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I often enjoy Steve Barbour's takes on Bitcoin. I'm curious what the stackers think of this one:

304 sats \ 6 replies \ @Lux 17 Apr

a combination of gov bans and price collapse is exactly what bitcoin needs to get rid of fiat maxis ;)

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You'd fit amazingly well in our irregular OG meetups where this recurringly is the solution dreamed about even before the wine/rum/beer bottles are opened. We're all jaded tho, so I am not sure that this is an actual compliment lol

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70 sats \ 2 replies \ @Lux 18 Apr

you say jaded I say frustrations valve :)

invite accepted

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I would love to come to that meetup where you go :)

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91 sats \ 0 replies \ @Lux 18 Apr

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There are times when I really do believe this, but I'm curious how such a thing would play out: price (in $ terms) would surely drop, which means a lot of miners would bail and pivot to AI. I don't think that's a big concern, but I wonder what would happen to all their ASICs. It seems like a bad thing to have a bunch of hash power that is in the wings, just waiting for Bitcoin to be favored again to plug in.

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215 sats \ 0 replies \ @Lux 17 Apr
what would happen to all their ASICs

i will open a "recycling" venture, they will pay me to take them :)

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Weak Canadian mind, perpetually blackpilled and unable to fathom that patriots are in control.

The national security state didn't create Bitcoin just to ban it, there's not a single thing about Bitcoin that doesn't benefit US National Security.

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Doesn't that assume that the people in decision-making roles in the US Government are not weak minded?

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Stuffed suits get titles because they're controlled, blackmail or otherwise. They are not decision makers, they're front-men for the actual decision makers.

Patriots get there through strength, wisdom, courage.

Government is a foggy battlefield between the two factions. Regime change is a shift in balance, never absolute.

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No offense.
But you are a crazy mofo.
Cheers

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In contrast to normies that's a compliment, taken.

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Dude I used to pretend otherwise
But none of us are normies

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Most Bitcoiners are sounding very normy these days

Psyops expanded from MSM networks to social media and influencers/podcasts/astroturf blogs/alt media, and Bitcoiners got swept in the tide.

Normies are Trump deranged, blabbering about Epstein, and think Bitcoin was made by some lone wolf anon

Point for point in-line with most bitcoiners.

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Dude real bitcoiners are out there using bitcoin in the real world, out there spending it via lightning and ecash... Using it non-kyc running their own lightning nodes and such.

None of that is 'normie' whatsoever, maybe it will be one day but its nowhere near normie today.

Wow, your comment made the top downzapped list!
If I had not seen it I wouldn't have read this excellent thread.
Thanks for taking the hit.

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q much?
psyoped good

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Q is breadcrumbs.

Not seeing the meta-psyop is to be psyopped.

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18 sats \ 0 replies \ @Lux 17 Apr

sure

you make great apps

i still like you

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Is a ban really a wipe out, or just the ultimate stress test? Every time a major economy (like China) bans Bitcoin, the network migrates and proves its resilience

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This is how I've always thought about it. If bitcoin survives a US government ban, I'm not sure much could be better for it than that.

Edit: And, if it doesn't survive such a ban, then we shouldn't be wasting our time with this.

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Yes, but the question is how awful would the interim be? I'm a softy. I don't want to live life on the lam.

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Probably worse than I expect. Think of your hash share, though.

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this was sort of my thinking. I don't want to be stupid and claim such things would be good for bitcoin from my comfortable armchair while I don't have to risk going to jail to send transactions, but i do believe Bitcoin's main value proposition is that it lets you break the law. If it is not clear to people that there are laws that need breaking, I'm not sure very many people will be convinced of Bitcoin's value.

It's like Bitcoin almost needs governments to introduce more capital controls so that it can demonstrate how easily it defies them...so that people can see what makes Bitcoin truly valuable.

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Breaking the law might just be you creating self sovereignty

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103 sats \ 3 replies \ @OT 17 Apr

Even when the pendulum swings back to blue I don't think they'll be able to ban it. It would take a charismatic dictator and there's no one in US politics that fits that description.

Even a US white market ban wouldn't destroy Bitcoin. It would dump but recover as miners and capital move elsewhere.

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Ironically a blue admin would probably be beneficial for Bitcoin’s fiat exchange rate cause everybody would be coinjoining and opening Lightning channels in fear of wealth confiscations.

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13 sats \ 1 reply \ @OT 18 Apr

I remember hearing Mechanic say this a number of times. Something along the lines of that you need the state to attack Bitcoin or it becomes soft and complacent.

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2028 Democrat sweep and 2028-2032 Bitcoin mass adoption!

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Government ban is worst. I seen it affects most LN wallets. I read somewhere that there is no way Quantum can affect bitcoin, but we should have a way to switch over to this new computer to get ahead for the future and to stay on top in strengthening Bitcoin.

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Obviously governments bans are a worse threat because they already exist.

So pro-Bitcoin governments have to bomb the shit out of any regime that bans it, send the wrench gangs to concentration camps, and economically/literally starve the taxmongers and welfare cheats.

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6 sats \ 0 replies \ @Car 18 Apr

maybe in the usa but def not in texas, working everyday to make sure of it

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there's no such thing as white market, the only real market is the black market. Hope it happens soon.

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Two asymmetries worth separating here:

  1. Government ban targets the USD on/off-ramps (KYC exchanges, banks, miner hosting). It can drain the value bridge but cannot touch the protocol — node count went up during China's 2021 ban.
  2. Quantum is bottlenecked by what must be broken: secp256k1 ECDLP on exposed pubkeys. That's P2PK (Satoshi-era), reused P2PKH, and live-at-spend-time pubkeys. Dormant P2PKH / P2WPKH / P2TR hashes stay HASH160/SHA256-shielded until broadcast. So the attack surface is narrower than often stated — and NIST's PQC roadmap (FIPS 204/205 finalized 2024) is years ahead of a capable fault-tolerant quantum computer.

Barbour's take holds if you value existence of the network. For holders of reused-address UTXOs, quantum is strictly worse because it's silent and irreversible.