Opinions on a crypto reserve aside, we seize tons of cryptocurrency every year in police actions and then auction it off. Just stop auctioning it off and you don't need to buy anything.
The slippery slope fallacy is a logical error where it is claimed that a relatively small first step will lead to a chain of events resulting in a significant and undesirable outcome, without sufficient evidence to support that claim. This type of argument often exaggerates potential consequences to instill fear or discourage a particular action.
normalization may refer to more sophisticated adjustments where the intention is to bring the entire probability distributions of adjusted values into alignment.
I don't hate it. I am a former Bitcoin maxi that watched the entire community commit suicide the moment KYC was imposed. When you remove the opportunities for fraud, money laundering, rug-pulls and illegal commerce, cryptocurrency atrophies.
You can skip the sealiioning and just say you like crypto and don't care if illegal stuff happens with it. It's not some gotcha that we 8se proportions for comparison instead of raw size with most societal things.
I don't particularly like crypto (mainly due to inefficiencies being common and it being a breeding ground for all sorts of grifters), but this argument doesn't convince me. Like... what ratio of legal-to-illegal transactions is permissible until you say "no, this is wrong, you can't use it even legally" or argue against it in a "only criminals use this, and you're not a criminal, are you?" way?
If we followed the same chain of reasoning, we can still easily apply it to real money. Cash, especially nowadays, is probably far more likely to be used for illegal transactions than electronic transactions. It's hard or impossible to trace, it can be laundered far more easily, it's easier to cook the books or hide illegal transactions with cash. Does this mean we should move towards banning it, as our society becomes more anchored to digital banking and the ratio of illegality keeps growing?
I still hold to a theory that Satoshi Nakamoto is a brilliant North Korean engineer. The ability to steal Bitcoin with no consequence is an extremely powerful vehicle for a sanctioned country. Yes I get it's not likely but it would be so much more fun if it was true.
There's a lot of talk about drugs and such, but just being able a tool for avoiding sanctions seems to be a bigger one that could be a reason to delegitamize it to drive the value to zero.
Yeah but that wouldn't do what this is actually designed to do: enrich the people who financially backed the Republican ticket.
The fuck are we going to even do with reserve crypto? I'm not even on the crypto bit here, the point of strategic reserves is to have stock for emergencies. What fucking emergency can someone possibly imagine that would be resolved with a pile of ETH?
Sell it to prop up the dollar and/or pay down debt, same as gold reserves.
Whether crypto is a good idea for that purpose is a matter of opinion. I lean toward no. Strongly. Make the case either way and it can be a sensible discussion.
So, I was in a conversation with someone who made an interesting comment.
He said we have a gold reserve and that makes sense, but if we become interplanetary, then you don’t want to pay to ship gold to Mars. Crypto solves that issue. The reserve will last well into the future so preparing now makes sense.
Unique take to be sure, but sharing because it was interesting.
The United States needs to establish a crypto reserve to prepare for a permanent Martian settlement with an independent economy 100 years from now? It's difficult to think of something less relevant to the well-being of the American public.
You can really tell it's just another pump-n-dump scheme because no reputable science enjoyer would read/write a novel about this in sci-fi except to describe a dystopia or satire.
Having gold-equivalent reserves seems like the very last thing that Martian colonists need to worry about. I would suspect "how do we survive in an extraordinarily hostile environment with no hope of rescue when something goes wrong" is a higher priority one to solve.
This level of thinking is exactly why we're so far away manned exploration of the solar system. Early colonists absolutely cannot treat these missions as business expenses.
> Every colony is expected to earn, this is the history of colonialization.
The problem with a Martian (or even lunar) colony is that... there's not actually anything valuable there. So a traditional "earning" colony is basically off the table, and aside from the technological hurdles, is probably why the drive to do it just hasn't been there. Of our closes celestial neighbors, well, Venus is just useless entirely what with how hostile the atmosphere is to our... everything, Mars is quite far away, several months via current technology, and it's incredibly, devastatingly thin atmosphere and lower gravity means any given colony will require a lot and I do mean a LOT of support from us here on Earth to function. Colony isn't even really an appropriate word here, as colonization implies some level of living at the destination and between the lack of breathable atmosphere, lack of any and all flora, and lack of water, you're basically requiring regular supply drops or everyone is just dead.
