I Think, Therefore I Bitcoin

Every passage, on the record.

1. 00:00Claim

   One of the ideas that gives me the most conviction about why Bitcoin will win in the long run is that I know I exist. I know what I am capable of, and what I would be capable of if I was in charge of the fiat legacy system, because trust in that system happens between individuals inside the extended order, and I know how easily I could trick myself into acting a certain way while thinking I was doing good, when I was in fact doing the exact opposite.

2. 00:00Reference

   The legacy system is built on trust and trust happens between individuals inside of the extended order.

3. 01:13Quote

   You write the terrible papers on why government involvement in any field is somehow beneficial.

4. 01:47Claim

   I could lie to you. I know I could say one thing to your face and mean and do the complete opposite. I'm capable of that, and if I'm capable of it, other people are as well. I'm not an outlier, I'm not one in a million, I'm a member of the extended order: an individual who can do things that, from my position as a Bitcoiner, would be absolutely unforgivable.

5. 02:24Quote

   I could lie. I could cheat. I could steal. And I could do so with a smile on my face. I could be a psychopath. In fact, I'm probably a psychopath.

6. 02:24Claim · condensed

   Because I am a psychopath, I know that they must exist, meaning psychopaths running the legacy system, and that gives me more conviction than anything else, more than any argument about permissionlessness, energy transformation or divisibility.

7. 02:24Claim · condensed

   Bitcoin lets you send a bearer instrument at light speed anywhere in the world over a communications protocol, with microtransactions possible because it is so divisible.

8. 03:04Claim · condensed

   Bitcoin outcompetes the alternative systems that make up money, all the technology that came before it, on the properties we normally harp on: open source, decentralized, permissionless, easily transportable, divisible. All of that is true, but it isn't what gives me the most conviction.

9. 04:45Analogy

   It's a needle in a haystack. It's a Bitcoin wallet private key in a sea of infinite digits, infinite possibilities.

10. 05:18Claim · condensed

    The real competition, outside the sideshow arguments between proof of work and proof of stake, is the fiat legacy system, which outcompeted the systems before it because it transformed more energy than they did.

11. 06:21Quote

    If Bitcoin can help me do that, I like Bitcoin. If Bitcoin cannot help me do that, I don't give a flying fuck about Bitcoin.

12. 06:51Quote

    I need this to be so boring and so hard to filter through all of the various layers that make this machine work that you just give up.

13. 06:51Claim · condensed

    If I were in charge I'd speak in as boring and mundane a tone as possible so you'd take no interest, and I'd lobby to make people as fat, stupid and lazy as possible, because I don't want smart people asking questions about the system.

14. 07:29Claim · condensed

    I'd start with education as young as possible and get people out of their houses and into the workplace as fast as I could. Instead of one wage, you have to survive on two wages in a house, which removes the caregiver and forces parents to hand their children over earlier, so all I have to do is not train you to think for yourself.

15. 07:29Analogy

    Let's diminish the ability for individuals to save the energy that they have transformed themselves. Let's make that ice cube melt faster and faster and faster.

16. 08:31Idea

    Every time I tighten the ratchet, every time I transfer energy from the have-nots to the haves, it becomes more and more difficult for the have-nots to make up that discrepancy, because it takes energy to make more energy: if you remove what little energy the have-nots have, they have to get back to zero before they can start progressing.

17. 09:07Claim

    As I accrue more and more energy, the process gets easier and easier for me and it becomes more difficult for the individuals trying to maintain what little energy they have access to.

18. 09:41Idea · condensed

    Even the largest Bitcoin whales cannot expand their wealth, cannot expand the energy they have access to, unless they contribute to the TASOE. You have to find a way to transform energy and give it to other people who will also use it to transform more in the future; if you don't, you don't get more Bitcoin, and the stack you do have slowly diminishes and spreads to the people who did transform energy and provide it to others.

19. 09:41Quote

    I like getting energy for doing nothing. I like the ability in the future to access energy for never having transformed it.

20. 10:46Claim · condensed

    In a Bitcoin exchange it should be the opposite of how people describe it: they are selling energy, you are buying energy. That is what is happening in the Bitcoin exchange.

21. 11:18Claim · condensed

    The system is closed and only has 21 million units, and no one can make more of it easily. Everyone has to participate the same way to make more or to acquire more, so all the advantages that existed in the legacy system are off the table.

22. 11:48Prediction

    I would ignore talking about Bitcoin for as long as I possibly could. Once it was so big that I couldn't ignore it, I would create fear at every single on-ramp, off-ramp, everywhere in the mainstream media, because that would keep individuals in my system where I can slowly bleed them out.

23. 12:51Prediction · condensed

    If I saw that the gig was up, I would double down and go harder rather than stop, because I'm going to be found out anyway. Given the choice between austerity, telling the truth, or quietly printing more units and slowly squeezing the system, I'm going to choose the easy, quiet way: printing, again and again.

24. 12:51Quote

    I'm not going to stop until the last dipshit realizes exactly what I'm doing.

25. 14:35Prediction

    The problem is that I can't outlast Bitcoin, because Bitcoin can't be killed, and because Occam's razor tells me that printing is going to occur over the harder alternative, so all I have to do if I'm Bitcoin is wait it out.

26. 14:35Reference

    Because the easy way, because Occam's razor tells me that printing is going to occur versus the alternative because the alternative is more difficult.

27. 15:13Claim · condensed

    There's no money in Bitcoin companies at the moment. The biggest companies in the space make their money letting you buy and sell shitcoins, not from buying and selling Bitcoin itself, because there isn't a lot of fat to skim off the top of that.

28. 15:46Claim · condensed

    Being a Bitcoin payments provider is a small market: you have to convince people who just realized how much they were getting screwed in the legacy system, who finally found a way to store energy that can't be manipulated, to spend it, while they're also incredibly handicapped by how the tax department treats it in most governments around the world.

29. 16:25Claim · condensed

    It's not a feasible play right now to do the extra work of a Bitcoin business outside of exchanges. The play is to get your business out there and get the model working now, so when hyperbitcoinization does happen you're in position to capitalize on it, since you'll have been in place the longest and be the go-to name.

30. 16:25Reference

    Get your business out there, get the model working so that when hyperbitcoinization does happen, you're in that position to capitalize on that.

31. 16:57Claim · condensed

    It's really hard to transform more energy than just buying and holding Bitcoin, because Bitcoin is so mispriced relative to the utility it offers, given how little the extended order understands what they're giving up by not having it. So doing anything except buying and holding Bitcoin means leaving gains on the table.

32. 17:32Claim · condensed

    My main conviction comes from believing the fiat system will crumble, because I know it's run by people like me, capable of everything I described. If that collapse comes, the only real alternative system waiting to fill the void is gold: no one is thinking about going back to seashells or glass beads, and of the few competing systems left, Bitcoin has by far the most upside.