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𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 2 months ago (Received 1 month ago) • mastodon (AP)

Today I stumbled upon a very intersting (but also lengthy) blog post discussing currencies (crypto and fiat).

Thought provoking.
I definitely recommend reading it.
If anyone has any opinions on what is being said I'd be interested to hear them.

I'm not entirely sure what to make of the article, but points out a lot of interesting things which might be very relevant now that trump was elected.

https://dergigi.com/2022/11/19/dear-crypto-fiat-bros/

Dear Crypto & Fiat Bros - An open letter to the confused and dismissive. | dergigi.com

The coin is dead, long live the coin!

^dergigi.com

196 comments - Show more

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

> I'm not entirely sure what to make of the article

It's neither a technical nor a political-economic analysis. It's a religious one.

I skimmed a couple of pages, which were so full of motivated reasoning, and so smugly and unambiguously wrong on the basics, that I stopped reading.

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey interesting.

yes - i do notice that he is obviously very excited, but it also seems the arguments as such are valid.

could you point out a few things that were wrong? i might have missed them.

@Strypey

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(1/2)

@serapath
> could you point out a few things that were wrong?

I'm not sure this is a good use of your time or mine at this point. Because I consider the whole thing obviously wrong, based on a huge memeplex of premises and assumptions that are also obviously wrong.

The fact that you consider it mostly right means we have a *huge* amount of ground to cover. Given how long we were able to debate Nostr vs. the fediverse alone, we'd need to strap in for months to get anywhere with it.

@𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(2/2)

But just an example, the author assumes that money is valuable because it's scarce. This is the sort of myth that needs to be corrected in high school classes on economic history.

As Graeber pointed out in Debt, money began as coins that warlords issued to their soldiers, and demanded back (in "taxes") from the peasants in the territories they held. This is still what gives money it's value; whoever holds the monopoly of violence in a territory (the "state") guarantees that it is.

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

Money is not valuable because it is scarce.

You could have a giant chalk board where you write down for everyone who did what for whom so you can notice if some people only receive benefits without doing anything for anyone in return

The problem is with those who control the chalk board. They can write down extra benefits for themselves and they do. That is the capitalist class

What many people want as money is an "honest chalk board", where nobody controls it to benefit themselves

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey hahaha 🙂

i mean the gist imho is:

no young person can afford houses or anything apart from food and rent and even that is difficult.

the money printing worldwide is through the roof since 2008 and inflation too. stuff is insanely expensive and it apways gets worse.

if you dont have a job that pays you high salaries you are disadvantaged.

bitcoin does not solve all problems, but it ends the capitalist class. we (the ppl) never had momey printers, but bitcoin has no more than 21 mio

@Strypey

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

Me
> The fact that you consider it mostly right means we have a *huge* amount of ground to cover

Are you starting to get why I said this @serapath? ; )

I need to break for the holidays. So after today, I'm going to take a break from responding on these threads, or anything that isn't fun shitposting. Feel free to give me a prod around late April/ early March, and we can get back into it.

@𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(1/?)

@serapath
> soo yeah, what do you think?

I agree with Jason Hickel;

https://mastodon.nzoss.nz/@strypey/113647624222641778

It's well worth listening to the full podcast. But the rash of quotes I posted in that thread will give you a taste of just how differently we think about political economy.

I wasn't joking when I said a decent discussion would take months, I was being optimistic. It would probably require us to write blog length replies to each other and paste links here.

I'm up for this, after summer ; )

Strypey

2024-12-13 21:25:25

"People think, oh, you just want to slow down the entire economy and this is obviously going to leave us in poverty. But degrowth actually calls for, let's identity very energy intensive and materially intensive forms of production that are also socially unnecessary. Like mostly are organised around capital accumulation and elite consumption, etc, etc."

#JasonHickel, 2024

https://techwontsave.us/episode/226_how_degrowth_will_reshape_technology_w_jason_hickel

(1/2)

#podcasts #TechWontSaveUs #DeGrowth

@𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(2/?)

I think we're tacking towards the same destination. But one of us is going east to get there, and one to the west. So figuring out where we are in relation to each other right now, is going to take some careful descriptions, and poring over of maps.

This would be a complete waste of your time if I was a statist (whether marxist or liberal). But I'm not. Although as an environmentalist I do see a limited role for territorial governance, including making tactical use of existing ones.

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(3/?)

Having given all that context, since you're asking what I think of BitCoin, I'll be blunt. I think the same thing I've thought about it since about a decade ago. It's not tulips, it's clearly more than a passing speculation fad, but It's not money either. It's value is a pure derivative of the value of fiat currencies, particularly the USD.

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(4/?)

The main reason BTC holds value, more consistently than other crypto-tokens, is that the USAmerican elite are using it to stash stolen wealth and evade taxes. When the petrodollar scam finally ends, and the US financial system goes into freefall, BTC will tank along with the USD.

But by then those US elites will have turned their holdings back into land, and gold, and other things that hold their value in an economic crash. Most of it outside the US, which will probably deepen the crash.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(5/?)

Having said all that I'm less bearish on 2 strips of bandage on the "crypto" mummy.

Blockchains are a genuinely clever data structure. When the crypto wars are over and the dust settles, I'm confident they'll turn out to work really well for a particular set of use cases. Few if any of them to do with finance.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(6/6)

In the shorter term, I am interested in blockchain tokens as payment systems, for the same reason I'm interested in *every* kind of digital payment system.

Efficient digital payments are an unsolved problem. As I learned in some depth when I had a contract helping Permaculture in NZ improve their website, including a payment gateway for accepting membership dues and event registration fees.

InterLedger protocol interests me more than BitCoin though.

https://interledger.org/developers/get-started/

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey interesting.

i dont see what this is backed by.
it seems BRICS and other countries are mining BTC woth government resources and see it to some degree as an option to get rid of USD dependency?

Given that the west froze lots of savings from russia when the russian invasion of ukraine started (i think it was billions), wpuldnt countries in general be happier to save in something that is more independent and reliably protects from that?

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

i wonder what use cases those could be.
to me anything that doesnt benefit from global consensus (and there are extremely few things that need that) ... seems to be better solved wothout blockchains.

I do see many altcoins running interesting experiments and was involved in some of them for some time, but at the moment i dont wanna get near any of them and apart from bitcoin they all feel like scams to me right now

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey
i follow interledger for some time now, longer than blockchains actually, but my impression was its mostly a system to allow payments on the internet ...including bitcoin.

I did not think interledger by itself works, but havent checked it for some time now.

maybe i'm missing some essentials about how it works. i found it difficult to wrap my head around it

@Strypey

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(1/2)

@serapath
> i follow interledger for some time now, longer than blockchains actually, but my impression was its mostly a system to allow payments on the internet ...including bitcoin

Yes. I've seen it described as a kind of Internet Protocol of payments, a neutral way of connecting 2 payment systems across a network. One of the founders describes it quote well in this interview;

https://www.w3.org/blog/2019/w3c-interview-coil-on-interledger-protocol-and-web-monetization/

I'm interested in BTC payments in the short term because they're one way to use it.

@𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(2/2)

I recently joined a thread discussing where Interledger is at, and asked how it relates to GNU Taler, which has broadly similar goals;

https://indieweb.social/@johnallsopp/113619430595140949

My intuition is that the two could work together somehow. But I'd need to learn more about the nuts and bolts of both to figure out what that could look like in practice.

John Allsopp

2024-12-08 21:55:24

interledger protocol and web monetization are still a thing. Coil is gone now but the technologies are still there and being developed.

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

i dont think bitcion needs or is supposed to use a lot of energy - because your tech wont save us link was kinda about that too

Once block rewards go to zero and all figure it is pointless to attack and block rewards go to zero, it makes more sense to stop mining unless to again correct and protrct the chain, thus it should get less energy intensive. right now its crypto war time and block rewards exist so it continues, but apart from that, i feel its main proposal is 21mio limit

@Strypey

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(1/?)

@serapath
> Once block rewards go to zero ... it makes more sense to stop mining unless to again correct and protrct the chain, thus it should get less energy intensive

I'll admit it's been a *long* time since I read the BitCoin white paper. However ...

My understanding is that mining blocks in a Proof of Work system isn't pointless make-work, designed merely to slow the release of new coins. But rather it's the computation work that confirms transactions, preventing double-spending.

@𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(2/?)

Which is why new tokens get harder and harder to mine as time goes on. The algorithm is trying to make sure the number of new tokens to be issued approaches but *never reaches* zero. Because if mining ever stops, the whole shamozzle comes to a shuddering halt.

So not only is mining baked in, so is its exponentially increasing computational cost, and ergo, it's energy usage. All to create a form of purely artificial scarcity that we don't really need.

It's techno-solutionist insanity.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(3/?)

From what I understand, this is why Ethereum and a bunch of other blockchains have used or pivoted to Proof of Stake (Ethereum, Cardano et al).

I don't know how this affects energy use but it comes with new problems. It basically simulates capitalism (in the original Marxist sense of the term) on top of the blockchain. Whoever starts with the most tokens has a baked in advantage. Much more so than in PoW systems, where pools of holding power can be checked by pools of computation power.

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(4/?)

The holy war between card-carrying BitCoiners, and the crypto protestants interested in wider use of blockchains, is IMHO explained by my conspiracy theory of BTC as a vector for elites hiding stolen wealth.

Their strategy doesn't work if people accept that BitCoin was a Proof of Concept, never intended to be used as day-to-day infrastructure. If usage bleeds off and spreads across a range of tokens, BTC loses its effective monopoly as a jurisdiction-agnostic store of value.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(5/?)

From memory (again, it's been a while), the BitCoin white paper anticipated some of the limitations that are now confirmed. As well as offering idea for possible workarounds, some of which have been adopted by other blockchains, and some by adjacent projects like Lightening.

Yet whenever I dip my toes into Nostr, I see this blind loyalty to the one true BitCoin, just as I see it in the link you posted, that kicked off this branch of our hellthread.

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(6/6)

In summary, IMHO the BTC maximalism we see today is based not only on a bunch of fundamental misunderstandings of how political economy works, but also on a profound ignorance of the underlying technology of BitCoin itself.

How many BitCoiners do you think have actually read the white paper? Of those, how many do you think understood it?

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(1/2)

@serapath
> i wonder what use cases those could be

My go-to example is the JamiNS blockchain;
https://docs.jami.net/en_US/user/jami-distributed-network.html

Interested in your thoughts on GNU Jami, not just JamiNS, but in general.

@𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(2/2)

@serapath
> to me anything that doesnt benefit from global consensus ... seems to be better solved wothout blockchains ... they all feel like scams to me right now

Exactly. Most blockchain projects so far have been people in love with hammers trying to treat every problem as a nail.

That was the tulip mania aspect of blockchain fandom. But that's pretty much moved on to #MOLE Training now.

#mole

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(1/?)

@serapath
> BRICS and other countries are mining BTC with government resources and see it to some degree as an option to get rid of USD dependency?

Got any links on the first bit? Even accepting it for the sake of argument, the second bit doesn't necessarily follow.

The Euro was an attempt to escape USD dependency. The Libyans were trying to set up an African EU equivalent with it's own currency, but Secretary Clinton made short work of that (only one reason she's contemptible scum).

@𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

i wasnt super impressed by taler.
they dont seem to improve anything unless they jave a secret plan hidden in plain sight that should maybe occur in a future when gnu taler was adopted by everyone as a mainstream thing...

...but apart from that, it seems messy and custodial to some degree and maybe i am doing it wrong, but interledger or not still requires the decision ofusing SOME payment network among the many to use interledger with i guess?

