billymg[asciilifeform|cgra]: !!ticker btc usd
deedbot[cgra]: $27,320
billymg[cgra|asciilifeform]: i always assumed sandwich theory was just hyperbole, considering it's observably false throughout bitcoin's 14 year history
asciilifeform: billymg: asciilifeform's version of 'sandwich theory' is that the ~0 -> 10k+ transition happened before reich got the waterfall (incl. the 'leveraged goxes' variant) going. '# of 0s' not changed substantially since then, and imho not likely to other than via usd hyperinflation (or if somehow waterfall breaks down)
billymg[cgra|asciilifeform]: asciilifeform: sounds like holding btc through hyperinflation is the correct move then, since it will at least keep you whole, instead of losing 95% of purchasing power by holding fiat
billymg[asciilifeform|cgra]: and if that's true, then a non-zero amount of people, with a non-zero amount of dollars, might catch on to this as well, creating a feedback loop that causes btc to outpace inflation
billymg[asciilifeform|cgra]: the waterfall becomes less effective over time as well, as with each major blow up more people become wise to their tricks
bitbot[asciilifeform|cgra]: Logged on 2023-03-14 14:06:10 billymg: asciilifeform: i know you stay away from all heathen pits but from my cursory look at twitter post-ftx collapse quite a few average retards started to realize that withdrawal to own keys is necessary
billymg[cgra|asciilifeform]: and more coins move into cold storage
dulapbot: (asciilifeform) 2022-01-19 asciilifeform: spend no coin where...
dulapbot: (asciilifeform) 2022-01-19 asciilifeform: 1. ... it'll be taxed (i.e. some uknown, potentially up to 100%, of its value confiscated by busybodies taxing imaginary 'gain', which in actuality consists strictly of ~their~ toiletpaper's debasement)
dulapbot: (asciilifeform) 2022-01-19 asciilifeform: 2. ... in exchange for ~fuffles~ (e.g. bags of fiat not immediately destined to be spent on durable necessities; plastic autos; titles to 'property' in the reich)
dulapbot: (asciilifeform) 2022-01-19 asciilifeform: 3. ... when it'd be your last coin.
dulapbot: (asciilifeform) 2022-01-19 asciilifeform: by no means exhaustive but more or less sums up 'axioms' from asciilifeform's pov
asciilifeform: 'how many decimal places will live to see' is entirely orthogonal q.
asciilifeform: so far we've 2+y of usd hyperinflationary lulz, and during which exchrate went from 60s to 20s. imho waterfall is most plausible mechanism re why. and if 'even tards are withdrawing to own keys', it aint yet macroscopically obv.
asciilifeform: ( not purely gox-powered, either, reich has at least coupla $bil in actual coin, taken off the corpses of various 'silk roads', to satisfy quite a few 'withdraw to own key' folx while keeping exchrate at whatever # they're comfortable with)
asciilifeform: and latest rumour is iirc that miners (who, precisely as one'd expect from hill-climbing amoebas, moved en masse from cn to usa) are aboutta be taxed (i.e. forced to sell 30-40% of coin right off the bat), further keeping the waterfall wet
asciilifeform: to actually dry out the waterfall, sumthing would 'have to give', asciilifeform not knows what it is atm.
