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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

#291

Post by acdha »

ryanmonroe wrote: post #289
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jewelry looks pretty. Bitcoins don't.

Well, it only looks pretty to you if you're into that type of thing. I don't think it would be hard to find people who don't think gold jewelry looks good. My point is that the utility is entirely dependent on the subjective experience of the user.

That’s true but the belief that gold has cosmetic value goes back for thousands of years. Even if you ignore that something like two thirds of consumption is industrial, that’s a huge track record to conflate with … basically nothing. It’s on the scale of saying there’s no reason why your band couldn’t be as valuable as the Beatles.

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

#292

Post by a-dub »

This is just more evidence that my theory on why Bitcoin was developed, may actually hold water.

It was never about the GFC, failing banks or some crazy libertarian dream. It was all because someone was upset that the "million dollar bank transfer codes (or the two keys geographically separated that have to be turned at the same time, or the special secret crypto laptop in the zero halliburton that can transfer billions instantly and untracably)" trope from all those crime films was complete bullshit, and that in reality most money is protected by horrifyingly thick layers of mediocre bureaucracy and somebody wanted to be the mahatma gandhi of making those sorts of situations actually plausible in the real world.

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

#293

Post by astrodust »

mkirklions wrote: post #111
algo646464 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Bitcoin wouldnt be the currency for loans. Bitcoin seems to be best for hording and spending. It holds value and can be transferred easy and cheap. You can still have companies using currencies that incentivise loan/investing. Bitcoin currently exists and the loans keep being written. I think as bitcoin grows its going to become big and boring. No 10x gains, not even 2x gains, like 10% swings over the course of a yea…

> As BTC gets bigger...

It can't get any bigger, the transaction limits, the "halvings", the liquidity issues after over a decade of operation, so I guess that experiment has run its course.

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

#294

Post by cletus »

In case of what? If something so major happens that the US dollar, the Euro, the British pound and other reserve currencies collapse or the financial system breaks down completely, what exactly is going to keep the Internet running such that the blockchain consensus will even be there?

It's a bit like there's really no point (IMHO) preparing for a massive nuclear war by stockpiling food, water and guns and having a generator and a bomb shelter because if we have a nuclear war we're all kind of fucked anyway, so what's the point?

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

#295

Post by jonknee »

mkirklions wrote: post #184
jonknee wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, essential spending would happen. But why upgrade your car, or go out to eat, or go on a vacation, or all the other non-essential spending that powers our economy? Even a very small change in these behaviors has huge effects because one person's spending is another person's income.

> why upgrade your car, or go out to eat, or go on a vacation, or all the other non-essential spending that powers our economy? I find 0 of those good. Upgrading your car when you dont need to is wreckless spending. Maybe the Economy changes to become more conservative and less environmentally damaging. Going out to eat + vacations are unnecessary expenses. And btw, I completely doubt people are going to stop doing t…

Consumer spending is what keeps everyone employed. Even in Silicon Valley because who do you think is buying all the ads?

> Upgrading your car when you dont need to is wreckless spending.

But that's what creates the used car market, which is much bigger than the new car market. When people stop buying new cars it means tons of layoffs, which means tons of reduced spending by all the previously employed auto workers, which means more businesses lay people off, etc etc.

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

#297

Post by chris_va »

smallnamespace wrote: post #260
dragandj wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By that reasoning, investing in gold is also speculation. What else? However, gold has some utility as jewelry etc. Cryptocurrencies are (currently) pure speculation.

> gold has some utility as jewelry Gold's utility as jewelry stems from its high value as a precious metal. It's circular reasoning though, since we're also saying that it's high value is underpinned by its use as jewelry.

That's not entirely correct. Gold is malleable and does not tarnish, both of which are nice for making jewelry.

E.g. the Incas used gold for jewelry despite it being fairly abundant.

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

#298

Post by imgabe »

emodendroket wrote: post #255
mr_spothawk wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oh, that explains why nigerian scams dont work. /s

Tell me the last time a major bank shut down and its proprietors ran off with all the deposits. Or what is the BTC equivalent to a chargeback if services aren't rendered? What protection does it offer if someone steals your information and makes fraudulent purchases with your money?

You're conflating properties of a payment processor like Visa, with properties of a currency. What's the equivalent of a charge back if I pay in cash for services that aren't rendered? It's called a "lawsuit", and there's no reason you couldn't use it if you paid with Bitcoin.

With Bitcoin, unlike cash, there is also a public record that you did in fact pay, so the defendant couldn't lie and say you never paid when they just hid the cash under their mattress.

Likewise, there's no reason a payment processor like Visa couldn't process payments in Bitcoin and provide fraud protection if that is something people want. Bitcoin isn't there yet, but neither was cash until about 50 years ago, out of thousands of years of usage.

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

#299

Post by c22 »

acdha wrote: post #258
anonuser123456 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would agree that for the general public there appears to be little upside (currently). For the fantastically wealthy that want to move large amounts of capital outside the purview of the tax man or regulators, it has tremendous upside. The same holds for illicit markets. Because those markets do not exist in isolation, the demand effect will spill over into the broader market (because arbitrage). I'm not a fan of B…

If you’re looking to evade taxes or otherwise commit serious crimes, why on earth would you do so using an immutable public ledger? Any mistake and you’ve gift-wrapped the case for the prosecution.

Probably because you can do the laundering step through a web of anonymous servers sitting on the darknet rather than through fraudulent incorporations which have a lot more surface area for detection and also leave immutable paper trails.

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

#300

Post by gefh »

282883392 wrote: post #247
dragandj wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By that reasoning, investing in gold is also speculation. What else? However, gold has some utility as jewelry etc. Cryptocurrencies are (currently) pure speculation.

Crypto certainly has, if not more, at least the same utility than jewelry. Trust less, distributed ledgers--these aren't tulips.

Tulips and jewelry at least look pretty. And you're trusting, at least, the implementation and the underlying math. Personally the risk of recourse-less outweighs the value of trust-less.
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