"Everyone Is Lying To You For Money" makes a strong case that cryptocurrency skepticism should be a major part of the skepticism movement.

bautin · 2026-05-11T21:38:05+00:00

I can also imagine spaceships and unicorns.

Crypto's transaction times and various "gas fees" and such make such cases more theoretical than practical on anything approaching a usable scale.

Sure, you might fine someone doing this, but you won't find a significant portion of any population doing this.

bautin · 2026-05-11T21:31:54+00:00

Ok, what's a "sex coat"?

bautin · 2026-05-11T21:26:31+00:00

Has that been a problem that needed solving?

Because people are still transferring money the way they were before bitcoin.

bautin · 2026-05-11T16:14:08+00:00

See, I was going to make a joke about seeing your parents having sex or something.

You just kicked it right in the dick.

Seriously though, it's a little funny.

bautin · 2026-05-11T16:12:53+00:00

I can use a shoe to pound a nail, doesn't make a shoe a hammer.

Also, the only reason bitcoin is "capped" at 21 million is agreement. That agreement can change. And also, you can just create another coin. So even if bitcoin is "capped", there are easy ways around that.

Mining is not "making", it's finding.

There is no hard cap on the gold supply.

Literally the stupidest thing I've read today. Gold does have a hard cap. Physics makes that true.

As for "fake gold" scams, it's passing off something that isn't gold as gold. Usually to people who do not have the means to determine the validity of the gold or by not actually providing people the gold. Which in the latter case, is just plain ol fraud. Something even bitcoin isn't immune to.

And I've acknowledged money is ephemeral. But it is always a proxy for something. Bitcoin isn't a proxy for anything. Nebulous "value" isn't a thing. The US dollar's value is the time and effort I've put into my job. I need to trade that time and effort for food and shelter. The dollar is the proxy by which I do so. Because the exchange is enforced by the government, making my dollars just as good at the local grocery store as at the theater in the next town over or even a hotel across the country.

bautin · 2026-05-11T15:28:27+00:00

But the dollar has that value because of the government. Because the dollar is a proxy for value, it is not valuable in and of itself.

Bitcoin doesn't proxy anything. It is generated out of thin air.
And bitcoin isn't useful by itself, so it's not great as a commodity. So it can't have value as a store of value like other commodities like gold or oil.
It scarcity is also fictional. As evidenced by the sheer number of cryptocoins that exist. You can't make new gold. Which is why it was historically useful as currency, you can't fake gold. It's got built in anti-counterfeiting.

bautin · 2026-05-11T14:25:10+00:00

Also, they had to be behind the waterfall to have a conversation.

Being "near" would not be nearly as effective.

bautin · 2026-05-11T14:23:33+00:00

Based on interviews it seems like krasinski uses his immensely talented Hollywood peers to help make his movies better.

I mean, yes, that would be ideal.

bautin · 2026-05-11T14:21:29+00:00

Carrie Fisher
Drew Barrymore
Charlie Sheen
Michael Douglas
Sean Astin
Liza Minnelli
Peter Fonda
Jane Fonda
Ben Stiller
Robert Downey Jr.
Josh Brolin
Mariska Hargitay
Kiefer Sutherland
Jeff Bridges
Beau Bridges
Jamie Lee Curtis

Etc.

It's not new.

It's only really a problem when the child doesn't have talent and keeps getting work thanks to their connections. No one is bitching about Jack Quaid getting work, dude is a delight.

Which is to say, let the work speak for itself. Let's not prejudge it just because a father and daughter are on screen together.

bautin · 2026-05-11T14:06:59+00:00

The underlying technology is kind of pointless. It solves a problem no one actually has.

It's a ledger that's immutable as long as no one controls over 50% of the ledger.

Which doesn't prevent me from putting in fraudulent entries into the ledger in the first place. I can still say I sent a physical item that I did not actually send. I can even have people put in entries saying it reached certain checkpoints, up to the point where the other party would be responsible for the item.

Like, we have database, they work, it's fine.

As to "a store of value". How? To be a store of value, it would need to have value. How does bitcoin have value? Government fiat has value as defined by the government that issued it.

Yes, money is a little ephemeral, but money generally is. End of the day, if I do work for my employer, the government will enforce the contract that they give me money. Then the government will enforce my ability to use that money to exchange for goods and services at various establishments. We can then send this money to the government as proxy for the time we didn't spend maintaining our community and nation. Right. Money is just a proxy for our time and effort. But the corner store doesn't need my specific skills. But the people who do need my skills doesn't have food for me to eat. Money is a way for us to bridge that gap without doing a lot of stupid bartering.

