Quote from: suchmoon on Today at 04:07:02 PM

Quote from: JayJuanGee on Today at 06:09:36 AM

I do get some sense that Saylor tends to be much more grown up than Elon and also has built quite a bit of credibility in the bitcoin space in the past 10 months or so.. as compared to Elon dicking around in a variety of ways.. whether self-serving, distractions or attacks upon bitcoin.

For all the praise Saylor gets, the bottom line is that he's pumping Bitcoin with OPM and basically running a Bitcoin ETF.

Seems to me that Saylor is using his own money and other peoples money, so surely, he has taken a pretty aggressive stance toward bitcoin, but it is NOT only other people's money.

In regards to his company being a public company, he has a lot of control over the company, and it seems that he has gone overboard on the disclosures that are necessary by law, but of course, there could well be some motivations that some USA regulators might want to attempt to go after him.. if they believe that he might be going overboard or just that there is a bit of hostility to bitcoin, even though they might not want to outright admit it.

We might be getting far afield but there can be passive aggressive behaviors from regulators in many respects too.. so they will tolerate various bullshit from Elon as long as he seems to be attempting to undermine confidence in bitcoin.. Similar things could well be going on with shitcoins like ethereum in which there is some tolerance for the bullshit to be allowed because there could be ways to undermine bitcoin by having people believe in a piece of shit smoke and screen system like ethereum.. but maybe ethereum might get too big for its britches at some point, too... but in any event, when peeps get out there and actually talk the sound money points and do not mince words, like Saylor seems to have been doing in the past 10 months or so, there might be considerable desires bring him down a notch or two.. He surely is not untouchable, even so far, there has not been any publicity to go after him from USA regulators or even to claim that Saylor is doing a speculative attack on the dollar.. which could be a plausible accusation.. .. whether it would be good for the USA government to go after him might be another story in terms of potentially causing a Streisand effect... its a risk... and also risk of wack-a-mole, too.

Quote from: suchmoon on Today at 04:07:02 PM

I'm genuinely surprised how bitcoiners - typically distrustful of everyone and everything related to Walls Street / banks / big corps / etc think that this is a good idea.

I doubt that all bitcoiners are necessarily on the same page, but whether it is a good idea to be going against some of Saylor's tactics seems problematic too. He has been providing free seminars for other companies to imitate his tactics, and sure charging some of them for "elite" access, and so there are going to be all kinds of ways that banks of the future get transformed and some of the ways are going to be adopting some traditional models or attempts to work/"play" within various existing systems.

People are going to do all kinds of shit, so on the balance are their actions good, bad, ugly or something else will likely vary too.. bitcoin does not give any shits about who comes in or does not come in... so there can be good guys and bad guys criminals and child pornographers. Some of this will be creative and maybe some of the criminals will be able to get away with it, but maybe governments are going to need to become more creative in terms of figuring out what is going on and which behaviors might be enforceable and what will not.

Banks are also going to need to figure out ways to still maintain relevance in these kinds of changing dynamics. Are new laws going to pass? Sure. Is there going to be possible lobbying in terms of Saylor cheating or not playing by the rules or trying to bring traditional banking to bitcoin? Sure.

Some of us can attempt to get prescriptive in terms of what we want or what we do not want, and some of us will just be trying to roll with the punches and recognize that all kinds of changes are going to continue to take place, and on balance, I am having troubles considering Saylor as some kind of bad guy or bad influence in the whole scheme of things.. at least so far but maybe I haven't seen some of his true colors or maybe I don't appreciate the gravity of the situation as much as you seem to, suchmoon?

Quote from: suchmoon on Today at 04:07:02 PM

Quote from: JayJuanGee on Today at 06:09:36 AM

I doubt that you were mining for a medal..

Nah. I just find it really hypocritical for those suits to try and make it look like they're doing us all a favor talking about "transparency" and "renewables".

I cannot disagree with you, and surely there has been a decent amount of attention coming to the energy question in recent times, and I doubt that people are just going to accept green label bullshit without attempting to have some further assessments, and sure there might not always be agreement regarding weighing costs versus benefits of any technologies, and some technologies that are subsidized might not be as green as they are being made out to be in terms of privatizing the profits and publicly subsidizing some of the costs...

Longer term bitcoiners surely are not newbies in terms of dealing with various misinformation talking points, and even if some of the misinformation can latch on for a while, there still could be some aftermath information and studies that come out to help in clarifying the varying ways that some of us might have gotten duped by the earlier spins.. so surely there can be a lot of taking matters with a considerable grain of salt, anyhow, even if we can see there are supposed "green" trends that are window dressing rather than having any actual material and significant substance behind them.

