People! US Dollars are not worth a fifth of a Bitcent. STOP SELLING!

The general backdrop for this discussion is to be found on irc :

mircea_popescu People desperate for bitcoin capital. It will only get worse.
kakobrekla Ah I get it, the bitfinex model. I thought pirate was out of jail at first.

mircea_popescu Lol. On the short term, 2015-2016, it'll be AMAZING what sort of interest people will be able to earn if they don't actually want their Bitcoin capital back. Increasingly more respectable firms will be offering BTC denominated savings accounts with a fiat clause as the cheapest most accessible way to get in the game. Stuff like "deposit your Bitcoin with for 50% per annum!!1" ; small print "repayable in either Bitcoin or fiat at our option". All the "everyone made ROI hand over fist with a 60% BTC loss" crowd will be well served.
jurov FTFY: "repayable at our option".

mircea_popescu That'll slowly go away. It's cheaper to pay a few % and pretend like you've paid than to not pay at all.
The only reason this isn't the rule now is the relative small size of the deals, which makes cluelessness seaworthy. But even on a market of garr and nasty fucktards, it's slowly emerging.
jurov AFAIK it was the case with fiat before central banking.

mircea_popescu Something like that yes. Early bank paper (banknotes) stood to gold in a very similar relation. "Deposit your gold, we'll pay 5976597985%. In gold. Or maybe paper". "It's just as good".
pankkake Paying dividends seems the way to keep investors happy. Until, of course, well... "They pay dividends" is the usual retort to any criticism.

mircea_popescu Yeah, it's been through the years the most popular scam. "Deposit lump sum, we'll pay you a few %s of it a few times. Annuity ftw!" But re the paper conundrum, take this ancient quote :

Government sponsored enterprises enter the business, in due course bad behavior is made mandatory, and the evil financial network is bigger than the honest financial network, with the result that even though everyone knows what is happening, people continue to use the paper issued by the evil financial network, because of network effects - the big, main issuers, are the issuers you use if you want to do business.

Then knowledgeable people complain that the evil financial network is heading for disaster, that the government sponsored enterprises are about to cause a “collapse of the total financial system”, as Wallison and Alan Greenspan complained in 2005, the government debates shrinking the evil government sponsored enterprises, as with “S. 190 [109th]: Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005″ but they find easy money too seductive, and S. 190 goes down in flames before a horde of political activists chanting that easy money is sound, and opposing it is racist, nazi, ignorant, and generally hateful, the recent S. 190 debate on limiting portfolios (bond issue supporting dud mortgages) by government sponsored enterprises being a perfect reprise of the debates on limiting the issue of new assignats in the 1790s.

The big and easy government attacks on money target a single central money issuer, as with the first of the modern political attacks, the French Assignat of 1792, but in the late nineteenth century political attacks on financial networks began, as for example the Federal reserve act of 1913, the goal always being to wind up the network into a single too big to fail entity, and they have been getting progressively bigger, more serious, and more disastrous, as with the most recent one. Each attack is hugely successful, and after the cataclysm that the attack causes the attackers are hailed as saviors of the poor, the oppressed, and the nation generally, and the blame for the the bad consequences is dumped elsewhere, usually on Jews, greedy bankers, speculators, etc, because such attacks are difficult for ordinary people understand. I have trouble understanding your proposal - ordinary users will be easily bamboozled by a government sponsored security update. Further, when the crisis hits, to disagree with the line, to doubt that the regulators are right, and the problem is the evil speculators, becomes political suicide, as it did in America in 2007, sometimes physical suicide, as in Weimar Germany.

Guy knew EXACTLY what was going to be going on, back in... 2009. This is also why stomping out USⁱ influence in Bitcoin is quite so critical for its survival at this juncture. They seem to not wish to submit, so they will have to be killed, pretty much.

Bitcoin offers perfect immunity against all the ways these people normally get into the game. There's nothing to inflate, there's nothing to regulate, they're in one hell of a fix right about now - specifically because they're adapted to their old, fiat environment. They tend to show up late at parties because they figure they can always steal the cake anyway, so why bother go early ? Let the suckers figure out first - on their own dime - where the good cakes are, then just swoop in and collect.ⁱⁱ

This means the only way they can get in is if you let them get in. Don't let them get in for cheap - they have no business here.ⁱⁱⁱ Based on the present strength of Bitcoin and the laughable weakness of the dollar, anything under 10`000 dollars is cheap. Keep your Bitcoins and watch them sweat and squirm.

Powers That Be indeed. Powers That Be my foot.

1. The notion that the USG consists of the agencies and functionaries exclusively is naive. That's the tip of the iceberg. Everyone involved in the bezzle is just as much part of the USG as the secretary of state. US banks exist as private corporations in name only, they're government funded, government run entities. The various hedge funds, especially the ones pushed by the USG propaganda machine (called by older authors "mainstream media") are exactly the same thing. [↩]
2. Ever seen Cagney's 1939 "The Oklahoma Kid " ? He gives it straight in there,

   - How come a young strong fellow like yourself isn't out there up to his neck in this land rush ?
   - Why ? I do alright.
   - Those people are going out there to build a new empire.
   - Fine, let them have it.
   - You mean to say you've got no feeling for the country ? No pride in seeing a civilisation carved out of a wilderness ? What sort of an American are you ?
   - I like the country fine. As for civilisation... I've got nothing in particular against it, I can take it or leave it alone.
   - What sort of folks did you come from ?
   - Oh-ho-ho-ho, the most god fearing law abiding land grabbing empire building fellows you ever saw. Suckers for this landrush stuff, too... But not for me. I crave a nice, easy going existence. And I've got it.
   - I see. No responsibility and no ambition. None of this get up and get it stuff that regular folks have.
   - Exactly. And that's why my folks'n I've been on the outs for years.
   - You seem like a very antisocial young man...
   - But I'm not, I'm as social as a newborn pup. And I go with all sorts of people. I just don't go for this ploughing out new empires stuff, that's all.
   - But why not ?!
   - I'll tell you why not. Now look : in the first place, the white people steal the land of the Indians. Right ?
   - Well... they get paid for it, don't they ?
   - Paid for it ? Yeeeah... a measly dollar-forty an acre, price agreed upon at the point of a gun. Then the immigrants sweat and strain and break their hearts carving out a "civilisation". Fine. Great. Then when they get all pretty and prosperous, along come the grafters, the landgrabbers and politicians and with one hand skim off the cream and with the other scoop up the gravy. Not for me. Listen : I learned this about human nature when I was but so high, and that is: that the strong take away from the weak, and the smart take it away from the strong.
   - I suppose you've never learned of the law that protects people's rights and propety...
   - O, yeah, I've heard of it. I've seen it work, too.

   Currently, to put it simply, everyone that has a chunk of Bitcoin is the strong. Now just how many of you are going to end up being the smart, too ?

   How many of you are going to fall for bullshit pushed by "core devs" like Peter Todd, trying to get the price a little lower, so his owners in the USG can buy a little more a little cheaper ? How many of you are going to fall for "prices" published by propaganda offices like Coinbase and the USMS ?

   Smarten up, it's just about time. [↩]

3. Bitcoin is so that we force Warren Buffett's and Marc Andreessen's daughters into abject prostitution, a dollar a minute on Chaturbate. Not so that they force your sons into abject prostitution, a saltine a minute on the conference freakshow. [↩]