I’ll take issue with your last point. Many in crypto are evangelical about it, but follow up everything with a “DYOR” as if that absolves whatever their statement was.
Michael Saylor, the most visible corporate Bitcoin warrior, advised people to mortgage their homes and borrow as much as they could to buy Bitcoin at the literal top of the market (to the day).
The number of people in crypto who believe in a libertarian, anarcho-capitalist world are on the order of 0.01% - the millions of retail traders punting Dogecoin around are just trying to get rich and don’t give a damn about the tech or some greater cause. And that’s because that is how crypto is actually marketed to the masses.
Michael Saylor did say that, it's true. I am posting this, which is the original video, since I see the other comments link to a reddit post which has a modified, sensationalized version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgqC5_eugJI&t=4470s
I take issue with him telling individuals to accrue debt to acquire Bitcoin (companies I have less of an issue taking debt on). That's also the least reasonable part of the interview though. I think overall he makes a lot of good points as to why Bitcoin makes sense in the majority of the interview. However, I'm not one of those crypto people that only looks at one side of this. Yes, sometimes ridiculous things are suggested, but there is some good to this technology, too.
If you don't even know how to google for something as easy to find as a recording of Michael Saylor saying "go mortgage your house and buy Bitcoin with it" that you confidently "lol" and falsely deny that he said it, then how can you possibly claim that YOU are even remotely qualified to "DYOR"?
Yet you scoff at other people who don't bother to do THEIR own research. Without having done the slightest bit of research yourself about what you're proudly claiming in public.
Most people are too intellectually lazy to do their own research, as you just proved. YOU are the one making stuff up.
"Well Bitcoin's the best crypto asset. What's the second best? There is no second best. There is no second best crypto asset. There's a crypto asset that's called Bitcoin, right? Right. There is no second best, ok? But take all your money and buy Bitcoin. Then take all your time, figure out how to borrow money to buy more Bitcoin. Then take all your time and figure out what you can sell to buy Bitcoin. And if you absolutely love the thing that you don't want to sell it, GO MORTGAGE YOUR HOUSE AND BUY BITCOIN WITH IT. And if you've got a business that you love, because your family works for the business, because it's in your family for 37 years, and you can't bear to sell it, mortgage it, finance it, and convert the proceeds to the hardest money on earth, which is Bitcoin." -Michael Saylor
Does that leave any wiggle room for misinterpretation? DYOR: He said it.
> Well Bitcoin's the best crypto asset. What's the second best? There is no second best. There is no second best crypto asset. There's a crypto asset that's called Bitcoin, right? Right. There is no second best, ok? But take all your money and buy Bitcoin. Then take all your time, figure out how to borrow money to buy more Bitcoin. Then take all your time and figure out what you can sell to buy Bitcoin. And if you absolutely love the thing that you don't want to sell it, GO MORTGAGE YOUR HOUSE AND BUY BITCOIN WITH IT. And if you've got a business that you love, because your family works for the business, because it's in your family for 37 years, and you can't bear to sell it, mortgage it, finance it, and convert the proceeds to the hardest money on earth, which is Bitcoin.
Bitcoin people really are a piece of work, eh? The people at the top of the pyramid sure seem like totally legit, honest people don’t they…
Its fascinating to me people take what he says literally, probably because they need to argue against proponents of the things they hate.
If you ever watch any of his interviews he rationally examines monetary policy and his reasons for liking Bitcoin. He is an MIT graduate in (Aeronautics?) Engineering, and makes analogies to closed energy systems.
He's not just saying "buy bitcoin". He's doing it himself. He's actually borrowed billions of dollars against his company to make such bets. That's skin in the game. That's conviction, as real as it gets. Still, someone people will try to say he's manipulating the market, he's only doing this to pump and dump. Maybe, but his company's is public, and so his balance sheets are public. What bigger bet could you possibly make then borrowing billions of dollars you don't have?
What he's describing what his literal path, and what he's actually done, and how he got obsessed with Bitcoin. If you think he's advising people to invest money they don't have, then I'm afraid you aren't actually paying attention to the conversation.
You're the same guy who was just denying he said what he actually did say, who didn't bother to do his own most basic simple research, and is falsely accusing OTHER people of making stuff up, which you were actually doing (and are still doing now).
NOW you're telling us he doesn't mean what he says he means, because you think you have some special insight into what he really meant, that contradicts his words you were just denying he said. Are you really expecting us to take you seriously?
So what is it? Do you believe he said it or not? Why did you think he didn't say it? Why did you think people who quoted him were making stuff up? Do you still stand by that?
So do you admit you were wrong, or not? What have you done to readjust your world view now that you realize you were wrong? Are you just digging in deeper?
