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Bitcoin is a disaster

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Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#371

Post by reiderrider »

addicted wrote: post #95
hombre_fatal wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the irony. The point is that Bitcoin has introduced an actual "digital cash" currency without institutional/governmental middlemen. That institutions can be built on top of that, and that some people want such institutions, doesn't change the novel utility of finally having a currency that functions like digital cash. It's like saying it's ironic that people use physical USD for anonymous p2p transactions…

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.

I also use Bitcoin as a currency (via Coinbase). I love the reactions. It’s not commonly accepted in my area so I’m only using it for haircuts and holiday bonuses, but would gladly buy more with it. Excited about Etherium’s DApps but having trouble creating viable ones in my industry (insurance). BTC’s transaction cost is worrisome (who is spending $6 in transactions fees for small purchases). Monero has some serious advantages over BTC (privacy and transaction costs).

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#372

Post by rglover »

Maybe Bitcoin is a disaster from the perspective of solving all of these problems, but alt-coins have solved a lot of them. The idea of Bitcoin as a digital gold has always made the most sense to me. While the initial goal may have been to use it as a literal form of digital cash, what it's evolved into isn't exactly a failure imo.

It seems that instead of wiping the slate clean, it'd be better to more actively promote Bitcoin as just that, gold, not cash. Then, on the technical side, focus on making the conversion of that "gold" to a more cash-like cryptocurrency as easy as possible.

I'm not terrible well-versed on the technical side of Bitcoin (just a high-level understanding), but this post seems kind of fatalist. Bitcoin is a success purely on the basis that over a decade later, after countless claims on its death, it's still chugging along. That resiliency deserves credit.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#373

Post by SilasX »

wcoenen wrote: post #288
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…

> 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.)

That’s not true when the buyers of the debt include the Federal Reserve using new money, as is happening here.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#374

Post by bluedevil2k »

scotty79 wrote: post #363
bluedevil2k wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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'.

So did Enron

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#375

Post by rjurney »

XargonEnder wrote: post #275
rjurney wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is needed is an AI digital currency where training deep networks for representation learning has a side effect that mints coins without costing a lot of extra resources. Then mining coins is useful and we get more better AI to enslave humanity.

I'm confused by how much I agree with you

I think its a no brainer and possible doom scenario. Is it possible? There are common operations like... the L1L2 norm that are used across machine learning. Is there a way to craft an operation like a regularizer that is both useful and profitable? Or could up you use a block as an initialization parameter and somehow make use of it? A prediction task itself might work - solve this provably hard problem and you own the cash. I don’t know but it seems like what is needed.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#376

Post by ur-whale »

icedchai wrote: post #267
thelittleone wrote: post #226

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 used to buy things with bitcoin, but every time I have regretted it. It would've been better to use cash and keep holding.

> t buy things in crypto only because of the reporting burden.

There's an easy solution to that problem: spend BTC when you buy things, and then every week-end, buy it back to get rid of whatever monkey money (fiat) people gave you (salary,payments,etc...)

That seems like a lot of work, but it's easy to automate.

And if enough people do this, this will strengthen the BTC economy and weaken fiat, so you can feel good about yourself when you go to bed.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#377

Post by njarboe »

aidenn0 wrote: post #175
sunshinerag wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dollar is STILL the king of criminal activity, money laundering, kidnapping, ransom ... it will take awhile for the shift to happen.

I thought the Euro was taking over thanks to the 500EU note?

They are not printing any more 500EU notes, but they do remain legal tender for now. They might start being worth more than 500EU over time. Seems like a good note to keep your cash savings in if you live in Europe.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#378

Post by zik »

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.

Cash transactions over 10,000 lakh are illegal in India [1]. Spain, France and Greece have all recently introduced limits [2]. Germany [3] has tried to introduce similar limits but have failed (so far). Australia's introducing a limit soon [4].

[1] https://babatax.com/cash-transaction-limit-in-india-cash-pay...

[2] https://wolfstreet.com/2017/01/28/europe-limits-on-cash-tran...

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/08/german-plan-pr...

[4] https://www.accountantsdaily.com.au/business/14087-governmen...

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#379

Post by brianobush »

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.

Do any simple technical analysis and you will find an upward trend over its existence. You don't look at a narrow window.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#380

Post by sn_master »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #306
ojhughes wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Monero is used now. Not Bitcoin.

Most of Monero is actually paid for in Bitcoin via online exchanges. WH stopped doing auto-exchange just few weeks ago, but many other exchanges are still up with barely any kind of validation, not even an e-mail.
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