I’m in Bitcoin, because I never had faith in humanity.  Bitcoin is a system which exploits ruthless self-interest to coerce people who hate each other into cooperation—for the good of Bitcoin, not for each other.

I am sorry for your loss.  By that I mean, your dearly departed coins which I know you are mourning.

I have all of my life savings in Bitcoin.  All the liquid money that I have, aside from hand-to-mouth scraps of fiat to cover my mundane expenses (and I live simply).  It is money that I cannot afford to lose; for I was never an investor, and I never thought of it as a financial investment per se.  Bitcoin is to me more than money.  Also, I can’t preach something to people if I’m not living it.  —Also, I play for keeps; and that means going all in.  I have always been that way.

For the past few days, I have been ignoring the market (as I usually do).  I don’t even know the current price exchange rate (non-monetary commodities have prices; currencies have exchange rates!).

I couldn’t panic-sell, even if I wanted to:  I have never had a KYCed fiat-crypto exchange account.  Getting my money into Bitcoin anonymously was a major project; and it cost dearly, especially given that I was ignoring the market as usual.  Selling my coin for fiat would be even more difficult, because it’s easier to spend fiat cash anonymously than to obtain fiat cash anonymously.  But I don’t mind being stuck with Bitcoin.  Married to it.

Now, it is foreseeable that in the near future, I may wind up with Bitcoin and no food.  I am a practical man; and frankly, I will admit that I would rather have food.  Still, I am glad that I have my Bitcoin.  Bitcoin makes me happy.


That is actually not emotional on my part; and it is not a religion, my sense of humour notwithstanding.  Bitcoin is the concrete embodiment of higher principles.  At this point in history, it is one thing that can help slow our descent into a terrible abyss.  That, I care about more than I care about money.

---

I don’t recommend buybacks based on emotions, any more than I would recommend panic-selling.  The cool, savvy approach will result in having more Bitcoin in the long run.  I do think the banks are trashing us now.  Panic-selling means money value in their pockets (correction noted as to a principle that most people never understand: the nature of money); so would whipsawing around with effectually FOMOing.  Just pretend that you are approaching this for the first time—so, how would you get into Bitcoin now?  Pretend that you just saw the term “maximalism” for the first time, and you’re such a n00b that you assume it means maximizing the amount of Bitcoin that you have. ;-)

I am even more negative:


Astute observers have been predicting the collapse of the system (including the global financial system) for about the past half-century.  Not “if”, but “when”.

If the current-events trend does not change soon (NOT the damn virus, but people’s reaction to it), well... you may wish that you had traded all of your government-issued toilet paper for literal toilet paper.  (Actually—for food, gold, tools, and weapons.)  Is this a good time to HODL fiat?


Accumulating more Bitcoin right now is a hedge on the potential that S will not totally HTF.  In that case, you may well wish for assets in a form free from direct government control which (if you know what you are doing) is very easy to conceal, transport, and convey.  It is not alarmist to observe that things are already pretty bad in many places.

In case of total SHTF, neither government-issued currency nor the Internet will exist.  In that case, you would need the other side of that hedge:  You need to have spent at least the past few years quietly making the sorts of preparations that most people laugh at.  If you already did that, then you don’t need for me to tell you that now is not a good time to be competing with desperate people for more of things that you already wisely prepared.  Whereas if you didn’t, then starting that now is too late!  Don’t be another desperate headless chicken.  Just buy more Bitcoin, hope for the best... and if you die, at least you will die HODLing.

How is that for negativity?  :-)

VB1001, love it.

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Hey, after a few days off the forum for fateful reasons, I just posted a long polemic in Politics & Society about how it is panic that will destroy the world.  Panic already wrecked your hard-won HODLings. :-/


Life is not safe.

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Gold is golden—if you can keep it.  No matter where you are, nowadays, good luck with that, if SHTF and you are not very carefully prepared long in advance.


I heard that toilet paper is in high demand.


Was Bitcoin ever “safe”?  It is powerful:  A powerful idea that can change the world for the better.  Therefore, it has powerful enemies.  I bet on Bitcoin.

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Metldown caused by panic.  See the trend?  Yes, I think it is a meltdown.  To increase your chance of surviving it, first of all, don’t panic.





What’s better than hyperinflation?  Infinite inflation?

I know next to nothing about daytrading.  I study history.  This is exactly the sort of move that is used to suck value out of the market—i.e. out of the populace.  Dollar-holders will be left holding the bag.  At this point, I think the only question is whether they will lose it all (in which case it is really SHTF), or they will “only” get sheep-sheared much more than usual, in purchase-power terms.

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Pop quiz:

America was a quite free country in 1932 (unlike today!).  Pretend that you are an American in 1932.

In 1932, it was also in economic turmoil amidst the throes of the Great Depression.

Do you put all you have left into gold?  Congrats, you are now forced to trade it for toilet paper in 1934.

Do you HODL dollars?  LOL!  *crash*

There was no Bitcoin in 1932.

N.b., I never claimed that Bitcoin was “safe”—especially in a time of disaster, when more than ever, nothing is safe.  Choose your best available options.

A PSA that should probably not be buried in WO:  Stop measuring value in dollars!

Those of you who do TA and dataporn, do you have any good intelligence on the value of the dollar, in purchase-power terms?  I don’t mean today; I mean tomorrow; I don’t mean the next day, either.  Every sane person has known for a very long time that the dollar must collapse someday; but trying to predict when is like trying to predict the fall of the Roman Empire when you are living in it at some undermined point between c. A.D. 300–400... or is it later than I think?

Flip the axes on your BTC-USD trading charts, re-run your algorithms with the variables swapped, and see what that tells you—to start with.  What is the dollar’s trend against Bitcoin?

As a rule of thumb, I measure fiat currency value by how many $/€/etc. an ounce of gold will purchase.  Not vice versa.  Flip your thinking, because your thinking is upside-down.  I also try to track the fiat/BTC price:  What is the value of government-issued official trading stamps, as measured in Bitcoin today?  However, that only works to avoid being a sheep getting sheared in the markets due to mismeasures of value, plus for long-term predictions, e.g.:  The dollar loses value.  Whoopie, I’m a genius.


Damn, well said.

Note that all of the above assumes the continued existence of the Internet—and all the Internet’s massive dependency chain of fragile infrastructure.  If that assumption holds true, then I rate Bitcoin a strong buy without even trying to time the bottom.  If not, then moving your assets to toilet paper is not exactly helpful.  The creation of money out of thin air is a tool for shearing sheep by draining value from their possession.


There is no single person in charge.  This is the problem with “conspiracy theorists” (not calling you that—it’s just a good segue for an important point).  Everybody who knows how the world actually works, knows that it is run by the sum of vectors of competing interests.  Of course, people with the same interests will collude much as they can, and try to avoid announcing their plans to their competitors.  In that sense, the world is run by “conspiracies”, and always has been; but that is just Real Life 101.

