Monday Open Thread

4 thoughts on “Monday Open Thread”

1. Hunter Biden and the price of eggs aside, this piece touches on one of like a million things I'm a little more worried about:

   Look at Elon Musk's growing empire. Tesla, Starlink, X, and Neuralink all stand to benefit substantially from this new alignment. They won't be alone. Peter Thiel's Palantir and Palmer Luckey's Anduril are perfectly positioned to collect expanded defense contracts, while major venture capital cryptocurrency investments are likely to see favorable regulatory treatment. The concentration of power in these companies' hands isn't just about market dominance, it's about shaping the very rules of our digital future.

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2. Somebody that understands cryptocurrency, please explain:

   How can they make people use? Crypto that don't want to use it if my employer wants to keep paying me in USD how can that be changed?

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   1. It subsumes fiat currency as the reserve default leading to a stagnant economy similar to the gold standard 

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   2. Cash, Checks and Bank tranfers are obviously useful. I hate credit card fees (but I digress)

      Crypto has a number of reasons to exist.

      (1) Hidden transfer of large financial assets from one place to another. (Maybe not always as hidden as they'd like!)
      (2) Speculative gambling on crypto appreciation. It's just another Meme-stock.
      (3) Purchase of illegal physical things like drugs or blackmail payoffs.
      (4) Moving stolen public assets or to a safer location in the US, let's say from Moscow to a condo in a Manhattan skinny skyscraper. (How many units of asset stashing would you like today?)

      If you get sucked into a conversation with a crypto-bro (it's almost always a bro), the conversation immediately turns from "What is it good for", to a deep discussion about why Dogecoin or Ethereum is better than Bitcoin, and then you're on the slippery slope into technical mathematical details about how Doge works.

      Money is very interesting. Read how Venice invented banks, banking, bank transfers, trusted "bancerros". Yes, they actually sat on benches. 

       

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