[lolc]

Well thanks for answering! I still can't see the "value proposition". It feels weird when Bitcoin's properties are posed as sort of a natural law. Like when people compare it to the rareness of gold. Even though it's a cultural artifact!

One thing I'm wondering: did you acquire actual Bitcoin, or title to it?

[jonahbenton]

Re: cultural artifact- yes, it is, but- if you are familiar with "mechanism design"- BTC is a game that incentivizes and rewards narrow-only adherence to the rules that are in fact established by culture/behavior and seemingly could be easily changed- but won't be, because the incentives are all aligned against change. This is kind of how "inertia" in the sense from earlier in the conversation comes about. And that the game was structured this way by the author "Satoshi" I think, again, is a genius-level innovation. The first solution to the Byzantine Generals problem. Now we have a lot of them but that one was first.

In the crypto space there is data to quantify the cost of divergence. People who want to just get off the train- fine- there are others willing to play/drive.

Re: actual BTC vs title- the BTC I count is that which I only have title to, e.g. held by a custodian. Yes, not your keys, not your coins- but as both a technologist who has had to manage- and has lost data- and as someone also with a background in the financial space- custodianship is one of those essential cultural/behavioral features- it only works if people follow certain rules, and those who do not are punished. My custodians have been around for a while and are I believe properly incentivized. As such they will be better suited to asset management than I am, as a single point of failure. Once more mature multisig/social auth workflows are worked out I will probably move to those. I am lucky to have partners who can play parts in those.