The Wealthy Are Hoarding $10B of Bitcoin in Bunkers • Hacker News Board

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

#221

Post by laglad » Wed, May 09, 2018, 3:20 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #172

blocked_again wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You need a hash rate at least vaguely close to the pre-collapse hash rate, or else the network will grind to a halt. Will they be physically capable of that?

This assumes a sudden collapse event happening within the 10 minutes that it takes to reset the hash rate. I'm struggling to think of global scenarios where that can happen so quickly.

What are the chances that collapse is a sudden event vs a cascading deterioration event?

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

#222

Post by kolinko » Wed, May 09, 2018, 3:20 PM UTC

algo646464 wrote: post #96

mkirklions wrote: post #74

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…

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…

That's the theory. But the practice has shown that people who have Bitcoin spend it both on their living expenses, and on investments.

Ergo, there must be a hole in your theory somewhere.

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

#223

Post by 21 » Wed, May 09, 2018, 3:20 PM UTC

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…

> After an EMP wipes out data centers and cell phone towers

If such a thing happens on a large scale there will be hundred of millions of deaths. All major cities will simply collapse.

See recent articles how London can only survive for 4 days without electricity, after that there will be no food.

The modern society is incredibly fragile. Everything is just in time, there are no stocks or buffers. Bitcoins will be the least of your worries in such an event. Your Krugerrands will also not be of much value. Nobody will be stupid to give you food or gas for a piece of metal.

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

#224

Post by hisabness » Wed, May 09, 2018, 3:20 PM UTC

spookthesunset wrote: post #167

mkirklions wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 mino…

i think you're arguing semantics. if most people dont view the forked chain as valid and prefer the original, then a new bitcoin isn't created per se.

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

#225

Post by empath75 » Wed, May 09, 2018, 3:21 PM UTC

kajumix wrote: post #127

The word 'hoarding' demonizes 'saving,' which in most Keynesian economies is considered leakage. It's really a question of values. Inflationary currencies encourage consumption; deflationary ones encourage savings. High consumption does increase demand, and apparently a faster growth in the economy. One could argue that this almost forced consumption for the sake of faster economic growth is what causes malinvestment…

> Inflationary currencies encourage consumption

You mean "investment"

> deflationary ones encourage savings

I'm not sure why encouraging people to bury their wealth in the ground instead of doing something useful with it is something we want to be doing.

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

#226

Post by TeMPOraL » Wed, May 09, 2018, 3:21 PM UTC

blueprint wrote: post #105

api wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin seems to have already undergone a deflationary collapse. Its original goal of Internet money has been abandoned in favor of the concocted idea that it is a "store of value." Unfortunately it's a poor store of value since it requires a constant stream of electricity to maintain. Gold, land, and other traditional idle stores of value just sit there and are free to maintain with the exception of the cost of phys…

> Unfortunately it's a poor store of value since it requires a constant stream of electricity to maintain. "Earth is a poor store of life because it requires a constant stream of light to maintain." Hm no, that doesn't work...

Life isn't outgrowing Earth's capacity to absorb sunlight (nor Earth's capacity to radiate heat). Earth's energy flux is good for supporting life for the next 2 billion years.

Cryptocurrencies are designed to waste increasing amounts of energy that grow both with time and the popularity of the system. Right now we're not able to pull energy from Sun fast enough to power them (see all the global energy issues, fossil fuels, etc.). And even if we eventually could, cryptocurrencies would only grow to consume all available energy. And even if we could keep up with that, it's an incredibly unnecessary waste if you compare all the other uses that energy could be put to. The guarantees that cryptocurrencies give are not worth the upkeep.

And that's all without discussing the other side of the coin - waste heat.

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

#227

Post by theseatoms » Wed, May 09, 2018, 3:22 PM UTC

algo646464 wrote: post #96

mkirklions wrote: post #74

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…

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…

A deflationary currency regime would raises the bar for both investment and consumption. Investors would be choosier about speculative opportunities because the yield on the risk-free asset would be much, much higher. Consumers would still buy essentials, but they'd be extremely incentivized to hold currency rather than spend it.

Regardless of whether or not a deflationary end-state is better or worse, it seems non-controversial that the transition from our current situation to a deflationary one would be absolutely brutal. We're talking about turning the global economy on it's head.

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

#228

Post by acdha » Wed, May 09, 2018, 3:22 PM UTC

imgabe wrote: post #60

acdha wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a rather blatant strawman: it’s literally a textbook example of the value of regulation and laws which make that happen, not the goodwill of bankers.

You mean the laws and regulations written by lobbyists paid by the bankers? Do you mean the regulators who leave their Federal jobs for multi-million dollar per year jobs at the banks they formerly regulated? Are those the ones you're talking about? You seem to be implying that the regulations / laws and the banks are two separate entities. They're increasingly the same. Which means that yes, it is basically their go…

That may be an argument for stronger regulations, not no regulations. As the bitcoin world has repeatedly proven that abuse will happen without the same institutions — ever notice how the various scam/incompetent exchanges end up in the same courts for the same reasons? It’s just harder and less likely to be successful because they weren’t practicing any semblance of responsible practice before.

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

#229

Post by clarkmoody » Wed, May 09, 2018, 3:22 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #166

clarkmoody wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Choosin…

Indeed. My caution is against keys that are already in the clear in a written work.

Bitcoin is cryptography's biggest bug bounty.

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

#230

Post by empath75 » Wed, May 09, 2018, 3:22 PM UTC

clarkmoody wrote: post #208

Inflationists / consumptionists have been demonizing savers and sound money since the 1700s, if not earlier. They enjoy the artificial boom induced through inflation of the money supply and then blame gold or speculation or "animal spirits" for the bust. They think that if we could only got back to the consumption levels of the boom, then we'd be "back on track." This never works, and the calls for consumption are us…

> Inflationists / consumptionists have been demonizing savers and sound money since the 1700s, if not earlier.

And as we all know, it's been one long, slow economic collapse since the 17th century.