Dilution not Inflation

We have to push back against the political wordsmiths. Using the term inflation to describe this money phenomenon is a sham that favours the money printers. in the past people have used the words strengthening and dilution and I think this is much better. 

Inflation implies that what goes in (the money printing) is not material and that the surface is what is of importance. I don't think that this balloon analogy relates to reality. You could say in this image the surface was the market of prices, but the market is influenced of the whole of the money supply.

Deflation also, is such a deflating word, no wonder they picked it, they want it to make you feel sad. The terms have been chosen to maximise the money printers disguise and reduce it's psychological footprint in the publics mind.

In truth, during what we call "deflation" the pool of money becomes more potent. The metaphor of the pool which is a good description, is broken down when the balloon inflation is included. This creates a convenient confusion for the state. The term "Dilution" is more accurate. The pool of money gets bigger and its potency reduces. All of the sudden your brain doesn't hurt so much.

In the pool metaphor inflation money is added to the pool and in doing this the strength of the money is diluted, something that you don't want happening. You can see easily that this disadvantages savers.  I think its much clearer, or is it just a boozy metaphor? Let me know

To me the word is dilution not inflation

 

Ethereum is/was Bitcoins Greatest Sidechain

Despite our resentment as bitcoin purist's we can't deny that there has been a lot of development on Ethereum over the years. We call it a scam and it is pretty scammy, dishonest at the core (see my previous article). Though it has been a major distraction, we can learn a lot from what has happened and how it has fallen. Bitcoin gets stronger from attacks and this is no different, but we can learn a lot from the choices that were made in etherium and how they have slow led to its decay and fall from grace.

There have been so many well-funded projects, programmers even amateur devs maybe, have been getting rich. It is not (or it wasn't) uncommon to find a relatively unknown project with an ERC20 token that has a billion-dollar market cap. That market cap means that if the developers are taking 10% they have more than enough money to work on the project for life. It means we have seen a lot of fast development in the Ethereum ecosystem. 

This wild funding has been used to wrap bitcoin, to exchange bitcoin and to do all sorts of things, NFT's and finance rip-offs. Lots of bitcoin has been moved around here and it has created value for bitcoiners wanting to get spendable money out or wanting to exchange their forks and altcoins. It has had the highest bitcoin volume of all the sidechains, I like to think of it like this, yes it's a shitcoin, but this has had the biggest objective utility for bitcoiners for many years. It was never going to replace bitcoin (even though they said they used to say they would), but it did have a use, though many of these are only experimental we bitcoiners get to learn about many things before they can affect the mainchain.

With etherium for me at first it all seemed too good to be true and it turns out it was. The altcoin development ecosystem sits on shaky foundations. It stands at odds to honour and prudence. Despite the potential security flaws and deception, we have to admit that the methods have coloured our vision for what could be our future and stand as contrast so we can define bitcoin in the best way. I wonder if the  anarchy that creates them and allows them may be necessary. 

With the rise of Liquid, RSK, RGB, Taproot Assets, Lightning, nostr, BRC20 and layer 3 how long will it stay on top. We might need to reorganise coin market cap, with the demise of etherium and all its decendents and offshoots. I hope that bitcoin can learn from it's rebellious but prosperous, now foolish and forgotten son Etherium. BItcoins son that let its own sons (the grandchildren) free and then succumbed to fear and changed his mind for the worst to hold onto power.

 

BitVM

The white paper is here and we apologise to etherium, but we can’t stop it. Virtual machines, general purpose computing will be running on the Bitcoin network.

VLS

With the blockstream green wallet, breeze and sphinx the power of VLS is coming to everyone. Validating Lightning Signers allow you to have control over spending your bitcoin on lightning without having to control the full stack, preventing hacks and physical vulnerabilities.

Its a nifty gadget but its stronger than it may seem!

Infinity/21m

The cult classic coined by Knut Svanholm is great. so much there. Possibilities wtih bitcoin are infinite and only limited by our own creativity... So what if we just this whole thing is backwards, but it's interesting if we divide 21 million bitcoin by the everyone (8 billion people)

The answer is 0.002625 btc or 262,500 sats thats $8.97 in today's
price.

Why do the same numbers feel different?

