Clearing ones mind and gazing into the machinery of the economic world, one is left with little besides absolute awe.

Humanitys inventions and their subsequent compounding throughout the years have manufactured a world of great abundance - one which would be close to unrecognizable just five generations ago.

Airplanes physically connecting every point on earth, the internet digitally connecting every person at the speed of light for free, supply abundance in western civilizations, massive complex infrastructures found in manufacturing, supply chains, cities, etc. The result of countless human generations dedicating their entire lifetime in the pursuit of productive aims.

Despite all of the problems that are so apparent to us today, weve truly created something great.

The delicate balance that led to this creation is that the whole of the world's modernity has been created through correctly-aligned incentives.

Humans dedicate their entire lifetime in a productive manner, but their end-goal is not to chase productivity just because. Rather, theyre chasing money and everything else that comes with it - supplies, goods, status, emotional safety, optionality, freedom.

Money can be described in many ways and can be unintuitive if one has never spent the time to internalize its meaning. Simply put, money is the stored productivity of one person.

You work all day and provide value, services or goods to others. You, yourself, also want value, services and goods in exchange. In the very distant past, people would directly barter with one another to receive what they wanted. It didnt take humanity long to realize that more efficient ways existed and thus money as a medium of exchange was born.

Instead of directly bartering your service for another persons goods, you get rewarded an intermediate, not-yet-consumed state of such value/services/goods in the form of money.

That being the case, money can be looked at as stored productivity: your labor essentially gets calcified in the form of money.

In another way of looking at it, money is human time and energy converted into a token.

Any amount of money, therefore, is an indirect extremely-fungible debit of other peoples time and energy.

Given that money is a claim on other peoples services/goods, each human pursues money in order to get more goods, or more services, to further his own lifes desires. Akin to having a carrot on a stick in front of them, humans are generally greatly motivated by their desires.

The critical invariant here is that in order to obtain money, one must trade in their own services/goods for it. In that way, a positive flywheel spins up where one has to provide value to the world in order to receive value back.

But there is another crucial component in this mix: greediness. Humans are inherently greedy animals - they always want more than they have.

With this information, it becomes apparent why the consumer economy is successfully structured to always drive us to crave/want more things: it taps into our core human nature.

While the consumer economy is generally perceived negatively, one could argue that this propels society further into making every human more productive. Youre indirectly incentivizing humans to do more (to produce) in order to consume more (to satisfy internal desires).

The cherry on top of all of this is another core human trait: laziness.

When you pair greediness with laziness, you understand why humans always have this inherent desire to get more than what theyve bargained for: to receive a greater payoff compared to the energy expended.

In a well-aligned system, this is a massive benefit because it incentivizes people to think of more efficient ways of achieving the same thing. When society figures out a way to achieve things with less energy or resources, greater abundance eventually trickles in.

In fact, that is what technology is. Technology is the ability to do more with less through the application of new, innovative methods.

A simple but perfect concoction resulting in a win-win scenario would be to incentivize humans to benefit themselves by receiving more for less through the development of efficient technology, indirectly moving humanity forward in the process.

This simple first-principles way of looking at the world describes how humanity has kept advancing throughout the ages, despite having many periods where one could say weve reached a comfortable enough state to have retired from this endless pursuit.

Our desires and greed have kept us going.

Of course, weve seen first hand that this doesnt work out just perfectly. Humanitys inherent greediness and laziness is not innately beneficial to society. The carefully-balanced system we laid out is always at the threat of degradation due to another fallible human trait - corruption.

Corruption can be defined as the abuse of entrusted public power for private gain, typically at the expense of others.

Corruption Of Money

When one begins to artificially alter the properties of money, he inevitably messes with the productivity formula that pushes humanity forward.

Through the constant dilution of the purchasing power of money through inflation and the forceful suppression of interest rates into negative territory, central powers (governments) around the world have artificially made money much cheaper.

