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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

#331

Post by isostatic »

mkirklions wrote: post #149
spookthesunset wrote: post #133

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…

> China doesnt have control over bitcoin.

I thought China had over 50% of the mining power

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

#332

Post by nerfhammer »

jpadkins wrote: post #176
jonknee wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I have taken econ 101, this wasn't covered. Deflation via credit default has shown to be harmful to wider economy 2x times in US history (monetary shocks). I am not aware of any conclusive study that a deflationary currency is bad for investment and progress. The easy counterpoint is Gold, which is often deflationary (when economic growth outpaces gold mining). We have had 10k years of investment that have shown your…

> Inflationary fiat or credit based currency is a relatively new invention (1972 in the US)

The dollar has been fiat since the 1930s. The gold standard from 1933-1972 was essentially in name only.

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

#333

Post by erdojo »

ryanmonroe wrote: post #261
acdha wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> Investments need to have intrinsic value. > there’s no value in any particular set of random numbers What is the "intrinsic value" in e.g. an iPhone? Would that value exist without humans? I would say no, it only has value because people are willing to pay for it. So I'm left wondering what principled distinction you can draw between a particular set of random numbers and a particular arrangement of metal and glass…

You're comparing things that have no relation.

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

#334

Post by smokeyj »

simias wrote: post #271
smokeyj wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, things you need like energy food and education aren’t included in core inflation. So what happens is, the finance people use freshly printed money to buy up the things all the poor little people need. But let’s not call it speculation. Crypto is a democratizing force in a corrupt and unaccountable world.

So your point is that the current system is broken because our currencies are not truly inflationary if you're super rich and powerful because you get to print money so we should switch to a currency that's deflationary by design so that they don't even have to bother printing money? How does that work? >Crypto is a democratizing force in a corrupt and unaccountable world. Assuming that cryptocurrencies are successfu…

> So your point is that the current system is broken because our currencies are not truly inflationary

No, I'm arguing traditional currency is no longer necessary. Rich people don't own currency, they own assets. Currency is for poor schmucks who don't know how finance works. Currency is for a convenient way of taxing the masses and devaluing their life's savings at the behest of the 1%.

What's the solution? Asset backed certificates. Store your savings in a diversified portfolio backed by the incredibly valuable "means of production". These certificates can be settled in real-time given their levels of liquidity. Merchants can sell things denominated in one asset, and customers can pay with arbitrary certificates (say, apple stock) - settlement occurs at transaction time instantly.

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

#335

Post by chriswarbo »

mkirklions wrote: post #152
spookthesunset wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only time I did an on-chain transaction in the last 3 years was moving money to another exchange to buy alt-coins. So you used a "totally not a bank, but really a bank" bank, eh?

Why are payment processors/banks bad again? 2FA > a piece of paper under my bed. But also I keep my bitcoin in lots of places, a few bucks in coinbase for free transactions is like keeping cash in my wallet.

> Why are payment processors/banks bad again?

It's a matter of opinion. However, the only reason for bitcoin to exist is to avoid banks and payment processors. Hence it's illogical to make heavy use of coinbase/etc. regardless of what opinion you have.

Bitcoin has many downsides (volatility, no recourse, vast energy usage, paranoid wallet security, high fees, long confirmation time, etc.) and one upside (no need to trust processors/banks).

If you think that processors/banks are bad, then you might find that the upside outweighs the downsides, and make many on-chain bitcoin transactions. Yet you shouldn't use coinbase/etc. in this case, since they're a bank/processor, hence you'd be removing the only upside that bitcoin has.

On the other hand, if you don't think that processors/banks are bad, then the upside of bitcoin isn't worth all of the downsides. You might as well use regular currency, with all of its advantages over bitcoin (instant payments, lower fees, lower volatility, recourse, less paranoid security, etc.). In this case there's no need to use coinbase/etc. because there's no need to use bitcoin.

Those intermediaries do serve a role in converting between traditional currencies and cryptocurrencies, but it only makes sense to use them occasionally, e.g. buying a stash of bitcoins and immediately 'withdrawing' them to your private, on-chain-only wallet. If you're regularly converting back and forth, or maintaining a non-zero balance on their systems, you would always be better off doing something else (either sticking to fiat, or sticking to crypto).

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

#336

Post by dumbfounder »

snikeris wrote: post #24
dumbfounder wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coinbase is FDIC insured.

* Your USD wallet at Coinbase is FDIC insured.

Yikes, that is indeed a very important distinction that I missed.

https://support.coinbase.com/customer/portal/articles/166237...

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

#337

Post by bufferoverflow »

clarkmoody wrote: post #139
bufferoverflow wrote: post #134

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.

I said password for the private key, not the private key itself. I store my PKs in KeePass databases with a crazy number of rounds, so each password guess attempt takes 2-3 seconds on a modern CPU. Good luck bruteforcing that.

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

#338

Post by erdojo »

I would argue that Bitcoin in this case isn't an investment or speculation. It's insurance.

These wacky boys think their Bitcoin will save them someday. Whether they foresee a societal meltdown or government breaking down their door and seizing assets, they're living in fear. This wacky company is has found the perfect message and the perfect product for the perfect market.

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

#339

Post by blueprint »

hisabness wrote: post #197
blueprint wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

i think the value is also the ability to transfer value relatively quickly without having to sit at a bank for 30 minutes to do so.

I should have warned you people will try to downvote you for trying to help me

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

#340

Post by gamblor956 »

blueprint wrote: post #328
simias wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> We don't really need bitcoin for anything though. Why was Bitcoin invented; what problem does it solve?

Bitcoin doesn't solve any problems of the modern financial system. It does (re)create dozens of new problems.
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