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0 sats \ 3 replies \ @fourrules OP 5h \ parent \ on: Is tokenisation a bad word in bitcoin maxi circles bitcoin
You keep projecting opinions onto me, like you are arguing with a person in your head and this thread is just a medium for you to feel clever.
That is despite my responses stating repeatedly that "I don't believe ABC", and "I never said XYZ", you continue to project onto me the opinions that you want to argue against rather than anything I am actually saying.
Now, I have no doubt that China has Russia, Iran, Pakistan, and North Korea over a barrel. I'm sure they have strong influence in the middle East, South East Asia, and even South America to encourage the use of their payments system for international settlements.
But ultimately in a multi-polar world the base layer will be neutral, India, Brazil, the Middle East, Norway, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, there are many power players who don't want to replace one bully with another, and to give China even more leverage.
Incumbent fiat dominance ensures that Bitcoin has to be a store of value before it can become a medium of exchange, that is obvious. It was always naive to think that bitcoin could become a medium if exchange first.
Anyway, you took over this thread about tokenisation to rant on a soapbox, just use a mirror next time you want to listen to yourself.
You say - ' But ultimately in a multi-polar world the base layer will be neutral, India, Brazil, the Middle East, Norway, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, there are many power players who don't want to replace one bully with another, and to give China even more leverage.'
Now you assume a multipolar world and I agree that is possible.
And that Bitcoin might be one of those poles.
However India is deeply tied to Russia and with Russia now deeply dependent upon China India has few options, especially with the rapid decline of western power and its long term reluctance to align with western imperialism.
The mostly authoritarian nations outside of the liberal western democracies are even less inclined to accept Bitcoin for MoE as they nearly all outright ban it for MoE use.
Yes there are potential pockets of resistance that could adopt Bitcoin but if that excluded them from Chinese protocols and trade that would be a cost few would want to accept.
'But ultimately in a multi-polar world the base layer will be neutral'
There is no logical basis for this assumption- history strongly suggests it is not the case.
While Bitcoin presents a potential new paradigm state power structures and imperatives argue in the opposite direction.
After all the network effect applies to monetary systems and because China now dominates trade in manufactured goods and commodities it can dictate terms and in fact must impose some sort of power projection beyond its borders to enable it to invest in and maintain control of global supply chains and infrastructures including institutional structures.
China is the logical builder of new alternative trade payments protocols and it has already built them and they are already being used by a growing number of respondents.
Your assumption that Bitcoin, an apolitical algorithm will over ride the imperatives of global hegemony is an assumption ignoring history and logic.
Bitcoin could in theory provide a fantastic basis for true free trade, but true free trade has never been the reality- trade has always been to a greater or lesser extent subservient to the dictates of dominant military and trading nations.
Just because Bitcoin delivers superior monetary functionality (in theory) to the individual does not mean it does the same for the nation state- it doesn't!
The nation state is still a major factor, perhaps the most important factor in the wealth of nations.
The wealth and dominance of the US owes at least as much to its legacy domination of global protocols and institutions as it does to 'free trade'. The US has been far from an exponent of free trade but rather increasingly dependent upon exercising its domination of trade payments and military power projection. Now that US economy is increasingly mired in debt the viability of its empire is declining and Chinas is rising.
Bitcoin may be a useful neutral outlier/safe haven, but looks unlikely to gain the critical mass and widespread MoE acceptance required to be anything more than an outlier to Chinas growing dominance. Speculating upon the worth of potential Bitcoin derivatives without accepting and incorporating context in the real world is fruitless.
You say- 'you took over this thread about tokenisation to rant on a soapbox'.
I say I am just providing real world and historical context that is lacking in your analysis.
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Solomonsatoshi is obsessed with arguing that China is supplanting the US. Getting into arguments with him about that topic isn't likely to lead anywhere productive
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Try to dismiss the messenger but fail to dismiss the message why don't you!?
Yes I do raise this topic sometimes but it is also true that nobody of the Libertarian ideology has yet responded with any credible refutation of the main points I raise.
Perhaps because they cannot they respond with a credible reasoned argument they respond instead with personal attacks...in order to avoid these issues they cannot refute.
In doing that they concede defeat, by default in terms of a fair and reasoned contest of ideas.
I have been called names (statist, Chinese operative, lunatic etc etc) for my efforts but that just shows nobody of the Libertarian ilk can respond in a credible reasoned fact based manner and so resort to crude name calling shoot the messenger trolling.
I believe this is an important and significant issue today and going forward especially relevant to Bitcoin and to Libertarian ideology.
The fact that it presents real and demonstrable challenges to Libertarian ideology is not my problem but it is revealing that the Libertarians who often claim nobody is prepared to engage with them in reasoned debate are not themselves capable of calm and reasoned contest of ideas when offered the opportunity.
The OPs obsession with digital tokens/tokenisation/financial derivatives I would present as further evidence of the corrupt narratives within the west where financialisation of everything has come to dominate and the actual making and production of useful tools, materials, infrastructure and products in the real world is increasingly deficient.
The highly financialised western hegemony is inherently vulnerable to the 'practical mechanics' of Chinas mercantile based strategy, but US Exceptionalists are seemingly blind to this vulnerability. The OP demonstrates this blindness by assuming that the Chinese would invitably fall into the same trap (of chronic fiscal and trade deficits) as the US has regarding being the dominant issuer of currency when that is clearly not inevitable.
The Chinese will be free to construct a monetary and trade payments protocol/s and institutions to avoid such a trap, and very likely will.
They might ultimately fall into new traps but that is for the future and history to tell and is unlikely to be foreseen easily via existing paradigms.
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