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I don't have much concern for the US attempting an outright ban any more. That ship has sailed unless the US gets very disparate. The issue that most concerns me is that there is a slow move away from self custody by bitcoiners.
As Bitcoin becomes more normalized Bitcoiners become normies
It's becoming normie hell already, time preference has gone from low to high... what drives clicks today are fake L2's, jpg's, Shitforks, and ECash...
Welcome to Ethereum
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As the dollar falters, I still think we'll become the scapegoats at some point. My concern is selective invocation of civil asset forfeiture to seize bitcoin or targeting known bitcoiners with tax violations.
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Market cap of Bitcoin is <1.5T
Even if they could confiscate every Bitcoin and could mark it to market it'd cover at most 1Q of federal spending
As the dollar falters it only becomes less because dollar supply is a direct function of the spending
Some forfeiture regime assumes a complete breakdown of law and order, in which case Bitcoin is still the safest thing you can own... imagine owning a rental property in Portland OR for contrast...
But, they don't need to use a legal framework to seize it though, that'd be going through the front door and silly... it'd likely be much more insidious, something like the CIA phones up the MSM to run 24x7 stories about $5 wrench attacks until everyone puts their coin into a regulated custodian
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I don't think it would be a revenue grab. The intention would be to kneecap an emerging threat. I'm sure they'll also use an intense propaganda campaign.
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Complete exhaustion of the float by the US ETFs before anyone else gets a chance.
In the next 2 years, every country with its own markets will want to offer BTC ETF like vehicles. Its all getting eaten by BD Fink.
The US has a large first movers advantage by launching in early 2024. More and more sats are locked for decades in 401ks, and investment accounts. The ability to store sat (value) for decades in a tax advantaged way without excessive fees are making the difference here.
You can argue about the strength of the binding between an ETF claim and sats, but I posit that the public US markets have a very strong systemic binding here. I believe the day will come when people can redeeming ETF shares for UTXOs. I guess those UTXOs wont be less than 1 BTC.
But the rest of world needs a taste before its too late!
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MSTR float
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I think thats market participants duty to price that risk, how much will self custody be worth as a premium? Don't know, until we see a good old fashioned rugging.
My one concern is the backing of these things, its settled in-cash so who is to say they're not inflating the supply just a little and as it continues to run up these issuers continue to get greedy and over their ski's
The other concern is that none of this "bitcoin" is interoperable with the open monetary network, so you can't even call them out on this bs, like you can with an exchange and drain their reserves
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What post Bitcoin ETF? You mean in 200 years? At that point who really cares, you wont be around to see it, feel free to speculate. I think we will be split as we are now. Self custody is not for everyone, so there will be your ETF. Those who prefer real ownership will take advantage of it, rightfully so.
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I don't see anything as a threat because I believe that governments can't stop Bitcoin. They have already surrendered in front of the almighty money.
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I don't think it can kill Bitcoin, but it certainly can make it less useful or more difficult to use in the west, at least initially.
Some sly roundabout way, like allowing retirement investment accounts take on risk -- direct via ETF or indirectly via 'accretive equities included in major market index funds', might do it. ❤️
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