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What would have become of Hercules?
130 sats \ 4 comments \ @pillar 2 Sep 2022 bitcoin
The following quote comes from Epictetus' Discourses:
What would have become of Hercules, do you think, if there had been no lion, hydra, stag or boar - and no savage criminals to rid the world of? What would he have done in the absence of such challenges? Obviously he would have just rolled over in bed and gone back to sleep. So by snoring his life away in luxury and comfort he never would have developed into the mighty Hercules. And even if he had, what good would it have done him? What would have been the use of those arms, that physique, and that noble soul, without crises or conditions to stir him into action?
It got me thinking how the Bitcoin community is like Hercules here. We are growing ourselves because of the challenges we face. In a world with no inflation, no evil governments, no censorship, no confiscation... What would have been of Bitcoin?
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10 sats \ 2 replies \ @TheBTCManual 2 Sep 2022
I think even without the adversarial forces we see now, bitcoin would still continue the same way and the culture would be the same, as we look to use bitcoin to take on entropy in other parts of life, for example, the push for supporting more life, better quality of life means bringing more energy online, that means tackling issues like fission or declination at scale
Bitcoiners will always find some new challenge
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20 sats \ 1 reply \ @pillar OP 2 Sep 2022
Let me disagree with you. I think there is some empirical data that supports the idea that adversity strengthens the bitcoin community: in the countries where financial systems are more mature, bitcoin is less used and, even worse, it's used in more custodial ways, less censorship resistant ways. On the other hand, on less developed countries where bitcoin is both more needed and also more opposed by the establishment, adoption is growing at a faster pace and in a more p2p, grassroots and private way.
What's your take?
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @TheBTCManual 2 Sep 2022
I agree with your current take on the way bitcoin is used and distributed, absolutely "trust" in organizations are higher in "developed" markets, so custodial use or non-use is high.
I am in South Africa so see what a failed organisation does for example, we have high crime rates here, our police are corrupt, incompetent nd understaffed, so we have the biggest private security market per capita in the world. It's a natural reaction to market demand
We don't have major gun adoption here on the private level so walls, electric fences, gated communities, and 24-hour security have filled that demand. If guns were widely adopted you'd see those industries shrink.
So I see bitcoin as something that actively seeks out the worst environments like it's not valued as much in a non-custodial form in "trusted" communities, it gets a premium in places with conflict, as that capital flows in there, makes people richer, and they can then develop methods of safety that work for them (as I mentioned in the example above)
We see bitcoin flow out to somewhere else, it's like a pioneer species that is actively looking to raise people's living standards. Will the world ever be free of issues? I doubt it, not in my lifetime, I can't speak for lifetimes after mine though.
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @purpurato 2 Sep 2022
Hard times create strong characters and bitcoin couldn't have flourished in a different epoch. We're still do early
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