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Bitcoin hits $10,000

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Re: Bitcoin hits $10,000

#381

Post by wallace_f »

zjaffee wrote: post #380
wallace_f wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made a mistake, but this is the problem with online comments -- brevity leads to necessary oversimplification. Gadaffi was trying to oust the type of central bank they had been forced to have in Libya. I will explain. Admittedly this is pretty far out in the realm of Wrongthink. Just look at Investopedia or an econ text book, and what they say about the question: does the Fed print money. They say no[1]. This is ut…

Sorry the comment came off harsh, but this particular piece of fake news is spread heavily among popular youtube channels and other social media pages that are ordinarily deeply intellectual and thought provoking. Now, while I understand why a lot of people like the idea of a gold standard, or really holding static assets like gold or bitcoin themselves (for microeconomic reasons), to suggest that debt based central…

>is spread heavily among popular youtube channels and other social media pages that are ordinarily deeply intellectual and thought provoking.

You should reconsider investigating this idea again.

The rest of your comment argues against deflation and commodity-money which is a straw man: I'm not arguing for that. I'm arguing for sound money controlled by our government, not international banking cartels that print money to give it to the banks (you could replace the Fed with a k-percent rule algorithm, 100% transparency, and 100% reserve banking).

Unfortunately, we've been riding on greater fools for so long that whatever generation is forced to do this is going to feel some financial hardship.

Re: Bitcoin hits $10,000

#382

Post by placeybordeaux »

bb88 wrote: post #277
ErikAugust wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say 21M "cryptocoins" but you couldn't, however, create 21M BTC arbitrarily. As long as that number stays the same (it isn't completely immutable) then BTC has real scarcity - making it a store of value, like gold. Throw in some additional properties that BTC has that gold does not, and an argument can be made that BTC is at least a decent value store. Even at $100,000/BTC, Bitcoin would still have a ~1/5th of th…

What exactly is a BTC? BTC is man made, and depends upon computers and software. And the people who control the software can change their minds, if they so choose. So what a BTC is now, may not be what it is later, including its scarcity. See also the ETH and BTC forks. Gold on the other hand exists naturally in nature, and doesn't change based upon someone else's whim. So no, BTC is not like gold.

If we decide to say that iron is gold as well then we have created more gold on our whim.

Bitcoin is defined as having only 21 Million tokens in supply. Until the majority of people change their belief in that it will have that many.

Re: Bitcoin hits $10,000

#383

Post by placeybordeaux »

bluetwo wrote: post #84
wintom wrote: post #17

“Rosenstreich at online trading firm Swissquote said bitcoin’s surge harks to the surprises of the U.K. referendum on European Union membership and President Trump’s election. “We have underestimated the populist movements,” he said. “There is growing unease on how central banks and governments are managing fiat currencies. Ordinary people globally understand why a decentralized asset is the ultimate safe haven.”” Th…

Errrrr.... Bitcoin is a fiat currency, so be careful with your generalization. And whose job is it to investigate bitcoin fraud and theft? No one.

By bitcoin fraud do you mean frauds that are 'settled' in bitcoin or counterfeiting?

The protocol stops counterfeiting, the miners stop individuals from failing to fulfill a payment (i.e. stops double spends) and theft is governed by whatever jurisdiction the crime happens in.

The US government does not prosecute thefts of USD in other countries.

Re: Bitcoin hits $10,000

#384

Post by placeybordeaux »

StudentStuff wrote: post #91
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did you do this? None of the local businesses (Bellevue WA) take bitcoin that I can tell, and it is populated by lots of techies.

Go to Cap Hill if you want to spend BTC, the east side is pretty well devoid of establishments that take bitcoin.

What places take BTC in caphill?

Re: Bitcoin hits $10,000

#385

Post by Fjolsvith »

gbear605 wrote: post #378
Fjolsvith wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Suppose a solar flare destroyed all existing digital equipment. Suppose someone invents a way to turn lead into gold?

One of these things is not like the other!

In their absurdity they are. Oh, and in the way that the two events would wipe out the function of a store of value for bitcoin and gold, respectively.