In all significantly powerful countries, the ruling classes have been in headless-chicken mode for a very long time—ever since they converted themselves from aristocracies to industrial capitalist plutocracies.  They painted themselves into a corner:  They are dependent on the dollar scam, the Euro scam, the stock market scam, etc., etc.  They are not only using it to trap you:  They are trapped, too, and trapped worst of all.  “Too big to fail.”  Building dynasties on the foundation of what is effectually the biggest Ponzi scheme in recorded history was not exactly wise.

Thus indeed, no sane person is in charge.  No single person or monolithic organization is in charge; and the various competing groups in power are all totally insane.  We are now enjoying the sum of competing vectors of insanity.  Lulz.

Hmmm...


Read what I said two paragraphs after that, if you want any chance of surviving a real SHTF scenario.

Gold (etc.) is the only form of money that survives the deaths of civilizations.  But it has been under total control in America since the 1930s, and worldwide since not later than the Nixon Shock and global conversion to completely arbitrary fiat currencies.

Any WO-style investment decisions assume as a premise the continued existence of civilization.  For other assumptions, you needed to start preparing long ago.  But if that assumption is correct, then don’t shoot yourself in the foot financially here.

Do the opposite of what panicking people are doing.  For example, I have my own take on this excellent photo of panic personified:


Also, for example, if panickers are dumping Bitcoin, then now is a good time to accumulate it.  If I had any fiat to invest, I would be buying more Bitcoin, and also be looking at futures in commodities, plus some stocks for companies that are least likely to cease to exist.  Well, take that for what it’s worth:  I have no skin in the game with fiat currencies. ;-)

If I had been trading in London at the time of the Battle of Waterloo, I would have ridden on Rothschild’s coattails, too.  Even without any special intelligence as he had.  Just based on my principle that men with cool heads place carefully measured bets against panic.  Always bet against panic!

All of this is high-risk; but do not expect safety in a time of mass chaos (or ever!).  It is a good time to get rich, if you can pull it off—and if you can’t, for the nth time, government-issued scrip is not a safe place to park your assets right now.

Why do you assume that a replacement must exist before it collapses!?

That is like assuming that Madoff’s scheme could not collapse before his investors moved on to something better.  Say what?

The U.S. Dollar itself is the most enormous of things that are “too big to fail”.  That does not mean it cannot fail—to the contrary.  It has been suspicious since 1913, fundamentally unsound since the 1930s, and a red-tag scam since the 1970s.  Of course, it will collapse—it cannot keep going forever!  The problem is that without a crystal ball, it is impossible to time the collapse of a global, tera-scale scam backed by a habitually belligerent military superpower with a worm-eaten domestic economy that still has a lot of momentum.

I am not a financial analyst.  I think in historical terms.  The context that you snipped:

This is a good debate, i.e. thoughtful disagreement.  Thanks, Phil_S:


By that logic, every scam called out on the Scam Accusations forum has actual value as long as people believe in it.


Boldface on a faulty assumption.  Wealth is not a zero-sum game—not in either direction.  No quasi “law of conservation” applies.  Value is both created and destroyed.

I have long predicted that the collapse of the dollar and the collapse of industry, technology, and society will be intertwined in a feedback loop.  Massive amounts of real value will disappear.  Not flow to something else.  Things of durable value will remain; but not many people will have them.

I must now revisit something here:


That is incomprehensibly stupid.  It is also a very good way for the people who control dollars to extract the last bit of durable value from total idiots.  Well, I don’t have anything against that, in and of itself.  Total idiots don’t deserve to have things of durable value.  The only unfortunate part is that there are massive side effects to people who are not total idiots.

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A technocratic, industrialized, globalized international economy based on massive centralization and long supply chains cannot survive such a scenario as “global lockdown for 1 year+”.

That is why I accuse headless-chicken governments of destroying the world in a futile attempt to save it from a virus that is not being significantly slowed by all the lockdowns.

It’s working just fine.


Massive panic-selling is a good opportunity to make dollars out of thin air, and give the panic-sellers what they’re asking for!

Note:  I am not suggesting that some monolithic hidden hand is ushering in the age of space aliens, or whatever.  Remember what I said earlier about the vectors of competing interests.

The U.S. Fed has a century-plus history of fucking the markets for the purpose of draining real value, and of helping hydra-head institutional banks to suck up real value.  They drain value chronically, in both “boom” and “bust” parts of their cycle, via instruments including (but not limited to) the hidden tax of Keynesian inflation (both through the obvious primary effect, and through the secondary effect of encouraging interest-bearing indebtedness by punishing savers).  They also do it acutely, as in the Great Depression—or in times such as now, when total idiots are panic-selling all kinds of value in exchange for a massive infusion of dollars.  LOL!

Other big players may well be desperately trying to stop the market from dying, because they will die with it.  Hey, how many wealthy, upper-class, well-connected New York financiers committed suicide in 1929?  Just for example.

Only a fool would claim to know in advance exactly how all of this will play out.  And to be clear, I myself am dosing with Hopium® for technological civilization to last at least a bit longer.  It may.  And none of us is prepared for otherwise.  Don’t argue with me; I obviously know what the fuck I am talking about.  99% of “prepper” stuff is, unfortunately, a self-comforting illusion.  A few people may be well enough prepared to have a small chance of long-term survival in the event of a global collapse—of the global collapse, an historically unprecedented event, the Fall of Rome raised by a few orders of magnitude.

I have my Bitcoin.  In the event that total collapse does not occur, times will still be tough; and Bitcoin will be a very useful form of money!  And if total collapse does occur, then I will have worse problems than losing all my savings.  For you see, I am strictly rational.  No hope.  No optimism, either.  Whatever may happen, I will meet it with dignity:  The one thing that cannot be taken from a man.

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Quote from: nullius on March 08, 2020, 10:29:37 AM

I scorn all hope:  Hope was the ill at the bottom of Pandora’s box, “the evil of evils, the most malign of all evils”.  For the lulz, keeping up with the theme of things that I did not study in school—in this case, something that was always obvious to me:  “(Gerade wegen dieser Fähigkeit, den Unglücklichen hinzuhalten, galt die Hoffnung bei den Griechen als übel der Übel, als das eigentlich tückische Übel: es blieb im Fass des Übels zurück)”.

Quote from: nullius on March 15, 2020, 05:53:59 PM

Quote from: nullius on February 26, 2020, 03:00:11 PM

Man and Technics

Quote from: nullius on February 02, 2020, 11:45:06 PM

Quote from: nullius on February 08, 2018, 11:54:02 PM

“Optimism is cowardice.” — Spengler (writing most of a hundred years ago)

LOL, FTFY:


...indeed, just like Bitcoin!  (At least in this respect.)

