Hard disagree. I think Saylor is the most to-the-point bitcoin advocate on the planet. His analogies make a very complex, opaque subject simple and easier to grasp. The man is a human razorblade cutting through bullshit. Every interview has different levels of difficulty attached to it, but on balance, he's the best entry point for understanding bitcoin's value and what is wrong with money (both then and now).
I completely agree with what you said. However as I stated, he is too abstract for the average person. The moment he says 'Bitcoin is stored energy', he loses the average person and comes across as a zealot evangelist. For someone who understands physics, economics and money, it makes sense.
There will always be moments in a long-form interview that will get a little wonky/abstract/inside baseball. The difficulty understanding Bitcoin's value vs. other assets, particularly gold and fiat, is part of why there is a lot of opportunity for wealth appreciation. If this was super simple and obvious, everyone would already get it and the market cap would have exploded and you'd be lucky to get your hands on a couple thousand Satoshis. So, you can either put in the time to learn now, or be forced to agree later, at a much larger price. Between the Spot ETF approval and the next halving, the latter half of 2024 is going to be absolutely wild.
Agree to disagree about pretty much all this. Touched on these topics some, but I think I can't really add more without this turning into "yeah-huh, nu-uh." I do agree that some of these social sciences involve data and models that can be more fuzzy/less concrete than other hard/natural sciences (though some fields of have similar challenges, especially when they also interface with human behaviors). Given the challenges, it definitely takes more effort and discipline to build models/theories that can stand up to scrutiny over time, and I'd definitely be more skeptical of this type of research (in general) than other types of research with fewer inherent challenges. That said, I think this can force the existing research to be very rigorous and open to things like peer review, which ultimately leads to better results overall (as long as all the internal logic is sound). Furthermore, even if you want to poo poo the "science" involved, I think these folks are still experts in this field. If I want to know about the history of various human civilizations over time, I'd still happily defer to a historian (and specifically mainstream consensus historian ideas) vs relying entirely on my own research. I would make a similar case for something like "hmm would buying GME stock take me to the moon?" which also seemed to lack this deference to expertise (even if that expertise didn't involve hard science). If there's no point in relying on these experts, I'm not sure why we even bother having these as parts of our academic systems. If understanding Bitcoin requires a belief that the social sciences provide little (if anything) of value, then that's another reason that will keep me from embracing it. Not that you necessarily made that claim, though I'm struggling to come up with a different line of reasoning based on what I've seen. If we're looking at things like money, inflation, etc., and we can't rely on mainstream economists and their models/theories/etc., then what's the point of having economists? Bitcoin involves multiple fields of study, and in order to fully understand all of it, yes you will essentially need to be well-versed in each field. There are no "Bitcoin PHDs" where people can receive an education catered to all of these disciplines. I can agree with you there. However, I think I might argue that you only need to to possess those traits if you're *promoting" the usage of Bitcoin. As a critic, I think if you can point out flaws in any part of Bitcoin's design (from tech/crypto to energy to financial theory), you do not need to possess knowledge on all parts. If (based on tech expertise) you believe the tech is garbage, then it doesn't matter what the economic theory is. If the economic theory is garbage, it doesn't matter how elegant the tech/algorithms are. The economic theories behind Bitcoin are decades old, maybe even ~100 years (if you want to go off of the debates happening during WW1/WW2...or even older). There are experts who have studied this stuff, debated it, modeled it, charted it, etc. I do think many folks in this field *have* bothered to learn all aspects of Bitcoin, but I think restricting their criticism solely to the economical theories behind Bitcoin is sufficient. I don't think it is correct to waive away all that expertise simply because this specific permutation of ideas is new (although I understand it would be super convenient to do so). And just in case it isn't clear, I *am* learning all these things. My conclusions aren't the same as yours, but since jumping back into this thread, I've probably consumed 20+ hours of random videos/podcast (including nearly every pro-BTC link in this thread), referenced 5+ books, read various Reddit/Google resources, etc. And this is on top of all the research I've done prior to that. The thing is that I don't generally have any disagreement with the experts I reference, so why go with "this is RC Cola's thoughts on Fiat" when I can just say "this is mainstream economics thoughts on Fiat"? I mean even if I stuck more to the stuff that was software/programming/algorithm/etc related (my personal expertise), I think I'd still reference someone like Bruce Schneier (who literally wrote the textbooks I used). I think he's purposely being a bit provocative, but I don't really disagree with what he said (and thus I don't agree with your rebuttal here). Agree to disagree I suppose. Anyway main point of sharing that was for the discussion around inflation, which I felt was more accurate than what I've seen from some Bitcoiners.
