I just finished the Saylor episode on WBD. Some unorganized thoughts:
- Saylor made some good points about approaching newcomers from a positive angle and not eating your young, or whatever phrase he used. I will admit I have viewed companies copying his strategy as just opportunistic vultures, but once you think through it logically - as he laid it out, then it really does make sense that we should be welcoming of such developments. If we want everyone to adopt bitcoin, then companies will also need to adopt it. Why frown that some shitty company embraced bitcoin when so many haven’t. There are clearly so many opportunities ahead.
- Having said that, I feel that Saylor unfairly berated Danny. It was clear to me that it was not his intention to criticize Saylor, so his rant was not fair, not really directed at Danny, but he took all the heat anyway. It seemed to be aimed at some specific people that were probably getting under his skin on Twitter. To me, this is shitty behavior, that I suppose you could excuse with some bottled up frustration or a bad day or something, but overall not cool. The guy is there to have a conversation and genuinely learn about your thought process, why rail against him personally? Weak. You’re not there to debate the host… it’s not a debate in the first place and nobody is making any accusations.
- I agree with a lot of what Saylor said about not having endless BIP proposals to do XYZ thing to make bitcoin cool again. Money is supposed to be boring. Bitcoin works, we have layer 2 and 3 for building on top of a solid foundation and there’s no reason to mess with level 1. Bitcoin doesn’t need to become a shitcoin that does this thing or that thing - money IS the use case as Mallers eloquently put it one of his rants. Lightning already unlocks scalability in a much more private way.
- I don’t fully agree that bitcoin is digital credit for money… clearly. It CAN be, and it will be used in such a way - there’s no way to stop that, and that’s fine. But it also is money and can be used as such, and should be used as such. I get that Saylor does not care about bitcoin as a medium of exchange, and that’s fine if that’s how you approach it - but we don’t need to be preached on this. We can use bitcoin however we like, as a store of value, or as a medium of exchange.
- I don’t understand the whole spiel about offering higher rates when you have bitcoin as credit. It kind of makes sense in current conditions (if bitcoin is up), but under a bitcoin standard, any credit created results in inflation, so I don’t see how you’re going to offer better rates than inflation when everything is backed by bitcoin. Maybe I’m just a dummy though. (Ok, I am.) Would love to hear a deep dive on this topic. I sometimes think Saylor just says shit because he knows it takes me longer to process it and he can get away with nonsensical shit, but maybe he’s just operating at a pace I can’t understand fast enough…
- Much of his mentions of trillions sounds like bullshit. Like.. how many trillions are there? Who is putting 10 trillion into your credit product. Sounds like horseshit. Or, again, I’m a fucking idiot. If you make a credit product backed by bitcoin worth trillions, then there would be others doing the same… or just not use your credit product at all because they prefer to help out their shitcoin buddies, OR would rather bypass your thing entirely and pretend like it doesn’t exist.
- That said, I admire Saylor’s ability to come up with so many monetizable ideas so quickly. It’s like his mind was built for finance. Incredible.
- I also enjoyed some of the history Saylor shared in this episode. Made me look up Conceived in Liberty.
- Regardless of what was said - we all know to stack and self custody. Everything else is not your money. If you want to gamble, go for it. If you want to take risks, do it. Bitcoin incentivizes maximum accumulation behavior and people shouldn’t be judged by the methods they employ to do it, as long as they understand the risk.
- I also want to take the other viewpoint of centralized bitcoin (paper bitcoin). While I do not like it for the individual and would always recommend self custody, I think it’s worth acknowledging that this grows the overall adoption and is good for bitcoin (as long as people eventually move to self custody). The ETFs, Stablecoins, hell even the shitcoins - all the things that are not actual bitcoin ultimately grow participation in the network, make it more liquid, lower barriers and take away the stigma associated with new and risky things. The important thing is not to lose sight of self custody, and to build tools that promote it and grow it.