Zem Gao

The analogousness between artificial intelligence and cybernetics is both true and natural. In fact, it’s inherent. However, it is erroneous to equate AI with human intelligence. These two are also analogous, but there exists a fundamental difference. Part of the reason is that “brain” and “mind” are ontologically different. Link to the full article: zemgao.com/?p=16182

@CsTominaga Yes, yes

There’s a peculiar poetry to automation. It’s the promise of liberation: the spreadsheet that fills itself, the citation that appears like magic, the tedious chores evaporating so you can watch the world burn gold on water at night, next to the woman you chose and the silence you earned. This is why automation matters—not because anyone needs another algorithm pretending to be witty, but because time is a finite resource and only a fool would spend it filing references instead of living. But here’s the rot at the core: we’ve sold ourselves on the idea that automation means freedom, when mostly it just means fighting with some clumsy machine that wants to be human, and fails at being even a mediocre secretary. These systems, these much-lauded AI ‘assistants’, want to chat, to imitate, to simulate empathy and cleverness. No, what’s needed is a tool—unromantic, ruthless, effective—a machine that hammers out the tasks humans hate and leaves the art of living, and thinking, to the actual artists and thinkers. Not a chatbot. Not a digital therapist. Something that does what it’s told, with the precision of a good blade. And yet—here we are, still fiddling with reference managers that eat their own bib files, project folders that refuse to be tamed, software that insists on being clever but can’t manage a table of contents. You’re left doing the work twice, with automation just sophisticated enough to ruin your evening if you trusted it. That’s the absurdity: all this technological promise, and still the only thing you can count on is the reflection of a ship’s light on black water, the grid of pool tiles, and the small sharp joy of knowing your time is your own—at least when you refuse to surrender it to the cult of almost-good-enough automation. Perfect automation should never aspire to replace us. It should aspire to free us. And until it does, I’ll be here, poolside, glass in hand, watching the lights drift by and doing it myself—because nobody, and certainly no software, is going to do it right until it’s worthy of the time it claims to save.

Linked below is an article with in-depth discussions of the so-called quantum threat to Bitcoin. Bitcoin blockchain is not based on encryption, but uses one-way hashes that reduce the size of the information space, making reverse computing mathematically infeasible. Furthermore, all these potential threats, real or imagined, highlight the importance of single-use key practice, something advocated by Satoshi but misunderstood or ignored by BTC followers. Implementation of real, effective single-use keys requires a blockchain that is scalable and efficient with negligible transaction costs. Only Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV) can meet these challenges. It's a long article, but it's an important subject. The Quantum Cryptopocalypse Myth zemgao.com/?p=16052

Cybernetics view of systems that are bound to collapse zemgao.com/?p=16014 BTC is fundamentally an election system, but BTC as an election system is corrupt and self-contradictory, like communism.

While the concepts (history, current political reality, budget bill and appropriations bill, discretionary spending, and mandatory spending, etc.) they are explaining are true, they miss the most basic reality: With the current bill, which does not have the necessary drastic measures, the system will collapse. The reliance on all these political procedures is just self-deceiving, escapist excuses of a drug addict. But what's even more painful is the fact that one can't really blame Trump, Johnson, and the Congress, for they're doing their best facing the US political reality. They cannot get out of this debt addiction when they are a central part of the symptom. (The following is an excerpt of a longer article: The Looming Economic Crises in China and the United States: A Tale of Two Corrupt Systems. - zemgao.com/15920/ ) Few people truly understand how desperate the situation is. Many say that the US debt-GDP ratio is only about 130%, significantly lower than that of Japan and China. But there’s a misunderstanding about this matter. The problem is not the debt numbers themselves, but the annual interest that a nation must pay for its debt, and how hard it is for the nation to restructure the debt to avoid a default. All this has to do with how the debt is sold and purchased, and who the creditors are. To put it simply, in China and Japan, when a crisis arises to a point that the governments have to force the creditors to write down what they own or accept an artificially lower interest rate, they would be able to do it (to understand why, read the article, which is too long to be quoted here). They will also suffer, but they do not risk the collapse of their current system. Not in the US. The US debt is of an entirely different nature. The whole thing is based on free market principles, meaning that the creditors buy the US national debt for their own financial gains. It is not an evil to start with, because it is exactly where the strength of the US economy lies: the free market. But as always is the case in this world, the better a thing is, the worse the effect of abusing the thing will be. The free market is the bedrock of the US economy and society, but when the nation abuses it by taking on an excessive amount of debt, it will find that it is left with no non-market administrative means to solve the problem. Rather, the US will face the devastating cost of its own abuse of the free market: destruction of the free market. With the current trend, the US cannot solve its debt problem without damaging or even destroying its economic foundation: the free market. If there is still the slightest last chance to solve the problem politically, it is now. But now is already too hard. That is the political reality the US faces. It is an addiction, affecting both the Republicans and Democrats. The difference is that the Republicans are kind of awake and making an effort, only with an illusion that measures like the big beautiful bill are going to solve the problem, or at least will maintain the status quo, while the Democrats are simply wasted. Again, please read the full article: The Looming Economic Crises in China and the United States: A Tale of Two Corrupt Systems. - zemgao.com/15920/ )