...for now after my experience its BTC

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey
i think it mainly serves to decide how to reach consensus. in this case get one peer to produce the next block with transactions then broadcast to everyone else ... every 10 minutes.

if the block is cheating, double spends or anything, it will be corrected by the next miner.

having little mining going on makes it easy to cheat, but everypne will see and can correct it, so the cheating will be undone.

if ppl know all cheating will always be corrected, then why spending resource on it

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey hmmm... not entirely.

the mining reward will go to literally zero around the year 2100, but already before it will be miniscule.

the mining difficulty goes up ...or down, with the amount of miners... based on how fast blocks get mined. target is every 10 minutes.

if its faster, difficulty goes up, if its lower, difficulty goes down

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey agree.
that is why i am not up for any blockchain without fixed number of tokens... e.g 21mio.

because whether proof of work as in Doge coin or proof of stake as in ethereum... the rich always get the new printed moneu. the poor get dilluted.

that is the same shit we already have.

and i saw ethereum, polkadot and some more of web3 from the inside.

to me it feels like microsoft joined forces with silicon valley and wallstreet and its a hoard of employees building out the web3 based

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

bitcoin is extremely transparent, tokens can be tracked forever, thus especially if somebody is very rich - its not a good way of hiding transactions imho. its worse than the current monetary system with obviously allows for plenty of criminality already

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

yeah. it could be something else than bitcoin, but if the elites should lose their capitalist class money printer privilege i can only see how that cnan happen with a finite amount of tokens.

imho litecoin also has a finite amount, but bitcoin seems to be a better "schelling point"

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey i dont know.

there are a lot of youtube videos and books explaining the white paper or all the parts of it.

the white paper does not include important things like representing a keypair as 12 english words. and many more things.

they are technically not essential, but in prqctice a lot of stuff build in the ecosystem makes it actually usable

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

maybe this CNBC show?

https://youtu.be/QUJNIMh3sMA?si=qN7-gNDJT7FV0Gcv

el salvador uses it as legal tender

swiss canton zug allows to pay taxes in BTC

i think argentina is mining with goverment resources? ...but heard a bunch of others as well.

china did in the past, but i am unsure about the current status

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey have to take a look. will answer in a bit

@Strypey

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(2/?)

The only way a country can really be independent of the USD - short of replacing all fossil fuel use - is by finding countries willing to sell oil in currencies other than USD. Are there any selling oil for BTC?

If not, then like as not, BTC mining has nothing to do with USD independence, one way or the other. It's more likely to be a strategy of converting underused computation or capital into a money printing machine. Which is what crypto-mining looks like from the outside.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(3/?)

As for the banks seizing Russian savings, you've got to ask why is a country the size of Russia storing so much wealth outside its own borders in the first place?

Some possible reasons for this are explored in this podcast, notably where he talks about repatriating the savings of trade surplus countries;

https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/pb183/episodes/Can-Trumps-Tariffs-Work-e2s4ab3

But my money is on Russian oligarchs storing their ill-gotten gains where their government and the population they stole it from can't easily access it.

Can Trump's Tariffs Work? by Patrick Boyle On Finance

In today's video we examine Donald Trump's plan to rebalance global trade using tariffs, try to understand the issues with international trade that have been pushing the United States and other countries in this protectionist direction, and if tariff…

^{Spotify for Creators}

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(4/?)

Circling back to your opening question;

@serapath
> i dont see what this is backed by

I presume you're asking precisely how the US elite stashing their ill-gotten gains in BTC drives up the price? The logic of this seems pretty obvious to me.

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(5/?)

* the price of BTC - like any unsecured derivative - goes up when there's more willing buyers than sellers

* If people are using it to launder hoards of stolen wealth, that massively drives up demand

* With demand going up, it's reasonable to assume that price will go up, which reduces willingness to sell

* Given a) relatively static number of tokens, b) rising demand, and c) static or falling supply, this must drive up the price

* the rising price drives up b) and c), rinse, repeat.

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(6/?)

People see number go up, and erroneously assume that high price = high value. But most of the real world value is in the wealth that is being laundered through it.

Yes, if you manage to buy low, and sell high, you can realise real value. But that's true of any speculation activity, whether on stocks and bonds, fiat currencies, or financial derivatives, including blockchain tokens.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(7/7)

A good friend of mine who studied International Relations at postgraduate level likes to ask; how many armoured divisions does BitCoin have?

This pithy question sums up the overlap between IR Realist, anarchist *and* MMT theories about money;

The value of a currency is guaranteed by a monopoly of violence in a territory, and backed by the assets and productive capacity of that territory.

BitCoin has no territory, nor any way of defending it if it did. So it's not a currency.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(1/?)

@serapath
> i am not up for any blockchain without fixed number of tokens

Two things;

1) When the tokens have no fixed value, this is ultimately an illusion. The number of tokens can be increased by breaking BTC into Satoshis, and then by breaking Satoshis onto micro-Satoshis.

But this is details. The more important reason the fixed number of tokens doesn't matter is ...

@𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(2/2)

2) Goldbugs are wrong. The value of a currency does not come from scarcity, and never has. Much wrongthink in tokenomics comes from this variant of the 'all trout are fish therefore all fish are trout' fallacy.

Overabundance of a currency reduces the value of a currency, ergo, reducing the number of units increases the value.

The problem is inflation is caused by increasing *not* the absolute number of currency units, but the number
*relative* to the value of the economy backing it.

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey based of microsofts HR capabilitirs.

all the rich ones are early investors who own the majority of tokens and hence get all the new tokens and decide everything.

totally rigges, but they are telling a marketing story of true decentralization.

imho its all fake apart from bitcoin

@Strypey

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

> totally rigges, but they are telling a marketing story of true decentralization ... imho its all fake apart from bitcoin

As I've explained, I think this BitCoin exceptionalism is self-deluding. But let's revisit this conversation in a decade or so and see if either of us were right, or if we're both wrong ; )

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(1/?)

@serapath
> bitcoin is extremely transparent, tokens can be tracked forever

True. Good to see people are moving on from the 'BitCoin is anonymous' nonsense ; )

> its not a good way of hiding transactions imho. its worse than the current monetary system

It's very much not. If you've ever tried to move money between countries without using crypto, you'll know that fiat currencies have a huge number of checks and balances (AML, KYC, etc), which make it hard to move large volumes offshore

@𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(2/?)

When I lived in China, I quickly noticed that the financial system was organised such that it was very easy to move money *into* the country. I could just go to any ATM and withdraw cash from my NZ bank account.

But getting money *out* of China was a whole different story. To do that, I had to go to a specialist teller, only at the central branch of the bank where I had my Chinese account, with a whole folder of paperwork. There are laws limiting outward cross-border cash movements too.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(3/3)

This isn't unique to China either. Aside from fraud mitigation, every country that cares about its sovereignty has a whole range of regulations on capital movements, offshore ownership, etc. Which hedge against the risk of ending up with the bulk of its economy owned by another country, which can use that as geopolitical leverage.

So if you're a Chinese oligarch wanting to move wealth out of China, BTC would be ideal, if the CCP hadn't caught on and regulated to prevent that.

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

> it could be something else than bitcoin, but if the elites should lose their capitalist class money printer privilege

What do you think "cryptocurrencies" are other than a new kind of capitalist money printer?! Adopted as a potential replacement for the last kind; trading banks issuing mortgages. Which were turned into money printers to replace the original kind, nation-states, which they lost control of to communist and social democratic revolutions in the early 20th century.

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

> there are a lot of youtube videos and books explaining the white paper or all the parts of it

How many of those were created by people who read it themselves and fully understood what they read? It's advanced computer science, even now. I knew enough basic computer science to know I didn't fully understand it, and would need to study it in depth and read some of the references before I did.

How many BitCoiners are that reflexive?

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(1/?)

@serapath
> maybe this CNBC show?

Web videos are not famous for being credible sources, and neither are CNBC. Especially on a topic that has so many people blowing smoke around it, for their own pecuniary purposes.

I'd be looking for academic or primary sources when evaluating claims about what states are and aren't doing with BTC and other crypto-tokens.

@𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(2/?)

@serapath
> el salvador uses it as legal tender

AFAIK the countries doing this are vassal states of the US, where USD is already used as if it's legal tender, whether or not that's official. Mainly because of USD coming across the US border as remittances from workers.

Now the US highway cops are becoming highwaymen, stealing from anyone carrying cash interstate, let alone cross border. Recognising BTC as legal tender is mainly a way to mitigate this, and reduce internal need for USD.

@𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(3/?)

@serapath
> swiss canton zug allows to pay taxes in BTC

"Due to Zug's status as a business center and tax haven, 5.74% of the tertiary sector is in management and business consultancy, 4.67% provide information technology services, 4% provide legal and tax consultancy and nearly 4% provide financial service"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canton_of_Zug

Swiss banks are infamous for being one of the main vector for the laundering of stolen wealth internationally. Of course they're getting on board.

canton of Switzerland

^{Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)}

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(4/4)

> china did in the past, but i am unsure about the current status

See the other branch of the thread where I talked about the challenges of moving money out of China. The CCP were bullish on crypto-mining when they saw it as a magic money printer. As soon as they realised it was a vector for unregulated cross-border/currency flows, they cracked down hard.

Argentina and others will have the same experience.

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

JamiNS is 100% guaranteed an ethereum based project. ..so no. wouldnt touch it with a stick imho.

name registratiin is either not needed or plenty of solutions are already out there.

thr DHT bit sounds like dat, but dat is a 501c3 started in 2013 and has no blockchains involved at all, because not needed.

name registration is a feature you might or might not need. i am not convinced it is needed, but if, exisiting solutions exist

@Strypey

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

This sounds like an insistence that all problems *are*, therefore anyone not using hammer is doing it wrong ; )

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

The blockchain is used to solve Zooko's triangle. Jami has unique addresses on a decentralised network, but they're not human-readable. Pet names can be mapped to these long, cryptic addresses, but not uniquely. JamiNS allows a Jami app to resolve the username "Strypey" to a specific address.

@serapath
> name registration is either not needed or plenty of solutions are already out there

I'd love to see you open an issue on the Jami forge and propose one. Send me a link, I'll make popcorn ; )

@𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey
we can revisit in the future.

i am not cou ting on the bitcoin community or in general on anything that makes folks special, only on the rules

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

Bitcoin has 8 digits after the comma.

0.00000001 BTC is called one Satoshi or SAT

It cant be divided smaller than that, because digital does not have infinite digits.

The point is also more in: no new tokens for capitalist class ppl. no more money printers.

with money printers, the printing class gets more, the rest loses. in bitcoin, everyone gets more when the value of BTC goes up. that is a big improvement and in absolute terms nobody gets more.

if you spend you spend

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey i personally dont have large amounts to move around, but i am pretty sure criminals know how to do it.

buy something... shares? cash? or a car or diamonds or gold or whatever? or set up multiple businesses and sell a business from Mafia A to Mafia B for under the price in Country 1 and sell another business from Mafia B to Mafia A in country 2 for a bigher price... and yay... you transferred the diference.

I mean criminals will be criminals with or without crypto.

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

probably.
but then again, criminals and big criminal businesses have always existed and they always managed to move or hide theirnmoney, transport and sell drugs or do all sorts of things...and nothing could really stop them.

With bitcoin, if anything, i expect it to get better rather than worse. ...but even if things stay the same, i havent heard of any reports that said BTC creates more crimnals.

crypto in general is a different story though. i think altcoins are all scams

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

really?
obviously that didnt prevent from some chinese getting filthy rich and buying loads ofnhouses overseas ..while the majority has little money.

I dont really see how it helps. maybe the government loyal capitalists get protected while non-government competitive mafia is kept in check? ...i dont know - sounds weird though 🙂

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

most crypto is that what you say, but crypto currencies with a max supply (minority of them) does not have the printer built in.

e.g. ethereum and all of web3 or musks preferred doge coin issue new tokens forever and they go to the rich with most tokens or compute or whatever, essentially giving them fresh money forever on the account of the peasants who get diluted.

in bitcoin everyone is in the same boat.

