If you (or anyone else) think you can effectively break bitcoin then there is a billion dollar bounty available to you in the form of a highly leveraged bitfinex short position.
Bitcoin's governance model is what makes it special.
1) The founder declared it would have a maximum of 21 million coins with a set mining schedule
2) Many/most of the people who bought into it implicitly agreed that this is the core feature of bitcoin - that it would only ever have 21 million coins
3) The founder disappeared/died/whatever
4) Now, everyone continues to agree on the 21 million coin cap. If anyone tries to change this, they are opposing the founder and the reason many people bought bitcoin. At that point bitcoin will become the most used chain that maintains the set 21 million cap
This lack of governance as well as scarcity consensus is by far the strongest mechanism to maintain a scarce supply that we have in existence. It is not totally infallible - maybe a superhuman AI could social engineer the entire bitcoin community to increase the cap. But it is the best I can imagine is possible. The network effect of more people buying into it makes that 21 million meme stronger and stronger, and satoshi being "gone" reduces the risk that he comes back and declares that he has "changed his mind". Even if he did do that the core 21 million devotees will fork the coin to a 21 million and that will be the truly scarce bitcoin.
Therefore, this is the most securely scarce asset in existence.
Bassist from venezuela, rhodes keyboard from greece, rapper from washington dc, rhythm guitar from finland, jazz guitar from USA, mastered by a guy in croatia.
We had a medical student who had her abdomen scanned as part of teaching. They found a cystic looking thing on her pancreas. She ended up getting it excised - it was benign and would've never caused problems, but she had multiple complications and 2 months in hospital as a result of the surgery.
I think Doctors (I am one) definitely err on the side of overtreating in those uncertain situations. Just like politicians, it feels more caring to act than to not act.
If you MRI 1000 people and leave the vague results in the hands of a bunch of physicians, they will tend to be interventional. This will lead to a spate of overtreatment.
Ways around this would be to consent patients for watchful waiting in the case of uncertain lesions. Even so, telling people they have weird looking lumps that you're not going to treat will cause serious anxiety.
But it would be pretty easy to obfuscate the whole thing behind a few layers of "We've got 50 PhDs working here, we run black box algorithms" etc etc, the strategy could be artificially made a couple of orders of magnitude more complex while still producing the exact same outcome.
Do hedge fund investors keep an eye on whether you do what you say? How did Bernie Madoff go for so long if that's the case?
Of course the mechanism is simple and mechanical, but that isn't how you'd market it to investors.
Say I set up a fund holding a low cost s&p500 index ETF, but at the end of each year sold naked puts with a ~1/25 risk of ruin to earn ~4% return. Therefore my fund consistently makes 4% over the market index, except for 1/25 years when it explodes and loses everything. Because the volatility is low, my sharpe ratio is good (until it explodes), correct?
Assuming it can stay in business >10-15 years won't I be a billionaire hedge fund manager by then and then change to a low risk strategy that only makes 1-2% more than market index with very low risk of ruin and just let my investors lose interest and quit the fund over the next decade while I continue to earn fees from them?
Dunking on all these fucking bankers is going to be the sweetest thing ever. I hope every last one of these pieces of shit is holding a big hoard of crypto when it finally crashes. I've already sold them a LOT but I've got a fair bit to go.
Yep, it's like Fiat currency is some crappy thing poor people use to live on while the rich accumulate actual scarce resources with infinitely appreciating prices.
Previously the only real options we have to use as "money" are nation-state derived and under the control of central bankers. For various reasons, nothing else (eg. gold, stocks, property) presented a practical alternative to state issued money in fulfilling the core functions of:
- medium of exchange
- unit of account
- store of value
Central banks and governments always ended up debasing their currencies. They ranged from super-corrupt to just believing weird keynsian-stimulus stuff, and always end up printing money and debasing the currency. QE given to corrupt politicians as happens in africa enriches the politicians at the cost of everyone else holding or earning the currency. QE given to bankers as in USA enriches asset owners at the cost of savers and wage earners.
Finally, cryptocurrencies with fixed, limited inflation schedules provide a competitive non-inflationary alternative to state issued currency.
I mean that if you can produce a fingerprint image corresponding to a blockchain hash and it matches your fingerprint 20 years later, and this is linked to 20 years worth of blockchain recorded credential information, I would find that very compelling evidence that you are who you say you are.