Less than 1% of the earth people today are aware of this, but 99% are being affected, and many will end up bearing the mark of the beast on their forehead (the mind, the thinking) and the right hand (the strength, the doing). It's a spiritual battle, so both the energy and the ultimate victory must come from the higher realm. However, before the end when the Victor does arrive from above, the earth must, and will, devour the waters from the Dragon's mouth (Revelation 12:16). It's not the salvation, but protection in time. That's why I still work on the real Bitcoin blockchain, Bitcoin Satoshi Vision. It is the earth part, but it is a necessary part.

Speaker Johnson and commentator @larry_kudlow are trying to explain that @elonmusk Musk's protest against The One Big Beautiful Bill arises from his misunderstanding of the government spending procedures, such as the budget bill and appropriations bill, discretionary spending, and mandatory spending, etc. While the concepts they are explaining are true, they miss the fundamental truth, as also President Trump and the Congress: With the current bill, which does not have the necessary drastic measures, the US economic and political systems will collapse. The reliance on all these political procedures is just self-deceiving escapist excuses of a drug addict. But what's even more painful is the fact that one really can't blame Trump, Johnson, and the Congress: they're doing their best facing the US political reality. They cannot get out of this debt addiction when they are a central part of the symptom. (The following is an excerpt of a longer article: The Looming Economic Crises in China and the United States: A Tale of Two Corrupt Systems. - zemgao.com/15920/ ) Few people truly understand how desperate the situation is. Many say that the US debt-GDP ratio is only about 150%, significantly lower than that of Japan and China. But there’s a fundamental misunderstanding about this matter. The problem is not the debt numbers themselves, but the annual interest that a nation must pay for its debt, and how hard it is for the nation to restructure the debt to avoid a default. All this has to do with how the debt is sold and purchased, and who the creditors are. To put it simply, in China and Japan, when a crisis arises to a point that the governments have to force the creditors to write down what they own or accept an artificially lower interest rate, they would be able to do it (to understand why, read the article, which is too long to be quoted here). Not in the US. The US debt is of an entirely different nature. The whole thing is based on free market principles, meaning that the creditors buy the US national debt for their own financial gains. This is not an evil to start with, because this is exactly where the strength of the US economy lies: The free market. But as always is the case in this world, the better a thing is, the worse the effect of abusing the thing will be. The free market is the bedrock of the US economy and society, but when the nation abuses it by taking on an excessive amount of debt, it will find that it is left with no non-market administrative means to solve the problem. Rather, the US will face the devastating cost of its own abuse of the free market: destruction of the free market. The bottom line is that the US cannot solve its debt problem without damaging or even destroying its economic foundation: the free market. If there is still the slightest last chance to solve the problem politically, it is now. But now is too hard. I disagree with Musk on many things, but I feel him on this one.

Good, that's a helpful reply, because it clarifies that the X's in the address 1CounterpartyXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXUWLpVr are actual literal letters, not placeholders for arbitrary letters. In that case, you're right, my argument of the impossibility of a valid private key applies to this address as well. And because this one does have a valid checksum, it can be used by any standard wallet. I made my previous comments assuming that the X's are placeholders for arbitrary letters. Other than that assumption, everything I said was logically reasoned.

