Fiat currency is an agreement of settlement using an inflationary mechanism created at will with no work required to provide value.
Bitcoins are an asset created in response to work performed, scaling proportionately with the work required giving it value.
It really is that simple and makes perfect sense.
Bitcoin still makes no sense
51–60 of 161 posts
Re: Bitcoin still makes no sense
#52There have been lots of other currencies privately traded previously, but since the state has the guns the state can outlaw it. If it truly started competing with major currencies you would see it outlawed. It also is not secure as China is controlling a majority of the mining now and the majority can control the currency. Further, Google has a computer that can hack the encryption and you will see a lot more organiz…
> It consumes more power than Switzerland. It's bad for the environment.
Compared to what? You think fiat money has a zero environment footprint?
Re: Bitcoin still makes no sense
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right. It's scaled up. I suppose that if people became suddenly interested in old stamps to the tune of billions of dollars, stamp-dealing would also start competing for resources with the rest of the economy.
I think that’s wrong for a few reasons.... - a stamp uses a small amount of resources no matter how many stamps you want (more stamps may even be cheaper from economies of scale). - Bitcoin inherently relies on expensive computation to provide safety - each Bitcoin is more expensive than the last due to increasingly difficult nonces. - (dumb edge case) you can’t make old stamps so it’s hard to image using a lot of re…
> each Bitcoin is more expensive than the last due to increasingly difficult nonces.
Bitcoin difficulty can change in either direction.
Re: Bitcoin still makes no sense
#54There have been lots of other currencies privately traded previously, but since the state has the guns the state can outlaw it. If it truly started competing with major currencies you would see it outlawed. It also is not secure as China is controlling a majority of the mining now and the majority can control the currency. Further, Google has a computer that can hack the encryption and you will see a lot more organiz…
According to this article: https://decrypt.co/28560/quantum-computers-could-crack-bitco...
It looks like you need a lot more qubits than the most powerful quantum computer we have now. Also, it's fairly trivial for Bitcoin to adopt a quantum resistant algorithm with consensus.
I think the far larger problem would be every non-quantum resistant encryption on the planet being broken at once.
Re: Bitcoin still makes no sense
#55There have been lots of other currencies privately traded previously, but since the state has the guns the state can outlaw it. If it truly started competing with major currencies you would see it outlawed. It also is not secure as China is controlling a majority of the mining now and the majority can control the currency. Further, Google has a computer that can hack the encryption and you will see a lot more organiz…
> It's just a bubble and can be popped anytime.
That's been said for years since Bitcoin emerged, this is starting to get a little old as Bitcoin survives longer and longer.
Re: Bitcoin still makes no sense
#56The problem with Bitcoin and is that it creates real negative effects, with little positive effects to show for it. The most prominent negative effect is the huge energy waste, which doesn't help when we are trying to cut on our carbon footprint The second one is that it makes illegal activities easier, and at a larger scale. It's quite common right now for companies to be coerced pay millions of dollars to anonymous…
"with little positive effects to show for it" It's an efficient store of value. Here is a dilemma - you have 10 million dollars. You need somewhere to park your money. Do you follow the Chinese businessman pattern and buy real estate in Toronto? That seems complicated - picking a property, being subject to the real estate market, etc. Often these houses sit empty, since you are on the topic of wasted resources. Do yo…
A single bitcoin transaction (that is, literally one) uses as much electricity as a house consumes in several weeks. The entire system uses roughly the same amount of electricity as the country of Ireland, or Denmark. For ~300k transactions per day.
No, the "huge energy waste" is so vast as to be nearly inconceivable. It cannot reasonably be compared to anything else. Even shipping literal gold around by helicopter might be more efficient.
Re: Bitcoin still makes no sense
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll assume you're referring to obtaining drugs which many consider to be something that at the very least should not be punished by prison time (myself included), as opposed to say... the distribution of child pornography, ordering hit men, arms trafficking, or the selling of hacked credit card numbers, passwords, and zero days. If that was your idea, wouldn't we be better served by lobbying our politicians to move…
Personally I assumed they meant exchanging money in secret if you are a whistleblower and the government is after you.
Same. Or maybe you're someone who was born in a country embargoed by the United States and you want to accept payment for freelance work.
Re: Bitcoin still makes no sense
#58some hobbyist observations, please correct me if I'm wrong: >I’m still trying to piece together what exactly how much control governments really lose under Bitcoin, whether I can see that as a positive or a negative, and whether I agree with Dalio that governments would (or could) take action to prevent it. I don't think they could control it at all, as I will get into in the next post >The enforcement of debt and th…
>you can today exchange btc for monero, ethereum or whatever and back again and it's virtually untrackable who owns it or where it came from.
I don't get why people buy into this idea that BTC is super-hacker-cash that can't be traced.
BTC can be traced. That's the point of an open ledger. If you want 'untraceable' BTC, you have an big burden to do so (buy it for cash in a parking lot with no cameras and using an alias).
The problem is the second you start buying things with the BTC and sending them to your house, your anonymity is shot.
There are coins (like Monero) whose purpose is to make transactions more untraceable but BTC is intended to be traced.
Re: Bitcoin still makes no sense
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
"with little positive effects to show for it" It's an efficient store of value. Here is a dilemma - you have 10 million dollars. You need somewhere to park your money. Do you follow the Chinese businessman pattern and buy real estate in Toronto? That seems complicated - picking a property, being subject to the real estate market, etc. Often these houses sit empty, since you are on the topic of wasted resources. Do yo…
> It's an efficient store of value. Here is a dilemma - you have 10 million dollars It's not a dilemma. At all. If you have 10 million dollars just lying around, chances are, uo already know what to do with your money. So your entire premise is based on a combination of assumptions that make it entirely laughable: - that if you have 10 million dollars, you have a problem with storing them - that in order to defend bi…
Dimas, I already clearly listed the problems with those investments, in case you didn't understand, I will repeat:
Stocks - all time high during COVID-19, propped up by fed printing money. Very risk invesment atm.
Property - buying real estate of any form is a very complicated process, where you get burned if you don't understand the market.
Securities - same thing as stocks - unless you are trading options, features, interest rate swaps, etc. The same arguments apply, with more complexity.
bonds - aka padding for mutual funds to reduce their risk with, on paper. Near-zero yields.
Investments - are you going to repeat the same words that mean the same thing ad nauseum and act like it's an argument?
Diversified portfolios - oh, I guess you are. Next you are going to say "Index funds" - what do I win?
Re: Bitcoin still makes no sense
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess the key difference is that less startups have bilked investors by peddling fantastical dreams of post-fiat ancient coin based economies.
Maybe less tech startups, but im pretty sure a bunch of people popped up to bilk other people out of their money during the beenie baby craze.
I'm not sure if you're defending bitcoin or comparing people buying it to crazed beanie baby collectors. At least, nobody was talking about a beanie baby based financial system at the time - however adorable it may have been.