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Bitcoin Is an Escapist Safe Haven

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Re: Bitcoin Is an Escapist Safe Haven

#71

Post by mdpopescu »

MarcusBrutus wrote: post #9

Bitcoin fails to satisfactorily answer von Mises' regression theorem. It also has no scarcity since it can face competition by an infinite number of similar conceivable algorithms / block-chains / virtual currencies that offer much the same features, regardless of how hard its own mining gets. Not to mention that once it is perceived as more than just a nuisance by some major government it will be shut down in a hear…

I recommend you read some Jeff Tucker; he also started from the same position but changed his mind later on. I'm not saying he's right, to be honest I have yet to care about Bitcoin, but he is an example of an Austrian economist who favors it.

Re: Bitcoin Is an Escapist Safe Haven

#72

Post by tlrobinson »

bduerst wrote: post #64
tlrobinson wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to settle every transaction on the blockchain itself. See https://lightning.network/

Sidechains are not a workaround, even ignoring that they're centralized and marketed as such. Sidechains only solve the problem of user scalability, not volume scalability, because they still require the Bitcoin network to verify. For example, on a side chain it would take seconds to make 10,000,000 transactions between 2 people, but making 2 transactions between 10,000,000 people would take over a month.

Sidechains and Lightning Network are not the same thing.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Lightning_Network

https://lightning.network/

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/greg-maxwell-lightning-...

It's basically a network of "payment channels" you can route instantaneous off-chain payments over, which occasionally settle on the blockchain. And you don't need to trust anyone in the network with your funds.

Re: Bitcoin Is an Escapist Safe Haven

#73

Post by dwaltrip »

Animats wrote: post #52

Bitcoin is basically a way to get money out of China. 97% of the trading is in yuan, as the article points out. All other uses are down in the noise.

Those numbers are fairly misleading.The Chinese exchanges volumes are somewhat fabricated. Check out the data on bitcoinity.org [1], which reports that 9.3 million BTC, or 98% of worldwide volume, were traded on Chinese exchanges in the past 24 hours. That would be 58% of all bitcoins currently in existence, traded on Chinese exchanges, in a single day.

Clearly, that is not what is happening. My understanding is that these numbers are the result of zero fees, enabling self-trading (same person on both sides) to create false market signals, as well as rapid fire back and forth trading strategies. There is also some speculation that some Chinese exchanges directly manipulate the volume data in one way or another.

I'm not sure exactly what the story is. And China may still very well be leading this current price wave. However, those volume numbers are very suspicious and should be taken with a large grain of salt.

[1] http://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/volume/24h?c=c&r=hour&t=b...

Update: In the past 15 minutes, while I finished writing this post, an additional 200k BTC were supposedly traded on Chinese exchanges. That would be approximately $250 million of trades at current prices, which is ridiculous.

Re: Bitcoin Is an Escapist Safe Haven

#74

Post by benchaney »

zanny wrote: post #33

> Its decentralized nature means it's not part of any system That... isn't true. The bitcoin blockchain is distributed, but the last two years have functionally proven that bitcoin core IS bitcoin, and that implementation (most of whoms developers are employed by Blockstream) is centralized control by a corporate entity. They can change what they want about bitcoin, and even after they force controversial tech alread…

Segwit requires 95% miner support to pass. It isn't a good example of Blockstream having centralized control. I don't know as much about RBF adoption.

Re: Bitcoin Is an Escapist Safe Haven

#75

Post by Bombthecat »

zanny wrote: post #33

> Its decentralized nature means it's not part of any system That... isn't true. The bitcoin blockchain is distributed, but the last two years have functionally proven that bitcoin core IS bitcoin, and that implementation (most of whoms developers are employed by Blockstream) is centralized control by a corporate entity. They can change what they want about bitcoin, and even after they force controversial tech alread…

I for one, never thought bitcoins are something to free people or so. It always was and is something for big corps and people with a lot of money and states to cut costs and taxes.

Whoever talked about freedom was delusional.

Re: Bitcoin Is an Escapist Safe Haven

#77

Post by stale2002 »

ubernostrum wrote: post #50
stale2002 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not if they don't know that you own an account.

The IRS got Switzerland to open up previously-confidential banking records. You think they're not going to find a way to identify Bitcoin users? "It's on the internet , that makes it untraceable" is magical thinking that does not survive contact with sufficiently dedicated real-world agencies.

The IRS got people to give up the identities of other people.

With bitcoin, if you take the right precautions, it is impossible for anyone to know which account is yours.

It is a TECHNICAL solution. It doesn't matter how many people the IRS threaten.

Can the US government tell everyone in the world to think of a random number, then these citizens don't tell anybody what number they chose, and then can the government arrest everyone who chooses the number 10? No, it cannot do this.

And if it can't do that, then it can't arrest all the bitcoin owners.

Re: Bitcoin Is an Escapist Safe Haven

#78

Post by stale2002 »

tlrobinson wrote: post #57
stale2002 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Litecoin's capacity is still nothing compared to VISA or Mastercard. The question is not whether a crytocurrency can do 4X. The question is whether it can do 1,000X or more.

You don't need to settle every transaction on the blockchain itself. See https://lightning.network/

Exactly, that is one of the "clever solutions" that I was referencing.

Re: Bitcoin Is an Escapist Safe Haven

#79

Post by kobeya »

zanny wrote: post #33

> Its decentralized nature means it's not part of any system That... isn't true. The bitcoin blockchain is distributed, but the last two years have functionally proven that bitcoin core IS bitcoin, and that implementation (most of whoms developers are employed by Blockstream) is centralized control by a corporate entity. They can change what they want about bitcoin, and even after they force controversial tech alread…

> and that implementation (most of whoms developers are employed by Blockstream) is centralized control by a corporate entity.

This is false. The majority of development, measured by commits or lines of code or people or whatever is NOT Blockstream. If anyone holds that honor, MIT does, as the release manager, wallet manager, and network protocol manager all work for MIT DCI, and they plus Chaincode Labs combined have more contributions than Blockstream, to say nothing of the other developers.

I'm afraid you've been taken in by a smear campaign.

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