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Bitcoin is a disaster

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Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#581

Post by xapata »

sunshinerag wrote: post #117
svara wrote: post #54

There does seem to be a fundamental design issue in bitcoin and proof of work in general: Mining has economies of scale and therefore winner takes all mechanics leading to centralization. At that point the mechanism that ensures ledger integrity is the calculation that if the miner tampers with the ledger, that would destroy trust in the coin and hurt the miner in that way. But 1) that's exactly how conventional curr…

Re: 1, I don't see conventional currencies working that way. Has any government promised how and why they will maintain their currency. They supposedly claim they help people why screwing up the very same people. Case in point, the 2008 crisis and the various modern monetary based crises.

2008 is a great example of why fiat currency is helpful. The government can simply create more to stimulate cash flow and/or prevent a crisis of confidence in a non-government institution.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#582

Post by claydavisss »

baby wrote: post #31

That’s nonsense. Bitcoin is as good a store of value as gold due to one unique feature: scarcity. Actually, it’s even less power consuming than the gold industry and is much more transparent. I wouldn’t really advise bitcoin for anything else, like day to day transactions, although I and many of my friends have used bitcoin to transact on dark markets and it works. The only argument I’ve heard about gold being better…

Bitcoins can be destroyed. Practically speaking, gold cannot be destroyed. In my mind, this is its advantage. No world government can delete gold.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#583

Post by syshum »

cool_dude85 wrote: post #550
DeafSquid wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much electricity do you think traditional money printing and transfers consume?

When confronted with relatively concrete studies on Bitcoin's wasteful energy use, are you going to point to the fact that physical money printer energy use has not been studied to muddy the waters? The reason it hasn't been studied is that it doesn't use a huge amount of electricity. Anyway, as another way of answering your question, physical money printing and transfers require no electricity at all, predating the…

Pretty sure the modern machines that

1. Print the money

2. Harvest the Cotton and other raw materials

3. Transport the money

4. Secure the money (even in electronic form)

5. and about 100 other things

All use "energy" the point of the OP's comment was about "wasted energy" which i would image is tied to climate change

The idea that "printed money uses no energy because it is old tech" is just ignorant

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#584

Post by chii »

nichohel wrote: post #311
etimberg wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you believe there should be no capital gains on it?

Possibly funny thought: If you have to declare a capital gain on every BTC purchase of a cup of coffee, why can't you declare a capital loss every time you spend dollars that you earned long ago, and which have decreased significantly in value since then, due to inflation?

you can and would declare capital losses on gold sold at a loss. Cash does not have gains/losses, as they are themselves the unit of accounting.

The inflation effect causing cash to lose value is something you suck up - it's incentive to invest the cash.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#585

Post by mandelbrotwurst »

gruez wrote: post #333
foepys wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Lightning Network doesn't solve the congestion problem for global adoption. To open a lightning channel you need an on-chain transaction. The same is true to close one. Assuming 2,500 transactions per block, you will need ~970 days to just open a lightning channel for each US citizen (assuming 350 million citizens and no other Bitcoin transactions). Due to his limitation the Lightning Network is unsuited for any…

>Assuming 2,500 transactions per block, you will need ~970 days to just open a lightning channel for each US citizen (assuming 350 million citizens and no other Bitcoin transactions). >Due to his limitation the Lightning Network is unsuited for any large scale use outside of exchanges. But do we need to onboard everyone everyone in a year? It's like saying the internet will never scale because modem manufacturers can…

I'm mostly guessing at this because I'm not very familiar with Lightning Network, but I think they'd need to be closed out periodically as well in order to settle up? Plus, I think you'd ideally want an account with each vendor that you deal with, not just one account, otherwise I think the channel would probably need to be managed by some central authority who manages the accounting between you and whoever you're keeping these side accounts with, which seems not great for a number of reasons....and then on top of that there's that 350 million is just one country, let alone the entire planet.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#586

Post by jt2190 »

xapata wrote: post #185
sunshinerag wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are confused. There is nothing in Bitcoin that prevents VAT. It's just Germany's policy. Elsewhere they charge VAT on it like any other currency. I have paid VAT on all my bitcoin transactions like any other currency. I am not in Germany.

That's good to hear. What about exchange controls? How do you see governments adjusting inflation with widespread international Bitcoin usage?

My understanding is that the inability to control inflation is a “feature” of BTC, not a “bug”. I strongly suspect that this will eventually make BTC too rare for owners to trade very often, and not practical as a day-to-day currency.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#587

Post by marcell »

jpmattia wrote: post #544
marcell wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a subtle distinction though. When a bank lends out US dollars, they are effectively creating new money that is treated as “real” money. They don’t technically lend out the deposits. In contrast, crypto lenders can’t create new bitcoin. They need deposits to lend out. The depositer in turn is aware they don’t hold real bitcoin, just a deposit credit at the lender. This is the origin of the crypto mantra “Not…

> When a bank lends out US dollars, they are effectively creating new money that is treated as “real” money. They don’t technically lend out the deposits. This is exactly wrong. In fact, it is the origin of the term "fractional reserve": They are reserving a fraction of the deposits and lending out the rest.

Right, but in crypto world most people regard coins held in custody as different from coins held in a private wallet. The Mt Gox experience was a good lesson on this topic, if it’s not your keys, it’s not your bitcoin.

In comparison, very few people distinguish paper cash money from a bank credit backed by a fractional reserve.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#588

Post by StavrosK »

nwienert wrote: post #579
StavrosK wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So are we talking about "a good currency", or "cash"? Because the initial comment said "cash".

I guess we’re just establishing that Bitcoin doesn’t fit the definition of a functional currency of which cash is a subset.

I disagree, I think Bitcoin is excellent digital cash, but not of a great currency yet.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#589

Post by thewarrior »

hedora wrote: post #557

I wish the crypto currency described in the second half of Applied Cryptography had caught on. Basically, the bank issues a signed secret coin, and you (recursively) spend the money by using the secret to generate another signed secret. As with onion routing, you can only “look back” one step of the signature chain unless you collude. It’s anonymous and supports offline spending. Anonymity can be broken via collusion…

How does this scheme support offline spending and also prevent double spending ?

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#590

Post by firekvz »

LatteLazy wrote: post #408
wpietri wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this from personal experience? And is there any data available to show that it's doing significant volume in Venezuela versus other options?

I'm not OP. I looked and Chainalytics claim Venezuela is world number 3 in bitcoin use. But it's not clear what they're basing that on. My (very limited) understanding is that they can't directly see the country of origin of a bitcoin transaction. So they must be relying on figures from exchanges or apps? https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/venezuela-cryptocurrenc... Does anyone know if you can tell country of origi…

Bitcoin adoption in venezuela is Absolutely fake/nonexistant

Bitcoin is only used as a bridge for exchange VES:USD a.k.a money laundering from corruption and drugs, with some remittances transactions caught in the middle of those laundry waves.

there is absolutely 0 adoption for bitcoin in Venezuela, Im a bitcoin enthusiast since 2011 and I hold bitcoin and I live in Caracas (capital) and move around all tech communities and yet to see a real crypto transaction. Some people used the “get rich quick” schemes from DASH and other silly alts and tried to make a big media (international media) about Venezuelans using bitcoin to try to money grab international money into their scams, they manage to convince some stores and local food chains to “accept” their silly cryptos but of course no one uses, yet they got the money from their international sponsors trying to force adoption in the country.. there is hillarious threads on DASH forums about it

You can read my other post on details on the only use for bitcoin in venezuela, that big money laundery called localbitcoins

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