In re noobs and conventions

Monday, 24 June, Year 5 d.Tr. | Author: Mircea Popescu

First part :

    ThickAsThieves http://www.cryptocurrencycon.com/ starring everyone you've never heard of.
    pankkake Hence the "con"?
    mircea_popescu Lol who told the noobs the way to matter is to hold a con ? Seriously now. So fucking wrong. Imagine all the newcomers held a Movies Convention in LA. FIRST IN LA!!i and there'd be like... nobody going, except a bunch of waitresses etc. And then the next day they'd be all like... ooooo, we made so much business!!!1ii

    pankkake Actually I know Tucker and Kinsella. But not for their Bitcoin work.
    ThickAsThieves Likely it's a pitch-fest. First they tell you how great everything is then they sell you something.
    pankkake From what I see, their aim is to promote bitcoin - it does not seem targeted at current bitcoin users, and not technical either... uh... $180 that won't work. Unless their target is rich people who want to invest in bitcoins ;)
    mircea_popescu Their target is "oh we're unemployed what to do now".

Second part, from my PR :

    from: crazy_rabbit on June 10, 2013, 06:09:12 AM
    People are a valuable resource- the most valuable in terms of something like bitcoin.

    I think that's a common misconception. Selected people are the most valuable resource, much like selected earths are the most valuable resource. People generally are about as valuable as dirt generally.

    from: crazy_rabbit on June 10, 2013, 06:09:12 AM
    conferences means educating larger number of people about bitcoin, proselytizing the bitcoin philosophy, building local bitcoin communities and creating new networks of individuals with a common goal.

    I'll be a darling and not bitch about extraneous s's (this, incidentally, is a figure of speech, goes by the name apophasis) but I can't pass the remarkable "proselytizing the philosophy". This is also a figure of speech, you name it.

    So here's the thing: unless the "Bitcoin philosophy" is rampant Icandoeverything mixed with Thisisthesecretbankershate-howaretardmadebazillions, with the obvious heap of Imascammerhearmeroar piled on top (look here, and here) I have no idea what exactly you imagine these conferences are proselytizing.

    A nice place for Jared Kenna to go pretend he didn't scam the users of the (at the time) second largest exchange (seriously, what happened to the Dwolla lawsuit?), as if that does anything. A nice place for Vehehes to pretend like the "Bitcoin Foundation" has anything to do with Bitcoin, and that it's ok for the unelected president to be the unelected treasurer, and that it's okay to use donation funds to prop his own private ventures, and so on and so forth. A nice place for retards that can't read code but love to write (bad, useless, buggy code) to go and snort together over lifesize anorexic 16yos drawn on posters and pillows. Seriously man, snap out of it. Conferences measure nothing and never have.

To recap :

Talking about sex and watching a lot of porn (ie, other people having sex) does not resolve your virginity.

TALKING ABOUT BITCOIN, EVEN IF IN A GROUP, DOES NOT MAKE YOU PART OF BITCOIN.iii

———
  1. It's a reference to one group of fuckwits holding the "first ever" gathering of twenty adolescent cocks in a pub in London recently. You know, just like these other idiots last year, sharing their "impressions" and "oppinions" about how hungry they got waiting three hours for catered food. []
  2. This is, seriously, not how it's done. You don't march in here pretending like you're hot shit. We're the hot shit. We will bury you. You come in peace, do something useful for a while and stfu. That's the path : hard work and stfu. []
  3. And since we're on the topic, neither does buying PMBs nor overpriced mining equipment which you then use in a pool. []
Category: Bitcoin
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22 Responses

  1. impression - a vague idea in which some confidence is placed

    You might want to reconsider usage of quotation marks.

  2. Hey calm down Mircea. Jeff Tucker and Doug French have a long history of libertarian activism. Dough French was a president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, Jeff Tucker was their chief editor (I think) and now they both work at Laissez-Faire Books. Jeff has been obsessed with Bitcoin since about december and decided to organise this conference.

    Stephan Kinsella is a patent attorney, a leading legal theoretician associated with the Austrian school and an anti-IP activist. I have discussed the legal theory with him several times and he reviewed my work on property rights and Bitcoin.

    Tony Gallippi you hopefully know for BitPay. Adam B. Levine is also doing some Bitcoin activism, he's on the biweekly Let's Talk Bitcoin show. Michael Goldstein is a Bitcoin activitst too, I'm not familiar with all his work but we have communicated a couple of times.

    Cathy I don't know.

    And last but not least I run the economicsofbitcoin.com blog and am doing economic research of Bitcoin full time. Remember the nonsense article by Korda and how I attempt to address his arguments? Yea that's me. I am more academically oriented now and help researchers interested in Bitcoin, I'm just on an airport returning from a conference where I was invited due to my Bitcoin research.

    Vitalik Buterin reports that the cryptocurrencycon will be more philosophically oriented and based on the list of speakers I agree.

  3. Mircea Popescu`s avatar
    3
    Mircea Popescu 
    Monday, 24 June 2013

    So which service do you run ?

