Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling • Hacker News Board

Re: Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

#311

Post by api » Mon, Aug 27, 2018, 1:02 PM UTC

keymone wrote: post #303

api wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure it is. Hard money advocates see the Fed as some kind of parasitic liability on America, but it's quite the opposite. It's a weapon of war. A sovereign currency that can be manipulated is an instrument of empire. Eliminating it in a world where everyone has one would be akin to unilateral disarmament. Generally speaking libertarian idealism is unthinkable until we have had at least 50 years with no war. It won't…

> an instrument of empire i don't see the word "nation" in here. do you? i don't care about empires losing their weapons. i would very much invite such an event and would do everything in my power to enable it.

The problem is when your empire loses its weapons but all the others still have theirs. Think China's trade policy is unfair now? Imagine if we had no tools for monetary policy. There would be much laughter in Beijing.

Only multilateral disarmament works for game theoretic reasons. I don't think soft disarmament in areas like aggressive monetary policy can be done until hard disarmament happens, so I write that stuff off until we've had at least 50 years with no major war anywhere on Earth. (Most smaller wars are proxy wars between major powers.)

Like most major innovations Bitcoin is ahead of its time. Maybe on Mars...

Re: Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

#312

Post by justincormack » Mon, Aug 27, 2018, 1:02 PM UTC

paulpauper wrote: post #168

socrates1998 wrote: post #70

It sounds weird, but I think a big part of Bitcoin's, and other crypto's value, isn't in the day to day ability to use it to buy and sell things, it's the inability of the government to devalue it. This isn't as big a problem in many richer countries with relatively stable currencies, but I sure as hell would prefer Bitcoin to anything the Venezuelan government or the Argentinian government would issue. The kinks are…

I used to think that, but bitcoin didn't go up despite the currency collapse there. The problem is the vast majority of Venezuelans are too poor to buy even a fraction of a bitcoin. Hyperinflation destroys wealth very quickly, so often everyone it too poor by the time they can do anything. The wealthier people put their money overseas or in gold.

When I was there (20 years ago though), diamonds, gold nuggets and hundred dollar bills were fairly common forms of portable wealth. The banks and cash were never trusted (they were shut down when I was there), and the country mines gold.

Re: Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

#313

Post by javajosh » Mon, Aug 27, 2018, 1:12 PM UTC

api wrote: post #295

keymone wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The same monetary policy is appropriate for all nations you're conflating. the concept of nation has nothing to do with the concept of money.

Sure it is. Hard money advocates see the Fed as some kind of parasitic liability on America, but it's quite the opposite. It's a weapon of war. A sovereign currency that can be manipulated is an instrument of empire. Eliminating it in a world where everyone has one would be akin to unilateral disarmament. Generally speaking libertarian idealism is unthinkable until we have had at least 50 years with no war. It won't…

* > [Money] is a weapon of war.*

This point is so true and so important it deserves special emphasis. If you imagine two societies at war, one with currency and other without, who wins? Clearly, the one with currency, because you can collaborate far better than the other, and war is won primarily by scale, which money can maintain.

And as for those that want to abolish currency, or nation-states, this is naive idealism: anyone who demolishes their nation-state will just get invaded and absorbed into one of the remaining nation-states. Peace lovers would do better to plot a course for peaceful subsuming of states into a larger entity, something like the EU model.

Re: Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

#314

Post by keymone » Mon, Aug 27, 2018, 1:17 PM UTC

api wrote: post #311

keymone wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an instrument of empire i don't see the word "nation" in here. do you? i don't care about empires losing their weapons. i would very much invite such an event and would do everything in my power to enable it.

The problem is when your empire loses its weapons but all the others still have theirs. Think China's trade policy is unfair now ? Imagine if we had no tools for monetary policy. There would be much laughter in Beijing. Only multilateral disarmament works for game theoretic reasons. I don't think soft disarmament in areas like aggressive monetary policy can be done until hard disarmament happens, so I write that stuf…

i totally understand your argument and agree that it is valid.

the difference here is that cryptocurrencies undermine isolated regimes even more than they do developed economies. being able to own something a government can't debase or manipulate is extremely useful for everybody.

Re: Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

#315

Post by keymone » Mon, Aug 27, 2018, 1:21 PM UTC

javajosh wrote: post #313

api wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure it is. Hard money advocates see the Fed as some kind of parasitic liability on America, but it's quite the opposite. It's a weapon of war. A sovereign currency that can be manipulated is an instrument of empire. Eliminating it in a world where everyone has one would be akin to unilateral disarmament. Generally speaking libertarian idealism is unthinkable until we have had at least 50 years with no war. It won't…

* > [Money] is a weapon of war.* This point is so true and so important it deserves special emphasis. If you imagine two societies at war, one with currency and other without, who wins? Clearly, the one with currency, because you can collaborate far better than the other, and war is won primarily by scale, which money can maintain. And as for those that want to abolish currency, or nation-states, this is naive ideali…

> Clearly, the one with currency, because you can collaborate far better than the other, and war is won primarily by scale, which money can maintain.

this is a weird hypothetical. i can't imagine a nation-state without currency and i don't think you can either. so how is it clear who wins?

i highly doubt isolated regime can somehow improve it's sustainability simply by manipulating money. Venezuela just had a massive devaluation - did it make Venezuela richer? did it improve it's economy or GDP? no, it's still the same corrupt country on a brink of collapse.

