Some weeks ago, I watched the debate between Erik Vorhees and Peter Schiff, and I found some interesting quotes that I wanted to share with you. Obviously I don't agree with everything Erik has said or done, for instance, when he says blasphemies against God and the Catholic Church, which is appalling and disgusting, however, regarding the neutral content of economic systems, game theory, and the refutation of central banks, there are plenty of interesting angles and arguments to consider, and as St. Paul says:
"But prove all things; hold fast that which is good."
1 Thessalonians 5:21
In fact, this debate is so full of interesting quotes, that I sometimes find myself re-watching the whole thing, so this is a summary not just for you, but for me. I might even put these quotes on my Mindzip folder. (Mindzip is an app that helps you study ideas or quotes with a spaced repetition system)
So, without further ado, here is Erik Vorhees.
Note: In this debate, whenever Erik is saying "Bitcoin" he is referring to cryptocurrencies in general, as it will be shown on the first quote:
"I'll use the term Bitcoin loosely here, to refer to any such cryptocurrency that accomplishes that goal"
My Comment: So it seems that Erik is not a bitcoin maximalist, and concedes the point that another crypto could become dominant.
"I am the founder and CEO of Shapeshift, which is a leading digital exchange, which is available everyone other than here in New York, because New York is quietly suffocating under a depressing pal of statism, the question of whose more socialist, New York or China would perhaps be a good topic for a Soho debate"
My Comment: Within a centralized system, socialism might function for a time, but on a decentralized system, such system will collapse.
"Money's come and go, and the adoption of one monetary standard over another is the rule, rather than the exception throughout history"
My Comment: It seems that the U.S. is not keenly aware of this mega-trend.
"Bitcoin possess all the attributes, not only of good money, but of supremely good money, it is not only marginally better than the alternatives, but it rather is on its own league entirely"
My Comment: Agreed, comparing fiat to crypto is like comparing bitconnect against ethereum.
"(Bitcoin) It is the only money that doesn't require permission from an overseer, therefore it is the only money appropriate for free people"
My Comment: And government-fiat is the only type of money appropriate for slaves.
"You cannot have a free market, when the most important good, money itself, it's centrally planned and controled, fiat money and a market economy are mutually exclusive concepts, like oil and water, they can certainly be mixed together when force is applied, but they will naturally separate and dispell one another over time"
My Comment: This quote should be hang on the U.S. Congress.
"The average life-span of fiat is less than 50 years, the U.S dollar only became fiat in 1971, that's less than the length of William Shatner's career, and as it happened, last week he announced that he would start mining bitcoins as well"
My Comment: He got into the space in 2018, the best time to get involved in recent history.
"Fiat is willed into existence by politicians and banks because printing money enriches the printer at the expense of the public who holds the previously printed money"
My Comment: Just like Tether, but without anybody being able to sue.
"Your fiat will only last so long as your bank permits, and even then it slowly loses its value, your bank can destroy your fiat with the click of a button, ask a Cypriot, ask an Argentinian how durable fiat is"
My Comment: My fiat is losing value at a noticeable rate since I am a kid, with no signs of reaching the bottom, and people complain about ethereum, go figure.
"With fiat, your ever dependent on a third party for your wealth, is that an attribute of money that you find attractive?"
My Comment: (A resounding NO is heard on the background)
"It is faster to strap cash to an envelope and FedEx it to Tokyo than it is to send an international wire, do you really think than that system is going to outcompete bitcoin in an open market place?"
My Comment: That's why it is possible than when things on the side of crypto get more traction, governments might start pouring more hostile attacks against bitcoin.
