RE: Get Ready for a World Currency
One of my goals in my (still ongoing) blockchain development work (which was unfortunately significantly stalled for a few years by illness) is to try to create features and a system that gets users as interested in what they can do with their cryptocurrency tokens that they can’t do with fiat systems (including Paypal et al) as they are interested in the investment appreciation of the fiat exchange value of their tokens.
If we can accomplish that goal, then we will have achieved what I believe is a Schelling point for a (as quoted from my blog):
- Globalized medium-of-exchange with some exclusive, compelling attribute— i.e. intrinsic value
Steem is vying to be that system. Do we value our STEEM as much for what we can do with it as the investment return on STEEM (or the STEEM that can be extracted by blogging)?
Bitcoin probably already has a lock on the intrinsic value of a reserve currency for cryptocurrencies, and the medium-of-exchange to/from fiat. Thus I argue the worst outcome is to fork Bitcoin in August destroying the immutability which insures a 21 million coin limit (and I think all Bitcoin forks will fail because whales will protect the intrinsic value of Bitcoin).
I realize it is unsatisfying to Bitcoin fans if Bitcoin will not scale, but Bitcoin does not need to scale as it can be the on/off ramp to fiat and BTC saving for the altcoin that provides scaling,. Since there will likely be many such competing altcoins, then BTC remains the common denominator for investing in the crypto sector, i.e. the reserve currency of cryptocurrency.
Even if Bitcoin was forked to add some weak ass non-scaling lie, it will still never be that cryptocurrency that provides the breakthrough I am alluding to above. For that, we need competition and experimentation amongst altcoins (not forking the BTC unit into chaotic confusion). Thus we need a stable reserve cryptocurrency and that is Bitcoin. We have it, so no benefit in destroying it whilst trying to make it be something it can not be. Transaction fees will go up on-chain, so eventually those who can not afford have to move to an exchange or an altcoin. That drives a market need for altcoins to compete for the best solution.
Edit: Bitcoin can scale somewhat simply by agreeing on block size increases.
@anonymint Thanks for your comment, this is a very important point that you brought up:
"Steem is vying to be that system. Do we value our STEEM as much for what we can do with it as the investment return on STEEM (or the STEEM that can be extracted by blogging)?"
This is crucial. It's amazing that so many people are using Steemit without even being aware that it is a Blockchain or that it has a cryptocurrency making it work. I suspect that a higher and higher % of new users will not know about this ether and that people will use Steemit without knowing about blockchain in the same way that people use the internet today without knowing about the http protocol.
Sorry to hear about your illness, glad that you seem to be doing better now. When did you first hear about cryptocurrency and how did you become involved in it?
You said, "system that gets users as interested in what they can do with their cryptocurrency tokens that they can’t do with fiat systems". Not quite sure what you meant by this?
That is a good point that if attain mass adoption, most users won’t even realize they are using a blockchain.
I mean when there exists desirable things they can’t do with fiat. For example, earning tokens from writing and commenting. Beyond that is for example displacing all the centralized databases on the Internet, smart contracts, distributed microeconomies/micronations, decentralized speculation, new forms of gamification and monetization of Internet and computer activities, etc..
As I wrote at the bottom of my blog, I read Szabo’s Bitgold in early 2009 after writing something somewhat analogous 14 days before he published:
I heard about Bitcoin sometime after that (perhaps it was 2010), but I was distracted on other life matters. Risto Pietila and I were dealing in physical silver from 2008 to 2009 (we had met on Jason Hommel’s forum). In 2012, he asked me about getting into Bitcoin but I told him I was preoccupied with my illness (which was acute hospitalization in May). In early 2013, he asked whether he should sell $100,000 of silver and buy BTC at $10 and I said yes. I wasn’t able to join him because I had lost $75,000 of fiat in 2012 (side-effect of the flight or fight effect of my illness) and “theft” of my silver and gold over the years. From 2013 to present, I became expert on blockchain technology, having been a computer programmer since age 13 (age 52 now).
My bad I forgot you mentioned having written something analogous to what Szabo wrote. Not many veterans like you in the space now, definitely glad I discovered your blog!
I don’t point this out to brag, but rather to counteract the crab bucket mentality betamales over at BCT who fail to acknowledge such things, such for example as I wrote in my most recent blog that I was the one who had researched and written a very lengthy thread over at BCT over the past couple of years portending the illegality of ICOs and potential impending crash of Ethereum’s ICO craze:
Yet when it finally comes true as linked in the above quote, they ignore the pre-existing thread linked above, fail to acknowledge a meritocracy, and instead create numerous duplicate threads on the same topic because just like democracy and socialism they want to debase the productive and redistribute to the unproductive and destroy society such that Altcoin Discussion becomes a disjointed maze of duplicate thread topics:
So this is why I had replied to @Theymos (the owner of BCT) as follows when he banned me from BCT:
And thus why I wrote there I would create Bitnet in order to have decentralized moderation and squelch them from the productive Internet of discussion. Yeah past week or so, my health seems to be back to near normal, as about 3 weeks ago I completed the very liver toxic (especially for a man over 50 according to the guidelines on the) antibiotics for curing the disseminated Tuberculosis that I had apparently been suffering with over the past 5+ years. I was told it takes 1 month for the liver to regenerate. I never suspected Tuberculosis because I never had a cough. I did not know “gut TB” existed. So for several years, the illness was a mystery and I thought maybe I had Multiple Sclerosis. Being I was in the Philippines and did not have the finances to leave at that time (also I didn’t suspect it could be cured at reasonable cost because I had autoimmunity, peripheral neuropathy, liver malfunction, welts on my skull, swollen feet, etc.), I (thought I) had no options for reasonable healthcare. The prior time I had trusted Philippines doctors they had blinded my right eye in 1999 and in 2012 prescribed 21 days of ruinous fluoroquinolones (for eradicating H.pylori, as 21 days is insufficient for TB and will create a multi-drug resistant TB) which BTW is the second line drug for TB so should not be prescribed for that reason in a country with 80% incidence of latent TB (but I didn’t know that before, because I used to trust doctors before!). I wrote more in a comment post on Medium about the struggle of my illness.