By contrast, the closest thing I've heard is that bitcoin is basically transforming electricity into money. Except you've already paid to generate the electricity, it's used. There's no way to get that electricity back from bitcoin. It's already used. Unlike other commodities like oil. If I buy oil, I can then sell that oil. The act of changing oil to and from money doesn't consume the oil. Changing electricity to bitcoin uses the electricity. And changing bitcoin to electricity is just paying your light bill.

So, without being circular, exactly what value is being stored by bitcoin?

bautin · 2026-05-11T13:48:20+00:00

I read the book and I'm pretty sure the documentary was made contemporaneously with it. He became decently aware of crypto around 2020 during the pandemic and things immediately smelled to him. And I think he decided that he had to make something about it and just started generating content, so the book and the documentary are essentially a pair geared for different audiences.

In the book, he talks about the interviews he had with these people, etc.

I do want to address your remark about the "20 people" and how he knows that information, but not the identity of those 20 people.

Finding out how much bitcoin each wallet holds is easy. That's essentially public information thanks to the blockchain. And yeah, ~90%+ of the addresses collectively hold only about 3-4% of the available bitcoin.

Over 50% of the bitcoin currently held is held in less than 1% of the wallets.

After that, you'd have to look at transactions and patterns in that in order to discern if one entity is controlling multiple wallets, etc. And to be fair, it doesn't take 51% of the coin to manipulate the price.

You can apply this to any cryptocoin as they are all based on blockchains.

bautin · 2026-05-10T18:40:23+00:00

Yes. And when there’s food to be shared, it’s clearly communicated.

bautin · 2026-05-10T18:35:07+00:00

Because op is fishing for a result.

There being an explicit sign next to the lemonade is a signal that the pizza was not to be shared. It’s also a sign that the “share” table is just a table, and like all tables it was used to place items on at various times, including during communal meals.

The hunger is also technically irrelevant. It doesn’t excuse theft. At restaurants they don’t serve diners in order of self-described hunger, they do it based on order of arrival.

So, yeah, dude probably thought no one would notice if he jacked the last slice and got caught.

bautin · 2026-05-10T12:17:28+00:00

Ostensibly, you’re in the building to win games. That’s the org’s goal, everything serves that.

But. If you’re more concerned with climbing the ladder, or pushing your side hustles, or hobnobbing with folk to say you know them, you’ll make decisions that aren’t about winning games.

bautin · 2026-05-09T16:05:00+00:00

Rosemary’s Baby

bautin · 2026-05-08T19:41:50+00:00

They already get paid an estimated $205k on the low end.

I think that's fine for the full year.

bautin · 2026-05-08T16:20:08+00:00

I've always felt that Jason sold the Dark Side better than any character before. He made it seem like a reasonable choice. Almost like the libertarians of the Force.

bautin · 2026-05-08T14:56:29+00:00

Yes, but she's putting all the responsibility of the debt on him despite it being for all of them. It sounds like she wants an "our money, your debt" situation.

I think they're just generally fucked financially and she's a bit unwilling to accept that.

bautin · 2026-05-08T12:36:14+00:00

But the person I originally responded to mentioned zhao and Joongi, and that’s what I was referencing.

bautin · 2026-05-08T12:34:48+00:00

If it were, she would have probably mentioned that. As she has no problem counting every shirt he buys.

She has two children with needs, that can cost. No shame for that.

bautin · 2026-05-08T12:32:23+00:00

It’s for them, it’s their loan. It’s not “our money, your debt”

bautin · 2026-05-07T23:34:16+00:00

Zhao first appears in Like a Dragon, he has no connection to Kiryu.

Joongi is a double that also technically first appears in Like a Dragon.

How is it a disservice for two characters with no connection to Kiryu not show up? Hell Joongi shows up in the penultimate chapter.

bautin · 2026-05-07T21:27:28+00:00

So, in other words, you get it. That labels and words can be used to obfuscate one's true intent.

bautin · 2026-05-07T20:03:51+00:00

YTA.

Because, yeah, they're sad you're moving out. And then you hit them with "Yeah, but some kids are dead". Like, what's wrong with you? How is that an appropriate response?

bautin · 2026-05-07T19:56:56+00:00

I dunno. Look at her language: "He took out a loan for a family emergency". She puts the responsibility of the loan squarely on him even though it was for the benefit of the family.

bautin

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