in terms of how the bank can "tax that".) I think (although I could be wrong) that he tries to be careful in what he says.
an interview last year, Saylor declared his belief as to how Bitcoin’s medium of exchange is a dated concept and how Bitcoin custody should be left to the control of centralized exchanges, the same entities known for data collection and fractional reserve lending.
With this I agree... Saylor's comments were extremely poor and correctly called out. I think he misspoke though... I am NOT defending him although anyone can make a mistake.
These shocking statements received several days of pushback on Twitter, with many cryptocurrency influencers crafting carefully worded tweets admonishing this rhetoric.
Yes what he said was wrong. However I personally don't believe he is a villain based on the totality of his comments and his demeanor.
The result? Saylor posted a brief apology statement, and all was forgiven. How sweet it is to be king! The pied piper has enticed the moonboys with dreams of economic prosperity, and idealism be damned because now he has majority rule.
Whether MSTR buys Bitcoin or they don't buy Bitcoin... it doesn't change how you use YOUR Bitcoin or what you do with it. So who cares what the 'stonks' people or Saylor do?
But for the darknet market maximalist, this is but a summary of how rotten things have gotten, a portrait of the desperate fantasy played out in the minds of the moonboys that one day they too will be in Saylor’s position, with thousands of underlings jealous of the success of their big-brained investing.
Every single person, rationally, to include the Monero people and folks on r/Monero wants to have greater purchasing power. This is just Human Nature. Saying otherwise... isn't telling the whole story.
Saylor’s contributions to Bitcoin have been doubling and tripling down on the wretched mentality of “HODL” culture, which espouses that the only use case of Bitcoin is one of buying and holding on for dear life.
So there are no in-person merchants and vendors who accept Bitcoin for goods or services?
This creates an interesting paradox: how can Bitcoin be the future of money if nobody wants to actually use it?
How can something be money... if noone wants to actually save in it?
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The advocates of the store of value use case point to Gresham’s law, arguing that the hardest form of money will be removed from circulation. This would be fine if Bitcoin had characteristics of fungibility (it doesn’t), or if its security model wasn’t based on transaction fees (it is), or if there wasn’t a concerted effort to centralize the software that is used by Bitcoiners.
With regard to 1) I disagree with this or at least it doesn't tell the whole story.
With 2)... so a 'tail emission' like in Monero because the on-chain demand is too low for miners... is the problem? So a tail emission is the answer? and 3) Monero people are really going to tell Bitcoiners that btc software is centralized? Really?
Who even develops for Monero source code? Where is the guthub (with lots of contributers)? Where are the vibrant passionate technical discussions? Who are the developers and what conferences are they speaking at so that we know who they are and what exactly they stand for??? Monero has no leg to stand on IMO when it comes to centralization.
Isn't Monero waiting for a hard-fork sometime in the next year... that will come eventually???
Cryptocurrency is dominated by moonboys, and the pied pier Saylor is a reflection of that. Considering how Saylor hasn’t been tarred and feathered by the Bitcoin community but rather exalted and embraced is all you need to know about the current state of affairs.
Don't you think it's a little more complicated than that?
It’s a wonder why this fraud, with his billions of dollars, never thought to solidify the defense of Samourai Wallet or Tornado Cash with the best legal team money can buy.
Don't you think Saylor bankrolling the support of privacy software... would cause even more distrust of that software among the people who want to use it? Do you really think Saylor can go around talking up the uses and needs to Coinjoins and mixing? Really?
Why isn’t he likewise helping spearhead a lobbying campaign on Capitol Hill for privacy and freedom for those who use cryptocurrency as digital cash? Why does he only ever talk about buying Bitcoin and not being a reasonable individual who can occasionally take profits or use Bitcoin? You know the answer. It’s because he doesn’t care about Bitcoin, or freedom, or any of those things. The Saylor swindle is a game of musical chairs where the only winners playing are the ones lucky enough to get out while they are ahead. We are in the middle of the game now, which of course, is rigged for him to come in first place.
This really boils down to Bitcoin as a currency and I think a legitimate criticism... if there are only 21 million units and everyone wants one... what will they pay for one after all?
