So yeah,
market gods have decided to lower the MVRV a little more more,
with these constant big fakeouts separating lots of amateurs from their coins, dropping the mvrv even more
๐ณ๐พ๐พ๐ผ๐ฟ๐พ๐ ๐ ๐ธ๐ฝ๐ถ
market gods have decided to lower the MVRV a little more more,
with these constant big fakeouts separating lots of amateurs from their coins, dropping the mvrv even more
๐ณ๐พ๐พ๐ผ๐ฟ๐พ๐ ๐ ๐ธ๐ฝ๐ถ
๐จ5
๐จ NOW: FTX bankruptcy plan approved by judge, customers to be paid out in cash
(1) Repaying customers in cash plus interest, based on November 2022 value of their crypto
= right at the BOTTOM, when $BTC was $22k and $SOL was $40
= Bad for FTX clients, irrelevant for crypto?
Irrelevant for crypto because they were always going to dump their crypto for cash in bankruptsy anyway, and in fact already did all of that dumping earlier this year via auctions that vest out over 4 years?
(2) FTX is dumping their holdings in woke AI company Anthropic
= Hilarious. But, apparently this deal already completed in June 2024.
Can see why this couldโve been an excuse for the market to take a mini-dump, but TBH looks like non-news, all that FTX crypto was already dumped long ago
๐ณ๐พ๐พ๐ผ๐ฟ๐พ๐ ๐ ๐ธ๐ฝ๐ถ
(1) Repaying customers in cash plus interest, based on November 2022 value of their crypto
= right at the BOTTOM, when $BTC was $22k and $SOL was $40
= Bad for FTX clients, irrelevant for crypto?
Irrelevant for crypto because they were always going to dump their crypto for cash in bankruptsy anyway, and in fact already did all of that dumping earlier this year via auctions that vest out over 4 years?
(2) FTX is dumping their holdings in woke AI company Anthropic
= Hilarious. But, apparently this deal already completed in June 2024.
Can see why this couldโve been an excuse for the market to take a mini-dump, but TBH looks like non-news, all that FTX crypto was already dumped long ago
๐ณ๐พ๐พ๐ผ๐ฟ๐พ๐ ๐ ๐ธ๐ฝ๐ถ
๐4
Nick Szabo overtakes Len Sassaman as frontrunner for HBO's Satoshi reveal on Polymarket
๐ณ๐พ๐พ๐ผ๐ฟ๐พ๐ ๐ ๐ธ๐ฝ๐ถ
๐ณ๐พ๐พ๐ผ๐ฟ๐พ๐ ๐ ๐ธ๐ฝ๐ถ
๐5
Ethereum is essentially the Titan sub of crypto,
As Iโve said for many years.
Remember, Satoshi easily had the technical ability to give Bitcoin arbitrary smart contracts,
BUT HE INTENTIONALLY CHOSE NOT TO,
INTENTIONALLY CRIPPLED ARBITRARY SMART CONTRACT ABILITY,
IN THE NAME OF SECURITY
Because he couldnโt figure out how to make arbitrary smart contracts secure, in the same sense that the built-in bitcoin accounting โdappโ is secure
EVERYONE in early Bitcoin, whoโs being honest, knew this as well, it was blatantly obvious
Then Ethereum came alongโฆ
AND JUST REMOVED THAT SECURITY PROTECTION,
WITHOUT SOLVING THE SECURITY PROBLEM AT ALL
Ethereum was always a massive blatant scam,
in the same sense as any other engineering disaster that eventually arose from someone ignoring safety restrictions that had been put in place for good reason, while putting zero effort into solving the problems those safety mechanisms were put in place for
- Titan Sub: Everyone knew very well carbon fiber subs were a horrible idea prone to sudden catastrophic failure. Dude just ignored that restriction while doing nothing to solve the problem, then boom.
- 2008 financial crisis: Many financial restrictions, which were well known to be restrictions that should be observed in order to avoid a blow-up, prior to 2008, suddenly the industry stopped observing. Then boom.
Etc.
Countless examples of WELL-KNOWN saftey restrictions, whose role in preventing disaster was well understood โ
and then one day an industry just decides to stop observing those obviously sensible restrictions,
and then things work well for a while,
and then boom.
Ethereum was exactly that.
0% innovation.
100% just removing a very well-established safety restriction, without any serious attempt at all of solving safety problems it was in place to protect against,
And then boom.
