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If you (or anyone else) think you can effectively break bitcoin then there is a billion dollar bounty available to you in the form of a highly leveraged bitfinex short position.

Bitcoin's governance model is what makes it special. 1) The founder declared it would have a maximum of 21 million coins with a set mining schedule 2) Many/most of the people who bought into it implicitly agreed that this is the core feature of bitcoin - that it would only ever have 21 million coins 3) The founder disappeared/died/whatever 4) Now, everyone continues to agree on the 21 million coin cap. If anyone tries to change this, they are opposing the founder and the reason many people bought bitcoin. At that point bitcoin will become the most used chain that maintains the set 21 million cap

This lack of governance as well as scarcity consensus is by far the strongest mechanism to maintain a scarce supply that we have in existence. It is not totally infallible - maybe a superhuman AI could social engineer the entire bitcoin community to increase the cap. But it is the best I can imagine is possible. The network effect of more people buying into it makes that 21 million meme stronger and stronger, and satoshi being "gone" reduces the risk that he comes back and declares that he has "changed his mind". Even if he did do that the core 21 million devotees will fork the coin to a 21 million and that will be the truly scarce bitcoin.

Therefore, this is the most securely scarce asset in existence.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1UO3iBE0nsuayzNceZPeK2mynHj...

Here's a tune I made with Fiverr.

Bassist from venezuela, rhodes keyboard from greece, rapper from washington dc, rhythm guitar from finland, jazz guitar from USA, mastered by a guy in croatia.

We had a medical student who had her abdomen scanned as part of teaching. They found a cystic looking thing on her pancreas. She ended up getting it excised - it was benign and would've never caused problems, but she had multiple complications and 2 months in hospital as a result of the surgery.

I think Doctors (I am one) definitely err on the side of overtreating in those uncertain situations. Just like politicians, it feels more caring to act than to not act.

If you MRI 1000 people and leave the vague results in the hands of a bunch of physicians, they will tend to be interventional. This will lead to a spate of overtreatment.

Ways around this would be to consent patients for watchful waiting in the case of uncertain lesions. Even so, telling people they have weird looking lumps that you're not going to treat will cause serious anxiety.

If the form factor is good enough why wouldn't you want the ability to have a tablet sized screen whenever you need a bit more space to do stuff?

This seems like the first actual bit of interesting innovation in smartphones in about a decade..

cool project, expected response from BCH crew. permissionless is permissionless. they need to suck it up.

Masayoshi seems great at picking market tops and buying into them.

But it would be pretty easy to obfuscate the whole thing behind a few layers of "We've got 50 PhDs working here, we run black box algorithms" etc etc, the strategy could be artificially made a couple of orders of magnitude more complex while still producing the exact same outcome.

Do hedge fund investors keep an eye on whether you do what you say? How did Bernie Madoff go for so long if that's the case?

Of course the mechanism is simple and mechanical, but that isn't how you'd market it to investors.

I'll go read the Lo paper...

ok while we're playing "ask a hedge fund guy"

Say I set up a fund holding a low cost s&p500 index ETF, but at the end of each year sold naked puts with a ~1/25 risk of ruin to earn ~4% return. Therefore my fund consistently makes 4% over the market index, except for 1/25 years when it explodes and loses everything. Because the volatility is low, my sharpe ratio is good (until it explodes), correct?

Assuming it can stay in business >10-15 years won't I be a billionaire hedge fund manager by then and then change to a low risk strategy that only makes 1-2% more than market index with very low risk of ruin and just let my investors lose interest and quit the fund over the next decade while I continue to earn fees from them?

I think even zuck would have given up on any political aspirations at this point. He's a total pariah.

Honestly, who wants to be a billionaire at this point? Even if you promise to give away 99% of your money everyone still hates you.

I sold most @ $16.5k in the dead cat bounce after the bubble.

I just bought quite a few back @ $3800.

You get used to it, this is my 3rd or 4th >80% drawdown. Still remember $30->$2 in 2011/12

So you say that tribes can physiologically adapt depending on their environment.

