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Bitcoin is a disaster

metzdowd.com

281–290 of 992 posts

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buying drugs with BTC is very widespread and probably what fuelled the initial adoption. How is that anything but a currency?

So buying drugs in 2010 makes it a currency, gotcha.

Last time I checked drugs were still pretty popular in 2020 and no one wants to hang around big Daves dirty house to buy some weed

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#282
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I use Bitcoin where ever possible, so your opening claim is wrong. Just because a random guy barters bitcoins for goods/services, that by no means implies that bitcoin is anything close to money. There is a very specific definition of what money is, and bitcoin's volatility alone rules it completely out.

Well bitcoin is as much money as FIAT money, except if you consider money credit. Than indeed, bitcoin would not be money.

The US government would not accept BTC as payment for anything, so it is definitely NOT a fiat money.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#283
post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one treats Bitcoin as a currency. ... And the reason behind that is obvious. Something whose value may double in a month or whose value may halve within weeks is a terrible currency. Nope. I don't buy things in crypto only because of the reporting burden. Every cup of coffee bought with crypto has to be reported on a tax return.

I didn’t know this is the case. Source?

https://www.irs.gov/irb/2014-16_IRB#NOT-2014-21

It's reported as a security - other, which is laid out like the stock trades 1099. Your taxable amount is the difference in price between what you paid for the currency and what you "sold" it for (both in USD).

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"No one treats Bitcoin as a currency. It’s treated as an investment vehicle." I, for one, have and will continue to use it as a currency in some cases. I'm quite sure I'm not the only one.

I’ll call BS on this - are you actively selling it to buy things online? And you buying BTC when you have spare money in checking accounts? Is your turnover like 10-20%? I’m guessing you’re a buy and hold person with BTC, which makes you an investor in it.

I'll admit that I do buy bitcoin for use as currency. It is still the easiest way to remain pseudonymous digitally. To me it's similar to gold. Most people use it as an investment vehicle, some use it because it's an efficient way to store value that is hard to track.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#285
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as everything in the market is priced in the same underlying asset > the increasing worthlessness of the USD I think you must be using words different from what I take them to mean, which means you can draw radically different conclusions from how I read them. If everything in the economy is tied together, such that $10 is still an hour of work at a grocery store, and $10 still buys you a lunch or three gallons of…

To my understanding, inflation -- and the causes of such -- is something that can only really be assessed ex post facto. What's being asked is, "is what we're seeing a warning sign of inflation-yet-to-come?" Rephrased, "are people bullish on technology stocks and Bitcoin because they're speculating that there's major fiat inflationary risk and these asset classes are most likely to hold value?"

Inflation is a loss of value and it hasn't happened until it has happened, and when it happens, you notice very much instantly.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one treats Bitcoin as a currency. It’s treated as an investment vehicle. And the reason behind that is obvious. Something whose value may double in a month or whose value may halve within weeks is a terrible currency. If I expect it’s value to increase then I would be a fool to spend it. If I expect it’s value to drop I would be a fool to accept it. Cryptocurrencies are anything but currencies.

Technically speaking, it's also a terrible investment vehicle for those same reasons. It's a fantastic parlor game of speculation though, where the point is the volatility.

I stopped being annoyed by crypto generally when people stopped pitching me insane scams of how the entire internet 2.0 was going to run on blockchain (its not) and they accepted its a fun gambling vehicle.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#288

Related: the current rise of Bitcoin prices has been peculiar to me, and seems to be a bit of a canary in an inflationary coal mine. We've injected trillions of dollars of fiat into the economy this year. It feels like the sky-high valuations of technology companies and Bitcoin are "shock absorbers" of sorts, or early signals of inflation-yet-to-come. If we assume the market is efficiently pricing these assets (like…

> We've injected trillions of dollars of fiat into the economy this year

When the government issues debt and then uses the money to send out cheques, that money had to come from investors in the first place. So the money was reallocated, not created. (New assets did get created: someone is going to hold those bonds and count them as part of their assets. But they can't use these bonds directly to buy groceries.)

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#289
Bitcoins are digital-hawalas and therefore are keepsakes. You can find yourself or pay to get someone's keepsakes. There is no counter-party, just like gold and oil. Once I own it, there is no way to consume it other than to barter it. It could be made illegal anytime by authorities.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#290

> The pseudonymity of coins being owned by the bearer of some > cryptographic key is a failure; People have been eavesdropping and > aggressively analyzing the block chain from day 1. And the block chain > will always be there, it will always be public, and it will always be > subject to further analysis. And we are learning that analysis of that > record is sufficient to destroy any pretense of anonymity or > pseudo…

I wonder how many Bitcoin users have read and understand the following extensive list of privacy "pitfalls" (mistakes that can reveal information about unwary Bitcoin users): https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Privacy Are you careful to avoid these numerous privacy pitfalls? If not, you're leaking information about yourself, into the public ledger (blockchain)

Most BTC holders are on exchanges that all have KYC rules in place, so there is no anonymity or privacy assumed. It is just like buying KO shares on Etrade.
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