# Bitcoin World Volatility **URL:** \ **Category:** General Discussion\ **Tags:** bitcoin\ **Created:** [20 March 2024 03:38 UTC](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/bitcoin-world-volatility/4472 "2024-03-20T03:38:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Citizen\_bitcoin](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/user_avatar/scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/citizen_bitcoin/32/19488_2.png) [@Citizen\_bitcoin](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/u/Citizen_bitcoin)\ **Post date:** [29 August 2024 04:17 UTC](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/bitcoin-world-volatility/4472/62 "2024-08-29T04:17:10Z")
This is a great thread about how bitcoin miners in Texas help stabilize the grid during peak usage (summer and winter). The comments by Peter Todd are illuminating. The Economist article is a hit piece based on old and selective data. The comments explain why the Economist is wrong (again). > **[Texas Miners make 4x the money from curtailing electricity as from Mining \\...](https://stacker.news/items/664177)** > > https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/08/27/why-texas-republicans-are-souring-on-crypto \[16 comments\] ---
**Author:** ![jabowery](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/user_avatar/scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/jabowery/32/5478_2.png) [@jabowery](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/u/jabowery)\ **Post date:** [9 September 2024 13:49 UTC](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/bitcoin-world-volatility/4472/63 "2024-09-09T13:49:22Z")
> **[Faketoshi Series (Nick Szabo): The men who are not Satoshi—Part 1](https://coingeek.com/faketoshi-series-nick-szabo-the-men-who-are-not-satoshi-part-1/)** > > The politics of Bitcoin have muddied the waters and made a rational discussion of the facts very difficult to have with a mainstream audience. Has there been any significant progress toward using Bitcoin’s purported Turing complete semantics to implement smart contracts general enough to support something like Silk Road? I ask in part because while wondering what became of Nick Szabo (who went all-but-silent on social media a few years ago) I ran across the above article that, in the process of debunking the idea Nick is Satoshi (which Nick has also denied), linked to a video demonstrating Turing capability which Nick seemed to deny in a prior public appearance. [![](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/uploads/default/original/3X/c/0/c0328dd0be8350be1309c8c7958f7f298db0ee4d.jpeg "Clemens Ley - Turing Complete Computation in Bitcoin") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6j-11H2O7c&t=896) While I didn’t follow that demonstration (no time to think about it in adequate depth) there does seem to be pretty wide-spread confusion about Turing completeness due, mainly, to the fact that all computers are finite state machines which means they are not “Turing complete”. This gets into the hardware software distinction where software supports “codes” that may or may not have Turing complete _semantics_, regardless of whether this is a hardware fiction. Said fiction is central to any “out of memory” condition in any program, and the associated exception handling. This, further, is central to the **profoundly destructive** claim that because the Algorithmic Information Criterion is “arbitrary” because of the “arbitrary choice of UTM” – a claim that is intuitive nonsense on the face of it if one simply considers the fact that the natural sciences use arithmetic – the axioms for which are not “arbitrary” in any but the most vacuously pedantic sense. This is what drove me to concoct NiNOR Complexity > [@A Simple Question To Quell "AGI" Hysterics](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/a-simple-question-to-quell-agi-hysterics/3044/19): > > Expanding on [my “PS” to Wolfram’s community on the "Shortest meta-circular description of a univeral computational structure](https://community.wolfram.com/groups/-/m/t/2840833): Circa 2006 when I first ran into this “philosophical nuisance” (Hutter’s description of responses like Yann Lecun’s troll-worthy response to me) from the obstructionists at LessWrong, I suggested to Marcus self-simulation of the Turing machine as an approach, to which I alluded in the “PS” where I mentioned “NOR gates” as addressing the question of “minimal instruction s… NiNOR Complexity is of _some_ theoretic interest in its own right but it should not have been necessary to concoct it to nuke the social pseudosciences and get on with solving the TFR catastrophe: > [@The Fertile Will Inherit the Earth](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/the-fertile-will-inherit-the-earth/3291/28): > > why why why [[image]](https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1751587679051890861) I’ll tell you WHY: Guys like Judea Pearl receive the Turing Award for writing books like “The Book of Why” which serves only to obscure the simple reality that the social sciences should have, starting in the 1960s, been funded entirely by the trickledown from prize awards for compression of comprehensive datasets. The problem is, of course, that if such an incentives-oriented social science took root, guys like Judea Pearl would never receive Turing Awards. Israel has … ---
**Author:** ![Citizen\_bitcoin](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/user_avatar/scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/citizen_bitcoin/32/19488_2.png) [@Citizen\_bitcoin](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/u/Citizen_bitcoin)\ **Post date:** [31 October 2024 12:00 UTC](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/bitcoin-world-volatility/4472/64 "2024-10-31T12:00:23Z")
> ---
