Man, I like Jeff Booth, but sometimes the statements he makes are wild: - "They can't kill Bitcoin because when they attack it, it just keeps getting stronger, so they'll try to co-opt it." - "As long as Bitcoin stays decentralized and secure ... then XYZ" Jeff is not like the other mainstream Bitcoin salesmen, in my opinion, he gives off good guy energy. He's actually the guy who "orange-pilled" me and I've made lots of fiat on my Bitcoin trades. He'd probably say that if I think in fiat terms, I don't understand Bitcoin, but I think that in order to really understand Bitcoin, you also have to understand how the world works. If you don't understand how the world works, your attempts at Game Theory are worse than useless. The people who focus only on understanding how the protocol works are too zoomed in to see the bigger picture. The idealistic, protocol-centric scenario is unrealistic under a One World Government this tyrannical. So I listened to a recent Jeff Booth podcast to see if he's updated his view on certain things, but he hasn't. It's easy to tell because all of his podcasts are really just the same 1st principles presentation. Going back to this quote: - "As long as Bitcoin stays decentralized and secure ... then XYZ" This of course assumes that Bitcoin is decentralized and secure. I guess we'll have to ignore: - 6-7 mining pools being close to 90% of the hash, - Bitcoin Core being 80+% of the nodes, - most retail users interacting through mobile wallets or browser extensions controlled by Apple and Google, - increasingly more draconian on/off-ramp custody and surveillance, - paperization practically destroying the 21M meme, - crazy tax and regulatory frictions on payments, - crazy Lightning Network centralization and regulation, - significant portion of the reachable nodes being hosted on major cloud providers, - centralized ASIC production, - centralized out-of-the-box, noob-friendly hardware wallet production, - etc. Going back to this quote: - "They can't kill Bitcoin because when they attack it, it just keeps getting stronger, so they'll try to co-opt it." Let's assume that they can kill Bitcoin for a second. Why in the world would they want to kill Bitcoin? For 99% of cases, they'd rather you use Bitcoin than gold/silver, Monero or cash. Unless you're moving tens/hundreds of millions of non-KYC Bitcoin to sponsor groups the Controllers don't like, they'd much rather you used Bitcoin than gold or cash. As I've previously written, it is very likely Bitcoin was actually created by the government, so it makes very little sense for them to kill it in the current environment (with more adversarial alternatives available). Can we at least stop pretending that Bitcoin in its current state is anti-establishment technology that makes our Jewish central bankers want to shut it down? That's just cringe. For most Bitcoiners, the "have they co-opted Bitcoin test" is: "Is there a new block every ~10 minutes? (tick-tock, next-block?)" - If yes, Bitcoin = not co-opted - If no, Bitcoin = co-opted Of course, this is a gross oversimplification - it focuses only on the protocol, while ignoring the policy and perimeter layers. It's like saying: "If human breathing:" - then human = healthy - otherwise human = unhealthy On this part: - "They can't kill Bitcoin because when they attack it, it just keeps getting stronger" My best attempt at pointing out where Bitcoin is stronger compared to 5-10 years ago: - more people know about it (is good and bad), - more hashrate (although insanely centralized, so doesn't mean much), - higher fiat price (greater incentive to defend BTC), - more people running nodes (although ordinary user nodes are at the bottom of the food-chain), - more client decentralization (although Core still at 80%+). So, a more honest Bitcoin pitch: - Hey, we've got this thing that: - might go up in fiat terms, - is very easy and convenient to transport across borders, - might protect you against the Great Taking if self-custodied properly, - is very CIA/MO$$AD, MI6-aligned, so they've got no incentive to kill it. Think of it as a stock of a blue-chip company, but a stock you can self-custody. So, essentially similar to a paper stock certificate of a Blue-Chip company that is Controllers-aligned (e.g. NVDA, MSFT, GOOG, AAPL, AMZN, etc.). This is the honest pumper Bitcoin pitch. Not - "We are about to separate money and state (... after we get permission from the state), and the Jewish bankers are pissing their pants." View quoted note →