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Well, you must be laughing it up at all the people HODLing dollars.

Why not take delivery?  Oh, right.  Hmmm.

Good thus far...

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Now, hold up a moment!  Compare this:


Yes, “fake” is not the same as “created by the government”.  Yes, also, I am reasonably sure that the Great Depression was caused by the Fed (whether from malice or stupidity), and subsequently exploited (from malice only).  Nevertheless, the same principle applies:  The fact that a crisis can be exploited—is being exploited for tyrannical purposes does not in itself support any inference whatsoever about its causes.  Tyrants can act opportunistically!

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Yes, I have been hitting that point hard since I was a Newbie:

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Hmmm...

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Protip:  When you have a rock-solid point that is completely indisputable as to fact, don’t bollox it up with stuff you cannot prove in black and white.

For example, everything that I said here is reasonably unimpeachable—unless somebody wants to deny that lockdowns are occurring, or whatever?

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To be clear, I concur with the same points about the government responses.  I am urging more effective advocacy.

I never liked talking about this.  (Privacy, y’know.)  Whereas the point is too important here...

(Date Registered: July 23, 2011, 06:23:50 PM)

I have a little story that will make jojo69 feel better about selling anything whatsoever at $13.

I have said parts of this before, in various threads.  (Will not now waste time mining for self-quotes.)

I discovered Bitcoin rather early.  I don’t want to say exactly how early—enough so that the original Zerocoin paper immediately caught my attention in 2013.  So, significantly earlier than that.

I didn’t buy.  Didn’t even mine (when that could still be done with commodity hardware).  Didn’t even play with the software!  Didn’t bother creating a forum account before 2017, although of course, I knew about this place long before then.  (And if anybody was wondering how, at Newbie rank, I came out swinging in the thick of the fork wars within 36 hours of when I started actively posting—then the next day, hopped over to defend Segwit in Development & Technology...  ...and yes, I was in the Lauda camp before I even registered.)

Bitcoin was an intellectual curiosity which fascinated me, given my interest in cypherpunk money going back to the 90s.  I casually followed its development, from a distance.  I just could not stand the privacy problems of a global public ledger.  I hoped that Bitcoin would lead to better technologies; and just like all those technocratic blockheads whom I have always despised, I was more focused on the technology than on the organic, unduplicable, rapidly growing Bitcoin Social Phenomenon.

After all that I had read about Bitcoin, I actually got into cryptocurrency via Zcash, which I had been patiently awaiting for several years.  Thereupon, I endured a hard lesson in the virtù of Shitcoin Minimalism (h/t qwk (date registered: 2011-06-15)).  Hello, Bitcoin:  I have always loved you in theory; now, I embrace you in practice.

I could have been “Bitcoin rich”.  Could have been.

I hope that people learn something from my story.

The funniest part:  Most of the regulars on this thread have far more Bitcoin than I do, even though I am all in on Bitcoin with my life savings.  In terms of personal wealth, I never had much money.  Now, because I was reading about Bitcoin and sitting on my hands when I should have been getting in, I don’t have much Bitcoin.  The Bitcoin is what I have, and is thus all the more precious to me...

mindrust, don’t take my recent posts the wrong way.  I wandered into WO via your post history, because I’ve been checking up on people whom I respect—hoping that everyone is ok.  Oh, forking hell, mindrust just did what!?  Ouch.  Hey, I was a “nocoiner” who admired Bitcoin from a distance for years.  It has worked out so terribly well for me, as you can see.



How do you think I feel right about now, or ever?  The almost early adopter.  Who could have had the secret keys to ancient coins neatly tucked away.  Fuck me.  I betrayed myself.

I believe in leading by example.  In this case, please take the story of my personal crypto-journey as an example of what not to do.


Damn straight.

On the other side of the coin, if Bitcoin fails, then we will all be globally, historically fucked in a thousand ways that you never even imagined.  Spunky little Bitcoin, whose whole market cap is a drop in the bucket of the global financial markets, is now all we have to advance the cause of financial freedom against the tyranny of an international system that reads your soul (and your practical activity) by watching all that you buy and sell, and that is moving toward the point that it can starve any dissent simply by freezing the money of anybody deemed undesirable.

When hardcore HODLers are panic-selling, the prospect of losing the value of my life savings is actually the least of my concerns.  Hello, WO!  I never posted here before, because I am not a financial investor.  Now, I am here saying to BUY and HODL.

Quite frankly, I tell you that that is risky—for everything is high-risk right now.  Manage the risk rationally:  No FOMO panic-buys, and no panic-selling!  I also candidly point out that Bitcoin is less risky than government-issued toilet paper—which historically has always been the worst risk in times of social breakdown!  I hereby add that if the sheep all run away from Bitcoin, then we will all be as lambs to the slaughter.


I dream of not needing to ask anybody’s permission to use my own money, and of easily carrying on private transactions with anybody in the world.  Bitcoin is my bet.

Stereotypical American.  And you wonder why most of the world justifiably hates you.  Look in the mirror.

There are some individuals from America whom I respect and admire.  They don’t have this American attitude; and most of them hate America, too.

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Then delete your duplicate post with absolutely identical content, instead of waiting for someone else to clean it up for you.  “How to use a forum” at n00b level.

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You would be making some great points, if you weren’t mixing them with arrant nonsense.

N.b. that these conclusory leaps of logic also tend to discredit in the public mind anybody who has sound reasons for being wary of the CIA, the NSA, the UN, the Fabians, et al.  Such as myself.  Why, it is almost as if there is some sort of a conspiracy to discredit rational investigation of such matters. :-/

If more Americans knew what the hell you are talking about (and cared to), then perhaps I may not despise America as I do.

Since you allude to Jefferson, you may observe that Jefferson’s notion of a “natural aristocracy” was in essence an attempt to synthesize his own rationally aristocratic mentality with the “Enlightenment” ideals which he believed with a religious fervour.  The resulting vision of a State ruled by an educated middle class was what must surely be one of the most elegant populist theories ever imagined.  Too bad that it did not survive contact with reality.

I hold several of the American founders in the highest respect—both Federalists such as Washington and John Adams (plus Adams’ famous scholarly great-grandsons; read their stuff!), and Antifederalists such as Jefferson, Samuel Adams, et al.  I detest Americans all the more for betraying the gift bought with blood and honour by men greater than themselves, and bequeathed to them with a foolish generosity:  Freedom given freely, and discarded cheaply!

If my favourite American founders could see their country today, they would probably panic and beg the King to take them back.  Nowadays, the individual Americans whom I most respect are the ones who finally realize that the same patriotic principles which make them love what America could have been, must make them hate what America is.

