npub1zh…ggdq0 on Nostr: I've been on the "Follow the Money" train since I was like 21, and the one thing I ...
I've been on the "Follow the Money" train since I was like 21, and the one thing I can say now is that money is the ultimate signal of morality. it's also the best record-keeper of history because we almost can't understand the driving forces of the human psyche without knowledge of the inflows and outflows of money.
like, as a kid when you learned about royal families, if you didn't ask yourself how they got so rich in the first place then you probably weren't going to be interested in history whatsoever.
money low-key defines history, but one's relationship to it also defines success more than the amount. I think that's why Satoshi was able to design a system that is so elegantly simple, but somehow addresses the three problems of all current monetary systems: lack of accountability, lack of transparency, and lack of privacy.
transparency and privacy aren't mutually exclusive things, imo; in fact, it's almost impossible to have transparency without privacy and vice versa. the combination of both is like the perfect marriage from which accountability can manifest, but the question of "accountability to whom?" is what Bitcoin itself answers; that is, accountability to the public itself and not a government, which may or may not be comprised of a criminal enterprise.
the point is that we can't really trust governments to NOT be occupied by criminal enterprises, regardless of how much they point the finger at "criminals" while the biggest ones remain in roles of governance and demand privacy without transparency for their criminal dealings.
this is to say, however, that the public deserves the highest degree of privacy while the government deserves the lowest, and the public is entitled to the least amount of transparency while the government is obligated to the highest. but this also works out well in terms of expenditures, because no one really questions a thousand tiny transfers of money; we will, however, question large amounts of inflows and outflows to and from a well-recognized source regardless of its anonymity.
the government using Bitcoin means that we have the right to identify whether those inflows and outflows are aligned with our values, and it is as simple as assigning wallets to every single department and ensuring that the money it spends is actually on the books. most of the corruption we see isn't solely wasteful spending, but from off-the-books, unaccounted for dollars which mysteriously appear and disappear.
catching this fraud is like playing whack-a-mole because it is so many intelligence operatives' sole duty is to launder money for the government. but Bitcoin as a monetary system eliminates the opportunity for governments to launder through private banks and then through shell corporations to do extrajudicial "missions", because we have access to a permanent record.
no other shitcoin does this so well, and imo, denying Bitcoin in favor of other blockchains is akin to admitting what level of fraud a government intends to commit. almost all of the "features" of other cryptocurrencies are actually loopholes designed after precedent financial criminal organizations and their fraudulent "business" models. Bitcoin is the only blockchain based purely on the simple notion of transparency and accountability. it's so straightforward that the crooked simply can't accept its terms.
to call this 'outdated' is to say that financial fraud needs a more useful vehicle, and many shitcoiners know that Bitcoin isn't exactly easy to game. imo, ETFs are a last ditch effort to squeeze people for value that they could easily obtain by direct ownership. fraudsters are gonna defraud whether we like it or not, but at the very least, our governments shouldn't be occupied by them.
Bitcoin IS accountability through transparency and privacy. we have never had the option to hold governments accountable this way and I think we should demand much more than its accumulation in national reserves – we should demand that it be used as the transacting currency for the entire National Treasury.
like, as a kid when you learned about royal families, if you didn't ask yourself how they got so rich in the first place then you probably weren't going to be interested in history whatsoever.
money low-key defines history, but one's relationship to it also defines success more than the amount. I think that's why Satoshi was able to design a system that is so elegantly simple, but somehow addresses the three problems of all current monetary systems: lack of accountability, lack of transparency, and lack of privacy.
transparency and privacy aren't mutually exclusive things, imo; in fact, it's almost impossible to have transparency without privacy and vice versa. the combination of both is like the perfect marriage from which accountability can manifest, but the question of "accountability to whom?" is what Bitcoin itself answers; that is, accountability to the public itself and not a government, which may or may not be comprised of a criminal enterprise.
the point is that we can't really trust governments to NOT be occupied by criminal enterprises, regardless of how much they point the finger at "criminals" while the biggest ones remain in roles of governance and demand privacy without transparency for their criminal dealings.
this is to say, however, that the public deserves the highest degree of privacy while the government deserves the lowest, and the public is entitled to the least amount of transparency while the government is obligated to the highest. but this also works out well in terms of expenditures, because no one really questions a thousand tiny transfers of money; we will, however, question large amounts of inflows and outflows to and from a well-recognized source regardless of its anonymity.
the government using Bitcoin means that we have the right to identify whether those inflows and outflows are aligned with our values, and it is as simple as assigning wallets to every single department and ensuring that the money it spends is actually on the books. most of the corruption we see isn't solely wasteful spending, but from off-the-books, unaccounted for dollars which mysteriously appear and disappear.
catching this fraud is like playing whack-a-mole because it is so many intelligence operatives' sole duty is to launder money for the government. but Bitcoin as a monetary system eliminates the opportunity for governments to launder through private banks and then through shell corporations to do extrajudicial "missions", because we have access to a permanent record.
no other shitcoin does this so well, and imo, denying Bitcoin in favor of other blockchains is akin to admitting what level of fraud a government intends to commit. almost all of the "features" of other cryptocurrencies are actually loopholes designed after precedent financial criminal organizations and their fraudulent "business" models. Bitcoin is the only blockchain based purely on the simple notion of transparency and accountability. it's so straightforward that the crooked simply can't accept its terms.
to call this 'outdated' is to say that financial fraud needs a more useful vehicle, and many shitcoiners know that Bitcoin isn't exactly easy to game. imo, ETFs are a last ditch effort to squeeze people for value that they could easily obtain by direct ownership. fraudsters are gonna defraud whether we like it or not, but at the very least, our governments shouldn't be occupied by them.
Bitcoin IS accountability through transparency and privacy. we have never had the option to hold governments accountable this way and I think we should demand much more than its accumulation in national reserves – we should demand that it be used as the transacting currency for the entire National Treasury.