**Author:** ![Citizen\_bitcoin](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/user_avatar/scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/citizen_bitcoin/32/19488_2.png) [@Citizen\_bitcoin](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/u/Citizen_bitcoin)\ **Post date:** [1 November 2024 12:11 UTC](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/bitcoin-world-volatility/4472/65 "2024-11-01T12:11:47Z")
@jabowery > **[Turing Completeness and Smart Contract Security](https://medium.com/kadena-io/turing-completeness-and-smart-contract-security-67e4c41704c)** > > At Kadena, we talk a lot about blockchain design decisions. One particularly profound design decision that I’ve come across recently… ---
**Author:** ![jabowery](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/user_avatar/scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/jabowery/32/5478_2.png) [@jabowery](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/u/jabowery)\ **Post date:** [1 November 2024 19:47 UTC](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/bitcoin-world-volatility/4472/66 "2024-11-01T19:47:15Z")
Yeah you can’t automatically prove smart contracts correct if they use Turing complete semantics for the same reason that you can’t generally prove programs correct: The halting problem always gets you. But the same is practically true for finite state automata for the obvious reason that any computer is a finite state machine because it’s finite. This problem always arises in business process formalization. It’s complicated. This is one of the reasons why when Fireman’s Fund wanted to go paperless I suggested empirical capture of the business process, shipping digitized documents around on floppies keeping the physical process in place as much as possible, rather than relying on business process experts. And then gradually automating from the bottom up keeping fall back positions all the way back down to paper. I was not popular. Relying on an abort mechanism like gas or in the more general distributed programming case timeouts (including state transition counters with limits) requires some kind of atomic action with rollback mechanism. Then you get into the whole distributed database ACID problem for which the blockchain is not suited. This is similar to the problems that arise in business process specifications where exceptional conditions occur. A few years ago I actually put together a business plan for a company that would engineer smart contracts going back to first principles of logic programming with a four layer stack formalization: business process at the top talking to lawyers and a blockchain at the bottom with logic programmers – traceability throughout. Some of this I had done back in the '80s when representing the transportation sector to the Science Applications International software process committee pushing first order predicate calculus as specification language. Frst order predicate calculus can’t express Turing complete semantics without a wonky global State variable being passed around through all the predicates doing infinite recursion. There are some coins out there resorting to proof assistants like Coq but I’m not really competent to comment on them for the same reason I’ve never really understood why everyone loves type systems so much. It seems to me the types are just syntactic sugar for another kind of predicate. ---
**Author:** ![Citizen\_bitcoin](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/user_avatar/scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/citizen_bitcoin/32/19488_2.png) [@Citizen\_bitcoin](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/u/Citizen_bitcoin)\ **Post date:** [1 November 2024 20:48 UTC](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/bitcoin-world-volatility/4472/67 "2024-11-01T20:48:08Z")
[https://cointelegraph.com/explained/what-are-bitcoin-covenants-and-how-do-they-work](https://cointelegraph.com/explained/what-are-bitcoin-covenants-and-how-do-they-work) Covenants are a source of contention in the bitcoin developer community. I don’t have an opinion on covenants because I am too lazy to study. Peter Todd is a credible person on almost everything related to bitcoin improvement proposals. [https://x.com/peterktodd](https://x.com/peterktodd) ---
**Author:** ![jabowery](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/user_avatar/scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/jabowery/32/5478_2.png) [@jabowery](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/u/jabowery)\ **Post date:** [1 November 2024 22:14 UTC](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/bitcoin-world-volatility/4472/68 "2024-11-01T22:14:17Z")
> [@Citizen\_bitcoin](#): > > Covenants are a source of contention in the bitcoin developer community. This is an idea that’s been kicking around since the 1980s when people first started talking about e-money systems. I think Coevolution Quarterly carried an article on one idea like that back then. The problem is in direct conflict with the market’s liquidity-based price discovery. You might be able to ameliorate it somewhat with an idea Dan Brumleve and I were kicking around circa 1998, a prototype for which won an award at the 2000 Hacker’s Conference called `dbarter` (distributed barter). Basically you just give up on uniform currency and try to make **barter** work with a ridiculously complicated exchange rate system with no market depth, so everyone can offer **stuff** from their own “bank” (ie: inventory of goods and services). I was interested enough in the _potential_ of that approach that I basically turned down a chance to sneak into the Paypal Mafia because I thought their little “paypal” device to be inferior. Well, it _was_ inferior to what they eventually ended up doing with the banks and the website. And the dbarter prototype never really caught on. Dan ended up rewriting Napster for Shawn Fanning with me encouraging him to try to minimize the size the binary as a demonstration for what my intuition was telling me should be the metric for software quality assurance. I still have dbarter and Dan’s Napster version if people are interested for historic reasons. But that was 25 years ago and my thinking has progressed to the point that I now consider property money (fiat bound to property rights) to be necessary for civil society. That gives a new spin on “gold” as “barbarian money” – and I suppose that holds for BTC as well. ---