If money is stored human labor, then it is fair to say that inflation indirectly robs people of their stored energy. In that way of looking at it, governments are leeching institutions (also defined as a parasite), siphoning off human energy out of the productive people that are driving the world forward, in order to further their own means. To play devils advocate, a governments own means should be the good of the public, but we will touch on that later.

In the same way, the artificially-negative interest rates are unintuitively putting a negative price on future labor.

Typically, because the future is always uncertain, any present-day human productivity loaned in exchange for uncertain future productivity should yield a greater return, as the money (current human productivity) is essentially being risked.

There is a fundamental expectation that the future productivity will yield a greater payoff - otherwise nobody would trade in their present productivity for it. At the same time, there is the risk that the uncertain future productivity is less than expected (or zero) and that the current productivity would be, in effect, wasted. Both of these things warrant a return on the money that is loaned - a yield.

By driving interest rates down, governments have forcefully inverted this dynamic and unintuitively made it so that present human productivity is somehow worth more than future productivity. As is the case in Germany (among other countries) putting your money in a bank costs you a negative 0.5% interest rate. Absent of any yield, or present of negative yield, present money is worth more than future money.

Such government interference has made it so that stored human energy is in a constant state of degradation due to two forces - inflation and negative interest rates.

Of course, such manipulation is only feasible with the kinds of money that are entirely controlled by humans, as is the case with fiat currency. One could make a very strong point arguing that this could not happen in a free market, with a free currency which isnt controlled, yet which might face competition from other free-market forms of currency.

Redistribution And Inefficient Allocation

Taxation is the forceful redistribution of capital in the economy. Practically speaking, taxes end up being a trade-off for being integrated into the society you are in.

When the government takes taxes from its people with the threat of prison for noncompliance, it essentially steals from them just like a robber who mugs you in the street.

This is widely accepted and not thought of as adversarial due to two factors:

The problem with this is that if you believe that the public sector is the most inefficient allocator of capital, you also believe that the money youre giving away for taxes are being spent very inefficiently.

It doesnt make sense for any actor to purposefully allocate capital inefficiently. It is the broken incentives of an unchallenged monopoly that allow this sloppiness to flourish.

Governments around the world are legacy institutions that are simultaneously growing in size and crumbling from the inside due to the inefficient and structurally broken ways of organizing themselves.

Because of the governments privileged position of a monopoly on tax collection, they get a fixed (increasing) amount of revenue without having to ever compete as an organization to be better, faster or stronger than others. They are the ultimate middleman - a pervasive rent-seeker entrenched in our society. As incentives drive the world, such an organization has little reason to innovate or improve oneself whatsoever, precisely because there are no repercussions for not doing so.

In a similar way, their incentives are also skewed towards high time preference - there is a necessity to do good in short-term decisions, regardless of their long-term consequences.

The result is an endless passing on of problems into a future administrations court instead of strategically dealing with them as early as possible. The incentive here is the politicians imminent re-election bid in the short-term (a few years) instead of the alternative constructive long-term bricklaying process

These unfortunate incentives lead to inadequate results. This constitutes the bear case for communism, socialism and most other middle-of-the-road type of politics that give greater power to the government.

It makes little sense to give greater power to an institution that is not destined to do its job prosperously.

Revenue And Scope Creep

Once any organization gets access to new cash flow, it is very hard to give it up. Modern governments are only growing in spending (at a faster rate, even), not decreasing.

Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program. - Milton Friedman

A simple example that is widely accepted today? Income taxes were initially introduced to fund wars, and were meant as temporary measures.

Posterity is seemingly undesirable: after all, what organization would purposefully choose to shrink in power, especially when their growth is unchallenged? Further, it is hardly achievable - every government is growing both in size and relative indebtedness (debt to Gross Domestic Product).

The result of this is that the government is growing in power and governing ability, as it starts to try and control (govern) more aspects of daily lives. This leads to an ever-greater scope creep of centralized institutions and therefore an increased inefficiency in society as a greater part is bureaucratized and managed by said monolith.

If communism is a spectrum, then one could indisputably say that wevee moved further along that spectrum towards the communism end than where we were sitting a couple of decades ago.

