171–180 of 278 posts
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I think the fixed supply is what attracts people.
Which results in long-term depreciation, such that spending bitcoin is economically irrational.
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Bitcoin isn't a stock. Most kinds of assets don't provide dividends or other cashflows -- that is certainly not the only determiner of the value of an asset. It would indeed be a bad idea to construct an investment portfolio out of only Bitcoins and no stocks, but that doesn't mean it is without value (for example, as a monetary technology or an inflation hedge) > It is not at all clear to me that having more (relati…
Assets similar to bitcoin are somewhat rare on the ground. Art, antiquities, maybe a few other things. (Precious metals are typically useful for other things.) Few people regard those assets as useful investments, in anything other than a diversification sense. No one regards them as economically productive.
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The notion that citizens have a say over their country's fiscal policy seems pretty unsupportable to me. In the US, the Federal Reserve is specifically designed to avoid political pressure, and the European banking institutions are even more insulated from the consequences of elections. Your vote's impact on currency policy is very small, indirect, and highly delayed in time, so much so that it is for all practical p…
Pretty unsupportable? Complete and utter nonsense. The Fed just handed out cheques to all Americans because Congress asked it to. It was unprecedented in US history, and the strongest indication that the system still works for the average person. Under what circumstances would that be possible with Bitcoin? Do the big whales in crypto care that you've lost your job? Congress does because it's their job to care. That'…
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There must be an entry point. After you bought you BTC, you can withdraw it, and use it to pay for things, store privately etc.
A true cypherpunk would say that everyone should just start earning bitcoin directly to enter.
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Actually the ultimate reason why a note has value is that it can be used to settle tax bills and other debts, so you do not have to "hope" that someone out there will take it -- the government behind the money will take it from anyone who owes taxes, which is almost everyone who lives or does business in the country.
Hm, so what happens if a country issues some sort of currency in the form of loans/salaries/whatever but does not collect any tax (let’s say they sell natural resources to foreign countries and use that money to maintain their printing presses). Would the currency be worth nothing?
Perhaps the idea of "pure decentralization" doesn't exist; only partial realizations of it. If you look at Bitcoin and Ethereum you find concentrations of power, information, and etc at many levels; centralization. Even at the technical level the solution to controlling change is often to have minority steering groups whose membership necessarily suggests a concentration of power enabling them to exert influence.
unrelated comment: it's crazy how anti crypto and anti blockchain HN is for being a tech community
Cryptocurrency promotion implies to some extent that central control of money is a bad thing. So it is somewhat political. I think most HN folks are against it for political reasons to a certain extent. Even if they say they aren't, they are getting their information from and socializing in a bubble with a political bias. There are some news topics on HN that i will never read the comments of because of how motivated…
It is kind of funny that exchanges have become so successful for Bitcoin- since they lose 100% of the stuff that made BTC attractive in the first place. They’re centralised, regulated and transactions don’t even go on the blockchain. The result is that the number 1 way people get into Bitcoin is through a mechanism that has none of the attributes of Bitcoin.
> The result is that the number 1 way people get into Bitcoin is through a mechanism that has none of the attributes of Bitcoin. Sure, but 95% of people don't care about that. They just want an asset they will go up. Everything else is just a story people tell themselves so they're not putting 20% of their net worth in trading cards.
Gold was the best portable and fungible speculative bet for a very long time.
Bonds are speculation that a country will continue to be productive and well managed enough to pay their debts without resorting to massive inflation.
Stocks are a speculation that a company will continue to be competitive and profitable for long enough to recoup your investment.
Real estate is a speculation that an area will continue to be a desirable place to live or useful for some industry.
Rare art is a speculation that people will still be willing to pay millions for your original Picasso and that we won't be able to produce undetectable copies with better technology.
Bitcoin is a speculation that people want a digital, neutral store of value like gold was that they can park excess money in that they don't have a better use for right now.
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The notion that citizens have a say over their country's fiscal policy seems pretty unsupportable to me. In the US, the Federal Reserve is specifically designed to avoid political pressure, and the European banking institutions are even more insulated from the consequences of elections. Your vote's impact on currency policy is very small, indirect, and highly delayed in time, so much so that it is for all practical p…
Pretty unsupportable? Complete and utter nonsense. The Fed just handed out cheques to all Americans because Congress asked it to. It was unprecedented in US history, and the strongest indication that the system still works for the average person. Under what circumstances would that be possible with Bitcoin? Do the big whales in crypto care that you've lost your job? Congress does because it's their job to care. That'…
Uh, no, the Fed didn't.
The US Treasury did because Congress directed (not asked) it to. Congress can make non-binding requests, but neither round of stimulus checks was a product of such a nonbinding request, and neither was executed by the Fed.
> It was unprecedented in US history
The size was bigger, but broad individual stimulus checks based on past tax filings are not unprecedented in US history. They were done in 2001, for instance.
> Under what circumstances would that be possible with Bitcoin?
Fiscal stimulus would be just as possible with a Bitcoin monetary system as a fiat one; the difference is that the divide between fiscal and monetary policy, which MMT correctly points out is artificial in a fiat system, would be a hard divide in a Bitcoin system, which would mean that where in fiat securing financing such as by selling debt is not strictly required for deficit spending, though traditionally done because of the strength of the belief in the fiscal metaphor, in a Bitcoin system there would be hard constraints which would require financing of deficit spending. This would probably drive up the cost of borrowing, since while lenders don't want borrowers to monetize debt, the fact that they ultimately can reduces default risk since it is impossible for a debtor whose debts are denominated in its own fiat to be forced to default through insolvency.
unrelated comment: it's crazy how anti crypto and anti blockchain HN is for being a tech community
We can't even begin to imagine all the new tech that will use blockchain (related) tech yet. The money making is just the "nasty" part of it now. A recent development is that of NFT's for example. And the smart contracts thing is just understandable for us tech nerds, but if all our customers and entrepeneurs get wind of it.. brace yourself.
Perhaps because it doesn't, and can't produce any "new tech"?
> And the smart contracts thing is just understandable for us tech nerds, but if all our customers and entrepeneurs get wind of it.. brace yourself.
No one will brace themselves. Smart contracts have innumerable problems that cannot be solved, and are inherent in the fact that it's just a piece of technology, and technology by itself can't do anything.
1. They are digital only. And can only govern things that can be programatically checked. So, anything that can't be checked (for example, delivery of physical goods) is out of the question. If you say "but yes, those things can be provided by people", you're back to being no better than regular contracts (which also have a bunch of laws and regulations around them protecting all the parties in the contract).
2. They require all involved parties to understand, vet and audit programs written in any number of esotheric programming languages. Yeah, good luck with getting customers and entrepreneurs getting wind of it.