The Memory Pool Where ideas wait to be mined into the block chain of the collective conscience

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Parker Lewis - May 23, 2020 (Originally published May 1, 2020)

There may be debate but bitcoin is the inevitable path forward. Time makes more converts than reason.

Parker Lewis - April 10, 2020 (Originally published March 26, 2020)

No matter how many cycles of quantitative easing the Fed and its global counterparts have in their bag of tricks, bitcoin is inevitably becoming a rallying cry for all those that see the train wreck coming and are unwilling to stand idly by.

Parker Lewis - March 3, 2020 (Originally published January 24, 2020)

Bitcoin obsoletes all other money because economic systems converge on a single currency, and bitcoin has the most credible monetary properties.

Parker Lewis - January 4, 2020 (Originally published November 29, 2019)

We accept the good with the bad, recognizing that due to the very nature of bitcoin, we do not get to decide. There are always trade-offs, and in this case, that bitcoin will unavoidably be used for illicit purposes is the trade-off we gladly accept in exchange for the economic stability that an unmanipulable global currency will provide.

Parker Lewis - January 4, 2020 (Originally published November 8, 2019)

Banning bitcoin is a fool’s errand. Some will try; all will fail. And the very attempts to ban bitcoin will accelerate its adoption and proliferation.

Parker Lewis - January 4, 2020 (Originally published October 18, 2019)

[Bitcoin] will only proliferate if it creates utility for those that adopt it.

Parker Lewis - January 4, 2020 (Originally published September 27, 2019)

Ultimately, bitcoin is backed by something, and it’s the only thing that backs any money: the credibility of its monetary properties.

Parker Lewis - January 4, 2020 (Originally published September 6, 2019)

Every other fiat currency, commodity money or cryptocurrency is competing for the exact same use case as bitcoin whether it is understood or not, and monetary systems tend to a single medium because their utility is liquidity rather than consumption or production.

Parker Lewis - January 4, 2020 (Originally published August 30, 2019)

Could the whole apparatus of central bank policy be the root cause of the problem rather than the ever-elusive solution?

Parker Lewis - January 4, 2020 (Originally published August 23, 2019)

If a global financial system is to be built on a decentralized monetary system, the foundation must be protected at all cost.

Parker Lewis - January 4, 2020 (Originally published August 16, 2019)

Put a price on economic stability and the economic freedom a stable monetary system provides; that is the true justification for the amount of energy bitcoin should and will consume. Everything else is a distraction.

Parker Lewis - January 4, 2020 (Originally published August 9, 2019)

Volatility in bitcoin is the natural function of monetary adoption and this volatility ultimately strengthens the resilience of the bitcoin network, driving long-term stability. Variation is information.

Parker Lewis - January 4, 2020 (Originally published August 2, 2019)

Those that attempt to copy bitcoin signal a failure to understand the properties that make bitcoin valuable or viable as money.

Parker Lewis - January 4, 2020 (Originally published July 26, 2019)

Bitcoin exists as a solution to the money problem that is global QE.

Ross Ulbricht - September 26, 2019 (Originally published September 25, 2019)

Bitcoin was consciously, yet spontaneously taken up as money while no one was watching, and our world will never be the same.

Also available in: Russian

Trace Mayer - August 2, 2019 (Originally published June 29, 2015)

The […] listed network effects can only serve to strengthen [Bitcoin]. Competitors beware.

Also available in: Russian

Vijay Boyapati - July 1, 2019 (Originally published February 26, 2018)

[T]he bullish case for Bitcoin is compelling but far from obvious.

Pierre Rochard - November 1, 2018 (Originally published July 8, 2018)

Compromising on trustlessness could help the Bitcoin price find a local maximum, at the expense of finding a much higher global maximum.

Also available in: Russian

Saifedean Ammous - November 8, 2017 (Originally published May 19, 2017)

From the settlement layer view, the growing adoption of Bitcoin is increasing its liquidity internationally, allowing it to compete with global reserve currencies for increasingly more valuable transactions, causing transaction fees to rise.