Re: Bitcoin hits $10,000

#386

Post by ric2b »

vilmosi wrote: post #374
ric2b wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have trust that the Euro will retain its value You must feel very betrayed every year when you look at the inflation rate and the price increases...

The euro zone had around 1.5% inflation this year, what are you talking about?

How is that retaining it's value? That's nearly 10% gone after 7 years.

And that's assuming 1.5%, some years are worse.

Re: Bitcoin hits $10,000

#387

Post by bb88 »

placeybordeaux wrote: post #382
bb88 wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly is a BTC? BTC is man made, and depends upon computers and software. And the people who control the software can change their minds, if they so choose. So what a BTC is now, may not be what it is later, including its scarcity. See also the ETH and BTC forks. Gold on the other hand exists naturally in nature, and doesn't change based upon someone else's whim. So no, BTC is not like gold.

If we decide to say that iron is gold as well then we have created more gold on our whim. Bitcoin is defined as having only 21 Million tokens in supply. Until the majority of people change their belief in that it will have that many.

The idea of what BTC is controlled by a dev core of several thousand developers.

The idea of what Gold is is controlled by 6 billion people.

Re: Bitcoin hits $10,000

#388

Post by bb88 »

keymone wrote: post #286
bb88 wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly is a BTC? BTC is man made, and depends upon computers and software. And the people who control the software can change their minds, if they so choose. So what a BTC is now, may not be what it is later, including its scarcity. See also the ETH and BTC forks. Gold on the other hand exists naturally in nature, and doesn't change based upon someone else's whim. So no, BTC is not like gold.

BTC is what the distributed consensus says BTC is. You can’t fake that without pouring billions into building up mining infrastructure to organize a 51% attack and even then the distributed consensus will simply fork around your amazing achievement of successfully doing a single double spend? So yeah, BTC is definitely not like gold, it’s way better.

Well, you can't double spend gold. You either have it or your don't. And until the matter replicators come into existence, nobody can fork gold.

As to your argument for the 51%, say, Visa comes out with a fork called VisaCoin(TM) that allows one to use a visa card to make transactions directly from VisaCoin (which is a BTC fork).

So that was two to ten people, maybe and what an ad slogan?

And here's the ad slogan: "When you go to the Fog City Diner in San Francisco, take your visa card, because they don't take BTC!"

Re: Bitcoin hits $10,000

#389

Post by bb88 »

keymone wrote: post #350
orcasauce wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is BTC better than gold? What can I do with a bitcoin? It's just data. It's still a fiat currency. Gold is specifically not a fiat currency because it has real world applications. I will agree cryptocurrencies are better than other forms of fiat currency in that there is a definitive quantity, similar to a non-fiat currency, but it's intrinsic value is in the trust others will accept it in exchange for something…

Bitcoin is better than gold because in virtually all aspects - it’s scarce by design, not by our belief in inability to find more of it on this planet or some asteroid - it’s mobile, transporting gold is pain in the ass - it’s secure, securing a little piece of paper is easier than deposit of gold - it’s divisible, sividing gold into nanograms is not practical - it has transaction platform built in As for practical a…

This kind of gets into some philosophical points, so I'll take them 1 by 1.

> it’s scarce by design, not by our belief in inability to find more of it on this planet or some asteroid

Scarcity is ironically one of the reasons gold is treasured. It's a natural scarcity not a man made scarcity.

> it’s mobile, transporting gold is pain in the ass.

Most gold exchanges don't require you to physically take gold home with you. It's stored in a vault and traded like any other security.

> it’s secure, securing a little piece of paper is easier than deposit of gold

BTC is not a piece of paper, and requires that only one person not be smart enough to break the BTC encryption model.

Gold can be stolen, but not all of it at once. But apparently BTC can be stolen too.

> it’s divisible, dividing gold into nanograms is not practical

Today's cost of gold to grams is $40.17. Practically speaking, we don't need nanograms to get to penny scale. A centigram of gold is good enough.

> it has a transaction model built in.

I hand you an ounce of gold. You give me $1000 dollars or something else in value that I want. That transaction method has been trusted for eons now.

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