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Bitcoin is a disaster

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Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#871

Post by ric2b »

SnowProblem wrote: post #742
bconnorwhite wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Today you can buy a device a million times faster than 20 years ago for the same price.

And as you can see that massive deflation completely destroyed the computing industry, as everyone sat around waiting for next year's device that was faster and better for a similar price.

Wait, that didn't happen? People still buy things when there is deflation? No, that can't be, how else can I justify the morals of my money printer?

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#872

Post by literallycancer »

exclusiv wrote: post #603
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…

Understood that is a concern for you and some. I hope it gets there. But I'm not sure most people care. Bitcoin isn't a currency yet. Most people can call up their credit card and get stuff blocked and returned instantly. Debit cards are definitely less of a service in that regard though and shouldn't be used like credit cards. But the services are valued by most people. As a currency, and as someone mentioned earlie…

Credit cards are debt instruments. Very easy to use of course, but having credit card UX isn't required to qualify as a currency. There were no credit cards 100 years ago. Many countries still rely exclusively on cash and debit cards.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#873

Post by ric2b »

zhoujianfu wrote: post #743
cyphertruck wrote: post #723

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Because lots of businesses don't care that much when they're moving much higher amounts, so they use really basic/dumb algorithms to choose their fees.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#874

Post by StanislavPetrov »

firekvz wrote: post #590
LatteLazy wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 communi…

>Bitcoin adoption in venezuela is Absolutely fake/nonexistant

This is completely and absolutely false. I personally know hundreds of (mostly very poor) Venezuelans who absolutely depend on bitcoin and other crypto currencies to survive. The people I'm personally familiar with eke out a few dollars creating content on platforms like Hive and Steemit, trade their alt crypto for bitcoin, pool it crypto together, and have it sent to Venezuela in small bundles where they collect it and use it to supplement their very meager incomes.

https://hive.blog/

https://steemit.com/

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#875

Post by literallycancer »

lottin wrote: post #458
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…

> 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 People use banks because they provide financial services. You don't have to use banks, if for some reason you want to avoid them, but then you're left without access to those services. As far as I know, Bitcoin doesn't provide financial services, so it's not a replacement…

Most banks provide most services at loss and make most of their money on mortgages. So they will provide payment services in the hope that 20 years later you get a mortgage from the bank you are familiar with.

Notice also that the whole business model relies on the bank having privileged access to central bank money and sharing that access with the plebs for some percentage interest. However current technology makes it feasible for central banks to simply interact with consumers directly. The only remaining problem is how to decide who is likely to pay back the loan. Retail banks could be relegated to credit check providers.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#876

Post by jt2190 »

ric2b wrote: post #858
TheReveller wrote: post #802

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How do I pay 0.005 USD to my friend?

If useful, the US Department of the Treasury can issue a coin or bill with a value of any denomination, including .005 USD, and so is “infinitely divisible”.

Bitcoin divisibility is limited, by design, to 0.00000001 BTC (1 Satoshi)

Whether this is “enough” is very difficult to answer definitively. If the demand for BTC is greater than the supply, the value of BTC will rise until supply and demand reach equilibrium. If the demand outpaces supply, holders (“HODLERS”) have less incentive to trade and more incentive to keep their BTC, because the value of their BTC increases.

If demand gets too great, few to no holders trade, because they get more value by doing nothing, and trades involving BTC slow or stop completely. (We can think of this as kind of a “consensus attack” by “store of value” advocates on the “medium of exchange” advocates.) The demand doesn’t go away, though, so supply and demand can’t reach equilibrium.

Eventually this would lead people to start using something else as a medium of exchange, perhaps just bartering at first, eventually settling on something common. So now we have a problem: BTC demand has been satisfied by another “medium of exchange”. But what happens to the “store of value” part of BTC if it is no longer the “medium of exchange”? Do coins become like works of art, traded infrequently for great sums? Or do they become worthless?

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#877

Post by biolurker1 »

luizparreira wrote: post #869
biolurker1 wrote: post #818

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you get banned from Pix?

Thats a good question. PIX is directly tied to your bank account, so I imagine if your bank decides to ban your account, you won't be able to use PIX through that account/bank anymore. But, I suppose you could open another account in another bank, move your previous PIX keys to it or create new ones.

Not how it works.. One banks bans you and you are screwed for life. That's the value proposition of bitcoin

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#878

Post by graeme »

biolurker1 wrote: post #820
graeme wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much less? Bitcoin currently powers almost none of the world’s transactions, yet consumes all that energy. The entire us consumes 75 twh in a year, the same as bitcoin’s global energy use. Of that, the entire commercial sector is about 12 twh. That’s not just banks. That’s every company. Banks alone are surely far less. Maybe 2-3 twh? And the us is 15% of global gdp. So, global finance might consume about 14-32 twh.…

Bitcoin transacted way more money that PayPal etc

People actually buy stuff on paypal. They processed 2.5 billion transactions in 2020. Bitcoin processed about 250 million transactions.

The total amount of reported money transacted might be higher for bitcoin but that doesn’t come from contact with the real economy. So that depends on the valuation of bitcoin rather than economic impact.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/277841/paypals-total-pay...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/730806/daily-number-of-b...

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#879

Post by sibbdojo »

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…

Most Venezuela Bitcoin statistics are based on information published by localbitcoins.com

I wouldn't trust anything published by Chainalysis. Their accuracy is much lower than their reputation

Venezuela is often painted as a "Bitcoin solves this" poster child. Yes, Bitcoin is sent from the USA and other countries into Venezuela, mostly by Venezuelan expatriates to family. It's useful for buying USD in Venezuela. But USD liquidity in Venezuela is very weak, so Bitcoin doesn't really solve much at all there. You can't buy groceries in Venezuela with Bitcoin

>Does anyone know if you can tell country of origin of a transaction request?

You can not

> Maybe the IP sending the request is public to the network?

If the sender is using his own Bitcoin node, the sender's IP is known only to the other nodes the transaction was broadcast to. If the sender is using a third-party service, that service records the IP addresses of its customers in the same way as any Web site does, just as my IP is known to ycombinator when I submit this comment

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#880

Post by arcticbull »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #842
arcticbull wrote: post #809

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was answering to a person who said that RUB lost half of its value against USD in a span of a year. I just pointed that it is a part of a general trend, what do you find ridiculous about that? Btw, 'a trillion times' is an understatement. Exact figure in 2014 was... 57 460 000 000 000 000 (fifty seven quadrillion four hundred and sixty trillion) times [1], and just add some more since that time. Still thinking that…

Yes of course it's the risky investment. BTC has seen 3 drawdowns of -86% in the last couple of years, and also, what happened to XRP shows that the football can be deflated in seconds with the right SEC memo.

Currency isn't an investment. Currency has never been an investment. You're not supposed to hold currency. You're supposed to use currency to buy assets. A spot exchange rate means absolutely nothing. This is ECON-101.

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