Really the moon is far better in the transit aspect, which since you're supplying your colony from here, is a huge data point. And even then, what does that colony then do? The moon doesn't have much of anything we're really hurting for, certainly nothing to make up for the exorbitant cost of mining there. I could see it as a valuable location for low-G construction of larger, further-going spacecraft I suppose? But in terms of "expected to earn," I think either the red planet or our friend in the sky is going to be pretty dire.
When your colpny's line of support is a bubble om your head and a single sensitive means of transport, you don't want people thinking in terms of monetization. We can save taxation for the 24th century if and when we manage to terraform mars and make planatery transport not cost trillions of dollars.
But yes, I agree with you on the backers. That's precisely why I don't think they will be the ones landing Mars.
See, I want to agree with you, but at the same time we are actively burning our only habitable planet because the rich refuse to give up any money. So I guess, if we only send poor people to live on Mars, this will probably hold? But if there's one rich guy up there he'll probably kill every last person with him if you don't make sure he gets paid.
It solves the problem? The problem of shipping gold to mars? This is as made-up a problem as you get. Might as well say "What if advanced aliens come to Earth who already use crypto based currencies and the only way to stop them from destroying the earth is to pay them in ripple. So basically we need the reserve to save all life on earth."
Mars lies just at the edge of the asteroid belt. There is plenty of gold in the belt.
But to state the obvious: the Martians can keep their gold in Earth banks, just like Russia used to keep its gold in UK and Swiss banks. Many European countries still do. Even on Earth, nobody prefers to move gold around.
yeah it would cost more to ship it to Mars then it would cost to get a team of the most expensive contractors you can find to dig it out of the surface of Mars with their bare hands.
Not to mention the absurdity of thinking crypto would be more usable over interplanetary internet than VISA/ACH, or that such a society on Mars, when more than a research outpost, would benefit at all from being economically bound and gagged to a distant terrestrial currency.
> Crypto solves that issue.
Asteroid mining solves the issue. Gold will be functionally unlimited. Cryptocurrency will be long forgotten in history books after the first self sustaining space colony exists.
Maybe I am missing something, but what issue were they alluding to?
Yes, databases (anything digital for that matter) are easier to transfer over large physical distances. Why would there be a need to ship or transfer anything in that manner, considering we as earth bound humans have stopped moving around large quantities of gold for purely financial purposes quite some time ago?
Besides being a damning inditement of whatever interplanetary society they were envisioning, I’d be interested in what their view on modern day precious metal trading as a whole is.
> The “strategic reserve” exposes crypto as the scam it always was (alexkolchinski.com) | 125 points by kolchinski 2 days ago | 124 comments |https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43236752
"Fact check: Jimmy Carter put his peanut farm into a blind trust during presidency"
Carter put his peanut farm into a blind trust during the presidency – he didn't sell it. An expert told USA TODAY blind trusts allow someone to retain ownership of an asset while transferring management to another person or institution.
The sale happened after Carter left office, with considerable personal debts:
The Carters sold the peanut farm in March 1981, shortly after Carter left office following a failed bid for a second term. Years of drought and changes in warehouse management had left the Carters with more than $1 million of debt at that point...
I'm not sure a blind trust makes particular sense for a specific business as an isolation measure. Contrast with, say, an investment portfolio where management of the portfolio is completely handed over to an independent entity. In that case there's no direct managerial control over the individual investments themselves (save shareholder votes), and the contents of the trust can vary over time.
Putting an individual business in a trust strikes me as putting a single item in a bag and then into another bag. You're not abstracting or collectivising, only putting more packaging around it. Maybe there's some managerial distance, but everyone on both sides of that gap knows exactly who ultimately benefits.