"You can only send fiat if you have permission, try to send it to a family member in Russia, you'll be censored, want to donate to a relief effort perhaps in Venezuela? Too bad you'll bee censored, are you sending a suspicious amount? Your payment will be blocked and you better get ready for questioning or outright confiscation, yeap, the Orwellian nanny state is alive and well and fiat currency is one of it's most insidious tentacles"
My Comment: It sounds like a very bad nightmare, but then I woke up and realize socialism rules large chunks of jurisprudence and global monetary policy
"Fiat has this poor monetary attributes because is a tool and an appendage of the state, it exists to serve the state, not to exists market participants, it's attributes as money are intentionally constrained and inferior so as to syphon wealth to the state through debasement, and to surveil and control the behaviour of the king's subjects"
My Comment: It is strange why so many people put up with this system.
"For gold to work in a modern economy, it must be warehoused by a company, and then digital certificates or credits must be issued against that gold, those digital certificates could theoretically work well as money in a modern economy, except for one problem, centralization, a digital gold payment service or any privately issued market-based money requires some form of centralize control or custody and thus exposes users to counter-party risk, this is fatal because if such a private company ever grows to scale a government could shut it down, unplug it's servers, arrest its principals and seize its assets, this exact thing happened with e-gold and another company, goldmoney was so scared of this happening that they stopped allowing payments of digital gold between customers entirely"
My Comment: Greed + Corruption + Power = Freemasonic Fiat Currency.
"Private money, when centralized probably cannot attain scale and thus cannot surpass fiat because the government won't allow it"
My Comment: And in the meantime, we are here gathering dust (economically speaking)
"Bitcoin will win because there is now competition in money, and bitcoin is the best money currently available because is decentralized it cannot be stopped"
My Comment: An entire book could be written just with this idea.
"Bitcoin now imbues every human on earth with financial sovereighty"
My Comment: My keys, My money.
"(Bitcoin) it is one of the most potent tools of individual empowerment ever invented and is happening right in front of us"
My Comment: Enjoying every second (so far)
"Someday school children will laugh and joke with each other as they learn about the silly flag paper with cultish incantations inscribed on it, which, in yet another history's examples of mass delusion people thought to be valuable."
My Comment: Amazing quote, punching directly at the satanic incantations inscribed on the U.S dollar bill. When I first hear this part, I was kind of amazed, since such utterance is so contrary to what some mainstream people would do in a similar debate. In fact, this and other similar quotes and actions from crypto enthusiasts are prompting me to write an article on the interesting composition of the crypto community, which I hope to release soon.
"Fiat will fall in time, and in its place, true decentralized market-place money will emerge, the profit motive alone will lead capital gradually away from those assets which can be debased and censored to those who cannot"
My Comment: Provided enough time passes. Yes.
"Satoshi did an injustice to the system by calling both the payment network itself and the unit of account, the currency, both, have the name of Bictoin"
My Comment: Similar confusing naming conventions had held back other people. Unfortunate.
"...you can send a transaction to someone else, in a decentralized way were no one can stop it between any two people on earth, no border whatsoever, it cannot be censored and it is really cheap to actually do it, if that isn't valuable, then I don't know what is"
My Comment: This is especially valuable when your money is generated outside of your country.
"Volatility is what happens when the market is trying to decide on its value, bitcoin is new, it is small, over time it would achieve stability just as it has, when I got involved in 2011, it would move 50% in a day, today its a big deal when it moves 10%"
My Comment: Some specific cryptos could easily go sideways and thus be stable, and there is also DAI.
"Stability as a market asset its earned with time, you cannot design something to be stable, so while bitcoin its too volatile today, I think that problem is self-correcting"
My Comment: This was mentioned in 2018, today we are getting closer to get some stability at least in some coins, for instance dai.
"I want to address the multiple coins-as-inflation argument, which is that:
'Bitcoin is not really scarce because theres all sorts of coins that could be replicated from it'
Just as gold it's scarce and I can't make the claim that there are other metals and thus gold is not scarce, I don't think that you can make the claim that just because there are other cryptos that means bitcoin is not scarce,
you can copy the code, but the code is not the network
you cannot copy the hash power of the miners
you cannot copy the infrastructure of all the wallets and all of the companies that operate on the bitcoin network,
you cannot copy the brand
you cannot copy the reputation that bitcoin has earned in time"
My Comment: Look, another book could be produced just with this idea.
