/biz/ - Business & Finance

>>57311139
I was just about to post this, but what happened with handmade illustrations? Not to bash on the achievements of a custom AI model, but Monero-chan illustrations used to have so much soul and style in them. They used to be scarce, and high quality. Every one would be an instant save, while so far I only found a couple of AI generated ones that are worth the disk space.
I remember being in these threads specially for the purpose of scouring for new and rare Monero-chan illustrations. Even had a folder that was >1 GB, until I discovered that there was a MEGA folder. As far as I could tell, the main source of new illustrations came from the artfund, which kind of died down. The only thing in recent memory for me was when they did two (or three?) photo-shoots with some 3DPGs.
Maybe this is just one of the effects of being in a bear market, the community as a whole dies down for some years, but I still would like to see handmade Monero-chans returning over AI generated ones.

>>55964473
Network security is directly correlated with token price. And turns out when you normalize for hashrate, Monero is orders of magnitudes more expensive than that of Bitcoin.
>It's Bitcoin that's changing the state, not the other way around.
Sweet summer child. Read the OP, but in case you need reminding. Feel free to use a copypasta as well.
>there are OFAC compliant blocks in the chain
>there are state mined blocks in the chain
>China ban took out roughly half of your hashrate
>Bitcoin is overwhelmingly tracked by chainanalysis companies and the rest is blocked
>over 90% of coins in existence have been KYC-d at least once
>large financial institutions are buying "virgin bitcoins" for a 20% markup
>the vast majority of BTC mining is under direct State watch
>BlockStream directly paid off u/theymos to control BTC discussion before the most important HF and proceeded to DoS nodes that didn't agree
>LN Labs is a WEF associate
>over 99.9% of BTC nodes run the same node software that is controlled by a handful of public figures
>LN is over 99% custodial and hubs own over 60% of the network's liquidity and a similarly large share of channels
>the rollout of Bitcoin in El Salvador has been done through a State-managed custodial application that freezes funds and blocks transactions with other non-approved wallets
>development on the BTC software has been non-existent since Satoshi left

The State is not your friend, its monopoly over legal tender is perhaps its single most important monopoly of all. It will undercut anyone that threatens that monopoly. At first BTC was truly uncontrollable, private, digital cash, run by some unknown person. Nobody to submit legal complains to, nobody to ask to censor transactions. No devs on taxed payrolls and no large custodians with incorporated LLCs. For that time, Bitcoin was the drug dealer's money, hosting CP. But that changed. It's not a competitor anymore, it's an alternative that is fully coopted and integrated.

>>55740209
So welcome back to those of us following. We've read another chapter of "What Has Government Done to Our Money", namely the chapter titled "Government Meddling With Money".

Whatever view you might hold of the government, it is an organization that primarily acquires its revenue through non-market ways, or violence. Historically, this has been done explicitly through taxation, or the direct seizure of property and labor. But more recently governments have took to inflation as a more covert way to acquire resources. Now, there are some things to note on the effects of inflation. Firstly, the effects of higher prices are not instantly expressed. Sectors that are closer to the government will have an advantage. Secondly, it distorts business calculation, which will inevitably lead to over- and underproduction of goods and services, or economic bubbles.

However, to reach the current monetary state of digital money printers, a lot had to be done. Firstly, the Mint was nationalized. Competing national and international competitors were forced out. This gave way to debasement, which was the prevalent trend in Medieval Europe. Furthermore, artificial ratios and controls were set up for "bimetallism", which through Gresham's Law drove out silver. The next step in monetary control to unleash inflation was with bank holidays, bailouts, and ultimately fractional reserve banking. These measures granted legal immunity to fraud and permitted banks to create deposits out of thin air, or inflation. Central banks were put in place to precisely control (or attempt to control) that inflation. And smaller scale, labeled "commercial banks", were put under direct the control of the central bank.