(I'm not calling Carter corrupt. He's likely the least corrupt president the US has seen in 50--75 years. I'm saying that this specific measure, well-intentioned as it may have been, was rather empty. It's also immeasurably better than present practices, of course.)
Hi dang, is a user with similar karma levels as the flagging user able to unflag a post? If so, can you mention that in the FAQ as well? You may think it's obvious but I think it would have a calming effect on the meta-thread if people know that another user with the same amount of cred could theoretically unflag the post.
There is information in the FAQ about how to flag a post and who gets to do it, but it's unclear, at least to me, if another user with a similar karma level is able to unflag it.
I agree that a user may find the title inflammatory because it's an opinionated accusation without an explicit court decision backing it up, but I want to emphasize that official HN moderators should not be able flag this specific post as Coinbase is a YC company and happens to be one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world, hence the conflict of interest in burying this story. I can't see any way how someone could contest the fact that this story presents a conflict of interest for YC.
The alternative is to allow this site to burn itself to a crisp, an irreversible outcome.
Perhaps you think the this-time-is-differentness of this time is different enough to justify it, but (a) none of us can actually know that in advance, (b) the impact of getting it wrong is existential (if one can use that word about a relatively trivial thing like an internet forum), (c) people have often said such things in the past and it's clear that we were right not to pull the plug when they did, and (d) my job hasn't changed.
OP here:
if stories like these will cause HN to burn to a crisp,
it's worth talking 'why?'.
We all know YC is a crypto backer,
and if crypto is the problem,
then maybe HN is part of the problem.
It hasn't got to do with cryptocurrency—it's the same with any major ongoing topic (MOT), especially when the stories are sensational, inflammatory, and/or divisive. This is about internet forum dynamics and our attempt to have a forum that's optimized for intellectual curiosity [1]. To achieve that means we have to limit the amount of repetition [2].
If you want further explanation, the links in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43272671 should take you to plenty. If you read some of that and then have a question I haven't answered yet, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
Question: is Gary Tan willing to make a public statement about YC's stance regarding the propose Crypto Reserve how CoinBase will benefit?
In particular,
addressing Brian Armstrong's position that Bitcoin and only Bitcoin should be in the reserve? https://finance.yahoo.com/news/coinbases-brian-armstrong-thi...
So, let's say HN does burn to a crisp, let's take that as given.
- What is an HN in the world in which we seem to be headed?
- What is the possibility, however slim, that HN might serve as a bulwark against that world? Is that a die worth throwing?
- What is HN's, and YC's, culpability in creating that world? I'm looking at social media, crypto, AI, AdTech, FinTech, Thiel, Musk, Andreesen, and who knows who else here, as well as general enshittification and authoritarianisation of the Internet (surveillance, propaganda, disinformation, censorship, targeted manipulation,[1] kompromat, the intertwingled and self-reinforcing surveillance capitalism/state/anarchism, killbots, etc.).
- What if any sufficient difference would change your mind? Do you, dang, have any personal moral limits at which you'd change your moderator stance, or simply wash your hands and walk away? Or not?
I borrowed Anubis's scales, and it seems to me HN compares poorly to the feather of the liberal social democratic experiment.
Turning HN into a Nazi bar[2] is also an irreversible outcome. As is turning the polity in which it resides into a fascist state.
What is HN in the world in which we seem to be headed? One of the last places where one can have a relatively sane conversation.
In the world we're headed into, truth is gone. Making an honest judgment based on your best evaluation of the evidence available to you is gone. You will parrot the current insanity that some authoritarian demands, or suffer the consequences. In that world, we really need HN, to keep our sanity, and to avoid the complete destruction of our moral character.
And if you really think that's the world we're headed to, do you think converting HN into all-anti-Trump-all-the-time is really going to be the difference between ending up there and not ending up there?
Just noting: I'm giving this some thought, it's a good question.
Though for the most part, the short answer is that HN would be either irrelevant, irredeemably corrupted itself, and/or a tool for the abusive power of that world.
Which is to say that fighting against that outcome is paramount.
