log☇︎
311900+ entries in 2.503s
mircea_popescu: consider the situation of a supermarket. if you open one in africa you will have a bunch of shoplifters.
jcpham: i bet vetting people with a large fee to play has been successful
mircea_popescu: there's a reason the concept of "underbanked" exists.
mircea_popescu: go get in the wot, spend a year or more making sense, trade many many thousands of btc on mpex
mircea_popescu: pgp people like coinsetter are part of a lengthy tradition of dunning-kruger. the controlling example is one kludge, an out of work bank clerk who figured himself a banker
ezdiy: mircea_popescu: but i guess you have a liquidity problem so you cant force liquidate positions
pgp: as well as acting as a broker to public
pgp: running a full exchange in US is a risky proposition, in my view
mircea_popescu: that piece looks like it cost a hundred bux. im not quite into giving obscure venues money for this "service" yet.
ezdiy: (mpex is actually a bucket shop btw :)
taub: real trading runs on margin as well and isn't a bucketshop
taub: i'm not sure if it IS a buckt shop
jcpham: you have a good point
jcpham: how will it not just turn into a bucket shop
pgp: a lot of talk from coinsetter
unbalanced_: mircea_popescu: finally found a link: http://siliconangle.com/blog/2013/04/11/coinsetter-the-newest-bitcoin-forex-seeks-a-niche-in-the-wild-market/
mircea_popescu: the barrier to entry however is a lot higher than getting a bunch of people talking.
mircea_popescu: pgp it's funny but i think gold is doing a bitcoin.
mircea_popescu: or a gold mine etc.
Bugpowder: just like a biotech
unbalanced_: As a motivated options trader actively looking for a solution to trade options on Bitcoin, it took me about a year and umpteen visits to mpex.co to grok it and get over the 1995 layout and titties and harsh attitude.
Bugpowder: Oh look a whale is betting again with a big address = positive clinical trial result
mircea_popescu: Bugpowder i think perhaps you have a good point there, it does move like a biotech
mircea_popescu: grosso modo if you're spending any part of your day in a place where you can't peruse porn you don't belong here anyway.
unbalanced_: I respect the math/investment opinions, so I'm not going anywhere. I could just do without you playing to the mentality of teenage boys while you simultaneously express distaste for unsophisticated noobs (a high proportion of which are likely that same demographic).
mircea_popescu: now, with the mob there comes sudden and striong social mobility, and also a bunch of murders.
mircea_popescu: consider a town, and consider the mob moves in.
Bugpowder: S.DICE moves like a biotech
mircea_popescu: the surest way for her NOT being a successful fotomodel at 19 is if her tits grow too fast.
mircea_popescu: there is a problem of growthspeed which is not too well understood, especially not by the average (which is to say business illiterate) entrepreneur these days.
mircea_popescu: of course there's a lot of friction to the model, but
mircea_popescu: when you go to get your degree you are basically paying a fee for this priviledge, equal to the value of your time you put into making the papers
error4733: 350$ was a bargain i knew it hehe
mircea_popescu: just so they can cringe when it's $500k+ in a year or two.
mircea_popescu: haha something tells me people cringing at $7500 membership a week ago are still not running to get it at 60% discount
mircea_popescu: maybe idiots behave and we have a nice slope going to 130 till summer.
punkman: it is? I'm not a big fan
Framedragger: punkman is a rather choice pseudonym /OT
mircea_popescu: a a
mpexbot: thestringpuller: (help [<plugin>] [<command>]) -- This command gives a useful description of what <command> does. <plugin> is only necessary if the command is in more than one plugin.
ThickAsThieves: just watched a few min of mtv video awards, wow that channel really fell apart huh?
mircea_popescu: whether it scales or not will decide how large a community can get, not whether it will be the norm or not.
asciilifeform: reminds me of a tale where Chinese peasants, shortly after the red victory, calmed down upon hearing that the Emperor has returned.
mircea_popescu: global warming is a useful "abstraction" if you're using it to get a dumbass neighbour to stop smoking out your pool.
asciilifeform: but I still think the abstraction is a useful one.
thestringpuller: did I really just come back to "getting a girl to suck your cock is no proof you're loved.
mircea_popescu: getting a girl to suck your cock is no proof you're loved.
asciilifeform: well it matters, of course, if the front rank is a thousand blue blood knights, or three bums you've collected from a boozing den.
mircea_popescu: anyway, not so sure sepukku is such a bad example. you have one chance to do yourself in as one of us now that you can't continue living as one of us.
mircea_popescu: a, that's a pity. probably the best thing tyo come out of france
asciilifeform: or the Chinese emperor (forget which) who would order his front ranks to behead themselves on the start of a battle
asciilifeform: a better example: Hassan-i Sabbah
asciilifeform: Seppuku is a bad example: the men ordered to do so generally faced the alternative of being beheaded like commoners (not to be confused with voluntary seppuku.)
