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Berkshire: Bitcoin is ‘contrary to the interest of civilization.’

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Re: Berkshire: Bitcoin is ‘contrary to the interest of civilization.’

#241

Post by robjan »

tromp wrote: post #179
alkonaut wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they bought the stock they are helping fund the business. The shareholders are keeping the stock because it represents their stake but the actual money paid can be used by the company selling its stock and that’s the primary purpose. Whether the buyer/investor votes, or knows what they bought, doesn’t change anything in that respect.

If you buy into an IPO you're helping the business raise funds. If you buy stock from other stock owners it doesn't help the business.

The existence of a secondary market helps the business to sell their IPO in the first place. Additionally they can raise more funds by selling additional shares.

Additionally the people who own shares own the company so what benefits the shareholders benefits the company and vice versa as their interests are the same.

Re: Berkshire: Bitcoin is ‘contrary to the interest of civilization.’

#242

Post by BackBlast »

smt88 wrote: post #198
jl2718 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody does, but it’s a possibility, and we’re hoping that self-sovereign money makes for a more peaceful transition in those places. If it’s total chaos, the criminals will have total control. We have seen this many times. To see why people buy it, understand their fear of what might happen to them if they don’t.

> To see why people buy it, understand their fear of what might happen to them if they don’t. Yes, I totally understand it. My opposition to crypto speculation is as follows: 1) Investments can be a self-fulfilling prophecy if extremely powerful/wealthy people are involved. If you bet on an outcome and also have the power to create it, can we really trust you not to do that? See also: Peter Thiel buying property in N…

> 2) This one is just personal to me -- if crypto becomes an important alternative to USD fiat, the world has likely collapsed and I'll probably either be dead or ready to die.

This is pretty fatalistic. Life goes on, even through war and grief. Just because you don't like the contemplations doesn't make them unrealistic or un-navigable.

Major power transitions are historically accompanied by world war, in such a war the electrical grid will be one of the first casualties. You can't use Crypto without a functional power grid. IMHO, Cryptocurrency isn't a good fit for this scenario. War is bad for cryptocurrency.

> It's hard to overstate the consequences of the US collapsing, considering the enormous amount of military power that our country has.

War has ever been unthinkable, yet it is historically common.

The US military needs an incredible amount of high tech supplies and upkeep to sustain, it would not survive as-is in a significant downturn.

Re: Berkshire: Bitcoin is ‘contrary to the interest of civilization.’

#243

Post by agotterer »

pydry wrote: post #214
agotterer wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For better it worse, the primary use case of Bitcoin is as a store of value. I find it misleading to tell people that the “primary use-case is facilitating nefarious business”. Do you have some data to back up a statement which says that the vast majority of Bitcoin is used in that way? I’m not suggesting there aren’t bad actors out there. But there are plenty of bad actors who deal in fiat as well. But this was the…

Bitcoin wouldn't function as a store of value if it didn't have an underlying use case. This is true of all stores of value - with gold it's shiny and useful, with cash you can pay taxes, with a home you can live in it, etc. In Bitcoin that use case is wealth transfer that is uninhibited by law. That essentially makes it kind of like an index tracker for the underground economy.

Something is valuable because someone else also believes it has value. Have you considered that people put their money in Bitcoin to avoid it being stolen by nefarious/oppressive governments or to hedge against inflation or as speculative investment that Bitcoin will offer additional use cases in the future? Those all seem like legitimate use cases to me.

I don't disagree that it's an underground economy, but that's only because it hasn't hit the mainstream. But being underground doesn't necessarily mean nefarious or illegal. Those bad actors definitely exist in the Bitcoin economy and all other economies. But without some data I'm having trouble coming around to the idea that the majority of Bitcoin is used for illegal purposes.

Re: Berkshire: Bitcoin is ‘contrary to the interest of civilization.’

#244

Post by sixQuarks »

Applejinx wrote: post #232
sixQuarks wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did listen.... when bitcoin was $1 and everyone here was saying it was a scam. I learned that just because the group is smart, they may not be prescient. Look up any successful Y Combinator company's Show HN thread on here, and the top comment is usually something along the lines of "this will never work"

Scams are inimical to civilzation, and hated by Hacker News posters. I don't see the contradiction here.

So you're saying despite the fact that bitcoin has been the best performing asset in history (not just a short period either, we're talking the past decade), it's still a scam?

Re: Berkshire: Bitcoin is ‘contrary to the interest of civilization.’