One reason that governments are able to get away with so much is through their monopoly on money.

Through its fixed supply of 21 million, its immutable monetary policy and its indestructible decentralized nature, Bitcoin promises to be the solution that separates money from state by becoming the dominant form of money in the world.

A society powered by incorruptible sound money is a society with one huge gap in the incentive system plugged for good. Through that, the world should end up with a better equilibrium of incentive structures and therefore better results.

The biggest promise of Bitcoin is in fact not the apparent qualities it offers as a monetary good but all the numerous downstream effects that follow after adoption of an incorruptible sound money system.

The second order effects of such a profound change are inherently hard to accurately predict, but it is safe to say that they should trend toward greater prosperity.

Through the inefficient redistribution, manipulation and dilution of the money supply, the government inadvertently pushes humanity backwards by degrading the well-working incentive system of the worlds free market.

The incentives are aligned against this negative intervention mechanism ever slowing down, let alone stopping. Humans never voluntarily give away power, and because the monopoly of governing functions is unlikely to ever get challenged, the governing structure is just as unlikely to ever meaningfully increase in efficiency.

This stagnation results in a negative network effect, where each subsequent generation pushes itself further into ruin by feeding the negative non-working structures. One would rightfully theorize that such a mechanism is bound to blow up and reorganize itself at some point - practice has indeed shown that this is the case.

Fortunately, we are incredibly lucky to live in a time where we have a life raft available to us. Bitcoin promises to be the light at the end of this grim tunnel - the solution that offers a stable foundation for society to rebuild its institutions upon and reap the greater long-term dividends that come from a fundamentally sounder system.

That starts with a Bitcoin standard.

This is a guest post by Stanislav Kozlovski. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine

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How Bitcoins Sound Incentives Drive A Sound World - Bitcoin Magazine

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Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for December 21, 2021. This is my final Daily Crunch with you for the year. So, let me just say thanks for reading since I took over writing the newsy bits of this newsletter. It could have gone horribly, frankly, given how much folks hate change in their inboxes. But, with open rates at an all-time high, yall have welcomed the New Daily Crunch Crew with open arms, and were grateful. Heres to an even better 2022 and more jokes. Alex

P.S. You should follow Miranda (Experts), Walter (TC+), Annie (editing) and Richard (editing) as they make this newsletter sing. Richard declined to share a link. Hes a ghost! But a friendly one.

But wait, theres even more public market news! Yes, Snapdeal filed to go public, and our own Manish Singh (follow him; hes amazing!) has the details. SoftBank is a backer of the New Delhi-based startup. Per its prospectus, the company anticipates raising around $165 million in its public-market debut. Recall that Snapdeal once competed with Amazon and Flipkart in India [but] has lost considerable market share in recent years, we wrote.

And speaking of companies going public, remember the Better.com fiasco in which the companys CEO went viral for firing a bunch of staff on Zoom? And then a bunch of whacko stuff from the company came out? Well, were curious why Vishal Garg still has a job, so we did a little digging. Theres more to come on this story.

Next, a few new funds:

And a few rapid-fire pieces of startup news:

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He tears down SEO platform Ahrefs homepage, providing actionable strategies you can use at your startup, including how to handle objections, use social proof to build urgency and establish credibility, and catering to your audience.

(TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

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Daily Crunch: Bitcoin is religion; web3 is greed - TechCrunch

Satoshi Nakamoto holds around 1.1 million Bitcoins, which is valued at US$70 billion today

In 2021, even the biggest Bermuda Triangle uncertainty has come to a convincible end. However, the mystery behind the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto still remains in the shadow. Today, every Bitcoin is worth more than US$46,000. The cryptocurrencys value managed to hit an all-time high of US$68,000 in November and experts predict that Bitcoins price will go up to US$100,000 in 2022. Despite the fueling interest in BTC, the identity of its creator remains behind the walls. Unfortunately, there is no assurance that revealing Satoshis identity could do any good to the currency falling Bitcoin market.