@zeminggao There's only one counterparty burner address. The one with +2000 BTC. Obviously no coins were sent to the other mentioned invalid addresses as you would not be able to do so using any available Bitcoin client whatsoever.

It was an old thread in 2018. Because the original posts have been deleted, the context is rather obscure. But based on what I can see, this is what happened: --Someone promoted an idea of "burn address" for bitcoin (the purported burn address ending with the string "UWLpVr"). --CSW argued that it must be a scam, because if they wanted a real burn address, they could create an address that is verifiably invalid (he gave two examples, one ending with XXXXXX, the other ending with BurnoAddr), so why a particular one that cannot be verified (and therefore others have to trust that the promoter is telling the truth)? Therefore, CSW asserted that the purported burn address is not a real burn address but was fraudulently presented as a burn address. (A real burn address would be verifiably permanently unredeemable. An address purported as a burn address but can be redeemed by the people behind it is, by definition, a fraud.) Whether CSW's accusation against the fraud was factually valid or not, his reasoning was impeccable. If Roger Ver used that thread as "evidence" that CSW did not know that Bitcoin had a checksum, then I really agree with @EquityDiamonds conclusion that Roger is either a fraud or wasn't knowledgeable. By the way, @J_B_N_P's reply to CSW's post was very strange. It was literally saying that because CSW had given an example of what a real burn address could be, he (CSW) did not make sense. But that was the raison d'être for the very conversation itself! It only proves that CSW knew what he was talking about, and others didn't (or intentionally didn't want to)! Anyway, there are too many ridiculous examples of such accusations against CSW. It takes more than a team of psychologists, along with the help of historians, real bitcoin experts (and honest ones) to explain why and how this has happened, and continues to happen. Yes, I do mean "psychologists," not only because of the subconscious motivation behind the Cult of Satoshi, which has grown to such an idolatrous level that it preemptively and absolutely denies the real person behind Satoshi (or any real human being for being Satoshi for that matter), but also because the whole behavior pattern is deeply driven by greed, and masked by clever schemes.

@J_B_N_P Which one (all three addresses start with 1Counterparty) and why?

@zeminggao The same applies to the counterparty address. Your logic doesn't make sense.

Why? Please note that the address CSW proposed is supposed to be a "total vanity address", meaning that every character has to be computed because they're not random. That is the proposition. It is mathematically provable that the owner of the particular address cannot have a private key because it would be practically impossible to compute one. If you disagree, please explain why that is not the case. Just making assertions is not conducive to a discussion.

@zeminggao He did not propose a better address. He literally proposed the exact same address just with an invalid checksum. And another even worse example that is not even Base58. None of the word salad makes sense.

Sure, if the purpose of this discussion were to find the best burner practice, I'd say sending coins to the Genesis block address can be a good choice, depending on people's beliefs (see: Satoshi's secret in the Genesis block zemgao.com/?p=10926). However, finding the best burner practice isn't the point of the discussion. Although it started with a purported burn address, CSW pointed out it is not trustworthy, and gave a much more reliable example of a burn address. That in itself would not have been very consequential, but the conversation was hijacked into an accusation against CSW that he had shown that he didn't understand that the bitcoin address had a checksum. In response to that, I just pointed out it was a misunderstanding of what CSW was saying. (Actually, based on the pattern of all this, I suspect it is worse than a mere misunderstanding. It may just be another intentionally biased distortion.) CSW used a hypothetical address, which is a valid illustration of a valid principle. Nitpicking on whether that can be a real base58 address is beside the point. If we keep distracting the dialogue by making tangential arguments, we miss the truth, regardless of how much knowledge we have thrown into the pile.

