How to Start Disrupting Cryptocurrencies: “Mining” Is Money Transmission
1–10 of 91 posts
Re: How to Start Disrupting Cryptocurrencies: “Mining” Is Money Transmission
#2What a terrifyingly dumb perspective... "it has helped facilitate a whole lot of bad things" is his whole hand-wavy argument for why people (presumably lawyers) need to go around "throwing sand in the gears."
IMO we should be throwing sand in the gears of the government. Starting wars and killing hundreds of thousands of people is much worse than ransomware attacks.
Re: How to Start Disrupting Cryptocurrencies: “Mining” Is Money Transmission
#3> All cryptocurrency assets, not just Bitcoin, are zero sum. So every dollar “made” in cryptocurrency was simply provided by someone else.
Can't you say that about any other asset? If I sell my house for more than I paid for it, it's zero sum since someone simply provided me that money. But that's not how we determine value. It's positive sum because the buyer attributes a value higher than he had paid for it, otherwise he wouldn't have bought my home to begin with. You can say no one can reasonably "value" a crypto currency, but there's 100+ billion dollars that says otherwise.
> There is no silver bullet, but there are a lot of things that can throw sand in the gears, degrading Bitcoin and other systems into unusability.
Ironically, the author goes on to describe a way to attack the value of Bitcoin and presumably drive its price down (destroying value). So it doesn't seem zero sum after all
Re: How to Start Disrupting Cryptocurrencies: “Mining” Is Money Transmission
#4What a terrifyingly dumb perspective... "it has helped facilitate a whole lot of bad things" is his whole hand-wavy argument for why people (presumably lawyers) need to go around "throwing sand in the gears." IMO we should be throwing sand in the gears of the government. Starting wars and killing hundreds of thousands of people is much worse than ransomware attacks.
When I first saw this I was thinking "Gee, what other technology will some gov't entity decide is dangerous to its centralization of power".
Re: How to Start Disrupting Cryptocurrencies: “Mining” Is Money Transmission
#5What a terrifyingly dumb perspective... "it has helped facilitate a whole lot of bad things" is his whole hand-wavy argument for why people (presumably lawyers) need to go around "throwing sand in the gears." IMO we should be throwing sand in the gears of the government. Starting wars and killing hundreds of thousands of people is much worse than ransomware attacks.
I derive significant utility from my government, and prefer it to continue to function, despite its flaws that need addressing. Less needless wars, for sure, but also less crypto please (if the crypto evades democratic government regulations and laws).
If this is a path to applying more regulatory pressure on crypto, by all means, full steam ahead.
Re: How to Start Disrupting Cryptocurrencies: “Mining” Is Money Transmission
#6How would this prevent scenarios such as refurbishing a nuclear powered Russian icebreaker to sit in international waters mining Bitcoin?
Re: How to Start Disrupting Cryptocurrencies: “Mining” Is Money Transmission
#7> All cryptocurrency assets, not just Bitcoin, are zero sum. So every dollar “made” in cryptocurrency was simply provided by someone else. Can't you say that about any other asset? If I sell my house for more than I paid for it, it's zero sum since someone simply provided me that money. But that's not how we determine value. It's positive sum because the buyer attributes a value higher than he had paid for it, otherw…
> it's zero sum since someone simply provided me that money
By your definition, every transaction ever made is zero sum.
Re: How to Start Disrupting Cryptocurrencies: “Mining” Is Money Transmission
#8> All cryptocurrency assets, not just Bitcoin, are zero sum. So every dollar “made” in cryptocurrency was simply provided by someone else. Can't you say that about any other asset? If I sell my house for more than I paid for it, it's zero sum since someone simply provided me that money. But that's not how we determine value. It's positive sum because the buyer attributes a value higher than he had paid for it, otherw…
Sure, if your house increases in value it is in fact not creating any value. Same with stocks. But if you invest in stocks you increase the amount of risk capital in the world, so more companies will be started, companies that can create value.
So it's not the rising stock price that creates value when a company is successful, but is an indication that the company is creating value, since people are buying its product.
Re: How to Start Disrupting Cryptocurrencies: “Mining” Is Money Transmission
#9What a terrifyingly dumb perspective... "it has helped facilitate a whole lot of bad things" is his whole hand-wavy argument for why people (presumably lawyers) need to go around "throwing sand in the gears." IMO we should be throwing sand in the gears of the government. Starting wars and killing hundreds of thousands of people is much worse than ransomware attacks.
The organization's name "Lawfare", has some pretty negative connotations in-and-of-itself.
Re: How to Start Disrupting Cryptocurrencies: “Mining” Is Money Transmission
#10> All cryptocurrency assets, not just Bitcoin, are zero sum. So every dollar “made” in cryptocurrency was simply provided by someone else. Can't you say that about any other asset? If I sell my house for more than I paid for it, it's zero sum since someone simply provided me that money. But that's not how we determine value. It's positive sum because the buyer attributes a value higher than he had paid for it, otherw…
> If I sell my house for more than I paid for it, it's zero sum since someone simply provided me that money.
No transaction between rational individuals is ever zero-sum.
If Bob values a house at $300,000 and Alice values the house at $300,000, the house will __never__ be sold. Because by the time transaction fees come about, Bob would have lost money in the transaction.
In reality, Bob values the house at $250,000, and Alice is happy to buy at $350,000. Maybe some negotiations happen, and after transaction fees, Bob receives $270,000 while Alice pays $330,000 (both happy), with the Banks / Real Estate agents pocketing the $60,000 spread.
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This is called the Bid-Ask spread, and its always, always, always non-zero. Stocks have bid-ask spreads of a penny, but Pokemon Cards, Houses, Lumber, etc. etc. all have a spread in reality. There's never one price for things, there's a buyer's price vs a seller's price, the bid and the ask.
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The difference in the bid-ask spread gives you an idea of how much value any transaction created. If Bob was willing to sell the house for $270,000 and Alice was willing to buy the house for $330,000, then there was at LEAST $60,000 of value created by the transaction.