Re: Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

#316

Post by throwaway123156 » Mon, Aug 27, 2018, 1:27 PM UTC

slavik81 wrote: post #190

anbende wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is only relevant if your clearing bit coins above the cost of the electricity. If not, you’re losing more turning them on than off.

In economic terms, suppliers will continue producing so long as the sale price is greater the marginal cost of production. The average cost is irrelevant in the short run because it includes sunk costs.

The comment you were responding to was about electricity, which is clearly a highly linearly correlated marginal cost. I am not sure why you're bringing up average costs at all.

And the comment you replied to did not even mention the other marginal costs that Bitcoin faces (employee costs, land rental, networking costs, etc).

Re: Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

#317

Post by throwaway123156 » Mon, Aug 27, 2018, 1:31 PM UTC

conanbatt wrote: post #151

TACIXAT wrote: post #21

A currency with no mechanism for monetary policy is not going to be adopted. Bitcoin is purely deflationary for more reasons than just people losing their keys. For example, a fixed reward split between a growing group of miners will also cause a rising price floor. The miners will not sell for less than their electricity costs, which makes the smaller piece of the block reward they receive have a higher price. So yo…

I disagree with several of your statements. First, bitcoin has a monetary policy, and the key is that it cant be changed, which is very appealing: more appealing that storing gold vs fiat, since gold has a less predictable monetary policy. Gold had been chosen as currency for most of history, across cultures and languages. In countries where the currency breaks down, things like chocolate, potatoes or corn get into c…

The Fed can easily replicate the benefits of cryptocurrency in seconds. They simply need to come out and say "We will only print X number of dollars, every Y number of months".

There you go. All the benefits of Bitcoin replicated in the USD, which is a far more widespread and versatile currency?

So why doesn't the Fed do it? Because it really is a terrible idea. It's like pegging your currency to gold, which was a terrible idea (although good for its time) and the delay in moving away from it probably cost tons of money and lives.

Re: Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

#318

Post by andrewmcwatters » Mon, Aug 27, 2018, 1:41 PM UTC

keymone wrote: post #277

smsm42 wrote: post #238

I am not surprised. I am a programmer with decades of experience under my belt, and I have no idea how to install bitcoin in a way that would allow me convenient use of it. No, I can install the apps, and I can spend a month or two waiting until it downloads the whole 40+G of current blockchain, or I can trust some site that says it'd fix it for me, or I can open an account on any of the exchanges and pray to cryptog…

exaggerating a bit? bitcoin syncs within couple hours unless you run it on the computer you'd gain your decades of experience on :) every mobile bitcoin app is a lightweight client - it only syncs block headers, much faster but not great for large sums of money. so for a person that can't tell "browser" from "internet" there's no difference between introducing them to paypal or to bitcoin - it's just an app on your p…

> it only syncs block headers

I think what the parent comment is trying to say is: who cares about this? Not even many of us technical people care.

It's like saying, "Just get the mobile app, it just synchroaligns the ledger manifest distributable intra-block metadata! Duh! Simple!"

It's not accessible to people, and not even engineers who aren't familiar with the tech.

I don't need to understand the minting process to know how to use a dollar, but for some reason the Bitcoin community expects you to understand blocks, difficulty, ledgers, exchanges, and many other concepts that are relatively advanced and take time and effort to understand. A dollar is a dollar.

This continually seems to fall on deaf ears.

Re: Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

#319

Post by collyw » Mon, Aug 27, 2018, 1:50 PM UTC

deevolution wrote: post #90

bobthepanda wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, what advantage does it have over gold? Advantages of gold vs. Bitcoin: - gold is pretty easy to find, not that hard to buy for the average consumer; BTC is anything but - gold is physical in form and securing it is not hard; BTC is not physical, exchanges get hacked with losses to accounts, in the event of a natural disaster or some event where power generation and internet is lost you lose access to BTC. (So…

Maybe its a generational thing, but i have no clue how i would go about buying/trading gold and i dont think anyone in my friend group does either. Bitcoin is far more accessible.

I would say the same about bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

#320

Post by keymone » Mon, Aug 27, 2018, 1:52 PM UTC

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #318

keymone wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

exaggerating a bit? bitcoin syncs within couple hours unless you run it on the computer you'd gain your decades of experience on :) every mobile bitcoin app is a lightweight client - it only syncs block headers, much faster but not great for large sums of money. so for a person that can't tell "browser" from "internet" there's no difference between introducing them to paypal or to bitcoin - it's just an app on your p…

> it only syncs block headers I think what the parent comment is trying to say is: who cares about this? Not even many of us technical people care. It's like saying, "Just get the mobile app, it just synchroaligns the ledger manifest distributable intra-block metadata! Duh! Simple!" It's not accessible to people, and not even engineers who aren't familiar with the tech. I don't need to understand the minting process…

this is just weird.. i was addressing GP's concern about performance of syncing. of course i wouldn't bother explaining how bitcoin works and what are the modes of operation and performance differences between them to a lay person. they don't care. they care that it's just an app.

so what exactly did you want to say?