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Bitcoin breaks above $20k

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Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#441

Post by ogogmad »

rodiger wrote: post #271
ogogmad wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You got it the wrong way round. Deflation means when prices are dropping. The price of computers has fallen over time predictably and exponentially, and yet that hasn't stopped people from buying them. The Keynesian argument against deflation is that it disincentivizes people from spending money as they expect prices to drop. This disincentive hasn't prevented the computer industry from being a huge success. The fact…

Kinda unintuitive, but if you look at processing power as a currency, it is actually undergoing hyperinflation (number of computers + processing power increases every year). Meaning you buy a computer, assuming its value will drop (due to the inflationary nature).

Except processing power is not a currency, so it's the opposite way round...

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#442

Post by Taek »

ljf wrote: post #364
Taek wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no question though that a lot of people have put their faith in Bitcoin. Misplaced or not, that original comment is wrong :)

I wonder what number of people actively use or hold bitcoin in any given month? Is there a dashboard for this and also transaction per month?

There's a dashboard for it somewhere and iirc something like 50-80% of bitcoins haven't moved in over a year.

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#443

Post by agent008t »

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #361
agent008t wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes me wonder. What is the optimal size of the population for a given country/territory/planet? That is, the size of the population at which the welfare/wealth of the median individual is maximized. Given that, as you say, prime land, prime housing, prime infrastructure, prime tourist destinations don't easily scale, yet more people enable better technologies/more efficient production of other consumer goods a…

Also depends on how you split it. I'd wager a lot of metropolitan areas are over already. Smaller cities are close to the maximum, but most people in the middle class or lower will feel it is way over already simply due to the cost of things. There are quite a few fields you could at least slash in half overnight too. Bureaucracy is one: here (small European country) we have way too many managers and people that are…

Right - also, the more people you have, the less attractive automation becomes, even if you already have or are close to achieving the technology.

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#445

Post by rodiger »

ogogmad wrote: post #441
rodiger wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kinda unintuitive, but if you look at processing power as a currency, it is actually undergoing hyperinflation (number of computers + processing power increases every year). Meaning you buy a computer, assuming its value will drop (due to the inflationary nature).

Except processing power is not a currency, so it's the opposite way round...

If you're looking at USD as the base asset, computers are undergoing inflation, not deflation. Both USD and computers are inflating in supply, but computers are inflating faster (in terms of processing power at least)- hence the continuous drop in price. You could argue USD is deflating in comparison to computers, but computers are not deflating in comparison to USD.

Edit for a bit more clarity: Inflation / Deflation is relative to a "base asset" which is considered unchanged in value. For USD this is normally a standard basket of assets (foreign currencies or a "market basket").

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#446

Post by stjohnswarts »

cryptica wrote: post #253
nostrademons wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is representative of a bigger problem within the developed world: the top problem on many people's mind is "Other people have money and I don't." This manifests in a lot of other areas as well: stock market speculation, people asking for government handouts, folks looking for get-rich-quick startup ideas, glorification of the "side hustle", etc. And I think the root cause of that is that productivity gro…

Yes it's musical chairs; through monetary policy, reserve banks keep pulling out chairs and thus inflating the value of remaining chairs... Then they'll claim that this is all to prevent global warming. All this is actually starting to make me doubt global warming. The banks certainly never gave a damn about global warming before. Do I think that people in power suddenly became more altruistic over the past few years…

I think you are too harsh on money. Power corrupts people. Whether thats in the form of a Communist dicatorship, Capitalist dictatorship, winning the lottery (money is a form of power), being a town sheriff that doesn't pay a lot but lets you shoot people and throw them in jail. Power corrupts, it's not necessarily money.

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#447

Post by jpsalm »

zadler wrote: post #369
jpsalm wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Significantly less energy per transaction, which is the only metric that matters.

Lightning network will also scale to millions of transactions per second and consume much less than each Bitcoin transaction.

Yes, non-blockchain transactions are much more efficient. But then what's the point of using blockchain if transactions happen off-chain?

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#448

Post by nwah1 »

varajelle wrote: post #406
nwah1 wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Onion routing also requires trust that there is no collusion between nodes

You seem to dislike lightning network, but the reason given are not accurate. What would happen if there was collusion between nodes? And while it is true that you are still limited by the Blockchain speed if the nodes don't cooperate, all the incentives are made so they do cooperate and that transactions happen near instantly.

Incentives in the existing ACH and SWIFT systems are such that transactions are fast and accurate.

But businesses have to follow the law. If a regulation were imposed, people would feel a need to comply. If they said to block transactions from Iran, on penalty of imprisonment, then they would do so. Etc. Avoiding all of that was the exact motivation for bitcoin. Adding all of the features and drawbacks of existing systems into bitcoin would undermine bitcoin's reason for existence.

Centralization at every layer of bitcoin has been the rule. Mining, exchanges, etc. Their dominance is so complete that if only a few of the primary exchanges were to blacklist an individual, they would have a very difficult time. In the same way that Mastercard and VISA banning PornHub is a major harm to that website.

Censorship-resistance is thus out the window, and there really isn't that many benefits left for bitcoin after that.

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#449

Post by ttul »

ChainOfFools wrote: post #154
thrower23423423 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm. I'm surprised BTC isn't mined in India - a country with an extremely high power leakage, and provides free electricity for 'farmers'.

There has to be a goldilocks zone where high power theft and corruption is balanced with reasonable physical security and guarantee of stable power delivery, or your miners will short out the entire town supply, if they aren't simply stolen first. Also thy need cooling and are very noisy, attracting attention.

For example, the country of Georgia: https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/04/23/597780405/...

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#450

Post by ryanlol »

three_seagrass wrote: post #243
ryanlol wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are vast amounts of professional drug dealers making their living from transactions using this “hobby currency”.

Are you up to speed on the dark net markets? Most have closed. The last one in use, Empire, had an exit scam this summer. Before that, Wall Street Market was taken over by feds and used as a honey pot - where they used traced bitcoin transactions to arrest dealers/people involved. Any drug dealers still doing online trading prefer Monero, and even then, I would still say that using a currency solely to buy drugs onli…

> Are you up to speed on the dark net markets?

Yeah actually.

If you think Empire was “the last one in use” you obviously have no idea what you’re talking about. There are more DNM transactions happening now than ever before.

There are closer to 20 markets in operation, XMR makes up less than 10% of the transactions. I’m sure many dealers would prefer Monero, but few customers do.

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