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The Wealthy Are Hoarding $10B of Bitcoin in Bunkers

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Re: The Wealthy Are Hoarding $10B of Bitcoin in Bunkers

#91

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

zeth___ wrote: post #87
mkirklions wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speak for yourself. I use bitcoin all the time for payments. Peer to peer using coinbase(email) for free and instant to friends. Shift card for free and instant at merchants. Bitcoin is beyond blockchain, companies have built products to trade BTC instantly, free, using the infrastructure already existing. The transaction time 'problem' doesnt really exist if you are into crypto, you know how to use it. And I dont tr…

I am curious, how were you doing any of these things 4 months ago when the average transaction fee was $40?

Coinbase transactions are done 'off-chain'.

Re: The Wealthy Are Hoarding $10B of Bitcoin in Bunkers

#93

Post by pavlov »

wyldfire wrote: post #40
pavlov wrote: post #22

According to its proponents, Bitcoin is digital gold. (Interestingly it’s not an “electronic currency” anymore even though that was the original title of the 2008 whitepaper. I suppose Lightning Network or something is supposed to fix that with new transaction layers backed by the Bitcoin gold.) One aspect of gold’s historical value is that it’s traditionally recognized even in societies in collapse. I’ve never under…

> Or is the idea that Bitcoin will be valuable again when the wealthy finally crawl out of their New Zealand bunkers and reestablish the financial system? The idea is that the transactions are irreversible and you cannot rely on any number of police officers or judges to fix a theft. The bunkers are for security's sake, not preserving-wealth-in-an-apocalype's sake.

The police officers and judges can put you in jail, which is generally worse than having your assets confiscated. I’m not sure how Bitcoin helps.

What I’m trying to understand is how Bitcoin advocates’ promise of it being a store of value independent from governments can be valid when the system depends on extremely sophisticated infrastructure that was built and enabled by governments.

Re: The Wealthy Are Hoarding $10B of Bitcoin in Bunkers

#95

Post by zeth___ »

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #91
zeth___ wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious, how were you doing any of these things 4 months ago when the average transaction fee was $40?

Coinbase transactions are done 'off-chain'.

So the decentralized solution to a centralized banking system needs a centralized totally not a banking system to work?

Re: The Wealthy Are Hoarding $10B of Bitcoin in Bunkers

#96

Post by algo646464 »

mkirklions wrote: post #74
Balero wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin has no inflation, there are only a given number of total bitcoins in existence, which many (myself included) would argue makes it a poor currency.

> there are only a given number of total bitcoins in existence, which many (myself included) would argue makes it a poor currency. I have always question who says this. What makes you think deflation would be bad? My conspiracy is that governments require inflation to print themselves out of bad policy. Without government abilities to do this, the government performs poorly. Common citizens do not lose 2-4% of their…

A simple argument is as follows.

Without inflation, i.e. fixed money supply, it would be impossible for a majority of loans to be repaid with interest, or give a positive return to investments. Note that this fact is independent of how well the borrower or business performs. (This is like a zero-sum game).

So, it would be irrational for investors or lenders to part with their deflationary money, as the net profit is always zero (or negative because of other costs).

I am very interested to know if there is a way around this problem.

Re: The Wealthy Are Hoarding $10B of Bitcoin in Bunkers

#98

Post by blueprint »

acdha wrote: post #46
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because - and everyone but the uninformed or idealists know this - it's an investment product. It's simply not suitable as a currency, because one, inflation / instability, and two, it can only do what, a dozen transactions a second, if that? That's not nearly enough to become a viable currency.

Investments need to have intrinsic value. Under the new spin that bitcoin isn’t intended to be a currency, it makes little sense as an investment because there’s no value in any particular set of random numbers. If nobody is using it except for speculation, where’s the incentive to pay to keep that network running?

I'm not disagreeing with you on the distinction between an investment and a speculative position, but know that the value is in the confirmations of old transactions piled up which make it extremely difficult to retroactively mutate the ledger. Lots of people don't understand that well yet.

Re: The Wealthy Are Hoarding $10B of Bitcoin in Bunkers

#99

Post by Geee »

pavlov wrote: post #22

According to its proponents, Bitcoin is digital gold. (Interestingly it’s not an “electronic currency” anymore even though that was the original title of the 2008 whitepaper. I suppose Lightning Network or something is supposed to fix that with new transaction layers backed by the Bitcoin gold.) One aspect of gold’s historical value is that it’s traditionally recognized even in societies in collapse. I’ve never under…

And that is why Bitcoin is designed against these kinds of events. It's very unlikely that everything would be wiped out or everything would be under military control. There's always strong economic incentives to keep it running and secure.

Re: The Wealthy Are Hoarding $10B of Bitcoin in Bunkers

#100

Post by raducu »

mkirklions wrote: post #65
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because - and everyone but the uninformed or idealists know this - it's an investment product. It's simply not suitable as a currency, because one, inflation / instability, and two, it can only do what, a dozen transactions a second, if that? That's not nearly enough to become a viable currency.

Speak for yourself. I use bitcoin all the time for payments. Peer to peer using coinbase(email) for free and instant to friends. Shift card for free and instant at merchants. Bitcoin is beyond blockchain, companies have built products to trade BTC instantly, free, using the infrastructure already existing. The transaction time 'problem' doesnt really exist if you are into crypto, you know how to use it. And I dont tr…

So, you're actually trusting coinbase, just like I trust my bank.
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