Vijay Boyapati Profile picture
Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito
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Oct 9, 2018 7 tweets 3 min read
1/ @SatoshiLite recently debated @rogerkver about the merits of using Lightning Network vs BCash for payments. In the debate Roger brought up a point that needs to be addressed; Roger claimed that it is easier to censor payments on LN than on BCash.

2/ Here is the tweet that Roger mentioned in the interview. In it we see a strongly connected network with one isolated node - the node was named Roger Ver.

Roger claims that the ostracization of this node is not funny, but a sign of censorship.

Sep 16, 2018 10 tweets 3 min read
When I worked at Google, as an engineer on Google News, I was asked to write code to censor news articles in China (circa 2006). I refused and they took me off the project and put someone else on it.

Doesn't surprise me Google is back at it. "Don't be Evil" is a Google myth. Since this is getting some attention, I want to explain what happened in more detail.

At the time Google was censoring Web results, but this was widely known. It was a conscious decision: being in China and censoring was better for the Chinese people than not being there at all.
Sep 9, 2018 13 tweets 3 min read
1/ #Ethereum is crashing (not just in USD terms but in BTC terms); has the demand for a decentralized world computer disappeared, or is something else at play? Let's consider the fundamentals from an economic point of view. 2/ The price level of all monetary goods is determined by (and only by) reservation demand. More precisely, the duration that the average unit of the monetary good is held in reserve.
Sep 5, 2018 5 tweets 2 min read
1/ Good intentions are commendable but actions and consequences matter too (a lot more imo).

I was one of Erik's biggest fans before 2017 but then he became a leader in the most concerted political attack on Bitcoin in its history (#NO2X). 2/ Let us not forget that reputation should be associated with the consequences of our actions. Erik and ShapeShift have earned the suspicion of people who care about #Bitcoin.

If 2X had succeeded (with Erik's help), BTC's core value would have been destroyed.
Aug 29, 2018 6 tweets 3 min read
1/ I've found further evidence that the story written for Business Insider about Jeffrey Wernick, by Sara Silverstein (@IChartNY), is based on fabricated facts.

businessinsider.com/greshams-law-e… 2/ In his self-penned biography at the @CryptoFinCon conference, where Mr Wernick is a key note speaker, he writes that he studied under no less than SEVEN nobel prize winners (see image below)
Aug 28, 2018 12 tweets 8 min read
1/ @CryptoFinCon it is shockingly irresponsible of you to invite this person as a keynote speaker to your conference. He fabricated a claim to be buying bitcoins in 2009 - no one was buying them back then - and he laughable claims to have studied under 7 nobel prize winners. 2/ Have the conference organizers done a shred of due diligence on this person? There is no information at all on him before late 2017, then he suddenly shows up in a bunch of shady publications saying he was buying bitcoins in 2009 - all the articles have the same verbiage.
Aug 23, 2018 11 tweets 3 min read
1/ Scarcity seems like such a simple concept, but do we really understand it? Sometimes we need to reframe a concept before its full potential can be unlocked.

How was the concept of scarcity unlocked for the digital age? 2/ At least as long ago as the 16th century, economists (in particular the Spanish School of Salamanca) understood that scarcity played a very important role in how money gained its value.

Money was more valuable where it was scarce, and less valuable where it was abundant.
Aug 20, 2018 10 tweets 4 min read
1/ Bloomberg published a piece today uncovering the fact that BCash has very little merchant adoption, despite @rogerkver's unrelenting effort to promote it to merchants as a low-fee payment rail. There's an economic reason for this. Let's explore...

bloomberg.com/news/articles/… 2/ The fundamental flaw in Ver and Jihan Wu's economic vision is that they assume that money is first and primarily a medium of exchange. They do not understand that all market based monies must evolve through a store of value phase first, before they can be suitable as a MoE.
Aug 14, 2018 12 tweets 3 min read
1/ The 19th century saw the greatest improvement in the lot of the average human that history has ever seen and perhaps will ever see.

It is no surprise that such momentous amelioration of the human condition occurred under a global hard money standard - the gold standard. 2/ A hard money standard provides an economic framework that lowers time preference across all of society; all fields of endeavor are affected, from philosophy to science, engineering and the arts.
Aug 13, 2018 14 tweets 4 min read
1/ The most important news in the "cryptocurrency space" today is the gigantic IPO that @BITMAINtech intends to complete this year.

