markjgsmith

2024/08/01 #

• I totally might be not understanding this correctly but aren’t CBDCs basically stablecoins run by the government instead of a foreign company? If that’s the case then another way of saying that is that stablecoins are CBDCs run by a foreign company. That doesn’t sound like a good idea. #

• cat << EOF > Bitcoin strategic sovereign reserves

  There’s been a big shift in the sentiment towards Bitcoin and crypto in recent weeks. The US presidential candidates have realised that there are now quite a lot of people into crypto. So many in fact that they represent an amount of people large enough to have an impact in elections. That has led to several candidates announcing that they are now pro-crypto. Trump in particular has been particularly vocal, having spoken at a big Bitcoin conference a few days ago, where he promised to turn the US into the Crypto capital of the planet. Here’s the full keynote speech in video.

  The video from the conference is pretty interesting. I’ve seen a bunch of soundbite clips which are short and informative but in the full video you can tell he is of course reading off of the tele-prompter, and though he obviously knows a bunch about Bitcoin and crypto, he’s clearly still got some learning to do. There are several bits where you can tell he doesn’t fully understand what he’s reading and saying, and there are some other bits where he’s genuinely suprised by the crowds huge reaction. But anyway the point is he’s talking about it, and he’s learning as he goes along. He’s a busy guy.

  The US already has quite a big stockpile of Bitcoin, mostly from seizures from criminal activities, but there is much talk of the US creating a strategic reserve consisting entirely of Bitcoin. Though Trump didn’t go into specifics, others have done. Robert Kennedy for instance says he would setup a program of steady daily Bitcoin purchases, 550 Bitcoins per day until the US had around 4 million coins. That’s around 1/5 of all Bitcoin in existence.

  What I found interesting was this idea of a country steadily buying up Bitcoin. Countries are such big entities that they could have a big impact on the Bitcoin markets. But what would happen if all countries banded together and bought Bitcoin at a sustained pace together?

  I don’t know the answer to this, but I would have thought they could theoretically usher in a very smooth transition from fiat currencies to Bitcoin if they worked together. This is happening already, and everything in the world is being repriced accordingly, but it’s been somewhat chaotic. Though it’s chaotic, there are re-occuring patterns, with high valatility, but it has been happening in a 4 year cycle, that seems to follow the fiat money system’s liquidity refinancing cycle.

  I’d like to know what would happen if countries band together and start buying Bitcoin in lockstep, slowly but synchronised? Would that be a good thing in general, what about for current Bitcoin holders?

  EOF

Today’s links:

• Tether Nets $5B Profits This Year, Says Its US Debt Holdings Surpassed Germany's - These stablecoins are making a lot of money, and they are investing heavily in crypto mining and AI companies. They are also becoming the biggest holders of US treasuries, at the same level as nation states. I’m not an expert in all this but that seems like a very very strong position to be in. www.coindesk.com #

• The US government needs Bitcoin with Luke Gromen & Preston Pysh (What Bitcoin Did Podcast) - I wasn’t able to follow everything in this episode, it rapidly gets pretty complicated, but IMO there’s some very important information in there. It’s basically a macro discussion around how Bitcoin is intersecting with the old school financial system, how the interplay between stablecoins and treasuries is shaping up, and how this might affect and be affected by geo-politics. It gets very abstract in places, but they always bring the discussion back to grounded truths and examples. I think even if you don’t fully understand everything, seeing things through a Bitcoin lense gives you the ability to see where things are moving at least directionally. I’m wondering if there are stablecoins backed by chinese treasuries, that’s were the biggest productivity gains from recent years are currently. Somewhat sad to hear that it’s one of the last WBD episodes, it appears they are moving onto other ventures still to be announced. www.whatbitcoindid.com #

• RA.947 Lydo (Resident Advisor Podcast) - I listenned to this mix by vietnamese - america electronic music artist last night. It’s pretty great, hard techno, gets pretty dark, especially at the end, I could totally imagine listening to this in a club with an incredible sound system. Probably quite good music to code to also. ra.co #

• Michael Malice (Joe Rogan Podcast) - I think Malice was previously on Rogan, and I think I really enjoyed their conversation. They are very well balanced together, I feel like they bring out the best in each other. It’s a very conspiracy heavy episode, so if you’re into that, you’ll enjoy this episode. All sorts of topics including the Biden body double, deep fakes & cheap fakes, sceptical being the new norm, Elon and free speech, Harris wine mom, Google memory holing, Trump shooter weirdnesses, Silk Road Ross Ulbricht, Prince Charles’ sausage fingers, aristocrats being perverts, prince Andrew loosing ability to sweat, 1000 space monkeys writing the Art of the Deal, and a whole lot more. If you have a few hours to chill, worth listening to. podcastindex.org #

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