Tag: Bitcoin
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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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More on the two pies
Continuing from here, on the economic similarity and political distinction between the tech IPOs (unicorns) and the bitcoin world. There’s another similarity, less obvious but possibly more important. Both of these Innovative Disruptions depend on massive quantities of cheap energy. In other words they depend on COAL. Bitcoin is being starved from two sources. The…
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Two pies on the menu
Speaking of Tau, here’s a half-baked thought. Bitcoin and tech unicorn IPOs are opposite political sides of the same economic bubble. Both are aimed at the same demographic group of suckers, young white males. The economic pied-piper is identical for both styles of pie. Standard bubble technique, practiced for 400 years. 1. Central banks blow…
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The ultimate website for Scrip
For many years I’ve been trying to make the point that bitcoin is the EXACT OPPOSITE of decentralized. When all transactions are made and recorded on ONE SINGLE LEDGER, and the ONE SINGLE LEDGER is contained inside NSA’s web, you are ultimately and infinitely centralized in the worst possible way. Ordinary currency is naturally decentralized.…
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Reprint on pure math
The two ‘missed points’ in previous item combine neatly to inspire a reprint from last year. = = = = = Normal people correctly associate heft with value. This makes sense in most real products. A car or house built with thicker materials and bigger beams WILL last longer, and WILL be more resistant to…
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Terrible idea.
US Congress and UK Parliament are starting to consider regulations on bitcoin. Terrible idea. 1. Regulating after the fools have lost their money won’t help anyone. If you’re going to protect fools from voluntarily losing their money, you need to do it on the boom side, not the bust side. The bust itself cures many…
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Schadenfreude is never tiring
I’m repeating this picture happily. Schadenfreude about bitcoin never gets tiring. A refreshing drink on a hot day. Musical accompaniment. Via Wolf Richter: Goldman created Coinbase to rope in the greater fools. Now that the Fed counterfeit press has stopped, bitcoin has stopped. After the “value” of Coinbase dropped from $400 to $40, Goldman is…
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