The evil that is to be fought is far more than just one person. But by fighting that orientation (it's not an ideology, it's simple power-lust) is essential.
HN has had its critics going back to its origins. I'm tending to think jwz was right.
I've heard from others who were themselves prominent on HN that they're finding the site no longer tolerable, and I ask myself whether or not it is at least weekly, if not more often. And as much as I've admired much of what dang does here, there's some which makes my hair stand up. Including what he has, and has not, said in this thread.
(This is only a partial answer, and I hope to give it more consideration and justice soon.)
Is the flagging of articles an absolute number? How does the article get 100+ upvotes but still flagged? Does it mean it early hit the flag threshold to get flagged and later got the votes, or that the flags continue to outweigh the upvotes?
I was curious if the 'flagged' note that is added to articles is triggered based on a ratio of "flag"/upvotes or if it is a flat number.
To clarify an example of what I mean:
For example, if the maximum flag ratio: is 0.5, and if an article has 10 flags / 19 upvotes, then the ratio of 10/19 is > 0.5 and the flag gets triggered.
Or maybe it's just a flat number, such that any article with >20 flags is flagged.
I'm sure it's more complicated than either example, but was just curious if you could share the approximate way the 'flagged' note is added to articles?
Hey, at least we got to see what NetBSD looked like on a JavaStation before the collapse. I'm sure voting-age US citizens will really appreciate the tech caucus' focus on the real issues facing a rapidly modernizing society.
"bongodongobob, why is the president's decentralized technology defrauding American citizens?"
"Dunno, haven't you ever wondered why FastDOOM is fast though?"
I argue that is most crypto stories period. Good to know that politics is the line people die on though when the predient does it and then we just have to ignore it.
They are brazenly corrupt. If you are logical, you just expect it of them. Otherwise how did a line item for about 4 million dollars with the State Department turning into a 400 million dollar contract for Tesla. It's just brazen corruption, they are stealing your tax dollars as quickly as they can.
It’s a bit disheartening when you start to realize how very little anyone cares about those of us who don’t have a ton of money to burn.
After they tank the economy, a lot of is should probably just go chuck ourselves into the burn pits. It will save us from having to go into debt hust to board the meat grinder early.
It is much harder to steal gold than crypto. Crypto prices are volatile, and they depend on sophisticated computing infrastructure to work that may not exist after a catastrophe. Crypto depends on 51% consensus (which can be attacked by foreign nations), gold does not. Gold has intrinsic value.
The U.S. already has a gold reserve, and an oil reserve. There is no need for a crypto reserve.
I've posted dozens of comments on these issues in recent weeks (I mean issues such as how we handle politics on HN, when we turn off flags, etc.) and have spent countless hours answering people's questions in the threads as well as by email. I wouldn't do those things if I "could not care less"—it's a ton of work, plus it's mind-numbingly repetitive!
(If you haven't seen any of those many explanations, I could understand why you might jump to such a conclusion, but it's based on a mistaken premise—probably due to the "measure zero" effect that I've described a few times [1].)
Here are a few links in case anyone hasn't seen those posts and needs some trailheads into the forest:
[1] The "measure zero effect" is the strange phenomenon that no matter how many times we repeat something, the set of users who hear (or at any rate remember) it seems to have measure zero. I also call this the statelessness of the internet, but I like the 'measure zero' analogy better because it includes the fact that many users do hear these things—they're just negligible in number, compared to the ones who don't.
"A dedicated hacker news of politics site is long overdue. Civil discussions, amazing moderation, and the intelligent insight of experts to hash out complex issues. I’d be on it and participating nearly all day long."
Many years ago, I created a section of a site making the history of each commenter a major part of the discussion. This meant the trick of attempting a cleverly-structured and seemingly reasonable statement could more easily be revealed as a bad faith effort to promote hidden motives. It didn't tamp down moderation needs as much as it made the discussion far more useful for getting at how facts were related to how the discussion was being framed.
