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Bitcoin breaks above $20k

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Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#431

Post by apta »

mrlala wrote: post #419
apta wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is an investment, just like any other, it can go up or down. If you really want to talk about profiting off the backs of others, look no further than interest bearing loans. It isn't for no reason that parasitic and immoral practice had been declared prohibited in Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. Most, if not all of the economy today is based off of interest, and the sooner we get rid of it the better.

>Bitcoin is an investment Well what I find ironic is you are against the concept of interest but consider a cool technology like blockchain an "investment". If you were really so righteous about economics you would realize turning cryptos into "investing" is a total scam.

What's so ironic about that? One is a parasitic immoral practice that feeds off the poor, the other is a new technology that breaks the dependency on government fueled interest and inflation. I don't see where the scam part is.

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#432

Post by traeregan »

mywittyname wrote: post #340
hiq wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you distinguish a proper currency from a hobby currency? I can think of these criteria on the top of my head: * trading volume * number of shops where it's accepted * whether you can pay taxes with it Did you have something like that in mind? Or something else? What would lead you to say "this is not just a hobby currency anymore"?

Proper currencies are used to pay your bills: anything else is speculative. You might think this is a silly definition, because it means that the determination of how "proper" a currency is depends on where that person lives. And that's absolutely correct. I have no functional use for Turkish Lira. The only reason I would possess any is because I'm speculating that the value of Lira will increase relative to the curr…

> I have no functional use for Turkish Lira. The only reason I would possess any is because I'm speculating that the value of Lira will increase relative to the currency I use to pay for my needs.

Or if you’re in Turkey or Northern Cyprus.

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#433

Post by CryptoPunk »

_sm6n wrote: post #94

It's kinda sad that the pricing or market capitalization is the only thing that is being talked about in the "cryptocurrency community", instead of focussing on how the technology can be useful for society. Like for example if you look at /r/Bitcoin, there's a sidebar with "Submit text/link NOT about price", yet virtually every post is about price, even if just indirectly (Paypal joins the cryptocurrency bandwagon an…

Up until 2015, price talk was heavily discouraged in /r/Bitcoin.

It was all about adoption - new merchants accepting it, new people spending it, new use-cases enabled by its peer-to-peer electronic cash and immutable and permissionless record-keeping functionality, etc.

Everything changed after the 'purge', where the head moderator took a harsh stance against members trying to build consensus for a hard fork that would help realize Bitcoin's potential as a global peer-to-peer electronic cash, and started banning people left and right. The Bitcoin subreddit turned into a full time price pumping forum after that.

Ironically, Bitcoin saw more rapid price growth before 2015, when the primary topic of discussion was consciously steered away from price, than after.

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#434

Post by NeutronStar »

iforgottherest wrote: post #335
tudelo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you notice? Not sure what you are trying to allude to.

Plenty of individual transactions (at least on this recording time scale) and not a flow as an economy would daily. Plus some odd transactions where money is allocated to several wallets at the same time. I wish it had the relative size included in the visualization.

The more transactions are show the more links would appear. It also takes time for linked transactions to appear in real life.

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#435

Post by koonsolo »

three_seagrass wrote: post #408
koonsolo wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

APPL is probably a hobby company ;)

Nobody is saying that it is, but by your logic APPL is a great currency.

First of all, comparing 2 things doesn't insinuate that they are the same.

Second of all, just because US classifies bitcoin as an asset, doesn't mean the rest of the world has to agree with that. My country doesn't.

And from the wikipedia page of bitcoin: "It is a decentralized digital currency"

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#436

Post by alwillis »

NoOneNew wrote: post #266
_sm6n wrote: post #94

It's kinda sad that the pricing or market capitalization is the only thing that is being talked about in the "cryptocurrency community", instead of focussing on how the technology can be useful for society. Like for example if you look at /r/Bitcoin, there's a sidebar with "Submit text/link NOT about price", yet virtually every post is about price, even if just indirectly (Paypal joins the cryptocurrency bandwagon an…

While I do agree that crypto needs to step away from the current "investment vehicle" mentality and be treated more like a "currency"... I'm still lost how yet another currency is going to help society. Im not trying to be an ass, I'm being serious on figuring this out. I constantly see this argument with no real logic other than trying to essentially use Marxist ideals of "redistribution of wealth" to a disenfranchi…

Bitcoin is a non-sovereign, hard-capped supply, global, immutable, decentralized digital store of value. It’s an insurance policy against monetary and fiscal policy irresponsibility from central banks and governments globally.