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

i do think bitcoiners in general are very much about educating and providing information

not saying all content is great or every bitcoiner understood everything, but i have experienced web3, which is the opposite. from ethereum to the last tiny shitcoin, their goal is to hide the details from end users and ideally move them into crypto behind the scenes, so nothing changes for end users... e.g. all your services and products you use run on ceypto behind the scenes, but you wont know

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey i see. i heard it is Argentina, UAE and Ethiopia, but also Russia now. But dont k ow whether there are papers... probably, but yeah, cant provide any links to scientific papers - more just financial mainstream news sources, which to me still seems different from specifically "crypto news"

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

you have alreqdy .ens domains im ethereum and you have the original namecoin and you have HNS and probably every major altcoin has some sort of solution... of course, they are all blockchain based domains.

But i think folks anyway type into search bars and autocomplete or click links sent or found on messengers/websites.

so ceyptolinks arent a problem and urlbar autocomplete can look up your or your peers/friends petnames for cryptolinks or if anyone you know knows the link.

@Strypey

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

> more just financial mainstream news sources, which to me still seems different from specifically "crypto news"

Heh. Large news media outlets don't know whether to report it as tech news, business news, financial news, or political news. Of course it's all four. Even the tech press reporting on it is about as reliable as their reporting on the fediverse, ie not very.

That's why I specified primary sources, or academic ones, where they're getting better at interdisciplinary work.

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(1/2)

You seem to have missed the bit where I said;

> But this is details

But sure, let's split hairs ; )

@serapath
> 0.00000001 BTC is called one Satoshi or SAT

The point is that the original pitch had a fixed number of tokens (BTC), and that was considered to be a feature, not a bug. But that money supply limit didn't survive contact with real world use at scale. So now the number of tokens has been increased (conceptually but not technically), by defining a subtokens called a SAT.

@𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(2/2)

You'd think that this would have taught people that there are sound reasons that a finite supply of monetary units has been abandoned, in every economic system in which it's been tried. *Including* the BitCoin economy. But this dogmatic and completely mistaken belief in scarcity as the source of monetary value seems to be the only bit of OG BitCoin that *has* survived contact with real world economics ; )

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

> started before silicon valley, big tech and wallstreet knew, so its not again the already rich who have the most. it has the most fair distribution possible compared to all cryptos

What evidence base do you have for these claims? For a start;

https://www.fool.com/money/buying-stocks/articles/how-the-winklevoss-twins-amassed-a-6-billion-bitcoin-fortune/

Also, in a PoW blockchain, whoever has the most computing power in the network can mine the most coins. You really think this has nothing to do with ...

> silicon valley, big tech and wallstreet

Really? Why?

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

Honestly, if you really want to get to the root of our disagreement here, you need stop getting lost in the weeds of the tech and interfactional drama in the crypto world, and focus on the underlying *economics*;

https://mastodon.nzoss.nz/@strypey/113665691857278151

Why exactly do you think ...

> bitcoin being limited supply

... is a good thing?

What exactly do you mean by ...

> capitalist money printer

... and why is it a bad thing?

What is a blockchain mining pool if not a money printer?

Etc, etc.

Strypey

2024-12-17 02:00:15

(2/2)

2) Goldbugs are wrong. The value of a currency does not come from scarcity, and never has. Much wrongthink in tokenomics comes from this variant of the 'all trout are fish therefore all fish are trout' fallacy.

Overabundance of a currency reduces the value of a currency, ergo, reducing the number of units increases the value.

The problem is inflation is caused by increasing *not* the absolute number of currency units, but the number
*relative* to the value of the economy backing it.

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

so bitcoin being limited supply, so no capitalist money printer class, earliest and most adopted, mosy secured of the bunch, makes it a good candidate to adopt it.

once we have one global money, we dont need a second one. that just opens up attqck vectors to speculation again and complicatw sthings unnecessarily, so its not that bitcoin as such is so superior... but it is important that things are stable, because any change makes it unreliable or unpredictable

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

Also - its not Bitcoins technical properties thwt make it special. Its more that it started before silicon valley, big tech and wallstreet knew, so its not again the alreadyvrich who have the most. it has the most fair distribution possible compared to all cryptos imho AND it has limited supply, a.k.a no money printer for the rich.

Also - money tends to go towards one that is universal is the one of the properties of money. the more monies we have, the more we are back to exchange

@Strypey

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(1/2)

@serapath
> i personally dont have large amounts to move around, but i am pretty sure criminals know how to do it

They find ways, financial regulators find ways to mitigate them. It's an arms race.

> I mean criminals will be criminals with or without crypto

True. Blockchains are not, in themselves, better suited to financial shenanigans than fine art, or any other kind of unsecured asset, whose value is purely speculative.

@𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(2/2)

What makes crypto-tokens different is;

a) being relatively new and mostly unregulated.

b) having a network of partisans who are highly allergic to any attempt to regulate them, to make them harder to use for financial shenanigans

This network of partisans forms part of the speculative value of crypto-tokens as an asset class. It's a built-in hedge against the risk of new regulation exposing and stopping tax evasion, wealth misappropriation, etc, using cross-border crypto trade.

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

> that didnt prevent from some chinese getting filthy rich and buying loads of houses overseas ..while the majority has little money

I did say it was a hedge against, not a guaranteed solution in every case. See;

https://mastodon.nzoss.nz/@strypey/113671295066964258

Besides, this seems like a deflection, because it doesn't even try to refute the point I was making;

> if you're a Chinese oligarch wanting to move wealth out of China, BTC would be ideal, if the CCP hadn't caught on and regulated to prevent that.

Strypey

2024-12-18 01:45:13

(1/2)

@serapath
> i personally dont have large amounts to move around, but i am pretty sure criminals know how to do it

They find ways, financial regulators find ways to mitigate them. It's an arms race.

> I mean criminals will be criminals with or without crypto

True. Blockchains are not, in themselves, better suited to financial shenanigans than fine art, or any other kind of unsecured asset, whose value is purely speculative.

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(1/2)

Me:
> Recognising BTC as legal tender is mainly a way to mitigate this, and reduce internal need for USD

It's worth specifying that in practice, this looks exactly like the only time I ever traded crypto-tokens for money. I bought tokens using RNB in a Chinese bank account, then immediately sold them to someone else doing the same thing, who deposited NZD in my NZ bank account.

Making BTC legal tender just simplifies regulation of these cross-border currency flows.

@serapath

@𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(2/2)

If currency exchanges could use pork futures as the intermediary asset, it would work just as well. But futures, like most forms of established financial trading, are heavily regulated to hedge against them being used this way. So are fine art sale, for the same reason, and to hedge against trade in stolen antiquities.

If you have evidence of people in El Salvador or Argentina or anywhere else are using BTC as cash, to actually buy things for their everyday needs, I'm keen to see it.

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(1/?)

@serapath
> you have already .ens domains im ethereum and you have the original namecoin

There's a large and growing literature on the abject failure of existing attempts, including the 2 you mention;

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/An-Empirical-Study-of-Namecoin-and-Lessons-for-Kalodner-Carlsten/5f2f9116d34f741b714b47c4d153566fa77ebe19

The @Jami team tried to learn from this when designing JamiNS. Which is *not* a DNS alternative BTW, but a solution specifically for use with Jami and compatible apps (if there are any).

@Jami @𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey so the human readable is unnecessary.

also, a standard could allow the address maker to store a human readable petname, thus that can be looked up tok, to get an initial name in case you know nobody.

other than that, identicons and other ways of translating crypto addresses into unique images or icons helps too.

to me thats enough. you avoid the entire madness that comes with creating a human readable namespace system and you can just avoid it entirely

@Strypey

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

@Jami @𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(2/?)

> folks anyway type into search bars and autocomplete or click links sent or found on messengers/websites

Maybe. But I still think it's useful for someone to be able to;

1) install Jami
2) wonder who they can talk to as a test
3) think to themselves, Strypey must be using this, I'll find him
4) knowing that I'm "strypey" almost everywhere, search for that username
5) Find my Jami account (via JamiNS), instead of a bunch of namesquatters who are not me

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(3/?)

Obviously the Jami developers have had enough requests for this kind of UX that they thought it was worth hacking together a solution to Zooko's Triangle. It's equally obvious they thought a blockchain was the right tool for the job. Otherwise, given the rise of hard anti-blockchainism (even among BitCoiners it seems), they would have used something else.

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(4/4)

FWIW your reactions suggest that GNU Jami is totally new to you. If so, I suggest worth learning a bit more a about the project and its history.
It began as a SIP client for GNU/Linux called SFLPhone, which pivoted into a P2P messenger app called Ring, before being adopted by the GNU Project. It was then renamed again to Jami;

https://linuxreviews.org/Jami

It's not blockchain-based, and can be used quite happily without JamiNS. I last tested it, about 5 years ago,

https://write.as/c7fda5x13qzve

VOICE Scheduled Testing Session #2

Sunday 21 July, 8:00 UTC Candidate: [Jami] (previously known as GNU Ring) Previous Session: [Test Session #1](https://write.as/zk9vm8m00eutn.md) Comments by: [@Naught...

^Write.as

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(1/2)

@serapath FYI I was want to flag that I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed. When I feel overwhelmed, I can tend to get defensive, and that can manifest as snarky. While any snark coming from me is unintentional, I acknowledge that I still hold responsibility for it. To that end;

Checking in with myself, what I'm feeling overwhelmed by is not the number of posts (I'm actually loving the detailed replies), but the complex branching structure of the thread.

@𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Strypey 1 month ago • mastodon (AP)

(2/2)

It would help me if we could keep the tangents to a minimum, and focus on one topic at a time. I write a string of replies to the last string you wrote, and vice-versa.

Linking back to previous posts as appropriate can be a way of folding tangents back into the mainline discussion for further elaboration, without turning the thread into a thorny tangle of crisscrossing branches. Does that make sense?

Remember also to @mention me only in the first post of a string, to avoid flooding : )

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

hmmm.. but the original paper always defined 8 digits after the comma. That wasnt introduced later.

It has always been
21,000,000.000,000,00

So it did not get introduced later on is what i want to say. Bitcoin has been successfully ultrqconservative in sticking to the original vision and all kinds of changes and forks have been tried and were not successful.

The only thing that sometimes after endless discussions works is backward compatible additions a.k.a soft forks

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

Those twins invested in 2012/2013
That is the time when big business took notic of bitcoin and the first couple of bull runs and were getting ready to launch their own web3 shitcoins, starting with ethereum in 2013 and a few other experikents before that, like mastercoin/colored coins, etc...

Yes rich folks can buy more compute to mine more, but eventually that stops. There is no more mining when 21 million is reached, no matter how rich you are

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

some blockchains will always make new tokens. it doesnt matter if proof of work or proof of stake. if there will be new tokens, they go to the rich at the expense of the poor.

any blockchain with fixed supply wont have that at the expense of the poor, such as bitcoin.

money printing is deficits/loans/debt based money that **never gets paid back** and also in practice CAN NEVER be paid back.

https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2024/10/15/global-public-debt-is-probably-worse-than-it-looks

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_debt

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

yes. i will try.
mastodon makes it hard to keep track of branches, so link8ng to fold them back in is a bit difficult. but let see

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey yes, which means its a net neutral effecg... maybe bitcoin transparency makes it even harder for criminals...but in any case, i feel its kinda a niche (irrelecant?) side brqnch when discussing bitcoin. i do agree though, that non-bitcoin blockchains, a.k.a web3, are very dubious and scammy in my experience, but i wpupd anyway not advocate for those...

