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Facebook is banning all ads promoting cryptocurrencies

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Re: Facebook is banning all ads promoting cryptocurrencies

#241

Post by wpietri »

moduspol wrote: post #87
wpietri wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key difference being that the intrinsic use of gold is proven by thousands of years of use and a current robust market in the $100 billion/year range [1], while the "intrinsic value" of Bitcoin has no historical track record and approximately $0 current demand. An important second difference is that creating a replacement for the intrinsic value of gold is somewhere between difficult and impossible, whereas it ap…

It seems unnecessarily reductive to claim that gold can have no valid alternatives, yet Bitcoin has no value because anyone can create an alternative. I can start trying to use aluminum to hold value. It has intrinsic value through valid non-currency applications. Being able to do so in no way lessens the value of gold, and the ability to do the same thing with virtually any other material does not mean gold's effect…

I didn't say "has no valid alternatives". I just said it's hard. Gold is a specific element with specific characteristics that make it uniquely valuable for jewelry, electronics, and other industrial uses.

Gold has been out of fashion for currencies for many decades, especially since Bretton Woods; despite that gold had continued to be valuable because it has practical use, which is what people generally mean by intrinsic value, and definitely what dr_win meant.

It's not impossible that tomorrow you will invent some aluminum alloy that is way better than gold for jewelry, although it's certainly unlikely. But it would be very easy for someone to start offering yet another pseudocurrency that allows for "interesting digital infrastructure", which is what dr_win claimed was Bitcoin's intrinsic value.

Gold's demand is large and stable and it's supply is constrained. Bitcoin's demand as digital infrastructure is both small and unproven, and the supply appears bounded only by the number of hucksters in the world and the bytes of storage that they hucksters can command. That means that for dr_win's theory of intrinsic value, Bitcoin's should tend toward zero.

Re: Facebook is banning all ads promoting cryptocurrencies

#242

Post by wpietri »

baddox wrote: post #137
wpietri wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key difference being that the intrinsic use of gold is proven by thousands of years of use and a current robust market in the $100 billion/year range [1], while the "intrinsic value" of Bitcoin has no historical track record and approximately $0 current demand. An important second difference is that creating a replacement for the intrinsic value of gold is somewhere between difficult and impossible, whereas it ap…

Your principle complaint seems to be a tautology: that a new technology has no track record before the date it was invented. People who routinely mock fanatical cryptocurrency proponents’ claims (e.g. “this is actually good news”) should look no further than this comment as an example of equally preposterous claims from cryptocurrency skeptics.

One, Bitcoin wasn't invented yesterday; it's 9 years old by this point. It definitely has a track record. Many technologies have demonstrated substantial use value by 9 years in.

Two, we're talking intrinsic value, which is a basically backward-looking concept.

Three, all I'm doing is pointing out the error in mr_win's claim that Bitcoin's intrinsic value is "exact equivalent to industrial use of gold as gold's intrinsic value", and is therefore presumably worth something.

So if you would like to grumble at somebody for suggesting that one should evaluate intrinsic value based on actual utility, please go bother him.

Re: Facebook is banning all ads promoting cryptocurrencies

#244

Post by dredmorbius »

stryk wrote: post #239
dredmorbius wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more that the apparent signal, whatever it is, is not the whole of reality. And often gives quite the mis-placed view of same. And if the name Edmund Burke means nothing to you, you've a whole universe of enlightenment to attend to.

Ah ha, Ok, so the ones who are most vocal and/or visible are, more often than not, not accurately representative of the as a whole. I think the Olde-English-y sound of the original quote threw me for a loop. In any case, I agree - that makes total sense.

Quite often not.

Attention is the ultimately rivalrous commodity, and it's very easily consumed. Where true significance is carried by what's hidden or indirect, this can be especially pernicious.

Re: Facebook is banning all ads promoting cryptocurrencies

#245

Post by olivermarks »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #183
mv4 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct, that would be a risk for them (especially for FB) because of how big they've become. Anecdote: in 2014, I registered an account on Twitter called "tweetcoin". I felt social networks would start developing their own currencies. I posted one comment, "exciting things in the works". I was promptly locked out of the account, and a new tweet appeared there (dated 2012!), stating "this is not your account.…

And oddly enough, it says the account was created in 2008. Very strange indeed.

https://twitter.com/jack/status/958743238512328704

Re: Facebook is banning all ads promoting cryptocurrencies

#246

Post by anderspitman »

untog wrote: post #91
mulmen wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get it. If people realize they don't want gold why would the price go up?

