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arbed_out Profile picture
@arbedout
Sep 21, 2020 • 7 tweets • 3 min read • Read on X
Still digesting the #FinCENFiles dump, but going over it so far has helped crystallize something for me:

I don't think the dollar is going to be replaced anytime soon, but I don't have the same kind of confidence in the dollar *system*.
I don't quite grok how dollars can continue to exist without the dollar system.

But I also don't get why Tether trades pari passu to the dollar (even after Bitfinex admitted it was less than 100% reserve backed!)
I don't get why mafiosos continued to trade in Italian Lira well after it was demonetized. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
And I really, really don't get why we still use Genghis Khan's unit of account.
Old threads on future paths for international monetary system:

Also the petrodollar theory of currency recycling and China's attempts to internationalize their currency:



Closing out with some Eichengreen:
Adding this on b/c I feel it's related:
Turning this into a Bitcoin thread in the last tweet:

Coordinating a migration to a new international monetary regime is almost impossibly difficult

Convincing kids growing up today that the $ symbol stands for satoshis is comparatively way easier

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More from @arbedout

arbed_out Profile picture
Apr 4, 2022
Inspired by this tweet:

Here's a list of choices ISPs and network operators made back in the '90s and early '00s with unintended consequences that damaged the Internet.

(Mea culpa: I'm one of those operators).
1) As e-mail became popular with residential users, spam delivery volume went through the roof. ISP operators decided best practice would be to filter port 25 (SMTP) so that residential users couldn't host email servers.

This broke so. many. things.
"Clients" and "servers" were meant to describe different programs, running on the same hosts, not hosts themselves.

Blocking residential users from running mail servers bifurcated the Internet into "client hosts" and "server hosts".

Also it didn't fix the spam problem.
Read 12 tweets
arbed_out Profile picture
Sep 22, 2021
Decentralizing the Internet in a tweet:

Embed details for a fidelity bond and associated list of TLDs in nameserver's SOA record; client resolvers can compare age and amount locked in fidelity bond to decide which NS is authoritative for a given TLD

That's it, that's the tweet
(Whether offering alernatives to the root nameserver is enough to count as 'decentralizing the Internet' is an open question, but it's at least a step in the right direction IMHO.)
Every attempt (that I know of) to compete with current ICANN / IANA root servers - Namecoin, Handshake, OneName, OpenNIC, and so on - ends up running into the land rush problem.

Namely: how do you stop squatters from ruining your new namespace?

Read 7 tweets
arbed_out Profile picture
Mar 23, 2021
I need to put all of my networking protocol rants into one place for b̶o̶r̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶m̶u̶t̶u̶a̶l̶s̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶d̶e̶a̶t̶h̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶D̶M̶s̶ easy access. Brace yourself:

The CLNP fiasco at the 1992 IAB meeting:

How layering allowed the ARPANet to grow:
Speaking of layering, here's some Gopher vs. HTTP:

Read 9 tweets
arbed_out Profile picture
Oct 3, 2019
You plebs put Abqaiq dead last behind even Ukraine on this poll, so now you get a solid eight bagger on Things I Wish We'd Talk About When We Talk About Oil.
#1: The total amount of oil production is by itself not a useful metric; more important is amount of oil produced per capita.

In 1980 during the glut, the U.S. had ~220 million people and produced ~9 million barrels a day; today it's ~13 million barrels for ~330 million people. Image
#2: Petroleum and crude oil are commodities, but petroleum *products* are not - there's an entire supply chain that sits between raw crude and the products it makes, crafted over decades by the invisible hand of the market. Image
Read 10 tweets
arbed_out Profile picture
Aug 3, 2019
Tell me what you do at $DAYJOB writing software, and I'll tell you what food service industry job you'd be comfortable working at.

Thread!
You work at a nameless Fortune 500 company, churning out updates to the internal homegrown CRM software. You desperately want to leave but you have student loans to pay and this was the first temp-to-hire gig you could find.

You're working at McDonalds, and you effing hate it.
You work at a seed funded startup, desperately churning out code to grab more and more total addressable market share. You declined the Fortune 500 gig cuz you're cooler than that.

You'd be at a "hip" fast-casual spot like QDoba. You think it's better than McDonalds. It's not.
Read 19 tweets
arbed_out Profile picture
Jul 31, 2019
It's days like this I wonder - is it time for the ground up beetles, or the wheat poultices?

(Thread on how George Washington died. Mostly.)
On the evening of Dec 12, 1799, Washington came down with a nasty cough. It progressively worsened over the next 36 hours, until he woke up in the middle of the night on the 14th in severe respiratory distress.
The laypeople around him - the estate overseer and his personal secretary - first made him an elixir of molasses, vinegar and butter to treat his sore, swollen throat.

He damn near choked him death on it.

pbs.org/newshour/healt…
Read 11 tweets

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