"If it was true that more coins and blockchains would debase the value of bitcoin over time, the market cap of bitcoin should be far less than it is today, and this shouldn't be a mystery to anyone, a clone of bitcoin's code is not bitcoin"
My Comment: Roger Ver and Craight Wright strongly disagree (I suppose)
"If you want a market-based system of money that doesn't get shut down when it grows pass the size of a novelty, it has to be descentralized, it cannot have an individual person or company or vault that can be seized, if thats what you have, then you would never actually have a free market financial system because the goverment simply won't allow it, gold indeed was confiscated in the 30s, this is not a crazy idea"
My Comment: Interesting how backups and redundancy are the most potent tools against socialism and the illuminatti, when I was a kid I thought that physical strength and some tanks would be the best tools against a tyrannical government, how wrong I was.
"And even though, gold worked very well in XIX century America, people weren't doing online commerce in XIX America, the world has changed, to some degree, it doesn't mean that the principles of money had change, but it does mean that the form of money in today's economy that works the best may have changed"
My Comment: I personally never thought gold could do the job of replacing fiat in any meaningful way.
(When referring to economic units of account) "Fiat means value by decreed, it comes from anything that its value in the marketplace because some legal reason causes it to be valuable, dollars are fiat now, when dollars were backed by gold they were not fiat, bitcoin's value, even if you think its the most speculative and stupidest investment in the universe, that value does not come from any decree, it comes from its desirability in an open marketplace"
My Comment: You would have to be very ignorant to ignore the greatest asset class opportunity in history.
Referring to a possible ban on Bitcoin
"Governments have a super poor record of successfully banning anything, they can write on paper that you shouldn't suppose to use it, I am not aware of any time in history in which that actually works, murder itself is banned by the goverment and yet people get killed all the time"
My Comment: Funny and insightful, great.
"It is easier to ban bitcoin that it would be to ban gold because of popular sentiment, however, it would be harder to enforce it.
If you have 10 million dollars and you want to move it somewhere on earth, if it is outlawed, that gold is probably not gonna move or if it does it is going to be a black market transaction that requires a huge amount of expense in order to do that, just as it gets to move drugs across the border, I can send a billion dollars of bitcoin anywhere in the world without no one knowing about it"
My Comment: To send a billion dollars like as if it were an email, talking about mindblowing ideas.
"The biggest impediment to (Bitcoin) adoption is simply that most individuals still want governments to manage money for them until that changes, bitcoin I think will always play second fiddle"
My Comment: Agreed
"The history of money is full of governments losing control over their fiats"
My Comment: Conveniently, that lesson wasn't taught at my school.
"There has never been a financial crisis in which cryptocurrency actually existed, the next time that happens I know were a lot of people are going to be going, and that's what I waiting for"
My Comment: Me too.
"This isn't some sci-fi future thing anymore, crypto is currently pulling in the global financial system and restructuring it through a process of free market metamorphosis, and it is about (...) time we have free markets again"
My Comment: Free markets = More Food
"Bitcoin cannot be debased, it cannot be debased and it is now competing with the incumbent currency, the U.S. Dollar fiat, which not only can be debased but exists in a state of perpetual institutionalized debasement, this dynamic would encourage a virtuous cycle in which rational actors at the margins decide to hold the non-decaying form of money to the exclusion of that which decays"
My Comment: I'm already on the side of cryptoland.
"Compared to gold, bitcoin provides an efficient digital apparatus of payment and exchange, but more importantly, compared to fiat, bitcoin bestows a gift from which humanity will grow increasingly hungry, an open, honest financial system that is under the control of no man, committee or nation"
My Comment: The best economic possibility to distribute wealth in a more efficient and just way.
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