I felt his analogies were more misleading than too abstract. I'm not opposed to using analogies in general, but the way Saylor used them seemed more like a grifter than someone using analogies to help explain concepts. Perhaps I'm being too harsh on him (though I do think his facts/claims were misleading even outside the analogies), but even being generous to him, I don't think it was particularly effective. Much of what he said was literally the same (almost word for word) as what I learned from Lyn Alden, which was still fresh on my mind. Mind you, I don't necessarily agree with all these ideas, but of the two, I preferred Lyn's way of explaining things. I did have to bail out of the video at some point, so maybe it gets better. I don't particularly disagree with parts of this. I definitely think the complexities in the market make it very difficult for economists (aka experts) to easily explain (let alone predict) some of the things that have happened. Not something I've looked into super closely (the complexities in this seem very...complex), so I'm partly speaking from ignorance here, but I think your general point is plausible. In the context of my statements, I was referring to these experts due to their explanation of things like inflation relative to what some Bitcoiners put out as explanations for inflation. And I would say their statements largely mirror yours (based on what I read/heard), while the Bitcoiners I'm referencing...don't (i.e., inflation = "money printing!"). Now that doesn't mean these experts have figured out everything, but if given the choice of picking who to trust/who to learn from (possibly neither?), I'm still happy to defer to the experts.
Yeah, inflation is a tricky thing. There's good inflation (wage growth, economic growth, productive returns on credit) where everyone gets taken care of and there's bad inflation where the economy doesn't fire on all cylinders and increases borrowing to match rising living costs. 1970s gets mentioned often because stagflation was catastrophic to the American economy, and Central Banks couldn't figure out how to resolve it (globally) with their Keynesian "toolboxes". There's a sidebar about the Eurodollar that probably doesn't matter in this discussion but seems relevant to how far the system has gotten off the rails (physical money -> ledger -> credit/derivatives -> faith?). That period along with the Great Moderation that followed it are good points of research. By breaking prolonged inflation, Volker created a myth that the Fed were all knowing and had a host of "powerful tools" to track and understand the economy. Greenspan became a sage-like figure that shepharded wayward investors to a golden path... After the Great Moderation (which itself held a raft of bubbles before and after the dotcom boom/bust) came the Great Financial Crisis. This period we think we all know but there's a lot of half truths circulating to this day that we're only slowly beginning to understand now. Like you mentioned, how was inflation contained in the Age of Easy Money? tl;dw Normal people ate it just like their bank deposits with the shitty rates it got. Asset class owners doubled and tripled their wealth...or 100x...or 1000x their wealth. I guess we would've "seen more" inflation last decade if buying those size measuring yachts actually trickled down the economy.
Coal is stored energy. Fossil fuels are stored energy. Bitcoin needs energy to work. It doesn't store energy. That's more bullshit. This is what I see when I look up Michael Saylor. Update: MicroStrategy executives to pay $11 million to settle SEC fraud charges By Michael Meehan Computerworld | DEC 14, 2000 12:00 AM PST AG Racine Sues DC-Based Billionaire Michael Saylor & Software Company Microstrategy for Evading More Than $25 Million in District Taxes August 31, 2022 Lawsuit Alleges Saylor Illegally Evaded DC Income Taxes Over 15+ Years; Conspired with MicroStrategy to Avoid Obligation to Pay So a guy who constantly is caught up in fraud is your champion spokesperson for Bitcoin. Good job. Michael Saylor MicroStrategy’s cult leader.
In theory you can have "good inflation", but in practice I don't think "good inflation" exists. Wages going up is not necessarily a positive economic indicator. Often times it's bundled with a net negative. Purely good economic indicators are rising standards of living, shrinking income inequality, abundance of goods and services, etc. Most of these are actually deflationary in nature.
