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Bitcoin is a disaster

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Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#801

Post by bigphishy »

freewilly1040 wrote: post #774
bigphishy wrote: post #762

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Establishing trust between seller and buyer is not a new problem. The same scenario that you described could be had with mailing checks, physical cash etc. wherever there is not a trusted escrow service. Ironically, blockchain technology is the first technology that actually solves the age old problem of how to establish trust within a truestless system. imho Bitcoin is a novel implementation of open-source technolog…

My critique is not about greed. My critique is about crypto proponents claiming it does things it doesn’t do. The GP complains about the overhead and data collection of traditional solutions, implying it’s a bunch of unnecessary cruft. In fact it’s to comply with local laws and protect the consumer and merchant from fraud. GP used Bitcoin to get around this hassle, renouncing any rights in the event of a dispute. Now…

actually yes, every month I pay my rent by mailing a check. Also, what is the acronym 'GP' ?

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#802

Post by TheReveller »

dsterry wrote: post #706
jt2190 wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's no theoretical limit to it's divisibility. The total supply is known ahead of time but the world will never run out of Bitcoin to transact.

All currencies are infinitely dividable I've never understood this supposed advantage of Bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#803

Post by raindropm »

bigphishy wrote: post #801
freewilly1040 wrote: post #774

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My critique is not about greed. My critique is about crypto proponents claiming it does things it doesn’t do. The GP complains about the overhead and data collection of traditional solutions, implying it’s a bunch of unnecessary cruft. In fact it’s to comply with local laws and protect the consumer and merchant from fraud. GP used Bitcoin to get around this hassle, renouncing any rights in the event of a dispute. Now…

actually yes, every month I pay my rent by mailing a check. Also, what is the acronym 'GP' ?

GP = grand parent. The topmost parent comment we’ve reply (or refer)to.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#804

Post by stjohnswarts »

Bakary wrote: post #171

From my POV the ideological reason behind supporting bitcoin is somewhat weakened given that you'll just have the caste of early adopters completely dominate the market. Essentially trading one elite with another with possibly even greater inequality this time

I think this is why it will fail but some other cc will rise that actually has the characteristics of the original intent of bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#805

Post by tekkk »

bitxbitxbitcoin wrote: post #329
tekkk wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to burst your bubble but assets with extreme volatility, like bitcoin, are not suitable for saving purposes. Investment maybe, but not saving. I assume "saving" purpose in this case means that it withholds its value while being easily liquidable. If you on the other hand have a long saving window so you can tolerate huge swings in the price of the bitcoin (or other cryptocurrency) then the question arises why not…

Despite the crazy year, bitcoin still has less extreme volatility than some actual country's currencies. So for that small percentage of the world, bitcoin is a better "currency" too - besides for obvious things like local brick and mortar acceptance.

Sure but the de facto standard way of dealing with this issue is storing cash in a well-established fiat currency, like US dollar. Although I'm not sure what are you implying. I would assume buying US dollars is as easy as buying bitcoins in most cases. And more accepted too. The only problem being having to have either a bank account or physical notes somewhere stored.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#806

Post by ximeng »

beaner wrote: post #754
ximeng wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t the issue exactly that money supply is increasing decoupled from the real economy? This is why quantitative easing hasn’t particularly increased consumer prices, which are one important indicator of value.

Money supply rarely goes directly to consumers, it first has to be spent by the receiving parties and distributed to the wider economy before consumer prices begin increasing. But it doesn't happen without the prerequisite of money being printed.

That hasn’t happened though - money has gone to corporations and asset holders. It hasn’t trickled down to consumers. Banks aren’t lending to small businesses.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#807

Post by xapata »

stale2002 wrote: post #731
xapata wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose you had a particular debt, denominated in currency A, owed at the end of the year. Would you want to hold some amount of currency A throughout the year to ensure you could pay that debt? I suppose you could argue that you'd buy some currency swaps or somesuch, but most people would just hold that currency. Remember the Asian Financial Crisis, when a bunch of the "tigers" had loans denominated in USD, Francs,…

Holding enough currency to have a small amount of hedged safety against risk of that currency changing in value is not really a good enough reason to say that a country would be able to "force" "taxpapers to be subject to its currency". Even if we say that people would hold some of that original currency, there could still be a significant benefit to transferring most of your wealth to a deflationary currency. Theref…

> significant benefit to transferring most of your wealth to a deflationary currency

I'm not familiar with any evidence of that claim, despite my economics education. I suppose the best historical corollary would be gold? If so, I think we can agree that almost no one has adopted that practice. Do you think Bitcoin is different enough than gold such that it would motivate different behavior?

Let's consider the effects of owing tax in the national currency. Retail businesses would owe sales tax in that currency, perhaps paid quarterly. Rather than adding complexity to each sale, they'd probably price goods in the national currency, even if not a legal requirement (which it easily could be). If goods are priced in national currency, it's handy to keep your working capital in that same currency. ... The incentives start to align to keep the bulk of domestic economic activity using the domestic currency.

For comparison, we can look at behavior in countries which make significant use of some foreign currency. For example, in some central American countries, banks make it easy to keep a USD-denomimated bank account. Why do people want USD instead of gold?

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#808

Post by lottin »

darawk wrote: post #794
lottin wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Traditional finance does not allow you sovereignty over your money. What do you mean sovereignty? Do you mean property? Traditional finance is not only compatible with the ownership of money, it relies entirely on it!

I mean sovereignty in the sense of actual control. When you put your money in a bank account, you give up control of it to that bank. The money may legally be yours, but they physically possess it, and can keep you from transacting with it whenever they wish. I in fact just had this issue the other day. I have a company, and due to a clerical error with the state its registered in, my company was listed as being "not…

Ok, that's not sovereignty. Sovereignty refers to the highest authority in a territory. Yes, in traditional banking, customers cede control of the money they deposit with the bank to the bank. They do not cede the ownership of that money, which they continue to own. Now, transferring money without making a deposit is possible with any currency, not just BTC. You make it sound like it's a feature of BTC but it's not. It's a feature of the financial industry, whether it provides this particular service.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#809

Post by arcticbull »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #623
TheCoelacanth wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you have a similar problem with Russian currency? From Jun 2014 to Jan 2015, it lost more than half of it's value relative to USD.

In the past 110 years Russian currency depreciated against USD at a something like trillion times. It's a safe bet that it'll continue the trend (with some occasional and not too long lapses of stae slowish decline), and actually bitcoin is a rather safe bet against rouble. After all, it's not backed by Putin's government!

This is an utterly ridiculous statement. Not only is the trillion fold devaluation not at all a reasonable assessment of the situation, the exchange rate only matters at the time of the exchange, not after. That's the point.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#810

Post by arcticbull »

lawrenceyan wrote: post #778
firekvz wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 communi…

How do you deal with the ongoing devaluation of the bolivar currently?

Truthfully? There's no good answer, period.

The government needs to be replaced. This is the false promise of bitcoin. As long as the government needs to be replaced you have much bigger problems than the currency. As soon as the government is replaced, you no longer have to worry about the currency.

Bitcoin always has been, and always will be, a solution in search of a problem.

Forget Venezuela for a second and ask yourself how Bitcoin is helping the North Koreans.

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