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bconnorwhite

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"...banks issued their own currencies, which they sometimes refused to redeem for their purported value in gold or silver."

Fortunately the government stepped in with its own currency to refuse to redeem for gold

"Why would one person want to reduce the ability to apply economic policy in their country?"

What do you think happens to your currency when they print more of it?

One problem with gold though is that we know where plenty of gold is, its just too expensive to mine. Once the price of gold rises, more gold becomes profitable to mine, supply increases, and the price goes back down.

I can't tell if you're agreeing by saying "its only been 12 years," or if you're disappointed by a 10 million % appreciation in 12 years

I think the difference is that currencies fluctuate against each other, whereas if everything is priced in Bitcoin, its whatever you're pairing it against that's fluctuating. Goods (ex: loaf of bread for 200 satoshis for example) would stay stable

Most of the criticisms in this thread seem to be missing that Bitcoin is only layer 1. Bitcoin isn't Visa or cash - its gold. Rather than shipping gold across the Atlantic, large institutions will settle in a few minutes in Bitcoin. L2/L3/L4 solutions (built into Apple Pay, etc.) will allow for instant payments for coffee, allow for privacy similar to physical cash, etc.

Before this is possible, the price has to stabilize. Just takes time to go from $0.1 to $10M per coin. Once Bitcoin has eaten all the "store of value" value & only appreciates at the rate new wealth is created, L2/L3/L4 solutions will go mainstream.

This is super common on HN. Just look at threads on Tesla. Fortunately betting against someone with a closed mind is super profitable, because they'll always mis-price the risk/reward.

We are far too stupid to not fall for scams. It's better that the government "protects" us. /s

Seriously though, this is messed up. Crypto is similar - CoinMarketCap has a program where you can earn tokens by watching a few videos, but look at the list of restricted countries: "Belarus, Democratic Republic of Congo, Cuba, Iraq, Iran, Mainland China, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, United States of America and its territories (American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands), Zimbabwe."

Why the f are we on a list with Cuba, Iraq, Iran, China, North Korea, and Syria??? America is not free

The other factor is that Musk has nothing better to spend his money on. With Tesla + SpaceX + Boring + Neuralink he'll likely be a trillionaire by the time Mars colonization is full swing. Even if the price was $2T instead of $200B, Musk might be able to fund most of this himself.

True, but even after narrowing this, you usually end up with 3/4 of these companies in competition.

Messaging? FB vs Apple vs Google

Ads? FB vs Google vs Amazon

Video? FB vs Google (YouTube) vs Amazon (Twitch)

Especially re: Google linking to its own sites, are we now arguing Google has a monopoly over google.com? It gets a bit weird

I don't think DDG is quite as simple as a wrapper on Bing, just open both in private windows. Same search => different results.

The reason to use DDG isn't that its results are superior to Google/Bing (although imo this is true in many cases), the reason to use DDG is that its so clean. Google and Bing just feel spammy/garish in comparison

Motivation = what you think about in the shower http://paulgraham.com/top.html

The question seems to be how to keep your project top of mind. Once you're forced to stop working on your project, the context file this post mentions acts like a save point to return your project to top of mind.

I'm sure there are other similar hacks. Maybe review your context file before showering each day?

Engagement rate is measurable. The average time it takes for users to complete the action they're looking for is also measurable. Companies test this stuff, Apple isn't spending millions of dollars to redesign MacOS because Tim Cook is bored. Same goes for the Instagram redesign of a few years ago, or this GitHub redesign, etc.

Excel today is still cleaner than Excel 2010, and Google Sheets easier to use than both. Most spreadsheet users simply don't need the extra functionality Excel provides, and the few users that do need this use the product enough to have memorized the keyboard shortcuts.