Investing General Discussion

Haus said:

So I've been starting to worry we're really looking into the abyss of a serious and painful correction/recession, but then....



Looks like WAGMI

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Arden said:

Ok so it sounds like our real argument is:

I think BTC is sovereign resistant but not sovereign immune, and that it doesn't need to be immune to be a better currency than fiat.

You think it's not sovereign resistant, and therefore it's not better than fiat.

Fair?

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Flobee said:

Curious how a government can force Bitcoin to be unusable? If you have Bitcoin, and I have beef and we want to trade that beef for Bitcoin... That's very hard to stop. Sure you can make arguments that they can make it illegal, 6102, etc... but you're failing to think about enforcement. How would they enforce that? Are they going to spend the resources raiding every home of a KYC'd holder and give em the ole wrench? Sure they can stop individuals but it's just not feasible at scale and they know it.

I think you're all giving the government too much credit regarding it's capabilities. Yes it's theoretically possible that it could be enforced, but multiple governments have tried and failed already.

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Kirun said:

Not quite. You're still simplifying the positions in a way that obscures the real issue.

I'm not saying Bitcoin has zero sovereign resistance. I'm saying its sovereign resistance only holds under conditions where the state is indifferent. The moment a government actually exerts pressure, Bitcoin's usability, liquidity, and convertibility can be restricted without touching the protocol.

So the real disagreement is this: You're defining "sovereign resistant" at the protocol level (immutability, capped supply, censorship resistance in theory).

I'm defining "sovereign resistant" at the economic-use level (can people actually transact, convert, and use it at scale under state pressure).

Those are not the same thing.

Bitcoin being "better money" in a theoretical design sense does not automatically translate to it being superior as a functioning currency in real-world conditions where governments control/regulate markets.

So the actual divide is:

You: If the ledger and supply are intact, Bitcoin remains superior even under pressure.
Me: If the ability to use it collapses, the ledger being intact is irrelevant to its economic value.

That's the core point and that's why "resistant vs. immune" isn't the right framing. The question is whether Bitcoin's practical utility survives state-level opposition. And that is where its weakness shows.

You're describing peer-to-peer barter, not an economy.

Sure, if you have beef and I have BTC, and we meet in person and trust each other, we can trade. That's not the question. The question is whether Bitcoin remains usable at scale - for businesses, payroll, imports, taxes, contracts, debt payments, lending, settlement, and large-volume commerce.

A functioning currency has to work at scale - for payroll, businesses, taxes, contracts, imports, etc. The moment you move beyond "guy with beef trades guy with BTC," you run into chokepoints.

The government doesn't need to raid homes or break the protocol. They just do things like: Require KYC on exchanges and wallets, restrict banks and businesses from touching BTC, require tax reporting on every transfer, deny convertibility to fiat, regulate stablecoin issuers, pressure ISPs/infrastructure.

Once institutions and payment rails back away, liquidity dies. The chain can run forever, but that doesn't mean it's useful.

Look at China. Bitcoin still "exists" there. But retail usage and on/off ramps collapsed overnight. That's the difference between the protocol surviving and it remaining functional as money.

On the "incentives" point - governments aren't hedge funds. They don't maximize profit, they maximize control over the monetary base. They don't need to "ban" BTC to neutralize it. They just wrap it in compliance until it behaves like any other regulated asset.

And that's the actual outcome we're heading toward: Not a ban, a co-option. KYC'd custodial wallets, stablecoins pegged to Treasuries, and Institutional control of rails.

At that point, BTC isn't "sovereign-resistant money." It's a speculative asset inside the fiat system. And if that's the case, the whole "this frees us from government monetary power" narrative collapses.

So the disagreement isn't whether one guy can trade beef for Bitcoin. The disagreement is whether Bitcoin survives as money if the state decides it doesn't want competition. That's where the weakness is and that's the part crypto bros never seem able to address - they just return to the same marketing soundbites about "sovereign resistant, decentralization, etc.".

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