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RE: Was Bitcoin the unlikely winner in Tuesday's Midterm Elections?
It's a step in the right direction, but I remain skeptical of the relationship between crypto and state actors. They are natural enemies because truly decentralized crypto is anathema to state control. Who runs for office in order to lose power? Such individuals have to have one of two things in mind. Either they are trying to protect their crypto investments, or they are really for centrally controlled blockchain. The latter is completely pointless because a permissioned blockchain is nothing more than an inefficient database. Beware of politicians of support "blockchain" for the purpose of advancing a state run cryptocurrency.
There is a 3rd option as well, one where they believe people should be in control of their money.
I am thinking there are thousands of explanations for their motivation. This false dichotomy (binary analysis) has infected every aspect of our public discourse. It is constantly presented as it is either "A" or "B." To think human motivation is so simplistic that it lends itself to an either or argument is ludicrous.
I've heard this one before. Lay out the other motivations then; don't just pretend that your thinking is superior to everyone else's, demonstrate it otherwise your superiority is useless to anyone else's benefit.
Better yet, how about I apologize for that last post. Rereading it, I think it comes off as kinda snarky. I am not like that. So, alternative motivations: He gets campaign contributions from Crypto HODLers and feels obligated to them, he is an idealist and sees this as the future, he is a patriot and sees this freeing his fellow citizens, he fears China's economic growth and sees this as a way to stop them manipulating fiat currency, he hates the FED and sees this as an opportunity to sideline them, etc, etc. My point being human motivation can be highly complex. The behavior may be binary (he did it, he did not do it) but the reasons behind said action do not lend themselves to the same binary analysis.
Yep, my thinking as well. Well said.
In other words, let's muddy up the waters so that the overall pattern that I was trying to highlight becomes less clear. So lets fix my post to say this instead...
"It's a step in the right direction, but I remain skeptical of the relationship between crypto and state actors. They are natural enemies because truly decentralized crypto is anathema to state control. Who runs for office in order to lose power? Such individuals probably have to have one of two main things in mind. Either they are trying to protect their crypto investments, or they are really for centrally controlled blockchain. The latter is completely pointless because a permissioned blockchain is nothing more than an inefficient database. Beware of politicians of support "blockchain" for the purpose of advancing a state run cryptocurrency."
You're pointing out the obvious and obscuring the important. Your alternatives really can fit under one of the two categories I stated. For instance, why would one hate the Fed? Is it primarily because they're worried about their investment, or because he's worried about his neighbors freedom (or maybe because their funding caused some wilted flowers in the Ukraine or a million other reasons)?
As for feeling obligated to constituents, I've rarely met a politician who took that seriously (and I've met a few). Many of them make jokes about how stupid we are for believing their BS when they think we're not looking. If you think Trump's "grabbing pussy" statement is unusual, trust me, it's not and it pales in comparison to some of the other things I've heard in the past half century or so. So let's focus on the reality of what's likely to happen. If you can assemble these other motivations in a symbolically useful way to point out what's likely to happen to crypto Hodlers in the 2020's, I'm all ears...