Mircea Popsecu is a largely forgotten figure in this space, but he was a very impactful cultural figure in his time before slowly disappearing from the wider public sphere to eventually “accidentally” drown off the coast of Costa Rica. He was quite a crazy and eccentric figure, but he has left a lasting impact on this space. I would say that he is essentially the godfather of what people today consider “toxic maximalism,” although compared to the people who ascribe that label to themselves today, it would make them look like overly sensitive and whiny children.
One of his bitcoin-prices-bitcoin-inflexibility/”>most prolific publications In my mind was his consideration of the price of bitcoin and the market dynamics it entails over the long term, starting in 2013. He was discussing the dynamics of supply and demand interacting with each other, and specifically the mindset of current bitcoin holders in contrast to average consumers who may or may not have an incentive to try to accumulate bitcoin in response to the deterioration of the fiat system.
He framed the friction between these two groups as an impasse, where current holders have little incentive to part with their bitcoins, and people trying to get rid of their devalued fiat currency have no real recourse if bitcoin holders act that way.
He proposed three possible solutions to this impasse.
““One is that consumers cave in and submit, the price of bitcoin is approaching $1,000 a share, and there's a rush to move society away from that dysfunctional standard. Banks start accepting bitcoin deposits, bitcoin hedge funds are popping up everywhere, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, the president of the ECB, and everyone else comes to Timisoara when they want to make a move to get my blessing, etc.”
This is the path we are walking on apparently Right now, capitulation of the existing system, integration into the legacy financial system, veneration of early adopters and bitcoin as a solution to the systemic problems of fiat. This is what Bitcoiners are currently celebrating in terms of our path forward, citing every little news story from a banking institution, an ETF, an investment fund, as proof that they are capitulating. We have won!
This is wishful thinking, pure and simple. Trump’s accommodating attitude toward Bitcoiners seeking campaign funding does not really benefit bitcoin; he is and always will be a fan of the dollar. His mindset is based on the idea that printing money and exporting our inflation globally is a huge positive for American interests. Democrats are overwhelmingly antagonistic toward this space, for similar reasons.
Even if such a future were to actually come true, in reality and not just in name, it would be a very bleak and depressing future for anyone who sees bitcoin as a tool for freedom and sovereignty. Using bitcoin would not provide that for almost anyone. Hedge funds, banks, ETFs, they would all be the key holders for the vast majority of people. No one would really have any degree of freedom, it would be the same financial system we live in now, where nothing can be done without seeking permission from some feudal lord who actually has control of their funds. Regulations would not allow for increased competition in this sphere, existing players would take advantage of their revolving doors to encourage capture and high walls around their privileged position in this role.
This path would essentially mean the failure of bitcoin as a tool for freedom, and the same game we see being played out right now with slightly stricter rules for the privileged few who can get a seat at the table.
“Another one is that consumers revolt, governments intervene, we all spend the rest of this decade fighting each other. bitcoin also hits thousands of dollars a share, but the energy, effort, and resources that could have been spent on comfortably giving in and productively submitting are wasted on an ultimately doomed effort to play hardball with a weak hand. Neutral, uncommitted governments win, and as the dust settles, the balance of macroeconomic power has shifted from the Western world to whatever, China, Iran, Brazil, whatever.”
This is the path they are taking to openly fight bitcoin. People start switching to bitcoin in droves and governments react reflexively to try and prevent this. From here, things play out as bitcoin starts to become a more important aspect of global finance outside the realm of the traditional financial system, and countries that fight back and refuse to allow this to happen end up hurting themselves, while smaller, more adaptable jurisdictions that either stay on the sidelines or embrace this change end up benefiting greatly.
In this world, Western governments make using bitcoin an enormously difficult task, but people persevere anyway. The rest of the brainy world either stands by or proactively embraces it, while the West devotes all its efforts and resources to futilely fighting the inevitable. The rest of the world experiences a financial renaissance, while the Western world stagnates, its citizens forced to fight uphill all the time to retain some degree of economic success (or even just stay afloat).
As brutal as it sounds, this is the world I want to see. One in which the West’s domination and coercive control over the rest of the world is eroded. We have no special right to rule the rest of the world as we do, and this path forward would slowly, over time, strip us of the ability to continue to do so. Citizens of the West can embrace bitcoin and defend their individual freedoms and sovereignty, and in doing so, protect us from the collapse of our corrupt institutions.
Victory in a revolution is neither free nor easy. For bitcoin to actually do what many of us hope it will do, it really does need, at the end of the day, to go down a painful path. And that means people have to choose to go down it. Many people in this space think that governments will just give up and let bitcoin win, but that's just a feint to come in and capture it.
We have to push to build around them, build in parallel and force them to act. If they don't actively fight, then there is something else at play. That's not good for us.
“Another one is that consumers revolt, entrepreneurs step in, by the end of 2015 there are between a thousand and a million different bitcoin forks, each with its monetary base of about ten million worth about a dollar, on average globally. The size of the market between Bitcoins, the complexity and the resulting confusion makes virtually everything unmanageable for the “average person”. Hedge funds and banks (those that are a little ahead of the curve) Using Excel) that trade in this murky complexity makes a fortune and becomes the main engine of global economic growth. Not only is the consumer just as screwed as he is now, but to everyone's benefit, he has been clearly shown once again that rebellion equates to being fucked in the ass harder, longer, with a thicker instrument and sharper spikes. It is also convenient that the motive for rebellion has become much vaguer and more intangible. On the balance of probabilities, this would seem to be the most likely outcome, strictly because history flows unerringly in the direction that most cruelly violates the “average person.”
Popescu called this the most likely outcome: constant fragmentation, bitcoin would fragment into countless forks from the original, each region or group of people with a different idea would split off into their own different networks, eroding the network effect until it becomes localized with more sub-fragments than people can keep track of.
Everyone assumes that this is over, that this door was simply a phase we went through during and in the immediate aftermath of the block wars, and that it is closed forever. That is an illusion. Nation states are adopting bitcoin, major financial institutions that basically write government policy are coming into the picture and integrating it into their systems.
The world is a game of coercion and extortion politics, the US invading countries and slaughtering hundreds of thousands of people simply to keep the flow of goods in the direction it wants. To imagine that they and other interests wouldn't siphon off bitcoin for their own self-interest on a global scale is naive. I would even go so far as to say that opening the first door, “capitulation” and the capture of bitcoin quickly by these people would almost guarantee that this last door would eventually open.
This is a failure of the first order. Fragmentation, not a singular network effect imposing a real shortage of supply and, more importantly, rules on economic actors around the world. A brief respite and then an immediate return to the game as we know it now. Total and utter failure of any form of revolution.
The three doors are still there, we haven't gone through any of them yet. No one knows which one we'll ultimately go through. Bitcoiners could use some humility and recognition of the fact that not only have we not come close to winning, but failure is still absolutely on the table. In multiple ways.
