It seems there are patterns within patterns here Liquid is not all that liquid, people might even want it more when main chain fees are so high and people want to stack, save and not spend. There might end up being different prices for bitcoin. New layer twos are all the rage and we are going to need a while universe of options in this next bull market.
Bitcoiners have learnt the power of money, yet often in their daily lives they struggle to accumulate fiat. It could be ironic or reasoned, I don't know, but a good friend who is into bitcoin but also still holds on to what he himself will call "shitcoins" discussed this topic at some depth.
Money still sadly provides some signal in the fiat world, though this is degraded and distorted and often leading to destruction it is still useful for bitcoin maxi's to see these things during the transition. We can take the good parts out, use the bad currents to the advantage of the good and accelerate what we are trying to create. It is confusing as hell and that is why for many it is best to just phase out altcoins and fiat all together, but never fear! we will dive in.
It can be hard to create value in bitcoin only, not many people want to give you their bitcoin honestly, because they know what it is truely worth. So many of us need to earn fiat so that we can accumulate bitcoin.
One prime example of fiat money making is in the cryptocurrency scene. Often from a bitcoiners perspective it is completely subsumed to the forces of fiat. My friend (who has some crypto) explained that their meetups are more popular at the moment. This is even during the start of an exciting bull market where bitcoin has already outperformed riskier altcoins. Their meetups attract 10x the audience. So we want to figure out why? It seems it could be more than flashy marketing and promises of great returns.
As "decentralisation maximalists" and "bitcoin maximalists" the key differences in the behaviour of crypto and etherium type groups and to the "bitcoin only" type groups that we saw were:
1. Short term profits and saying YES to yield
2. Young people attending and today love
3. External focus, to much introspection creates division in a group
4. Starting with an open mind, all crypto is good crypto
So in the interest of promoting "bitcoin only" experiences let go through it point by point.
1. Time preference has a limit, being to longterm focused can scare off many people, it can also prevent action and we need action to have long term benefits. So where crypto groups encourage action with the promise of gains, championing yields, bitcoin groups have encouraged stacking and care, demonising yield in most forms and this has been at the cost of action. If there is nothing to do but wait, why even come to a meetup, its a security risk. I propose that ACTION can be the new bitcoin YEILD. Where our actions, though they may not turn to bitcoin immediately, will create value able intangible infrastructure and trust, and we should work on this with pace and intensity.
2. Having a positive mental outlook on life is important, bitcoiners often like to wax on about doomsday scenarios and how kids these days don't know how to live, music is not what it used to be. Nobody wants to be around people continuously whining, Instead I propose we focus on our achievements, how good we have it since finding bitcoin and how optimistic the future is for us with all the cool things that we do. The youth are great bitcoiners with potential to be the greatest and today and everyday we have is an honour live through. We have sacrificed, and we will continue to have temperance but at the same time we need to live our lives to the fullest now, leading by example and embracing our youth. We are all younger than our oppressors and isn't that fun, we are winning so well.
3. The ponzi nature of cryptocurrencies forces an external focus. This is because you need to find new people to feed the beast, exisiting people often find out what is going on, don't like it and then are of no value, even negative value, they are often ignored ghosted. Conversely in bitcoin circle introspection is common, all the way down, you can spend a lot of time doing this and it is valuable, we are kind of doing it here, but there is a limit. It comes at the cost of other things. Further to this loss of time we can't be perfect and can always find little issues with each-other, these things are often pointless and isolating. Too much introspection ends up making us worse.
Analysing ourselves, each others and different companies and groups bitcoin purity levels comes from a good place of "don't trust verify" but makes new relationships hard to establish. To grow the group we need to trust that new members will be good and will be made good just by being with us. If we have the right foundation the more people we bring in the better and they will find their way naturally without lecturing. Evidence suggests that bitcoin makes people naturally introspect to a level that creates good outcomes and that we just need to bring people to the school.
4. In bitcoin maximalism its easy to get clear on what is good and bad and then let people know, it's called getting toxic. It is a great feeling because it is so decisive and provides a clear course of action. At the same time we are innovating so need to embrace the unknown and the new. Having an open mind exposes you to scams, which is dangerous, it exposes your stack, but at the same time as a group it exposes you to new information and ideas.
Even if these ideas are misdirected they provide insight into how people are thinking. This is important if you are growing a group. A lot of people have been burnt by scams, but now, we are not as vulnerable to ideas as we may think. As cypto people start coming back to bitcoin and new people start looking at crypto and experimenting with things we know are hazardous we can have an open mind. Many people take that path and learn the hard way and for some that may be the only way they can get to bitcoin maximalism. So it's ok we can't protect them. We can learn a lot from this and we can help them by prioritising growth of the group.
More people will benefit in then end and our group will get bigger, which in the end is more valuable than one small toxic lesson. We can learn something from shitcoiners, they have built large groups. If we can learn how to negotiate these four factors well it will help bitcoiners who have fallen all the way into the bitcoin maxi rabbit hole. With larger groups bitcoin only people will have the infrastructure to make fiat money, which so it turns out at the moment, ironically makes better bitcoiners, because they will stack more!
In the name of action and at the risk of ostracism I'm listening for fiat signals now.
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
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.
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!
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.