(By the way, from your apparent lack of fatheadedness, I assume that you are probably not fat.  That itself makes you a dissident. ;-)

Off-the-cuff prediction, knowing America:  Not only will it require a bank account, but it will be entwined with the IRS.  Either directly, with forms that make people give statements relating to tax status—or more likely more subtly, somehow that makes people dox themselves in ways that will be useful to the IRS.  Cf. the institution by the American Kerensky of the Social Security system, replete with Social Security Numbers.  Where will this lead?  Will ☭Trump be the American Lenin?

I admit that I am going out a bit on a limb there.  It is too early to tell where that will lead; but on the other hand...  FYI, American “Social Security” cards used to be explicitly marked, “NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION”.  LOL.  Has America seen any greater mass panic since the Roosevelt era?

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Quote from: Wekkel on March 17, 2020, 04:40:22 PM

Revised: Trump is seeking $1,000 per head to plow into Bitcoin  

Excellent! :-)

Just as long as the Americans tick the box saying that they hodl virtual currency. :-/

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Quote from: nutildah on March 17, 2020, 04:52:39 PM

Quote from: fillippone on March 17, 2020, 04:38:20 PM

*TRUMP SAYS ‘WE’RE GOING BIG’ ON VIRUS RELIEF MONEY

That's the only way Trump goes.

He’s a big talker.

Quote from: nullius (DRAFT of post for my anti-American thread)

Maybe Trump should ask the Chinese for advice on how to build amazingly big border walls—and do it with style!

The Chinese:  “We will build a wall!”

MADE IN CHINA


American Twit-in-Chief Trump:  “#TWEET #TWEET”

What’s wrong?  You Americans can’t build a simple wall for yourselves, ever since you shut down most of your industrial base and outsourced its functionality to China?  Lulz.

I have news for you:  The People’s Republic of China pwns your country.  Now, I have no sympathy for the Communists; to the contrary, I hate them with fire.  I am merely pointing out that, for example, you, the most pestilent warmonger country in the history of Earth, could never dare to risk a war with the Red Chinese.

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Quote from: BitcoinBunny on March 17, 2020, 05:24:36 PM

Bernie Sanders will probably be shouting that Trump should give $2000 to every American and $3000 to every Mexican.

I think you meant a bunch of other politicians from both “(D) Pepsi” and “(R) Coke”.  Although Sanders is an admitted Socialist, he himself has said that mass-immigration is bad for the American working class.  Therefore, I would not assume that his almost overt Marxism would take the form that you are suggesting.

https://web.archive.org/web/20150728172319/http://www.vox.com/2015/7/28/9014491/bernie-sanders-vox-conversation

Quote from: Vox, Ezra Klein, 2015-07-28

Ezra Klein

You said being a democratic socialist means a more international view. I think if you take global poverty that seriously, it leads you to conclusions that in the US are considered out of political bounds. Things like sharply raising the level of immigration we permit, even up to a level of open borders. About sharply increasing ...

Bernie Sanders

Open borders? No, that's a Koch brothers proposal.

Ezra Klein

Really?

Bernie Sanders

Of course. That's a right-wing proposal, which says essentially there is no United States. ...

[...]

But I think what we need to be doing as a global economy is making sure that people in poor countries have decent-paying jobs, have education, have health care, have nutrition for their people. That is a moral responsibility, but you don't do that, as some would suggest, by lowering the standard of American workers, which has already gone down very significantly.

Strictly speaking, he is correct in identifying open borders as what would be more properly described as a globalist-capitalist corporate agenda (which, I will add, is always substantively indistinguishable from the International Communist agenda).  Of course, I think it’s a ploy to pander to the masses.  But it does demonstrate the folly of picking leftie names out of a hat for rhetoric about leftist policies.  In my opinion, Sanders is the left’s counterpart to Trump:  A candidate who purports to oppose the establishment, and makes rhetoric that appeals to the working class.  If the working class were to turn from Trump to Sanders, I do predict that they would be just as disappointed as they have been with Trump.  See how that works?

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Quote from: gentlemand on March 17, 2020, 04:42:41 PM

By the time this is done universal basic income may well be a thing in several countries including the US. China made commies out of us all just with one asshole eating a bat that fucked a pangolin.

Forking hell, the Chinese even pwn America by accident!  Why, it is almost as if the proud Ovine-Americans are begging for tyranny, and will eagerly embrace any excuse that their government has the opportunity to offer.

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Quote from: jojo69 on March 17, 2020, 05:06:55 PM

I hear the choppers in the distance

Paranoiac.  You are at high risk for contracting the contagion of slowly progressing schizophrenia.^*  STFU and turn back to the TV, if you don’t want to be in need of re-education.  For your own good.  You do not appreciate the American freedom that you enjoy; people who love you will want to help you with that.

* nullius loves Big Brother.

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* Actual USSR “medical” diagnosis applied to particularly dangerous dissidents.

You are arguing with someone who drew an analogy likening the coronavirus to Hitler, as a setup for somehow pinning this on Germans and Austrians.  Do not expect logic.

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Boldface in the original:


Very well said!  However, I disagree with the connection to what you said later in that post.

HODL!

I suggest that the basic fallacy here is evaluating Bitcoin’s value based on the cost of mining.  This was raised somewhere earlier in the same general context (sorry, WO n00b here will not dig back through all these fast-moving pages to find it).

As I have been saying on this forum since I was a Newbie (search post history), Bitcoin’s value is not based on the cost of producing a coin.  That is backwards:  Miners are incentivized to mine, based on a market value that rises from other factors.  Observe that if the market value of Bitcoin were to drop below the cost that can be recovered from mining, then hashpower would surely decrease:  Miners could not prop up Bitcoin’s value by spending more on electricity!

Of course, there is a subtle feedback loop between one of the factors in Bitcoin’s value and the hashrate:  The higher the hashrate (assuming that the total is split between non-colluding independent parties), the more secure Bitcoin is.  The more secure Bitcoin is, the better it is for the usefulness that gives it its real value.  But that is not the primary factor; and it is more a matter of effects than causes.

My Bitcoin Social Phenomenon thread presents my thesis on the true nature of Bitcoin’s value.  I mean its long-term real value in terms of fundamentals, not its speculative daytrading value.  In short:  Bitcoin is the money that lets you independently control your own funds, store them securely, and transmit them anywhere in the world fast and easily.  Both its security and its value are increased by a design that not only assumes it is deployed in a hostile environment between mutually distrusting parties, but actually exploits distrust and competition to encourage both mining and nodes.  Bitcoin doesn’t care if its users love each other, or hate each other—it just keeps going, providing a global transaction network that nobody can control.

As such, Bitcoin facilitates other economic activity which would be otherwise inconvenient or impossible—Bitcoin’s real value rises thus.

