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Bitcoin is a disaster

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Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#361

Post by alerighi »

viraptor wrote: post #192
hombre_fatal wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That you brought up banking is precisely my point. Imagine if you needed a bank account to give someone $100 cash. Or to spend a few bucks at a street hotdog vendor. Most people take it for granted that they need a bank to do anything, and they don't really consider how powerless they are over their own money. Like how it's illegal to carry too much cash (and it can simply be taken away). And how your bank can impose…

> Like how it's illegal to carry too much cash Which country is that? It's not illegal anywhere I know of.

In my country (Italy) is kind of illegal. I mean, not carrying too much cash (but of course if they find you with a suitcase full of cash, they will ask you where you got all that cash from), but you can't pay in a shop more than 2.000 euros (and they will lower this limit to 1.000 and possibly less in the future). Also you can't pay your employee cash, you have to pay in traceable manners something that you want to deduct from taxes like medical expenses, and so on.

Transaction with cash between private citizens are permitted tough (like buying a used car in cash), but it's not a good idea to do so if you don't trust the other party (because then how can I prove that I gave you the money?)

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#363

Post by scotty79 »

bluedevil2k wrote: post #273
thebean11 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's volatile, but the overwhelming trend has been upwards. Historically it's a great investment if you can weather volatility

> overwhelming trend has been upwards You’re cherry picking your price analysis time period. Last year I could have said “BTC has trended down tremendously the last 2 years” and I’d have been right as well.

Bitcoin never dropped below its previous peak.

You have to cherry-pick narrow enough time period to see bitcoin dropping in price.

If you pick sufficiently large time period bitcoin always grows. This screms 'investment'.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#364

Post by rjurney »

seibelj wrote: post #132
rjurney wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who will be the largest Bitcoin vendor because they are trusted.

But they won’t be the only vendor. There is no license required that gives them a monopoly on bitcoin. If they serve a market segment, great! Others will use something else. Bitcoin is entirely open - it’s a protocol.

So is EDI used by banks with other currencies. I am old enough to have used it :)

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#365

Post by rossjudson »

loeg wrote: post #53
keithwhor wrote: post #24

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…

BTC prices have approximately zero relation to inflation in the real economy (for whatever definition of that you want to use). Rising BTC prices are driven by pyramid scams, fraud, and speculation. There is no useful signal here related to anything else.

I guess "I want to invest in crime, but I don't want to have to do crime to invest in it" falls under speculation.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#366

Post by sixQuarks »

leoplct wrote: post #347

BTC is incredibly overvalued. if you value Bitcoin as much as the cost of the labor it takes to create one, then it should be worth a lot less.

Bitcoin is valued at precisely what the market believes it’s valued at. If you believe it’s incredibly overvalued, then you should short it.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#367

Post by pojzon »

pjlegato wrote: post #328
brianobush wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a useful signal in the dollar price? Price of silver? They are all used in hedging bets. Same for BTC, people with a lot of cash are looking for a safe spot while we have the possibility of hyper inflation.

The entire BTC market cap is minuscule -- about 600bn as of this writing. That seems like a lot, but compare it to Apple -- the market cap of just this one company's stock is currently ~2,238bn. The market cap of gold, US dollars, Euros, etc. are all many times more than Apple. The value of all BTC is a tiny microscopic speck compared to the amount of USD or gold in the world. This means (among other things) a few sm…

To give an another view:

600bn is more than gdp of majority of countries.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#368

Post by wpietri »

im_down_w_otp wrote: post #138
addicted wrote: post #95

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.

Exactly. It frustrates me that the term "investment" has been stretched to include raw speculation. People are welcome to do either one, but it's dangerous when people confuse zero-sum and positive-sum games. Buying any currency, crypto- or otherwise, is like playing the ponies: for every dollar won, there's (at least) a dollar lost. That's very different than investing in a company, which hopefully uses the money to create value.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#369

Post by leoplct »

brianobush wrote: post #75
loeg wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BTC prices have approximately zero relation to inflation in the real economy (for whatever definition of that you want to use). Rising BTC prices are driven by pyramid scams, fraud, and speculation. There is no useful signal here related to anything else.

Is there a useful signal in the dollar price? Price of silver? They are all used in hedging bets. Same for BTC, people with a lot of cash are looking for a safe spot while we have the possibility of hyper inflation.

Look at the Money Velocity. It’s decreasing. You cannot have hyper inflation with a decreasing velocity.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#370

Post by thysultan »

konjin wrote: post #330
jokethrowaway wrote: post #13

Completely agreeable, albeit it misses a point: Governments can't print more of it. That's it really, everything else is noise. I can sympathize with btc (I wish we still had a gold standard, or a standard based on the price of common goods) but I don't see much the other benefits. On top of this, governments could ban btc.

Government forks bitcoin, adds the ability for a trusted address to add more coins. Kills anyone who doesn't switch. Welcome to China, you just lost the majority of your mining pool.

All governments would have to follow suit in lock step for that to work, at which point you have far bigger problems, i.e why not just nuke the internet all together, far easier.
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