1 BTC = $30,000 usd

10 BTC = $300,000 

100 BTC = $3,000,000

1,000 BTC = $30,000,000

The fiat numbers seem somehow attainable where the bitcoin numbers impossibly high. They are however just different expressions of the current exchange rate. As you go up 10x in the number of bitcoins it seems exponentially harder to see yourself saving to those numbers. The fiat numbers however seem like at some stage in your long life, given a little luck you could get there. How can it be when the numbers are the same, at this moment the equivalent value, they could feel so different?

Fiat has an insidious way of bringing shallow goals falsely within reach. Attaining a number as we know means very little, It is what you do with it that counts. I think this subconsciously makes many people feel more positive about their progress than they should. The number move closer over time but the real goal continues to be distant.

When the numbers are small it is not so noticeable, but the larger they are the more we feel the dynamic. where 3 million dollars might come to you with a successful business and some good property investments, 100 btc will require a lifetime of diligent savings and then if the price goes up to fast could easily escape even your most diligent grasp. 1000 btc seems near impossible as it would require you getting 30 million dollars now and then buying bitcoin before it likely skyrockets given the copy cat demand that you could expect to see. In 50 years time however, maybe a fancy house is worth 30 million dollars. 

The current price is the truth, in a sense a summation of possibilities and current human understanding however for the individual this can be very different. Each person has there own truth and for me, I know that in trying to somehow get 1000 bitcoin, even if I had the dollars, the price of the bitcoin itself, due to its limited supply would go up now to a point where the amount of fiat dollars required would be impossibly high. If everyone should try this then it would become impossible. The opposite is not true for fiat, to me they can and probably will print it till we all become broken millionaires. In this way the ambitions bitcoin goals or OG stacks of yesteryear really are further away than the fiat numbers, because we look at them with a future mindset.  

The future value of dollars is already discounted in our heads. This is imprinted in our subconscious and it might take a generation or two to change this.  When looking at the current value of something we should include future expected values and if you're confident in bitcoin it means it is very undervalued currently. It's no wonder it's hard to get people to spend their bitcoin, the real current value in our minds is higher than the spot market price. This psychology also holds the bitcoin price back, people can't stop thinking that somehow it can't go up for ever. 

Your Transaction Record Effect

A permanent transaction record has different psychological impact in a deflationary bitcoin moon environment. In fiat it's rare to look at old bank statements or review your transactions back further than the last couple of month, maybe a year if your doing annual accounts. It's a boring thing that you have to do and generally there is not a lot of information or emotion there.

When you look at your bitcoin wallet it is different than your bank statement. Not only are your main chain transactions permanently on the blockchain, but they are easily accessible and naturally sorted by use case for each wallet. Often you have many bitcoin wallets, trying out the latest new thing and keeping your UTXO's separated in accordance to how you want to spend or save the bitcoin. On your phone you end up seeing past bitcoin amounts and often a fiat number to go with it and it can casually spark your curiosity. 

The fiat numbers linked to the bitcoin transactions sometimes display what was the fiat amount at the time, but since this would require someone to hold extra information, often they just show a conversion of that bitcoin amount at the what is the current conversion rate. This option makes the current value of your transactions very apparent. 

In bitcoin old transactions for beers, dinners or gifts to friends can increase in value in a surprising way. The pizza effect is real, the $20 dollars worth of bitcoin you gave your friend long ago suddenly buys them a big TV. Even if your friend should spend their bitcoin, as long as they keep there wallet, which they probably will, because they will have change, they will be able to see their transactions. You might see it and call them up and ask them if they feel the orange glow yet. It is something that regularly reminds us of the current value of our old decisions. This should empower us to make better long term decisions.

In the old fiat world, inflations mean that numbers on old fiat transactions fade into insignificance. That feeling of insignificance comes from the inflation. Banks don't even keep digital records in a way that is available to the customer for longer than 7 years.  Your old statements if you get them are never looked at and only kept in the off chance that you need some legal evidence sometime n the unknown future. It all piles up in a worthless clutter.

In bitcoin history is permanent. This posses privacy challenges, which we wont delve into here, but this applies more importance to your behaviour. Importantly it allows self reflection and improvement. It's easily accessible and seamlessly archived. It helps you to be conscious of the impacts of your spending in your life.

Bank statements will never feel the same. Worthless paper displaying the record of worthless paper. Bitcoin wallets friendly reminders for self improvement and the virtues of balanced fun and frugality.