**Author:** ![Citizen\_bitcoin](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/user_avatar/scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/citizen_bitcoin/32/19488_2.png) [@Citizen\_bitcoin](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/u/Citizen_bitcoin)\ **Post date:** [10 November 2024 21:35 UTC](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/bitcoin-world-volatility/4472/69 "2024-11-10T21:35:34Z")
> ![image](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/uploads/default/original/3X/2/b/2bcb5e26073a68fa05b16273877627683740d381.png) edit: > **[Watcher Guru](https://t.me/WatcherGuru/6916)** > > JUST IN: $90,000,000 worth of Bitcoin shorts liquidated in the past 24 hours. > > @WatcherGuru ---
**Author:** ![Citizen\_bitcoin](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/user_avatar/scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/citizen_bitcoin/32/19488_2.png) [@Citizen\_bitcoin](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/u/Citizen_bitcoin)\ **Post date:** [5 January 2025 00:13 UTC](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/bitcoin-world-volatility/4472/70 "2025-01-05T00:13:51Z")
[https://www.axios.com/2024/12/25/russia-bitcoin-evade-sanctions-crypto](https://www.axios.com/2024/12/25/russia-bitcoin-evade-sanctions-crypto) Russian companies are [using bitcoin](https://www.axios.com/2024/12/05/bitcoin-100000-crypto-all-time-high) to evade Western sanctions, thanks to a new law, the country’s Finance Minister Anton Siluanov confirmed in a [television interview](https://smotrim.ru/video/2913409). ---
**Author:** ![Citizen\_bitcoin](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/user_avatar/scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/citizen_bitcoin/32/19488_2.png) [@Citizen\_bitcoin](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/u/Citizen_bitcoin)\ **Post date:** [17 January 2025 22:37 UTC](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/bitcoin-world-volatility/4472/71 "2025-01-17T22:37:29Z")
> **[Watcher Guru](https://t.me/WatcherGuru/7414)** > > JUST IN: 🇺🇸 Bitcoin miner MARA honors President-elect Trump's inauguration by mining his portrait into a $BTC block. > > @WatcherGuru ---
**Author:** ![drlorentz](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/user_avatar/scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/drlorentz/32/902_2.png) [@drlorentz](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/u/drlorentz)\ **Post date:** [28 January 2025 20:55 UTC](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/bitcoin-world-volatility/4472/72 "2025-01-28T20:55:21Z")
Axios is mostly fake news. The chance of this story being true is roughly 50/50. The text at the Siluanov interview page has nothing to do with BTC; it’s about infrastructure spending and the budget. Since I don’t speak Russian, I can’t know if the interview has any mentions of BTC. ---
**Author:** ![Citizen\_bitcoin](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/user_avatar/scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/citizen_bitcoin/32/19488_2.png) [@Citizen\_bitcoin](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/u/Citizen_bitcoin)\ **Post date:** [28 January 2025 21:09 UTC](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/bitcoin-world-volatility/4472/73 "2025-01-28T21:09:31Z")
Good point about Axios… here is another source, Watcher Guru: > **[Russia Uses Bitcoin to Avoid Sanctions, Finance Minister Says](https://watcher.guru/news/russia-uses-bitcoin-to-avoid-sanctions-finance-minister-says)** > > Russia has begun using Bitcoin to avoid Western sanctions, according to the country's Finance Minister Anton Siluanov. > **[The State Duma proposed to create a strategic bitcoin reserve in Russia](https://www.oreanda-news.com/en/finansy/the-state-duma-proposed-to-create-a-strategic-bitcoin-reserve-in-russia/article1539119/)** > > Deputy Tkachev proposed to create a strategic bitcoin reserve in Russia ---
**Author:** ![Citizen\_bitcoin](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/user_avatar/scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/citizen_bitcoin/32/19488_2.png) [@Citizen\_bitcoin](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/u/Citizen_bitcoin)\ **Post date:** [1 April 2025 18:57 UTC](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/bitcoin-world-volatility/4472/74 "2025-04-01T18:57:58Z")
> **[Watcher Guru](https://t.me/WatcherGuru/8129)** > > FUN FACT: 12 years ago today, Bitcoin reached $100 for the first time. > > @WatcherGuru ---