Ethereum will eventually be remembered in the same way that the retarded instruments of the financial crisis was, or the retardation of the Titan sub was
โ the innovation was always obviously lies,
= Reality is Ethereum just tossed aside critical safety restrictions, lied about having solved the underlying safety problems that those were in place for, when really the had never even seriously tried to, then boom, inevitable disaster.
(Solana, FWIW, can partially be seen as much more restrictively extending what bitcoin could do โ Essentially all Solana tokens that are tradable on the major dexes are just instances of 2 smart contracts! Incredibly restrictive. BUT, solana does some bad things by eliminating PoW, so as a whole a mixed bag, BUT in the area of programatic restriction and enabling automated verification of security of tokens, Solanaโs huge step backward with restrictions here actually is huge step forward for security at the dapp layer vs Ethereum.)
๐ณ๐พ๐พ๐ผ๐ฟ๐พ๐ ๐ ๐ธ๐ฝ๐ถ
As Iโve said for many years.
Remember, Satoshi easily had the technical ability to give Bitcoin arbitrary smart contracts,
BUT HE INTENTIONALLY CHOSE NOT TO,
INTENTIONALLY CRIPPLED ARBITRARY SMART CONTRACT ABILITY,
IN THE NAME OF SECURITY
Because he couldnโt figure out how to make arbitrary smart contracts secure, in the same sense that the built-in bitcoin accounting โdappโ is secure
EVERYONE in early Bitcoin, whoโs being honest, knew this as well, it was blatantly obvious
Then Ethereum came alongโฆ
AND JUST REMOVED THAT SECURITY PROTECTION,
WITHOUT SOLVING THE SECURITY PROBLEM AT ALL
Ethereum was always a massive blatant scam,
in the same sense as any other engineering disaster that eventually arose from someone ignoring safety restrictions that had been put in place for good reason, while putting zero effort into solving the problems those safety mechanisms were put in place for
- Titan Sub: Everyone knew very well carbon fiber subs were a horrible idea prone to sudden catastrophic failure. Dude just ignored that restriction while doing nothing to solve the problem, then boom.
- 2008 financial crisis: Many financial restrictions, which were well known to be restrictions that should be observed in order to avoid a blow-up, prior to 2008, suddenly the industry stopped observing. Then boom.
Etc.
Countless examples of WELL-KNOWN saftey restrictions, whose role in preventing disaster was well understood โ
and then one day an industry just decides to stop observing those obviously sensible restrictions,
and then things work well for a while,
and then boom.
Ethereum was exactly that.
0% innovation.
100% just removing a very well-established safety restriction, without any serious attempt at all of solving safety problems it was in place to protect against,
And then boom.
Ethereum will eventually be remembered in the same way that the retarded instruments of the financial crisis was, or the retardation of the Titan sub was
โ the innovation was always obviously lies,
= Reality is Ethereum just tossed aside critical safety restrictions, lied about having solved the underlying safety problems that those were in place for, when really the had never even seriously tried to, then boom, inevitable disaster.
(Solana, FWIW, can partially be seen as much more restrictively extending what bitcoin could do โ Essentially all Solana tokens that are tradable on the major dexes are just instances of 2 smart contracts! Incredibly restrictive. BUT, solana does some bad things by eliminating PoW, so as a whole a mixed bag, BUT in the area of programatic restriction and enabling automated verification of security of tokens, Solanaโs huge step backward with restrictions here actually is huge step forward for security at the dapp layer vs Ethereum.)
๐ณ๐พ๐พ๐ผ๐ฟ๐พ๐ ๐ ๐ธ๐ฝ๐ถ
๐ฏ7๐1
Since Nick Szabo is in the spotlight again, hereโs some my highlights from many years ago, of his 1996 โSmart Contractsโ article.
So it starts of INCREDIBLY well,
Correctly listing out many critical properties that a legitimate generalized smart contract platform of the future absolutely must fulfill,
โ Properties which later scams like Ethereum OBVIOUSLY AND HORRIBLY VIOLATE, and remember this was 1996, so Ethereumโs BS was well recognized decades before Ethereum even existed.
