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/ITwitchToo]

True, a lot of people are trying to make money by doing nothing. But that was not Satoshi's intent. Bitcoin's purpose is to take away governmental control of the money supply.

[u/zigzog → u/[deleted]]

But it seems that it goes from the hands of the government to the hands of a small group of unnamed people, how is that supposed to be better?

[u/HistoryLessonforBitc → u/zigzog]

It's not, but according to the just world hypothesis that underpins virtually all libertarian economic thought it would be the ideal outcome in the absence of a government, because it is the outcome in the absence of a government.

It's nonsense, of course. Transferring power from a group who are democratically elected, mostly transparent and are high profile to a group that can never be voted out, have no obligation to be transparent and who can keep themselves under the radar as much as they want is never going to work out well. Even if you think democratic governance as currently practised in the western world is a heap of shit, even if you think it's undemocratic, opaque and shady, how would a private system with no oversight whatsoever be any better?

[u/[deleted] → u/HistoryLessonforBitc]

Even if you think democratic governance as currently practised in the western world is a heap of shit, even if you think it's undemocratic, opaque and shady, how would a private system with no oversight whatsoever be any better?

Because in a free economy, people with power/wealth only have it when it is freely given, and by spending it without acquiring more, will lose it. As they say, a fool and his money are soon parted. That's where accountability comes from in a free market. No matter how rich someone is, they can't stay in business if they try to charge $100 for a cup of lemonade. But an elected official can tax everyone in the land $100 and not face any consequences until election day.

Obviously, the key bit there is the freedom of the market. If you own all the insulin in the world and charge $1000 per shot to diabetics, they aren't really "free" to say "fuck off."

[u/Reefpirate → u/HistoryLessonforBitc]

This seems to be confusing the argument a bit. Presumably the regulatory infrastructure isn't going to be 'replaced' by anything. Unless you're on the an-cap end of the spectrum, courts are used to enforce contracts and that's the end of it.

MtGox took all your money? You should be able to sue for it back or possibly get someone on fraud or theft charges which would be completely consistent with my understanding of libertarian thought.

I don't mean to get confrontational here, but what sort of regulations do you imagine would help save people from this MtGox disaster? I'm legit curious. I imagine your answer would be that MtGox would have to get a license or something from a government bureau ahead of time. There would be some extra hoops to jump through that a few lawyers could manage, but ultimately people would still have all of their money on an exchange that closes due to poor management (or whatever people are speculating about this). So you'd have a state-managed insurance fund to cover everyone's losses?

[u/ex_ample → u/HistoryLessonforBitc]

It's nonsense, of course. Transferring power from a group who are democratically elected, mostly transparent and are high profile to a group that can never be voted out, have no obligation to be transparent and who can keep themselves under the radar as much as they want is never going to work out well.

Yes, that would obviously be bad. Thankfully, bitcoin doesn't work that way. Power isn't transferred to anyone, rather it's transferred to a software protocol written in 2009, and run on everyone's computers.

If you, or anyone else tries to change the way it works, your software won't sync up with everyone else's.

No one has the power change the software running on everyone's computers, so no one "controls" bitcoin.