#245

Post by pydry »

agotterer wrote: post #243
pydry wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin wouldn't function as a store of value if it didn't have an underlying use case. This is true of all stores of value - with gold it's shiny and useful, with cash you can pay taxes, with a home you can live in it, etc. In Bitcoin that use case is wealth transfer that is uninhibited by law. That essentially makes it kind of like an index tracker for the underground economy.

Something is valuable because someone else also believes it has value. Have you considered that people put their money in Bitcoin to avoid it being stolen by nefarious/oppressive governments or to hedge against inflation or as speculative investment that Bitcoin will offer additional use cases in the future? Those all seem like legitimate use cases to me. I don't disagree that it's an underground economy, but that's…

I have considered that. Nonetheless, the people who try the hardest to get money out of oppressive countries are typically the corrupt - they know that their rackets have an end date and they want an exit strategy when that happens. We shouldn't kid ourselves - this is who we are really helping here. It's the same people who buy luxury apartments in New York and London and leave them empty just in case.

I find it hard to believe that anything beyond a small minority of transactions are the "good kind of underground transaction".

Re: Berkshire: Bitcoin is ‘contrary to the interest of civilization.’

#246

Post by keiferski »

jsiepkes wrote: post #237
keiferski wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PayPal or other online banking apps are nowhere near as big of a leap as crypto is. Not even remotely comparable. The former is simply making a trusted single location for a database of transactions. The latter is making that database global and uncontrollable by any single entity. A vastly more difficult and complex task. And again, the idea that a technology can be deemed useless a mere decade after its launch is d…

None of the technologies you name had that big of a negative effect on society while they were maturing. We are a decade in with cryptocoins and 98% of the things that cryptocoins have currently accomplished are a net loss for society. A net loss of which we are currently already "paying" for; Ransomware, waste of energy, people getting scammed with pump and dumps, etc.

Incorrect.

Early automobiles killed so many people that it became a major public health issue.

The Printing Press essentially fueled the Reformation and the subsequent Wars of Religion.

Airplanes were used in bombing raids during WW1, just over a decade after the successful flight of the Wright Brothers.

All technologies have both positive and negative consequences.

Edit: here’s a nice quote illustrating this.

Serious debate was held in courtrooms and in editorials over whether the automobile was inherently evil. The state of Georgia's Court of Appeals wrote: "Automobiles are to be classed with ferocious animals and … the law relating to the duty of owners of such animals is to be applied ... . However, they are not to be classed with bad dogs, vicious bulls, evil disposed mules, and the like."

Re: Berkshire: Bitcoin is ‘contrary to the interest of civilization.’

#247

Post by syshum »

roenxi wrote: post #80
jl6 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For any thing that has both positive uses and negative uses, it seems reasonable to weigh the positives against the negatives. The dollar has substantial non-infringing uses that benefit people. Bitcoin less so, and particularly when weighed against the great harms (environmental or criminal) that Bitcoin brings, I don’t find the criticism baseless.

But if we weigh up pro- and con- Bitcoin is pretty solidly pro. Having a government-resistant unit of exchange was one of the things keeping Wikileaks alive for example. All the negative stuff was going to happen anyway - including energy waste. Humans waste a lot of energy. Wikileaks on the other hand would have folded like an origami in any pre-cryptocurrency era. This is the sort of press freedom that humanity has…

That is the thing, many people do not believe having anything "government-resistant" is good, as they believe government is good, thus if something is resistant to government it must be bad.

If anything the last 2 years has shown me how fragile freedom is, and how much people are willing to give up freedom for safety and security. Sadly people like you and me that see Government as something that should be controlled and feared are in the minority as most people view government as the solution to all their problems, and as their moral compass.

Re: Berkshire: Bitcoin is ‘contrary to the interest of civilization.’

#248

Post by [deleted] »

read_if_gay_ wrote: post #226
Symbiote wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Child pornography was never a significant use of the Internet.

Facilitating CP wasn't the intent behind the internet, but there is significant use, at least if you believe the government when they're trying to justify new regulations. The same thing holds for BTC and illicit transactions.

[deleted]

Re: Berkshire: Bitcoin is ‘contrary to the interest of civilization.’

#249

Post by cromulent »

smt88 wrote: post #10

If you think of all investments as a bet, what are you betting on when you buy crypto? In my opinion, you're betting that crypto will be useful as an exchange of value, which means the people exchanging it are either: A) criminals or B) living in a failed state. Personally, if crypto becomes so widely used that it justifies its market caps, that means a lot of states have failed, and I don't want to live in (or bet o…

In my somewhat limited circle, most people that I know are buying it as its price is rising. They are betting they can sell it for more than they paid. Only a few actually use it as a currency.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_fool_theory

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