I encourage beginners to ignore Ungovernable Rich who seems likely intent on making conversations on this topic less simple. Seems like typical trolling.
The conversations he starts are like many that take place in forums among people past the beginner level of understanding, though he seems to start with belief before epistemology, which is putting the cart before the horse.
Yeah. But I hope you don't block him before us beginners have gotten a line on what he's talking about. We don't seem to be privy to the whole exchange. You say :
"I don't consider, "It didn't take over smoothly in the first six months," to be much of an argument "
but I don't see where he said that.
To tell you where I'm at: I just wonder if I should put a few dollars into bitcoins and I'd like to understand a little rather than just take someone's word.
That experiment began a little over six months ago. He didn't need to say it.
"I just wonder if I should put a few dollars into bitcoins and I'd like to understand a little rather than just take someone's word."
I think that small experiments are a perfectly reasonable way to learn. In fact, that's one of the very best ways to learn. That's the way I approach a lot of things.
I had to block him. Last time he took up an hour of my time. I can either lose sleep having a classroom for beginners where I block people who try to run streeking nekked in front of the children...or I can not write it at all. Those are the only reasonable choices for me here at this newsletter/blog.
He spreads absolute quackery in the covid articles & stalks subscribers. To the point where I've cancelled several substacks in part because he was harassing me, & it was potentially dangerous to beginners to let his claims go unchallenged.
This is the 1st time I've seen him go for an author. It's a relief to finally see him smacked down & shut down.
I've gotten into a couple of weird brawls with him on other threads about his entirely serious ambition that all forms of personal transportation except bicycles be confiscated from everyone, EVERYWHERE, though he concedes those living in rural areas be "allowed" to keep their personal vehicles until infrastructure is developed.
He doesn't raise this stuff on my stack only because we don't talk about that stuff much.
The only person I've banned was a guy with the belief that viruses don't exist at all that was becoming increasingly abusive and insulting (and fucking weird) to anyone dissenting from this view.
Your stack isn't a public forum. It's your living room, and you can have whatever house rules you want.
My only interest in bitcoin is standing in wonder and watching it. That said, I laughed and the use of the word ‘nonce’ - in the UK, a NONCE is someone in prison who is Not On Normal Courtyard Exercise. Usually reserved for child murderers and child sex offenders who are usually in danger if they mix with the rest of the prison population.
I've always wondered what will happen when the grid goes down. With gold, you can still make jewelry and electrical contacts, which of course will also be useless when the grid goes down.
The purpose of Bitcoin (and all crypto) is to create the perception that it is still possible to make it big - in a world that is increasingly bereft of opportunities to do so.
Sure one might be able to invent a new online platform that eternally loses billions because there is and never will be a path to profitability. But if you get get growing uptake and hype the shit out of it, then sure - you can swing your dick (but in reality you will never make a dime and are quite probably not capable of managing a McDonalds franchise).
For instance, you could launch $$$$$.com -- the site where you buy $100 bills for $50. The uptake would be huge! Unlimited in fact. Might be difficult to get funding for this though... VC's are stupid and might consider .. assuming there is even stupider money out there to take the bag... but I think ... not this stupid. (Softbank might be open to this as their ship sinks and they become truly desperate and swing for a home run)
Obviously it is quite difficult to invent a sexy business that loses billions (eternally) but that can continue to attract new cash ... and grow the user base. You almost have to rewire your brain to be able to come up with something like this --- even millennials struggle with the concept...
As for businesses that actually make money --- hahahahaha... what is that? Impossible... might as well raise a billion dollars and buy lottery tickets ...
So back to my thesis ... crypto was invented (by Mama San or San something .. some Japanese guy living in the mountains outside Kyoto?) so that anyone can go from rags to riches... to ensure that the hordes believe that upward mobility is still possible (when it's not - or when the only shot at living large is winning the lottery).
Research indicates that when there is no upward mobility opportunity in a country - the natives become restless... and those who are already upward and mobile (on private jets) do not want restless natives.
Crypto fills the void of hopelessness -- you need to be 'smart' do your research -- throw in a bit of luck ... and YOU can live large! Crypto entrepreneur!