We required users to declare either neutrality or allegiance to one side of position on major issues and sub-issues. This forced users (in a limited way) to choose between spending time on honest, good-faith arguments for what they declared allegiance to, or be a "spy for the other side" and pursue dishonest, bad-faith arguments.
If a discussion site were structured to potentiate advanced moderation, you would be one of the world's premier experts in how to measure success, and in predicting the likelihood of success of different approaches. Somewhere, we need to be able to take the next step past sites like TheMotte.org
I think it would be a very different site than HN, and much harder to moderate. Moderating HN pushes me to my limit, so I can't imagine what it would take to run such a site. That doesn't mean it can't be done, of course, and I'd be interested if someone could pull it off! But it would probably take a special person to do it—for most of us, the pressure would be too high.
dang thank you for all the hard work you do to moderate this site. But I have to ask…do you ever take time off or go on vacations? You almost seem like an inhuman machine that works a lot (I mean this in a positive way btw lol)
Seriously man you do a great job taking care of this place. Please don’t forget to take care of yourself too.
With my own moderating experience, I would agree. The system would need to be based around moderation, not just posting and commenting.
It just seems that one of the most valuable uses of the internet could be in the area of politics, and with the high value, the high difficulty is worth tackling.
There have been some attempts to try to have places with high level rational political discussion.
The Neutral Politics subreddit is one example of such a place. I do not go to Reddit anymore because I feel the website overall is too addictive so I can't speak to the current quality of that specific subreddit but it was quite good several years ago and might offer you a little bit of what you want.
I agree that the current situation is not normal and that there's a danger in normalising it - plus I have some private thoughts about how the tech scene is partially complicit in what's currently happening. I'm also not sure if anyone can afford to be neutral forever (something that HN usually tries to do), simply because the stakes are so high that most participants from both sides won't accept neutrality anymore.
But even outrageous news wear off - it's human nature. I'm sure it happened during WWII, too. And there's a certain point at which, even if you do care, you don't want to have to engage with it all the time. So limiting the amount of discussion about political matters becomes a matter of mental health.
I just don't like that a small minority of readers can flag something and make a decision for an entire community. There's all kinds of stories don't like on HN. But I've never flagged any submission. It's up to the community to determine what they want to interact with (and the majority of stories rarely get more than 2 up votes. So they know how to 9fnofe stories).
I can sympathise with that, I recently deleted my Instagram account because of the increase in Nazi imagery having a negative impact on my mental health.
But with respect I would suggest that people here can do the same, choose not to click on things they don't want to discuss or ease of visiting the site a little during this time.
Or if that's not possible then it comes back to the question I was asking: Where can we discuss these things? Is there appetite for a new HN fork where we don't have to be neutral or considerate in the face of facism?
Because right now I don't know where else to go. If this was a non-political post about crypto then I wie immediately come here for discussion because I know I can trust my peers here to have a deep and nuances understanding of the technologies involved. But now I come here and I see it is flagged and hear we can't have it visible because it's "too much." That's ok, but where can we do it?
It feels very necessary for my own mental health that these discussions have a space, can you see that side too? And I feel Furthermore a responsibility to the people whose mental health and everything else is being affected directly by these off the wall decisions.
> It feels very necessary for my own mental health that these discussions have a space, can you see that side too? And I feel Furthermore a responsibility to the people whose mental health and everything else is being affected directly by these off the wall decisions.
I feel that there is definite emotional need for seeing that at least some of your peers share enough of your values to have a similar reaction to you - although that can cut both ways. For example, during COVID, many of the discussions were IMHO cesspools of misinformation with incredibly angry takes. In that situation I preferred having fewer of these threads on the main page.
Intellectually, I'm not so sure. I mean, at some point you either agree that all of this is crazy or you don't. You can certainly discuss immigration, government spending, even some hot button issues like DEI with some amount of civility, but when you're faced with what looks to be a descent into authoritarianism, is there really anything left to discuss? I'm not sure.
>For example, during COVID, many of the discussions were IMHO cesspools of misinformation with incredibly angry takes.
