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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

#161
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With 1000 USD? Sure, thats petty money if I lost it. I dont keep most of my bitcoin in coinbase.

What's the backup for various failure cases? House fire? I'd guess off-site backups. House fire that kills you? Do you stick recovery instructions to your backup in a will, or how do you leave money to your heirs? (Or just you don't?)

Unfortunately I have too much bitcoin to say where I store it.

The only thing I will say is that I keep my bitcoin in MANY locations and MANY wallets.

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

#162
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your points are valid. IMO the key tradeoff b/w gold (analog) and bitcoin (digital) is extra resiliency vs usability. If there were a systemic collapse breaking governments, knocking off power and telecom networks etc, gold would be immediately most valuable. But more quickly than fiat, bitcoin would be useful. Power and telecom systems are more resilient to systemic collapse (& have more bouncebackability) than a fu…

Are miners still going to be operating in this post-collapse environment?

Whoever operates is going to become rich. So someone will step up to satisfy the need.

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

#163
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> What makes you think deflation would be bad? Literally economics 101. Investment grinds to a halt and progress along with it.

Very true. Now do the inefficient capital allocations caused by inflationary monetary environments.

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

#164
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you think all the problems with banks would go away if they simply operated without any regulation at all?

When did I say that? I think at the highest levels they already do operate without any regulation. When you get to write your own regulations and there's a revolving door between the regulatory agencies and the companies they're suppose to regulate, there is no meaningful regulation. Bitcoin and other digital currencies are a threat to them because there is no central agency in charge of it that they can infiltrate a…

Instead you just get people losing their shirts to old-fashioned scams that were made illegal a century ago, with no recourse whatsoever.

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

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep reading that "economics isn't a science"

And it doesn't take a scientist to realize that when things will be cheaper tomorrow people tend to avoid making purchases today. (Think back to when home prices were crashing, there wasn't exactly a rush of people to buy homes that were declining in value.)

But what if you need to eat food? Or pay your mortgage?

How will you pay for things if you dont spend Bitcoin?

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

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safety deposit boxes are cheap. Put your encrypted PK on paper, store copies in 2 or 3 separate boxes. Your password can be stored in your memory. Or it can be something like the 100th sentence in your favorite book.

Don't use any portion of any written work as your private key! Brute-force attacks will use every bit of written literature to do this same search. You must use securely-generated random key phrases, or you will lose your coins.

No key is safe from a brute force attack that covers the alphabet of key and the length of the key.

What you're describing is a dictionary attack and it trades comprehensiveness for speed.

There's many more words than characters in any language. Using words as your alphabet gets you ($WORDS)^N possible passwords of length N instead of 128^N for an ascii alphabet. For humans remembering random words is easier.

Choosing a grammatically correct sentence instead of random words is little different in terms of complexity reduction than choosing a word based password (e.g. Password1) instead of random characters.

Obviously if the attacker can build a target specific dictionary they'll have a higher probability of success.

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

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bitcoin is beyond blockchain, companies have built products to trade BTC instantly, free, using the infrastructure already existing If bitcoin is "beyond blockchain", than what is it? Just a table of transactions in a Real Database™? If yes, whats the point? You've just layered a very bank-sounding, very-centralized construct on top of your space-age "trustless" decentralized blockchain. How is it at all revolution…

>I feel like bitcoin people live in some kind of alternate reality that I simply don't understand. I can tell. You seem to think Bitcoin is another inflationary currency. The excitement is that, Donald Trump doesnt have control over Bitcoin. China doesnt have control over bitcoin. No government does. People with computers have control over it. There are 21,000,000 Bitcoin ever ever ever. No amount of awful government…

> There are 21,000,000 Bitcoin ever ever ever.

Provably false. Bitcoin has been forked into multiple chains numerous time, creating many more then 21 million tokens. Given that there is no trademark on the term "Bitcoin", some of these forks can rightfully claim themselves to be The True Bitcoin.

In addition, there are thousands of other non-forked blockchains that are nearly identical to bitcoin, save for a few minor configuration changes.

> Bitcoin is rare and digital.

Absolutely false. Bitcoin is digital and infinitely creditable. This has been proven over and over again.

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

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question answers itself: they weren't. It also beggars belief that they were regularly spending bitcoins that was shifting in value by hundreds of USD in a matter of hours. The would be irrational to the point of lunacy if true, but I don't believe it is.

What is the crazy part? I bought BTC at 200, 400, 800, 1200, 3000, 11,000, and 7,000. I like BTC wayyy better than USD. If I need to spend 2$ at taco bell, I'll just use my bitcoin.

And kicked yourself for that $180 Taco Bell when it peaked at $18,000, right?

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

#169
post #17

>the global currency of the future, that they need to buy some, and that he’s the man to safeguard it. Looks like in the future people hoard currency instead of spending and investing it then. That ought to be interesting. It also demonstrates the costs associated with non-reversible transactions, these vaults aren't storing gold ingots or priceless artifacts, just private keys. Banks around the world don't need to w…

People hoard capital now (currency being one form). Look at the result of the tax cuts leading to stock buy backs

This is more motivation to transition from currency based societies and focus on outcomes that benefit labor first

It’s plain there is no free market when currency monopolists can control not just what we work on looks like, but whether anything is worked on at all

There is great demand for the end of war, housing, social services, and universal healthcare. Cottage industry can rise around that instead of digital assistants that schedule hair cuts.

But we’re forced to prioritize the tasks the currency monopolists dictate, putting our own communities second

Adam Smith only mentions a markets in the context of a free labor market for workers of equal condition to move about freely

Mandate universal healthcare. It’s just as important to a secure and free nation as guns and is a potent first step to saying “we’re not interested in addressing the needs of stock markets and distant currency monopolists.”

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

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep reading that "economics isn't a science"

And it doesn't take a scientist to realize that when things will be cheaper tomorrow people tend to avoid making purchases today. (Think back to when home prices were crashing, there wasn't exactly a rush of people to buy homes that were declining in value.)

Yes, that's common sense, but we shouldn't trust it blindly.

From what I can tell, the evidence on the expected deflation you're talking about paints a different picture: https://www.bis.org/publ/work186.pdf

You ask why people would buy stuff when they'll be cheaper later, but then again, why do people buy stuff now when they could put the money on the stock market and take it out later, when it will be worth more than the product costs?

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