I play hockey in beer leagues with quite a few guys in their 20's and 30's .. a LOT of them are in the crypto space (not making much but they are working at it)... I know a couple who are dipping into the digital art scene... they are very serious about these 'investment opportunities' and know all the lingo...
I came from a generation (in my 50s) where you still could create a business that made money... so I watch with detached bemusement as they toil away in what essentially is another type of mass psychosis.
They actually believe that this is a real business - when in reality is has zero purpose... it is no different than putting a value on red smarties --- with someone controlling the number that go into a packet -- you buy packets and hope to 'mine' red smarties. You get enough people believing this is a business - or investment -- and those red smarties can be worth a lot of $$$$.
This is the sort of thing that you invent and foist upon the rabble to keep them hopeful and calm... when the system is going to pieces --- when there are next to know legit opportunities to make $$$ ....
I have no problem with it - but anyone who does hit the jackpot -- I'd recommend spending the winnings are quickly as possible ....
Thanks, I'll spend time with that video too. Much to learn here. Have dabbled in them merely to learn how they work; and am still a bit mystified, to be honest haha. And I'm an investor (private placement stuff, etc.)
From what I can tell, however, I see cryptocurrencies as exactly that: currencies, that is mediums of exchange (many, including myself, distinguish money from currency by saying that money is a store of value.)
What I find really fascinating is the potential for ledger/blockchain technologies to transform so much of what we do; the ultimate disintermediators, if you will. Of course, as with all technology (btw, love your definition, "anything that grows resources"), they could be put to multifarious uses as well. *cough* social credit score systems, etc *cough*
Ask a geologist about whether prospecting is a lottery.
It's true in the sense that it has to do with probabilities, but in that case it would be a lottery where the pattern of the winning tickets' numbers predicted if and what would be found, and in what amounts.
Who constructs the "...extremely complex computational math problem."?
We know quite well why minerals and metals are where they are, and how they came to be, but how does these math problems come into existence, does the hardware/software learn to fin and solve them better over time, and does the math problem in case have any practical relevance or application in the real world (i.e. has i any real value beyond the fiat value of BitCoin)?
It would be enlightening for many skeptics I think if this was properly explained, and would go a long way to combat the (understandabe and very prevalent) sneaking suspicion that BitCoin is more than a high stakes carny game.
It's not usable in the real world (see El Salvador). You have to wait 10 minutes or more to have your transaction confirmed. And I don't know where the claim for 'there will be no wars under bitcoin' comes from. Also governments are not planning to use bitcoin they're planning to use shit coin (aka Central Bank Digital Coins). Which will have rewards and punishments. Depending on your position in society and how you've behaved.
"It's not usable in the real world (see El Salvador)."
If you're going to make these grand conclusions with no explanation on a beginner's post again, I'm just going to block you. Surely you have better sense.
I don't consider, "It didn't take over smoothly in the first six months," to be much of an argument considering the dozens of governments that are currently talking about following in their footsteps.
The point about war is that the vast majority of all war is for the purpose of securing monetary dominance (whether the textbooks describe it that way or not). See: Endless wars in the Middle East over the petrodollar and competing gold-backed system.
"Also governments are not planning to use bitcoin they're planning to use shit coin"
That's the story we're hearing, but there are so many reasons why this will fail, the easiest of which to explain is Gresham's law. But I will suggest that the smart people in the banking world don't even believe in CBDCs, which is to say that the unspoken reality is that they are an illusion to keep the trust of the public that there will be system continuity.
Amen. The data to show "BTC didn't work in ES" is from an American polling firm, and all it showed was that it's slowly being adopted. Literally. Also, the CAR just became the second country in the world to make BTC legal currency, and good luck understanding the global implications of that since CAR never ever gets covered in English-language media :)
Mathew, if we are on first name basis, while I certainly don't know much or even anything about BitCoin, I do know politics and political science; (even allowing for that all things finance are amoral in themselves) I fear many libertarians or likewise inclined people are fooling themselves structuring their arguments and reason on the lowest common denominator, in thinking that the corruption in the west is in any way, shape or form equal to corruption in South America, Asia or (especially) Africa and the Middle East.
Incidentally, the same mistake the marxists of old made when equalling all trade/commerce between people with capitalism, if I'm to use the lowest common denominator too.
