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The problem is that he is trying to monetize the distribution of content. All his talk about decentralization is pointless, because he wants a system where ther

The problem is that he is trying to monetize the distribution of content. All his talk about decentralization is pointless, because he wants a system where there are gatekeepers, the only difference from Twitter (or Facebook/Google) is that in his view these gatekeepers should be baked into the protocol. It would be comical if it wasn't diabolical.

PontifexMinimus 4y ago
> he wants a system where there are gatekeepers Does he? He says "it can't have an advertising model" and that it shouldn't be centralised. > in his view these gatekeepers should be baked into the protocol I don't see how that could in practise be done, and my reading is that Dorsey either doesn't want it or doesn't think it's possible (or both).
- loceng 4y ago
  In practice you rally all of the Bitcoin HODLers who are "desperate" and on average have "decent" losses - and want Bitcoin to become popular again, and ideally for them, become mainstream. This then incentivizes them to use only platforms and services that are integrated with Bitcoin (et al), in order to try to continue the charade that Bitcoin overall provides a net benefit, in hopes that its price, based on demand, reaches at least what they paid for it to begin with - but "hopefully 10x more!" However, it's described in part as Ponzi scheme as someone is always left holding the bag, and it will be the present moment wave who are most heavily holding the bag, who will then be more willing to rally and be a coercive group; it's like religion, or a cult, that you buy into - but where you not only have a profit motive, you're motivated to make back your losses too. The problem is they've never actually been able to compete with non-Bitcoin platforms and services - and perhaps at its foundation due to the higher cost of using Bitcoin vs. just using the internet with encryption and other security protocol; let alone story after story showing the $ billions stolen in Bitcoin; from the beginning in Bitcoin-related startup pitch decks - you'd never see a price comparison slide for Bitcoin vs. current offerings. This "army of HODLers" is however a potentially dangerous situation, as these are real people with voting power in democracies - and as I referenced above there was fairly early on an effort to "educate" politicians: how much the broader society be manipulated into adopting Bitcoin, simply through nudging of making it more normalized, all so the current HODLers can profit and pass the bag onto the next unsuspecting, misled laypeople? It only takes a single person with $ billions to $10s of billions to gain if this scheme continues, and who may already have $ billions of cash to spend say 50% of trying to manipulate to move it along strategically.
  - loceng 4y ago
    Re-reading this: a Freudian slip perhaps, I meant to say cohesive group - not coercive.
- rglullis 4y ago
  > He says "it can't have an advertising model" and that it shouldn't be centralised. That does not contradict the idea that you can have gatekeepers: just make it so that the your "decentralized platform" requires payment for distribution of content and/or that it is not subject to any equivalent to "Common Carrier" rules. Sure, in theory everyone would be playing by the same rules, but in practice you'll be turning one single gatekeeper (Twitter) into many (Big Corporations, VCs, media companies, already established influencers), and everyone would presumably be paying a cut to whoever is running the distribution platform.
loceng 4y ago
Sunk-cost fallacy with his indoctrination and vested interest in Bitcoin. Jack, Twitter, having been invested in early by Union Square Ventures, Fred Wilson et al, who also invested in Coinbase, CryptoKitties, Brave Browser, etc; USV believed they need to, or saw an opportunity to, basically create the whole ecosystem infrastructure for facilitating selling shovels during the "coin" rush. Many years ago before Fred (at AVC.com) removed the Disqus commenting system - USV sold it off, so clearly Fred no longer had a financial reason to keep utilizing it - I would near daily engage in long-form conversation in the comment section with other experienced individuals of various domains and have engaging and mostly intellectual conversation. Fred had valued that community, stated so many times and that it was invaluable to meeting many of the entrepreneurs he'd end up investing in - and where he regularly engage with comments. As soon as however he/they/USV started drinking the Bitcoin (Ponzi-MLM-like scheme) then there were people with the countering narrative, highly intelligent regular comments, narratives that all Bitcoin fanatics would have to ignore, avoid, dismiss in order to not shatter their ungrounded, uncriticially analyzed beliefs. Around that time Fred started getting eloquently articulated backlash, he heavily stopped engaging with the comments - and obviously avoided those critical and pointing out flaws, pitfalls, or ignored realities of the narrative they were following and propagating; and helping evolve, not to mention funding a lobbyist organization to "educate" politicians about Bitcoin and crypto-"currencies." The SEC should have immediately attempted to put a hard stop to them - albeit a challenge with its decentralized nature, but they could have limited the layperson from losing $100,000s; I personally know a few relatively unsophisticated and unknowledgeable, gambling type people who lost large sums - and many who lost a few thousand; most I predict don't announce their losses publicly. Rather the SEC seems in bed with the VC-finance industrial complex, and it seems like their friends must have been set to make money not transaction fees - but also they likely were bought into the earlier or lower part of the Ponzi-MLM scheme, and so then they, as a decentralized "community" of "HODLers" could benefit and participate in essentially pump and dumps; at least "HODL" is the mantra, those making and not losing money of course weren't holding - they were selling, but depended in part on the manipulating the community to hold off from selling - so then they themselves could sell higher - but primarily for the price to artificially get higher and higher. One young fellow I met ~7 years ago in the valley, having entered Bitcoin early, already had returns of over $40 million - to which he bought real estate with. He then used the rent money to continue buying Bitcoin during the troughs - as many people likely did - helping drive the relatively artificial-baseless price back up, making it continue to appear like there was higher demand than in reality. Rinse and repeat - sell high, buy low; transferring wealth weighted from the late adopters to the early adopters - the later adopters being left holding the bag of various weights depending on exactly when they "invested" in the scheme.

