0/n Politicians, normies and MSM-pundits call #Bitcoin "Virtual Money", but it is actually the VERY OPPOSITE of that!
Bitcoin is really a huge step in the process of (RE-)DE-VIRTUALIZATION of Money!
The process of money virtualization had already started very long ago.
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1/n The first step of money virtualization was COINAGE. Money was still a physical token, but its market value was often driven by INFORMATION printed on it, more then by metal content (especially when political power mandated that, or when people didn't independently verify).
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2/n The second step of money virtualization was SEIGNIORAGE, where the increasingly huge, long-term decoupling between face-value and metal-value of coins (before just due to accident or fraud) was accepted and normalized as the typical business model for the coinage provider.
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3/n The third step of money virtualization was CUSTODY. Money was not a physical token anymore, it had instead become INFORMATION support (banknotes) used to represent it and (hopefully) redeem it. But there still was some level of reality behind the representation: reserves.
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4/n The fourth step of money virtualization was FRB, where the increasingly huge, long-term decoupling between circulating banknotes and actual reserves (before just due to accident or fraud) was accepted and normalized as the typical business model for the custody provider.
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5/n The fifth step of money virtualization was FIAT MONEY, where the redeeming was "suspended" (as a "temporarily" measure, of course🤭🤫), turning money into pure INFORMATION, conveyed by physical bearer instruments, without any residual connection with physical commodities.
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6/n The sixth and last step of money virtualization was DIGITAL FIAT, where even physical bearer instruments were gradually restricted, moving INFORMATION to identity-based central ledgers. Increasing censorship and exclusion, and decreasing costliness for monetary expansion.
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7/n (n=7)
It may come to you as a surprise, but...well...BITCOIN FIXES THIS!
#Bitcoin effectively DE-VIRTUALIZES money, completing the cycle, bringing it back to physical scarcity (difficulty-adjusted PoW) and bearer control (private cryptographic keys).
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1) Azteco/BATM: shop owner *may* record your face on security cameras, register the gift card id, connect the two (plus cash serial numbers in extreme cases) and pass the intelligence to the attacker: very low probab.;
2) Bisq/Robosats: each individual seller learns for sure an identifiable fiat bank/fintech ID, which *may* be yours (or maybe of your relative/friend/client/local hobo, no strict check, you can use different ones), and he *may* record it and give it to the attacker;
3) Hodlhodl/Relai: each individual seller and the platform learn identifiable fiat bank/fintech IDs, which *may* be yours (or maybe of your relative/friend/client/local hobo, no strict check, you can use different ones), and the platform is legally required to keep it;
@_joerodgers@mir_btc@GiorgiaMeloni Traditionally she comes from the "Social Right", which is the most statist part of the post-fascist (thus pretty much statist, even if at least anticommunist) Italian right. Her economic statism is still the same in absolute terms, but since every single other party and ...
@_joerodgers@mir_btc@GiorgiaMeloni ... politician, globally but particularly in Italy, moved towards full communism in the last 30 years, she look almost mildly pro-free-market by comparison. Vocally pro-regulation, pro-spending, pro-deficit, pro-debt, thus implicitly pro-fiat, but almost "anti-tax" if compared...
@_joerodgers@mir_btc@GiorgiaMeloni ...with most other parties. Culturally conservative, thus opposed to the SJW bullshit invasion coming from the States, but not particularly brave or insightful on that side either (common sense opposition to cultural Marxism, nothing extremely "based"). The worst traits are ...
Bitcoin is not dead nor dying: it's stronger than ever. Bitcoin Maximalism is not dead nor dying: it's stronger then ever.
But my thesis is that the average quality of article about "the Death of Bitcoin Maximalism" is slowly dying. Look at this increasingly cringe obituaries:
Most long-term Blbitcoiners are too tired to engage with this bullshit again, but for the one of you new around here: "PoS" is logically broken (specifically: circular), as explained to Wei Dai in 1998 and as definitely crystalized by Andrew Poelstra here: diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2…
Specifically: a method to vote about the current transactional chronology which uses as a weight the current transactional chronology has literally "nothing at stake": it can only work assuming centralized checkpoints, either in code or in social circles ("weak subjectivity").
Since this flaw has made been quite clear in 1998 already (even if not in such a clear, concise & complete way as in the Poelstra paper linked in OP), Nakamoto had to introduce PoW instead to fix it. Yes you read correctly: PoS is a broken 1998 proposal that PoW *fixed* in 2008!
Hey @pete_rizzo_, I blocked by the OP from responding on your thread where you discuss "maximalism" @MrHodl, but as a self-identifying "maxi" I'd deny it's about finding moral issues in people trading shitcoins or in shitcoiners improving shitcoins. I wouldn't find any.
Specifically: 1) I think people buying any kind of shit if they think the relative price will go up (or viceversa) are honest market actors helping price discovery. Considering shitcoins behave as leveraged bitcoin derivatives, I think trading them can be *risky*, not immoral.
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Also: 2) Shitcoiners improving shitcoins, maybe taking advantage of specific tradeoff choices not replicable on Bitcoin, do nothing wrong. Maybe in the future some of those attempts will even turn out useful (not so far imo).
Not sure who could find this interesting, but since some people asked me about it, here's a very quick thread about my "complicated relationship status" with the Swiss Confederation, in light of recent events.
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2/15
I moved to (Italian) Switzerland from Milan with my family in 2016. Back then I considered the Confederation as a dream of market freedom, power decentralization, institutional competition, property right protection. In 2018 my family moved back to Milan, but I stayed.
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3/15
Reality never compares to idealized dreams, of course. Some Swiss things are very weird and frankly socialist: monstrous commercial protectionism, hysterically draconian driving regulation, no space for homeschooling/unschooling for kids. But overall it was decent.