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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

#221

Post by imtringued »

tiku wrote: post #93
WJW wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This gets back to the "gambling vs investing" debate we had on the front page yesterday. What is the fair value of bitcoin? It will never provide dividends or other types of future cashflows, so that aspect of its fair value is zero. The remaining part is purely speculative in that it is based on what other people will pay for it. It is not at all clear to me that having more (relatively uninformed) speculators will…

One of the values of bitcoin is the price miners get for it. If they lose money on selling their newly minted bitcoins they won't sell. So it's related to power prices, the difficulty of mining a new coin.

This might be a source of price stickiness, however, how many miners are actually unprepared and unaware of the price movements of Bitcoin?

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

#222

Post by imtringued »

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.

Lots of Bitcoin simply get lost and people are betting on this loss too. You are also forgetting the ultimate irony behind long term deflation. At some point your Bitcoin will be worth millions in dollars but will the dollar actually buy you that much product or service if there aren't enough young people to take care of everything?

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

#223

Post by imtringued »

barbegal wrote: post #48
vbezhenar wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people couldn't run full nodes Can you elaborate on that? I checked few years ago and it was possible to run full node. What would prevent me from running full node right now?

Maybe I should say didn't rather than couldn't. Everyone can rent a server for a few dollars a month to run a node. Most people home laptops are not suited to running a full node as they either have to be always on or are spending a lot of time validating blocks every time you power them on to catch up.

That's a fundamental problem with any decentralized system no matter what source of consensus you use. Blockchains retain their history forever, it's only natural that it's going to use an excessive amount of storage.

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

#224

Post by paulcole »

wayneftw wrote: post #63
dmingod666 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there is a claim that an anonymous currency is owned in major part by a certain gender the burden of proof lies on the people making a claim.. I don't think anyone can actually prove these numbers.. If I say 70% of cash is held by group 'x'. prove me wrong, you can't. No one is going to be able to do that. Let me know if you have a link to MtGox sharing gender breakdown of their owners..

> I don't think anyone can actually prove these numbers.. Nobody is making a court case out of it, except for you. Everybody else is just using their common perception, that it is indeed mostly men holding bitcoins because it’s mostly men talking about it and it’s commonly known that mostly men are into computer technology. Let me know if you can’t justify a correlation between those things and I’ll help you “read th…

> it’s commonly known that mostly men are into computer technology

Just curious, do you think this is accurate and if so why is that the case?

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

#225

Post by briefcomment »

phatfish wrote: post #212
briefcomment wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, execu…

"It requires no upkeep like buildings and other property." I suspect the physical footprint required to keep the Bitcoin network running is actually quite significant. Considering estimated power usage of all the "mining" operations.

By upkeep, I mean that investor's would not have to deal with the inconvenience of maintaining an apartment, etc.

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

#226

Post by briefcomment »

dafty4 wrote: post #213
briefcomment wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, execu…

Fiat can deflate, though rarely. Just look at '08/'09. The inflation/deflation curve of US fiat has been much more predictable than BTC. You're statement "just another store of value" is almost a tautology, as any tangible or intangible item in the universe can potentially fit that definition. What matters for a useful currency is that it is a stable store of value. As long as you admit that BTC is a speculative comm…

Tbh, the market for Bitcoin doesn't care what it "promised" the people before, and doesn't care what the expectations for it are. If people want to put money in, they will. Clearly, enough people don't care about it's instability to store $1tril, and it'll probably get a lot more stable. Labels are one thing, but price and staying power are another.

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

#227

Post by runawaybottle »

moralsupply wrote: post #202

> 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 insa…

That’s interesting. Yeah, what if they were mostly Jewish? I never really thought about the demonization of men now days in those terms. Took a long time until Jews fought back against the absolute constant throb of ‘Jewish cabal’ that runs the world. Very long time.

Interesting, that was profound.

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

#228

Post by anonisko »

moralsupply wrote: post #202

> 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 insa…

Proof of work (PoW) vs proof of violence (PoV).

Both energy intensive mechanisms for enforcing the security of a currency.

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

#229

Post by 3np »

Grim-444 wrote: post #143
kemonocode wrote: post #101

I won't say much about the article as it's a topic that has been discussed plenty of times before (The merits and faults of Bitcoin) with often inflammatory results, but I will definitively say it's pretty easy and rather intellectually dishonest to attack it only whenever there's a dramatic price swing. Where were all these articles during all those price lull periods? Also, if we're pointing fingers, the influence…

What price lulls? Before 2017 the price of Bitcoin was stable as it wasn't worth anything. From 2017 to 2021 the price of bitcoin has changed every year by: 1,300%, 71%, 75%, 328% Compared to the DJIA, which over the same years changed every year by: 25%, 8%, 21%, 11% In the last four years, two of those years have had price changes in the hundreds of percent, and the other two years the change was still 300% the gre…

Volatility has consistently gone down over the years, not up.

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

#230

Post by shawnz »

imtringued wrote: post #220
shawnz wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree with these statements, except I think the intrinsic value of precious metals is exaggerated and Bitcoin also has functional value as a monetary technology (not generally in an important way for most first-worlders though).

Gold derives its store of value property from being an elemental shelling point. It's the best element to be used as a store of value. That property will not disappear in the future since it's based on the laws of physics. However, the exact price is obviously not guaranteed. Merely the ability to keep exchanging it in the future.

Agreed, I only mean to say that the intrinsic value (i.e. for jewellery or electronics) is exaggerated. Gold has obvious usefulness as a store of value and an inflation hedge, although I think Bitcoin or a similar technology has the potential to be even better/more guaranteed/more convenient.
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