Also available in: Spanish

David A. Harding - July 29, 2017 (Originally published July 28, 2017)

I personally suspect that Bitcoin’s steadily improving privacy will prevent us from ever measuring decentralization in a truly objective way. Losing easy quantification but gaining stronger privacy seems like a good tradeoff to me.

Jimmy Song - May 8, 2017

Like with most things, Bitcoin Dominance is a very crude metric and one that’s unfortunately very easy to manipulate. The recent enthusiasm for ICOs has made the manipulation even worse and continues to hide the fact that Bitcoin is doing really well.

Daniel Krawisz - January 8, 2017

This article is about how money interacts with the rest of the economy after it has matured and about how mismanagement by an issuer can cause it to fail.

Daniel Krawisz - August 7, 2016

If it became easier for people to trade different forks of the same currency, then investors could get direct experience with different ideas without endangering the network.

Daniel Krawisz - July 13, 2016

If someone says “blockchain tech” to you, you might as well walk away right there. They’re just trying to sell you on their new decentralized crowdfunded blockchain tech internet of bitthings appscam.

Daniel Krawisz - June 20, 2016

I fully support the attacker’s actions, and I wish I had thought of it first.

Oleg Andreev - November 17, 2015 (Originally published May 23, 2014)

If achieving consensus in a non-trust manner is ever possible in practice, then it is only possible with a Proof-of-Work scheme and highly specialized expensive production chains.

Daniel Krawisz - February 8, 2015

Bitcoin upgrades must be a clear improvement to Bitcoin as an investment or else they face a sharp uphill battle to adoption.

Also available in: Russian

Daniel Krawisz - January 12, 2015

Bitcoin has the right properties for the world’s money, and the more the world comes to terms with this, the more stable it will become.

Daniel Krawisz - January 6, 2015 (Originally published September 3, 2014)

Bitcoin makes conspiratorial group cohesion more difficult. If the Fappening took place as I described, then this effect is right at the center. The possibility of getting bitcoins by releasing secrets caused the group to fall apart.

Daniel Krawisz - January 5, 2015 (Originally published October 25, 2014)

The difference between Bitcoin and a Ponzi scheme is that in a Ponzi scheme, the early adopters benefit by cashing out. With Bitcoin, there is no reason ever to cash out.

Daniel Krawisz - January 4, 2015 (Originally published November 30, 2014)

Krugman’s article and Gobry’s follow-up are confused, do not establish their case, and say nothing about Bitcoin.

Daniel Krawisz - January 3, 2015 (Originally published November 22, 2014)

Working in the Bitcoin world is like working for a drug addict with bipolar disorder.

Daniel Krawisz - January 2, 2015 (Originally published October 4, 2014)

There are two ideologies in the Bitcoin world. They are not political ideologies; they are different visions of Bitcoin’s place in the world and how adoption will happen.

Michael Goldstein - December 24, 2014

Protecting ourselves from the dangers of crypto-anarchy requires embracing it even more fully and internalizing and practicing the virtues that have helped great men weather the storms of life since antiquity.

Also available in: Chinese

Daniel Krawisz - November 8, 2014 (Originally published July 10, 2014)

All Bitcoin entrepreneurs today build on top of the success of the Silk Road. Their work was made possible by his.

Oleg Andreev - October 2, 2014 (Originally published December 28, 2013)

Bitcoin raises the cost of many kinds of attacks, going far beyond protecting against central banks meddling with money supply.

Andrea Castillo - September 30, 2014 (Originally published June 10, 2014)

Bitcoin provides us alternatives to compelled trust in monopolies but it can never obviate the need for trusted human connections. Nor can it protect us from our own pesky brain bugs’ ambiguous filters on perceived reality.

Also available in: Chinese

Michael Goldstein - September 11, 2014

There is a war going on for your bitcoins, and willpower is your only defense.

Also available in: Finnish, German, Spanish

Peter Dushenski - July 4, 2014 (Originally published April 29, 2014)

Only Bitcoin can restore the necessary balance between the Gods. Only Bitcoin can give us life.