    Yes, I know, blogs, twitter, discussion, etc. But which service do you run, and more importantly why do you think a decade's worth of practice can be dispensed with on the grounds of having "a long history of libertarian activism" and having run some minor bookseller nowhere ?

    These are not trivial points. Run a service for a while, work for someone running a service for a while, then you can do all the theory you'd like. That's the only way.

  4. We are bloggers, we are activists, we are talking, we are bitcoin.

  5. . But which service do you run, and more importantly why do you

    I'm asking for people who actually make money and do not discuss about money, as well for people who actually work and don't discuss hypothetical work

    There you go Mircicicica.

  6. Cathy I don’t know.

    Doesn't wort at all.

  7. Mircea,

    I do economic research of Bitcoin full time. You may not think about it as a service, but there are people for who it is. Prior to that, I have been programming for 25 years, contributed to many open source programs, have my own linux distribution and worked for companies in the areas of online payments and in email security, among other things.

    Other people think that I am an expert in economic research of Bitcoin, due to my publications, blog and other comments I posted around. They started contacting me, asking me for interviews, assistance with research or lecture. Eventually I discontinued my other activities that didn't have to do with Bitcoin. I'm not earning any money now, but I take my research very seriously. Maybe I will be able to earn money through it, maybe I won't, but I'm not going to let others tell me what I should or should not be doing.

  8. Mircea Popescu`s avatar
    8
    Mircea Popescu 
    Tuesday, 25 June 2013

    Somehow the point of the article (ie, "If what you do is talk about Bitcoin you are not part of Bitcoin") has been lost.

    The article is not titled Peter Surda is a bad person. The article is not about you, or me for that matter, and it's not resolvable by personal exceptionalism. It doth not matter if you've programmed for 25 years or 125 years - you may be a fine programmer for all I care and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the point at hand (except perhaps to illustrate that you don't bring "having read and written programming fiction and novels about programmers for 25 years" as an argument).

    The same is true in fiat : you do not become a financier by writing papers on finance. Even if you are (which means to say you seem) right. The very unfortunate results of Long Term Capital Management hiring otherwise very intellectually respectable talkers-about-finance is perhaps the most illuminating ground truth of this matter.

    To resolve your doubts : idiots and idiots only think you are an expert on Bitcoin finance. The press is a particular brand of idiocy, in that it somehow manages to make even marginally apt people act like complete idiots. You are more than free to gargle that piss, but if your interest honestly lies with self betterment rather than self representation you'll do what the actual experts in Bitcoin finance (such as they are) tell you to do. Not because of them, but because it's what it is.

    I am not telling you what you should be doing. I am telling you what works and what does not work, with a view of helping you save whatever's left of your life from stupid waste (ie, use towards something we know doesn't work). Waste it cleverly, like everyone else (ie, use it towards something we don't yet know doesn't work).

  9. Mircea,

    economics and finance are not the same thing.

  10. It'd seem to me the point of the article is verily that "economics" and Bitcoin are not the same thing. Not that economics is not a thing.

  11. Peter, I can say, as someone who tries to build stuff inside bitcoin economy (and forex is not interesting for me), that your blog is almost irrelevant to me. While bitcoin is following rudimentary economic principles, the system is mostly lawless and valueless. I doubt higher level contemporary economics theory applies to market with so much irrational behavior, exploitation, theft and lack of access to information. The teories and economists tend to handwave over liability and trust.

  12. Mircea Popescu`s avatar
    12
    Mircea Popescu 
    Thursday, 27 June 2013

    @jurov More's the point : so much of "classical" instruments and concepts has been gutted (see MPOE bonds, see the "no book" corporation, see the GPG contract and legal system) that someone who fails to spend the time (ie, years, probably) groking these very basic points first has about as much a chance of making sense for Bitcoin (or indeed "cryptocurrencies", whatever they may be - so far there's no such thing any more that there's "alien civilisations" on the basis of what may appear to be one alien) as someone trying to read Cicero as a collection of English words. Not that illiterate children all over the 51 states (ie, counting the UK) don't do this as a matter of course every single day.

    Unrelatedly : how's this strategy working out for you ? :D

  13. Juro,

    your argument is a hasty generalisation fallacy. It furthermore appears that you are actually not familiar with my work or economics. Same goes for Mircea.

    I'm unsubscribing this RSS feed, I thought I might learn something but it doesn't look that way.

  14. Vexare`s avatar
    14
    Vexare 
    Friday, 28 June 2013

    I don't even know what you're talking, do you...

  15. Mircea Popescu`s avatar
    15
    Mircea Popescu 
    Friday, 28 June 2013

    Teh tradition of getting butthurt at Trilema continues. Because that really solves anything.

  16. workouts to make your neck bigger`s avatar
    16
    workouts to make your neck bigger 
    Tuesday, 21 April 2020

    Yes! Finally something about keyword1.|

  17. Mircea Popescu`s avatar
    17
    Mircea Popescu 
    Tuesday, 21 April 2020

    Greetings of the day! You are have won the Trilema lottery of good luck today lucking out! Kongtext is King! Sorrybop!

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