Ironically those SEC regulation threads above appear to miss the main implication which is as I had warned in the past thread, that all those unregistered ICO tokens are going to become frozen (seized) if they are on centralized exchanges (with Russia, Europe, Singapore, China, etc) moving towards similar regulation.
https://www.sec.gov/oiea/investor-alerts-and-bulletins/ib_coinofferings wrote:
https://www.sec.gov/litigation/investreport/34-81207.pdf#page=16 wrote:
P.S. I never posted my “dick pictures” on BCT. I posted an image from Google of the angiokeratoma of scrotum (testicles) of a man (not myself) who had the same angiokeratoma as I had (which did not show the penis). It was in a discussion (argument) about my health symptoms with @DecentralizedEconomics. Also I had posted some images from Trilema.com showing that Bitcoin kingpin Mircea Popescu was posting pornography on his website. We need a place to communicate where we all have reputation to uphold and can’t hide behind anonymous sock puppet accounts. Those crab bucket useless troublemakers will be end up totally ignored by the productive who matter. We who are productive have no time to waste on their noise.
My further vindication is coming…in the form of a new blockchain project tentatively named Bitnet.
What kind of man “punches” a man who is very ill while hiding behind anonymity (no real risk of reputation to uphold, no honor) and claims I can’t code (which is provably false when I am not ill). The same coward (not alphamale) “man” who punches a girl or uses the collective to gang up, steal, and drag everyone back into their crab bucket.
Then again, my comment post is a waste of time documenting how retards destroy themselves in a crab bucket.
It will be more efficient to hit the Ignore button on Bitnet. We have a flag button on Steemit, but it is not decentralized moderation because we can’t choose which moderators we exclude from what gets down or upvoted from our view. I wrote more about expected differences in design between Bitnet and Steem.
Story of my life redux: Kafkaesque & the lesson of the open door
Simpletons at BCT should not conflate my frank discourse in informal settings written intentionally to express my indignation with society (not as a form of a marketing plan!) to how I would have my company or business communicate publicly. I wrote some damned facts about society and economics, but that does not mean I would market a blockchain that way.
Someone wrote:
Have you noticed most of my recent comment replies on Steemit are encouraging even if I disagreed with the comment.
It is easier to be amicable when the other side is also. The trolling at BCT makes it difficult to be encouraging.
I don’t write English in the futility of trying to convince the weak to change. People don’t change. I write to filter to the strong who will affiliate with me. As for helping the masses, I will do that with my code, let my code speak, and give back in other ways that I think can be effective.
You are correct in shining a light on the indignation (with society & nature) that I expressed in my recent blogs (although you know I told you that I know it is all natural). Indeed. And it is better to have productivity than waste too much time complaining. But after coming out of 5+ years of torture (both from illness and getting trapped in a crab bucket at BCT plus others traps I got mired in), I think I’m just releasing it by writing.
Checks out, @anonymint. Damn cryptos :^). I want to see more folks like You on this channel.
Currently I am curating inteviews with blockchain people and also steemians.
So question: Who would you like to see approached in a life conversation?
I created a link back to your blog from the programming language design discussion that @keean and I (@shelby3) have been having on Github.
I’m the wrong person to ask that question. I have no time for watching videos for leisure (and if I do it will be all sports related). I’m mostly interested in information that can help me do my job (avoid other forms of entertainment as much as I can discipline myself to). So I’m not much interested in personalities in crypto. I’m into jamming and synergy that accomplishes a goal.
I guess I would be interested if you could get James A. Donald (http://blog.jim.com) as he is the first person to communicate on the mailing list when Satoshi announced Bitcoin. His blog is quite controversial and afaik he has never been interviewed.
I’d like an interview with anyone close to Trump about cryptocurrency. Ditto a detailed interview with Martin Armstrong about this blog and other aspects of crypto and blockchains! I would be super interested.
I would probably have more ideas if I thought about it more.
Cool thanks. I didn't expect such high caliber persona to be suggested, but I'll see.
PS: I see types in Haskell being discussed there. I am interested in the Zen guys because they use F*. I actually made the steemit account to push my youtube videos on the dependently type language Idris ;)
From your video, I share your interest in math, programming languages, and the joy of receiving a new technical book to read. I am spread too thin though at this time to travel down every fork of my interests. Enjoy!