asciilifeform: you have a point in that analysis is vulgarizing. hence "the spartan speaks with his sword."
mircea_popescu: perhaps you just do it because it becomes clear the guy's a fuckwit.
mircea_popescu: perhaps. it does come out a rather vulgar thing as reduced by our conversation.
mircea_popescu: get moar gold but can't throw a party cause there's nobody to invite.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: the ancients were a different kind of animal from us. they had notions of aristocracy/future-oriented behavour. vs. the tinted window crowd, for whom "I plug the other guy -> get double the gold" is the order of the day.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: stable shared thrones is probably why Red China outlasted the USSR. but China is a bureaucratic clusterfuck rather than the virile fucktopia you envision.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: let's re-phrase the question a bit: who would you personally be content to share your throne with?
asciilifeform: the crowd is irrelevant, except that it does seem to have a tendency to throw its support behind one guy.
mircea_popescu: nobody may be too strong a world, as insanity is a good bedfellow to exceptional performance
mircea_popescu: you'd rather burn the world and go have a drink with them.
asciilifeform: note that Stalin couldn't even ride a horse (Zhukov rode in the victory parade in his stead.)
mircea_popescu: these three are just there cause they;'re the least obnoxious of a sea of similar bitches in heat.
mircea_popescu: i think the problem is something along these lines : young cock gets into night club, sees successful local mobster with the three girls dotting on him. figures this is a cool squarejaw, he's forcing these women to do such things.
mircea_popescu: or moreover this is what the state is, much like a supermodel is her tits and her waist
mircea_popescu: and there's a reason the tinted windows tinted glasses douches in the us have infinite budgets atm. they are THE state.
mircea_popescu: they're a form of expression of that state.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: seems like you were born a few 1000 years too late...
mircea_popescu: people need a good answer as to why the fuck they're your subjects.
mircea_popescu: that's the motherfucking point of a kingdom.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: fast-forward a decade. you run a kingdom. do you care to spend all of your time personally quashing revolts?
mircea_popescu: the effort of fucking a pregnant woman (for instance) is in no way wasted.
mircea_popescu: education is purely a sexual process. what's this "more fucks than necessary" ?
asciilifeform: yes, but presumably the cost of administering more of a beating than is necessary for a full education is a net waste.
asciilifeform: well yes, but all else being equal, you want the peasants to submit willingly, rather than hire people to pummel them (with gold that you could otherwise buy a second golden helicopter with.)
Namworld: Involves waiting a few weeks, and I don't trust other exchanges enough to deposit there.
mircea_popescu: mtgox doing such a horrible job of it is the bad thing.
asciilifeform: so why is the herd of morons pumping MtGox full of dollars such a bad thing?
mircea_popescu: it's never a case of anything vaguely related.
mircea_popescu: "guard labour" is a void notion pretty much. it stems from the ultimately doomed attempt of the intellectually bankrupt left to justify it's nonsense.
mircea_popescu: in a sense
mircea_popescu: because a. they keep making dumbass statements that then get fed into the dumbass press which make btc look like a scam
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: so why is the life (and death) of MtGox a subject of interest to you?
mircea_popescu: i seriously don't know anyone who's neither a noob or an idiot seriously using mtgox.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: no alternative, if you're a rat. and right now most BTC users are more or less that.
mircea_popescu: sure, garbage bins almost always have some food in them. i wouldn't call this a "brand"
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: nah, the worst reputation is just some random address you can send BTC or wire USD to from which nothing comes out again. MtGox is still a league above the rest, considering that this is what the rest is by default.
asciilifeform: (esp. if you include the cost of establishing reputation in said cost. otherwise my front door could be a top BTC exchange.)
mircea_popescu: it's not a game at all.
asciilifeform: BTC-fiat trading might be a "winner take all" game, like cocaine cartels.
asciilifeform: any lackey of the traditional banking system can trade USD for EUR, so it is unremarkable. but there appears to be a limited number of people with the balls and connections to run automated BTC/fiat exchanges.
mircea_popescu: right. cause it's a side business of no particular value or import
mircea_popescu: who is a serious contender for the exchange dollars to euros "throne" irl ?
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: at any rate, why are we burying MtGox again? who exactly is a serious contender for its throne?
mircea_popescu: go hit on a girl, she turns yhou down, you meant for her to turn you down all along. sure.
ThickAsThieves: first sign of a bubble
mircea_popescu: executing very well is an advantage if you have a good strat. if you have a bad strat executing poorly is actually better
asciilifeform: ok, maybe lag only works to Dr. Evil's advantage if he uses it as a nice padded box in which to hide front-running.