I think the implication is that the price will spike quickly, then collapse through the floor when people realise the true situation.

yeah sorry if that wasn't clear

Re: Facebook is banning all ads promoting cryptocurrencies

#247

Post by laughfactory »

wpietri wrote: post #53
dr_win wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intrinsic value of bitcoin tokens is the ability to use them to append a hash value into immutable eternal excel spreadsheet with no censorship possible. You can use this to prove some data existed at some point in time (proof of existence) or that some data was published (proof of publication). With these primitives you can build some interesting digital infrastructure (ledgers, smart contract platforms, etc.). That…

The key difference being that the intrinsic use of gold is proven by thousands of years of use and a current robust market in the $100 billion/year range [1], while the "intrinsic value" of Bitcoin has no historical track record and approximately $0 current demand. An important second difference is that creating a replacement for the intrinsic value of gold is somewhere between difficult and impossible, whereas it ap…

$0 demand? Are you kidding? If there was no demand then Bitcoin's price would be $0. It's not zero therefore demand is also not zero. This is basic economics. Come on, man.

No intrinsic value? How about how it is truly stored energy? It has a lot in common with gold. Just because it's digital doesn't make it's worthless. Lots of very valuable things are entirely digital these days.

Re: Facebook is banning all ads promoting cryptocurrencies

#248

Post by dang »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #139
ryankshaw wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love your idea of clicking on facebook ads just to see what would happen for a person that did happen to be in that cohort. Other things I have thought of that would be interesting to do this experiment with is multi-level-marketing BS, political ads catering to the opposite side of the isle, and "Preppers". I would find that much more interesting than my current facebook feed that just feeds me more of what I am a…

> I recently spent a week in Hawaii and listened exclusively to a local radio station the whole time. It occurred to me that my view of what people did for fun, or where they grocery shopped, or what issues were important to them, and generally "what the locals do" were largely determined by who happened to be paying that radio station to play their ads. And it was just an "ah-ha" reminder that in every group, cultur…

Can you please make your point in HN comments without being personally acerbic?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Facebook is banning all ads promoting cryptocurrencies

#249

Post by wpietri »

laughfactory wrote: post #247
wpietri wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key difference being that the intrinsic use of gold is proven by thousands of years of use and a current robust market in the $100 billion/year range [1], while the "intrinsic value" of Bitcoin has no historical track record and approximately $0 current demand. An important second difference is that creating a replacement for the intrinsic value of gold is somewhere between difficult and impossible, whereas it ap…

$0 demand? Are you kidding? If there was no demand then Bitcoin's price would be $0. It's not zero therefore demand is also not zero. This is basic economics. Come on, man. No intrinsic value? How about how it is truly stored energy? It has a lot in common with gold. Just because it's digital doesn't make it's worthless. Lots of very valuable things are entirely digital these days.

Read all the words, pal. We are not talking about "demand", we are talking about "intrinsic demand", by which we mean the non-currency need for the thing. The theory mr_win has about intrinsic value is not a bad one, but there is approximately $0 demand for the service he describes.

As an example, you can look at Bitcoin like digital Beanie Babies. The intrinsic value of a cute stuffed toy is, as any airport give shop can show you, a few bucks. The market price of Beanie Babies was for a time much higher due to limited issuance, energetic promotion, and a popular craze for them. The intrinsic demand did not change, so when the hype cycle ran out, price fell back toward intrinsic.

Bitcoin's intrinsic value is definitely not "stored energy", because you cannot get the energy back out. And it's not much like gold for reasons already described: gold has real, sustained intrinsic value. Bitcoin doesn't.

Re: Facebook is banning all ads promoting cryptocurrencies

#250

Post by thaumasiotes »

dang wrote: post #248
thaumasiotes wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I recently spent a week in Hawaii and listened exclusively to a local radio station the whole time. It occurred to me that my view of what people did for fun, or where they grocery shopped, or what issues were important to them, and generally "what the locals do" were largely determined by who happened to be paying that radio station to play their ads. And it was just an "ah-ha" reminder that in every group, cultur…

Can you please make your point in HN comments without being personally acerbic? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I may not be able to, without understanding why this one was apparently so offensive.

I provided two sentences. I'm assuming the second one was unobjectionable to just about everyone:

> Those advertisers weren't affecting your opinion of what your own culture was, they were affecting your opinion of a foreign culture.

The first one

> Maybe if you'd spent longer than a week there you'd have a more informed view of how one or more groups of locals really spent their time?

is overtly insulting inasmuch as it explicitly calls ryankshaw's view of local Hawaiian culture uninformed. But his comment is a story about himself in which he draws the moral that his view of local Hawaiian culture is uninformed. I don't see how my response can avoid referring to him personally, since the only content of his comment is a story about himself, or why it should avoid agreeing with his own assessment of his knowledge of Hawaiian culture.

Do you find the hypothetical

> Maybe the locals have a clearer view of "what the locals do" than tourists who have been there for a week do?

to be less acerbic or more in line with your guidelines?

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