#pest | 2023-03-20

meanwhile, in pumps.

10:00

!!ticker btc usd

10:01

deedbot

$27,963

~ 51 minutes ~

10:52

worthwhile to discuss whether there are design flaws in bitcoin which are thwarting its use as a currency. I'm suspicious the issuance schedule stair-stepping is entirely wrong.

10:53

with traditional gold (not the paperized modern system), prices increasing would motivate more mining and increase supply, which would act as a brake on "MOON"

10:53

price falls, mining falls, balances price in the other direction

10:54

bitcoin issuance has zero connection with human activity, and is in fact designed to maintain its schedule *despite*.

10:56

https://buybitcoinworldwide.com/stats/fees-percent-of-reward/ << were fees climbing enough to have engulfed block reward, this would be less of a problem. will happen in time, but again, not sure this was given enough thought.

10:58

looks like segwit happened around the time the "congestion" died down, which is to say fees taking over for block reward was thwarted.

10:58

signpost: the block reward thing kept (and still to an extent) a lid on req'd tx fees, which theoretically 'good for adoption', or at least was probably the idea

10:59

yeah, I'm not calling satoshi an idiot, so much as calling design of this issuance schedule a nation-building tier design problem.

11:00

the fixed issuance, otoh, prevented (and continues to prevent) reich from inflating the shit outta btc simply by building asic farms

11:00

so asciilifeform not convinced it was bad idea

11:01

miners collectively fighting over a ~fixed issuance, was imho 1 of the few ~good~ ideas in there.

~ 2 hours 41 minutes ~

13:42

fixed issuance for all time would've meant steady and slowing decay of reward/allBtc

13:42

hilariously, doge did this.

13:43

signpost: what means 'for all time' there ?

13:43

( i.e. a 100% premine ? )

13:43

if you just say it's 10BTC or whatever for all time, the ratio of reward to total BTC in existence dwindles

13:43

nah, per block, but not have halvings.

13:43

a

13:44

i.e. infinite inflation

13:48

signpost: in asciilifeform's pov, there are serious defects in the design that in fact originate in entirely unsolved, to date, problems , but don't reduce to numeric value of knob settings at all

13:48

(asciilifeform) 2021-11-08 asciilifeform: i.e. the 'responsibility collapse triangle' of collectivist failure where there's 'users' who 'just want', and a set of 'providers' who are to supply the thing they 'just want', and somehow they are to live happily-ever-a

13:50

importantly, however, 'it still worx'(tm)

13:50

if I were running a business where treasury was held in BTC, it'd be really hard to hedge where I think I am in the bubble cycle. these might be getting smaller, and maybe we disagree that they're in part supply shocks.

13:50

(asciilifeform) 2021-07-18 asciilifeform: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2021-07-18#1046402 << pretty sure we had at least one 'what does it mean to ask whether bitcoin still works?' thread, and not long ago

13:51

another thought would be making the reward decay gradual rather than step-function.

13:51

anyway, not an economist.

13:52

btc/fiatola hedging of whatever kind is much easier said than done.

13:52

Logged on 2023-01-18 14:13:43 asciilifeform: the other boojum is that the hedging he recommended requires maintaining fiatola reserves, which precludes 'pure btc biz' right off the bat

13:52

(asciilifeform) 2022-03-26 asciilifeform: the 'hedge' folx have an expression about this, iirc approx 'can only make bets when the horses are actually separate, you can't bet on asteroid flattening the horses'

13:54

signpost: hypothetically, the block reward could've been hardwired to difficulty, say. but not clear to asciilifeform what, exactly, this'd've accomplished.

13:55

yup

13:55

and yes, not paying for txn relay, operating full nodes, etc., are problems.

13:56

shitoshi was unable to come up with a means for 'pay for relay' just as e.g. asciilifeform to this day could not. is unsolved, afaik, problem (any solution would have to counteract sybilization, implicit in any scheme where 'paid for showing up')

13:57

afaik is 1 of those problems that no one even dared to approach, given that nuffin resembling an approach is known.

