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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.
mircea_popescu: when the fiat bubble is gone we will actually deflate, but the effects of THAT are not judgeable by this.
mircea_popescu: it's just that parachutes do little to protect you from falling objects.
mircea_popescu: in the sense jumping out of a plane and having a piano fall on you yield the same result.
mircea_popescu: there is no deflation caught in that discussion at all.
mircea_popescu: you can't "invest" in zimbabwe until their failrency settles down
mircea_popescu: you'd have the same difficulties if you landed in zimbabwe with a trunk full of dollars :
mircea_popescu: but this is an interfacing problem, not a deflation problem
mircea_popescu: "if all idiots vote in the wot like it is a nationalistic election, you will get a wot that works like your fucking country"
mircea_popescu: this is kind-of the gist of the old mpoe-pr post re personal responsibility
mircea_popescu: ThickAsThieves if YOU vote the wrong guy YOU are screwed.
mircea_popescu: it means few to one which groups in few to one which groups in few to one etc.
mircea_popescu: it's just that "distributed" does not mean one to many, as the nationalist representation of bork would have it.
mircea_popescu: this is how i find women, incidentally. i don't go into bars.
mircea_popescu: simple : i ask all the people who know people who pay beer tabs.
mircea_popescu: right. parft of the definition of even beeing your mates
mircea_popescu: do your beer mates try to trick you into paying for their beer ?
mircea_popescu: this doesn't seem to have anything to do with what i was saying
mircea_popescu: im not making it up in that this has in fact happened.