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Bitcoin is a disaster

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Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#941

Post by xapata »

ric2b wrote: post #861
xapata wrote: post #779

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> currency debasement ... is how the people are impoverished I agree that's the heart of the Bitcoin thesis, but I am convinced the evidence does not support that claim. In fact, quite the opposite. Much of the original Bitcoin discussion had its roots in von Mises' theories and beliefs, one of which was the rejection of empiricism. It's tough to fruitfully discuss a topic when the conversants disagree over epistemol…

> The government can print money and distribute it uniformly, such as with this year's CARES act (which is about as uniform as one can ask for in this political climate). It can, but it almost never does. Usually it just subsidizes or bails out businesses. > Regardless of government policy for how it distributes newly created currency, inflation is fundamentally beneficial for debtors and bad for creditors. If the in…

In the US, we have Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and countless other programs. Yang got mildly popular this election season with a basic income plan.

I'm hopeful.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#942

Post by xapata »

ric2b wrote: post #859
xapata wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't the government force taxes to be paid in the currency of its choice, thereby making taxpayers (residents, visitors, and their counter-parties) subject to its currency?

I can make my whole life in some other currency and then purchase some national currency just for the purpose of paying taxes once a year.

Better buy some swaps to lock in your exchange rate.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#943

Post by DennisP »

wyldfire wrote: post #539
majewsky wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we have "cash you can email" that doesn't consume as much electricity as several nation states combined?

Yes. Proof of stake coins like nano don't require any proof of work. Peercoin, too. Ethereum is considering PoS IIRC.

Ethereum has a proof of stake chain in production right now, in the sense that it is running with over a billion dollars worth of real ETH. But it won't run user transactions and contracts until the EVM migrates over, probably late 2021, and that's when PoW will go away.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#944

Post by stale2002 »

xapata wrote: post #932
stale2002 wrote: post #847

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd expect Venezuela could do something similar if they felt like it. And yet, if you look at the real world, and how things exist already, you see that these types of efforts have failed. This is not a hypothetical situation. This is not about stuff that may or may not happen in the future. Instead, you can look at real world situations, that happen right now, in existing countries all around the world, and you wi…

On the contrary, I think China is a good example of how the government can have its cake and eat it, too. When you say, "lots of people," how many are we talking about? The majority? If so, you'd think the government would just give up trying to have control, it wouldn't be worth the effort. Remember, we're not talking about trying to have a technology that a few hobbyists can use. The goal is widespread usage, enoug…

> When you say, "lots of people," how many are we talking about?

Enough that this whole original idea that you stated which was "Can't the government simply shut down the internet", is obviously not true.

The real world examples of real world countries, show that places like china are not "shutting down the internet", and that such an idea is obviously stupid.

There are tons of stories that you could make up in your head, about why China would want to shut down the internet right now.

And yet, the fact of the matter is, that China is not "shutting down the internet". Thats the facts. Countries are simply not doing that. Despite many motivations to do so.

> you'd think the government would just give up trying to have control, it wouldn't be worth the effort

And yet we see that the governments of the world are not successfully cracking down on the internet enough to shut down crypto. Thats not happening. Despite the fact that crypto is often used for illegal purposes. And yet countries aren't enacting authoritarian control over all of the internet to shut it all down.

We do not need to consider hypotheticals here. Just look at the real world, right now, and all the illegal activity that happens using crypto, and yet we are seeing that the world governments are not willing to enact measures to shut it all down.

Apparently, it is not worth the effort to shut down that illegal activity, right now. That is already the state of the world.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#946

Post by jen20 »

michaelmrose wrote: post #428
aplummer wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But maybe you can appreciate that I don't want to have to jump through those hoops just to be able to send someone $100 digitally. Surely you store fiat currency somewhere, and isn't there a "transfer money" button where you plug in an account number and institution and the money arrives shortly after?

for almost 1/4 of the population of the US that isn't actually true.

While I assume you're talking about those without bank accounts in this statistic, it's also not true of most bank accounts in the US either so far as I can tell.

The inability to make transfers immediately and without fees between accounts held at different banks is bizarre for those used to UK banking.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#947

Post by acover »

wcoenen wrote: post #860
acover wrote: post #712

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reserve requirement is 0%, increasing a bank's reserves doesn't allow them to lend more. There are mechanisms that allow an increase in bank reserves to be spent in the economy without loans [0]. [0] https://positivemoney.org/how-money-works/advanced/how-quant...

I read the post you linked, and was surprised by the description of money being created when a UK bank buys a government bond from a pension fund. I thought commercial banks were only allowed to create money when creating loan assets. Is creation of money when banks buy assets a unique feature of the UK banking system, or does it also happen elsewhere? If banks would buy financial assets and create money in the proce…

The purpose of QE is to cause inflation, the federal reserve is explicitly trying to avoid a Japan situation where there are low interest rates and deflation [0]. To avoid a deflationary spiral [1].

I can't find a source that explains the mechanism for how QE affects the economy.

[0] https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/051315/what-... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflation#Deflationary_spiral

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#948

Post by nwienert »

sunshinerag wrote: post #903
bluedevil2k wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s completely wrong. You would never say “the US dollar has crashed compared to Microsoft stock“. That’s a dumb comparison to compare a currency to an investment. The dollar has been mostly stable the past 10 years. A gallon of milk is still around $3.50

why are you comparing a currency (bitcoin) to a stock. USD vs Bitcoin is a comparison of currency.

Bitcoin is a security closer to gold than anything. Limited supply and high cost of production.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#949

Post by cbozeman »

lumost wrote: post #643
1-6 wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still question the early bag-holders of Bitcoin. Where are they and what do they do now? I think Litecoin came at a time when more people had an awareness of cryptocurrency, it's more democratized during the initial phases because of Scrypt and GPU's being the dominant mining tool at the time. ASICs shifted that balance again but I still have my doubts about who owns the majority of Bitcoin.

I would bet a lot of folks have been selling it over time. My wallet once held ~10 BTC for a few transactions back in the early days. I ended up with 5 btc left over that I rode the bull market with, selling half the position post bull run each time. I kick myself for loosing the BTC my friend and I mined back in '09 on CPU time when it truly was worthless. But I was a dumb college student at the time and was simply…

Oh man, I'm right there with you. I had the Bitcoin wallet app on my LG G3 years ago... I found a backup USB stick with the wallet backed up to it. Tried to restore the wallet, realize I've forgotten the password. It didn't have much on it, maybe 23 mBTC or so, but that's about $700 nowadays.
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