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

fair enough, but interestingly, the CCP was able to and in part because bitcoin aplows the tracking, imho by design.

thata different from e.g. monero or other really dark and privacy focusee blockchains designed to be untraceable...

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

i do think its still early. ppl there experiment with bitcoin payments, but its a new experience and ppl are stipl familiarizing

the reason why i think that bitcoin "lends itself" as a medium to transfer through is, that everyone can be re-assured, that there wont be a single party they need to trust to not "rug pull" or "freeze" or "inflate" the medoum while it is in use

bitcoin is 21mio. period.
this cannot be guaranteed for basicaply anything else, strictly speaking not even gold

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey what if i register strypy first in Jami and pretend to be you? now you cant even get it and ppl will always think i am you.

this problem isnt that easily solved

to me a global naming system is irrelevant in practice and the paper suggests namecoin was to cheap so squatting again happened. cool. try many others. In an extreme case Every app can run its own namespace blockchain or centralized database.

i happily opt out of all of them forever for autocomplete i control and shared links

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

or they did it because they get funded.
offer somthing and make good friends with ppl who uave qccess to funding and you get paid 🙂

David Graeber - Bullshit Jobs

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

JamiNS is ethereum now

Ethereum marketing or more broadly web3 marketing is hunting for every opportunity to plug themselves into existing open source projects to gain adoption to make web3 more legitimate for scammers to scam more

Jami sounds interesting

JamiNT is probably what they got money for and they took it to continue the project and now need to built blockchain stuff as well

I dont know the details, but if web3 scammers are involved i am not really interested

p2p is dat

@Strypey

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

(1/2)

@serapath
> the CCP was able to and in part because bitcoin aplows the tracking, imho by design

AFAIK it wasn't nearly as secret squirrel as all that. They just made it it illegal to operate any kind of exchange where people can use RMB to buy crypto-tokens. Without a trusted exchange, most people won't bother trying, and the few who do are easy to track down using standard banking/ financial regulation enforcement.

@𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

(2/2)

It's probably still OK to mine crypto in China and sell it for RNB. Just like it's fine to use a foreign bank card to take money out of an ATM in China.

EDIT: Effectively selling the currency you have in your foreign bank account and getting paid in RNB.

This entry was edited (4 weeks ago)

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

> mastodon makes it hard to keep track of branches

If you scroll up to the OP that kicked off the whole thread and click on that, you can then scroll down through the whole thread, and find the orphaned post containing the unexplored tangent you want to fold back in : )

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

I do think it is a big issue that web3/altcoin are unregulated. They are essentially all securities (unlike bitcoin) and they are all scams - if nothing else you can see how all their price histories clearly reflect presale, pump and dump after which the price never really recovers.

You also notice it if you ever try to engage in those ecosystems. They are a big fat lie. All of web3 is just new unregulated money printers for capitalists.

@Strypey

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

> the best deal possible imho is a world where we end the capitalist class privilege of money printing so we play on a level playing field

Right, which is why Jason Hickel is right. The power to issue new money belongs in the hands of elected governments, who can spend it into existence paying for public infrastructure, services, etc. Running surpluses when the economy is growing, and deficits when it's not, to keep the money supply in proportion, avoiding inflation.

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

I think scarcity is the wrong idea anyway.

Money is human made and like a game of how we can structure our economy.

No economy without money ever worked as well.

Now once you have money, it is valuable, because in that game you can exchange it for goods and services.

But some prefer a ledger without a capitalist class controlling it, where they always add extra numbers for themselves to get more from others.

Bitcoin ends that capitalist class privilege, while i dont know others

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey again:

> 0.00000001 BTC is called one Satoshi or SAT

SAT is the smallest unit since the beginning. This did not change later on. It was always like that - nothing changed and i bet nothing ever will for as long as people use bitcoin. This is the hardest consensus among all bitcoin features imho.

@Strypey

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

(2/2)

Politicians following the Washington Consensus ("neoliberalism", Reaganomics, call it what you will) handed over that power to trading banks. Who issue new money as loans, primarily to their mates, at a rate of up to 10 times their reserves. With the government trying to manage inflation indirectly by playing with the interest rate slider.

This is the reality of the capitalist money printer. The solutions to this problem are political-economic, not technological.

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey lets see.

I am pretty sure that the rich and wealthy. That old money and every capitalist sooner or later will fight bitcoin.

Bitcoin has the plebs, the people and some capitalists (usually not the biggest ones), who understand the game is rigged and they side with BTC ...giving up on any future capitalist privilege in return for saving as much of their capitalist wealth over into the new order imho.

That is how it seems to me.

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

Everyone is can sell their stuff for whatever token they want. I will buy exactly as many tokens from them (e.g. USD) as i need to get their stuff

I will sell my stuff only for the currency i believe in - one that cannot be printed by a capitalist class

So far it seems to work for the last 15 years - not that i offer any services in or for Bitcoin, but i definitely see that option as more and more interesting

The more people opt for it, the harder for capitalists who cant print BTC

@Strypey

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

(1/2)

@serapath
> but the original paper always defined 8 digits after the comma. That wasnt introduced later

I feel like you're working really hard to avoid acknowledging the point here, so I'm just going to restate it;

> the number of tokens has been increased (conceptually but *not technically*)

... because ...

> that money supply limit didn't survive contact with real world use at scale

A flexible money supply is a *feature* of all functional monetary systems, not a bug.

@𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)

This entry was edited (4 weeks ago)

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

Interesting - I would have assumed it is the gas that was sold.

Russia sells so much natural resources, e.g. gas ...and cant or doesnt need to buy equally much from the outside, essentially having an export surplus, just like Germany was a lot of times export world champion and just like china has an export surplus, which means, instead of importing goods and services they have a lot of foreign currency.

So, what else could they have done?

...isnt that natural that this happens?

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

All capitalists have ill gotten gains, all the way back in colonialist times as well, during slavery, during the time of former empires ... old money and the organisations and families that inherited it - it's all tainted and whether it was wars or other atrocities ...its out history and it is what it is.

Now some of those might stash it into BTC, some into other things, but moving into and hence empowering BTC means opting to abandon the capitalist class.

...which isnt the worst

@Strypey

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

(2/2)

One way to get your head around this is to learn about mutual credit systems. The oldest forms of documented exchange. In which credit is issued into existence directly, by the payer, whenever a transaction happens.

The only limits on the growth of the credit supply are;

a) people's willingness to trade their goods and services for credit

b) how much credit people are willing to issue in exchange for them

c) the total goods and services produced by people willing to accept credit

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

It is also possible that people and organistaion actually just drive up demand by buying with legitimate wealth as well.

The main value proposition of BTC, unlike anything else is: nobody can print it, hence no unfair advantage for anyone anymore.

it makes sense for billions to adopt it, because only a miniscule fraction of those billions of people can actually print money.

Those who oppose it usually are relatively close to the money printer and want to defend their privilege imho

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

The wealth that "is being laundered" through it is just regular people doing regular activity, trading with each other without a capitalist class being able to steal the wealth away which makes them cantillionaires a la Elon Musk in the process.

Governments can still raise taxes and track people on the public bitcoin ledger and prosecute them, so governments should be fine, but capitalists are not.

Wich is what is so brilliant 😀

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

After 15 years of price only up:

https://bitcoin.zorinaq.com/price/

Why?
The promise to end banksters and capitalists

It is a "Schelling Point" to end capitalism and the rules are open source and relatively simple compared to any other crypto coin and compared to the nebulous endless rules of any fiat legacy monetary system

We can just start consenting on bitcoin as a better game mechanism, because it cuts out capitalists. yay 😀 thats value

Just like ending slavery added value for slaves

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

That is the thing.

The "armoured divisions" are not necesarry if there is no money printer to be captured.

Its so highly decentralized that it can also not be targeted by armored divisions.

That "question" predates bitcoin and is always true for all systems before bitcoin, because they are all centralized and can hence be captured so need armoured divisions...

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

So you trust into elected governments and I dont.

I can only elect among the shitty options presented, e.g. Biden vs Trump in the USA, or the funny people we have here in the UK or in germany.

I have no influence over those options.

No matter who is elected, nothing changes. Under Obama, all main policies and geopolitics continued regardless of who was running the show.

You get different flavours and narratives, but the budgets still empower the cantillionaires.

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

@strypey

Big Politics. Crony Politicians of all colors... and Old Money private sector. The Lobbyists. Elon Musk & Trump.
Sorros and Biden, they all play golf together. Trump was on Clintons Wedding.

Angela Merkles Husband is in the Board of Axel Springer owned by Friede Springer

...where you look, THESE ARE THE SAME PEOPLE.

THESE ARE THE CAPITALISTS!!! 😁

What will you vote for?
For whom?
Who will change it?

I dont really understan what you are proposing.

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

Flexible money supply is possible, just as inflexible money supply is possible.

The question is not whether it is flexible or inflexible, but rather WHO GETS THE NEW MONEY!!! 🙂

In capitalism, it is the capitalists and always has been. They print hte money and they always have been.

That is how they steal from the people.

Try to buy a house today. Maybe you are a rich capitalists, but my money only works for food and rent and thats it.

Bitcoin only grows and no printing.

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

Agree. Where does that exist?

This makes for essentially everyone issuing their own money.

strypey tokens and serapath tokens, and so on.

So you need to find people who are willing to take this and that until you find a circle where debt clears, like A -> B -> strypey -> serapath -> C -> D -> A

Which is tedious, so you end up with big third parties that trade with everyone to clear - it's banks all over again and now they have control over the money printer again... yay! 😀

@Strypey

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

(1/2)

@serapath
> JamiNT is probably what they got money for and they took it to continue the project and now need to built blockchain stuff as well

If you have any evidence of the Jami team taking funding from blockchain bulls, I'd be keen to see it.

@𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

(2/2)

You seem to be guessing, and I can't help but you notice you seem to do a *lot* of guessing from first principles.

That can be a useful lense, especially for designing thought experiments. But where possible, it's more rigorous to build theory from empirical observations, rather than looking for empirical evidence to fit your first principles theory.

Confirmation bias is a thing.

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

> what if i register strypy first in Jami and pretend to be you? now you cant even get it and ppl will always think i am you

Ironically, this is an argument for a federated system with admins ; ) Which solves the problems JamiNS is trying to solve, by tying ID to a centralised source of truth (DNS).

But there you go : )

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

> They are essentially all securities (unlike bitcoin) and they are all scams

I agree with all of this, except "unlike BitCoin".

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

> The question is not whether it is flexible or inflexible, but rather WHO GETS THE NEW MONEY!!!

Consensus unlocked!

> the capitalists ... print the money and they always have been

This is ahistorical dogma. It's hard to pin down exactly when feudalism was displaced by capitalism, and of course it varies from country to country. But even if we date it from the earliest recorded usage of the word (1872 - https://www.etymonline.com/word/capitalism), money has been issued lots of ways over that time.

capitalism | Etymology of capitalism by etymonline

condition of having capital; from capital (n.1) + -ism. The meaning political/economic… See origin and meaning of capitalism.

^Etymonline

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

(1/?)

@serapath
> The question is not whether it is flexible or inflexible, but rather WHO GETS THE NEW MONEY!!!

Consensus unlocked! Compare;

* Obama's GFC bailouts - new money issued by the state, directly to the banks, with no strings attached

* Biden's COVID recovery bailouts - new money issued by the state, directly to everyone's bank account

In both cases, this increased the reserves of the banks, and their capacity to give loans. But the outcome for everyone else was *very* different

@𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

(2/?)