But then, deeper into the article, he starts to slip:
โA third category, (c) sophisticated vandalism (where the vandals can and are willing to sacrifice substantial resources), for example a military attack by third parties, is of a special and difficult kind that doesn't often arise in typical contracting, so that we can place it in a separate category and ignore it hereโ
โ NO. This was a common cop-out of the reputation-system focused approaches of the late 90s and early 2000s, to just ignore threat of attacks from rich countries, so can see why he would also use this cop-out, but no. Critical thing about Bitcoin its making cost to kill so incredibly expensive that soon not even the richest nations could kill it, a state that Bitcoin is finally arriving at and surpassing today.
And then futher down, starting in the โCryptographic Building Blocksโ section, he swirves wildly off-track, describing the horribly wrong identity-based and reputation-based approaches that were a popular path of exploration at the time, a completely different path than the one Bitcoin ultimately took.
So,
First half clearly shows that Szabo, like some others at the time, had exactly the right intuitions for what properties a legit system should have,
Latter half goes horribly off-track in the wrong direction
โ Question is:
In the 10 years after this paper, did Szabo abandon the failed approach of the 2nd half of the paper,
and switch back to something actually fulfilling the properties he outlined in the 1st half,
= creating Bitcoin?
Unclear, by this alone.
Tbf, other mega-celebrities in the field around the same time in the 90s, e.g. Bruce Schneier, had also been screaming the importance of the cost-of-attack based approach instead of the identity & reputation-based approach.
So Szaboโs first half of the article here is quite well thought-out, and quite against the dominant grain of much of the field at the time โ but actually not so original and totally matching some of the other loudest celebrities at the time.
Unclear, as far as evidence of Szabo being Satoshi.
That said, remains a good outline of why Ethereum was a horrible scam, to this day.
๐ณ๐พ๐พ๐ผ๐ฟ๐พ๐ ๐ ๐ธ๐ฝ๐ถ
So it starts of INCREDIBLY well,
Correctly listing out many critical properties that a legitimate generalized smart contract platform of the future absolutely must fulfill,
โ Properties which later scams like Ethereum OBVIOUSLY AND HORRIBLY VIOLATE, and remember this was 1996, so Ethereumโs BS was well recognized decades before Ethereum even existed.
But then, deeper into the article, he starts to slip:
โA third category, (c) sophisticated vandalism (where the vandals can and are willing to sacrifice substantial resources), for example a military attack by third parties, is of a special and difficult kind that doesn't often arise in typical contracting, so that we can place it in a separate category and ignore it hereโ
โ NO. This was a common cop-out of the reputation-system focused approaches of the late 90s and early 2000s, to just ignore threat of attacks from rich countries, so can see why he would also use this cop-out, but no. Critical thing about Bitcoin its making cost to kill so incredibly expensive that soon not even the richest nations could kill it, a state that Bitcoin is finally arriving at and surpassing today.
And then futher down, starting in the โCryptographic Building Blocksโ section, he swirves wildly off-track, describing the horribly wrong identity-based and reputation-based approaches that were a popular path of exploration at the time, a completely different path than the one Bitcoin ultimately took.
So,
First half clearly shows that Szabo, like some others at the time, had exactly the right intuitions for what properties a legit system should have,
Latter half goes horribly off-track in the wrong direction
โ Question is:
In the 10 years after this paper, did Szabo abandon the failed approach of the 2nd half of the paper,
and switch back to something actually fulfilling the properties he outlined in the 1st half,
= creating Bitcoin?
Unclear, by this alone.
Tbf, other mega-celebrities in the field around the same time in the 90s, e.g. Bruce Schneier, had also been screaming the importance of the cost-of-attack based approach instead of the identity & reputation-based approach.
So Szaboโs first half of the article here is quite well thought-out, and quite against the dominant grain of much of the field at the time โ but actually not so original and totally matching some of the other loudest celebrities at the time.
Unclear, as far as evidence of Szabo being Satoshi.
That said, remains a good outline of why Ethereum was a horrible scam, to this day.
๐ณ๐พ๐พ๐ผ๐ฟ๐พ๐ ๐ ๐ธ๐ฝ๐ถ
๐ฏ5๐ซก3๐2๐2๐1
Interesting.
Nick Szaboโs 2005 announcement for BitGold
& Satoshiโs 2009 announcement of Bitcoin
โฆare so incredibly identical,
that itโs 100% clear that the Bitcoinโs introduction was clearly written as a play on BitGoldโs introduction
BitGold: โThe problem, in a nutshell, is that our money currently depends on trust in a third party for its valueโ
Bitcoin: โThe root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that's required to make it workโ
โฆand, countless other quotes through out both of them are basically perfectly-aligned paraphrasings.