Bitcoin was a preeminent cryptocurrency that rocked the financial ecosystem. It emerged as the first digital token that countered and contemplated the traditional financial models. Bitcoin began its journey from zero and is currently valued at US$46,000. It rose to prominence in 2017 and gained more investors over the next few years. But the real action started in May 2020 when Bitcoins price touched new records and attracted new investors into the sphere. Owing to the surging dominance of BTC, other altcoins like Ethereum, Cardano, Ripple, etc also came into existence. But despite its growing importance, the identity of its creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, is yet to be revealed. According to reports, Satoshi holds around 1 million Bitcoins, which is worth trillions of dollars today. In this article, we explore the impact Satoshis identity reveal could have on the cryptocurrency market.

Bitcoin was created in 2008 after Satoshi Nakamoto published a nine-page whitepaper containing the first-ever mention of a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. Although this was not the first time somebody talked about blockchain technology and its global applications, Satoshis initiative managed to hit fruition when Bitcoin became the first cryptocurrency to make its debut. Satoshi partnered with developers and coders online to improve Bitcoins capabilities. The scenario continued till 2011 before Satoshi disappeared in thin air. But he didnt walk away empty-handed. When Satoshi left, he took with him a whopping 1 million Bitcoins.

One million Bitcoin is really a huge number because the total circulation of all Bitcoin is limited to 21 million and already over 18 to 19 million BTCs are in circulation. Therefore, according to crypto enthusiasts, Satoshi has the potential to tank the whole Bitcoin market with those 1 million coins. Besides, the Bitcoin community strives on a motto that it is decentralized and is not governed by any central authority. Without a leader, the Bitcoin community makes decisions through consensus. Currently, various constituents of the community including miners, developers, and investors, gather to discuss changes. However, revealing Satoshis identity could be a threat since it gives power to somebody who holds 1 million coins.

While the real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto is still under speculation, a Florida court case is thriving to give an answer to this. The family of deceased David Kleiman, a computer scientist, has sued his former business partner over control of their partnerships assets. According to the claims, Kleiman and his business partner, Craig Wright, created Bitcoin under the pseudonym, Satoshi Nakamoto, and stashed 1 million BTCs.

Craig Wright is a 51-year-old Australian computer scientist who claims to be the brain behind Bitcoin. Although there is some evidence to back Wrights claim, Bitcoin investors still seem to have varied opinions. They believe that Wright could be engaging in an elaborate hoax to convince the Bitcoin community.

On the other hand, David Kleimans heirs have sued Wright to get their half share of the Bitcoin stash that is worth nearly US$70 billion. Kleimans family lawyer has also claimed that they will soon show evidence to back the partnership avows. However, Wrights lawyer has said that soon the court will find that there is nothing to indicate of record that they were in a partnership. Despite the fuming court battle, many Bitcoin investors seem to deny the allegations and say that the claim could only be real if either Wright or Kleimans family produces a password or private key for the digital wallet that holds the 1 million Bitcoins.

According to Coinbases IPO filing, revealing Satoshi Nakamotos identity could be a major threat to the cryptocurrency market. A number of possible events could happen once Satoshis identity is brought under the scanner. One is that Satoshi holds the key to 1.1 million Bitcoins, which is around 5% of the total supply. In case if Satoshi plans to sell off those 1.1 million coins, then the cryptocurrency market as a whole will collapse. If he is already deceased, then the world will learn that those Bitcoins will be inaccessible forever. Therefore, revealing the face behind Bitcoin is not going to help the digital currency market in any way. Bitcoin will have to gain its ground from adoption and popularity and make a bounce back to perform well in 2022.

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Will Revealing Satoshi Nakamoto's Identity Help Bitcoin in 2022? - Analytics Insight

Former U.S. President Donald Trump says that crypto is a very dangerous thing. Commenting on cryptocurrencies, he warned of an explosion someday that will make the big tech explosion look like baby stuff. He also talked about his new social media platform, Truth Social, and his wifes non-fungible token (NFT) venture.