In regards to the CBDCs, perhaps the wind has gone out of the sails a little on these. But they were still being pushed by NZ's Reserve Bank fairly recently (a few months ago) and as far as I know President von der Leyen of the European Union is still pushing them.
Here's the NZ Reserve Bank on them just this February;
People "pushing" them is not by point. At serious levels of finance, nobody says they believe they'll be a stable system for long with a straight face.
With essentially zero knowledge of finance, after the panic declined & I had time to imagine it through, I expect that forced cbdc + social credit would trigger a huge black market in very short order.
I was going to add that you'd probably threaten to block me. It was completely foreseeable. I'm not going to give references on substack comments. I do though do it on my own posts and expect you to do the same.
The thing is that a bitcoin transaction does take at least 10 minutes to confirm. Realistically longer than that. How is that ever going to be useful in a retail environment?
You give no reason why a transaction cannot take place without waiting for a Bitcoin confirmation. You seem to act like you know a great deal, and aim your questions like you're somebody who does who is "fixing" the discussion. But you seem to know very little.
Bitcoin can be a root system for other ledgers and blockchains that take less time, and faster transactions can take place on other Bitcoin layers. But again, this is a beginner's thread, and if you do know what you're talking about, you're intentionally littering it with advanced topics, which I've politely asked you not to do several times.
I don't know how fast $$ transactions are confirmed today, but 10 minutes sounds good to me compared to (10 years ago) overnight between banks, 24 hours for wire, 3 days for ach & 7 or so for paper checks!
We should start teaching children the basics of algorithms and algorithmic complexity in middle school. The concepts apply to every aspect of human life where decisions are made or actions taken, not just math or computers.
You will have to take it up with the millions of people using it as a discrete analog of a point in computer science. If you can get them to change to another word, I will shift with the crowd.
The discussion of whether BTC mining is yet another climate evil is a discussion for someone else.
What I'm curious about is whether the breakpoint of energy costs for mining make it an actually realistic investment or if most miners are just operating on gold rush fever.
I rather despise commenting here as I consider Matthew to be particularly malicious. And he'll likely delete this post as well as all my posts addressing bitcoin directly have been deleted. And then he lies about what is in the deleted posts.
In addition this thread has become a space for all those who have an inferiority complex to diss me on the encouragement of Matthew. Like you Guttermouth.
But bitcoin mining is not in the purview of we ordinary souls anymore. You need cheap hydro and scale. And the right sort of computer equipment.
Thanks. It was the inscrutable descriptions of mining that kept me from investing in BTC until 2012, when I finally found enough real info to grok it, more or less, on my own. For one thing, I got hung up on the assertion that the nonce *has* to start from 0 (some sources say 1!) through 0xffffffff before changing the datetime field and starting over. So I wrote a Python script to read in old blocks, disregard the nonce in the block header, and use urandom to guess. I could "solve" the blocks far faster with random guesses than by bruteforcing it (birthday effect?). Obviously I was lucky with the blocks I tried, because this doesn't make sense. But anyway, after mining my first block of Americancoin using my "random nonce" script, I felt I understood it well enough to buy some BTC.
Mining has interested me for a while. I’ve considered many times setting up a rig to mine some crypto (not Bitcoin) but I never convinced myself it would be worth the time and effort. I looked into Helium mining because that seems pretty simple but again, time and effort.
It’s a great concept though and seems like it could be the way forward.
I encourage beginners to ignore Ungovernable Rich who seems likely intent on making conversations on this topic less simple. Seems like typical trolling.
The conversations he starts are like many that take place in forums among people past the beginner level of understanding, though he seems to start with belief before epistemology, which is putting the cart before the horse.
Yeah. But I hope you don't block him before us beginners have gotten a line on what he's talking about. We don't seem to be privy to the whole exchange. You say :
"I don't consider, "It didn't take over smoothly in the first six months," to be much of an argument "
but I don't see where he said that.
To tell you where I'm at: I just wonder if I should put a few dollars into bitcoins and I'd like to understand a little rather than just take someone's word.
"but I don't see where he said that."
That experiment began a little over six months ago. He didn't need to say it.
