111–120 of 128 posts
The article repeatedly quotes statements to the effect “this was supposed to show what a truly free market looks like. Instead, it’s a shitshow.” The word “instead” doesn’t belong there. Really.
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I feel like it's a parable about lofty libertarian ideals -- everything's peachy until there's large sums of money involved. Bitcoin is fixable but now there's a financial incentive for never fixing it.
I should google it but I'll just wonder out loud, how would libertarians use money anyway? Doesn't money need something to back it up, i.e. a central bank?
Is anyone else getting the same sense with Bitcoin as with Trump leading up to the election? Everywhere I go everyone has negative things to say, everyone is going on about how it's going to crash. They all seem like sensible arguments. But here we are, Bitcoin keeps following an exponential curve and Trump is president. The one thing I know for sure is there's an awfully noisy signal out there.
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You can't send $50M of gold halfway around the world for $3.
You can't send $50 million of bitcoin with only $3 in transaction fees either
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You can't send $50 million of bitcoin with only $3 in transaction fees either
Why not? The cost you pay is proportional with your transaction size in bytes, not the amount of bitcoins you're sending. So it depends on how many inputs and outputs you're using, not the quantity you're moving.
[1] assuming https://estimatefee.com/ is correct. Based on the transactions of some of my friends it seems pretty accureate though
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OK, Bitcoin-backed debit cards.
Who cares about what they're backed with? If it's not bitcoin, then you don't get the benefits of bitcoin. The only difference between a normal debit card and a bitcoin-backed debit card is that the bitcoin backing layer is more expensive than the usual one.
And that was arguably a key goal for Bitcoin. It came up in the shadow of ecash and e-gold. Although it's not as decentralized as many expected, it's also far less vulnerable to government takedown than ecash and e-gold were. But sadly, it's no less vulnerable to speculation than any other small currency has been.
Is anyone else getting the same sense with Bitcoin as with Trump leading up to the election? Everywhere I go everyone has negative things to say, everyone is going on about how it's going to crash. They all seem like sensible arguments. But here we are, Bitcoin keeps following an exponential curve and Trump is president. The one thing I know for sure is there's an awfully noisy signal out there.
Bitcoin seems like just another medium of exchange. Almost all the properties of bitcoin - decentralization, anonymity, worldwide acceptance - apply equally well to gold bullion. The one additional property bitcoin had was convenience. But as transaction costs increase this is becoming less true. Given the above, why would anyone expect bitcoin to behave differently than physical gold in the real world? The world of…
I don't get how there's much anonymity with gold. I mean, you need to ship it.
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You can't really create debt with money that you don't have, as the banks do. You can't make 1000$ appear on my bank account and say " you now have a debt of 1000$ to me". You need to give me physical money. But bank can create this money they don't have.
The bank isn't creating that money. When you deposit $1000 in a bank account, you lose that $1000 and gain 1000 FunnyMonies instead. The bank can then turn around and give that $1000 to someone else. At the end of the day, there's only $1000 running around. What makes it look different is that we treat 1000 FunnyMonies as if it were $1000. So instead of saying "there's $1000 and 1000 FunnyMonies" we say "there's $200…
I think it can lend it up to 10 times the money it has in its vault (not sure about the exact amount)
The high transaction fees are forcing Bitcoin in this direction. If buying a hamburger cost you $30 in fees on top of the $6 burger, you'd stop using dollars for everyday purchases, too. Seems we're stuck in this situation so long as the block size remains where it is. That artificially reduces the supply of transactions, forcing the price up. No matter how many miners there are competing for those transaction fees,…
No one who owns BTC wants it used for transactions. They want it to be an investment and go up forever, so they'll never go with a fork that allows it. It's like home owners in a neighborhood locking out new construction so their own homes raise in value.
Actually, I think that people would race to buy BTC before any fork, in order to get free money. (that explains why BCH has that volume/market)