Pierre Rochard - July 4, 2014

Bitcoin will overtake weak currencies like the dollar through speculative attacks and currency crises, not through the careful evaluation of tech journalists and 'mainstream consumers'.

Also available in: Hebrew, Russian, Spanish

Daniel Krawisz - June 29, 2014

Potential Bitcoin attackers are in a Prisoner's Dilemma. In the same way that the people cannot easily rebel against the king owing to a lack of coordination on their part, governments cannot rebel against Bitcoin for the same reason. The government puts the people in a Prisoner's Dilemma against one another, and Bitcoin does the same to government agents.

Daniel Krawisz - June 29, 2014

There is a fundamental agency problem with Bitcoin: agents can disappear or simulate a heist upon themselves. They cannot rationally be trusted without extreme costs being imposed on them which are more stringent than traditional banks.

Daniel Krawisz - May 24, 2014

Appcoins are a terrible idea.

Daniel Krawisz - May 16, 2014

Don't be a venture capitalist—be a speculative philanthropist.

Daniel Krawisz - May 10, 2014

Someone still lost in the dollar world looks at Bitcoin and sees wild and extreme volatility, whereas someone in Bitcoin looking back at the dollar sees the worst and longest economic crash in history.

Also available in: Spanish

Daniel Krawisz - May 3, 2014

The difference between money and a bubble is that a commodity whose price is a bubble actually has some underlying value.

Daniel Krawisz - April 26, 2014

Does Bitcoin need to be sanitized and separated from its anarchist, black-market roots in order to become acceptable to the general population? Absolutely not!

Daniel Krawisz - March 29, 2014

Government currencies will rapidly lose value as Bitcoin supplants it. What will such an event be like and how can it be understood economically?

Also available in: Arabic, German, Persian, Russian, Spanish

Daniel Krawisz - March 14, 2014

What falleth, that shall one also push!

Daniel Krawisz - February 25, 2014

The best way to improve Bitcoin’s image is simply to improve the Bitcoin economy.

Daniel Krawisz - February 12, 2014

The real hero is the hoarder.

Also available in: Italian, Russian, Spanish

Daniel Krawisz - February 1, 2014

For now at least, Bitcoin’s present trend is self-reinforcing with no equilibrium in sight.

Daniel Krawisz - January 28, 2014

Those who worry about Bitcoin’s volatility fail to understand what it actually means for Bitcoin.

Daniel Krawisz - December 20, 2013

No one should ever use Mastercoin under any circumstances or appraise their value as anything above zero.

Pierre Rochard - December 15, 2013

The Bitcoin Central Bank will be the longest lasting institution of its kind thanks to the anti-fragile independent monetary policy it has set in stone.

Also available in: German

Daniel Krawisz - August 22, 2013

In short, the altcoin phenomenon is the product of greed and bounded rationality.

Daniel Krawisz - July 2, 2013

Once it was known that bitcoin could be sold, even for a pittance, new possibilities opened up.

Daniel Krawisz - June 24, 2013

Proof-of-work should not be seen as a mysterious or wasteful system, but as something functional, natural, and potentially of value for the design of any communication protocol.

Daniel Krawisz - June 5, 2013

Stay one step ahead of the government and don’t get embroiled in politics.

Daniel Krawisz - May 29, 2013

If Bitcoin becomes money, the government’s control of money will have ended.

Daniel Krawisz - May 24, 2013

Public-key cryptography is the greatest tool of liberty ever devised.

Daniel Krawisz - May 22, 2013

With cryptography, one libertarian inventor can create an entire libertarian society.

Pierre Rochard - February 22, 2013

There is no reason to deposit your money with a 3rd party. Bitcoin makes fractional reserve banking an obsolete technology.

Pierre Rochard - February 19, 2013

Low transaction costs make Bitcoin the most competitive medium of exchange in humanity’s history, and it may be the case that a currency with even lower transaction costs is theoretically impossible.

Also available in: Spanish

Pierre Rochard - December 24, 2012

New capital formation is the impetus for two trends that push the equilibrium of all industries towards decentralized markets: increasing technological sophistication and a deepening of the division of labor.