"I just wonder if I should put a few dollars into bitcoins and I'd like to understand a little rather than just take someone's word."
I think that small experiments are a perfectly reasonable way to learn. In fact, that's one of the very best ways to learn. That's the way I approach a lot of things.
I had to block him. Last time he took up an hour of my time. I can either lose sleep having a classroom for beginners where I block people who try to run streeking nekked in front of the children...or I can not write it at all. Those are the only reasonable choices for me here at this newsletter/blog.
Thank you. He is a troll & borderline stalker who usually goes after other readers who lack the power to block him.
hoky doky, gotcha, thanks. you couldn't just leave his posts sit there unanswered?
Like the statue of the naked guy who ran through the kindergarten classroom before we kicked him out of the school?
I left some up of his posts up, but not the more obnoxious ones.
He spreads absolute quackery in the covid articles & stalks subscribers. To the point where I've cancelled several substacks in part because he was harassing me, & it was potentially dangerous to beginners to let his claims go unchallenged.
This is the 1st time I've seen him go for an author. It's a relief to finally see him smacked down & shut down.
I've gotten into a couple of weird brawls with him on other threads about his entirely serious ambition that all forms of personal transportation except bicycles be confiscated from everyone, EVERYWHERE, though he concedes those living in rural areas be "allowed" to keep their personal vehicles until infrastructure is developed.
He doesn't raise this stuff on my stack only because we don't talk about that stuff much.
The only person I've banned was a guy with the belief that viruses don't exist at all that was becoming increasingly abusive and insulting (and fucking weird) to anyone dissenting from this view.
Your stack isn't a public forum. It's your living room, and you can have whatever house rules you want.
He holds that belief that viruses don't exist. Don't ever go there with him, lol!
My only interest in bitcoin is standing in wonder and watching it. That said, I laughed and the use of the word ‘nonce’ - in the UK, a NONCE is someone in prison who is Not On Normal Courtyard Exercise. Usually reserved for child murderers and child sex offenders who are usually in danger if they mix with the rest of the prison population.
I've always wondered what will happen when the grid goes down. With gold, you can still make jewelry and electrical contacts, which of course will also be useless when the grid goes down.
It is likely that we will have multiple monies that relate to multiple scenarios.
I learned several useful things here this morning...not the least of which was where the expression about bad pennies always turning up came from!
The purpose of Bitcoin (and all crypto) is to create the perception that it is still possible to make it big - in a world that is increasingly bereft of opportunities to do so.
Sure one might be able to invent a new online platform that eternally loses billions because there is and never will be a path to profitability. But if you get get growing uptake and hype the shit out of it, then sure - you can swing your dick (but in reality you will never make a dime and are quite probably not capable of managing a McDonalds franchise).
For instance, you could launch $$$$$.com -- the site where you buy $100 bills for $50. The uptake would be huge! Unlimited in fact. Might be difficult to get funding for this though... VC's are stupid and might consider .. assuming there is even stupider money out there to take the bag... but I think ... not this stupid. (Softbank might be open to this as their ship sinks and they become truly desperate and swing for a home run)
Obviously it is quite difficult to invent a sexy business that loses billions (eternally) but that can continue to attract new cash ... and grow the user base. You almost have to rewire your brain to be able to come up with something like this --- even millennials struggle with the concept...
As for businesses that actually make money --- hahahahaha... what is that? Impossible... might as well raise a billion dollars and buy lottery tickets ...
So back to my thesis ... crypto was invented (by Mama San or San something .. some Japanese guy living in the mountains outside Kyoto?) so that anyone can go from rags to riches... to ensure that the hordes believe that upward mobility is still possible (when it's not - or when the only shot at living large is winning the lottery).
Research indicates that when there is no upward mobility opportunity in a country - the natives become restless... and those who are already upward and mobile (on private jets) do not want restless natives.
Crypto fills the void of hopelessness -- you need to be 'smart' do your research -- throw in a bit of luck ... and YOU can live large! Crypto entrepreneur!
I play hockey in beer leagues with quite a few guys in their 20's and 30's .. a LOT of them are in the crypto space (not making much but they are working at it)... I know a couple who are dipping into the digital art scene... they are very serious about these 'investment opportunities' and know all the lingo...
