1/ This new paper is a true declaration of war: the ECB claims that early #bitcoin adopters steal economic value from latecomers. I strongly believe authorities will use this luddite argument to enact harsh taxes or bans. Check 🧵 for why:
2/ Rather than praising bitcoin as a tech paradigm shift à la petroleum and the internet, the authors introduce the blatantly luddite argument that "early adopters" ... "increase their real wealth and consumption" ... "at the expense of [latecomers]".
3/ Then they go on to brazenly advocate for legislation ... "to prevent bitcoin prices from rising or to see bitcoin disappear altogether" in order to prevent "the division of society".
4/ The authors also model some projections, to illustrate the paltry amount of BTC that will remain available for latecomers. (Woe is me! Conspicuously left out is the reason that has driven 15 years of bitcoin adoption & development: it's simply better tech.)
5/ In all the years I've been monitoring the bitcoin space, this is by far the most aggressive paper to come from authorities. The gloves are off. It's clear that these central bank economists now see bitcoin as an existential threat, to be attacked with any means possible.
6/ Many of us have warned that this was coming: bitcoin as a major political fault line both in national and international elections. Well here it is. It means that us HODLers must take action to insure that governments respect our basic right to hold property.
7/ And no, this won't be a war between haves and have-nots. Rather this will be a historic clash between those who stand for the natural rights of the individual, and those who clutch at the failed ideologies of collectivism and central planning.
8/ Here's the download link to the paper: "The distributional consequences of Bitcoin". (We need detailed rebuttals. Who's writing one?) papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…
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1/ Incrementum just dropped their MONSTER gold report. As always it has a treasure trove of global macro charts. It is remarkably friendly to bitcoin, too! A selection:
2/ Clearly the invasion of Ukraine, and the subsequent financial sanctions, marked a new era for central banks—who are now buying gold much more aggressively:
3/ But it's already since 2015 that central banks around the world have been decreasing their exposure to the US dollar:
1/ Our report from last April predicted “for bitcoin to trade in a range of $22k to $42k, until a new multi-year bull market pushes it well north of $120k.” Now that bitcoin trades at $42k, let’s review our analysis & recommendations in a summary thread.
2/ We’ve been publishing our bitcoin reports since 2012, each time in periods of significant undervaluation. Last April, with the bitcoin price at $26k—60% below the 2021 all-time high—we once again felt the time was ripe.
People find bitcoin when they're ready: "... and then I realized that bitcoin, unlike ethereum, has this finite supply that is slowly coming to an end over time. ... I did purchase a little position." HT @MikeStillBTC
@MikeStillBTC Speaker is @kevinrose, his friend/interviewer @tferriss is sitting on the left. Kevin is the founder of reddit precursor Digg and is known to have been massively bullish on ETH and NFTs for years. Imo this is how the switch to bitcoin begins—one influencer at a time.
For people who've been feeding off of Silicon Valley's horn of plenty, it's been really hard to step outside of their widget-building bubble. Some knew about bitcoin early, but never really "got" it. (E.g. Kevin's an angel at trueventures.com.)
1/ Midjourney has introduced "/describe", which will allow for much more interplay between AI text and AI image tools. Basically you upload a picture to MJ and it'll respond with 4 prompts, each describing the picture and allowing you to recreate similar images.
2/ I was excited to try it with my own work. So the first image is a drawing of mine, the others are variations created by running the /describe prompts. I'm pretty impressed.
3/ The AI can be quite easily deceived. For example here, the color pink in my drawing made the AI believe it was dealing with a flamingo. The simple remedy was to change the word for "swan".
I love the lively fractional reserve banking versus full reserve banking debates. For so long these were relegated to obscure conferences and internet forums. Here is @BobMurphyEcon with a short take on fractional reserve free banking as defended by Selgin & co.
@BobMurphyEcon My personal position is that Fractional Reserve Free Banking is the lawless, libertinist take. "Let's allow fraud because it makes the economic machine run faster." And that full reserve banking is not utopian; it existed on many occasions, often in the most prosperous nations.