13:58

( even possible that it's a fundamental lul : relaying is simply too easy, hypothetically folx could already charge for service of getting a tx into a block, but market price of this service ~= 0 ultimately )

13:58

ditto the idea of rewarding noad operation / disk usage

~ 1 hours ~

14:59

http://logs.bitdash.io/pest/2023-03-19#1024864 << >> sec filings (warning, pdf) Do you think Microstrategy lied in multiple SEC filings? If not does that change your view on the

14:59

bitbot

Logged on 2023-03-19 21:27:31 asciilifeform[jonsykkel|awt|deedbot]: 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

14:59

increase in price?

15:00

Oh wait I see bought here has been shifted to mean bought and moved to custom cold storage.

15:00

yeah, his custodian might very well be coinbase

15:01

or kraken, whoever

15:07

http://paste.deedbot.org/?id=FSsm

15:11

'third-party custodial services' etc

15:11

yeah there you go, so some custodian

15:11

could be justabout anywhere (other than actual coldwallet, lol)

15:12

Yes however the question was, how can the price be going up?

15:12

!!ticker btc usd

15:12

deedbot

$28,166

15:12

Microstrategy took a bunch of coins off the market and hasn't sold them.

15:12

(indeed up!11)

15:12

You can argue that Coinbase is selling paper Bitcoin, I suppose.

15:12

could be that a few exchanges have not yet succumbed to fractional reservism.

15:13

would be nice if this were so

15:13

FTX as the glimmering turd counterexample

15:13

is ok, per reich, for it to go up, tho, so long as later goes down.

15:13

bitbot

Logged on 2023-03-19 21:44:24 asciilifeform[6]: 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.)

15:14

signpost: fractionalism overwhelmingly attractive nuisance, likely (what does a gox operator win from full reserve?)

15:16

awt: would be interesting if e.g. coinbase were pwned, and we found out how many coinz the users collectively thought they 'owned'. but afaik to date this kinda thing only took place 2-3 times (orig. mtgox being 1)

15:17

the usual cover story, when fractional reserve gox is uncovered, recall, is 'we were hacked, coinz were lifted'

15:18

but the simplest explanation is that 80-90% of'em existed strictly in the imagination of the chumps who 'bought' them.

15:19

from what I've heard through the grapevine both brian and jesse (CEOs) are "believers" in btc, but the reich's environment corrupts, so it's hard to rely on that.

15:19

say for instance they're treating US treasuries like cash. lol.

15:19

or their banks get seized and gutted by the feds

15:19

^ as in fact taking place atm

15:19

*

signpost expects this more than overt goxian theft

15:19

yep

15:21

*

asciilifeform ftr suspects that reich.'legit' goxes collectively share a reich-administered pool of actual coin as reserve, which was promised to be dispensed in the event of a 'run'

15:21

similar in fact to how the remaining fiat banks are known to work.

15:22

latter is about to be formalized into fed cdbc accounts post "liquidity crisis"

15:22

aaha

15:22

banks will be like domain name registrars, lol

15:23

already were; nao will be simply with less lipstick on the pig

15:23

true enough

15:23

coming out party

15:23

if asciilifeform's hypothesis (for which he has ftr 0 concrete proof) is tru, goxes aint vulnerable to a 'run' on 1 or 2, but only if the victims withdraw ~collectively~

15:24

https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/other20230315a.htm

15:25

signpost: wassat? 'swift' minus the pretense of decentralization ?

15:26

just about. refactored company store credits deeb.

15:27

*

asciilifeform leafed through the linked www, but not discovered how, precisely, differs from the traditional electro-usd

15:31

seems like blockchains rustled their jimmies and they're increasing settlement speed.

15:32

would expect this means establishing more control over the state of accounts at banks in general.

15:32

*

signpost bbl

15:32

*

asciilifeform wonders in what sense reich previously lacked control over electro-usd in banks

↖

~ 43 minutes ~

16:15