Do you then admit that tribes can adapt cognitively depending on their environment? Or does adaptation only occur below the neck?

Ok, so if "race" only affects external appearance, explain why every single london marathon champion since 2002 is kenyan or ethiopian?

On the freakonomics podcast episode with the study authors, they said that on average women earn over 10 percent more than men from tips.

Dunking on all these fucking bankers is going to be the sweetest thing ever. I hope every last one of these pieces of shit is holding a big hoard of crypto when it finally crashes. I've already sold them a LOT but I've got a fair bit to go.

Yep, it's like Fiat currency is some crappy thing poor people use to live on while the rich accumulate actual scarce resources with infinitely appreciating prices.

Previously the only real options we have to use as "money" are nation-state derived and under the control of central bankers. For various reasons, nothing else (eg. gold, stocks, property) presented a practical alternative to state issued money in fulfilling the core functions of: - medium of exchange - unit of account - store of value Central banks and governments always ended up debasing their currencies. They ranged from super-corrupt to just believing weird keynsian-stimulus stuff, and always end up printing money and debasing the currency. QE given to corrupt politicians as happens in africa enriches the politicians at the cost of everyone else holding or earning the currency. QE given to bankers as in USA enriches asset owners at the cost of savers and wage earners.

Finally, cryptocurrencies with fixed, limited inflation schedules provide a competitive non-inflationary alternative to state issued currency.

My doors aren't opening like an albatross anymore!

I don't mean using the fingerprint as a key.

I mean that if you can produce a fingerprint image corresponding to a blockchain hash and it matches your fingerprint 20 years later, and this is linked to 20 years worth of blockchain recorded credential information, I would find that very compelling evidence that you are who you say you are.

:rolleyes:

ok Apoorv, if you want credentials, here's Hayek's speech agreeing with me.

https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/la...

Why can't he, or I, diminishing the legitimacy of economics?

If someone had made up a fake Nobel prize in psychology I would diminishing the legitimacy of that too.

The field of economics is far, far less rigorous than any of the hard sciences for which Nobel prizes are awarded. The fake Nobel prize for economics is strongly disputed by much of the Nobel family, Keynes, and it makes economists act more blowhard, self-congratulatory and self-important than they already do.

I say this as someone spends a fair chunk of my time reading economics books and blogs.

Slate star codex/Scott Alexander is a good example of internet-driven democratization of opportunity. A trainee psychiatrist from somewhere in the Midwest, the quality of his blog posts on economic and social issues has led to him being one of the most influential thinkers around at present.

The Bitcoin protocol contains an incrementally diminishing mining reward that prevents endless expansion of mining long term

You are hopelessly naive if you think for profit publishers would ever do that.

I think economics itself is very important for society. I just don't think economists add much to the field.

Peter Nobel, a human rights lawyer and great grandson of Alfred Nobel explained that "Nobel despised people who cared more about profits than society's well-being", saying that "There is nothing to indicate that he would have wanted such a prize", and that the association with the Nobel prizes is "a PR coup by economists to improve their reputation".

So often I read some bullshit article with a headline touting the author as being a nobel prize winner, and it is always the economics prize. It debases the achievements of other nobel prize winners, both in hard science and in literature/peace.

Even Hayek himself was against the Nobel prize for economics because: "The Nobel Prize confers on an individual an authority which in economics no man ought to possess.... This does not matter in the natural sciences. Here the influence exercised by an individual is chiefly an influence on his fellow experts; and they will soon cut him down to size if he exceeds his competence. But the influence of the economist that mainly matters is an influence over laymen: politicians, journalists, civil servants and the public generally."

Thankfully, the blockchain's 8 million trillion hashes per second and robust elliptic curve cryptography don't care what Jamie Dimon thinks.

Honestly, the fake Nobel prize for economics really diminishes the credibility of the Nobel prizes and science in general. I like economics, have studied it and follow it, but it does not deserve to be placed alongside the hard sciences where actual irrefutable progress is occuring.