So Szabo is Satoshi?
Not so fast.
Already been long and well-established that Satoshi was well aware of Bitgold.
And TBF, whenever a legit, generalized successor to Bitcoin finally arrives,
โ Almost definitely the author will also introduce it in the same style,
= Root problem with todayโs servies is all the trust that's required to make them work.
Fascinating, though totally inconclusive, on its own, as evidence for Szabo being Satoshi.
๐ณ๐พ๐พ๐ผ๐ฟ๐พ๐ ๐ ๐ธ๐ฝ๐ถ
Nick Szaboโs 2005 announcement for BitGold
& Satoshiโs 2009 announcement of Bitcoin
โฆare so incredibly identical,
that itโs 100% clear that the Bitcoinโs introduction was clearly written as a play on BitGoldโs introduction
BitGold: โThe problem, in a nutshell, is that our money currently depends on trust in a third party for its valueโ
Bitcoin: โThe root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that's required to make it workโ
โฆand, countless other quotes through out both of them are basically perfectly-aligned paraphrasings.
So Szabo is Satoshi?
Not so fast.
Already been long and well-established that Satoshi was well aware of Bitgold.
And TBF, whenever a legit, generalized successor to Bitcoin finally arrives,
โ Almost definitely the author will also introduce it in the same style,
= Root problem with todayโs servies is all the trust that's required to make them work.
Fascinating, though totally inconclusive, on its own, as evidence for Szabo being Satoshi.
๐ณ๐พ๐พ๐ผ๐ฟ๐พ๐ ๐ ๐ธ๐ฝ๐ถ
๐ฏ5๐ฅ2๐คฏ1
Further into Szaboโs 2005 BitGold announcement, we see the origin of one of the popular Satoshi announcements
โ Finney had previously implemented a modified enhancement of Szaboโs Bitgold, with Szabo refusing to ever turn any of his ideas into actual code
โ So natural to conclude that Finney may have simply done the exact same thing again some years later, making another implementation of that fixed critical problems of the previous versions
= Bitcoin
And then this time around, the fixes actually worked to make something useful, and it took off from there.
Supposedly, one theory is that, in light of the Liberty Reserve disaster that was fresh on everyoneโs mind at the time, Finney may have decided to launch this new iteration anonymously, to avoid the same fate.
(This is NOT to say that Bitcoin was a collaboration among multiple people. Doesnโt seem to meet the threshold. Seeing someone elseโs critically-flawed work and then redesigning it to fix the critical problems would not generally be considered collaborative work, as long as the fixed parts are substantially different, or as long as the previous guy got some core properties confidently and horribly wrong, and the fix went in the opposite direction.)
๐ณ๐พ๐พ๐ผ๐ฟ๐พ๐ ๐ ๐ธ๐ฝ๐ถ
โ Finney had previously implemented a modified enhancement of Szaboโs Bitgold, with Szabo refusing to ever turn any of his ideas into actual code
โ So natural to conclude that Finney may have simply done the exact same thing again some years later, making another implementation of that fixed critical problems of the previous versions
= Bitcoin
And then this time around, the fixes actually worked to make something useful, and it took off from there.
Supposedly, one theory is that, in light of the Liberty Reserve disaster that was fresh on everyoneโs mind at the time, Finney may have decided to launch this new iteration anonymously, to avoid the same fate.
(This is NOT to say that Bitcoin was a collaboration among multiple people. Doesnโt seem to meet the threshold. Seeing someone elseโs critically-flawed work and then redesigning it to fix the critical problems would not generally be considered collaborative work, as long as the fixed parts are substantially different, or as long as the previous guy got some core properties confidently and horribly wrong, and the fix went in the opposite direction.)
๐ณ๐พ๐พ๐ผ๐ฟ๐พ๐ ๐ ๐ธ๐ฝ๐ถ
๐ฏ4๐3
And to be clear,
Szabo got some things horribly wrong, at the most fundamental level, with Bitgold,
Much like he swirved horribly in the wrong direction in the second half of his โSmart Contractsโ article.
Quite weird that heโd says what properties a legit system should have, and then immediately presents a system whose properties are clearly not fulfilling those.
Costliness of โcreationโ was never a key property, neither sufficient nor even neccessary, and this was not even the property heโd outlined in the 1996 article.
Bizzare.
But yeah, BigGold got some things horribly wrong.
