71–80 of 131 posts
Don’t you all think insider trading will be significantly easier with crypto? Why is there little talk about this?
Front running and pump & dump are pretty easy currently. That's not a fundamental thing though. More of a fact that the cryptocurrency environments, especially exchanges, tend to be exceptionally opaque. Somewhat ironically.
I was hoping to read his thoughts on Bitcoins market cap of about 200 Billion Dollar. I have the theory, that the value of a cryptocurrency is equal to the sum of transaction fees people will spend in the future, discounted for inflation. Currently Bitcoin users pay about $5m per day on transaction fees. That is $1.82B per year. At this rate, it would take 109 years to reach those $200B. So by that logic, the market…
> I have the theory, that the value of a cryptocurrency is equal to the sum of transaction fees people will spend in the future, discounted for inflation. How does that follow, at all? Is the total value of all the USD in the world equivalent to the total transaction fees paid on USD in the future, discounted for inflation?
This utopian streak running through the crypto community is what convinces me most that it’s going to be a heartbreaker. > But Hayek used the notion of distributed knowledge. Well, it looks like we do not even need that thing called knowledge for things to work well. Nor do we need individual rationality. All we need is structure. Irrational exuberance is a good thing! And while these ideologues are busy demonizing t…
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There is a distinct difference between some pump and dump strategy and a central bank printing a ton of currency. One has a temporary effect on supply and demand for the instrument in question, the other has a permanent effect.
>the other has a permanent effect This is not really accurate. There are of course many ways both fiscal and monetary for policymakers to "tighten the screws", as it were. They just haven't chosen to do so in recent years.
Perhaps a better way to describe it is that a pump and dump strategy has a transient effect on the value of the asset in question, whereas a central bank increasing the money supply has a persistent effect on the value of the currency in question.
This utopian streak running through the crypto community is what convinces me most that it’s going to be a heartbreaker. > But Hayek used the notion of distributed knowledge. Well, it looks like we do not even need that thing called knowledge for things to work well. Nor do we need individual rationality. All we need is structure. Irrational exuberance is a good thing! And while these ideologues are busy demonizing t…
I feel like you could say the exact same thing about democracy
Also relevant, there are no functioning democracies in the world today. There are a bunch of republics and parliaments and representative democracies and such, but without exception they empower some relatively small central institution to make broad, sweeping decisions on behalf of the nation.
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I see many people complaining about the banking system (often for a good reason) and mention cryptocurrencies as an alternative but I'm not sure I see it. Take your anecdote for instance, what would be the equivalent in the crypto world? If you actually need to deposit fiat you'll have to use an exchange and it's basically the same problem (good luck getting an exchange to accept $250 in cash). Of course the whole th…
I think the notion of banking won't go away, but today's concept of a bank will: no more physical locations, ATMs, wire-transfers that cost $30, etc. Maybe opening an account will be as easy as getting an email address (at least for the user anyways).
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I'm legitimately interested in cryptocurrency; I think it's a really cool idea. So what I'm hoping for is that everything goes as horribly wrong as possible, the price tanks, everyone's dreams are smashed, and all the bullshit takes disappear. At that point, the people who are interested in building something worthwhile will be the only ones who remain, and we can work in peace.
Is there an altcoin which is indefinitely and exponentionally inflationary? Such a coin would not have the gold-rush/ponzi characteristics which bitcoin has, and there wouldn't be a such huge incentive to mine new coins so hopefully it would avoid the incredibly wasteful mining arms race. But no one would get rich quick, so it would probably never take off in the first place.
Right now we're seeing the tip of the iceberg of potential cryptocurrencies. Pretty much only token-based (ie. non-ledger) based currencies, where we need global BFT consensus to track the current position of every single coin. This is crazy. And, as it turns out, unnecessary (see: Holochain).
When the iceberg capsizes (as Git capsized the CASE industry), globally consistent ledger-based value-stable currencies based on peer-to-peer co-signed personal blockchains will supplant these unnecessary globally consistent token based ... things. (Do I really care that you just slid a nickel across the table to someone? Nope). Same with crazy Turing-complete globally consistent VMs implementing Smart Contract languages. Not necessary.
You are correct -- value-stable currencies won't have anyone getting rich quick. But, when every sub-saharan goat herder and neighbourhood kid with a collection of trading cards can independently monetize his/her wealth into a value-stable currency, we'll see the face ripped off of the global Fiat monetary systems...
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There are plenty of local services for you to exchange cash for BTC. Yes, very big exchange rate, but you can find these easily enough.
I get charged in the US for using a non-BoA ATM by both banks for a total charge of $5 to $6. I would consider that a big fee if you are taking out $100 USD. BoA charges me a fee to send my landlord money even if it is a 3 business day period of $10. I lived overseas for 8 years, and you could move money between banks, send a friend lunch money right after lunch with no fee, pay your gas or electric bill at a 24/7 co…
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I honestly hope the utopian dream is smashed in the cryptocurrency community. It's not the kind of "utopia" I want to be a part of. I like the technical ideas behind cryptocurrency, but the terrible political views are off-putting.
While claiming the principles of Liberty for yourself (deciding what kind of "utopia" you want to be part of), would you deny that choice to others? This is perhaps what separates libertarians from liberals, conservatives, socialists, etc.: we simply do not deny others the liberty we claim for ourselves. If a monetary system that cannot be debased/controlled by government is available, does that not allow you to elec…
Oh cut the self-aggrandizing horse-shit. Libertarianism is 100% about denying others liberty while taking as much as you can for yourself.
> If a monetary system that cannot be debased/controlled by government is available, does that not allow you to elect to create and/or join a community of similar beliefs? Or, would you prefer that I (or someone else) be able to gain control of your government, and then choose to make it (financially) impossible for you to choose your associations and/or behaviors?
If you are under the impression that somehow cryptocurrency can't be controlled by governments, you're in for a bad time.
> Or, perhaps: does your "utopia" require others to fund it, in order for it to work? This is, unfortunately, the case with most people's personal beliefs. They require the non-consensual forced effort of others to succeed
There is no utopia. It's a naive pipe dream. Please don't project straw men onto me.
Sadly, NNT gets a key detail wrong: Bitcoin isn't controlled by its users, it's controlled by the miners.
And yet ultimately the users can move to a fork if they are unhappy. To wit: Bitcoin Cash, which is the true bitcoin. (With Bitcoin Cash, Nassim's coffeeshop transaction would indeed be possible, and without needing to wait for 10+ minutes, contrary to popular belief.)