Tela Network

Viewpoint = what someone thinks Mythos = the story-world that makes those thoughts feel true / Re: 'silver is an industrial metal and has no monetary value'... The awakening is spreading and everyday people are looking for a place to keep their cash. They are getting priced out of gold - silver is their only option. It is ultimately the people who will decide what has monetary value and what doesn't. / Source: An (edited) comment from: https://youtu.be/tQa6mNXcM4s We can see an underlying doctrine: People can decide the monetary standard. And another one: Gold is too expensive for the average person, therefore it can't be the primary monetary standard. What is most interesting to me is that it is a democratic inversion of the goldbug mythos, which says: 1) People must adapt to the most powerful monetary standard. 2) The best monetary standard will have the highest price. Summary: Goldbug mythos: monetary truth is discovered. Silverbug mythos: monetary truth is ratified.

... This imagining is another important good bestowed by historical reading, for it dispels the illusion that H.G. Wells called the "governess view" of history: They (the bad people) are doing this terrible thing to Us (the good people). The fallacy in it is to suppose that any large group acts as with one mind, clear in purpose and aware of consequences. Such a projection of the single ego upon whole masses is a form of provincialism that is encountered in most political discussions and certainly in all social prejudices: "If the President would only act ... if those people would only see reason...." A reader of history is cured of this simple-mindedness by developing a new sense—the historical sense—of how mankind in the mass behaves, neither free nor fatally pushed, and in its clearest actions mysterious even to itself. ... 'The Point and Pleasure of Reading History' Jacques Barzun

The first wave of Bitcoin Banks have started to emerge in the form of Bitcoin Treasury companies such as Metaplanet, Twenty One, and MicroStrategy. They are all trying to do one thing: acquire as much BTC as possible and use it to generate returns in whatever way possible for their shareholders. In short: they are attempting to bridge the gap between the old Fiat system and the new digital asset system by treating Bitcoin as a stock, not as gold. I don't have a concrete idea of how Bitcoin can be used in finance but I do know that using it to create returns as if it were a stock is unlikely to work in the long term. I believe that a good use of time is to research and experiment with how a group of individuals can come together a collectively grow a stockpile of bitcoin. Step two would then be how to financialise that or issue a token on top of the Bitcoin whoch could be used everyday in a small geographical area.

I believe that European leaders sense that inaction in the face of Russia does not have a positive outcome. However, action without buy-in from the US is also not worth contemplating, so acquiring that buy-in is of primary importance. Recent reports of drone incursions into Poland and Romania have resulting in an NATO Article 4 invocation by Donald Tusk. Presentation in the media is amplified compared to similar incidents such as the errant Ukrainian missile in Poland in 2022, during which Article 4 invocation was also discussed. In a 2025 interview, Andrzej Duda, when asked if Zelenskyy had pressured him to say that the missile had been Russian, replied "you could say that". Various casi belli are continuously laid at the feet of the Western public in the hopes that they percolate up to Donald Trump, although it does not seem likely that he will give his blessing to such action. Perhaps soon, a casus belli will be found that makes war with Russia a moral imperative.

Bitcoin is the first modern monetary system that is outside of the political control of any state. In the pre-modern era (earlier than the French Revolution), gold (and to some extent silver) was above the state. If the state issued too much currency, its value would visibly decrease relative to gold. However, tech advancement caused gold to become too difficult to protect on a small scale. Gold centralized into a few major locations inside states. It became impossible for an individual to escape the effect of money printing. Inflation is effectively another tax. (It also destroys the measuring stick that we use for value, and therefore for business.) For most young people, a house is out of reach. This was one of the only remaining ways to escape (somewhat, and badly) the debasement of inflation. For the next 15-30 years, despite the scams / fear / uncertainty / doubt, I think that Bitcoin will remain the most achievable method available to a young person to save for the future.

Q: All previous attempts to create independent digital currencies were made illegal. Why is Bitcoin still legal ? A: They didn't fail because they were made illegal. They failed because they could be made illegal. Satoshi's emphasis in the abstract of his paper is perfect. He solved the double spend problem, which was the last piece in the puzzle that neither Wei Dai nor Nick Szabo nor a teenage Peter Todd could figure out. Solving it removed the need to trust a centralised third party. Listen to Peter Todd's interview with Peter McCormack on What Bitcoin Did. Peter Todd thought the fundamental problem was limiting the issuance of new currency. But Satoshi realised the real problem was more broad - how do we make it expensive to update the ledger (which includes but is not limited to issuing new currency). He did this using proof of work as a mechanism to update the blockchain. Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/amzrmu/in_1998_wei_dai_came_up_with_his_ingenious_idea