@zeminggao 1CounterpartyoThisIsAlsoAoBurnoAddr is not even Base58 (unless the capital i is a lower case L). You guys are pathetic. If you really want to burn coins, send them to the Genesis wallet. Arguing that an invalid checksum somehow is a clever move is just 🤣

It depends on what one means by “invalid”. First of all, “invalid transaction” and “invalid address” are not exactly the same. Mining nodes are responsible for checking the validity of the transaction, including its scripts, but they do not check the validity of the human-readable output address string; that validation is primarily left to wallet software. These two are different because, if a wallet somehow allowed a transaction to be created using a invalid address (bypassing a checksum failure, for example), the resulting transaction would be considered “valid” by the network if the ScriptPubKey created from that mistyped data is syntactically well-formed according to script rules, even if it locks funds to an unrecoverable or unintended condition. The transaction isn’t invalid by network rules, but it’s a problem for the user unless that is exactly what the user intends. A purported burn address can be fake. There are addresses that might seem “invalid,” but are not. If the address passes the sender’s wallet, and the transaction associated with that address passes the validation of the mining nodes, you may not really be so sure the coins sent to the address are indeed unredeemable. For example, an address that has a wrong checksum can pass the validation by mining nodes, who don’t validate the checksum in an address but leave that to user wallets. A transaction sent to such an address may be stopped by a standard wallet, but one just cannot be so sure that the senders are not using a nonstandard wallet (especially when senders are lured to participate in some kind of scheme, not knowing they’ve been tricked). On the ohter hand, an address that is inherently unspendable-from, if it exists, is a genuine burn address. But how does the public, particularly the senders, know for sure that an address is inherently unspendable-from, namely, unredeemable by its owner? One sure case is a scenario where the owner of an address can provide mathematical proof that he does not have a valid private key for the address. But the question is, how does one provide such mathematical proof? Well, that’s what CSW has done in his example. In contrast to the potentially fake burn addresses, the address “1CounterpartyoThisIsAlsoAoBurnoAddr” given by CSW is a very strong valid burn address. This is because for that address to be redeemable, its owner would have to compute almost every one of the 35 characters (because they are not random) in the address to find out a valid private key that corresponds to a public key, which, in turn, matches that particular address. Note that the above example given by CSW is not a practical vanity address. To understand why, realize that computing a vanity address that has 35 targeted nonrandom characters is not three times harder than computing a vanity address that has 12 targeted characters. Using Base58, it is (58)^23 times harder, which is so close to infinite that it would be beyond practicality to compute. In other words, with an address given by CSW, you are practically sure that its owner does not have a valid private key. You only need to trust the math. In contrast, in the purported burn address, you just don’t know. You have to trust the owner.

@zeminggao How would you send coins to an invalid address?

The whole system and the concept of money and finance need to be revolutionized to save the world and the US.  Financialization started as a booster stimulus to the economy, but has infested the entire world so deeply and broadly that it has become a systemic and critical disease in itself. We need to rethink money, the very concept of it.  Please read: Tokenized Credit-based Community Money zemgao.com/?p=13464

Tim, please think about this more deeply. Consider your own example: If every person on Earth bought a cup of coffee, it would take about 40 years for the BTC blockchain to process them all. What you are really referring to, unbeknownst to you, is not BTC, but the real Bitcoin according to Satoshi Vision (#BSV ). BSV can already process all those transactions in about two hours, and could do it in seconds in the future. Gold may be "dead," but it is a reliable physical anchor that can be made alive using tokenization on a blockchain like BSV. (See "Gold is superior money, and tokenized gold is a superior currency" zemgao.com/9730/). But BTC is both dead and empty, promoted by a fake narrative of "digital gold" that is based on circular logic and predicated on people's ignorance (see The Idea of “Digital Gold” — BTC’s Value Fundamentals, zemgao.com/649/)    No amount of propaganda and Layer-2 dressing can make something both dead and empty live and substantive. BTC will always be a mere object of people's belief (false faith), and never anything that is useful to people. If you brush away BSV by an overheard assertion that it is "centralized", please think beyond that. BSV is the only blockchain that achieves the true decentralization vision by Satoshi. There can be no true decentralization without a locked core protocol. There can be no true decentralization without unbounded scalability, because real P2P transactions can only be enabled by unbounded scalability (without such scalability, once P2P is a mere abstract notion, as unrealistic as your coffee example). I don't make these statements lightly. I wrote a book on it (bitandcoin.net), not to promote the coin but to tell people the truth. You have always had a great vision, so please don't be blinded by other people's narratives or be entrenched by your early investment.

