However, I am trying hard not to, with your claim that shortwave could support $1M BTC by 2021.

I did not make that claim. I was refuting the oft-cited notion that Bitcoin could be totally destroyed by shutting down the Internet and power grid. Which is essentially implied by where you were headed with that line of argument.

If the entire Internet and power grid was shut down, I suppose the priorities of many people would rapidly shift to survival and away from financial assets.

Shutting down the Internet and power grid only in the USA would perhaps propel Bitcoin to $10+ million, because the rest of the world’s grid would be functioning. And there would be a loss in confidence in government (massive global deflation and thus a Minsky Moment) and a shift to non-fiat assets worldwide.

My overall point is that just because in theory some insurgents could temporarily disable some significant portion of the grid in one country at a time, is really just nothing but scare mongering and not really in touch with the reality of the resilient redundancy throughout the world.

When people start to resort to those sort of arguments insinuating that 32 men armed with box cutters could send humanity back into the Stone Age, I begin to lose interest in the discussion. Again not to put words in your mouth either. I just have dealt with these sort of arguments from others before and I think they are loony and completely ignorant of reality.

Diesel and propane fueled generators are a thing. They probably even stock them at Lowes and Home Depot. Large propane storage tanks are a thing. Some farms have them.

Edit: earlier in the discussion you pointed out the difficulty of predicting with near total accuracy left you vulnerable.

Predicting exactly when Bitcoin goes to a new ATH is fraught with potential chaos, even though I do expect it before May 14, 2020. If not I will reaccess. But I do not really need to diversify, because the likelihood of Bitcoin going below $6k before it reaches a new ATH is roughly between epsilon and nil. Diversification is the way to lose relative wealth, because it means one does not know enough about what they are investing in to assign risk versus reward.

There is no other major, liquid asset on the planet that has the potential for price price appreciation any where near that of Bitcoin in 2020. I would be foolish to diversify investments given the holistic information I have collected. Of course one should have their living expenses and living situation secured before speculating on investments, which is a form of diversification.

Note I do think there is a huge risk of not being able to sell Bitcoin after the halving even if the price is extremely high. So I am trying to thread the needle of selling before the posited SegWit attack and at a high enough price. I have to wait to access if those objectives are achieved.

I have learned a great deal from our discussion, and looking into the links provided.

I think the problem is that you lack my holistic understanding of the cryptocosm (presumably including domain specific technological knowledge). I see huge risk and huge potential rewards, and I see markers to look for along the way to make decisions about how to navigate the risks.

It goes far beyond what I have summarized in this comment trail.

In summary of our entire discussion, information is a hedge against chaos.

That does not mean risk-free. You are correct there are risks in everything. You are incorrect if you are implying that information is useless.

I am confident that Taleb would agree with me that black swans are what happens to antifragile systems, because by definition of antifragile they’re systemically ignoring relevant information. Taleb did once respond to my email in 2013. We can shine light on black swans if we have incorporated all of the relevant information. You are correct that we might not know if we have incorporated all the relevant information. Yet surely I have scoured every nook and cranny for information that applies to the sector we are discussing here.

Update: note my follow-up blog Bitcoin’s Whiplash Bear Trap

Update: someone emailed me about my newly coined aphorism for summarizing the principle of the hidden order in “deterministic” chaos:

[…] information is a hedge against chaos

Good T-shirt slogan! Like it.