You weren't just not "actually paying attention to the conversation", you're denying that the conversation took place, and then when I quoted it to you, you switched to gaslighting us about how he didn't actually mean what he literally said, now that your initial strategy of denying that he said it has fallen apart.
Do you think WE are not paying any attention to your side of the conversation, and forgot what you just said a few hours ago? Pick a lane, buddy.
"Lol he never said mortgage homes. You’re making that up." -doggosphere
"GO MORTGAGE YOUR HOUSE AND BUY BITCOIN WITH IT" -Michael Saylor
Do I have to to search through them all to give you soundbites of him saying less extreme advice like "invest an amount your comfortable with" (which is an actual quote.) Does the context of his speech even matter, or are you playing the social media game of clipping soundbites? Because that doesn't sound like you're actually giving anything else he says credit, you're providing no intellectual capital to this conversation. You're playing politics and news opinions.
The point is what are you trying to achieve by putting these one off quotes on blast? As if in the hundreds of interviews he's had, this is the most relevant and significant quote.
You're trying to cast dispersion on the popular characters behind Bitcoin because you hate Bitcoin, correct?
Edit to include the quote in above video:
"Okay, look, it's totally strange to have a financial instrument, which is scarce and capped, because you can print more tech stocks, you can print more bonds, you can mine more gold, you can issue more fiat currency. On the other hand, in the engineering world, when you're designing pneumatic systems or hydraulic systems, nobody ever built a pneumatic system with a leak, a hydraulic system with a leak. Your swimming pool doesn't even work with a leak, right? Everybody knows if there's a leak in the fuselage of the airplane, it's not going to fly, it's going to explode. So, you don't have a leak in a nuclear reactor. Do you ever try to go across the ocean and a ship with a leak?
Okay, the idea of a closed system is basic to every freshman in engineering. I'm an MIT engineer. We talk about something called adiabatic lapse. An adiabatic system is no leak. A closed system is when you have mass in the system that can either leave or can be added, and all you can do is inject energy. So, Bitcoin is the classic textbook closed system. There's 21 million coins, virtual bars of gold in the system. You can't remove any, you can't add any. There's no inflation.
On the other hand, what you can do is you can heat it up. If you're buying Bitcoin above the 4-year or the 200-week moving average, you're heating up the system. If you're buying it below the 200-week moving average, you're cooling down the system. The entire thing's like a massive monetary battery, a capacitor. It's storing energy. What we've done is created a system where I can take $100 million of monetary energy, I can put it into the Bitcoin network. It'll sit there for as long as you can imagine, and there's no power loss. That's the genius of it.
If I told you I was going to inject another million Bitcoin or two or three million Bitcoin, I'm bleeding off, I'm diluting the energy. So, when I describe it as a closed system, what I'm saying is for the first time in the history of man, we created a monetary energy network that will store the energy over time with no power loss. We've never had a money. We've never had a thing that could do that. Gold didn't do that. Copper, silver doesn't do that. Fiat doesn't do that. Stocks and bonds don't do that. So, it's really an engineering breakthrough.
But hey, he said the literal words "mortgage your house", so we'll just repeat those words out of context to show that he must be a sleazeball scumbag right.
My explanation is I don't take any remark as a literally as you do, especially in a disingenuous fashion meant to further a political argument.
Ex. Ball player says, "we're going to kill 'em tomorrow".
You: "omg this athlete says he's going to murder his opponents at the game tomorrow."
Me: "no he didn't lol."
You: "FULL STOP. Here's the quote. He literally said it. Did he not say the word "kill 'em"???? Why are you denying that he said he was going to kill people? Clearly he has communicated his intent and endorsement of murder, we need no further context for this speech. "
Of course there will be people who try to scam others into it. But how is this different from anything else in life? The world of investment is susceptible to scammers who prey on people's emotions. This is not crypto or capitalism, this just human nature and we've learned to spot it unless we're blinded by something else, and if not, then shit happens, life is not fair.
> The number of people in crypto who believe in a libertarian, anarcho-capitalist world are on the order of 0.01%
Where do you get your numbers?
> And that’s because that is how crypto is actually marketed to the masses.
Again, I don't see anyone "marketing" for it. People should understand what they're working with before selling their houses and "investing it" in bitcoin ffs. If they do that then they're dumb!
> Of course there will be people who try to scam others into it. But how is this different from anything else in life?
Because unlike everything else, crypto has been designed from the ground up such that society is unable to rectify the bad elements.
> Again, I don't see anyone "marketing" for it. People should understand what they're working with before selling their houses and "investing it" in bitcoin ffs. If they do that then they're dumb!