Normally I can accept this as an answer, but not here. We are not disagreeing about something subjective here, we are disagreeing about fundamental, objective truths. I need you to explain to me what is wrong with my statement and why. Otherwise, without a shared understanding of what reality is, there is no point in us ever discussing this topic again. Please tell me how any of these statements are incorrect: 1) Fiat is a depreciating asset 2) Fiat is centrally controlled 3) Central control of an asset by nature includes several liabilities 4) Bitcoin has true scarcity 5) The Bitcoin network cannot be destroyed or corrupted All of these things are non-controversial, bedrock truths. If you can prove anything to the contrary, you will have made a discovery/insight that would turn the entire financial world on its ear. You may be onto something, lol. I think where you're going wrong is that you seem to think this is purely an economics phenomenon, and it really isn't. It's an engineering/physics/history/science/math/politics/philosophy/economics/technology/law/finance phenomenon. Like I said before, you cannot throw a rock without hitting an economist who hates bitcoin (it's anathema to most of their core beliefs), so perhaps you might want to broaden your search. Two thoughts: 1) I'm still waiting for these promised flaws to be posted 2) What can appear as a flaw from one narrow point of view can be explained when other knowledge/contexts are considered This reminds me a lot about the energy debate. Sure, BTC seems wasteful if you're ignorant about why it's important to have inalienable property rights for all of mankind. But once you learn what that means for the world you realize that perhaps it's not so wasteful after all. The Bitcoin base layer seems flawed when you look at it through the narrow view of wanting to scale it out as quickly as possible, but when you learn more about the history of money and why centralization is a fatal flaw you realize that maybe it's not a flaw after all. This is why informed criticism is important. Observations that do not take into account the multitude of disciplines that under gird BTC tend to be very shallow and flawed. I don't have much respect for social scientists to begin with, so you're kinda barking up the wrong tree here. If this is true it is pretty amazing that you and I still do not agree on the fundamentals of the subject. Anyone who have put that much effort in should not be making such mistakes at the base layer of the discussion.
I'm not sure about that last bit. Each can have both inflationary and deflationary characteristics. Post GFC, American standards of living did rise with an abundance of goods and services (2 out 3). Turns out the credit environment and overall debt burden (great in post-08) was more important. I left out this video about credit cycles in the last reply, and it's relevant even if yall have watched this in some form before. Seems to me that a higher aim for BTC is to normalize boom-bust credit cycles in line with the overall productivity curve. But again, I'm not sure if that's simple or possible due to human nature and long term stability. Dalio talks about a short term and long term debt cycle. We could be in the midst of a 100 year cycle that can only be avoided by life changing tech (cheap sustainable fusion?). We're facing a demographic shift that 500 yr bitcoin doesn't address. When wars happen, people make less babies. When wars end, more babies. Good times usually means more babies. Bad times...less. In this environment, btc can be seen as the "perfect currency" for the faithless, a bigger hedge than gold. But when times feel limitless, btc could be unpegged for an inflationary digital currency in order to "grease the wheels" of investment. I don't pay too much attention to the ramblings of Elon, but Doge, btc's pow cousin, (or any fiat for that matter) would make more sense in that regard. Overall, I don't fault the Fed for doing its job. I fault them for their unaccountability, the desperate moves that sometimes exceeds the authority of the Federal Reserve Act, and their repeated dives into Moral Hazard that has trained generations into looking for hand outs and shitty bets. It's pure hubris in thinking a government through fiscal/monetary policy can contain/avoid/absorb a downturn in the business cycle without any rebound or consequences. We'll put it on the tab because this time it'll be different, and politicians know what gets them re-elected.