Health, law, relationships. Those are pretty much my main exceptions to stuff I can justify culling misinformation from. It's very specific, personal (or region-based', and bad advice can cost lives. No physical life is worth upholding some free speech on the internet.
This meanwhile is simply a mix of news and opinion. It's not harming anyone and HN never really gets "full on the front page". The algorithm does tailor to variety and the moderation strives to make sure duplicate stories are merged.
>but when you're faced with what looks to be a descent into authoritarianism, is there really anything left to discuss? I'm not sure.
Yes. It's more important to discuss than ever. You need to talk about organizing and rebelling. About how to use the system against itself. How to find allies. Keeping people ignorant and isolated is how you get hat regime to begin with.
I wouldn't have thought myself that calling my reps works without the right forums. I wouldn't know when and where protests in my area are. HN wants to say it's a community, but times like this reminds me we're more of some amourphous Meetup, mostly a revolving door of people who come in anf out with this pressure to talk about specific topics. But never make any deep connections.
The thing is that in these threads I see mostly (a) justified but predictable indignation, and (b) obvious propaganda accounts / trolls with bad takes that more reasonable people probably unhelpfully try to engage with (the propaganda comments eventually get downvoted or flagged but you'll still see them especially for new submissions).
I agree that actually discussing what can be done would be more productive.
Ways to fight back surely? And the "what looks like" is important because how do I know without discussion amongst peers?
It's fair what you're saying about Covid but HN is not where I come to hear the opinions of medical experts. But this crypto stuff, DOGE having physical access to servers etc.? The question again is where do we discuss it if not here? If it wasn't connected to Trump this would be the obvious place to come.
“Taxation is theft. It should be kept to a minimum."
What a small-minded little greed-sack. I hate it that since these people have escape-velocity wealth we have to forever sit here and on some level pretend their ideas aren't dumb.
Being born is rape. I didn't consent to choosing this country or mother or body.
That's my mindset when I hear this. There's a social contract you didn't sign but you're subject to it and given services to be raised into a hopefully healthy citizen. In return, you chip in to make sure those services can be maintained.
Your choice here is that you can one day revoke that citizenship. But sadly you were born to early to find your own sovereign island and declare yourself king so you can avoid taxes. That part is a shame.
Theft does not imply the use of force. It is illegally depriving you of your property (regardless of whether force is used).
However, tax you owe is not your property in the first place. It's the price of living in the society you benefit from. You can complain the price is too high, or go live somewhere else. But it's not theft.
Force in want sense? It's non-consensual. Just like garnishing wages, etc.
>It is illegally depriving you of your property
The legality of it is the main distinction but its just coincidental. Theft could be made legal or taxation could be made illegal. If that's the primary distinction then I think it just makes my point.
I dont think what I'm really saying is even that controversial. The basic definition of theft is taking something from someone without their consent. I think the intuition is that I am arguing for no taxes, and that's what sounds so disagreeable, but thats not what I'm saying. The government has a monopoly on violence, theft, etc. Its just how it works. And we're better off with government than without it.
> The basic definition of theft is taking something from someone without their consent.
I can go with that.
> The government has a monopoly on violence
Yes, but not unconstrained or arbitrary violence (mostly, in democracies at any rate). Property rights depend on them being enforced. So while the absence of a government might mean you didn't get taxed, good luck holding on to any of your property without laws, courts and police.
> And we're better off with government than without it.
A billionaire can go to a lawless place like parts of Somalia, and see first-hand how much people respect their claims to their safety and property there, if they did not pay yet more for mercenaries. Even for people who do not believe in investing in social welfare and public infrastructure and goods, taxes pay for the police, army, and laws that enforce their claim and monopoly over their own property. Without the government that taxes fund, private property is just a wishful concept, and it is difficult to own anything in the first place.
See my explicit note about taxes being necessary. None of what you're saying addresses my point that it is basically theft because the money is taken from you without your consent.