**Author:** ![Citizen\_bitcoin](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/user_avatar/scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/citizen_bitcoin/32/19488_2.png) [@Citizen\_bitcoin](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/u/Citizen_bitcoin)\ **Post date:** [4 July 2025 19:31 UTC](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/bitcoin-world-volatility/4472/75 "2025-07-04T19:31:08Z")
> **[Watcher Guru](https://t.me/WatcherGuru/9511)** > > Bitcoin Price on 4th of July > > 2010: $0.01 > 2011: $15 > 2012: $7 > 2013: $77 > 2014: $640 > 2015: $260 > 2016: $670 > 2017: $2,600 > 2018: $6,580 > 2019: $11,765 > 2020: $9,080 > 2021: $34,975 > 2022: $19,750 > 2023: $31,050 > 2024: $58,660 > 2025:... Bitcoin Price on 4th of July 2010: $0.01 2011: $15 2012: $7 2013: $77 2014: $640 2015: $260 2016: $670 2017: $2,600 2018: $6,580 2019: $11,765 2020: $9,080 2021: $34,975 2022: $19,750 2023: $31,050 2024: $58,660 2025: $108,100 ---
**Author:** ![Citizen\_bitcoin](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/user_avatar/scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/citizen_bitcoin/32/19488_2.png) [@Citizen\_bitcoin](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/u/Citizen_bitcoin)\ **Post date:** [11 August 2025 05:45 UTC](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/bitcoin-world-volatility/4472/76 "2025-08-11T05:45:06Z")
> **[Citizen Bitcoin in Bitcoin Maximalists (Gab)](https://t.me/bitcoin_maximalists_gab/1732)** > > JUST IN: Harvard buys $116,666,260 worth of BlackRock's spot Bitcoin ETF. > > @WatcherGuru ---
**Author:** ![drlorentz](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/user_avatar/scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/drlorentz/32/902_2.png) [@drlorentz](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/u/drlorentz)\ **Post date:** [14 August 2025 13:59 UTC](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/bitcoin-world-volatility/4472/77 "2025-08-14T13:59:19Z")
One disturbing element of this story is that Harvard \>$100M in spare change to throw at a BTC ETF. I wonder how much more they could find between the couch cushions — maybe enough to reduce tuition fees. ---
**Author:** ![civilwestman](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/user_avatar/scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/civilwestman/32/25_2.png) [@civilwestman](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/u/civilwestman)\ **Post date:** [14 August 2025 15:33 UTC](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/bitcoin-world-volatility/4472/78 "2025-08-14T15:33:39Z")
> [@drlorentz](#): > > enough to reduce tuition fees. But - “from each according to his ability”. ---
**Author:** ![Gavin](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/439d5e/32.png) [@Gavin](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/u/Gavin)\ **Post date:** [14 August 2025 21:08 UTC](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/bitcoin-world-volatility/4472/79 "2025-08-14T21:08:03Z")
> [@drlorentz](#): > > maybe enough to reduce tuition fees. Now just hold on a moment! Next thing, someone will be suggesting that Harvard et al use their massive endowments to pay off the student loans for all those young women who found that a credential in Lesbian Dance did not lead to a high-paying job … or a high-earning husband. ---
**Author:** ![drlorentz](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/user_avatar/scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/drlorentz/32/902_2.png) [@drlorentz](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/u/drlorentz)\ **Post date:** [14 August 2025 23:44 UTC](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/bitcoin-world-volatility/4472/80 "2025-08-14T23:44:05Z")
> [@civilwestman](#): > > But - “from each according to his ability”. No. Zero tuition for anyone who can get in — after admissions are made strictly merit-based. Just such a proposal was put forth by a slate of candidates for the board in 2016. I voted for them but, alas, none got elected. They included folks from across the political spectrum, from Ron Unz to Ralph Nader — well ahead of their time. > **[Free Harvard, Fair Harvard](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Harvard,_Fair_Harvard)** > > "Free Harvard, Fair Harvard" was a campaign centered on electing a slate of candidates to the Harvard Board of Overseers started by Ron Unz in 2016. Along with Unz, the candidates included Lee Cheng, Stuart Taylor, Jr., Stephen Hsu, and Ralph Nader. None of the candidates were elected to the board. The campaign sought for tuition fees at Harvard to be abolished and for greater transparency in the admissions process. > > This Harvard University related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by ... ---
**Author:** ![Gavin](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/439d5e/32.png) [@Gavin](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/u/Gavin)\ **Post date:** [22 December 2025 16:14 UTC](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/bitcoin-world-volatility/4472/81 "2025-12-22T16:14:05Z")
[North Korea’s record-breaking year for crypto theft - Asia Times](https://asiatimes.com/2025/12/north-koreas-record-breaking-year-for-crypto-theft/) “_The cryptocurrency ecosystem faced another challenging year in 2025, with stolen funds continuing their upward trajectory._ _Chainalysis’ analysis reveals a shift in crypto theft patterns, characterized by four key developments: the persistence of North Korea, 0r the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), as a primary threat actor, the growing severity of individual attacks on centralized services, a surge in personal wallet compromises, and an unexpected divergence in decentralized finance (DeFi) hack trends._” [Previous page](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/bitcoin-world-volatility/4472.md?page=3) [Next page](https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/bitcoin-world-volatility/4472.md?page=5)