HN is like a huge echo chamber and a bitcoin basher. Every single time the same arguments (bitcoin is a currency or store of value), the same questions (should I invest?) and the same reasons for talking oneself out of going into it. Even when bitcoin gets to a half a million value people will still be saying oh it’ll crash any time now, bitcoin is useless, can’t trust bitcoin because it’s not backed by US economy or the government. And you know what, keep living in your bubble because those that capitalize on the shift won’t have to say I told you so. I wholeheartedly agree on many arguments against bitcoin but we have to agree that we are seeing something unprecedented happen and nobody really knows what they are talking about 100%.
Bitcoin Surges Past $7,000 to Extend Record Rally
411–420 of 437 posts
Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $7,000 to Extend Record Rally
#412Earlier quoted context omitted.
> a single non-illegal use case that isn't better served by a traditional, centralized database You know how PayPal blocked payments to Wikileaks? (Back when it wasn't yet obviously evil.) That's what traditional, centralized databases can do for you. Note that donations to Wikileaks weren't illegal, governments were just efficient in pressuring PayPal into enforcing rules that didn't even exist officially . Also, tr…
> the possibility of near-instantaneous money transfers. Maybe the possibility . In actual fact, don't bitcoin transaction confirmations sometimes take >24 hours?
I can even make a bitcoin tx take more than a month by not attaching any tx fee to it.
Attach a higher fee, and it will get cleared in 10 mins, attach a lower fee, and it would take time.
Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $7,000 to Extend Record Rally
#413Earlier quoted context omitted.
By your definition, this still leaves FX trading as a "pyramid scheme". Trading fiat for fiat doesn't "put up capital to create something".
In FX trading people are putting up capital to create exchange ratios, which is information. Right now people are putting up capital to determine how much coin issued by a central bank with a "deflationary" bias written in code and run and administered by a collective (i.e., Bitcoin) is worth vis-à-vis USD. Something is most definitely being created.
You seem to be arguing that trading fiat↔fiat is comparable to trading fiat↔BTC. In which case I agree. That's the point I was making.
Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $7,000 to Extend Record Rally
#414Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're holding two currencies, one loses about 2.5% of its value a year, the other gains about 1500% (some huge factor) of its value in that same period. Which one do you purchase the coffee with? The one that's losing value as you hold it, or the one that's going gangbusters?
I'd absolutely, without hesitation, dump the volatile one. If it can appreciate by 15 times in a year, then, clearly it can fall to a 15th of its value just the same. I need to know that I can pay my mortgage and buy food at the end of the week, so stability is paramount.
Caveat: you are paid in the one that depreciates in value, and have to find other means to acquire the one that is volatile.
Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $7,000 to Extend Record Rally
#415Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why were you throwing the term around before you knew what it was? Again, you left out MANY aspects of pyramid schemes--the ones hardest to twist into fitting bitcoin. And you glossed right over this: the necessity of a purposefully fraudulent bad actor to redistribute the new investors' "investments" to old investors. >So should the price collapse, the old generation still stands to make massive profits, at the expe…
I knew what it was, but looking it up helped ensure my argument was complete. I know what a Volvo P1800 is, but if I saw one on the street, I'd still compare it to a picture on my phone to be certain. > And you glossed right over this: the necessity of a purposefully fraudulent bad actor to redistribute the new investors' "investments" to old investors. I did not, but here: Any person who currently own BTC, and publi…
You still skipped over both points. There is no central org which redistributes income. This alone disqualifies it as a pyramid.
Market manipulation is not specific enough to qualify as a pyramid. Pyramids have a central org that promises rewards for recruiting; it's not an abstract idea like "make comments on the internet and maybe someone will believe you."
You also left out many qualifying factors, again because they plainly don't fit Bitcoin or your argument.
If you'd like to deride Bitcoin, you'd do better to call it a generic term like "scam." It weakens your argument to call it something specific like a pyramid scheme, which actually has a real definition.
Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $7,000 to Extend Record Rally
#416I consider myself pretty tech-savvy, but I'm still completely lost as to whether Bitcoin is basically a pyramid scheme set to crash massively, or something huge that will continue climbing. I probably should've taken the time to mine some back when my friends were doing it and tried convincing me too. Ah well. (Queue heated comments from both sides. Discussing bitcoin is like bringing up religion AND politics at the…
There's no pyramid scheme. It's a hyped asset, to say the least, but there's no pyramid. Like a hyped startup, it doesn't do much yet, but it is promising, so people buy it. It may be "worth" much or zero in the end, it all depends on the final outcomes. It's also the easiest/cheapest/most open asset to trade (depending on where you trade). In the long term, Bitcoin can be seen as a safe heaven in case of economic ch…
Just wanted to echo your sentiment about banking on the go. I’m sad to say that the world is still not very friendly to borderless people. We have to jump through hoops and pay unnecessary fees just to do basic of tasks. Somehow a vast majority of people I deal with have a hard time grasping that you can work on the go or from home and that the cookie cutter 9-5 lifestyle is not the only lifestyle out there.
Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $7,000 to Extend Record Rally
#417Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's no pyramid scheme. It's a hyped asset, to say the least, but there's no pyramid. Like a hyped startup, it doesn't do much yet, but it is promising, so people buy it. It may be "worth" much or zero in the end, it all depends on the final outcomes. It's also the easiest/cheapest/most open asset to trade (depending on where you trade). In the long term, Bitcoin can be seen as a safe heaven in case of economic ch…
I think most of the people putting larger checks into Bitcoin are betting that it will become a store of value asset. Going from memory, a recent Bloomberg article called Bitcoin: "Gold for millennials". Or, similarly, Peter Thiel said recently [1]: "it's like a reserve form of money, it's like gold, and it's just a store of value. You don't need to use it to make payments." [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/26/bitcoi…
That’s why I got into bitcoin. It has far more potential as a global vault for store of value than a currency. I don’t expect it to ever function as efficient currency and don’t think that it really needs to given other crypto currency developments.
Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $7,000 to Extend Record Rally
#418Earlier quoted context omitted.
A pyramid scheme involves some form of active (fraudulent) recruitment to help increase the price of the asset. Bitcoin doesn't have this. From what you described above, every single speculative/overinflated asset would be a pyramid scheme. That's not the case.
It is a bit of a fraud to claim bitcoin can ever replace fiat currencies, though. Its deflationary, has a fixed coin limit, is incredibly centralized, and its tx rate is awful and costs a ton to move any of it around the chain. The only value in bitcoin is in how much it exchanges for at this point, and that is definitionally a pyramid scheme, because current buy-ins need more adoption to drive the price up so they p…
Bitcoin is highly divisible so I think your point regarding it being fixed is unjustified.
Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $7,000 to Extend Record Rally
#419Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not really....not at these rates anyways. There isn’t much difference between putting your money in the bank or under your mattress, well, except for convenience and safety issues.
Yes, it is. If you keep the money physically it yields exactly zero and nobody is using it. If you lend the money (to a bank or someone else) you get some interest (or not, in some countries interest rates are negative) AND there is someone else who can use that money. Bank deposits are fundamentally different from “hoarding” gold or bitcoins.
Sure, but the banks don’t thank us much for the pleasure. Money, gold, bitcoins aren’t themselves stores of value, merely IOUs. To really store value (I.e. production), you need things like grain silos.
Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $7,000 to Extend Record Rally
#420Notice how almost all news of Bitcoin now are about its price. Bitcoin used to be exciting in both technical and economical aspects, but has now become just a store of value entirely driven by speculation. Other technically superior cryptocurrencies (e.g. Monero, Ethereum) have replaced most of its usecases, boasting much faster and cheaper transactions and real anonymity in the case of Monero. Bitcoin takes more tha…
Bitcoin's value is given by the trust people put in it. Just like with the fiat currencies as a matter of fact, because I don't know of any of them to be backed by anything else than trust. Of course, the US dollar has the whole US economy and the biggest army in the world as its plus, but it also has its minuses: the US treasury can and does print as many as it wants, in the detriment of ALL USD holders. Bitcoin's p…
No this isn't correct. The government imbues value in their fiat currency by insisting you pay your taxes in it. You may think bitcoin is the best thing ever for many reasons. But if you live in the USA you gotta get USD to pay your taxes or they are going to put you in jail.
We see this globally with the huge effort the USA puts into keeping oil priced / settled in USD. It matters.
USD has a store of value because if I hold USD I know the US govt is going to make people hand over a portion of their labour in taxes which keeps USD demand up.