Aaaand there it is. A slightly longer form of “DYOR”. If you go around evangelizing something that turns out to be damaging, you’re not absolved of all responsibility simply because you add “not investment advice”. If people who promote crypto really didn’t intend it as investment advice, they wouldn’t say anything. The whole point is that maybe other people will pump your bags. And if it all goes sideways, then you can always point at “not investment advice” because the vast majority of promoters and traders don’t understand the first thing about what a blockchain is, much less “tokenomics” or smart contract code (and exploits).
You may be an expert, and not in it to get rich quick. But you’re naive if you can’t see that the huge majority around you are in it for very different reasons.
> But how is this different from anything else in life?
In other things in life, there are things like consumer protection. You can tell your credit card agency to refund you, you can use the judicial system to sue scammers. If you lose login secrets to your bank account, you can call the bank, they know who you are, the problem can be solved.
Crypto currency is designed from the ground up with the goal of eliminating all such centralized power and protection mechanisms. Anything that goes wrong is your fault and you have no recourse, and that is not a flaw that will be fixed, that is the most central thing in its design.
Society has protections for the weak, crypto is designed to remove those protections.
> Crypto currency is designed from the ground up with the goal of eliminating all such centralized power and protection mechanisms. Anything that goes wrong is your fault and you have no recourse, and that is not a flaw that will be fixed, that is the most central thing in its design.
This is hyperbolic. There are many insured custody services for cryptocurrencies, similar to fiat banks. Secure storage is a big topic in the crypto space, and it is certainly not a goal of cyptocurrencies to weaken protection mechanisms (centralized or otherwise).
Block size was a huge multi-year argument that split the BTC community. The current largest cryptocurrency is completely incapable of addressing small problems without enormous drama, let alone actually large problems. I have absolutely zero faith that the people in charge (unelected maintainers and miners) will be able to make appropriate policy changes over time.
Block size is a nuanced discussion and it was maybe a larger problem then you realize.
Argument for big blocks: Faster and cheaper transactions (lower fee), as well as more transactions per second. Can use more like cash, i.e. Bitcoin Cash. Everything should be done on-chain. They also argue that small blocks are a money grab from Blockstream so that the network is forced to adopt layer 2 solutions that Blockstream develops.
Argument for keeping block size the same ("small blocks"): Larger blocks means more hard drive space and bandwidth are required, and mining becomes more centralized based on those increased requirements. Big blocks are a money grab from the miners, since they make more money on bigger blocks. An additional concern is if the availability of hard drive space will increase in line with the growth of the network. They suggest to use the Bitcoin Core network more as a settlement layer and a store of value, and not everything needs to be on-chain. They suggest layer 2 solutions like the Lightning Network to use Bitcoin more like cash and enable fast transactions, as well as increase the number of transactions per second. I understand the Lightning Network has some caveats, but from what I've heard from institutions like NYDIG and Strike, that are already using it, it is already working as is.
All I'm saying is maybe it's not just a small problem. The decisions affect a global network and some of the decisions were said to potentially cause major problems.
It was a nuanced discussion. It isn't a trivial problem. I'm keenly aware of the details. There are clear pros and cons, as you described.
The point is that there are much bigger problems in a worldwide currency than block size. In comparison, block size is small potatoes. And the block size problem split the community into two that hate each other. They don't just disagree, but consider the other side to be actively sabotaging the system.
Yeah, I don't like the tribalism either. I see this with Democrats and Republicans in the US, too. One side thinks they are right. That seems to be a human thing. I do hope that progress can still be made.
You are right though, it is a bit ridiculous. What would you have them working on instead, just wondering? Fixing the environmental issues? Adoption? What else?
Protection mechanisms do not need to be "layer 1" (on-chain) solutions, though. There are many possible forms these could take. For example, a multisig wallet gives you very secure cold storage of your BTC/whatever.
How about all the elements/layers added to the traditional financial system that probably a lot of folks here don't understand to a deep degree? We're not comparing apples to apples. Cryptocurrency is a new technology. We are a decade in. Maybe we should let it mature a bit and see what it turns into?
Or Bitcoin was fine to start with and hasn't had a good enough reason to change yet. People can disagree, some did, forked the code, and went on their way.
> how is this different from anything else in life?
There is a high concentration of scamming around cryptos. There are the obvious thefts and frauds. But a good fraction of crypto businesses make their money pushing tokens in a manner remarkably similar to pump and dumps.
That said, for the reasons described here (crypto being a wealth transfer to the wealthy), I think it is here to stay.
Michael Saylor, the most visible corporate Bitcoin warrior, advised people to mortgage their homes and borrow as much as they could to buy Bitcoin at the literal top of the market (to the day).
The number of people in crypto who believe in a libertarian, anarcho-capitalist world are on the order of 0.01% - the millions of retail traders punting Dogecoin around are just trying to get rich and don’t give a damn about the tech or some greater cause. And that’s because that is how crypto is actually marketed to the masses.