Since taxation is not legally theft, I assume you are talking philosophically. And philosophically I'm saying that the notions of taxes and government are prior to property, and that the notion of property is a limited privilege that some governments grant to select people under its aegis (see also: certain serfs and slaves, who are not afforded the same privilege; they never had the opportunity that someone gave them a contract that paid them in property). It is absurd to say that when what gave you your monopoly over "your things" wants to limit the extent of its graciousness, that that is theft; rather it is a limitation of their charity.
In fact, many historical nations' main function is seemingly to define and protect property (especially land) of a select few privileged people.
There are places in the world that you can go to where sovereign violence does not reach and you don't have to pay tax, but lacking the organization afforded by a modern government is typically not what many people regard as a happy existence.
People often don't like the outflow of money. They complain about it constantly. "Netflix's prices went up!" "The store wanted me to pay for my groceries and wouldn't just let me walk out with them!" "I smashed my neighbor's car with a bat and now the judge says I have to pay for it." These things are not "literally" theft.
>"Netflix's prices went up!" "The store wanted me to pay for my groceries and wouldn't just let me walk out with them!" "I smashed my neighbor's car with a bat and now the judge says I have to pay for it." These things are not "literally" theft.
But who is saying they are? I certainly am not. I agree those things arent literally theft. I think the government deciding how much money you owe and getting it with or without your consent basically is theft. The main distinction is that its legal, but that is a coincidental distinction because theft could be made legal as well.
Trump gives US money to finance drug kingpins, paedophiles, human trafficking, scammers, hackers, ponzi schemers, illegal bookmakers, money launderers, polluters and electricity stealers in countries like NK, China, Russia and at home. Amirite?
How about that 50x leverage $200M BTC + ETH trade mere minutes before Trump announced the crypto reserve? [0] Like we all know Nancy does it but that doesn't make it ok for the Grifter in Chief to do it.
>“Nobody announced a tax or a spending program,” responded David Sacks, the venture capitalist serving as Trump’s AI & crypto czar, who has invested in crypto companies through his venture-capital firm Craft Ventures, including ones involved with Solana. Sacks said that he has sold his personal crypto holdings. “Maybe you should wait to find out what’s actually being proposed.”
And that's good enough for you is it? Unverified claims, and no insight into who else benefits from his decisions?
His venture firm (Craft Ventures) previously invested in Bitwise Asset Management, and their top holdings include Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, XRP, and Cardano — the exact assets named by Trump for proposed inclusion in the strategic reserve.
Sorry, that's too on the nose. Especially with the nonsensical decision to include Ripple and Cardano.
> Or, and here me out, those are the 5 biggest crypto coins.
How long has Cardano been a top five coin? Did you look at the marketcap chart and assume it had been there longer than a few days? Who owns the majority of Ripple?
> So if you had to pick what to put into a reserve it would make sense that the 5 biggest coins would be there, no?
Who decided five to begin with? And then I should actually refuse your logic and pick coins that weren't in the list of the five biggest?
Trump should do this: 1) announce the government buying bc repeatedly then not buy anything. 2) The price will go up and drop again every time until people stop believing it. 3) He should announce it again then buy one million worth of bc. 4) No one will believe he will do anything serious with it. 5) Then he should announce the government is considering buying 400 billion worth of bc. 6) Silently purchase the bc spread out over a few weeks using many wallets. 7) The price will go up. 8) Announce the government now holds 400 billion in bc. 9) The price goes up again.... 9) Sell everything. 10) The end :)
What exactly do you think they have been doing with the tariffs, and these performative announcements with stock market impacts that were a frequent occurrence during his first term in office?
But I absolutely guarantee that the final coins that are decided upon change from what's currently there.
> Limit gives you value, adding more devalue currency. One of reasons of inflation.
Another way of creating value is through innovation, which often needs easy(er) access to capital to research, develop, and produce it:
> But Inflation is not inevitable. There are numerous countervailing forces that have been at work for much of the past 50 years. The three big Deflation drivers: 1) Technology, which creates massive economies of scale, especially in digital products (e.g., Software); 2) Robotics/Automation, which efficiently create more physical goods at lower prices; and 3) Globalization and Labor Arbitrage, which sends work to lower cost regions, making goods and services less expensive.