Bitcoin was the first money in all of history to have these characteristics; indeed, it invented its own characteristics.  Thereupon, it has organically grown a user base, an established reputation, a decentralized social movement that cannot be duplicated.  There is only one Bitcoin, and there can only be one Bitcoin.  The upside is that Bitcoin’s uniqueness makes it all the more valuable—the downside is that if Bitcoin were to fail, we could not just make another Bitcoin.

I don’t think that even Satoshi really understood the value of what he created.  Nobody could have.  I surely didn’t (which is why I am not rich).

Bitcoin is historically significant.  Epochal.  I do not use those terms lightly:  I have too much respect for history, and I detest hype.

Any more questions about what gives Bitcoin its value?

Fuck you for making me sad that I don’t have any significant fiat for buying Bitcoin in the dip.  :'-(


Edit:  Doubly sad that I didn’t buy mindrust’s coins.  If I had, I would offer them back to him later at a moderate penalty for the panic.  I almost want to give him some Bitcoin, a trivial amount, just to stop him from being a nocoiner.  My problem is that in a few years, that “trivial amount” may look like jojo’s old $13/BTC sales.  Yes, I hoard.

So, ruin the world for strong, healthy people for the purpose of protecting sick people and stereotypical American fat slobs?

Don’t make me start dropping Nietzsche in WO.  (I am famous for that in Reputation and Meta.)

---

If there ever arises a genetically engineered bioweapon that selectively kills people who fear death, nullius did it.

I will call it the CatCH-22 virus.

---

Damn, this thread moves fast.

Quote

Warning - while you were typing 2 new replies have been posted. You may wish to review your post.

Quote from: JimboToronto on March 18, 2020, 03:07:40 AM

I've got an idea. Why don't we quarantine  all the old and wise.

Then the young and stupid can infect each other. Great way to fight the idiocracy.

 8)

Quote from: nullius on March 17, 2020, 03:33:23 PM

I am neither young nor healthy.  Without disclosing personal details that may compromise my privacy, I will note that I am at significantly higher than average risk of death from coronavirus.

However, as I have said repeatedly, life is risk.  It would be awfully hypocritical of me to preach about courage, then turn around and demand that healthy young people destroy the world and embrace unlimited tyranny because I got panicked about a personal risk to myself.

My first public message about the coronavirus:

Quote from: nullius on March 15, 2020, 05:53:59 PM

Dear readers of the forum:

Some of you will die from the coronavirus.  (—Some few of you:  The virus has low lethality except to the aged or otherwise frail.)  The virus may kill me, too; maybe, maybe not.  That is acceptable:  Life is risk, and death is a part of life.  My only sadness is that sometimes, the worst befalls the best of people.

* nullius will now hammer the post button until it goes through

Though my body is not that old, my females are ancient and timeless.  By the power vested in me by the god of Bitcoin, I have officially declared them to be Bitcoinesses:

---

Quote from: jojo69 on March 18, 2020, 03:02:31 AM

you have to keep reminding me

Phryne will make it all better.  Though I warn you, you will not have much Bitcoin left after that.  Look up what she offered to do for Thebes from her personal pocket money; she did not become so wealthy by providing intimate companionship for free.  Now that she takes Bitcoin, expect for her to be soon eating the whales for breakfast.  What would you pay for something priceless?

(Lilith is from a different culture.  She does not take your coins—only your soul and your seed.)

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Quote from: OutOfMemory on March 17, 2020, 11:31:46 PM

Quote from: jojo69 on March 17, 2020, 11:27:25 PM

you should totally set up a threesome

#nohomo

No, I will not let you watch my threesome with Phryne and Lilith.  Well, not unless you pay good BTC.  How much do you have?

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Quote from: lightfoot on March 18, 2020, 03:39:34 AM

The old are hardly wise. :-)

But the young are foolish. :-)

WO post #5:

So, when do you predict that we may test $9000 again?

I’m not one of those “MOON!” people.  I think that outlandish price predictions are damaging to Bitcoin:  They attract get-rich-quick FOMO that quickly turns to weak-hands panic.  Frankly, I would rather see slow, steady growth driven by growth in adoption of Bitcoin for actual use as money—both for transactions, and for long-term HODLing of savings.  Those two functions are indeed intertwined.

That being said, now that we have crossed the $9000 mark many times, I think this is reasonable to ask.  Also, $10k.  That is a psychological point of great ovine import.  If we can just get solid support at $10k, maybe after the halvening, then that would be a good starting point for a period of slow, steady growth with the lessened volatility that would in turn facilitate more adoption.  What do you think, TA wizards?

Of course, I have hereby committed a common fallacy:  Using the dollar as the measure of Bitcoin’s value.  If we soon see the effects of rapid dollar inflation (as seems a real possibility), then Bitcoin may indeed soon hit $1,000,000, without gaining any purchase power—just because the dollar crashed, and a $100 bill now buys a loaf of bread (if that).  Hyperinflation could also quickly give us quadrillion-dollar Bitcoins, or whatever; but that would not mean much, if it may also signal the global breakdown of technological civilization, and thus, the loss of the Internet.

A moderate amount of dollar inflation is also built into the rise since 2013:  $50 in 2013 dollars would be worth significantly more today.  Not >100x more!

Innovations in campaign finance reform:  Bankroll your own campaign for your first term, and then use tax money to buy everybody’s votes for your second term.  Now, that’s leverage!  If Democrats whine, point out that they’re the ones who want UBI or something like it.  What you are doing is totally different, because you wave so many American flags that you are definitely against Communism—so much against it, that you will spend the next four years building it even more, instead of building that wall thing, or rebuilding American industry, or whatever else you promised as boob-bait so long ago that insofar as the stereotypical American attention span is concerned, it is ancient history.

MAGA!


Try this.  It compiles, and you can even run it:

The secret proprietary code for Nullian Coin, which is so superior to Bitcoin that I will not let anybody have any:

Code:

#include <stddef.h>
#include "/dev/null"

int
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{

return (*(int*)NULL);
}

See my avatar:  It is the secret formula for creating infinite money with zero inflation.  My design for a perpetual motion machine is too complex to fit in the margin of this post.

@OP, this poll is typical of democracy:  It offers an exclusive choice between wrong options.


Please add this option:  “Panic”.

I do not fear the coronavirus.  As I have said, either I will die, or I won’t.  Meanwhile, I am alive.  I will take rational measures to increase my chances of staying that way.  I will not fear the virus.

I sure as hell am not caused fear by Bitcoin!  WTF.  Bitcoin makes me happy.  It is without exaggeration the only thing in my life that is going right, at this particular moment.  Everything else is hardforked without consensus, due to mass-panic.  That is why I have retreated into WO for the past few days, to run with the bulls.  Something is still right in the world.  Go, Bitcoin. go!

I fear the panic, or more precisely, the foreseeable results of the panic.