> the capitalists ... print the money and they always have been

It's hard to pin down exactly when feudalism was displaced by capitalism, and of course it varies from country to country. But even if we date it from the earliest recorded usage of the word (1872 - https://www.etymonline.com/word/capitalism), money has been issued lots of ways over that time, and not always by capitalists.

capitalism | Etymology of capitalism by etymonline

condition of having capital; from capital (n.1) + -ism. The meaning political/economic… See origin and meaning of capitalism.

^Etymonline

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

(3/3)

One example, Keynsian social democratic governments took direct control of money issue after the Great Depression (FDR in the US, Labour parties in the UK and most of the Commonwealth). They used it to build the social welfare societies we now live in the wreckage of.

Capitalists only got it back in the 1970s/80s (Reaganomics, etc), after decades of working on the Powell Meno master plan;

https://www.masterplanpodcast.com

Master Plan | Listen Now

Master Plan, a podcast by The Lever, reveals the gripping inside story of how extremists and tycoons orchestrated a system of legalized corruption in America.

^{www.masterplanpodcast.com}

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

or in the hands of nobody.
in practice it alwaus enriches the capitalists and their politician amigos. they own the media. they control who is even avaipable to vote for and small alternatives are a thrown away vote, so you rather vote for the crappers who are less bad.

thus again, empowering crony capitalists.
politicians and banksters. one money printer is private, the other one public, but none of them ever save the homeless or needy. its shit

bitcoin puts us all in the same boat

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

just to add. its not really changed conceptually.
it always had 21 mio. with 8 digits after the comma.

some ppl who didnt check the details thought its 21mio withput digits behind the comma or maybe jusy 2 digits, but it has always been 8 digits. nothing new.

the co ceptual change happened to those who werent aware because the media just talked about 21 mio.

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

i know how web3 works.
i saw ethereum and others from the inside.
i see how their marketing and devrel works.
the Jami blockchain uses geth, which is ethereum

i saw many open source projects getting bought or hired... which is great, because devs get some money, but the bigger picture is getting scammy web3 more adopted and more ppl will lose money because of it

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

maybe. for me its an argument to just build a good UX around crypto addresses with petnames where you query your web of trust for meta information and annotation to display in your address bar on autocomplete.

in chats i share links, so crypto addrrsses are not a problem, i just copy/paste, but even here, a meta info box based on querying my web of trust can be used and this should work totaly fine.

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey
a security means its controlled by single person or a small group who can significantly influence... or basically steal/rugpull ppl.

this is difficult with bitcoin.

nibody can print and nobody has such a significant control over it to change the value.

ethereum is controlled by the cabal of founders and early investors who control the code and established a culture of constant arbitrary changes.

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

fair enough, but even covid meant lockdowns and killed ppls businesses and jobs.

second. i know many ppl and who got bailed out was everyone with a government job or job in a big corporation.

if you freelanced of self employed or were unemployed or funemployed or student or on job center or anyone else than a big company employee, you got nothing.

if you got something? it qas based on your income. so if you had low income you got little for doing nothing, but a lot when big income

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

those who issued money were always the elites even if you didnt call them capitalists, they were the capitalists and the capitalists were their amigos

its what allowed the initial wealth accumulation. it allowed colonialism to print money to pay ppl to go out & conquer and from then on use that wealth accumulated based on money printing to put tourself closer and closer to eventually become the main money printer 🤷‍♀️

doesnt matter if elites are "left" or "right" ..its bever the ppl

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

the right wing capitalists were taken over by the labour capitalists who built for themselves and had different stories, but the millions of ppl never got the money. they got nice stories and handouts from the "well meaning" elites... so the story goes. 🤷‍♀️

@Strypey

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

(1/2)

@serapath
> Agree. Where does that exist?

LETS, timebanks and other forms of community currencies have been practicing mutual credit all round the world since the 1980s. Digital tech initiatives include;

* Community Exchange: https://www.community-exchange.org/home/ces-upgrade/

* Open Credit Network: https://opencredit.network/2019/03/22/introducing-mutual-credit/

* Credit Commons: https://creditcommonssociety.org/about-the-credit-commons/

* my friend @utunga's Together project: https://togetherproject.nz/

From whom I learned about ...

* Token Engineering Commons: https://tecommons.org/

Token Engineering Commons – Sustainable & Ethical Design for Token Ecosystems

Advancing the field of token engineering in a regenerative way. Stewarding the cultivation of resources to accelerate the creation of robustly engineered models, modular tools, standards and educational opportunities.

^{tecommons.org}

@𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) @utunga

This entry was edited (4 weeks ago)

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

(2/2)

One of our local groups researching and educating about this kind of stuff is Living Economies;

https://www.livingeconomies.nz/

But there's a huge community of people around the word interested in mutual credit. In fact, there has been since the early days of cooperatives. The original (pre-Marx) socialist movement grew out of the mutualism of Proudhon (the "property is theft" guy).

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

> Bitcoin has the plebs, the people and some capitalists (usually not the biggest ones), who understand the game is rigged and they side with BTC ...giving up on any future capitalist privilege in return for saving as much of their capitalist wealth over into the new order imho

Every pyramid scheme has a heroic story it offers to new recruits, as motivation to recruit the next layer of suckers. This is BitCoin's.

As I've been explaining in this thread, this is not the whole story.

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@mlncn @strypey

the rich buy a lot, so its not worse than what we already have, but they trade it in for their ability to print in the future. the class privilege goes away. they are still rich, but in the same class as others - which is a big win.

now its finally possible to compete and slowly chip away at their wealth by building apternative mutual aid and worker coop networks who offer better products and services.

if they spend their coins like they are used to, they will just waste it 😁

@Strypey @benjamin melançon

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

> its finally possible to compete and slowly chip away at their wealth by building apternative mutual aid and worker coop networks

This has always been possible, because all forms of money are backed by the goods and services available in the real economy. BTC adds nothing here except complicated wallet software and exponentially increasing energy usage.

> if they spend their coins like they are used to, they will just waste it

... so BTC is useless as a payment system.

@mlncn

@benjamin melançon

This entry was edited (4 weeks ago)

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

(1/?)

Again, you're hiding in the weeds, so I'll make the point again;

The money supply limit Satoshi built into BitCoin didn't survive contact with real world use at scale.

In the original design, BitCoin was a *payment* system, with 1 token conceptually equivalent to 1USD. Obviously a real world global economy needs more than $12 million; that's not even $1 per person. From memory, Satoshi's white paper said this was an arbitrary limit, chosen for the purposes of a PoC prototype.

@serapath

@𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)

This entry was edited (4 weeks ago)

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

(2/?)

Once BTC started to attract interest as a speculative investment (ie people started gambling on its price going up), the price per token rapidly headed up into the hundreds, then thousands of dollars. At which point 1BTC was no longer useful for its designed purpose; a means of everyday exchange.

So that's when the conceptual shift happened that reframed the Satoshi as the unit of transaction. Effectively growing the token supply by orders of magnitude, *without* changing the blockchain.

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

(3/3)

What this demonstrates is that the money supply needs to grow (and sometimes shrink) in line with the real economy of what it can buy. A fixed money supply is a bug, not a feature. Every experiment with fixed money supplies has confirmed this - *including* BitCoin - since the concept was invented (see @Rushkoff's book Life Inc).

So is it possible to have a system where new money is not issued, by a centralised state, or by capitalists (eg banks)? Yes, again, mutual credit.

@Douglas Rushkoff

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

> i know how web3 works.

I'm not interested in conspiracy theories, and quite frankly, I'm not impressed by the shade you're implicitly throwing on the Jami devs (and by extension the GNU Project), by hinting darkly at purely theoretical funding sources corrupting their dev goals.

Again, if you have any evidence of the Jami team taking funding from blockchain bulls, I'd be keen to see it. Piss or get off the pot, mate.

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

(1/2)

@serapath
> its an argument to just build a good UX around crypto addresses with petnames where you query your web of trust for meta information and annotation to display in your address bar on autocomplete

As with pure P2P, this makes sense in theory, and people have been talking about it for decades. Let me know when there's a PoC I can test. In the meantime, DNS-based IDs and JamiNS seem to be working just fine ; )

@𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

(2/2)

Every time I try to @mention a Nostr address here, I'm reminded how useful human-readable names are.

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

> a security means its controlled by single person or a small group who can significantly influence

Who told you that?

"A security is a tradable financial asset. The term commonly refers to any form of financial instrument, but its legal definition varies by jurisdiction."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_%28finance%29

A security is basically anything people buy that isn't;

* consumable

* real estate, or some other real world asset

* a unit of currency

BTC is none of these, ergo it's a security.

tradable financial asset

^{Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)}

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

(1/2)

@serapath
> even covid meant lockdowns and killed ppls businesses and jobs

Yes. Which is why some kind of bailout was necessary. Aren't you glad it didn't all get given straight to the banks again, as Obama did, and Orange Stalin would have done if he'd actually won in 2020?

In case it wasn't clear, my argument is *not* that the pandemic was good for the economy, so we should have more of them. It very much wasn't, and even it is was, I'm not a sociopath ... nor a utilitarian ; )

@𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)

This entry was edited (4 weeks ago)

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

(2/2)

@serapath
> who got bailed out was everyone with a government job or job in a big corporation

Again, where do you get this stuff? Have a look at the 'Key Elements' section here;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Rescue_Plan_Act_of_2021

Money was sprinkled out via a wide range of mechanisms, to get as much of it as possible to the bottom of the stack. Decades of "trickle-down" and "deregulation" make it fiendishly difficult to avoid the money pumps that suck it up to the 1%. But the Biden administration did their best.

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

I'm not even sure what you're talking about with this one. Maybe try fewer replies, with more time and thought put into each?

Otherwise we might as well train a couple of Markov bots on our posting histories, and let them sling key messages at each other ; )

This entry was edited (4 weeks ago)

Forbearance 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey nah bro they have like a Howie test and shit, real estate can be "a security", the naming rights to my butt can be "not a security" and "uncalled for".

@Strypey

sj_zero 4 weeks ago • pleroma (AP)

This whole conversation is very strange... "Capitalist" this, "Capitalist" that, but then "Money printer"

The capitalist can't really print money. They can print disney dollars or tokens in your favorite monetized video game, but those things aren't really currency, just pre-purchased merchandise, an agreement between you and one other vendor. The only entity that can print money That's the state, which is not part of a capitalist system by definition.

Even when the state "participates in capitalism", it's like a planet or a sun -- it warps the space around it, becoming a gravity well. It becomes a new point of reference sucking in and modifying everything around it.

Now you might argue that banks print money because of fractional reserve banking.

Who do you think allows such a strange system to exist? Who made it the basis of the whole monetary system?

That isn't to say that totally hands off capitalism would be utopian or perfect, but very often I see people blaming capitalism for an omnipresent state which intervenes in markets constantly such that you can always feel the pull of its gravity well.

I realized recently that bitcoin's fundamental design is broken, and it will never become the universal money standard people think it will. its fixed volume is part of the problem. If you'll only ever have 21 million of a thing (split up into satoshis), then eventually all the bitcoin that have ever existed will exist, and every time more things can be bought with bitcoin (compared to the basically nothing you can buy now other than fiat currency) each satoshi becomes more and more valuable, so where the problem with the money printer is that it pulls value out of the currency that exists and puts it elsewhere (usually in the state's hands because gravity well), in the case of bitcoin it pulls the value out of the things being bought and put it in the existing currency, so as the economy grows the value of your satoshis grow, and you have ultimately the same problem except instead of the money printers having disproportionate buying power, it's the money havers having disproportionate buying power.

That said, I think crypto could nonetheless be the answer. The ideal would be to have some sort of intelligent daemon who would look at the things being bought and sold with the currency you have and exactly shrink or grow the money supply to keep the relative value of each unit the same. What better daemon than an algorithm everyone agrees upon by downloading a piece of open source software?