PontifexMinimus 4y ago

> he wants a system where there are gatekeepers Does he? He says "it can't have an advertising model" and that it shouldn't be centralised. > in his view these gatekeepers should be baked into the protocol I don't see how that could in practise be done, and my reading is that Dorsey either doesn't want it or doesn't think it's possible (or both).

loceng 4y ago
In practice you rally all of the Bitcoin HODLers who are "desperate" and on average have "decent" losses - and want Bitcoin to become popular again, and ideally for them, become mainstream. This then incentivizes them to use only platforms and services that are integrated with Bitcoin (et al), in order to try to continue the charade that Bitcoin overall provides a net benefit, in hopes that its price, based on demand, reaches at least what they paid for it to begin with - but "hopefully 10x more!" However, it's described in part as Ponzi scheme as someone is always left holding the bag, and it will be the present moment wave who are most heavily holding the bag, who will then be more willing to rally and be a coercive group; it's like religion, or a cult, that you buy into - but where you not only have a profit motive, you're motivated to make back your losses too. The problem is they've never actually been able to compete with non-Bitcoin platforms and services - and perhaps at its foundation due to the higher cost of using Bitcoin vs. just using the internet with encryption and other security protocol; let alone story after story showing the $ billions stolen in Bitcoin; from the beginning in Bitcoin-related startup pitch decks - you'd never see a price comparison slide for Bitcoin vs. current offerings. This "army of HODLers" is however a potentially dangerous situation, as these are real people with voting power in democracies - and as I referenced above there was fairly early on an effort to "educate" politicians: how much the broader society be manipulated into adopting Bitcoin, simply through nudging of making it more normalized, all so the current HODLers can profit and pass the bag onto the next unsuspecting, misled laypeople? It only takes a single person with $ billions to $10s of billions to gain if this scheme continues, and who may already have $ billions of cash to spend say 50% of trying to manipulate to move it along strategically.
- loceng 4y ago
  Re-reading this: a Freudian slip perhaps, I meant to say cohesive group - not coercive.
rglullis 4y ago
> He says "it can't have an advertising model" and that it shouldn't be centralised. That does not contradict the idea that you can have gatekeepers: just make it so that the your "decentralized platform" requires payment for distribution of content and/or that it is not subject to any equivalent to "Common Carrier" rules. Sure, in theory everyone would be playing by the same rules, but in practice you'll be turning one single gatekeeper (Twitter) into many (Big Corporations, VCs, media companies, already established influencers), and everyone would presumably be paying a cut to whoever is running the distribution platform.

loceng 4y ago

Sunk-cost fallacy with his indoctrination and vested interest in Bitcoin. Jack, Twitter, having been invested in early by Union Square Ventures, Fred Wilson et al, who also invested in Coinbase, CryptoKitties, Brave Browser, etc; USV believed they need to, or saw an opportunity to, basically create the whole ecosystem infrastructure for facilitating selling shovels during the "coin" rush. Many years ago before Fred (at AVC.com) removed the Disqus commenting system - USV sold it off, so clearly Fred no longer had a financial reason to keep utilizing it - I would near daily engage in long-form conversation in the comment section with other experienced individuals of various domains and have engaging and mostly intellectual conversation. Fred had valued that community, stated so many times and that it was invaluable to meeting many of the entrepreneurs he'd end up investing in - and where he regularly engage with comments. As soon as however he/they/USV started drinking the Bitcoin (Ponzi-MLM-like scheme) then there were people with the countering narrative, highly intelligent regular comments, narratives that all Bitcoin fanatics would have to ignore, avoid, dismiss in order to not shatter their ungrounded, uncriticially analyzed beliefs. Around that time Fred started getting eloquently articulated backlash, he heavily stopped engaging with the comments - and obviously avoided those critical and pointing out flaws, pitfalls, or ignored realities of the narrative they were following and propagating; and helping evolve, not to mention funding a lobbyist organization to "educate" politicians about Bitcoin and crypto-"currencies." The SEC should have immediately attempted to put a hard stop to them - albeit a challenge with its decentralized nature, but they could have limited the layperson from losing $100,000s; I personally know a few relatively unsophisticated and unknowledgeable, gambling type people who lost large sums - and many who lost a few thousand; most I predict don't announce their losses publicly. Rather the SEC seems in bed with the VC-finance industrial complex, and it seems like their friends must have been set to make money not transaction fees - but also they likely were bought into the earlier or lower part of the Ponzi-MLM scheme, and so then they, as a decentralized "community" of "HODLers" could benefit and participate in essentially pump and dumps; at least "HODL" is the mantra, those making and not losing money of course weren't holding - they were selling, but depended in part on the manipulating the community to hold off from selling - so then they themselves could sell higher - but primarily for the price to artificially get higher and higher. One young fellow I met ~7 years ago in the valley, having entered Bitcoin early, already had returns of over $40 million - to which he bought real estate with. He then used the rent money to continue buying Bitcoin during the troughs - as many people likely did - helping drive the relatively artificial-baseless price back up, making it continue to appear like there was higher demand than in reality. Rinse and repeat - sell high, buy low; transferring wealth weighted from the late adopters to the early adopters - the later adopters being left holding the bag of various weights depending on exactly when they "invested" in the scheme.