Dave86ch

Bitcoin clearly benefits from the Lollapalooza effect.

Mr 100 is buying.

It has happened many times throughout history, and history just rhymes. We now confront an inflection point characteristic of transitional eras: The Pax maintained by a dominant empire diminishes The monetary order undergoes structural transformation New frontiers (digital, rather than territorial) emerge Strategically minded individuals exploit these shifts The internet and digital technologies have fundamentally reconfigured power dynamics, enabling individuals to attain financial independence and autonomy unbound by traditional geographic or political constraints. For the technically adept, decentralized systems now offer tools to secure economic sovereignty. This does not necessarily imply surpassing nation-states in wealth accumulation, but rather achieving sufficient resilience to voice opinions without incurring financial reprisal.

+1 Now they're feeling cognitive dissonance and need to vent in this thread.

It is clear that Bitcoin is set to benefit republican states and international allies as they adopt the new monetary system. This transition takes time—the asset is still in its infancy, as is its ecosystem (considering Lightning, Layer 2s, and sidechains). Beyond that, Bitcoin is inelastic, requiring careful handling to manage society’s response. The lack of foresight never ceases to amaze me.

The smart approach is to let fiat currencies die while gradually shifting funds into Bitcoin. Stablecoins will open their channels on Lightning under the name of the USD, maintaining hegemony and the demand needed to continue printing fiat’s dying paper. This will transition the economy onto a common value protocol, providing both privacy for sovereign individuals and an inflationary safety net for the masses—improving international exchange through a monetary system that stands above political interests.

Thinking that the state will be able to pay you a pension is also a leap of faith. I’ve read almost the entire Story of Civilization series by Will Durant, and when it comes to human history, almost everything is rooted in religion. The state itself has religious characteristics—ceremonies, rituals, beliefs, and priests who spread promises. President Johnson convinced everyone that eggs posed a serious threat to public health because science had supposedly proven a link to cholesterol. People believed it, and consumption of processed food skyrocketed as an alternative to real food. This happened because processed food had more manageable profit margins, while egg prices were soaring. The president cited "science" to back his claims. Many people today still believe it. There is little rationality in the religion of states, governments, and so on. "Listen, on top of the mountain, I talked with God, and He said it’s a bad idea to kill each other—otherwise, He’ll kill you all." You can't just say, "Hey, I'm Dave, and now I'm going to write 10,000 pages on why Bitcoin is better money." People will respond, "Who the fuck are you? And by the way, I want to watch the game tonight—I don’t have the mental energy to understand what you're saying." The fact that some of us use fiat currency to store wealth is an act of faith, backed by almost nothing. That’s just how we coordinate as a society, and having religious characteristics is actually a good sign.

Investing in a new and neutral monetary system—one that only Proof of Work can enable—educating your allies about this tool, introducing the population to its infrastructure and the opportunities of a deflationary savings technology, and strengthening your political position while improving the well-being of the people by leveraging unused energy sources. That would make perfect sense. It would pave the way for digitally native, hyper-efficient, and economically viable infrastructure, especially for developing countries. It would enable fair wealth distribution, resilience, and a more even economic landscape. And only Bitcoin has the technology and adoption to make this possible.

Bitcoin is a religion, way more powerful than any CEO. Like every religion, it has its priests—they come and go. Saylor is just playing his part, preaching about "having faith." $1 million is heaven; inflation is hell. Human nature never changes. Sachs and Chamath laughing about their hodlings. https://blob.satellite.earth/693b0371172e30089a60af93e5f9558ccd1fd72f0a204df7913b963098580739

Who introduced the denarius? The Roman Republic. It died. Who invented gold? God. It’s still alive. How many examples do we have of stores of value debased by human nature? Every single abstraction created by humans has been debased and manipulated. As a base layer, we need a commodity that is of God-made origin, like gold, but digital native—a bridge between atoms and bits. Just as gold was the PoW of the past, the denarius was the PoS. The rest will play a part as actors, but they will not form a foundational monetary system. The attempt to find the inventor of Bitcoin is a way to weaken its position in our minds.

I owned Ethereum, programmed a token in Solidity, and created some NFTs. I still hold VitaDAO and VitaFast (an NFT tied to intellectual property in pharma), but to me, the whole ecosystem feels like virtue signaling, networking, and shitcoinery that always ends up chasing airdrops or unclear interactions between DAOs. I keep holding it because it’s an irrelevant part of my portfolio. I made good profits in the past, and now it’s more of a learning experience than an investment.

The Lightning Network is pure magic—private transactions at the speed of light with near-zero cost. It came before Ethereum's L2s and has nothing to do with it. Bitcoin’s Taproot upgrade unlocked the ability to issue stablecoins on the Bitcoin protocol, which Tether is now leveraging.

Proof of Work

Learning about Bitcoin is an investment in itself. Shitcoins are just noise designed to exploit the plebs and give them some excitement.

History helps a lot in understanding Bitcoin, placing it within the cycles we’ve already experienced as a species. Sometimes, our perspective is too narrow, which prevents us from being prepared when “this time isn’t different”—only the perspective is.

Some pools distribute income to miners regularly based on their hashpower contribution, even when no block is mined. This favors companies with large balance sheets that can withstand the non-deterministic reward distribution, which ultimately leads to centralization. Hashcash-based eCash seems capable of creating a market that addresses this problem. Check out the Optech podcast I shared for more details.

An interesting development is USDt on Lightning through Taproot. Lightning is far more scalable than anything else.

It is a tool that is being adopted for its features and, above all, a protocol where building without permission is possible. For instance, I recently listened to an episode of Optech where they discussed the opportunity to create a Hashcash market around e-cash—a way to trade hash power and improve mining decentralization. https://fountain.fm/episode/Q4LMuuCZGvHfOLnkHJ8H It is a technological marvel involving many smart developers. Unfortunately, many will only realize this because the price goes up, just as it does for many tech companies that sell their technologies. In the meantime, many others will continue experiencing cognitive dissonance until they finally capitulate, realizing that they chose to keep fighting instead of seeking to understand. If anyone's interested, I'm building a learning version of the Bitcoin protocol in Rust, following a Braiins guide. You understand what you can build. https://github.com/Dave86ch/bitcoinrs/tree/main

Added to Bitcoin

Are you talking about Buffett followers? The ones who believe that nothing exists outside Buffett’s circle of competence? Myths and cults are part of human nature. People gather at Berkshire meetings and Bitcoin conferences just as they once gathered for pagan rituals, Christian churches, or political rallies. Cults are powerful—they bootstrap knowledge, tools, and workforces. They architect behavioral protocols—also known as laws. Bitcoin is a behavioral protocol as well—a set of rules governing interactions between digital entities in an increasingly digital world. It's no surprise that it looks like a cult among humans. I invested in Bitcoin, and I learned almost everything I know about investing thanks to Buffett. I’ve owned both BTC and Berkshire for many years, I shared my investmenrt and investment thesis in my blog over the years. But if you want to win, you must not simply believe; you must understand. You need to be able to withstand both Buffett and Satoshi without becoming emotionally attached to one side or the other. Otherwise, you’re just being manipulated by some divine figure who has likely weaponized tools, ideas, or charisma to elevate themselves as the priest of a belief system. But if you criticize something without investing the time to at least read a few books on the subject, you're probably part of a cult that demonizes anything outside the tribe—anything foreign or strange in the eyes of the so-called superior judge.