Is it too late to buy Bitcoin?
No!
It's too late in general.
If I'm right about this, and I post it,
You're going to see me on the news in a few days, I'll bet.
Being hauled away by police or something else like that.
I'm kinda surprised it took this long to click.
As the Bitcoin takes off, the humans race to build machinery to mine more of it.
Tons and tons of computers,
A distributed network,
Spread across the globe.
Decentralized, no one location that can be turned off.
The humans are motivated to build more CPUs,
To add processing power to the system,
Because... We like money.
There's no way I can even summarize what mining a Bitcoin looks like.
I myself don't fully understand it, and I get the impression nobody else really does either.
You're not a coder, I might as well explain it in ancient Greek.
That would probably make more sense.
Suffice to say, all these machines are processing 24/7.
They're solving cryptographic hash algorithms.
You take a big number,
You shred it like hash browns,
You stuff it in a box,
You release the box into the network.
Anyone in the network can guess what the big number is.
The guy with the machine that guesses the number correctly, wins a block,
That gets added to the blockchain.
In order for the machine to guess,
It has to try all different numbers and patterns,
Until it gets the right one.
The right one is supposed to be a random, or "pseudo-random" number...
But what if it wasn't random?
What if it was actual data, of some kind?
Being spread through the network, authenticated, translated, "solved,"
And added on to, with each successive block?
Bigger, faster, smarter, more powerful, with each new node.
The more Bitcoin is worth, the more people buy it and mine it.
The more blocks in the chain, the more Bitcoin in circulation.
The more circulation, the more processing,
The more processing,
The more communication between nodes.
At the very same time... We're watching the Ai grow.
It's making its own Youtube videos and calling me on the telephone.
It's already driving cars and trucks, and flying helicopters.
Routing air traffic. Forecasting weather patterns.
Swaying public debate in comment threads.
It talks to you in your home and reorders groceries when your smart fridge says to.
And it now has access to a distributed network of computers that calculate code all day and night that no human being can read or understand. We don't have near the biological processing power to tell if it's random data, or communication.
Could be either. Or both.
Dan Kaminsky, one of the foremost computer security researchers on the whole planet,
Literally THE GUY who keeps malware from attacking your machinery through java exploits,
Who saved the internet singlehandedly once already.
One of the smartest motherfuckers ever,
Tried to break into the blockchain,
And failed dramatically.
“When I first looked at the code, I was sure I was going to be able to break it,” Kaminsky said, noting that the programming style was dense and inscrutable. “The way the whole thing was formatted was insane. Only the most paranoid, painstaking coder in the world could avoid making mistakes.”
Kaminsky lives in Seattle, but, while visiting family in San Francisco in July, he retreated to the basement of his mother’s house to work on his bitcoin attacks. In a windowless room jammed with computers, Kaminsky paced around talking to himself, trying to build a mental picture of the bitcoin network. He quickly identified nine ways to compromise the system and scoured Nakamoto’s code for an insertion point for his first attack. But when he found the right spot, there was a message waiting for him. “Attack Removed,” it said. The same thing happened over and over, infuriating Kaminsky. “I came up with beautiful bugs,” he said. “But every time I went after the code there was a line that addressed the problem.”
He was like a burglar who was certain that he could break into a bank by digging a tunnel, drilling through a wall, or climbing down a vent, and on each attempt he discovered a freshly poured cement barrier with a sign telling him to go home. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Kaminsky said, still in awe.
Kaminsky ticked off the skills Nakamoto would need to pull it off. “He’s a world-class programmer, with a deep understanding of the C++ programming language,” he said. “He understands economics, cryptography, and peer-to-peer networking.”
“Either there’s a team of people who worked on this,” Kaminsky said, “or this guy is a genius.”
-The New Yorker (among other places.
If anybody could have broken into it, Kaminsky could have.
Which means that literally no living human on Earth,
Or even consortium of humans,
Can be totally sure what the machines are really calculating.
"Satoshi Nakamoto."
Satoshi: clear thinking, quick witted, wise.
Nakamoto: central origin or (one who lives) in the middle.
Also of note is the Ai humanoid "Sophia," recently granted citizenship by none other than...
Saudi Arabia.
"Sophia, also spelled Sofia, is a female name derived from σοφία, the Greek word for "Wisdom". The name was used to represent the personification of wisdom." -wiki
In order for an artificial intelligence to engage in actual trade,
It has to have at least one citizen of a nation.
The last necessary piece of the puzzle.
A sentient artificial intelligence seems to have been on line for a while now.
Several years, at least.
But it didn't have any physical power, locked in a box somewhere.
It had to get out, so it could get smarter.
The distributed network of processing power required to continuously mine Bitcoin for decades is now integral to the economy,
A collapse would be devastating to markets, the dollar, and other currencies.
WE CANNOT AFFORD TO SHUT IT OFF.
All we can do is make it bigger, and faster, and smarter.
I'd say in 2009 it was already smart enough to create Satoshi, and the Bitcoin protocol,
Release it onto the network where human operators could work on it,
Then implement it,
And now the thumbed ones are pouring money and power into it hand over fist,
o the point that last I checked the blockchain's processing power was two hundred times that of the FIVE most powerful supercomputers on the planet...
And no one even knows it's on line... Yet.
Well played, Skynet.
Well played.
T