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mircea_popescu: You see dear Internet, Juraj Variny was a simple country boy... you might say a cockeyed optimist, who got himself mixed up in the high stakes game of world diplomacy and international intrigue.
mircea_popescu: so you know... ATC/ALT getting more hash than doge serves a good purpose in the end.
mircea_popescu: you want them to eat ltc's lunch to some degree, much like you want about 50 other groups to start their own, doge-food eating bitcoin killers.
mircea_popescu: the actual correct move is to simply support other alternatives to burn their underbase.
mircea_popescu: ironically, while the correct move may seem to be to support ltc to crush them back into the swamp,
mircea_popescu: so basically what we have here, is "everyone" in the sense of "everyone that goes to tech conferences in SF and reads techcrunch religiously" figures they can take over this novel idea.
mircea_popescu: that they will be crushed by much larger things that exist independent of their knowledge or understanding is about as aliento them as mpex customers to jimmothey
mircea_popescu: the va circus, as hopelessly fucked as they are, imagine that "all entrepreneurship" is... well... them.
mircea_popescu: in principle, every circlejerk imagines itself "the only thing out there". like, the us thinks it's "the world". any us court thinks it has universal jurisdiction. any us politician thinks that his decisions matter universally.
mircea_popescu: because if you get more fuckwits to retweet your inane shit you will thus therefore be "bigger" and "more important" than people with fewer retweets.
mircea_popescu: ant will kill rhino, skin it, wear the skin as king of the jungle.
mircea_popescu: they are attacking bitcoin. perhaps in the manner an ant attacks a rhino, but nevertheless. as far as the ant is concerned, in its own system of representations, that's what's going on.
☟︎ mircea_popescu: "There are more transactions of the cryptocurrency than Bitcoin, although it is only worth a tiny fraction of Bitcoin."
mircea_popescu: most nobody even noticed, or cared. except for the finest tuned of watchdogs or w/e
mircea_popescu: basically bitcoin got attacked in 2013 by the most unlikely of sources : the dieing start-up circus.
☟︎ mircea_popescu: benkay seriously tho, im pretty sure it was in a mpoe report. prolly died summer 2013 ?
mircea_popescu: (dude this is so cool, i'ma do a series of i don't remember / i don't recall and be just like a real banker nao!)
mircea_popescu: jesus yeah, there was a distinct set that died horribly. ie, with the mm taking it up the ass.
mircea_popescu: Feb 01 16:41:24 <ThickAsThieves>getting my hands on the source will be Altcoin's "2 weeks" << did you ?
mircea_popescu: can't believe that chick's been building the snark since two years ago, and yet last month's noobs still "ambush" her
mircea_popescu: one of those "pay through the nose or waste your money" sort of situations which institutions handle so poorly.
mircea_popescu: problem being, of course, the space is full of fakers, and otherwise insanely expensive.
mircea_popescu: no. like getting the ok of someone in the space with enough authortiy to ok it.
mircea_popescu: in general, a small outlier could take over the entire world economy by doing something smart like this.
mircea_popescu: specifically, small countries had problems with their clipped/worn currency
mircea_popescu: fun fact : at the time the amsterdam bank rose to prominence, the thing that propelled it was its marginality
mircea_popescu: problem is, it'd need diametric's hr. which they dont have.
mircea_popescu: (generally, the old adage goes, careful what you claim for yourself, you might live to meet it)
mircea_popescu: that's the problem here. bitcoin selects for and promotes some very narrow, specified things.
mircea_popescu: there's no way to ensure it won't be tat taking it over, with his own version.
mircea_popescu: bitcoin, even should it have made by nsa, has actually taken it over.
mircea_popescu: "we don't have 10bn in the budget. application denied."
mircea_popescu: today at nsa headquarters, "sir, i would like to apply for permission to spend 10bn usd dollars in btc equivalent by dumpting our stash"
☟︎☟︎ mircea_popescu: anyway, take the nsa satoshi hypothesis. so the nsa spent 5mn making this thing, which we all embraced. as part of that expenditure it has premined 10mn BTC, which it kept, secretly. we don't know.
☟︎ mircea_popescu: and can't have sex as value without trying to hump vaguely calf-shaped electricity poles.
mircea_popescu: the incentives are correctly alligned, which is the absolute most you can say of any system
mircea_popescu: but it is in fact the people hoarding that have least interest to see this happen.
mircea_popescu: yet another point of elegant beauty typical of satoshi designs.
mircea_popescu: guess what ? intense volatility hurts large holders most.
mircea_popescu: hoarding is self limiting. you either hoard or matter.
mircea_popescu: strictly because those 18.9 mn coins COULD BE SPENT. but if they're spent... they're no longer hoarded.
mircea_popescu: now, imagine a different situation, in which 18.9 mn bitcoins have been hoarded.
mircea_popescu: what, if anything, do you think'd be different today ?
mircea_popescu: suppose the original satoshi prototype only had 2.1mn total bitcoin, and original block reward was 5 btc.