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I imagine there are readers who find my tone to be elitist, and I don’t disagree. Cryptocurrency as a whole is in need of criticism and introspection, especially from those who are staunch advocates of digital cash. How tiresome it is, watching the community from the sidelines, with so-called journalists and podcasters jockeying for relevance by shilling whatever cryptocurrency scam gives them attention or money.
There is only one cryptocurrency worth your (my) hardearned money and that is Bitcoin.
But don’t confuse pretentious viewpoints with an unwillingness to help! If you happen to be suffering from a bout of moonboyism, yet you still have a shred of dignity, you will gradually become inspired to learn and improve, and along the way the privacy experts will be happy to point you in the right direction.
In other words to adopt an illiquid shitcoin with highly questionable privacy tech? I have actually read the Dread forums and there are serious real concerns about the anon set for XMR transactions. Not 1/16 but more like... 1/4 or even 1/2. If this is true it is a bad joke people would have better privacy with CoinJoins.
There have never been more resources to learn about privacy and how you can protect yourself, and it goes without saying that one of the greatest investments you can make towards your future is in your education of how to fight back against the surveillance state. Take it one step at a time, harden every facet of your opsec, and learn the enemy inside and out. And as time passes, you will stand alongside the other jaded cypherpunks who have become darknet market maximalists, scratching their heads in bewilderment while Saylor makes a fool of himself yet again before his mob of supporters.
Do you really think that Cryptocurrency has to be all things to all people???
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What Saylor and company do to seduce the moonboy is to play up their fantasy, which is a hypothetical world dependent on the scarce asset of Bitcoin, with claims that the moonboy will be seated in the citadel, shielded from the unworthy nocoiners who must grovel at their feet for some spare sats to be thrown in their direction.
What's really sad... is the good, well-intentioned people who HODLed monero for the last 8 years, and since 2017 Monero is the same price.
With less purchasing power due to inflation over the last 8 years. THAT is the sad story that makes XMR people upset. That Monero has nowhere near the adoption and liquidity of Bitcoin... obviously makes some XMR people upset/jealous/confused... hence the "no-adoption" non-sequitur that someone we can't and shouldn't expect "wide adoption" because it "doesn't work that way."
OK sure.
This leads us to what is perhaps the biggest lie peddled by cryptocurrency influencers—global adoption.
So basically... "my crypto" is so great... but it will never have global adoption? What?
For many, this leap of faith is taken for granted. It’s inevitable, surely, that fiat currency will fail, that dollars will become useless, that all trust will be lost, and wheelbarrows of cash will be needed to buy loaves of bread.
I mean... all this stuff is already happening right? Have you seen the bond market this year???
It surely must happen that, one day, people will unanimously embrace cryptocurrency as their source of savings and income.
Stranger things have happened.
That the parasitic elites who have controlled our economies for hundreds of years will concede their political clout for the greater good. That the entire might of all nation-states will crumble under the power of Bitcoin, and they will bend the knee and declare that Satoshi is King, and that we will all hold hands and sing Kumbaya in a new era of peace.
I mean NOT LIKE THAT no... of course not. But I mean stranger things have happened.
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As we have already seen, every aspect of peer-to-peer digital cash that makes it an assault on the strength of the nation-state has been attacked, neutered, and infiltrated. Fiat currency is not going to go away quietly, and the general public goes along and will continue to go along with what the government tells them to do because it is safe, and people like to feel safe.
???
The moonboy mob goes along with the circus because the number continues to go upwards, and all the while the media implies that the usecase of a medium of exchange is a relic of the clumsy cypherpunk origins. Any hint of the counter culture that is an affront to banking is downplayed and smeared as crimes against anti-money-laundering legislation. In a word, their idealized future of peer-to-peer cash is an alternate form of Venmo—censorable, controllable, compliant.
So when Bitcoin's use is "not compliant" then it's "on its way out"... but when XMR's use is non-compliant... it's getting stronger???
I would continue writing but... I am running out of space and Cowboy Credits. And i think you understand the points I have made and I could go on...
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