1. Sure, I guess. And I think that's a good thing given the purposes behind fiat as a currency. 2. Sure, and again, I like that design (specifically, I like state-controlled currency...or if people want to be nitpicky, state-influenced at least) 3. Sure, though it also has advantages (i.e., allowing the state some controls). 4. I *guess* true, though being a digital currency, could possibly change (or be replaced by some other design). Not that I think it would necessarily be likely, but there's no "law of physics" that would prevent this from occurring (vs energy being created from nothing). And it might not be reasonable, but since humans can control this, you can't always assume reasonable behavior. 5. This is a fairly vague statement. If left this vague, I will say it is not true (as it could easily be destroyed by states or just certain sets of human behavior). Sorta similar to the points I'm making for #4. I know you're *probably* referring to the technical design, and yes, algorithmically this is true-ish, but opening it up to human behavior makes all that kinda irrelevant (human behavior in general is basically the key factor in anything cryptography/security related, more important than algorithms or anything you come up with). Anyway we can drill down more into these claims, but ultimately I'm guessing it gets into value judgements (e.g., pros vs cons of money supply being centrally/state controlled). Sorta similar to claims you can make about politics or sports. Hence why I felt it might not be worth going down this road. But we can give it a shot if you'd like. I'm focusing on the economics because that's what you (and others) wanted to focus on. "Learn money." OK, so let's talk about money. I can't even get past that step without having huge problems with claims you/Bitcoiners are making. Bitcoiner Bob can make some random claim about inflation, but then I go do my research and refer to economists, and his claims don't check out (e.g., inflation = "money printing and nothing else!", WTF 1971, etc). Frankly, I think stuff like Bitcoin falls apart from a technical standpoint simply because I don't think you can really rely on tech (or math/cryptography/etc) to solve complex human (social) problems. You rely on humans to solve those problems. Believing that an algorithm will solve these problems just opens the system to huge flaws. This is based on my own personal experience and expertise as well as the opinions I've gathered from others in my field (and it seems the ones who possibly don't agree are the ones running companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc....and I would argue that proves the problems with that approach). I've been name dropping Bruce Schneier numerous times (never mind experts in other fields), so I'm not sure why you think I'm basing this solely on the opinions of economists only. I shared multiple lengthy videos of people presenting flaws earlier (which I generally all agree with of course), though besides the last one I shared, I didn't see any responses to them. I'll reshare some of those and more I guess: Spoiler https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWU-KsAhLkE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abcKL_x_aoA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0laVac5pjU https://twitter.com/JesseJenkins/status/1515478135344701443 https://blog.mollywhite.net/blockchain/ That's a somewhat random selection of BTC critical videos/links, but it can be a decent start. There are some books I can possibly reference, though I'd probably have to manually present sections from it (unless you want to buy them). I don't particularly agree with the claims you make here (the energy debate, centralization vs distribution, etc), but we can debate those separately. For fun, what are some non-Bitcoin things that behave in this way? Might be easier for me to realize my mistake if I don't necessarily disagree with the underlying claims. I feel like if I think of something like a COVID-19 vaccine release plan (100% random example), if the basic biology behind a proposed vaccine just doesn't work, then everything else doesn't matter. If the biology works, but the costs are prohibitive, it doesn't matter. If all that works, but it is impossible to get compliance in the population, it doesn't matter. Etc. I think to greenlight or promote a plan involving these factors, you would need expertise in every field (likely literal experts in each field working together vs one super expert), though all it takes is an expert in one field to possibly nix the plan altogether. Am I wrong? I'm actually pretty fascinated by this take. I know it isn't directly related to Bitcoin, but I'd actually like to get more of your thoughts here. I'm sure it is wildly different than my own, but I'd love to understand how you think about these things. See, I told you all these pro-Bitcoin explanations suck! It does seem like there are few potential possibilities for this: 1) I'm lying/trolling/not genuine/etc. I've tried my best to make it clear that none of these are true, but can't really conclusively prove it. Outside of the time I argued Mario Galaxy sucked because the story was terrible, I'd like to think I *generally* come across as genuine in my posts. And even then, I didn't put *nearly* as much time/effort into producing those thoughts. 2) I (and many of the people I reference) have put in the time/effort/etc., but we just don't get it. 3) I/we do get it, but even these fundamentals you mention are based more on ideological beliefs than you might realize, so of course people with different core beliefs come to different conclusions (see abortion, guns, capitalism, etc.). 4) Bitcoin is a trash!
27:40-42:00 is in line with what I'm thinking w/ relation to topics on deflationary impacts of bitcoin, credit creation, and the future impacts of stable coins created in response to bitcoin's rigidity (turtles on top of turtles on top of...). Alden skirts the deflation question by fast forwarding btc toward the distant future where it hypothetically normalizes, then gives some hopeful anecdotes from our deflationary past. I think that's better than outright lying or sticking their head in the sand.
