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What Bitcoin Is: A Story of Two Mikesfrankcorva.substack.com/p/what-bitcoin-is-1d1
1936 sats \ 15 comments \ @denlillaapan 20h bitcoin
Frank is beyond excellent: go read the full thing.
Mike resides in a refugee camp in Kenya, where I’d imagine it might be quite easy for him to psychologically give up, yet he spends his time studying finance and investing in bitcoin, because it seems that he believes that doing both will help improve his lot in life. (And I tend to agree with him!)
And a keynote presentation [by another Mike] I witnessed at Bitcoin MENA last week was an important reminder of why I hate this place sometimes.
See, Michael Saylor thinks bitcoin is nothing more than just “digital capital,” something that a major institution like the one he heads should own so that they can issue “digital credit” on top of it, which will ultimately underpin “digital money,” (which I’m assuming would be some sort of stablecoin pegged to the value of the digital credit — barf).
It’s not that I care about the bitcoin more than my life — it’s that I care about bitcoin existing as freedom money more than I care about my life, and I would never opt to sell it to someone who doesn’t see it as freedom money as a means to aid their effort to recreate fiat.

"The first Mike I referenced in this edition of the newsletter is who people in the Bitcoin space should admire, not the latter."

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33 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 11h
I had to go dig up this old Saylor post of mine from 2022: #69542
It seems like I was on to him early!
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @denlillaapan OP 8h
hot damn.
At that time I was probably still a Saylor fanboi... impressive instincts, sir.
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22 sats \ 0 replies \ @fourrules 19h
I don't think "Michael Saylor thinks bitcoin is nothing more than just “digital capital,”"
I think he is still selling it to institutions with a pitch they will accept, that is minimum minimally an antagonistic. I think bitcoin is for my enemies and any argument that works for them to buy it in any form is good enough.
You don't have to buy MSTR if you don't like what he is doing, just look forward to the cheap sats if you think what he is doing will implode.
I don't think that bitcoin is the end of credit, I think that banks and other lending institutions will still want to lend to people who don't have bitcoin if they have the capacity to earn the bitcoin (or fiat) and make the repayments. In that case there is a possible market for collateral as a service. There is nothing in that statement that prevents bitcoin being a medium of exchange as well.
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0 sats \ 11 replies \ @CliffBadger 8h
It's not shadow banking. It's the obvious play that every corporation should adopt if they care about money.
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0 sats \ 10 replies \ @denlillaapan OP 8h
nah-nah-nah
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0 sats \ 9 replies \ @CliffBadger 8h
No? If you were CEO you wouldn't buy Bitcoin with 0% interest loans? You'd just go out of business instead?
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0 sats \ 8 replies \ @denlillaapan OP 7h
It's not 0%, but whatevs... I probably would, but that doesn't mean I/he "should" or that it's a good thing, for bitcoin or for the world (#1291642)
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0 sats \ 7 replies \ @CliffBadger 5h
It's a good thing because printing fiat to buy Bitcoin is what ultimately drives the purchasing power of fiat to absolute zero and confirms BTC as world reserve currency. It's not enough to warn about the flaws in the old system. Someone has to actively exploit them to prove the point.
And I disagree with the idea that an individual or company which does nothing except trade Bitcoin isn't providing a valuable service. They are. Treasury companies did the work of analyzing their balance sheet, so they chose the best store of value while everyone else chose wrong. It's perfectly fair for them to be incurring a gain in fiat terms.
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0 sats \ 6 replies \ @denlillaapan OP 4h
They're not printing money. They're printing shares, and in the process divert capital from the real economy. Financialization isn't beneficial, even if it's done in the name of approaching bitcoin nirvana
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0 sats \ 5 replies \ @CliffBadger 3h
The "real" economy means what? Every business except the one that takes Bitcoin seriously?
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 2h
basically, "do you create surplus or do you just move it around?"
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @denlillaapan OP 2h
the real economy, as opposed to the financial.
Strategy isn't taking bitcoin seriously. They're building nothing, achieving nada. Parasites, leeches.
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