And speaking of libertarians, BITCOIN LOL

[ericbarbour]

In case you missed this last summer:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n13/andrew-oh ... shi-affair

The true story of "Satoshi Nakamoto", aka (at least partly) Craig Wright, as fed to a writer as the "official account". Wright looks like yet another shrieking autistic basement-dwelling libertarian to me. Same old story, same old obsessions.

"‘Dressed up in samurai clothes, with the odd wooden shoes and everything. Making all the noises. His sisters would complain about him embarrassing them: “We’re down the park, we’ve got friends down there, and he’s walking around with webbed feet.” He used to have this group of nerdy friends in the 1980s: they’d come around in horn-rimmed glasses and play Dungeons & Dragons for hours.’"

This is a long screed but to really figure out what he "believes", you have to also read some of the old Nakamoto "manifestos". They are comical. He now has an "Institute" dedicated to him:

http://nakamotoinstitute.org/

Wright is such a smart guy and yet he says and does such incredibly stupid things. And it's "such a shock" that the Australian Tax Office came after him. If he actually does own those 1 million Bitcoins that trace back to "Nakamoto", then he has screwed Australia out of taxes on something like $2.8 billion. People get 30 years in prison for doing that in the "real world".

Plus it always cracks me up that these autists who hate the evils of government power always end up setting up their own governments. Which gain power and do evil things (if they survive--the jury's still out on Bitcoin). Little nerdy manchildren squabble with the other manchildren and want to take their toys and go home. You try to tell them that human societies are ALWAYS like this, feudalism is the inevitable result because homo sapiens is an inherently feudal animal, and they refuse to believe you. "We can beat them! We can use the Internet!" No, you can't. Smarter people than you have tried and failed.

[ericbarbour]

And yes, there is a Wikipedia connection. Some of the people deeply embedded in the twisted little world of Bitcoin are also major Wikipedia insiders. For example, the comments in this Reddit thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/4 ... _the_many/

u/gwern is Gwern Branwen, one of Wikipedia's looniest fans. He's an even bigger ranter than Nakamoto ever was. His personal website is not to be believed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Gwern
https://www.gwern.net/

There's a good chance some of the other Reddit users on r/btc are also Wikipedia insiders--they often operate under sock accounts. It's a haven for autistic spluttering and arm-waving. Say anything critical of the basic operations of Bitcoin and they'll downvote you and shriek at you. Look at this freak.

https://www.reddit.com/user/WippleDippleDoo

And Greg Maxwell, former administrator and checkuser of Wikimedia Commons, quit Wikipedia entirely in 2014--but is still one of the sysops of the Bitcoin Talk forum. Lol:

https://bitcoin-otc.com/viewratingdetai ... &type=RECV

[Strelnikov]

And yes, there is a Wikipedia connection. Some of the people deeply embedded in the twisted little world of Bitcoin are also major Wikipedia insiders. For example, the comments in this Reddit thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/4 ... _the_many/

u/gwern is Gwern Branwen, one of Wikipedia's looniest fans. He's an even bigger ranter than Nakamoto ever was. His personal website is not to be believed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Gwern
https://www.gwern.net/

There's a good chance some of the other Reddit users on r/btc are also Wikipedia insiders--they often operate under sock accounts. It's a haven for autistic spluttering and arm-waving. Say anything critical of the basic operations of Bitcoin and they'll downvote you and shriek at you. Look at this freak.

https://www.reddit.com/user/WippleDippleDoo

And Greg Maxwell, former administrator and checkuser of Wikimedia Commons, quit Wikipedia entirely in 2014--but is still one of the sysops of the Bitcoin Talk forum. Lol:

https://bitcoin-otc.com/viewratingdetai ... &type=RECV

Meanwhile David "Assisted Living Dracula" Gerard comments constantly on the Buttcoin subreddit as dgerard. Meanwhile Rationalwiki target Rome Viharo is pro-Bitcoin, and of course there is a thread on Buttcoin about the whole thing.

[ericbarbour]

Since this thread started, Bitcoin values have skyrocketed. This week it's past the $10,000 mark.

One result: bloggers mocking it.

https://splinternews.com/hey-idiots-you ... 1820805131

For ten thousand dollars I’ll go buy myself a Jet Ski with bad ass stripes on the side. Okay? And you buy yourself a Bit coin. And we’ll see who has more fun.

If I pissed in an ice cube tray and told you it was a “block chain” you’d empty your god damn wallet at my feet. Get some sense, kid.

[Graaf Statler]

Nothing new.

-

l'histoire se répète. The tulip mania, arond 1620 in Holland.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/636/636-h/636-h.htm

[ericbarbour]

LOL now people are being banned from r/bitcoin because they asked "bad questions", which were interpreted as "spam":

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/7 ... oning_the/

Wikipedia circa 2005 all over again.

[ericbarbour]

l'histoire se répète. The tulip mania, arond 1620 in Holland.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/636/636-h/636-h.htm

And people keep mentioning that, and deny deny deny:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/commen ... ulipmania/

[Graaf Statler]

It is a strange phenomenon. Because it is a orphan. In the huge euro crisis there was the European Central Bank to intervent., and most system errors are repaired now.
The German economy, were Holland a part of is, is one of the biggest and strongest in the world. So, there is something, there is something physically.

And what is the Bitcoin? A kind of wiki coin. And is a wiki community able to solve a problem? No......
Is there some safety net? No........
Are there system errors? For sure! The catastrophe is built in.

[sashi]

Sa2shi is totally unknowable except 4 {their} works.

alors ça! to chie ?

absentee coinlords, church games

Geez... I {got doubled}.

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/zealots-of-the-blockchain-golumbia.

[ericbarbour]

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/zealots-of-the-blockchain-golumbia.

Lol, which opens with:

In 2008, cyberlibertarian pundit and technology consultant Clay Shirky published Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, a book crammed with Silicon Valley bromides about Wikipedia, open source technology, and “democratization.” Premised largely on fantastical thinking, Shirky’s book touts the spontaneous birth of new “organizations” from the internet—beyond the mainspring of traditional organizational forms—the bulk of which unquestionably work for the good of society. Shirky’s basic presumption is loud, proud, and untested: anti-institutional and frequently leaderless organizations, those that today we hear more commonly described as “horizontal” or “decentralized,” are better for society than their more decrepit precursors.

Oh, I could go on and on about Shirky.