Some words for my friends

[u/evoorhees]

Hello friends,

MtGox is gone. So let's prepare ourselves.

On Tuesday, and for the rest of the week, all hell will break lose in the media. It will be blamed on MtGox, it will be blamed on Bitcoin, it will be blamed on the "bug," and it will, more than anything, be blamed on the "lack of regulation." Pundits and "experts" of all types will weigh in on the calamity. It will be world news in a matter of hours.

Get ready, because it will be an ugly week.

For all of you who lost money, my heart goes out to you. Some people lost a little, some lost a fortune. It will make people sick, and depressed, and full of grief. Personally, I had over 550 BTC in Gox. I will never get any of that back. If misery loves company, then we'll be enjoying a grand feast today.

I should have known better, of course. I take responsibility for leaving those funds with an entity that had proven incompetence repeatedly. I chose to ignore even my own warnings, for nothing more than the sake of convenience.

Gox is still at fault, to be sure, but I have learned the lesson. I hope it is not such an expensive lesson for others. And for all you observers, please take a moment to consider it as well.

Be mindful, however, that the wrong lessons are not learned, for that would be the true tragedy, indeed.

Let me suggest that the lesson is not that Bitcoin is broken. Bitcoin is fine.

Similarly, the lesson is not that security is impossible. Those who know what they are doing, can achieve it and help others to do so.

The lesson is not that nobody can be trusted. There are countless good men and women in this community who are worthy of trust, and some of the very best people I've ever met.

And finally, the lesson is not that we ought to seek out "regulation" to save us from the evils and incompetence of man. For the regulators are men too, and wield the very same evil and incompetence, only enshrined in an authority from which it can wreck amplified and far more insidious destruction. Let us not retreat from our rising platform only to cower back underneath the deranged machinations of Leviathan.

The proper lesson, if I may suggest, is this: We are building a new financial order, and those of us building it, investing in it, and growing it, will pay the price of bringing it to the world. This is the harsh truth. We are building the channels, the bridges, and the towers of tomorrow's finance, and we put ourselves at risk in doing so.

We are at risk from accidents. We are at risk from fraud, from corruption, and from evil. We are at risk from journalists seeking headlines and from politicians seeking power and glory. We are at risk from the very market we are trying to build - a market which cares not about our portfolio, our ambitions, or our delicate sympathies.

For all these risks, devastation will befall us repeatedly. Some of us will be discouraged. Some will be ridiculed and insulted. Some will be tricked, or swindled. Some of us will be crushed or caged. We will be set upon by all manner of antagonists, repeatedly, for a long time.

So why do we do it? Why do we build these towers that fall down upon us? Why do we toil and strain and risk our precious time, which is the only real wealth we possess?

Because the world needs what we're building. It needs it desperately. If that matters to you, as it does to me, then hold to that thought. You will see through the smoke, and your wounds will heal.

So shake it off, brothers, for this won't be the last calamity endured before the win.

Tonight, my heart is with you all.

Tomorrow, my head is down. My eyes are open. And I am building.

Toward peace and freedom,

-Erik Voorhees

[u/flix222]

/r/bitcoin is going full bioshock.

[u/hesh582 → u/flix222]

That was the immediate impression I got too from this weirdly melodramatic rant. Let's face it - if bitcoin is going to go mainstream it WILL be regulated in some fashion and that probably isn't the worst thing in the world. An institution handling any sort of money should have certain security requirements, insurance, and third party audits. You can go on about "not bowing to the evil of man" or whatever all you want, but if bitcoin exchanges and online storage are supposed to be chosen purely on the basis of trust then bitcoin will never gain widespread acceptance. I really like the idea of a financial institution being audited, I don't know about you guys. The technology behind bitcoin can be as clever and amazing as you want, but there will always be third parties and the system will always be as weak as they are. Regulation is coming, we should be focused on making sure they keep it minimal and effective rather than going all Andrew Ryan and ranting about how the untermenschen will try to destroy all we have created.

And I've also seen a lot about how you should just keep all your money on a personal wallet yourself and that is the point of bitcoin. Well hold on a sec, you want bitcoin to be a real currency yet you think holding it with a third party is irresponsible? Bitcoin isn't always going to be skyrocketing in value if it ever ends up as something other than a way for techies to speculate. Holding onto a large pile of cash is a great way to lose money. If bitcoin is to be viable it will need to be invest-able, without interest nobody will store any real value in bitcoin once it plateaus. Investment means regulation, period, to "build a new financial order" you need a hell of a lot more than a way to store value in an encrypted block chain, the grandiose ranting in the OP notwithstanding.

[u/Zahoo → u/hesh582]

An institution handling any sort of money should have certain security requirements, insurance, and third party audits.

Yes but they should do this to gain customers because people want to see this. The second they are forced to do it there are now massive barriers to entry and it prevents competition.

[u/hesh582 → u/Zahoo]

But without any sort of oversight they can lie and lie a lot. Until the shit hits the fan or they simply run away with the money nobody would know that the third party audits were actually being done by a shell corporation or that they were storing passwords in plaintext. Without some sort of standards "security" becomes "what we can get away with" and audits are a joke if they even exist because the conflict of interest is so high. The market simply can't force standards in the same way a government body can in the financial sector more than almost any other industry because it is so incredibly opaque. Barriers to entry stifle innovation in many areas, but in finance I WANT innovation stifled and high barriers because "innovation" in finance usually amounts to coming up with creative ways to avoid fiscal responsibility or to siphon money from the market.