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Bitcoin money ≠ the Gold Standard.

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Re: Bitcoin money ≠ the Gold Standard.

#51

Post by dfox »

corin_ wrote: post #35
contactdick wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like it's already happening - to quote construct "Some quick research shows a handful of big players in the mining market who have invested heavily in high-end GPUs for dedicated bitcoin mining, some with over 50 GPUs running 24/7 for months now. These guys are bound to have huge quantities of bitcoin they are eager to unload when the price is right. Meanwhile, news coverage is driving exploding popularity, wh…

I believe the idea is that mining was a solution for launching BitCoin, and that as BitCoin has become more popular, the value of mining has gone down, meaning that at some point (I don't know if it's already happened or not), mining won't be worth the returns.

mining has to be worth the returns, because without mining the network will not work. It is not about generating BTC, but about estabilishing verifiable historical record of performed transactions. It is expected, that when value of one block will go down, miners will make profit from transaction fees.

Re: Bitcoin money ≠ the Gold Standard.

#52

Post by njs12345 »

gritzko wrote: post #18

Technically, BitCoin is hardly scalable. As every participant needs to be aware of every transaction, that gives O(N^2) computational/storage cost, assuming N is participants and transactions~participants. May be cured by a dedicated central server storing all the transactions, but then it is not P2P anymore.

I don't think that's true. Clients just need the latest block (and a few blocks after) to verify that a transaction has gone through, only nodes (which are meant to be quite computationally powerful) need the whole block chain.

Re: Bitcoin money ≠ the Gold Standard.

#53

Post by Steko »

The link ignores most of the arguments made in what it purports to reply to:

No response to the Great Depression argument. No response to the governments will declare it illegal argument. No response to the offline argument. No response to the potential hackability of bitcoins.

Other then that it's a slam dunk.

Re: Bitcoin money ≠ the Gold Standard.

#54

Post by dualogy »

barrkel wrote: post #39
jsn wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free software isn't at odds with capitalism (you don't have to extract monetary profit from everything you do in capitalism). Neither is bitcoin. Government-controlled paper money, on the other hand, definitely is at odds with free market.

Nobody wants a free market. That's a market that includes slaves, child pornography, assassination contracts, etc. At the level of globally integrated economies, I think the gold standard has been pretty well proven to be disastrous. It especially doesn't deal well with trade imbalances that unwind suddenly. The trouble you see in the Euro area can be seen as a microcosm of what a gold standard is like; countries lik…

"That's a market that includes slaves, child pornography, assassination contracts, etc."

Yes -- but by definition only if agreed upon mutually voluntarily.

But you're probably still right when saying that (almost) "nobody wants" that.

Re: Bitcoin money ≠ the Gold Standard.

#55

Post by hasenj »

dalke wrote: post #45
hasenj wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think free software is at odds with certain capitalistic ideas: As a private owner of a "production" factory, you have control over your products, and through this control you gain profit. Contrast this with communism, which views private control over things which are needed by the public (like food) as a bad idea because the person in charge gets to limit the freedom of others (or some idea similar to that). Free…

The issue is your statement "you have control over your products" does not apply. Copyright law legally prevents you from including someone else's software in your work, unless you get permission. The GPL grants you that permission so long as you follow the terms of the license. In other words, it isn't "your products", it's a joint product, and the other contributor wants a say on how the joint product is delivered.…

> The GPL grants you that permission so long as you follow the terms of the license. In other words, it isn't "your products", it's a joint product, and the other contributor wants a say on how the joint product is delivered.

I've already responded to this in another comment.

The GPL doesn't "simply grant you this right". FSF think this right is essential and that it's unethical to not grant this right. If RMS simply wanted to give you a permission, he could've used a variation of the BSD/MIT licenses.

> but they stay well within copyright law to change the system from within.

But they still think the system is wrong.

> Have you considered that perhaps it's copyright's temporary monopoly grant which is "at odds with certain capitalistic ideas"?

I've heard this argument, and I don't think it's very compelling, but really what's the point? Why should anyone feel compelled to make such an argument? As if capitalism is the religion of the state, and every ideology must be compatible with it, or else!! So you have to go around and make these interpretation about what "true" capitalism is all about.

Re: Bitcoin money ≠ the Gold Standard.

#56

Post by hasenj »

msy wrote: post #50
dfox wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because market value of BTC is not at all stable or proven as the market is quite small. It is entirely imaginable that somebody will design similar, but slightly better system (faster transactions, more efficient implementation, whatever) that will cause most bitcoins traders to move there. Essentially, system like this depends entirely on market, while nothing has "inherent value", most physical things can be still…

So if this is an unstable, unregulated market that shouldn't be used for anything more serious than pizza at what point is that going to change? What magical thing is going effect to change? And if that thing doesn't exist, what is this apart from a more complicated way to waste electricity than Seti@Home?

The assumption/hope is that it will stabilize as it grows, but this will take time. It's not gonna be a magical thing/moment.

Re: Bitcoin money ≠ the Gold Standard.

#57

Post by hasenj »

olalonde wrote: post #41
hasenj wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not as if we live in a purely capitalistic system. In a pure capitalism, there would be no taxes. Yet here we are living in a system where the government takes money from you, specially if you're really rich. It's not as though any idea that's at odds with capitalism will require "an alternative system". There's not gonna be any change to the system that requires a new theory of economics. Suppose bitcoins are a…

I agree that we don't live in a purely capitalist system and in fact, I don't like to call it that way as it undermines its meaning. In a truly capitalist system we wouldn't have this discussion at all since there'd be no federal reserve and currencies would be free to compete against each others. In my opinion, Bitcoin (and the gold standard in some ways) is as close to capitalism as it gets.

"as close to capitalism as it gets" is not necessarily a good thing. As someone else pointed out, in a pure capitalism, we'd have slaves, child porn, thugs for hire, assassination contracts, etc.

I just got this idea right now, but I think a pure capitalism will deteriorate very quickly into a dictatorship. All it takes is for someone to accumulate enough military power so that he can take over. Assuming you can buy/sell groups of armed people and/or hire them.

Re: Bitcoin money ≠ the Gold Standard.

#58

Post by swombat »

Myrth wrote: post #27

If someone still didn't get it - the whole original post was a hilariously executed troll. The author very clearly states this: "See, a bitcoin rant is almost too over-the-top for me. Asking why I think bitcoin won't work is like asking why the sky isn't red. I mean, wait, you think it is red? You actually took that seriously? Oh boy. Where do I even start?" "For the record, I'm stupid and trolling. That's why it was…

You need to get that sarcasm detector fixed.

Re: Bitcoin money ≠ the Gold Standard.

#59

Post by nateberkopec »

A gold standard is a tool used by a central banking authority to promote stable prices.

A bitcoin is actually designed not to be controlled by a central monetary authority.

So, of COURSE Bitcoins aren't the new gold standard. That's like comparing apples to giraffes.

Re: Bitcoin money ≠ the Gold Standard.

#60

Post by Amincd »

hasenj wrote: post #3

I don't like how people get defensive around capitalism; "our ideas are not at odds with capitalism", ok, so what if they were? If an idea is at odds with capitalism, that doesn't necessarily make it a bad idea. For instance, I think the idea of free software (RMS style) really is at odds with capitalism; but so what? This is not a good reason to agree or disagree with the idea.

Capitalism means non-government intervention in your voluntary agreements and interactions with others. In other words, it's freedom.
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