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Coinbase mafia shows how tight a circle holds sway over Bitcoin

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Re: Coinbase mafia shows how tight a circle holds sway over Bitcoin

#201

Post by hammock »

anonisko wrote: post #178
dehrmann wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Every store of value that has ever existed and will ever exist is just a game of speculation that it will continue to be valued when you're ready to withdraw your money to do things you've saved for. 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 in…

Do you think gold still has value?

Re: Coinbase mafia shows how tight a circle holds sway over Bitcoin

#202

Post by moralsupply »

> Coinbase Global Inc.’s filing to become a publicly-traded company provides a glimpse into the remarkably small circle of mostly men who command the incredibly lucrative digital landscape

Why is the fact they are "mostly men" relevant in any way?

What if they are "mostly jewish"? Or "mostly white"? Or "mostly American"?

Is Bitcoin now a matter of "privilege"?

Are there people out there who fall for this sort of insane narrative?

In any case, feel free to keep all your wealth away from Bitcoin. It's not mandatory to use it -- unlike the US Dollar, which is actually managed by a mafia, which we call "the government", and which will use force against you if you don't use its currency.

Re: Coinbase mafia shows how tight a circle holds sway over Bitcoin

#203

Post by briefcomment »

anonisko wrote: post #178
dehrmann wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Every store of value that has ever existed and will ever exist is just a game of speculation that it will continue to be valued when you're ready to withdraw your money to do things you've saved for. 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 in…

Absolutely. Bitcoin is just of store of value that has some marginally better aspects than many other stores of value.

It won't inflate aways like fiat.

It requires no upkeep like buildings and other property.

It requires less intuition and research than fine art.

It is more portable and storable than gold.

It is more readily accessible than most things.

It is less dependent on products, market fit and changes, executive changes, etc. than companies.

It will take some value from each of the other stores of value based on investors' preferences and abilities.

Re: Coinbase mafia shows how tight a circle holds sway over Bitcoin

#204

Post by sjy »

shawnz wrote: post #41
WJW wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> since they lose 100% of the stuff that made BTC attractive in the first place Not so. They still allow speculation on BTC price volatility and "get rich quick" gambles is what drove most of Bitcoin growth in the past few years. If anything, the big exchanges make Bitcoin even more suitable for speculation than if it was on the blockchain, since you can trade way more if you don't have to wait several blocks for you…

Making it easier to speculate should in theory decrease volatility and make market manipulation harder, since having more speculators should mean that the price is driven to its fair value more quickly.

According to what theory? This sounds like the law of large numbers, which depends on the assumption that the averaged random variables are independent and identically distributed. The history of speculative bubbles contradicts the idea that speculators act independently.

Re: Coinbase mafia shows how tight a circle holds sway over Bitcoin

#205

Post by imtringued »

guilamu wrote: post #193
anonisko wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every store of value that has ever existed and will ever exist is just a game of speculation that it will continue to be valued when you're ready to withdraw your money to do things you've saved for. 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 in…

You've made some excellent points here, mate, thanks.

They are pretty weak points. By his logic, when you join a company and work you are speculating that you will get paid a salary. At that point everything is speculation and nothing is certain. By writing this comment I am speculating that a HTTP call will be made that results in a database entry. Since humans are not perfect and never have complete information about a system they engage in speculation in every single moment of their life. The comment is effectively value neutral or maybe even net negative and merely criticizes terminology and semantics, not the actual topic itself.

Namely Bitcoin generates no returns but everyone expects it to. Since everything is speculation we are still allowed to rate the speculation by how risky it is. Surviving long enough to finish writing this comment has a 99.9999% chance or more. So this type of speculation isn't risky at all. Meanwhile betting that Bitcoin will go up or down is inherently risky since there is no driving force behind Bitcoin other than human behavior itself.

Re: Coinbase mafia shows how tight a circle holds sway over Bitcoin

#206

Post by anonisko »

hammock wrote: post #201
anonisko wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every store of value that has ever existed and will ever exist is just a game of speculation that it will continue to be valued when you're ready to withdraw your money to do things you've saved for. 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 in…

Do you think gold still has value?

Of course.

It's a useful commodity resource. It can be use for industry, science, dentistry, jewelry, etc.

But I do think the store of value use case where you arbitrarily hoard this useful commodity in a vault so you can sell it later is starting to die. Nation states and companies that need it for it's actual utility will still hoard it as a strategic reserve, like we do with crude oil, helium, uranium, water, grain, maple syrup, etc. But that's a complex risk assessment decision that depends on a lot of variables from predictions of future supply flow to geopolitics that individuals won't be able to evaluate.

I think bitcoin will replace gold as the long term money battery, where you can arbitrarily store value that you don't know what to do with yet for a long time. It might take decades of continued volatility and growth to get to that steady state.

Re: Coinbase mafia shows how tight a circle holds sway over Bitcoin

#207

Post by briefcomment »

ForHackernews wrote: post #196
anonisko wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every store of value that has ever existed and will ever exist is just a game of speculation that it will continue to be valued when you're ready to withdraw your money to do things you've saved for. 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 in…

I disagree with this: there's a genuine difference between non-productive assets like bitcoin (and gold) and productive ones like companies. > Today the world’s gold stock is about 170,000 metric tons. If all of this gold were melded together, it would form a cube of about 68 feet per side. (Picture it fitting comfortably within a baseball infield.) At $1,750 per ounce – gold’s price as I write this – its value would…

That's not really a useful comparison. Of course a cube of the world's gold wouldn't really do anything. But a cube of soil and gas stations would be pretty useless too, without some work by humans. If humans worked the gold, it would return to being used for a purpose. That purpose is "trustless" accounting, which is certainly valued by some. Instead of relying on ledgers, and paper, and accountants and bankers, gold provides you some control of the money you have saved.

Re: Coinbase mafia shows how tight a circle holds sway over Bitcoin

#208

Post by joubert »

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #171
mcguire wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which results in long-term depreciation, such that spending bitcoin is economically irrational.

It is not so, because humans have finite life span. So they MUST spend their coins within a fixed time frame of about 70 years.

> So they MUST spend their coins within a fixed time frame of about 70 years.

Inheritance. Donations.

Re: Coinbase mafia shows how tight a circle holds sway over Bitcoin

#209

Post by briefcomment »

imtringued wrote: post #205
guilamu wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've made some excellent points here, mate, thanks.

They are pretty weak points. By his logic, when you join a company and work you are speculating that you will get paid a salary. At that point everything is speculation and nothing is certain. By writing this comment I am speculating that a HTTP call will be made that results in a database entry. Since humans are not perfect and never have complete information about a system they engage in speculation in every single…

> "there is no driving force behind Bitcoin other than human behavior itself"

That human behavior is more reliable than anything else when you're working with a Nash equilibrium

Re: Coinbase mafia shows how tight a circle holds sway over Bitcoin

#210

Post by joubert »

dragonwriter wrote: post #179
glitchc wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

> The Fed just handed out cheques to all Americans because Congress asked it to. 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 chec…

> Fiscal stimulus would be just as possible with a Bitcoin monetary system as a fiat one;

This article in the MIT Technology Review seems to disagree: https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/04/10/3060/bitcoin-wou...

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