At this point, I am nearly panicked over panic.

I need an appropriate poll option, so that I can exercise my Right to Vote.  Or is it my Right to Submit Vote?  Or my Right to Submit?  Hmmm.

Thanks.

I think that is now the canonical expression of true love:  You will risk contracting coronavirus so that you can come closer than officially mandated social-distancing distance.

Either that, or an expression of the fact that you think with the little head.

---

Anybody notice how it is now considered healthy to be isolated from other human beings?

They should start with the inmates on death row.  At least, releasing them should lessen the probability that convicts under penalty of death will take up precious ER beds for lifesaving measures.

Next, they need to let out all the poor, innocent people red-tagged by Lauda, the bad-cop kitty.

Of course, people convicted of serious crimes and domestic terrorism (such as underreporting taxable income, or making de minimis mistakes on gun purchase forms) must remain behind bars, for the public safety.

I will avoid mentioning why or how American prisons are notoriously efficient places to contract HIV.

WTF are you talking about?  The whole current system is technocratic in the extreme—and that’s a bad thing.

---

No, I get it all too well.  That is why I called you out on it.


I admit that I read what Lambie said with a strong bias against you, due to your having just engaged in almost comically stereotypical national-guilt nonsense, and then defended it with nothing more than (0) calling me a troll, and (1) saying that I didn’t get it.  (And you are still defending that analogy...)  If you’re not a bear, then I (very narrowly) apologize for having misjudged you on that particular point.  My mistake.  I will watch your posts more carefully before saying such things.


As the only person on this forum on the Internet who has been accused of being both Hitler (literally, Adolf Hitler himself) and a Mossad agent (yup, that’s (((me)))), I think I can safely say that it is you who is projecting with anything about not getting it.

---

Obviously, the virus is a bioweapon created by the South Koreans!  Who would have thunk it?

There:
Here:

For privacy reasons, I will not disclose my own nationality (or even my timezone),  But with sincere apologies to my German friends (who are NOT LIKE THIS), I think that I just met the real Jürgen.

Jürgen the german OutOfMemory in london
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EAuaNnsXy4

(With thanks to my English friends.  I don’t watch TV.)

I just reread OutOfMemory’s posts in Jürgen’s voice.  Much better that way. :-)

There:


Here:

---

No problem.  Do you understand what I mean by saying in English, “due to our history”?  If you do, then you should have known that I understood you completely, straight from my first reply to you.

N.b. that regardless of what languages I do or don’t speak, I have friends all over the world, including in Germany and Austria.  Although they are highly intelligent, many of them have English skills far worse than yours.  I am accustomed to that.


Since you are such an expert on this bit of history, quelle surprise that you forgot the part where he was directed to apply to architecture school.  Also, no, I am NOT willing to accept what you said:  Your whole historiography of WWII causes is bollocks.

I do realize that “WWII happened because Hitler didn’t get into art school” is indeed a quite popular version of TV-level history; and coming from you, with the surreal twist of pinning it on “a single bad decision of an Austrian principal”, it does work perfectly in Jürgen’s voice.



Indeed.  I have made my point.  I suggest that you try to think it over, instead of presuming to treat me to a lecture about all of this.  Though Youtube has more Jurgen videos, if you are inclined to continue this discussion.

Well, I presume that having finally hit middle age, you finally learned to respect the opinions of people who were called “conservative” when you were a know-it-all youngster.  Now, if only the youngsters would listen to you...  I am sufficiently old-fashioned to blame modernity itself.  The modern mentality.  Now, get off my lawn.

---

Before the discovery of coronavirus, too, it seems.  Well, don’t worry:  The hedonists nowadays can get their jollies on Pornhub, just as they have their “Friends” on Facebook:  Without human contact.

I suppose that such a means of itch-scratching will probably not make many babies; but as you observe, that outcome is specifically avoided, anyway.


Ah, a man of refined tastes:  An olive in your pharma rubbing-liquor and a splash of... whazzat, I gott it backwerds?  Dammn I’m drunk.  That winston chap did warn it’s like a dose of nitric acid, that Victory Gin.  Welcome to the future...  happening now, much better than Orwell ever imagined, and I sez BETTER because I love Big Brother.

If the shoe fits, wear it.

You are the one who somehow managed to imply that the coronavirus outbreak was the fault of Austrians and/or Germans, by a nonsensical direct analogy to completely irrelevant historical events.  I object to that.  Don’t you wax self-righteous toward me, now—especially not when my initial response showed insight into German and Austrian post-WWII cultural issues, instead of simply invoking Godwin’s Law and calling you a troll.

This is beautiful; I don’t want to detract by dissecting it, so I will keep my reply short:


The Real Flippening would be when the actual Bitcoin economy picks up, and takes over substantial real-life functions from the economy based on government-issued toilet paper.

When a stash of Bitcoin helps you to survive a real, dire emergency, it is a happy moment because Bitcoin helped you, and a sad moment because too many ways of “spending” it are either directly or indirectly dumping it for fiat.

When you can spend Bitcoin to another Bitcoiner, who will in turn spend it to yet another Bitcoiner—that is the golden moment of Bitcoin maximalism!

I know that everybody here understands this on such a level that I seem to have stated only the obvious.  But the concept needs a name, and a concise model of thinking.  I propose The Real Flippening:  Bitcoin flippening over fiat bit by bit.  Hardforking the government-controlled economy without consensus official mandate.  The generalized concept of a fork attack need not only work against Bitcoin.

It is another reason for each individual Bitcoiner to push for adoption.

---

And in good humour, it seems. :-)

I was going to chalk up your twisted way of interpreting my words to your admitted lack of facility with the English language.  However, I then saw what you added to your prior reply after I replied to it:


That’s the second time that you have accused me of trolling.  So, let’s get this straight:

• You:  Hit Godwin-in-one with the coronavirus—and belligerently insist that those who disagree with you just don’t get it, because this can be understood only by those of German or Austrian background, which (as you know through clairvoyance) anyone who disagrees with you must not be.  (I thereby provide to you a Wikipedia link, because you seem to be using Wikipedia to learn about basic n00b concepts pertaining to Internet discussion.)
• Me:  Pointed out that you’re full of it.  Also that you are ignorant of history—your historiography of WWII causes is arrant nonsense.  And check my post history:  Not a troll.

You accuse me of trolling?

LOL, *plonk*.  ← Usenet jargon meaning that I am killfiling you.

---

Humour note:  My first objection to OutOfMemory’s horrible analogy was titled, “TRUTH: Coronavirus was created in Hitler’s secret lab, hidden in hollow Earth!!”  I extended OutOfMemory’s absurd analogy to make it even more absurder, for funny hyperbole plus a shot at the idiots pushing the “bioweapon” nonsense in the other thread.

