Tag: Bitcoin
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The last influencer
Thanks to the central banks finally turning off the counterfeit waterfall, the bitcoin and NFT tower of lunacy has just about finished imploding. Nearly everything in the realm has been “hacked” by its founders or “accidentally” crashed by a “glitch” or “paused” to allow the founders to abscond safely. Now that the Correct Persons have…
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Great line
As the Web3 metaverse continues to collapse, some jaded observers are turning out great lines. The specific story is yet another weirdly complex trading of nothing: The problem is brewing at BendDAO, a peer-to-peer lending service that lets users borrow ether (ETH) against their NFTs. Customers can typically take out a loan equal to 30%…
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Gresham metaphor
Most of the content on the Blockworks Macro channel is pure bitcoin crap. But as usual, the bitcoiners are often the best realists on everything else. This clip features an old guy talking with two young Bitcoin Bros. Starting at 36 minutes, the old guy makes a wonderful analogy with Gresham’s law. Our information has…
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NFT next?
Earlier today I mentioned the invention (or rather evolution) of the transistor in 1947. Bell Labs also developed most of speech science, including synthesis and recognition, and the C programming language, and microwave technology, and a million other useful devices and entire branches of science. After the switch from profit to Share Value in 1980,…
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WWJD?
This week I’ve been quoting Duane Jones’s 1955 book on marketing and business practices. What would Jones say about Bitcoin and Metaverse and NFT? Facebook is primarily an advertising agency, so it certainly fits inside the topic. Jones couldn’t have imagined such MAGNIFICENT STUPIDITY. He worked in a period (1930-1960) when businesses functioned on PROFIT,…
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More boxtop thoughts
Continuing from previous. One of Duane Jones’s basic principles: There’s no point in advertising or boxtopping if the product itself isn’t good. The product must “repeat when sampled”; the first try should entice another try. This is naturally true of naturally addictive products like alcohol, but the standard should apply in a more ethical way…
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We need more dramatization, not more facts.
At the start of the 2020 “virus” hoax, I stupidly hoped that getting out the facts would persuade people. I shouldn’t have let myself harbor such hopes, since I’m the one who constantly shouts EXPERIENCE IS THE ONLY TEACHER. Those hopes faded quickly, replaced by my own jail EXPERIENCE with psychopaths. Good teachers and good…
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Right for the wrong reasons
Governments are telling us recession is a good thing. Everyone, left and right, is bemoaning and mocking this “hypocrisy”. Truth: Recession is a good thing. The governments are speaking the truth for a multitude of false and evil reasons, but that doesn’t make it false. In culture and technology and economics and individual life, drunken…
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Entertainment spawns entertainment
From Gerard and Castor’s record of bitcoin idiocy: But Zhu and Davies have been telling the public — especially their creditors — how they lost money too, how they fear for their lives, and how they are so overwhelmed that they can’t turn over banking information just yet, but they’ll get to that soon, for…
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More delicious Chateau Schadenfreude
The headline is enough: Blockchain-powered Carbon Offset Company Starts 35000 Acre Forest Fire in Spain Musical accompaniment. Land Life is a carbon offset company that focuses on reforestation, and speaks about its “autonomous planting, remote monitoring and blockchain verification”. ‘Autonomous’ means ‘Equipment started fire with nobody on scene to put it out.’ ‘Remote monitoring’ means…
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Irresistible attraction
I’ve been hammering on the strange shibboleth of bitcoin. Influencers who are realistic and skeptical about most topics are selling bitcoin. Influencers who are realistic and skeptical about bitcoin are utterly insane about other topics. At the corporate level this balance doesn’t apply. Nearly all corporations have tried to get on the bitcoin train at…
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Rare miss
In contrast to previous item about the Federalist atypically hitting a point, Taibbi atypically misses. He has done proper reportorial legwork on one bitcoin-related “loan company”. He found and documented its connections to Wall Street. But many commentators (ahem!) recognized the problem 10 years ago, and many good reporters have already followed the trails to…
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Useful Gedankenexperiment
Yesterday I proposed a sort of thought-experiment or useful metaphor: Constants and variables: When non-political gangsters are shot, our media and historians never play the crazed gunman game. We correctly assume that a rival non-political gangster hired the hitman. But when political gangsters are shot, we go directly to the random wacko myth and NEVER…
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He was right
Time to break out the refreshing Chateau Schadenfreude again! Musical accompaniment. My father always said you should vote Democrat if you want Republican policies, and vote Republican if you want Democrat policies. Not strictly true but pretty damn close. Headline: DHS Secretary approves border wall projects. Trump didn’t build the wall. Biden built the wall.
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WTF is wrong with insurers, part 541679
I’ve been asking this question since ZIRP started in 2009. Insurers and pension funds are required to stick with dependable interest-bearing investments. When ZIRP started, anyone could see that insurers and pension funds would either collapse or force the banks to retract the terrible decision. But insurers didn’t lobby for changes in their restrictions, and…
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