Donald Trump commented on cryptocurrency, his wifes non-fungible token (NFT) endeavor, and his new social media platform, Truth Social, in an interview with Maria Bartiromo over the weekend. Fox Business published the interview Tuesday.

What do you think about crypto? Trump was asked. Bartiromo noted that New York and Miami are really getting cryptocurrency into their financial systems.

The former U.S. president reiterated his anti-crypto stance: Well, I never loved it because I like to have the dollar. I think the currency should be the dollar so I was never a big fan. But its spilling up bigger and bigger, and nobody is doing anything about it.

Emphasizing, Look, I want a currency called the dollar, he warned:

I dont want to have all these others, and that could be an explosion someday the likes of which weve never seen. It will make the big tech explosion look like baby stuff. I think its a very dangerous thing.

Trump has never been a fan of crypto. In August, he predicted that cryptocurrencies are a disaster waiting to happen. In June, he called bitcoin a scam that needs heavy regulation.

Trump was also asked about the former first ladys non-fungible token (NFT) endeavor. Melania Trump announced last week that shes selling an NFT, titled Melanias Vision, on her newly launched NFT platform, which plans to release NFTs regularly. I am proud to announce my new NFT endeavor, which embodies my passion for the arts, and will support my ongoing commitment to children through my Be Best initiative, she said in a statement.

Commenting on his wifes NFT plans, Trump said: Shes going to do great She got a great imagination. And people love our former first lady, I can tell you that. They really do, they love her.

Regarding his social media platform Truth Social, he stressed, Its going to be so big. Trump previously explained that the new platform will be an alternative to Silicon Valley internet companies that he says are biased against him and other conservative voices. He plans to launch Truth Social nationally early next year.

The former U.S. president was further asked how he is going to compete with big tech companies like Twitter and Google. We have no choice, he replied, reiterating that he thinks its going to be very big.

What do you think about Donald Trumps crypto warning, Truth Social, and Melania Trumps NFT venture? Let us know in the comments section below.

A student of Austrian Economics, Kevin found Bitcoin in 2011 and has been an evangelist ever since. His interests lie in Bitcoin security, open-source systems, network effects and the intersection between economics and cryptography.

Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not a direct offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation or endorsement of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

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Donald Trump Says Crypto Is 'Very Dangerous' Warns of 'Explosion Like We've Never Seen' Featured Bitcoin News - Bitcoin News

According to Bloomberg Intelligence, $100,000 Bitcoin (BTC) and $2,000 gold could greet 2022 as global markets face deflationary forces.

In a tweet on Dec. 9, Mick McGlone, a senior commodity strategist at Bloombergs research arm, forecast that next year would be good for both gold and BTC.

As inflation makes headlines worldwide this month, Bitcoin has faced criticism over its alleged role as a hedge thanks to its 39% drawdown from all-time highs.

As Cointelegraph reported, the latest U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI) data is due Dec. 10, with analysts presuming that inflation will have sharpened 6.7% year-on-year.

Next year could be very different, McGlone argues, as inflationary pressures give way to declining commodity prices and equities.

$100,000 Bitcoin, $50 Oil, $2,000 Gold? he tweeted.

A previous post highlighted crude oil prices now being roughly equivalent to where they were just before the 2008 global financial risis.

McGlone is well known for his bullish views on Bitcoin. Gold, much-maligned this year thanks to its comparatively flat performance versus Bitcoin, may also benefit from macro headwinds.

Related:Bitcoin dips below $50K as Evergrande defaults on US dollar debt

The Bitcoin versus gold debate continues to rage, with proponents trading barbs as neither camp sees the kinds of gains they assumed would characterize Q4.

On inflation, however, there was consensus to be found.

"How long before investors realize that even if the Fed follows through with its inflation-fighting plan to taper QE and raise interest rates slightly in 2022, that it'll be too little too late to derail this inflation juggernaut?" gold bug Peter Schiff queried this week.

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Bitcoin could hit $100K, gold $2K in 2022 thanks to 'deflationary forces' Bloomberg analyst - Cointelegraph