---

Either I caught mad cow disease from the Nazi-bioengineered coronavirus, or eddie13 said something intentionally funny:


Actually, that’s not a bad idea:  Such rhetoric makes about as much sense as much of the other garbage that’s being passed around.

The difference is that you are saying it as a joke, and not as Jürgen-style “I am ashamed and angry” browbeating delivered with tedious scolding about how people who are not of German or Austrian background can’t understand, or I don’t get it, etc., ad nauseam.

What with you being a self-proclaimed “basically am a jew” (stated by you under protection of America’s First Amendment, in terms illegal for OutOfMemory), you would probably be amused by some of the Jürgen skits involving belligerently unhinged apologies to Jews.  Search Youtube—or simply incite OutOfMemory to explain to you how “angry and ashamed” he is.  Due to our history.  Oh, and if you disagree with anything he says about that, it means you just don’t get it—and you are a troll!

Since you are American, you may not be aware that this is a stereotype in Europe, both on the Continent and in the U.K.—thus the skits on British TV.  Unfortunately, as is the case with many stereotypes, there are a significant number of Germans (and Austrians) who behave this way.  Most of them don’t.  But the stereotype sticks, because (0) the ones who are that way are very vocal about it, and (1) political grudges, of course.

---

Now, I have covered this tangential subject in some detail.  I tend toward approaching such matters thoughtfully, instead of tossing off an invocation of Godwin’s Law to shut down the discussion.  My mistake, I suppose:  Godwin’s Law exists for a reason.

I will therefore decline to carry this discussion further—unless somebody says something peculiarly amusing, such as that Germans should apologize to China and pay reparations for the Hitler Virus.  LOL.

N.b., I refuse to carry a phone.  For reason of its location-tracking.  (And its bugging ability, but that is somewhat easier to control.)  I guess the “new normal” does not have a place for me.  Excerpted in pertinent part:


I called it!  Enjoy!

---

---

---

Edit:
I condemn anybody and everybody who PANICS.

Out of respect for those few Americans who are not contemptible domestic animals begging to be wrapped in unlimited chains forever, I will quote a great American—a famous quote, which obviously applies here:

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” — Benjamin Franklin

Done shilling BCH/BSV and decided to make sense now?

(Why I love the cat.  And why I always check trust pages before hitting the merit button on Newbie accounts.)

See also:

---

(Will catch up with you all soon.  ENOTIME.  This was an emergency post, LFC_Bitcoin.)

“9/11” was the best opportunity for wealthy New Yorkers (or Pentagon insiders) to vanish.  No bodies!  Any questions would be unpatriotic and offensive to family left behind!  Of course, opportunity favours the prepared; and that opportunity happened to favour wealthy, very shrewd people with overseas assets that may already have inadvertently slipped through the cracks and gotten lost.  Whoops!  The perfect storm of tragedies!  —Déjà vu:  I idly speculated on this with a personal associate, sometime before evening on 2001-09-11.  Neither of us were so foolish as to infer any connection between the people who perpetrated the attack, and anybody who may have conveniently exploited it for their own purposes.  Opportunity does favour the prepared!

As a separate but related issue, if I understand correctly, the Tragic Boating Accident pandemic started with the gun owners.  Of course, I expect that it should be contagious to goldbugs.


Funny memes aside, of course, I do not think that this would actually work in reality—unless your accident was well-documented, and occurred significantly in advance of any seizures.  With firearms, that probably also invokes a problem that you could get in big trouble for being caught currently in possession of an item with a serial number, which was legal before you proved that you lost it (and from which it is highly illegal to remove the serial number).  Gold is more fungible than guns are; and if you store only some of it in your boat, it may be difficult to tell which part is which.  Ammo is also fungible—and also has the ancillary benefit of being consumable.  Do you go shooting an awful lot?

I do hear that the plague of tragic boating accidents has made marine wildlife peculiarly dangerous.  PSA:  Be careful with the boat that you logically use to store your guns, ammo, gold, and also the only backups of your Bitcoin wallet!^*  Think of the environment!

---

* Invokes the problem of blockchain analysis.  Be careful.

---

I am in a peculiarly poor state of general health (not irrelevant to 20-month absence).  And with limited supplies of food and other critical items.  Things do not look good.

---

---

Damn, this thread moves fast.  Edit before posting:


Too bad that mindrust had a tragic mental malfunction of the “totally WTF” calibre.  (← Edit after posting:  Worthy of its own meme graphic.  Hmmm.)  The silver lining is that he can report to the Turkish tax/doxing authorities with iron-clad documentation that he sold at the bottom, and now he just does stocks. ;-)

A sell all order!?  If there is money there that you really cannot afford to lose, it may be rational to hedge sometimes.  But close out your whole position!?

---

Edit:


I know.  I am just joking around.  It is my way of coping with the discovery that a totally die-hard Bitcoin defender sold every last satoshi on the belief that it was all about to go to zero.

I suppose that is an object lesson about emotional decision-making, generally. :-/

Edit:  P.S., see edit of my prior post.  (Damn, this thread moves fast.)

Simple: Put in an amount consistent with “what you can afford to lose”.  Then “if” it goes down to $1k (which I think is very unlikely), or even if “the motherfucker” goes to zero (!), put on your strong face and endure the pain—safe in the knowledge that you didn’t just lose your shirt.

If that amount is not greater than or equal to 0.00000001 BTC, then why are you even involved in Bitcoin!?

For me, that amount is equal to “all the long-term monetary savings that I have”.  But that is because I am—well, I am me.  I have endured physical hardship for my principles.  Losing my life savings would be very painful; but as I have said repeatedly, if hypothetically Bitcoin were to totally fail, then I would be much more worried about losing what may be our last historical chance for freedom-money.


Paging Jay, I think that mindrust needs some n00b-level generalized investing tips about risk management and not being “muh mental health!” tier weak hands.

I am not even a financial investor, and I know that much.  [Edit:  Jay posted while I was writing this post.  Just hammered through.  Go read what he said. ++Jay]

mindrust, what if Tesla goes to zero?  Or the goddamn dollar goes to zero?  Where is your risk management there?


I know that Jay is going hard on you lately, but daaaamn, you need it.

Actually, not only generalized investment advice:  Generalized life wisdom.


An inexorable, inviolable law of the universe in which we live:

Only the dead are safe.

Honey, I need to mortgage you so that I can accumulate some more Bitcoin before the halvening.

Not a new thought.  Also, as usual for me, it is not a wise investment strategy; people should ask Jay for those.  I am an extremist. ;-)

---

If you want to insult me with the type of nonsense that says everything about you and nothing about me, then please at least have the balls to say my name.

Though you’re not the only one who is afraid to.

---

I assume this is unrelated—but just in case, for the record:


From trying to figure out where mindrust had gone, I wandered in here during the dump, before the pump.  I wouldn’t change my avatar for the same reason that I don’t have a paid signature, and would only take one to avoid immediate personal catastrophe (admittedly possible).

