321–330 of 405 posts
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I guess if you don't understand the problem behind decentralization you can say stuff like that...
Why don’t you demonstrate some of that alleged understanding to answer the question? Start by producing evidence supporting your belief that there is some significant problem with transaction history modification and move on to why that problem cannot be more efficiently addressed using proven cost-effective techniques.
“You couldn’t pay me to keep it with a bank.” Because if there's one thing banks are known for, it's running off with client assets suddenly and without warning. Oh wait, that's cryptocurrency startups...
Two things they are known for; Not allowing very large balances to be withdrawn at once. Complying with asset freeze orders.
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Who is hoarding currency on a notable scale? Why would they at the very least not invest in short-term bonds/mmfs
The people who sell the short term bonds / mmfs? Is it a sign of a fraud when you can’t tell if comments are trolling or not?
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I really need to hear the long story.
There are many ways of holding currency without being affected by inflation. This is what wealth management plans do. One simple tool used for this: > Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (or TIPS) are the inflation-indexed bonds issued by the U.S. Treasury. The principal is adjusted to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), the commonly used measure of inflation. When the CPI rises, the principal adjusts upward. If the…
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> 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…
Actually there are thousands of other things that take way more energy and pollute way more than cryptocurrency mining. In fact you can locate your miners anywhere, unlike, say, your shipping vessels. So there's an incentive to place the miners next to, say, hydrothermal plants.
Why aren't you fervently arguing for the other orders-of-magnitude-larger polluters to be replaced? Lord knows we have alternatives to them too.
By the way, do you know about Bitcoin's emission curve and what is going to happen to mining after bitcoins are no longer emitted?
> And even if we eventually could, cryptocurrencies would only grow to consume all available energy.
That's a lot of energy! Could you provide some kind of grounds for your opinion here?
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Bitcoin is inflationary at least nominally, until 2140.
That's definitely not what the overwhelming majority of people buying bitcoin today are counting on though. Like, at all. Otherwise "HODL" wouldn't be the meme it is. It doesn't make sense to hold inflationary currency.
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> 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...
It doesn't work because we need life to be alive. We don't really need bitcoin for anything though. But you're right that in the very long term remaining alive on earth, or even in the universe at large is going to be a huge issue. Wasting energy mining cryptocurrencies isn't going to help. I wonder who's going to be the first person building a dyson sphere to power a BTC miner.
Why was Bitcoin invented; what problem does it solve?
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But what if you need to eat food? Or pay your mortgage? How will you pay for things if you dont spend Bitcoin?
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.
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Top 1%? They have more wealth than ever and keep accumulating more and more while the differences in wealth between everybody else end the top class keep widening. Look at Warren Buffer, one of the best investors in the world and he has hundred billion dollars just sitting around as he sees no good investment opportunities. Apple & other companies are hoarding money as well, much faster than they can spend it or inve…
What is Warren Buffet’s cash holdings? There’s a good chance they are in Treasuries or Money Market accounts which mean that money is being used by banks or the government to loan and invest. It isn’t like he has a room in his house filled with cash. The idea that cash is being hoarded is absurd. On deposit at a bank isn’t “hoarding” as the bank is able to make use of that capital to provide loans. Without the “rich”…
The government created the computer and the internet...funds most major pharmaceutical, chemical, material sciences, and theoretical scientific research. The value created by the US government alone is estimated to be in the low hundreds of trillions and that's just measuring value created to this date.
The reduction of friction created by government regulation is estimated to provide a value equal in many cases to 100% of the price of the transaction (as in, the transactions simply wouldn't happen without government regulation creating sufficient trust between the parties).
Excessive taxation is a burden, but taxation in itself is not.