hi all. bitcoin had a wild, rollercoaster year. it seems to have hit some massive threshhold/ tipping/ turning point last year. saw a bitcoin ATM briefly at a mall this year during the huge bubble in the 1st half. the ATMs spread all over the country, and theyre probably down to a fraction of what they were. a sign of the times.

it looks like its starting to level out/ stabilize by the end of the year.

a cohort at work told me that “bitcoin sounds like a science fiction novel at times”. have been telling others that. its really neat to have 1 thing in life that defies the status quo, expectations, groupthink/ conventional wisdom, the Establishment, “consensus reality” etc… do believe that in the 21st century cryptocurrencies will have an extraordinary far-reaching effect on human social systems eg govts, corporations etc… aka all The Powers That Be™.

there is some idea of a “Digital Autonomous Organization” emerging and its more than paradigm shifting, its revolutionary, a worldwide gamechanger.

am hoping it will involve building a more humane system. so-benignly/anodynely-called “late stage capitalism” is a house of horrors, increasingly nightmarish/ dystopian/ even verging on apocalyptic. adam smith would be horrified at the “invisible hand” turned to “iron fist”. and our political system has failed to reign it in, because its fundamentally compromised.

so actually a more humane system is increasingly no longer optional. the future of the human race depends on it.

one might think this is a “mere” emergent/ mindless accident or “unintended consequence”, but decades of study have revealed to me/ others there are hidden architects of our “neoliberal” system, and they seemed to know exactly what they were doing. it was designed to create maximal inequality because an equivalent synonym not well recognized is “power imbalance/ power seizure”.

bitcoin will force them out of the shadows (already happening to some degree) and a day of reckoning is coming. am foreseeing/ predicting some pain, possibly quite serious, but freedom and integrity will win out in the end.

bitcoin is one of the most extraordinary inventions of my lifetime. and have seen a lot by now, have been making some lists on this site. lived thru the dotcom era. bitcoin reminds me of the good old days. silicon valley bumper sticker: “please god just one more bubble!”

bitcoin is a foundation and many very dynamic innovations are being built on top of it, some of it can be seen at the moment but suspect there will be key advances that were not foreseeable by anyone.

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hi all. bitcoin is going crazy at moment. its spiked rapidly in last few months and nearly $15k per coin as of this writing. talk about critical mass!

my 1st blog on bitcoin on this blog is early 2014. ahead of the curve™.

have mixed feelings on its success. feel it is still insecure/ vulnerable in a lot of ways. its not good for the price to spike so high in so short of a time. think “what goes up must go down”. it feels like a partial bubble to me. feel there will be some commensurate pain in the near future.

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hi all. havent written on bitcoin in awhile. its surging in value at the beginning of the year. this isnt the first year that happened. a set of favorable circumstances is propelling it. it is known that china regulation has a lot to do with its value and that there are a lot of chinese holders. it appears that chinese regulatory climate looks newly favorable.

another pattern is that whereever there is economic crisis in a currency, bitcoin surges.[f18] it seems that theres always some kind of monetary crisis somewhere in the world, and bitcoin capitalizes on it. there is that old saying by rahm emanuel, “never let a good crisis go to waste”. a bit machiavellian sounding, yet bitcoin seems to embody some of this. another way to see it is as a sort of ambulance that shows up at bloody scenes.

it looks like the media has gotten past the wild alarm and surprise over bitcoin. maybe part of the hype has subsided for the moment. theres less feverish reporting on it. but that does not fully capture its steady pace of innovation.

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hi all. wired reported last dec that Craig Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto,[a6] and then followed shortly after saying he “might be a hoaxer”[a13] and motherboard concurred[a10]. there is now a lot of press coverage.[a] a new wave of press coverage just burst forth mainly following on the heels of BBCnews.[a3] however as that article mentions he seems to have convinced other elite bitcoin participants including Andresen and Matonis. he was promptly hit with a tax raid/ confiscation on his properties leading to the natural question of whether he would have been better off without “coming out the closet”.[a9] Nakamoto is thought to be worth about $400M in bitcoins, pseudonymous or not (assuming the keys arent lost!). wright is highly educated, referred to as “australian professor”; [a2] points out he has 2 phds and 8 masters degrees. he says he doesnt care if people believe him or not (but then what is his motivation in disclosure?). the pseudonymous Nakamoto has now been nominated for a Nobel Prize (economics).[a12]

bitcoin technology/ ideology is continuing to advance with some bordering-on-feverish advocacy [b] and more sober/ restrained but still favorable/ optimistic povs.[c] its apparently outperforming currencies based on stability and/or gains [b13]. a new australian political party claims it will improve democracy,[b14] another a “fairer world”,[b10] another wonders if it could replace SWIFT,[c6] even the new yorker looking at it,[c11] and a new coursera course.[c12] a very thorough free article/ analysis showed up in london review of books.[c9] early signs are it seems to evoke a large possible role, maybe bordering on radical/ revolutionary, in remittances[c15] and currency exchange[c16] which are a very big deal in international finance.

scale and misuse/ spam [d9][d10] aspects is an increasingly gaping, bordering on critical problem [d][d13][d15][d17] as exactly as forewarned by Andresen.[d14][d18][d8] bitcoin was not necessarily built to scale early on, although so far its still working. [d4] says its growing 25% faster than early internet growth! there are issues with forked code.[d6][d7] serious academic researchers (Cornell etc) have gotten into the analysis with proposed solutions.[d12][d16]

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hi all at this point the bitcoin revolution seems to be in major force, possibly unstoppable & reaching the point of no return. one cannot even really keep up with all the major developments/ shifts, its overwhelming, but a few stand out over the last few months tracked in these links.

a few days ago Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison. its a case of sometimes the most innovative individuals being nearly indistinguishable from criminals. Ulbricht started one of the worlds 1^st genuinely virtual corporations. seems to me it does us no good to either demonize or idolize him, both are extremes. he is a multidimensional character. few will admit it but quite possibly Silk Road had a lot to do with the rising early bitcoin economy due to its massive amount of transactions. there appears to be a definite “bootstrapping” effect here. there are now very good/ detailed accounts of the whole story eg in Wired & in new book(s) coming out.[a]

wall st is seizing the day with increasing bitcoin integration into trading systems. at this point when wall st has a stake in it, one can be fairly confident it will never be ruled illegal or be subject to major/ extreme government crackdowns.[b]

the international news is somewhat surprising and something that was long speculated is now happening. argentina has a collapsing currency due to a variety of factors, and the public is switching in a major way to bitcoin. this is a pivotal, near revolutionary development, and is likely not the 1^st time this will happen, possibly just the beginning.[c]

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