Did Szabo himself later fix those backward desiderata and create Bitcoin?
Or was Szabo so stubbornly wrong with those backward desiderata, that someone else had to come along and do it right, to create Bitcoin?
But yeah, Szabo did have some very central things horribly wrong, at least at the time of BitGold.
๐ณ๐พ๐พ๐ผ๐ฟ๐พ๐ ๐ ๐ธ๐ฝ๐ถ
Szabo got some things horribly wrong, at the most fundamental level, with Bitgold,
Much like he swirved horribly in the wrong direction in the second half of his โSmart Contractsโ article.
Quite weird that heโd says what properties a legit system should have, and then immediately presents a system whose properties are clearly not fulfilling those.
Costliness of โcreationโ was never a key property, neither sufficient nor even neccessary, and this was not even the property heโd outlined in the 1996 article.
Bizzare.
But yeah, BigGold got some things horribly wrong.
Did Szabo himself later fix those backward desiderata and create Bitcoin?
Or was Szabo so stubbornly wrong with those backward desiderata, that someone else had to come along and do it right, to create Bitcoin?
But yeah, Szabo did have some very central things horribly wrong, at least at the time of BitGold.
๐ณ๐พ๐พ๐ผ๐ฟ๐พ๐ ๐ ๐ธ๐ฝ๐ถ
๐4๐ฏ2
Biggest challenge to identifying Satoshi
โฆis that even Satoshi horribly screwed up the core of Bitcoin in many ways,
making it kind of amazing the problems all ended up being reparable instead of having to start over from scratch yet again
โThe first version of Bitcoin allowed anyone to spend anyone else's coins with a super-easy-to-insert op code, it allowed miners to print themselves billions of bitcoins by taking advantage of a value-overflow issue, it allowed any miner to DoS the network with a relatively simple-to-code transaction flood script, included poker and marketplace stubs of code that were never finished (much less used), and wasn't even properly limited to 21M coins (it included perpetual inflation, with 4 batches of 21M coins being produced every mibillenium). It also was Windows-only. Some of those are pretty serious bugs or oversights.โ
^ And this description doesnโt even include some of the hugest screw-ups โ Initially, Satoshi made the fork-selection just based on the last blockโs difficulty in isolation, instead of cumulative, totally subverting everything. Massive error, right in the core of the PoW. Luckily, this was later fixed.
So yeah, biggest difficulty with identifying Satoshi is that even Satoshi made many critical errors in the fundamental design,
Not to mention that he clearly didnโt even properly understand why it would work at all,
Just pure engineering feels.
๐ณ๐พ๐พ๐ผ๐ฟ๐พ๐ ๐ ๐ธ๐ฝ๐ถ
โฆis that even Satoshi horribly screwed up the core of Bitcoin in many ways,
making it kind of amazing the problems all ended up being reparable instead of having to start over from scratch yet again
โThe first version of Bitcoin allowed anyone to spend anyone else's coins with a super-easy-to-insert op code, it allowed miners to print themselves billions of bitcoins by taking advantage of a value-overflow issue, it allowed any miner to DoS the network with a relatively simple-to-code transaction flood script, included poker and marketplace stubs of code that were never finished (much less used), and wasn't even properly limited to 21M coins (it included perpetual inflation, with 4 batches of 21M coins being produced every mibillenium). It also was Windows-only. Some of those are pretty serious bugs or oversights.โ
^ And this description doesnโt even include some of the hugest screw-ups โ Initially, Satoshi made the fork-selection just based on the last blockโs difficulty in isolation, instead of cumulative, totally subverting everything. Massive error, right in the core of the PoW. Luckily, this was later fixed.
So yeah, biggest difficulty with identifying Satoshi is that even Satoshi made many critical errors in the fundamental design,
Not to mention that he clearly didnโt even properly understand why it would work at all,
Just pure engineering feels.
๐ณ๐พ๐พ๐ผ๐ฟ๐พ๐ ๐ ๐ธ๐ฝ๐ถ
๐ฏ3๐คฏ2๐1
Btw, markets back to looking like garbage again tonight
Just great
๐ณ๐พ๐พ๐ผ๐ฟ๐พ๐ ๐ ๐ธ๐ฝ๐ถ
Just great
๐ณ๐พ๐พ๐ผ๐ฟ๐พ๐ ๐ ๐ธ๐ฝ๐ถ
๐4