phf: it is also entirely possible that the economic leverage of hodls is <20k$ 1btc, and bitcoin is being propped up rather than down
phf: the real hold has never been tried, which is an eschatological event anyway
phf: meanwhile i don't quite grok even remotely (chinese buying bitcoin instead of realestate? russian dark nets selling ak-47s to somalia?), why bitcoin would be trading outside of my personal comfortable trading range which is way way way bellow 20, on the grounds that i don't see bit
phf: coin as bitcoin being a thing outside of middle class techbro circles
phf: the wealthiest bitcoin man i personally knew was basically a shittalker with -ev, what armies and tangibles would he have been able to present in order to prop up the price. at some point (not withstanding his hardcore hodl), would have to cache in whatever "market" asks to buy shoes, food and rent
phf: imho the danger and promise of hold was in a both hodl AND economic activity. considering that btc economic activity was destroyed, rapidly, swifly, and efficiently, on mp's watch, hold ~imho~ is entirely at mersy of whatever shadow processes, that have nothing at all to do with some hypothetical gold standard effect
billymg[asciilifeform]: phf: entirely possible they're propping it up, rather than suppressing it. but that could also be out of necessity, to prevent too many undesirables from loading up cheap
billymg[asciilifeform]: to me it appears they have to find an equilibrium, where too expensive for pleb to buy a meaningful amount, but not so much that pleb who bought earlier can use it to escape the office cage
billymg[asciilifeform]: along with continued application of asciilifeform's heat engine process
bitbot[asciilifeform]: (asciilifeform) 2021-04-23 asciilifeform: a major moving part behind the price swings are the people who run this heat engine -- 1) spread fud re bitcoin 2) 'buy the dip' 3) drum up enthusiasm among morons 4) sell dear 5) goto 1, nao w/ moar coin, extracted from morons on both strokes of the engine piston
awt[asciilifeform]: phf: what form did the highest level of activity in Bitcoin take?
awt[asciilifeform]: *economic activity
awt[asciilifeform]: My guess would be silk road.
awt[asciilifeform]: Why are dollars exempt from gresham's law?
bitbot[asciilifeform]: (trilema) 2014-01-30 mircea_popescu: you familiar with gresham's law ?
awt[asciilifeform]: http://logs.bitdash.io/pest/2023-03-19#1024836 << this amounts to a paltry sum relative to the total supply even now
bitbot[asciilifeform]: Logged on 2023-03-19 18:28:30 asciilifeform[5]: to actually dry out the waterfall, sumthing would 'have to give', asciilifeform not knows what it is atm.
phf: awt, yeah, probably silk road, but i suspect there's other things. people buying houses and cars in eastern europe, as a not-too-infrequence occurence
phf: but i'm also distinguishing economic activity and economic leverage. economic activity never really materialized, but econnomic leverage is provided by ???
phf: before the original to the moon (the 16k spike that i keep bringing up), i'm pretty sure the leverage was provided exclusively by techies, as a kind of alt-rembrand
phf: which was in the mid 1k, which to my mind makes sense, because 300-400$ is a standard usg "1 unit of goods"
phf: at this point i have personally no idea where it's coming from
awt[asciilifeform]: Some big buyers I am aware of are Saylor (109,000), Tesla has 10k. I know a lot of non-tech non-middle-class buyers go though places like Swan.
awt[asciilifeform]: Is economic leverage something like the petrodollar? Some essential trade that takes place in Bitcoin and can't take place in anything else?
asciilifeform: wb phf !
asciilifeform: http://logs.bitdash.io/pest/2023-03-19#1024837 << this precisely part of asciilifeform's hypothesis, i.e. where 'raised to 10km to be dropped without parachute, repeatedly'
bitbot[asciilifeform]: Logged on 2023-03-19 18:29:24 phf[4]: it is also entirely possible that the economic leverage of hodls is <20k$ 1btc, and bitcoin is being propped up rather than down
asciilifeform: http://logs.bitdash.io/pest/2023-03-19#1024859 << often enuff some rockefeller will say 'i bought over9000 btc' but no one but him & odin know whether bought actual coinz or goxolade
bitbot[asciilifeform]: Logged on 2023-03-19 20:17:41 awt: Some big buyers I am aware of are Saylor (109,000), Tesla has 10k. I know a lot of non-tech non-middle-class buyers go though places like Swan.
asciilifeform: re: exchrate, tho, imho to ask 'what exchrate is actually justified by actual economic activity in btc' is somewhat of a 'partial differentiation' mistake, given as the leverage-conjured volatility is a rather strong brake on any such activity
asciilifeform not up to the task of divining what, precisely, would've happened if reich had ~not~ carried out the 'legalization' gambit
asciilifeform: ( possibly exch would be in slow -- but ~monotonic -- climb through the 100s or 1000s even nao. )
asciilifeform: i.e. where it appeared to be before the 'institutional' scum entered the picture.
asciilifeform: http://logs.bitdash.io/pest/2023-03-19#1024840 << near as can tell, it's been some yrs since bitcoin (in the actual, 'mah keyz' sense) was 'a thing' in any publicly-visible circle.