But even more astonishing is one of the details buried in their IPO filing. Let's consider the implications: 2/ It's now clear that Bitmain entered one of the worst trades of 2017 by converting a majority of their mined #Bitcoin to BCash tokens to prop up the price of that alt-coin:

Jul 20, 2018 5 tweets 3 min read
This #FF let's celebrate the developers who are making #Bitcoin great. I have three devs whose contributions I want to highlight this Friday: 1. @TheBlueMatt (@ChaincodeLabs) for his important work to improve the decentralization of mining with his BetterHash proposal. Great work, Matt!

bitcointalk.org/index.php?topi…

github.com/TheBlueMatt/bi…
Jul 19, 2018 6 tweets 3 min read
1/ The concept of "mental capture" does not just apply to participants in financial markets; it also applies to politicians. #Bitcoin 2/ @stevekbannon has stated that "I like bitcoin. I own bitcoin":

cnbc.com/2018/07/18/ste…
Jul 19, 2018 11 tweets 3 min read
1/ Now I have you in my clutches, @naval, let's tango! You brought up a subject worth debating and considering in some depth, and certainly without any animosity (I'm sorry if it feels like you've been bombarded with negativity on this). 2/ In the tweet I quoted above you present a mathematical tautology that seems obvious, but I think when unpacked it's a lot less obvious than as presented. Let me, however, agree with you: someone who codes for a protocol and is HODLer is doing more than someone merely HODLing
Jul 18, 2018 5 tweets 2 min read
1/ The thing I find interesting about this interview with Lasry, a billionaire with 1% of his assets in #Bitcoin, is that:

- He bought his first BTC years ago
- The majority of his holdings are from recent purchases.

cnbc.com/video/2018/07/… 2/ This is an example of what I've described as being "mentally captured"

Jul 15, 2018 8 tweets 2 min read
Some comments on the #LookAtMeImNaval meme. For those unaware a meme recently arose (or was manufactured) mocking @naval's style of sharing wisdom in Tweets. Naval is a well known (and influential) figure in the "crypto community" (for want of a better descriptor). So why the controversy (Twitter is full of such mockery)? One side claims it was all in fun and just a parody of an influential figure, or thought leader, and that such leaders should be able to handle such light-hearted mockery. The other claims it was a case of cyber- bullying.
Jun 22, 2018 15 tweets 4 min read
1/ In the immortal words of Ice Cube, HODLing ain't easy, but it's necessary:

An Ode to Saving (in #Bitcoin) 2/ No economic good can become a full fledged money without passing through the 4 stages of the evolution of money.
Jun 22, 2018 4 tweets 1 min read
1/ The idea is that ETH will become the most liquid token of a thriving (and massive) economy of applications that require decentralized computation. But how large can this economy be? 2/ Most of the value in an economy is in meat-space and this will always be the case. Any application that runs on Ethereum that touches meat-space cannot escape losing its decentralized properties and hence would be better run on a regular, much more efficient database.
Apr 24, 2018 13 tweets 4 min read
1/ What is the difference between monetization and market cornering? I wanted to explain this in more detail because so many people misunderstood what I wrote. 2/ The process of monetization is the increasing distribution of the supply of a monetary good amongst a population. What matters is not the number of people who become owners per se, but how fully the supply itself is distributed.
Apr 18, 2018 7 tweets 2 min read
1/ Balaji, firstly, congratulations on your success in the acquisition of Earn.com.

However, what you reference below is incorrect (no offense to the esteemed F. Wilson) and is based on a misunderstanding that has plagued the Bitcoin community since the beginning. 2/ The misconception is that Bitcoin (or other cryptocurrencies) must be "useful" or used in exchange or "earned" for them to be valuable. "Buying and selling" *is* enough for Bitcoin at this stage of its evolution to becoming money.
Feb 26, 2018 9 tweets 2 min read
1/ Bitcoin is not backed by a commodity, nor is it issued by any government. Its code is easy to copy, as is its blockchain. Why then should Bitcoin have any value at all? 2/ Over the next week, I will publish a four part series providing an economic framework for answering the above question. I will argue that Bitcoin is a nascent monetary good at an early stage in its monetization.
Feb 18, 2018 14 tweets 3 min read
1/ There is a kernel of truth in what Vitalik writes, but it is mostly misleading (never mind the virtue signaling). 2/ The kernel of truth: Bitcoin is a new technology and nascent form of money. The future is uncertain so there are obviously risks to investing in it. Anyone with a shred of common sense already knew this.