I came from a generation (in my 50s) where you still could create a business that made money... so I watch with detached bemusement as they toil away in what essentially is another type of mass psychosis.
They actually believe that this is a real business - when in reality is has zero purpose... it is no different than putting a value on red smarties --- with someone controlling the number that go into a packet -- you buy packets and hope to 'mine' red smarties. You get enough people believing this is a business - or investment -- and those red smarties can be worth a lot of $$$$.
This is the sort of thing that you invent and foist upon the rabble to keep them hopeful and calm... when the system is going to pieces --- when there are next to know legit opportunities to make $$$ ....
I have no problem with it - but anyone who does hit the jackpot -- I'd recommend spending the winnings are quickly as possible ....
Cuz this ship is going down.
Thanks, I'll spend time with that video too. Much to learn here. Have dabbled in them merely to learn how they work; and am still a bit mystified, to be honest haha. And I'm an investor (private placement stuff, etc.)
From what I can tell, however, I see cryptocurrencies as exactly that: currencies, that is mediums of exchange (many, including myself, distinguish money from currency by saying that money is a store of value.)
What I find really fascinating is the potential for ledger/blockchain technologies to transform so much of what we do; the ultimate disintermediators, if you will. Of course, as with all technology (btw, love your definition, "anything that grows resources"), they could be put to multifarious uses as well. *cough* social credit score systems, etc *cough*
I have never claimed to be a nurse.
I was wondering...
I'm a retired med lab tech. Very different training & experience.
Nitpicking:
Ask a geologist about whether prospecting is a lottery.
It's true in the sense that it has to do with probabilities, but in that case it would be a lottery where the pattern of the winning tickets' numbers predicted if and what would be found, and in what amounts.
Who constructs the "...extremely complex computational math problem."?
We know quite well why minerals and metals are where they are, and how they came to be, but how does these math problems come into existence, does the hardware/software learn to fin and solve them better over time, and does the math problem in case have any practical relevance or application in the real world (i.e. has i any real value beyond the fiat value of BitCoin)?
It would be enlightening for many skeptics I think if this was properly explained, and would go a long way to combat the (understandabe and very prevalent) sneaking suspicion that BitCoin is more than a high stakes carny game.
It's not usable in the real world (see El Salvador). You have to wait 10 minutes or more to have your transaction confirmed. And I don't know where the claim for 'there will be no wars under bitcoin' comes from. Also governments are not planning to use bitcoin they're planning to use shit coin (aka Central Bank Digital Coins). Which will have rewards and punishments. Depending on your position in society and how you've behaved.
"It's not usable in the real world (see El Salvador)."
If you're going to make these grand conclusions with no explanation on a beginner's post again, I'm just going to block you. Surely you have better sense.
I don't consider, "It didn't take over smoothly in the first six months," to be much of an argument considering the dozens of governments that are currently talking about following in their footsteps.
The point about war is that the vast majority of all war is for the purpose of securing monetary dominance (whether the textbooks describe it that way or not). See: Endless wars in the Middle East over the petrodollar and competing gold-backed system.
"Also governments are not planning to use bitcoin they're planning to use shit coin"
That's the story we're hearing, but there are so many reasons why this will fail, the easiest of which to explain is Gresham's law. But I will suggest that the smart people in the banking world don't even believe in CBDCs, which is to say that the unspoken reality is that they are an illusion to keep the trust of the public that there will be system continuity.
Amen. The data to show "BTC didn't work in ES" is from an American polling firm, and all it showed was that it's slowly being adopted. Literally. Also, the CAR just became the second country in the world to make BTC legal currency, and good luck understanding the global implications of that since CAR never ever gets covered in English-language media :)
That's the Central African Republic for all those not up on this acronym. One of the poorest and most corrupt nations on the planet.
And using the corruption of a leadership to leverage open the door for new technology is an excellently clever solution, I'd say.
Mathew, if we are on first name basis, while I certainly don't know much or even anything about BitCoin, I do know politics and political science; (even allowing for that all things finance are amoral in themselves) I fear many libertarians or likewise inclined people are fooling themselves structuring their arguments and reason on the lowest common denominator, in thinking that the corruption in the west is in any way, shape or form equal to corruption in South America, Asia or (especially) Africa and the Middle East.