Quote from: suchmoon on Today at 04:07:02 PM

Quote from: JayJuanGee on Today at 06:09:36 AM

Personally, I would not go so far as to suggest that meetings have no effect or that a lot of public attention could have affects too.. whether meetings or public attention causes actual substantive focusing on getting more green, or going through the motions or attempts to seek government subsidies can be variations regarding how meetings could change focuses of individual miners or pools.

Except for the last few months and brief periods in the past, Bitcoin mining is marginally profitable at best, and only with the cheapest power.

Surely I would not really know this, and sometimes the miners themselves might want to put out disinformation in order to keep out competition.
I see all kinds of numbers on how much it costs to mine a bitcoin, and sure I recognize that some sources are likely more credible than others. The more that you are involved in mining the more you might care about this, but also sometimes folks spout out theories of expected BTC price movement based on mining costs, too, and surely I take some of that with a grain of salt too and appreciate that peeps going to have differing perspectives about what causes what, and probably many of us appreciate that it is not exactly a one way street.. and even some miners might purposefully mine at a loss for a considerable amount of time to attempt to flush out competition too.

Anyhow, I guess my point is that there can be a lot of variables in terms of assessing overall mining costs or mining by region or even mining by scope of the operation or the way that a mining pool might be administratively set up to be able to be more profitable or not... and then also ways of shifting between shitcoins that could help with profitability and also prop up shitcoins that don't deserve to be propped up.. but if they are profitable, then that may well be the way that mining gets directed, at least in the short term, and some miners are more set up for fast switching (its like the fast twitching muscle) and others are not fucking around with shitcoins.. but they might get forced out of business if the shitcoiners are able to suck off of fluff and froth, and so I guess I am saying that there are all kinds of dynamics to attempt to assess profitability or not and also efficiency or not and purported "green" or not.

Quote from: suchmoon on Today at 04:07:02 PM

Which in North America often happens to be renewable (hydro in Washington or Quebec, govt subsidized solar panels, etc) but that's basically just a coincidence. I doubt that any sane large scale miner would switch their farm to 100% renewables unless it's the cheapest option, otherwise they'll be out of business when Bitcoin crashes and/or difficulty goes up.

Of course, you probably know about these matters better than me, but I would think that there is going to be some value for miners to have a variety of options and maybe even be able to move quickly if needed. We could sit here and come up with examples all day long, but a mining operation that was set up in texas and mostly running off of solar and wind and maybe even excess oil might have felt himself in a pinch when the energy grid went to shit for a while in December.. so there could be a lot of renewables that are reliable in a certain area, but then there could end up being a bit of saturation of miners in an area too, right.. if all the miners hear that Washington is the place to be, then regulators can sometimes fuck that up, too.. especially after 100 mining pools (or whatever is the number) shows up in the outskirts of Spokane or whatever other non-suburb location is suitable for such low cost and supposedly green sustainable and efficient (and whatever other buzz words) energy sources might be present.. right? So sometimes there could be some incentives for miners to be secretive about their location and whatever contracts they were able to negotiate.. whether green or not, whether reliable or not and whether the local government might break those agreements or not after the public finds out.

Quote from: suchmoon on Today at 04:07:02 PM

I also doubt they would want to regulate themselves out of existence nor do they have the lobbying clout to get subsidies...

Not everyone is going to recognize the ramifications of what they are doing at the time they do it, but still might not stop them from doing it because it seems like the "right thing" to do at that particular time that they do it.

Quote from: suchmoon on Today at 04:07:02 PM

but they might need to suck up to govt/banks/etc in some way and buy some solar panels from Elon.

Sure.. deals are not always in the public interest... that's for sure... and some people, institutions have more bargaining clout than others. That's how the world works, last time that I checked, and might not even be just or fair, either.

Quote from: suchmoon on Today at 04:07:02 PM

Again, a mighty ironic place for Bitcoin miners to be

You already said that they do not reflect all of the miners because they failed/refused to invite you... so whether these guys are at the right table or if it ends up being like the 2017 NY segwit2x blocksize agreement might still to be determined, no?

Quote from: suchmoon on Today at 04:07:02 PM

and mostly because some wall street brats pretend to be our friends while tweeting stupid shit.

You are not going to get any argument from me on that point. Wink

#nohomo