The stagnation was sometimes only stopped through lucky discovery of gold deposits:
> Monetarists believe that the 1873 depression was caused by shortages of gold that undermined the gold standard, and that the 1848 California Gold Rush, 1886 Witwatersrand Gold Rush in South Africa and the 1896–99 Klondike Gold Rush helped alleviate such crises.
Bitcoins in practice are not truly limited. The amount of gold on earth is not likely to change much, despite the efforts of alchemists in the past. However, new bitcoins (with new limited supplies) are introduced all the time.
Gold is more strategic because it has proven its value over millennia.
Bitcoin is still choosing which University to attend, and on his first date.
Bitcoin is a brand not a fixed tech. Remember when it forked?
Don't believe that Trump couldn't order Bitcoin to mint for the US. How? He is a master power broker and Bitcoin is centralized and run by humans. It is not an independent entity like, for example a coronavirus or an idea that cannot be tamed.
The big bitcoin buyers are then USA and Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy). The miners incentivised to operate in the US. The US government can now say to the coder: well, (clicks fingers), take this $10m and do what we say or don't and we will make you illegal and under arrest.
This would be well within Trump's MO and comfort zone.
Bitcoin is by definition not controlled by one party. It is in all involved interests for that not to be the case, since it would immediately lose all value were it to happen. You know, slavery has also been around for millennia, but I don't think it should make a comeback.
The point about being around for millennia is more about how do you measure a system where value is placed by faith. Longevity is a measure of faith. Unlike slavery, there is nothing inheritly bad or likely to change about gold any more than about bitcoin. Intact gold is backed by physics - you cannot fake it. Gold is gold. Bitcoin is one of many cryptocurrencies. Happened to be the first but that is the only distinction vs. Say litecoin.
Bitcoin is not as democratic as you suggest. Mining pools have power. Decisions get made. People are involved. It is like saying the US is not controlled by definition because there is Congress. But those people make decisions and can be heavily influenced by those with money.
It's a complex situation. On one hand, I understand why it's not right to buy a specific cryptocurrency which will disproportionally benefit a specific set of people. But on the other hand, cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin are provably scarce assets backed by a ledger which is far more robust and far more auditable than anything else we have at the moment.
A publicly auditable, decentralized monetary system is necessary in this day and age. Money is just too important to be entrusted to any specific political party. There needs to be a reliable mechanism to limit spending. Scarcity is one of the most important characteristics of money to ensure a level playing field for everyone; our current monetary system completely neglects this essential property and has no mechanism to limit government spending. We have an extremely centralized system which is unaccountable to the billions of citizens who are increasingly forced to participate in it as it is becoming increasingly unappealing, asymmetric and inefficient.
I think if the government launched a new cryptocurrency, distributed it evenly to every citizen, made it legal tender then started buying it up with fiat USD (intentionally causing hyperinflation of the fiat USD). That would solve a lot of problems. Every country should also do the same and they can agree on maintaining forex rates so that the hyperinflation is even and not too noticeable. Only people who refuse to move to the fairer system would lose; which is fine. Wealthy people who understand the benefits of a scarce money system will be able to maintain much of their wealth by transitioning early and buying up tokens from people who do not understand the benefits... Or they can just hold onto their assets (if they're confident that their assets are productive in real-terms and not just nominally in fiat terms).
I dislike crypto, but giving a financial benefit to a certain voting block after your election is not corruption, this is just a digital form of pork barreling.
> World Liberty Financial has received $75 million from Chinese crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun. Last week, Trump’s Securities and Exchange Commission, now purged of its Biden-era crypto enforcement team, dropped its fraud case against Sun.
This is not just financial benefit for a voting bloc.
> Rather, the person familiar with Fairshake said, the goal of the attack campaign was to terrify other politicians—“to warn anyone running for office that, if you are anti-crypto, the industry will come after you.”
> “It’s a simple message,” the person familiar with Fairshake said. “If you are pro-crypto, we will help you, and if you are anti we will tear you apart.”