bitbot[asciilifeform]: Logged on 2023-03-19 18:38:12 phf[deedbot|awt|signpost]: coin as bitcoin being a thing outside of middle class techbro circles
asciilifeform: most of the 'scene' hanger-on activity -- in all weight classes -- appears to revolve around shitcoins ( and to very small extent, faux-bitcoin )
asciilifeform: who, precisely, is generating the actual tx visible on the net, to asciilifeform is a mystery
asciilifeform: ~sumbody~ is doing it, and it aint martians. but it also aint the folx stuffing a 20$ in vending machine to get a coinbase barcode.
asciilifeform: http://logs.bitdash.io/pest/2023-03-19#1024844 << per asciilifeform's hypothesis, reich cares much less re the absolute value of the exchrate than about preventing monotonic climb (i.e. where could outperform various reich paper in re being a perceived inflation shelter.)
bitbot[asciilifeform]: Logged on 2023-03-19 19:01:42 billymg: to me it appears they have to find an equilibrium, where too expensive for pleb to buy a meaningful amount, but not so much that pleb who bought earlier can use it to escape the office cage
asciilifeform: i.e. they'd be fine with a rate perma-stuck at e.g. 100, just as the current one in 20s, for so long as it does not lure folx en masse away from 'stonks' etc.
asciilifeform: http://logs.bitdash.io/pest/2023-03-19#1024856 << back in 2010s, asciilifeform on several occasions encountered folx who admitted to throwing good % of their wage into btc. and each claimed to know coupla similar ones. these, likely, is who powered the pre-'institutionalization' climb.
bitbot[asciilifeform]: Logged on 2023-03-19 19:51:04 phf[4]: before the original to the moon (the 16k spike that i keep bringing up), i'm pretty sure the leverage was provided exclusively by techies, as a kind of alt-rembrand
asciilifeform: ( seemed to be from a perception of 'slow lift will continue as reich sinks' rather than 'suddenly, one day, to moon!!'. )
asciilifeform: what happened to any of'em, asciilifeform does not know.
asciilifeform: some, would expect, gave up, bought fuffles, wetted the waterfall. some -- not
dulapbot: (asciilifeform) 2022-01-19 asciilifeform: 2. ... in exchange for ~fuffles~ (e.g. bags of fiat not immediately destined to be spent on durable necessities; plastic autos; titles to 'property' in the reich)
asciilifeform: http://logs.bitdash.io/pest/2023-03-19#1024841 << assuming we're thinking of the same fella -- he summed to roughly same ~0 when was rich merely in saecular fiatola, as later when piled up hodl. i.e. it wasn't about the moolah, but rather lack of will to actually risk ~own~ (rather than other folx) arse at any known junctu
asciilifeform: re.
bitbot[asciilifeform]: Logged on 2023-03-19 18:40:42 phf[4]: the wealthiest bitcoin man i personally knew was basically a shittalker with -ev, what armies and tangibles would he have been able to present in order to prop up the price. at some point (not withstanding his hardcore hodl), would have to cache in whatever "market" asks to buy shoes,
asciilifeform: ... juncture
asciilifeform: ( oh hey, current blatta actually does break up msgs correctly? hats off to awt )
asciilifeform: http://logs.bitdash.io/pest/2023-03-19#1024852 << afaik approx. nobody knows much re ~actual, circulatable~ supply.
bitbot[asciilifeform]: Logged on 2023-03-19 19:28:40 awt: http://logs.bitdash.io/pest/2023-03-19#1024836 << this amounts to a paltry sum relative to the total supply even now
asciilifeform: ( the fact that 1 'whale' was able to take exhrate from 30s to 60s and then sink it again ~month later, suggests that circulating supply aint large )
asciilifeform: http://logs.bitdash.io/pest/2023-03-19#1024843 << propped both up & down simult. like an aerostat.
bitbot[asciilifeform]: Logged on 2023-03-19 19:00:11 billymg: phf: entirely possible they're propping it up, rather than suppressing it. but that could also be out of necessity, to prevent too many undesirables from loading up cheap