ngmi.co
techbro with philosophy degree
eng @ Asymmetric
Prev: AWS, Yale, GitLab
1,504 posts
238 followers
84 following
Discussion Master
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we always have to watch for Russellian conjugation
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This is incorrect. Miners don't get rewarded for transaction validation. They keep rolling the nonce header to find a hash below target to satisfy PoW. First to do it gets BTC.
Transaction validation is a separate, low-energy process from mining the block, enforced by nodes, not necessarily miners.
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These are headlines about the top 200 holders of a memecoin, which anyone can buy or sell on the open market, and verify onchain, to go to a dinner.
Can you model out where something dirty happened?
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Is current crypto policy, e.g. the GENIUS act, perfect? No. I disagree with banning stablecoins from being yield bearing assets, which I'm sure the banking lobbyist put in the bill to keep their gravy train going. But even if does keep the bankers rich, it does make stablecoins regulated and safer.
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Its a stark contrast to previous Operation Choke Point 2.0
www.piratewires.com/p/crypto-cho...
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Thats why the SEC pivoted:
- Launched a (pro) Crypto Task Force
- Repealed SAB 121
- Dismissed Coinbase lawsuit
- Dismissed MetaMask lawsuit
- Paused Binance lawsuit
- Dropped Uniswap investigation
- Dropped OpenSea investigation
- Dropped Gemini investigation
- Dropped Robinhood investigation
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Idk if you've seen the attempt at crypto policy by the previous regime but it was so bad that even SEC commissioners were happy it was over. Their proposals would jail you for effectively running a calculator. Over $429B has been spent in defensive litigation.
www.sec.gov/newsroom/spe...
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i know i was just yanking chains
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tbf worldcoin's Semaphore Merkle Tree Batcher is a really cool zk/privacy layer advancement
github.com/worldcoin/se...
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makes u think
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p(doom) is probably closer to the awareness side than the water side, otherwise leaking pipes is a much larger threat than AI
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What’s bsky doing with a crypto package in its codebase 🤔🤔🤔
github.com/bluesky-soci...
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Helius publishes a lot of information in digestible formats. A lot of it is solana oriented but applies to crypto more broadly.
www.helius.dev/blog
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bsky.app/profile/ngmi...
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www.journalofdemocracy.org/online-exclu...
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small list of benefits:
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Most of the bitcoin network uses zero-emissions energy now, according to Cambridge, and that energy spend provides the relative security guarantees of the global settlement layer.
www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/wp-content/u...
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btc and stablecoins serve different purposes and have different risk profiles. as technology for financial infrastructure they're more complementary than competing
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Big banks are also looking to get into crypto together
www.wsj.com/finance/bank...
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There is also an animated video on it that one can watch before committing to the book, but I still highly recommend the book to capture more of the details.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=jk_H...
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If interested in works by a financial expert, I recommend Broken Money by Lyn Alden, which tops the charts in various categories of banking, economics, and computing.
www.amazon.com/Broken-Money...
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theres nothing about that in early documentation, it was created to have a way to transmit value permissionlessly via telecommunications
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I think her preference is unknowable, but she's talked about bitcoin a lot:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-Hc...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr5e...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPTN...
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alternatively, using bitcoin to bypass oppressive male guardianship laws and restrictive financial access might be a good thing
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not sure i'm the one ignoring societal costs
www.journalofdemocracy.org/online-exclu...
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The biggest banks are looking to get into crypto together
www.wsj.com/finance/bank...
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i can see the future
www.wsj.com/finance/bank...
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to an extent yeah, if dollar-debt becomes too expensive the foreign banks and institutions become reluctant to use dollars, and we can see that in drop in foreign lending (unless stronger dollar helps that countries exports)
still, yuan comprises 4% of global trade
www.reuters.com/world/china/...
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i mean dollar/euro account systems to work well relative to lots of the world but i wouldn't say it's perfectly fine, more like its well enough until a stress event happens like 2008 global financial crisis, eurozone crisis, uk gilt crisis, yen carry trade unwind, regional banking crisis, etc
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i remember the regional banking crisis a couple years ago being exasperated by mobile app withdraws because settlement infra at banks were built for when people had physically go to a branch, and then the Fed had to launch BTFP to save the banks
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_Te...
