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Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017 Record

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Re: Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017 Record

#191

Post by arcticbull »

anythingdude321 wrote: post #186
arcticbull wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problematic part of a fiat system is not that is fiat, but that is in the hands of the government who knows not how to exercise constraint and inflates it at will to "pay" for things, more realistically, to promise to pay for things that if it had to actually pay for it will never be able to afford. If economic growth outpaces debt growth then it does not ever have to be paid back. > ...what do you think money…

Run for office? I prefer the trim tab approach: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trim_tab#Trim_tab_as_a_metapho... If Bitcoiners are right, Satoshi has been the trim tab of the century thus far. Time will tell :)

Satoshi is likely Paul Le Roux. Let’s hope not. He’s managed to waste more of our time, money and brainpower than anyone in recent memory.

Either way my point remains that Bitcoin solves nothing other than making criminals wealthy.

Time will tell.

Re: Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017 Record

#192

Post by arcticbull »

georgesC wrote: post #185
arcticbull wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problematic part of a fiat system is not that is fiat, but that is in the hands of the government who knows not how to exercise constraint and inflates it at will to "pay" for things, more realistically, to promise to pay for things that if it had to actually pay for it will never be able to afford. If economic growth outpaces debt growth then it does not ever have to be paid back. > ...what do you think money…

The fact that so many people don't know that cash/fiat is losing value over time makes it somewhat of a problem. Furthermore the creation of cash/fiat creates high benefits to those that benefits from the newly created money first, before the money spreads and devalues its value due to inflation over time. Inflation vs deflation debate is a complicated one, I don't know which is best in terms of enabling technical pr…

Not changing is nice conceptually but very bad in practice because the real world changes. It doesn’t map. It’s one of those software engineering tendencies to rewrite instead of understand and improve.

One side note though. Consider that inflation doesn’t affect the poor as the poor live paycheck to paycheck and wages in the US have kept pace with inflation. The wealthy don’t hold cash, they invest. Even cash tends to be held in a savings account with at least partially offsets inflationary pressure. Has it impacted anyone materially? I’d love to see some quantification.

Re: Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017 Record

#193

Post by colejohnson66 »

alwillis wrote: post #168
colejohnson66 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Preface: Bitcoin is a neat idea (decentralized currency), but it’s not practical at scale. Reply: To be fair, the US’ currency has no intrinsic value either. Prior to the removal of the gold standard, your $20 bill was backed by exactly $20 worth of gold in some vault. Mid-1970s, the gold standard was stopped and the US’ currency became “fiat”; it only has value because the US says it does. Should the US’ economy col…

It’s not exactly the same, but Bitcoin is essentially fiat money as its only value is what people say it is (somewhat similar to the stock market). So I think it’s an apt comparison. Absolutely not. There's nothing "fiat" about Bitcoin. Fiat means by decree—there's no Bitcoin nation or organization that decreed that Bitcoin is valuable. There's no authority that says what a Bitcoin is worth; the market decides. Bitco…

Nowhere did I say Bitcoin was fiat. I said it’s like fiat in that there’s no store of physical value behind it like the gold standard had. Bitcoin has a value of $x because the market says it has a value of $x. And the USD has a value of $y because the government says it has a value of $y. But on the gold standard, a $20 bill corresponded to a literal $20 of gold - a backing currency.

Despite what Bitcoin proponents want to believe, there is no intrinsic value in Bitcoin - hence why its “exchange rate” fluctuates so much. When a new block is mined, ~$20k of gold don’t magically get added to a vault - because there’s no backing currency.

Re: Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017 Record

#194

Post by the_only_law »

bilater wrote: post #164
the_only_law wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait I thought it was the tech bros shilling btc, I can't keep up anymore.

It's a bit of this: https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q...

Ah ok, reminds me of the infamous Dropbox comment here.

Re: Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017 Record

#195

Post by anythingdude321 »

arcticbull wrote: post #187
cloudinshape wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those things got cheaper because of advances in supply chains and technology. That is why things get cheaper all the time, yes. > Why in the world would I ever loan to a small business if I could see gains just by holding the money? The same reason you do now, which is the only reason you ever lend money: by lending it (to someone more productive than yourself of course) you gain more.