So how do you solve the second problem? I think it's by being careful about where the new money supply goes or is taken from. I'm imagining that during times of market cap growth the miners and the users (those who are buying and selling with the currency, not just holding it) would get a little bonus, not a huge amount per transaction but enough to grow the overall supply. When the market cap of the currency falls, you'd have fees go up a bit and the extra be destroyed -- not a huge amount per transaction, but enough to shrink the overall supply.

Unfortunately, such a design has a major problem is it doesn't give people a chance to get insanely wealthy through just grabbing a thousand bitcoin back in 2008 for a few pennies, and it doesn't give the state the chance to get insanely wealthy through just printing so much money everyone becomes poor except them. Its strength as a currency would ultimately be why nobody would feel like championing it.

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

(1/?)

@sj_zero
> The only entity that can print money That's the state, which is not part of a capitalist system by definition

Bwaaahahahaha, good one *slaps thigh and wipes tears from face*.
@serapath @mlncn

A series of photos of J. K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson from the Spiderman films. First laughing uproariously, then looking serious with the text "wait, are you serious", then laughing again.

@benjamin melançon @sj_zero @𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)

This entry was edited (4 weeks ago)

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

(2/?)

@sj_zero
> very often I see people blaming capitalism for an omnipresent state which intervenes in markets constantly such that you can always feel the pull of its gravity well

You mean like enforcing property rights, without which no capitalist system could exist?

> I realized recently that bitcoin's fundamental design is broken, and it will never become the universal money standard people think it will. its fixed volume is part of the problem

We do agree on this.
@serapath @mlncn

@benjamin melançon @sj_zero @𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)

This entry was edited (4 weeks ago)

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

(3/?)

@sj_zero
> the problem with the money printer is that it pulls value out of the currency

This is an odd sentence. A currency is just a representation of the goods and services that can be produced in the economy that issues it. You can't pull value out of it, any more than you can pull length out of metres.

> that exists and puts it elsewhere ... usually in the state's hands

Where it can be used to fund common infrastructure and public services. Or weapons and other corporate welfare 🤷‍♂️

This entry was edited (4 weeks ago)

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

(4/?)

@sj_zero
> What better daemon than an algorithm everyone agrees upon by downloading a piece of open source software?

I don't know, a democratically elected body maybe? But if you hear of a PoC for an automated system that can extinguish excessive currency units and fund common goods (ie automate taxation and public spending), I'd be keen to learn about it.

As for the comment about the state getting wealthy at everyone else's expense, see post 1 ; ) Honestly, where do you get this shit?

This entry was edited (4 weeks ago)

sj_zero 4 weeks ago • pleroma (AP)

Capitalism is the private ownership and control of capital, free trade, lacking barriers. Once the state starts micro-managing, that's not capitalism anymore. It's something else. Maybe overall the market is more or less capitalist overall, but the state micro-managing markets is definitionally not capitalist.

You can laugh all you want, but it's an important distinction to make. Our problem today is an omnipresent state that is overbearing into every nanometer of our lives. If people get rich off of that, it's just the state rewarding its pawns.

As for the state enforcing property rights, that's part of the problem of pure capitalism, that it can't actually exist because at some point you need to enforce property rights or contracts and the state needs to step in, and every step away from the ideal puts you onto that spectrum. When you get to half the economy being the state and the other half being pawns of the state like we've got, you're well past capitalism, and you can laugh and laugh, but I'll still be correct. I'd be like saying the thing you hate most about fencing is getting shot. If you're getting shot then you're not fencing anymore. "Oh, but I always get shot while fencing, you just don't know what fencing is!"

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@sj_zero
> Our problem today is an omnipresent state that is overbearing into every nanometer of our lives. If people get rich off of that, it's just the state rewarding its pawns

This is fantasy. Substitute "corporation" for "state" and you pretty much nail it.

State power has been in decline in anglophone countries since the 1970s, with the exception of military flailing. Which is a combo of military Keynsianism, resource grabs, and policing action, all on behalf of corprorations.
@serapath

@sj_zero @𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@sj_zero
You can redefine "capitalism" to exclude all the bad stuff observable in Actually Existing Capitalism, just as the tankies can redefine "communism" to exclude all the bad stuff observable in Actually Existing Communism. But some wise person once said something along the lines of;

Philosophers have described the world. The point is to change it.

@serapath

@sj_zero @𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey
Okay. fair enough.

I am german and i did explore the german landscape a lot. They have many so called "Regiogeld" initiatives and they also exist since forever, but they all have in common that they dont really work.

They are a nice gesture, a nice symbol, a nice experiment, something with a passiomate community, but most of them are less active now than in the past and the members are mostly old.

We can discuss their differences and why they did not get to the masses, but...

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

Its not a pyramid scheme.

Bitcoin endgame is to stay in BTC and if critical adoption happens this is possible.

Bitcoin adoption is the largest of ALL the blockchains and all the mutual credit networks and everything in between.

A pyramid scheme is one that collapses when it gets too big, because the last joiners cant find anyone anymore who they can scam.

I dont see why that would fit bitcoin.

bitcoin payments work and the rules guarantee no inflation. the game value proposition

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey @mlncn

No, this is NOT true.
It is impossible if the capitalists have money printers.

if you earn loads of money with your new apternative system of producing goods and services, then the capitalists just print money and buy you dry.

They hire everyone available and pay them printed money to make what you make and offer it for free, so you cant compete.

You have to sell to earn, but they print.

you always lose

@Strypey @benjamin melançon

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey @Rushkoff

That is not true.

I follow bitcoin since 2011.
Back then, before any of web3 and the ceypto craze... before any vinklevoss ever bought any tokens, there wqs already 21 mio with 8ndigits after the comma.

ppl bought pizzas for 10k bitcion, clearly less than 1 USD and the story back then was already that hypothetically, if bitcoin ever became mainstream, its price would become enormous, so basically an economy based on deflation per design.

@Strypey @Douglas Rushkoff

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

i dont k ow anything about the jami devs.

i do see its connected to ethereum/web3 though.
i do know a lot about ethereum/web3, but yeah - i understand that this alone might not help.

Just mentiined my opinion, but i get your point

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

There is a twst called the "Howie" test to define what a security is

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

what we need is a universal basic income for every person. All newly printed money should go into the economy through that.

That would be worth something.

This will never happen, so bitcoin and its deflationary economy is the second best. ...new value goes to every holder all the time because of deflation ... thats as close as we get i guess

@Strypey

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

> what we need is a universal basic income for every person

Consensus unlocked, again! Twice in one day, we're on a roll, despite my occasional grumpiness : P

UBI is an essential part of a major shift where we complete the democratic revolution, by democratising economies. UBI gives every person a weekly share of votes in what society invests its resources in, and frees us up to make uncoerced choices about what to invest our labour in.

> This will never happen

Never say never ...

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

> There is a twst called the "Howie" test to define what a security is

Ah, that's what the troll meant ; )

Go ahead and finish your point. Give me a sentence or two about what the Howie Test is and where it comes from, and tell me what you think it tells us about BitCoin.

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

> i do see its connected to ethereum/web3 though

What you *see* is that they've used tech derived from a version of the Ethereum blockchain. The rest is all your interpretation.

And this was my point. It's very important to be clear - in your own mind and in communicating a line of argument - when you're reporting facts and when your editorialising about how you interpret them.

*Especially* when you're commenting on other people's motives and ethics.

This entry was edited (4 weeks ago)

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

(1/?)

@serapath
You're really allergic to this point, and I get why. It's the single chain that holds the whole BitCoin story together. If you accept that a fixed money supply doesn't work, and can't work, you'll have to refactor a big chunk of your worldview from the ground up.

I fight like hell to avoid that, and obviously you will too. I expect to have to hammer this point home dozens of different ways before you're convinced.

This is why I said on day 1 this would take months ; )

@𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

(2/?)

@serapath
> there wqs already 21 mio with 8ndigits after the comma

I'm not sure how to say this any more clearly. Yes, the *tech* has not changed.

> ppl bought pizzas for 10k bitcion, clearly less than 1 USD

True. What I said was not BTC was worth $1, but;

> BitCoin was a *payment* system, with 1 token conceptually equivalent to 1USD

Note the word "conceptually", it's doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Remember the context too. I'm talking about the design notes in the white paper.

This entry was edited (4 weeks ago)

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

(3/?)

> the story back then was already that hypothetically, if bitcoin ever became mainstream, its price would become enormous

Well yes. Anyone who thinks about a desired commodity with a fixed supply, and hasn't been sniffing airplane glue for months, is going to come to that conclusion.

I don't remember anyone thinking about a Satoshi or giving it a name. There was just a vague notion of chopping token into smaller bits, or creating derivatives of them.

This entry was edited (4 weeks ago)

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

(4/4)

Remember, this was post-GFC, anything seemed possible, and most people had gone quite mad. Me for example, in 2011/12 I was living in and visiting a series of public squares and parks, where people had set up camp for months, and spent all day debating politics over copious cups on tea and breaking bread ; )

Anyway, if you think I'm wrong about Satoshi's design goals, there a simple solution; go back to the primary source. Reread the white paper and quote the relevant bits.

This entry was edited (4 weeks ago)

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

Ughh ... what?

We live in an international system of interlocking institutions. Some of them with hundreds of years of history feeding into their structures and the relationships between them. All of it covering hundreds of countries with states and thousands of nations, each with its own internal class and caste systems.

You're reducing the entire thing down to 'capitalists have magic money tree'.

I'm really not sure how to engage with this. @mlncn? You got anything?

@benjamin melançon

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

(1/?)

> Its not a pyramid scheme

> I dont see why that would fit bitcoin

That's what everyone who tries to get me to buy into a pyramid scheme tells me. Theirs is always the one that's different, even though it has the two primary qualities;

* the investment has no actual product or service

* the value of the investment grows to the degree that people have confidence it will, and keep buying in

> bitcoin payments work

For what? Other than that 10,000BTC pizza and a few other such stunts?

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

(2/?)

> the rules guarantee no inflation

Clearly you still don't understand what inflation is, why it happens, or the various theories about mitigating it. A fixed money supply only guarantees no inflation because it guarantees no functional monetary economy.

We've talked about this in a number of branches of the thread. For future reference, mostly linear threads are much more navigable when you want to refresh your memory of the discussion.

> the game value proposition

The what now?

Forbearance 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey @utunga when are we getting money where we issue it to do good stuff and not make rich people rich?

@Strypey @utunga

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@Forbearance
> when are we getting money where we issue it to do good stuff and not make rich people rich?

Since all money is ultimately backed by networks of social agreements, I guess when we agree to?

@serapath @utunga

@Forbearance @𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) @utunga

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

The togetherproject from @utunga seems to be in development status based on how the website sounds.

Token Engineering Commons is Blockchain/web3 ...more specifically Ethereum, hence we are back to blockchains.

cadCad is a project from the ethereum world and it is used for token bonding curves and it all circles back into web3.

web3 is backed by the typical investors which own it all and they cover every style, vibe and wording to get maximum adoption of web3 which they control🤷‍♀️

@Strypey @utunga

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

(1/?)

@sj_zero
> Here's a graph of state spending as % of gdp for several countries

What this tells me is that state spending was very low in the 19th century. A famously awful time to be alive for everyone but the very wealthiest, and whose political-economic systems set up the conditions for 2 catastrophic world wars.

Also that spending spiked in the 1920s and 1950s, when government spending dug their countries out of the holes those wars had left them in. Particularly the UK.
@serapath

@sj_zero @𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

(2/?)

Your graph also shows me that after those wars, people realised that the 1800s way of doing political economy was really shit, and we needed to do something different. So social democratic parties, formed by workers and the unions they were organized in, won elections in pretty much all these states, and set about doing different.