Incidentally, the same mistake the marxists of old made when equalling all trade/commerce between people with capitalism, if I'm to use the lowest common denominator too.
I'm honestly not sure I understand what you're trying to tell me.
In regards to the CBDCs, perhaps the wind has gone out of the sails a little on these. But they were still being pushed by NZ's Reserve Bank fairly recently (a few months ago) and as far as I know President von der Leyen of the European Union is still pushing them.
Here's the NZ Reserve Bank on them just this February;
https://www.rbnz.govt.nz/news/2022/02/innovation-key-to-the-future-of-money-and-cash
People "pushing" them is not by point. At serious levels of finance, nobody says they believe they'll be a stable system for long with a straight face.
With essentially zero knowledge of finance, after the panic declined & I had time to imagine it through, I expect that forced cbdc + social credit would trigger a huge black market in very short order.
I was going to add that you'd probably threaten to block me. It was completely foreseeable. I'm not going to give references on substack comments. I do though do it on my own posts and expect you to do the same.
The thing is that a bitcoin transaction does take at least 10 minutes to confirm. Realistically longer than that. How is that ever going to be useful in a retail environment?
You give no reason why a transaction cannot take place without waiting for a Bitcoin confirmation. You seem to act like you know a great deal, and aim your questions like you're somebody who does who is "fixing" the discussion. But you seem to know very little.
Bitcoin can be a root system for other ledgers and blockchains that take less time, and faster transactions can take place on other Bitcoin layers. But again, this is a beginner's thread, and if you do know what you're talking about, you're intentionally littering it with advanced topics, which I've politely asked you not to do several times.
I don't know how fast $$ transactions are confirmed today, but 10 minutes sounds good to me compared to (10 years ago) overnight between banks, 24 hours for wire, 3 days for ach & 7 or so for paper checks!
Please note I did reply here responding only to the question asked rather than the attempts at personal abuse.
And it was deleted.
We should start teaching children the basics of algorithms and algorithmic complexity in middle school. The concepts apply to every aspect of human life where decisions are made or actions taken, not just math or computers.
"But in truth, the computers operate with 16 digits, not 10, which is the hexadecimal system. Since 2^4 = 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 16"
Computers operate with 2 digits, binary. Hex is just a more human friendly representation of binary.
They may wish to delete the term "nonce", it's a well used British slang term for a paedophile.
You will have to take it up with the millions of people using it as a discrete analog of a point in computer science. If you can get them to change to another word, I will shift with the crowd.
The discussion of whether BTC mining is yet another climate evil is a discussion for someone else.
What I'm curious about is whether the breakpoint of energy costs for mining make it an actually realistic investment or if most miners are just operating on gold rush fever.
I rather despise commenting here as I consider Matthew to be particularly malicious. And he'll likely delete this post as well as all my posts addressing bitcoin directly have been deleted. And then he lies about what is in the deleted posts.
In addition this thread has become a space for all those who have an inferiority complex to diss me on the encouragement of Matthew. Like you Guttermouth.
But bitcoin mining is not in the purview of we ordinary souls anymore. You need cheap hydro and scale. And the right sort of computer equipment.
Thanks. It was the inscrutable descriptions of mining that kept me from investing in BTC until 2012, when I finally found enough real info to grok it, more or less, on my own. For one thing, I got hung up on the assertion that the nonce *has* to start from 0 (some sources say 1!) through 0xffffffff before changing the datetime field and starting over. So I wrote a Python script to read in old blocks, disregard the nonce in the block header, and use urandom to guess. I could "solve" the blocks far faster with random guesses than by bruteforcing it (birthday effect?). Obviously I was lucky with the blocks I tried, because this doesn't make sense. But anyway, after mining my first block of Americancoin using my "random nonce" script, I felt I understood it well enough to buy some BTC.
Mining has interested me for a while. I’ve considered many times setting up a rig to mine some crypto (not Bitcoin) but I never convinced myself it would be worth the time and effort. I looked into Helium mining because that seems pretty simple but again, time and effort.
It’s a great concept though and seems like it could be the way forward.