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true, we always have to watch for Russellian conjugation
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was the science actually bad though?
with good science we should be able to see sponsors we don't like and concede that the research they funded was verifiable, testable, falsifiable and narrow enough to say it was right or wrong.
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$trump and $melania are memecoins, specifically spl tokens on the solana network, not bitcoin. regulating bitcoin would not effect these.
Bitcoin itself also already has regulations in the US. CFTC, FinCEN, IRS, NYDFS etc have various oversights.
What regulations specifically are you proposing?
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E.g. if a solar energy company sponsors research that claims the Earth is angled at 23.5 degrees relative to the Sun and therefore we’d expect the Sun to rise here in the winter and over there in the summer, it's not wrong because solar company has a vested interest in knowing how the Sun shines.
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I guess its possible that the faculty of science at a Norwegian University and Cornell were paid off by malicious sponsors but I would argue sponsors don't matter either, it doesn't change science. All that matters is if it is:
• Independently verifiable
• Falsifiable claims
• Narrow predictions
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i do agree domains are not perfect either, my registrar could revoke my domain, theres risk in using that for identity
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it will at best be a superficial indicator of verification and at worst a signal of epistemological authority
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this is also why, during the USDC floating market depeg a couple years ago, options dealers wouldn’t write $1 strike calls. circle was still redeeming at par, so the redemption floor made those calls mispriced relative to fundamental value. thats all a stablecoin is, a token with $1 redemption.
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i would need to see a model of what you're proposing i think, i'm not sure i am seeing how to have the infra without ending up with a stablecoin still. all a stablecoin is is a token on that infra that the issuer will redeem for a dollar.
if a bank implements that infra, what parts end up different?
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i think thats where it converges, the banks still use stablecoins and stablecoin infra behind the scenes, but users just see USD on their bank app. backend might be jpmUSD, boaUSD, citiUSD, PyUSD, USDC, but abstracted to just USD. like scottish bank notes:
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banknot...
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I would also tease out "easily" a bit more because on one hand with a few lines of code, you can move millions around the earth at the speed of light, but OTOH, Stripe just paid $1.1B for stablecoin infrastructure so there must have been parts hard to build themselves
techcrunch.com/2025/02/05/s...
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yes, but you said the infrastructure they run on can be implemented easily. if you implement the infrastructure, what balance changes are happening if not stablecoin?
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I think what they're trying to do is attribute malice to a market they don't like. It's meant to be a Russellian conjugation, not intellectually honest.
If one doesn't sell their btc until price is up, it's a ponzi. If one doesn't sell their house until the price is up, it's an appreciating asset.
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wouldn't that infrastructure being implemented inherently mean the dollars moving over them is stablecoins
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Yup. This is why you see “Bitcoin is bad for the environment” less in the media now and even a flipped narrative in some cases. Eco-Business then vs now. For papers on this I recommend
Cambridge, Masanet et al. (2019)
Dittmar et al. (2019)
Sedlmeir et al. (2020)
Sai & Vranken (2023)
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Buffett, who calls bitcoin "rat poison", (but apparently dumping gigatons of coca-cola sugar into the global bloodstream is 🅰️🆗), has worked with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick on bills that work in his favor. He then lobbied to get ERCOT buy his gas peaker plants. Then Patrick says we need to look at miners.
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You mean the gas peaker plants Berkshire Hathaway (ran by a CEO who calls Bitcoin rat poison) lobbyists wanted ERCOT to buy for $10bln ended up failing to stabilize the grid? The thing peer reviewed research shows bitcoin does well?
www.reuters.com/business/ene...
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Ah, a fellow scholarly papers reader. I assume you’ve read Cambridge, Masanet et al. (2019), Dittmar et al. (2019), Sedlmeir et al. (2020), Sai & Vranken (2023) then?
I’ve listed a bunch of other papers here as well if interested. I trust the science.
bsky.app/profile/ngmi...