All Bitcoiners would label Schasfoort a shitcoiner. DeFi is filled with scammers and represents all criticism of non government digital tokens/currency. Lets be honest, if an economist can't recognize that, he doesn't deserve to be recognized as a professional. Since its inception, Bitcoin (the network) has always been decentralized. This is a powerful statement. Whether someone finds value in that is a different story. In DeFi, the decentralization is decentralized from regulation, not its core network. The core network is still very centralized.
There is a growing movement towards OTC transactions (through personal rigs) that facilitates wallet to wallet transactions (still not a bank Donny) over the nasty slippage and hidden middle man fees of dex and centralized exchanges. They're still mostly outliers as are the btc maxis who advocate full breakage from the rest of crypto world (Cory Klippsten comes to mind.) It's an open secret hedgies treat btc with other crypto interchangibly and treats btc as safe collateral much like treasuries to shadow banking and repo markets. That's also where rehypothecation rears its ugly head much like treasuries... Also, tether fits his description to a tee, which plays a huge role in btc trade activity. It's a symbiotic relationship more than other stables.
While I'm glad you've come around, I do have to ask, how did you go from "I disagree with pretty much all of this" to "Sure" in one post? There is no "guess" here. This is true. Full stop. You cannot change the amount of Bitcoin that will exist. If you ever create "more" than that, you have caused a hardfork and what you will have created is no longer Bitcoin (a la Bitcoin Cash). Beyond that, the logistics behind what it would take to create a hard fork make it practically impossible. This is not vague. It's quite literal. No "human behavior" can change or destroy Bitcoin. The amount of computing power needed to hijack the Bitcoin network/protocol is so immense no nation state could ever achieve it. The only way to stop Bitcoin at this point would be an event so disruptive it would likely mean the end of civilization, and perhaps humanity. You know how you keep taking issue with my assertion that people "haven't done enough research?" Well, the above two statements by you are perfect examples of why I feel this way. You are saying things which are demonstrably wrong. These particular points are not very far down-the-rabbit-hole either. These are aspects of Bitcoin that are very near the surface. This is why I keep telling you that you need to study the subject more, because no one who has done enough research into the topic would have said these things (unless they were simply incapable of understanding it, which is a very uncharitable assumption I try to avoid). I think at the end of the day centralization vs. decentralization simply boils down to how comfortable you are with government debt. If you trust the government with practically endless credit, centralization isn't a big deal to you. If you don't, then the opposite is true. I'm in the latter camp, and given the last century or so up to now, I've yet to hear a compelling argument why I should be in the former. I personally never said boo about economics. To me this is more about history. Again, 9 out of 10 (or more) economists you find are going to be Keynesian and therefore disagree with everything regarding Bitcoin. Nobody can really tell you what inflation is to the decimal, because it's a moving target and is felt different by everyone, and quite honestly, it doesn't even matter. What matters is that the US Dollar does not hold its value over time. You do not need a Phd to know this nor an economist to tell you this. If you want to transport the value of your life's work over time, as all of us do, it is imperative to stop this devaluation. I want to retire early enough to enjoy the latter half of my life and to be able to have my children and my children's children's lives not endangered by scarcity. This objective is made infinitely more difficult if my wealth is stored in an asset with engineered depreciation (that can also be confiscated). History is full of examples of technology solving for problems originating from normal human behaviors. For example, Bitcoin solves for the problem of trust, which is what, to this point, all non commodity assets were based on. A human made BTC (we think) My dude, you posted 5+ hours of videos with no time stamps. That ain't gonna fly. Whenever I post videos as a rebuttal, I try to keep it under 10 minutes as a courtesy. Not much to say, really. I do not respect economics as a discipline, especially as it relates to Bitcoin. It's to the point where I consider having an economics background to be a liability and not an asset when it comes to rational, clear thinking in this space. Most economists have been taught something like Bitcoin is impossible (or worse yet, anathema) their entire lives, so that's a lot of baggage to bring to the debate. If you believe that centralized assets, especially government currency, are overall a good thing, it tells me you have not learned enough about history nor the history of money. What you've said regarding BTC's technology/operation tells me you have not learned enough about BTC. It's also probably likely there is some ideology driving the boat here too. We all have that operating on us to some degree, but it's important to know when it's driving our thinking. Far too many people in this subject just default to either "govt good" or "govt bad" and that's overly reductive and anti-helpful.