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

(3/?)

They increased taxes on wealth, particularly on corporations, and spent public money on common infrastructure and social services. What followed was about 50 years of rising living standards, increased literacy, technological innovation, *and* economic growth.

It's hard for us to comprehend just how much this changed life for the average Jo, because even after 50 years of aggressive dismantling, we're still getting some of the benefits.

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

(4/4)

Which brings me to what your graph *doesn't* tell us, which is what proportion of the state spending in each trend line is spent on social welfare, and how much is corporate welfare. Because although the rise in spending relative to GDP tails off in the late 1970s/ early 1980s, corporate welfare massively increases. So social spending and public infrastructure spending tanks.

Which is why we're now surrounded by rotting infrastructure, and homeless people with untreated health problems.

This entry was edited (4 weeks ago)

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

> They are a nice gesture, a nice symbol, a nice experiment, something with a passionate community, but most of them are less active now than in the past and the members are mostly old.

Sure, if you choose the right criteria you can frame anything as a failure. Whether they still exist, and regardless of how many people participated, they led to real world trades that wouldn't have otherwise happened. How many real world trades has BTC facilitated, not including the infamous pizza?

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey @sj_zero @mlncn

whilenso far i agree with @strypey on everything, seeing technology get cheaper year after year wirhout the world collapsing. deflation being a threat is a justifying myth by the capitalist money printing class.

imagine working and earning bitcoin, and then losijg a job. ...if one lives frugal, the money brings one way further, because bitcoin always gets more valuable. its like a savings account. perfect.

why would that be a problem apart from capitalist saying so?

@Strypey @benjamin melançon @sj_zero

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

yes, i 100% agree with that, but how to get there if ever

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

Its complicated, but my understanding in a nutshell is, that if something is controlled by a single person or small group so that their qctions can significantly influence the value, then it is a security.

If no small group or single person can influence the value significantly, then it is not a security.

so far, afaik, the SEC only gave the non-security status to bitcoin

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

there are blockchain frameworks, such as "substrate" or the "cosmos sdk".

There are also very minimalist blockchains to fork and build off, for example "handshake", which is even doing something in the direction of jami.

So building off of "geth" is very surprising.

But yes, maybe they literally just forked it🤷‍♀️

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

it wasnt like that for me and i dont know where that was written.

Anyway, i think i slowly understand what you are trying to say - basically:

If the supply of money was fixed, prices would come down (deflation) and at some point things would need to be priced in tinier and tinier fractions, thus 21 mio, even with 8 digits after the comma would not be enough.

Fair point. That is theoretically and eventually practically true, and i dont think anyone would disagree here, BUT 🙂 ...

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

yeah i did.
the 8 digits after the comma were always there.
in 2011 i was camping for weeks and months in front of the central bank participating in the occupy movement, but bitcoin was mostly unheard of by the vast majority of participants sadly. ...so it was hard to discuss bitcoin ...not that i was very familiar with it back then, but i noticed its existence 🙂

@Strypey

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey @mlncn

institutions come and go.
they have in common to have ppl working for them getting paid.

money makes and breaks them.
its at the root of everything.

capitalists control the printer and can decide who gwts funded and who gwta defunded.

having ppl donating enough is tough

@Strypey @benjamin melançon

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey @Forbearance @utunga how?

bitcoin is that?
whats the better alternative and how do we get there?

@Strypey @Forbearance @utunga

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@strypey

I mean.
I never heard of what you linked even though it exists for a long time and i did look i to those regional and custom currencies.

BTC is known worldwide. Its in the mainstream news, over and over. Highest politicians talk about it. Black Rock and other large investment funds buy it. Heads of states talk about it. Niche, but Swiss/zug, El Salvador, several other countries are making use of it. It grows for 15 years straight to now again all time high.

On top of that...

@Strypey

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

> so far, afaik, the SEC only gave the non-security status to bitcoin

I know I said I'd be pausing all replies on this topic after yesterday, until the end of summer, and I will be. But I thought this was worth sharing, as an example of concerns at least one SEC commissioner had about BTC trading in Jan this year;

https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/speeches-statements/crenshaw-statement-spot-bitcoin-011023

I'll leave you with that for now.

SEC.gov | Statement Dissenting from Approval of Proposed Rule Changes to List and Trade Spot Bitcoin Exchange-Traded Products

Statement Dissenting from Approval of Proposed Rule Changes to List and Trade Spot Bitcoin Exchange-Traded Products Commissioner Caroline A. Crenshaw January 10, 2024

^www.sec.gov

Strypey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

If anyone can look at the unaccountable power of BorgSoft;

https://m.economictimes.com/tech/technology/microsoft-faces-wide-ranging-us-antitrust-probe/articleshow/115750648.cms

... or Goggle;

https://www.theverge.com/23869483/us-v-google-search-antitrust-case-updates

... or grApple;

https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/commission-sends-preliminary-findings-apple-and-opens-additional-non-compliance-investigation-2024-06-24_en

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-apple-monopolizing-smartphone-markets

... or FarceBook;

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2021/08/ftc-alleges-facebook-resorted-illegal-buy-or-bury-scheme-crush-competition-after-string-failed

... or scAmazon;

https://www.npr.org/2023/09/26/1191099421/amazon-ftc-lawsuit-antitrust-monopoly

... or the global power TenCent, ByteDance, Alibaba and Baidu give the CCP, and conclude that the institution that should be anarchist enemy #1 is still states and not corporations ... I don't know what to tell you.

Justice Department Sues Apple for Monopolizing Smartphone Markets

The Justice Department, joined by 16 other state and district attorneys general, filed a civil antitrust lawsuit against Apple for monopolization or attempted monopolization of smartphone markets in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act.

^{www.justice.gov}

Laffy 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

Judge Mehta: Pardoning Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes for Capitol riot plot would be 'frightening' https://apnews.com/article/oath-keepers-stewart-rhodes-judge-amit-mehta-d2a498d980bc9fa3186e1072a94c0dad

Laffy 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

He's toxic as hell

Leather Cub Andrew Aû 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

and he looks like a James Bond villain @_L1vY_

@Mother Bones

unusual_whales 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

Two days ago vs today

#news #finance #economics #stocks #options

#Finance #News #Stocks #Economics #options

unusual_whales 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

I'm building the most robust tools for trading at Unusual Whales.

You can follow along on site.

See more: https://t.co/F4eY8aRYjU

#news #finance #economics #stocks #options

Stock Heatmaps

The unusualwhales.com heatmaps to see p/c ratios, stock changes during the day, and more.

^t.co

#Finance #News #Stocks #Economics #options

Laffy 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

Several people are dead and about 60 others injured after a vehicle plowed into a Christmas market in #Germany, U.S. law enforcement sources said. A suspect has been arrested in the attack, the U.S. sources said https://abcnews.go.com/International/car-drives-crowd-christmas-market-germany-police/story?id=116997093&cid=social_twitter_abcn

#germany

MJ Muse 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

#WeCanEndGunViolence #BanAssaultWeapons

#banassaultweapons #wecanendgunviolence

your auntifa liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

you need to add denied health care by insurance companies

djsundog 4 weeks ago • akkoma (AP)

so this morning after the airship fell off the bed of the printer the printer also decided to lose its mind - well, its connection to the microcontroller over the canbus connections it uses for such (the extruder has a separate microcontroller, mcu1). after attempting to come up with a way to fix it through the magic of having root on the armbian-based host controller I said fuck it, emailed support with the error, and proceeded to track down a way to reinstall the firmware, thinking maybe our minor hackery so far had fubared something.

I found the update and did it, and eventually it took (I had to hard power reset the machine three times in a row after installing it for it to pick up all the hardware properly again. I gave up after two resets at least once and started over again.)

but later on today I realized the printer was still accessible over our zerotier network and we still had root access, so it didn’t overwrite the firmware but merely reinstalled their application stack.

so, beware - I currently don’t know of an official way to absolutely fully reset an #OrangeStorm Giga, should you hose the OS.

#orangestorm

Kim Possible 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

These Healthy Choice entrees aren't too bad if you melt some cheese on top and add pepperoni.

Mary Hilton 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

Honey on a bunny

#AltElfOnTheShelf
#HashtagGames

#HashtagGames #altelfontheshelf

This entry was edited (4 weeks ago)

djsundog 4 weeks ago • akkoma (AP)

a line of Types of Guy action figures that are just the right size for a blahaj to tear them to shreds before consuming them.

Loungagna 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

The US Presidency is now a Throuple of white men (Trumpler, Musked, Vancesh) who swear they are not gay. #USPolitics #PresidentMusk

#USPolitics #presidentmusk

Lety Does Stuff 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

So it turns out that if you don't ice skate for over a decade, it doesn't just come back to you once you're on the ice like how riding a bike does

Lety Does Stuff 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@GummyNerds Lmao you don't even follow me and no one's engaged with this toot yet, what keyword in this post are you even subscribed to???

@GummyNerds

Lety Does Stuff 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@GummyNerds That's very mean. I hope your day only gets better from here.

@GummyNerds

Elsa & Balou 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

Den wunderbaren, herzerwärmenden Film "Der kleine Lord" sehen und genießen
und dann mittendrin die Meldung aus Magdeburg. 🖤

Was für eine Welt...

Magdeburg 🖤 🕯️

Das Foto zeigt eine gelbe, brennende Kerze.

Mac 🌼 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

Einfach nur schrecklich 💔

Staff Chief of Joints 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

Chapstick of unknown provenance.

KanaMauna 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

Treasures you don’t want to loot.

Kim Perales 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

“The suspected perp in the German Christmas market attack is an “AfD fan & likes Elon Musk,” per @derspiegel’s national security reporter.”
-M Weiss

Es ist ziemlich schlimm - und offenbar ganz anders als die rechtspopulistische Bubble schon mal verbreitet. Der mutmaßliche Täter ist AfD-Fan und findet Elon Musk gut.

“It's pretty bad -&apparently completely different from what the RW populist bubble has already spread. The alleged perpetrator is an AfD fan & likes Elon #Musk.” *Transl
-F Schmid

#Musk

Its Not A Hoax ☑️ 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

Gee, What a coincidence.

INTERIM REPORT
ON THE FAILURES AND POLITICIZATION OF THE JANUARY 6TH SELECT COMMITTEE
https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:US:4b2b4679-1b3b-48e1-bbd0-0941fc3cd359

LETTER FROM JAN6 COMMITTEE TO REP. LOUDERMILK
https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:US:c0340dc9-9bd6-43bf-8c5e-14e1a42e2fa1

This entry was edited (4 weeks ago)

Brian Jopek 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

And they both love Nazis.
#Assholes

#assholes

2 people reshared this

Schadenfreude 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

Has anyone done Snoop on the Stoop?

#ThisIsReal
#AltElfOnTheShelf
#12DaysOfChristmas
#HashTagGames
#HashTagGame

#HashtagGames #12daysofchristmas #HashtagGame #altelfontheshelf #thisisreal

This Account Kills Fascists 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

My friend got one in the mail randomly. It was part of an attempted scam by someone in China. He also received human hair. It was weird.

Europe Says 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

https://www.europesays.com/1704437/ Cyprus may lose its citrus trees after alien bug found #cyprus

cover Cyprus may lose its citrus trees after alien bug found

Cyprus may lose its citrus trees after alien bug found - EUROPE SAYS

Cyprus’ citrus trees may be wiped out if a sap-sucking bug thought to have found its way to

^{EUROPE SAYS (EUROPESAYS.COM)}

#cyprus

Europe Says 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

https://www.europesays.com/1704434/ Belarus admits over 130,000 Ukrainian citizens since 2024 year-start #belarus

#Belarus

Europe Says 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

https://www.europesays.com/1704429/ Better Quantum Computing Stock: Alphabet vs. IonQ #Data

Better Quantum Computing Stock: Alphabet vs. IonQ - EUROPE SAYS

Breakthroughs in quantum computing have shares of Alphabet and IonQ soaring as of late. One pocket of the

^{EUROPE SAYS (EUROPESAYS.COM)}

#data

Kim Ilbery 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

Don't worry, the neighborhood watch is on patrol!