Gold is dead. It just sits there. Bitcoin moves. Borderless. Permissionless. Programmable. You can’t buy coffee with gold. But with Bitcoin, you can — without banks, inflation, or friction.

I had an exchange of messages with an analyst/trader “TZ” (pseudonym) at BlackRock today. TZ asked me about BTC, Elon Musk, and macroeconomics. I thought it may be useful to post part of my replies here. Bitcoin blockchain: an introduction I wrote extensively on this subject (Bitcoin & Blockchain – zemgao.com/category/bitco…). I even wrote a book (Bitandcoin.net). May I invite you to read the following sample articles?  If you disagree with what I wrote, that’s fine; at least you will have a glimpse of what my view is. - BTC is a combination of a cult and a scam -The fraudulent fiat “money” and fake “digital gold” - Bitcoin and electronic cash - Stock Market Amplified Ponzi Schemes (SMAPs) - Tokenized Credit-based Community Money. (Note: links in the article) I am a builder and thinker. I’ve been involved in a startup project that is closely related to the last article above. If you are further interested, I would like to recommend that you get a copy of my book (not trying to sell you a book,  because the price barely covers the cost, and the Kindle version is free): BIT & COIN: Merging Digitality and Physicality About BTC and BSV Frankly, I’m surprised that you actually read the articles.  You are a trader.  I am a philosopher and a builder.  I have never seen a trader who is genuinely interested in my views.  And I don’t blame them, because we look at two entirely different worlds.  Not just two different angles of the same world, but two entirely different worlds.  And my views don’t help traders by a long shot.  As a matter of fact, my views might even hurt the trading prospects, and that’s why I myself don’t trade. For this reason, take what I say with a bunch of salt. First, you mentioned “original BTC”. I don’t know what your definition of that is.  BTC is BTC, a version of Bitcoin. It is not the real Bitcoin, but a corrupt version of the original Bitcoin of Satoshi. It is a fact, and I know it. But that fact doesn’t matter to traders, because the concept of “originality” has nothing to do with trading. It is deeply technological.  For cryptocurrency trading, BTC is BTC.  Whatever has been recognized in the market and traded is the whole reality. Who cares about what the original Bitcoin is? Only technologists like me do. I care because I care about the actual utility of any technology to the world and humanity.  That’s why I focus on Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV).  In the view field of a trader like you, BSV probably doesn’t even appear on the radar screen. However, I’m not saying that the technological and economic reality of a blockchain is never relevant to trading.  Ultimately, the substance will bear on the appearance.  See, Price matters. About Elon Musk About Musk, my limited views about him can be found here:   “zemgao.com/?s=%22Elon+Mus…”. Musk is mostly sincere, and extremely creative and charismatic. But he’s wrong about Bitcoin and blockchain. Like many others, Musk thinks he understands blockchain and Bitcoin, but he doesn’t. There’s no denying that Musk is highly intelligent. But the appearance of his intelligence is multiplied by his influence (and vice versa). The trouble is that the magnification creates the illusion that he understands everything. He does not. When it comes to Bitcoin and blockchain, he is probably just slightly better than an average mainstream commentator, but still miles away from the truth. About macroeconomics You asked me to comment on the interest rate and macroeconomics.  Although I do have my views, I don’t think you really need to hear them.  I suspect that you have your own views and are unlikely to change them. My first view is that the existing geopolitical, economic, and financial systems, including the fiat system, are collapsing.  The only way for the US and much of the world to get out of the debt is by high inflation.  There is no other way.  The political system and the human nature of the masses simply are incapable of implementing and carrying out a principled and disciplined solution.  Not going to happen.  Under Republicans, the US has a better chance.  But still, I’m pessimistic about it. From a biblical point of view (I am Christian, and I don’t try to hide my identity),  I believe the world as we know it is unlikely to exist 20 years (perhaps even five years) from now. (See "The Days and Hours of the End Times'" - link in the article).  The biblical view, however, is fundamentally optimistic, not pessimistic. I am more concerned with the existence and overall viability of humanity, not the short-term or even long-term interest rates and economies.  I ask myself this very simple question: what will survive (continue to exist and be needed) in the new world in which the existing systems have perished. A conversation with a BlackRock trader zemgao.com/?p=15705