141–150 of 611 posts
I think this might be the first indication that what we currently call "institutional Bitcoin supporters" are not "Bitcoin supporters" at all, or rather, what they call "Bitcoin" is not what you and I call "Bitcoin". Services like Coinbase and BTC ETFs don't really suffer from this development at all. In fact, I think it's quite obvious that obviously benefit from something like this (at least from the first-order effects). What's the alternative to self custody? Well... third-party custody. Especially since they are already bound up by KYC rules, right? Their is a cynical reading that there's nothing inconsistent with this development if you consider "institutional Bitcoin's" goals to primarily be replacing existing financial power structures with themselves. "Bitcoin" is just a means to an end. Their goals were only incidentally aligned with individual BTC holders since they were previously in similar circumstances as the "out group". Previous administrations were as suspicious of "Bitcoin companies" as any individual Bitcoin holder, perhaps even more so. But that's not the case anymore. Bitcoin companies have successfully been brought into the fold, so it's not even that they're necessarily "betraying" the values of Bitcoin true believers, you might argue that interpretation of shared values was entirely inferred to begin with.
Critically though, I think an important consequence of this is that Bitcoin purists and skeptics should realize that they arguably now have more in common than not, at least in the immediate term, and may be each other's best allies. In my experience, for most the existence of Bitcoin, its skeptics haven't really seen Bitcoin as a "threat." Instead, to admittedly generalize, their critiques have been mostly about Bitcoin being "broken" or "silly" or "misunderstanding the point of centralized systems", etc. These aren't really "oppositional" positions in the traditional "adversarial sense," more dismissive. In fact, the closest thing to an "active moral opposition" to Bitcoin that I've seen is an environmental one. IOW, Bitcoin true believers think about Bitcoin way more than Bitcoin skeptics do. Similarly, Bitcoin true believers really have nothing against skeptics other than... the fact that they occasionally talk shit about Bitcoin? IOW, Bitcoin skeptics are not "the natural enemy Bitcoin was designed to defeat".
But if you think about it, "institutional Bitcoin" sort of embodies something both these camps generally have hated since before Bitcoin. Whether you believe Bitcoin to be a viable answer or not, it is undeniable that the "idea" of Bitcoin is rooted in the distrust of these elitist financial institutions, that evade accountability, benefit from special treatment, and largely get to rig the larger system in their favor. Similarly, I don't think Bitcoin skeptics like these institutions or are "on their side". In fact, perhaps they'd argue that they predicted that Bitcoin wouldn't solve any of this and would just be another means of creating them. But IMO what they should both realize is that the most important threat right now is these institutional players. They are in fact, only "nominally" Bitcoin in a deep sense. From the perspective of true believers, their interests are actually in now way "essentially" aligned with any "original Bitcoin values," and from the perspective of skeptics, the threat they pose has very little to do with their use of "the Bitcoin blockchain".
They are arguably just another instantiation of the "late stage capitalist" playbook of displacing an existing government service in order to privatize its rewards. Coinbase could be argued to have more in common with Uber than Ledger wallets. Instead of consolidating and squeezing all the value from taxis though, the play is to do the same with currency itself. It is incidental that Uber happened to be so seemingly "government averse". In this context, it's actually helpful to cozy up to the government and provide the things government departments want that make no difference to fintech's bottom line (such as KYP). In fact, that might be their true value proposition. Bitcoin only enters the conversation because in order to replace a currency, you do... need a currency. Bitcoin was convenient. It was already there, it had a built-in (fervent) user base that was happy to do your proselytizing for you, and even saw you as a good "first step" for normies that couldn't figure out to manage their own wallet. The Bitcoin bubble was already there, why fight it when you can ride it?
Again, I think this is highly likely to be against the values of Bitcoin true believers and skeptics alike, and I also think that if the above is true, it represents an actual danger to us all. Recent events with credit card processors have already demonstrated that payment systems have proven to be incredibly efficient tools at stifling speech. In other words, this is arguably an "S-tier threat", on par with or perhaps worse than any sort of internet censorship or net neutrality. If so, we should treat it as such and work together.
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But none of that matters if it's fundamentally inaccessible. The instant he spends outside of his known means, they have evidence he's accessed the funds and can jail him for contempt again. Travel is probably barred.
Yeah, of course, but since he didn't wanna give it up, and was willing to take 14 years of prison, I feel pretty confident he has some way of being able to use it, otherwise why not give it up? Of course, this is also assuming he was lying when he said all the money been spent and he had no money when he was arrested.
People go to shocking lengths to spite their exes sometimes.
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Essentially decentralisation sounds nice, but doesnt work in practice.
Most governments aren't decentralized in their structure, which causes the "problem". If you have private entities that coordinate with each other it works quite well, but the world is very used to big centralized governments that "solve" all their problems.
There's a conflict between Bitcoin as a public ledger, privacy, and money laundering. With a bank you can have anti-money laundering and bank secrecy. Transaction are known by the bank, can be subject to subpoena or automatic reporting, but are non-public. If you want privacy on Bitcoin you need to do things that look a lot like money laundering. Governments banning money laundering isn't a surprise. The value of Bit…
Essentially decentralisation sounds nice, but doesnt work in practice.
A lot of people keep looking for technology solutions to political problems. The fact is that privacy, especially of financial transactions, is becoming illegal. Any technology that allows you to send or spend money anonymously will be attacked by our governments. They won't be allowed. You can argue about whether you can get away with it due to difficulty of enforcement, but all that does is turn us all into crimina…
Some think we need financial freedom, but in reality it's the freedom to fund scams and malware, launder money, dodge taxes, and buy stuff that’s illegal.
That won't become legal just because you use "Monero" or whatever. Obviously we can't have privacy for financial transactions.
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Essentially decentralisation sounds nice, but doesnt work in practice.
Did you hear about the Internet?
Your point being?
People prefer centralised stuff since it takes care a lot of stuff for them. They dont actually care all that much about technology that yield decentralised outcomes. I know that may be difficult for many here to comperehend.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102
It was forbidden to have more than 5 ounces of gold.
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This has been a growing feeling for me too, seeing many users on various platforms go from mocking the murders of non-white people to claiming that their political opposition is hateful due to recent events. I used to think that being accepted in society was just a matter of integrating culturally (which I thought was fair), but the way people have been emboldened to say the most awful things has been changing my min…
I mean, we have to be practical in our condemnation. I feel we had that somewhere around the 2010s, where we accepted that you can’t change a racist 80 year old. Fine, I think America accepted that. But how the living fuck did that prior generation PASS ON the racism (and it’s way more than that, misogyny, economic selfishness, or wholesale disconnect in their economics to the point they don’t even vote for their eco…
Based on what I've seen in the world looking across all the countries I am familiar with, including the US, I have to say I think the opposite is true.