mindcandy

I haven't followed the guy closely, but I know that at this point he is a laughing stock. Proving that you are Satoshi is as easy as moving any of the coins known to be controlled by Satoshi. Instead of doing this, he just gets into flame wars with people who call him out as a liar.

There are companies that specialize in coordinating large, off-exchange trades. I listened to an interview where they mentioned security practices such as: keys are stored on laptops that were bought new, had the hard drive replaced, and the Ethernet and USB ports epoxied shut. All transactions are offline and multi-sig. Etc...

Politicians don’t put the bribes in their pockets. They put them in their re-election campaigns because without those bribes they will get voted out of office by The People in favor of an opponent with a larger, bribe-based ad budget. They don’t want the bribes, they need them just to stay in power. In return, the real goal of “access” is to hear what the bribing company wants written into law or else the bribes will cease and the politician will be booted out.

Competition for this ad budget is so fierce that Congresspeople spend more than half of their working hours reaching out to groups they need bribes from. This skews the laws not always in favor of the groups, but really in favor of whatever motivates the groups to bribe harder. Ex: if simplifying the laws would make everything easier for everyone, we can’t have it. We need the existing complexity to fight and have bidding wars over.

No matter what you want Congress to do, they can’t do it until we fix campaign finance. Doesn’t matter what issues you care about. They’ll only be worked on incidentally if they don’t get in the way of the bribes.

You don’t like it. Congress doesn’t like it. They’re trapped and can’t move against it without getting cut off and booted out. We’re all fucked until we find a catch-22-escape for them.

Constrained supply is a non-issue until it becomes an issue. But, this is a whole new currency being set up. Making inflation a non-issue from the start is a feature.

However, I think you are trying to compare Bitcoin to the US Dollar. US Dollar inflation has been reasonable if you live paycheck to paycheck. But, remember Bitcoin is not just for people living in the Bay Area. It’s also for Venezuelans, Zimbabweans, etc...

This is what happens when you try to build in SF. Note demand 3.

https://plaza16.org/visiondemands/

Additionally, people in rent controlled units are strongly incentivized to stay put, keeping the unit off the market. Knowing this, landlords must estimate the future market and price that in to new rates or they risk being even more below market rate after that new renter has been there for a few years. This is a feedback loop between landlords. Therefore, even if median rent paid in the city is reasonable, all available units are priced sky high.

This leads to people being stuck forever wherever they managed to land on their first try. Got a new job offer across town that pays better? Ready to upgrade from your straight outta school studio apt? Too bad. Moving out of your established rent control would cost you so much you’d be moving for an effective loss. Just stay immobile and keep that unit off market for decades.

The economics are being strongly skewed by an overly-enforced artificial scarcity. It's the government's job to regulate housing. But, the government is letting itself be pushed around by the land-owning minority to inflate that minority's assets at the expense of everyone else.

dislaimer: I'm not a tax lawyer. This is not advice. etc...

In general, trading crypto is taxed like trading stocks or any other commodity. So, when you trade some coins for something else, at that moment you owe tax on the difference in value between when you received vs. when you gave. Long term/short term capital gains and wash trade timing rules apply.

It gets pretty complicated when you have a trade where you are trading from a batch composed of multiple buys at difference price points in the past. Especially when you have to sort out the cap gains on the exchange fees you paid in crypto.

Try to think outside of the US/Eurozone. At least a billion unbanked individuals still have cellphones.

Meanwhile in SF, the homeless all have cell phones. They are also frequent customers of Bitcoin ATMs according to an convenience store clerk that I asked because he watches over one.

You’re still thinking like a mainframe salesman scoffing at PC’s ;) Crypto doesn’t require a bank account, passport, etc... The establishment requires that. A hope is that like the third world skipped telephone lines straight to cellphones, they will skip being dicked around by The National Bank of Venezuela and JCMorgan Chase & Partners, Ltd. and go straight to self-sovereign value exchange.

Cryptocurrencies are definitely an “Innovator’s Dilema” situation when it comes to general use. It’s much worse than the established solutions. It’s confusing, error-prone, unreliable, cheap and janky. It’s also not a great business case for the establishment who are currently making billions and billions serving very rich customers.

But... it also brings financial service options to people who have no opinions or only truly awful options.

If you are a non-homeless American, you don’t need crypto. American banks are bending over backwards to serve you. But, if you are a homeless American. Or if you are one of the unbanked billions around the world. Or, if you are a Venezuelan, Nigerian, etc... then the establishment is either dismissing you or actively working to screw you.

Crypto can bring tremendous value to all of them while bringing very little to the establishment by simply acting as a PayPal alternative for the extreme poor. If it manages to survive that, it will get better and better. Eventually it will creep up to becoming useful for rich westerners.

The connectivity requirements are like checking your email once a day or so. It’s not like you lose money if your phone goes through a tunnel.

In practice, your money should end up feeling more locked up if it is not on LN. LN becomes the checking account to the BTC savings account.