You have to compare it to your risk free return lol

the return on holding is not risk free. in the absence of progress money will be inflationary as there are more people competing for fewer goods. there's no free lunch

Re: Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017 Record

#196

Post by anythingdude321 »

mrlala wrote: post #109
jayd16 wrote: post #22

Can someone explain why BTC going from 13k to 20k in a month isn't the yearly pump and dump?

It's all bullshit speculation. And rich people / institutions doing whatever they can to "make money" no matter what. Am I saying crypto has no value at all and never will? No- but it's stupid that the "drive" for people to create new cryptos and hold current crypto is to uh.. make money off of it vs a currency like USD? That's stupid as hell. Crypto that is not pegged to something like USD is made for gambling and t…

that...doesn't make any sense. return 50x is returning 50x. many people would be thrilled to have 50-100k. It means a better house, maybe better schools, better food, better life. and that's just in America!

Envy is the thief of joy

Re: Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017 Record

#197

Post by globular-toast »

demadog wrote: post #30
domatic1 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can short it and still make money. Go ahead.

That is one thing I love about the finance industry vs other industries. Someone who thinks they can predict the future or at least have a strong opinion can go ahead and put their money on the line rather than just comment on a thread! It’s actually beautiful.

Not necessarily. That person might have no liquid assets at the time, or might not have the means to short a stock, for example. Pretty weird to assume that everyone has funds to move around at a moment's notice.

Re: Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017 Record

#198

Post by atomi »

arcticbull wrote: post #144
cloudinshape wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An inflationary currency incentivises you to invest it, otherwise you lose real purchasing power. With a deflationary currency, you can just stuff it anywhere and see gains. You steal from tomorrow. As the material wealth of the world increases, our money supply should increase to match. You don't understand the WHY of those gains. A deflationary environment is the only real environment, that is why central banks a…

Deflation reduces the velocity of money (why spend something now when you can spend less for the same thing later). This creates a negative feedback cycle which reduces economic activity and worse it increases inequality. This happens because the poor continue to transact hand to mouth and are unable to save while the wealthy accreted value on their idle cash. Invested cash creates economic activity. The cash in your…

To be fair, society already has prevalent deflationary capital - real estate.

Re: Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017 Record

#199

Post by ac29 »

centimeter wrote: post #49
crumbshot wrote: post #29

Bitcoin and other compute-intensive cryptocurrencies should be banned or taxed so heavily that it's financially infeasible to use them. The amount of energy being wasted (reportedly more than seven nuclear power plants worth) on what is essentially an unproductive project is quite absurd. In a world where we should all be increasingly concerned about the looming climate catastrophe, it's wholly irresponsible for Bitc…

> The amount of energy being wasted (reportedly more than seven nuclear power plants worth) on what is essentially an unproductive project is quite absurd. Orders of magnitude less than the amount of energy being "wasted" sustaining the millions of employees of the banking industry. I use scare quotes because the energy is being spent , not wasted. > I mean what would be left except for just buying into the pyramid s…

> Hard money (i.e. money which cannot be inflated)

1) Bitcoin has never not been in an inflationary period. Every 10 minutes or so, more gets printed.

2) There's no technical reason this can't continue forever - whoever controls 51% of the network can dictate the rules. Yes, the network could fork if the rules changed, but its impossible to say which network would be more successful.

Re: Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017 Record

#200

Post by arcticbull »

atomi wrote: post #198
arcticbull wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deflation reduces the velocity of money (why spend something now when you can spend less for the same thing later). This creates a negative feedback cycle which reduces economic activity and worse it increases inequality. This happens because the poor continue to transact hand to mouth and are unable to save while the wealthy accreted value on their idle cash. Invested cash creates economic activity. The cash in your…

To be fair, society already has prevalent deflationary capital - real estate.

To date since the 1970s, on average, on an inflation adjusted dollars per square foot basis, the price of real estate in the US has not changed. It’s not really deflationary since you can always build up (except where city councils tip the scales and prevent construction like SF).

Any deflationary nature is a council level imposition on an otherwise pretty neutral asset class.

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