https://twitter.com/sarahjeong/status/953419544516747264

on the phone:

@mslopatto: heavy sighing Oh... oh my god. That's so stupid. Oh my god. Why?

I explained the cypherpunks to her and she started sputtering
Liz: Okay, I think I understand the tech you're describing but... doesn't this just seem like a solution in search of a problem? Why would anyone choose this over regular centralized currency?

Me: ... let me show you something

[a minute later]

Liz: incoherent laughter

I absolutely believe that if everyone understood what the blockchain actually does, the bubble would be over in an instant. Unfortunately (fortunately?) people are too afraid of understanding code

Get out of my mentions unless you read the white paper at least five years ago or earlier

Me: Bitcoin solves a problem that is only a problem for a very narrow segment of the population

Internet rando: What about all the people who don't trust sovereign currency and would rather place their trust in a decentralized network

Me: Same answer as before

Internet rando 2: What about people who live under oppressed governments with unsound currency

Me: Only if the problem with their currency is that it's not volatile enough and the transaction speeds are too fast

People whose countries fall into financial crisis trade in bitcoin in order to buy other sovereign currencies, they don't use bitcoin for money qua money. Because................... it sucks

Even in the heyday of bitcoin-mandatory commerce (The Time Of The Internet Drugs), prices were pegged to sovereign currency rather than bitcoin and payments were held in escrow to beat volatility

"What about beating internet censorship and preserving privacy"

it's a public ledger chokepointed by regulated exchanges, you morons

If you want to have a conversation about how good Zcash is going to be for the eight people in the world who really need it, that's a different conversation altogether

Good good it's been five years of people stepping to me about bitcoin everyone wants to explain to me how money backed by math is more sound than the federal reserve but no one seems to want to explain zero-knowledge proofs to me

I thought y'all were fans of math

Eventually I'm going to explain blockchain to everyone in my life and listen to them descend into whoops of hysterical laughter as they finally comprehend what it is

"People are sick of the Federal Reserve, sick of bailouts, sick of inflation. You know what we need? Internet money with the usability of PGP and the stability of BART service"

Someone got mad at my previous bitcoin rant and pointed out that Keybase.io implements a blockchain thing to disprove my contention that blockchain is irrelevant to 99% of problems

Son, my point stands

I'm a journalist who understands crypto to a reasonable degree and writes about security and privacy fairly regularly and do you know how often people actually use my keybase? A number of times that can be best described as "lol"

I am the target demographic for blockchain based solutions. I am the paranoid 1% who purposefully inconveniences her life for decentralization and cryptographic solutions. I am the rare case and I fucking hate bitcoin

All of this has gone too far!!!!! It was fine when you paranoid dorks were out there scamming each other, please leave the normies alone!!!!!!!!!!! My name is Sarah Jeong and this is my manifesto

My boyfriend came out of the bedroom to check on me because I had told him I was going to bed soon. I had to switch tabs and pretend I wasn't yelling about bitcoin on Twitter

I feel like people don't know about the genesis of bitcoin, the problem it is solving for is probably not a problem you're interested in solving

If you know this and this is your jam, cool, you do you??? i'll see you at burning man, bruh oh shit he's coming out of the bedroom again bye guys

Yes I got in trouble

Math beanie babies is not my phrasing and this is the three tweet version of my explanation of bitcoin

The "math" behind bitcoin is "sound," it's also a solution to a radically misunderstood "problem" that has to do with human behavior rather than cryptography

Human behavior, theories of money, theories of politics, theories of the state. If you really do understand WHAT the problem bitcoin is purporting to solve actually is, godspeed and good luck with the floating concrete island in international waters

Also I had a lot of fun explaining metallism, modern monetary theory, and Christine Desan on this phone call, all of this is way more complex than just "THE MATH CHECKS OUT"

You know what else checks out? PGP, which not even Phil Zimmermann will use the basic tech at the core of PGP is beautiful and elegant and I will always be a fan but also PGP is bad and every time I get an encrypted email I get a sinking feeling in my stomach

I've never written any of this up because for a long time every who gave a shit about bitcoin understand the core tech and were invested in ignoring or actively disproving various theories of money and state and it all seemed a little useless

now that cryptocurrency is mainstream I live in a HELL of knowing what bitcoin actually is while the world loses its MIND all around me