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#437

Post by fsh »

mshumi wrote: post #195
slewis wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"you can already have fast and scalable transactions through normal banking." I see this repeated a lot. I think you're saying bitcoin is no better than normal banking for moving value. Do you really believe this? Yes, in the US I can immediately wire money somewhere as long as: 1) I do it within east coast business hours. Weekend? Sorry, wait til Monday 2) I have the correct information for the receiving institution…

It seems absurd that transfers between two accounts you own at large financial institutions take 3 days to process. There are obvious safety concerns, but there should be provably safe and faster ways of transferring value at minimal cost. People should be able to specify their security level; you could even gate-keep it with licensing, but we should make it an option for people.

In the EU, bank transfers (in €) have to clear within one working day. Transfers between your own accounts at one bank are typically instant. There is no fundamental reason for bank transfers to be slow. And unlike bitcoin, banks can handle more than a few transactions per second worldwide without grinding to a halt.

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#438

Post by WanderPanda »

cryptica wrote: post #338
WanderPanda wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

„Don‘t ascribe to malice what can be ascribed to stupidity“ (stupidity and short term, well intentioned, but in the end egoistic thinking, I would add)

"Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice" - Grey's Law. You just need a handful of people to independently see a few opportunities to profit from different activities (which are related in non-obvious ways) and together they can effect great malice without any single individual being aware of their collective malice. The Upton Sinclair principle ensures that the perpetrators of malice…

Wow, really cool, thanks for the pointers!! I was always thinking in these terms but never explicitly looked for other people's takes

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#439

Post by 3pt14159 »

intotheabyss wrote: post #375
3pt14159 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, as soon as I read through the whitepaper I knew it was going to be valuable at least for a time. My primary reason for selling most of my Bitcoins at $200 a coin was that I thought it was obvious that the US would ban it. I made out like a bandit, don't get me wrong, but the fact that it's an accepted investment still boggles my mind. They shutdown eGold but not Bitcoin?! Crazypants. In retrospect, I think th…

I mean, eGold needed an intermediary so it was centralized. Pretty easy to shut down eGold. Not so for Bitcoin. Maybe the fact that it's still running is a testament to its decentralization?

They way they would ban it if they wanted to ban it would be to get the West to collectively tie its use to economic sanctions and also to specific individuals. Huge fine for use, restricted travel to the US and her allies, and punishing sanctions for financial systems or corporations that defect.

There you go. No more buying drugs on the dark web for 99.99% of the people that currently do so.

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#440

Post by DennisP »

gruez wrote: post #430
DennisP wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ethereum was only about a year old at the time. When Bitcoin a year-and-a-half old, it had a bug that required a five-hour chain rollback. Bitcoin people will object and say that was a bug with the blockchain itself. However, sample code on ethereum.org had vulnerabilities similar to TheDAO's bug, so arguably it was a platform issue on Ethereum as well. There have been large thefts from contracts since then, includin…

>Ethereum was only about a year old at the time. When Bitcoin a year-and-a-half old, it had a bug that required a five-hour chain rollback. >Bitcoin people will object and say that was a bug with the blockchain itself. However, sample code on ethereum.org had vulnerabilities similar to TheDAO's bug, so arguably it was a platform issue on Ethereum as well. I think the main difference here was that bitcoin never had a…

Propose another large Bitcoin rollback and see how the community reacts. The idea that the longest chain always wins has been a core value in Bitcoin since its inception; the manual rollback was a complete violation of that.

It was also necessary for success, but the Bitcoin community has little grounds for moral superiority here.

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