---

Life is just one big string of interruptions lately.  One after another...  Reply to mindrust stuck in drafts box.  I hope Jay’s advice is well taken:  It is sound, logical, and pro-Bitcoin without being hotheaded bull.

Always check trust pages on suspicious Newbie accounts.

I think this one has bad intentions toward us all.

Your post brought this plague to public attention (i.e., my attention), whereupon I created trust feedback.  (“Neutral”, because I do not use negative feedback for non-serious purposes; this is the third “neutral” that I have left in fine humour, and the second one that I’ve left for an alt account that had some humorous element (though the other one had a serious purpose).)

As for the taste of the joke, yes, I will laugh at the plague and laugh at death, too.  It is superior to panicking.  Indeed, I most appreciate the joke now of all times, because I can’t drink myself silly when I am trying to find serious information for serious personal situations.

Seriously?  A well-known rule that stops massive spews of spam should be bent based on favouratism, so that hardcore Bitcoiners can get away with participating in a shitcoin giveaway?  I don’t always agree with mods; but what’s supremely “bullshitty” is to give them bullshit over a ban that could have been avoided by, um, not participating in a shitcoin giveaway.  Some people whom I generally like are on that list; so, well, see ’em in 7 days.

Forking hell, in a locked thread where I can’t say what was already said anyway, this made me give preeeeccciouss merrritttzz to suchmoon.  Got to be objective, I guess. ;-)


That was damn straight.

Anyone want to place bets on what the cat would think?  LOL.

---

Edit, OT/but for the record that I do not like backtalk, this was attempted at 2020-03-21 20:02:24:

---

A warning for the topic creator? !! ? ! ?



“Victim”?

So sorry for your hurt feelings.  Please don’t break important anti-spam rules that prevent this place from degenerating into “crypto talk” or whatever.

Wise investment strategy:  TA predicts that I would win such a bet. ;-)


I myself was once raked bloody with sharp claws for my having started in Zcash.  I was left pleading that it’s made by Real Cryptographers, that my crypto-idols Greg Maxwell and Pieter Wuille had cordially collaborated with Zcash people on some zero-knowledge cryptography stuff (on the Bitcoin blockchain), that Peter Todd was one of the trusted parties in the original Zcash Trusted Setup (per the blog post that he repudiated and defaced (archival link) when he unleashed a tweetstorm against Zcash), etc., etc.  At least technology-wise, it is not a typical shitcoin!

The cat’s reply:  Hiss.

Lauda is a Maximal Maximalist.

My personal experience HODLing Zcash :-(, plus their horrid handling of an unlimited inflation bug, their backpedalling on their promise to prioritize ASIC-resistance (just when XMR started fighting hard there), and many other stupidities, indicate that Zcash is an atypical shitcoin.  Technology alone does not produce the Bitcoin Social Phenomenon; and worse is good technology poorly executed.  I still say that Zcash is one of the best altcoins; but that is damning with faint praise:  Just saying that it has innovative technology instead of being a dumb clone of Bitcoin sources, and it’s not an outright scam.

Kitty: 1; Nully: NULL.

---

Though your point is well-taken, my mention of Lauda was a one-line off-hand remark about someone whom I am honoured to consider my friend, amidst a post about some WO regulars.

Furthermore, I am thinking that the cat does not give any shits about what those particular peeps think.  As for me—eh.  I am not a cat:  I am a man.

---

I personally will toast you on that:  Some of the trolls in Reputation perpetually accuse me of being Lauda’s alt.  I take that as a compliment, for I compete with her for the title of most principled and uncompromising. :-)


As for philosophy, although the discussion itself is as ancient as organized society, I believe that perhaps the relevant reference would be Machiavelli—who actually said that it is easier to rule by being feared, but more powerful to rule by being loved.

I love Lauda (don’t take that the wrong way: our relation is amicably professional).  So do many others.  And is she fearsome?  Frankly, I love the cat because she’s not a pussy (so to speak).

All good things must be dangerous, and therefore widely feared and hated:  As fire and Lightning, mathematics and cryptography, freedom, and Bitcoin itself.

In keeping with my (in)famous “theme” of quoting things that will upset idiots less if left untranslated:

---

I know. ;-)


I am not particularly inclined to take up an extended discussion about this here in WO.  But you see, I have been running far behind in my quota for talking about Lauda:  The cypherpunk nym who is so powerful that she is a greater threat to liberty than governments, banks, and all the armies of the world combined!

Such wow.

That’s just a little bit melodramatic for a 7-day ban of people who participated in a shitcoin giveaway, yes?

This is an Internet forum.  It is a 7-day ban from an Internet forum, and not undeserved.

Quarantines and death are not really comparable.

---

Speaking of which, I regret that I am just passing through after missing many pages.  Due to IRL.  You know, the place where we are facing quarantines and death.

Old-timer, you knew facts about Lauda that I did not:  Her surname is Gillis!  And she wears not a skirt, but a kilt—with no underwear, fearsome fighter that she is.

Silly me:  I had always assumed that she was Egyptian.

For those arguing over who is whose alt and who is a plant, please read the factual article and consider the level-headed, rational DO and DON’T suggestions that I saw in this fine thread:

PSA: Covert agents manipulate, deceive, and DESTROY REPUTATIONS

(Damn it, OP, thread needs cleanup.)

---

Generally, see also the Gentleman’s Guide to such subjects on the net.  (Known to any old net hand; I have linked it a few times in various places.)

I don’t have time to trace back up the thread.  Is this being seriously discussed somewhere, or is it just some stupid Internet idea?  It smells like the latter:  Bullshit.  But the way things are going...

For the record, I will kill anybody who tries to mark my body in any way.  I mean that literally.  If it’s the last thing I do.

For I was not born to be a slave.

---

To all the panickers:  YOU ARE CREATING A WORLD THAT IS NOT WORTH LIVING IN.

I do not say that only for myself.  I mean it on behalf of future generations.  Life is short, no matter what; I am not afraid of death.  I fear leaving behind a world where all future generations will subsist as slaves to an inescapable tyranny, forever.

A world where everybody is bodily tracked and controlled like packaged meat for the purpose of “tracking the spread of the virus” is a world where it would be better if all mankind had gone extinct from Black Plague.

“Wake the fuck up” is a good way to put it.

SHOUTING.  You sound angry.  Please take a deep breath, count to ten, and be grateful for all the toys that get to play with you for free. 😀

Are you folks seriously arguing that you can taste the difference between Coke and Pepsi?


Or do you actually believe that your preferred brand of flavoured sugar-water would avoid hyperinflation by telling people that, no, you can’t have infinite free money.  ← deliberately punctuated with a full stop.