Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bitcoin is a disaster

metzdowd.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

741–750 of 992 posts

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#741

Post by SamBam »

sunshinerag wrote: post #229
542458 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economists weren’t born yesterday. Inflation is measured in many ways, most often by looking at a basket of goods where the prices are relatively non-volatile. Using the USD/Bitcoin ratio as a yardstick for inflation seems very misguided, as Bitcoin is heavily speculated.

>> Economists weren’t born yesterday. So? They can still be idiots. Idiocy does not have an age limit. >> Inflation is measured in many ways, most often by looking at a basket of goods where the prices are relatively non-volatile. Meaning you remove the items from the basket if it's price jump too much ? so if you tamper with the items in the basket you can project(pretend) that the inflation is not happening.? >> us…

> but it's growth indicates people are increasingly prioritising it over paper to store value.

Or simply that there are thousands of speculators. (Which isn't even that many people considering the number of people who speculate in stocks.)

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#742

Post by SnowProblem »

bconnorwhite wrote: post #512
toyg wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except Bitcoin has no way to “stabilize”. Without central banks’ intervention and governance, even regular currencies would fluctuate like crazy. Unless the bitcoin world can come up with a Federal Reserve / ECB equivalent, it will continue to be a wild ride, which will effectively impede further uses. It will always be a speculation vehicle rather than a store of value.

I think the difference is that currencies fluctuate against each other, whereas if everything is priced in Bitcoin, its whatever you're pairing it against that's fluctuating. Goods (ex: loaf of bread for 200 satoshis for example) would stay stable

Humans are creativity machines. We are always expanding the amount of value there is in the world. The only way to have stable prices is to have a currency that inflates to match the amount of new stuff created.

But do we really want stable prices? Today you can buy a device a million times faster than 20 years ago for the same price. Imagine if everything were like that.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#743

Post by zhoujianfu »

cyphertruck wrote: post #723
kmeisthax wrote: post #718

We know . Hell, Bitcoin Core developers have known for years, that's why they never endorsed a base block increase. That's why they've put all their energy into adding upper layers with transactions secured by flimsy game theory rather than flimsy hashcash. That's why they pushed for SegWit, purely because it would make the complicated transactions necessary to run those upper layers not more expensive than direct tr…

The SegWit project quadrupled the max block size in 2016. Since then there’s never been significant backlogs. Even with record high prices, one hour transactions are less than a dollar. Maybe even a $0.10 fee will clear in that time. I don’t know why this claim it never happened persists, except certain people who wanted to tule over bitcoin have spent millions employing an army if bots to spread the lie.

If a transaction will clear in less than an hour for less than a dollar (or even ten cents), why is the average fee currently $9.10?

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#744

Post by dnautics »

dragonwriter wrote: post #728
dnautics wrote: post #704

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your assertions are simply not borne out by historical truth, there have been periods of history where there was no inflation or deflation, where there was plenty of investment and growth. For example, post-civil war US. Similarly the 1850-1900 sweden free banking era. Oh. And Japan. Do you seriously think there is NO productive investment in Japan currently, simply because there is no inflation? People grow and inve…

> Your assertions are simply not borne out by historical truth What assertions? > there have been periods of history where there was no inflation or deflation, where there was plenty of investment and growth. That...doesn't contradict anything I've said. I have not stated or implied that, in the absence of inflation or deflation, one would not expect productive investment and growth. I have agreed with upthread claim…

How can you claim the us had poor economic performance in that era? The country went from "having torn itself in two" to "becoming a international superpower" in 50 or so years. The rejection of reality implied by your selective analysis of economic history is truly astounding.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#745

Post by nichohel »

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?

The responses are valid as far as they go, but the larger point is that the government in a jurisdiction is free to inflate its own currency at great benefit to itself while simultaneously extracting taxes on fictitious "gains" of other currencies or equivalents (like BTC) against that currency.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#747

Post by seibelj »

throwaway666494 wrote: post #738
Taek wrote: post #709

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin has the most infrastructure surrounding it. And Bitcoin is the most careful to make life easy for infrastructure providers. Eth is very challenging to operate securely. Breaking updates are frequent, often with little warning. Bitcoin hasn't changed in many years, and new software updates are optional, and don't require you to write any new code or change how you operate. Most other cryptos suffer from the sa…

Breaking updates are not frequent, there's never been a breaking update on the ethereum blockchain. Bitcoin changes all the time (e.g., taproot)

Ethereum literally just had this issue a month ago https://www.coindesk.com/ethereums-hard-fork-disruption

Binance had to suspend wallets because of it

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#748

Post by colinmhayes »

ur-whale wrote: post #409
colinmhayes wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fiat currency is one the most beneficial economic developments ever. Goldbuggery is idiotic.

>Fiat currency is one the most beneficial economic developments ever. Currency certainly is. Fiat most certainly not [1] [1] https://ginifoundation.org/kb/fiat-currency-graveyard-a-hist... >Goldbuggery is idiotic. Whenever something is being thought of as useful by a sizable portion of the population over large swaths of time, calling it idiotic is pretty much guaranteed to be a boomerang.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKYKLgzyF9o this is what you uneducated goldbugs sound like
Post reply on HN