#Cats #CatsOfMastodon #Friday #nosy

Gray cat sitting with face in the window on the back of the couch, watching... Nothing

#cats #friday #catsOfMastodon #nosy

Kim Ilbery 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@Voline @ahimsa_pdx ..or the neighbor, walking their DOG! 🤣

@Voline @ahimsa

Stop That 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

I mean, I’m not seeing the problem here 💅🏽

Luigi Mangione Prosecutors Have a Jury Problem: 'So Much Sympathy'

https://www.newsweek.com/luigi-mangione-jury-sympathy-former-prosecutor-alvin-bragg-terrorism-new-york-brian-thompson-2002626

Luigi Mangione Prosecutors Have a Jury Problem: 'So Much Sympathy'

A former prosecutor has said he has never seen so much sympathy for a person accused of murder.

^{Sean O'Driscoll (Newsweek)}

2xfo 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

Um, yeah. Lol. They're his peers and they've all been victimized by the same companies. That's why we have juries decide these things instead of magistrates.

Colin from Edinburgh, Oklahoma 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

The Pope has so far given no answer about Luigi being accepted as a new saint, saying that discussions are ongoing.

Norcal Gma 2 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

While we were watching the sun set I told Summer we are going to have to keep a close eye on her pal. His temperature has been going up all day.
This always happens on the weekend.
I feel bad for him.
Now, I have to figure out how to wrangle some antibiotics.
Summer says we got this.
I hope so.
#Sunset

Cloudy sky with dark blue clouds. Gold where the sun is closer to the horizon. Fog just forming in the valley. Dark tree tops at the bottom.

#sunset

3 comments - Show more

Norcal Gma 2 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@cobalt
It is always a weekend. We will probably end up at the emergency room.
I hope the migraine gets better soon.

@cobalt

cobalt 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

That’s what my worry is too. If we went to ER here and Drew needed antibiotics, they could prescribe antibiotics but not give any. Possibly a shot but then you’re on your own to fill a prescription. I just hope for you both it’s not anything serious - but that’s pretty iffy. Think of you all.

fc 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

#AlternateFridayMusic
Dec 20 2024
 The prompt is Zen

Deep Space Network, “Zenn La” from Big Rooms, 1993

Deep Space Network was formed in Germany by David Moufang and Jonas Grossman, released in Germany in ’93 on their own Source Records label, and in ’94 in the US by Instinct Ambient. Oh, how I used to DEVOUR those instinct releases…

Zenn La, the opening track of their first release, provides their perfect entry point. A trippy spoken passage welcomes you as calm waves of #synth guide you through the rhythmic threshold where the melody widens before you, with audio references to the natural world grounding the journey throughout.

This track isn’t formless #ambient, nor hyper-beat #IDM, but lovely, even soulful, true #ChillOut music.

Go on, start it up...let the spoken intro adjust your mind, then relax and let the music take you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJcLEmbW790

#GermanMusic #ElectroniMusic #90s #90sMusic

ZENN LA ~ Deep Space Network

from album Big Rooms ( 1994 )© Instinct Records

^YouTube

#ambient #synth #90s #90smusic #chillout #idm #alternatefridaymusic #germanmusic #electronimusic

This entry was edited (4 weeks ago)

בנימין (Alex) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

Join in the biweekly #AlternateFridayMusic by @MarkIngs tomorrow.

The word for Dec 20 is "Zen"

Post and tell us about a song with a title, lyric, theme or meaning related to the word.

Upcoming biweekly words are:
Jan 03 #Asylum
Jan 17 #Battery

Also, Join us next week for #FortnightFridayMusic

Upcoming biweekly words are:
Dec 27 #Answer
Jan 10 #Zoo

Pestering poke 😼:
@dgar @Bishopjoey @AqiDrago @alfvaen

At the top is the group: AlternateFridayMusic
At the bottom is the date: Dec. 20
In the middle is the theme: Zen

#Battery #zoo #Asylum #Answer #fortnightfridaymusic #alternatefridaymusic @Bishop Joey (he/him) @MIngs🇦🇺 @Aaron V. Humphrey @Dgar @Aqi Drago

Aaron V. Humphrey 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

#AlternateFridayMusic for December 20 2024, the word is Zen

Artist: Ann Mortifee
Album: Born To Live (1983)
Song: Never Ending Search

I serve an unknown master in whom I don't believe
I wear a flaming eightfold wheel branded on my sleeve
I bow before a hidden throne I never will perceive
I seem to answer questions which I cannot conceive

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PE0bucawXjM

Ann Mortifee was born in South Africa and moved to Canada, and she is a powerful soprano singer. One of the first artists I saw live, and I loved her "Born To Live" and Journey To Kairos" albums as a kid.

I'm not sure if this song's lyrics are zen, but they feel vaguely Buddhist, at least.

#music #AnnMortifee

Never Ending Search

Provided to YouTube by CDBabyNever Ending Search · Ann MortifeeBorn to Live℗ 1983 Jabula RecordsReleased on: 1983-01-01Auto-generated by YouTube.

^YouTube

#music #alternatefridaymusic #annmortifee

Free Leonard Peltier 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

Can we just deport #Musk and be done with it already? We do have an immigrant problem, and he's an illegal immigrant from South Africa and they can have him back, like yesterday? Pretty sure this is a widely held opinion.
#NoMoreElmo
#ElonSmukMuskGo
#MakeLikeaSmukandJustSneakOut??
#muskmelon

#Musk #muskmelon #nomoreelmo #elonsmukmuskgo #makelikeasmukandjustsneakout

aburtch 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@_L1vY_ Don’t worry, as soon as he gets more press for being the “President Musk”, Trump will tire of it and boot him out for stealing the limelight.

@Mother Bones

Leather Cub Andrew Aû 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@aburtch you know... Kyle Kulinski from Secular Talk actually said something along the lines of never expecting to say it, but he wishes that Trump would fight Musk and kick him out

Who knows what will happen... but for now I think Trump is biding his time getting money from Musk for favors... what happens next, who knows... but there's still plenty of quid pro quo going on...

@goatrodeo @_L1vY_

@Mother Bones @aburtch @Free Leonard Peltier

Ham on Wry 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

Dominatrix Kitty in the litter box.

#AltElfOnTheShelf
#12DaysOfChristmas
#HashtagGames
#ai #aiart

#ai #aiart #HashtagGames #12daysofchristmas #altelfontheshelf

This entry was edited (4 weeks ago)

Littles 😈 Verified by the Boss 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

Did Mistress Kitty give you permission to say she is in the litter box?

Sue Stone 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

Senate confirms 235th Joe Biden judge, surpasses Donald Trump record

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5051917-biden-judges-trump-record/

DB 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

One positive piece of news

unusual_whales 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

US November core PCE +2.8% y/y vs +2.9% expected

#news #finance #economics #stocks #options

#Finance #News #Stocks #Economics #options

unusual_whales 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

The Commerce Department reported on Friday that the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) index rose 0.1% in November and 2.4% on a year-over-year basis.

Read more: https://t.co/v5noWPL7Ri

#news #finance #economics #stocks #options

#Finance #News #Stocks #Economics #options

Sue Stone 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

Elon Musk is becoming a one-man rogue state – it’s time we reined him in | Alexander Hurst | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/dec/20/elon-musk-is-becoming-a-one-man-rogue-state-its-time-we-reined-him-in

Elon Musk is becoming a one-man rogue state – it’s time we reined him in

He has bankrolled elections, stoked riots and ignored laws. We mustn’t make the mistake of playing nice with the world’s richest bully, says Guardian Europe columnist Alexander Hurst

^{Alexander Hurst (The Guardian)}

Sam 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

I'm looking to self-host an #RSS reader. What's a good solution for both podcasts and news? Is there an android app/webapp out there that handles both well?

#RSS

8 comments - Show more

Drikanis 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

maybe not exactly what you are looking for, but I use FreshRSS and Audiobookshelf. Audiobookshelf provides RSS feeds for your subscriptions so you can add them in FreshRSS pretty easily, and the feed items have embedded players so you can play the podcast directly from the feed (though I prefer to use audiobookshelfs dedicated app on mobile instead).

I think there are android apps that work with FreshRSS through the Fever API, but I found that the web app works just fine on mobile as is.

Sam 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@drikanis I think I'll likely end up doing something similar. Just finished setting up audiobookshelf and I quite like it so far.

@Drikanis

Alex Markley :mbetv: 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

I haven’t tried it, but apparently you can directly follow RSS feeds using #friendica ? https://friendi.ca/

#Friendica

Nonya Bidniss :CIAverified: 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

Content warning: Musk tweet

#scotus

4 comments - Show more

Sharon 🤦🏾‍♀️ Persists 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

Content warning: re: Musk tweet

@Mother Bones

Eli Wallach's favorite Bass 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

Content warning: re: Musk tweet

@Mother Bones @Sharon 🤦🏾‍♀️ Persists

Scott Williams 🐧 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

The more you look at it, the worse it gets.

#programming #meme

#programming #meme

Pomegranate County Irregulars 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

Egads!!!

Jack Yan (甄爵恩) 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

Dad felt that Die Hard more accurately referred to Aleksandr Borisovich Godunov’s character given what he goes through here! #FridayThrillerClub

#fridaythrillerclub

Clark W. Griswold #resist 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

My brother-in-law (and all the rest of our family) absolutely love #NationalLampoons #ChristmasVacation. His sister made him these cookies. They are art. Amazing. I’m totally jealous.
#baking #cookies #christmas

Photo of a spread of cookies each individually made in different shapes. The car, the RV, the bathing suit. And some of the funnier lines. Amazing

#cookies #Christmas #baking #nationallampoons #christmasvacation

cobalt reshared this.

Clark W. Griswold #resist 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

@revndm @blogdiva @steggy has a T-shirt that says “Why is the floor all wet, Todd?” And my matching shirt says “I don’t know, Margo!”

@Katrine @your auntifa liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦 @Rev NDM 🏳️‍🌈 Ⓥ 🧦☮️

Bradley Scott 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

#FridayThrillerClub My sister and her family went out to California a few years back. My brother in law sent me a picture of Nakatomi Tower when they were driving by it. It was so cool to see it like that.

#fridaythrillerclub

Ray*mond Li*terally 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

Carp on a harp

#AltElfOnTheShelf
#12DaysOfChristmas
#HashtagGames

#HashtagGames #12daysofchristmas #altelfontheshelf

Sue Stone 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

US lifts $10m bounty on HTS leader after talks in Syrian capital | Syria | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/20/us-lifts-10m-bounty-on-hts-leader-ahmed-al-sharaa-syria-talks

US lifts $10m bounty on HTS leader after talks in Syrian capital

In face-to-face meeting, Ahmed al-Sharaa gave assurances IS would not be allowed to operate in Syria, US official says

^{Julian Borger (The Guardian)}

Ray*mond Li*terally 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

Okie in the pokey

#AltElfOnTheShelf
#12DaysOfChristmas
#HashtagGames

#HashtagGames #12daysofchristmas #altelfontheshelf

Pam Phillips 4 weeks ago • mastodon (AP)

Nameless horse
On the race course

#horsewithnoname
#AltElfOnTheShelf
#12DaysOfChristmas
#HashtagGames

#HashtagGames #12daysofchristmas #horsewithnoname #altelfontheshelf

This entry was edited (4 weeks ago)

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