371–380 of 555 posts
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Bitcoin averages something on the order of 200,000 transactions per day. It's useful to someone.
That's definitely not proof of real economic utility. How many bets happen in Las Vegas every day? But economically, they're negative-sum events exploiting cognitive weaknesses.
Also, all systems that pay taxes are negative sum as well! Utility is not measured in money.
If Bitcoin became the dominant currency of humanity, eventually we’d darken the galaxy by building Dyson shells in the ultimate energy arms race to prevent a 51% attack. Joking. Mostly.
Having fun with your idea: How do you adjust the algorithm for the communication time between opposite nodes. Let's say earth distance, 16 minutes at speed of light direct.
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yes?
What is the value of currency you can legally print on any printer? Zero. Edit: any crypto-currency you can exploit gives you option to print yourself money.
It’s more like being able to write two checks for your whole bank balance and having them both clear.
So very relevant are:
- whatever goods you bought with the checks need to be impossible to recall. So, like you need to find (two) someone’s who will effectively cash your check. You can’t buy a house because the police will come take the house back.
- you need to do it fast. The second you make are the first transaction you need fork and start mining hard. 51% gives you a speed advantage, but it’s very small. It still takes time to get the network to follow you.
Double spend is a very specific heist. Even if someone did it, it wouldn’t mean Bitcoin is valueless, it would just mean a certain class of heist is somewhat more probably and people need to adjust their security practices accordingly.
Tricks like waiting for extra confirmations, requiring identification before accepting payment, etc, are easy remediations.
If Bitcoin became the dominant currency of humanity, eventually we’d darken the galaxy by building Dyson shells in the ultimate energy arms race to prevent a 51% attack. Joking. Mostly.
Having fun with your idea: How do you adjust the algorithm for the communication time between opposite nodes. Let's say earth distance, 16 minutes at speed of light direct.
How is the price https://www.coingecko.com/en/price_charts/bitcoin-gold/usd still good when this is all over the news?
This isn't the first time terrible news has broke and somehow a coin remains valuable. Remember when Bitcoin forked into Bitcoin Cash and somehow everyone just made up a new value for the coin? It was like billions of dollars were created out of thin air, everyone started trading it and nobody batted an eye. Bitcoin even GAINED value. There is no logic or sanity in the coin market.
https://firenewsfeed.com/news/635991
Good God you're not kidding.
It's like a car accident, but there's this siren song urging you to join in because some of the people are thrown free holding chunks of gold.
It reminds me of a Jim Gaffigan joke. He's talking about trying to lose weight, and how hard it is when the fast food restaurant has a $2 for 2 burgers deal... "Well... I don't want to lose money on this... I'll take eighty."
On the one hand this whole cryptocurrency thing seems to be gone off the rails. On the other hand, I do feel kinda dumb for not owning any.
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That's not buying anything with Bitcoin. You are converting your Bitcoin to USD and then purchasing using the traditional, centrally controlled financial system. And that's not even considering the transactions fees it costs to get the Bitcoin to your account. Then there are the transaction fees for using the card, which coinbase says is free "for now".
That's like saying you can't buy anything with a VISA. Sure, transactions are intermediated through some consensus denomination for exchange. So? He still lost bitcoin and gained tacos. Just as someone else might lose a portion of a credit balance and gain tacos. You get just as full either way.
If you insist that the guy paid his beer with USD, it is going to be very difficult to discuss about anything as the meanings of the concepts are so twisted.
It is quite obvious that using a credit card that then accepts BTCfrom you does not mean that you use BTC to pay for anything but your credit card bill.
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I agree with all of that except the definition of usefulness. As you eluded to with your use of regardless, rationality is not assured. It is expected (or more likely, hope) usefulness, aka speculation. Even funding the status quo is still speculation, because something could suddenly become not useful in the future. I suppose only time will tell what was actually useful, and I'm betting bitcoin is not among them. Ma…
Obviously capital allocation of individuals is not a perfect measure of utility, but it is the best/ fairest metric we have. Conveniently it provides a clear mechanism to sort out this mess. Price carbon pollution at the source and see the rest of the actors seeking profit fall in line. Miners will chose green energy, green energy will get more demand, their economies of scale will increase, pollution will decrease.…
In terms of my original statement, I was effectively stating that the problem of decentralising currency doesn't really give back power to the people, because of the nature of wealth accumulation and propagation. Sure, it reduces the capacity for regulatory capture, but people with capital in whatever form still exercise a capacity to better maintain their capital base.
With regards to waste again, it becomes a moral issue. If we know that our externalities will cause problems, then by letting people continue to capitalise on them, we knowingly undermine the wider system we operate in. We have ethics committees for science and medical experiments, but when it comes to finance, experimentation occurs unimpeded. This leads to socio-economic outcomes which, while not fully understood, are also not complete unknowns.
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My assessment is that the greatest vulnerability in Bitcoin is its breathless supporters, who will look past the dynamics of Bitcoin in adoration of the mechanics of Bitcoin. To that end, larger, more sophisticated enterprises (banks, hedge funds, etc) are likely leeching slowly off the system, propping the price up and inflating it when they can, so they can extract as much value as possible out of its correction to…
What’s the difference between dynamics and mechanics?
Then it hits the real world, and suddenly what people actually do with it and its valuation is dependent on how the exchanges operate (are exchanges even mentioned in the original paper?), energy prices in China, media coverage, interactions with alt-coins, etc.