11–20 of 44 posts
To those with hopes and dreams in Bitcoin I suggest reading Nassim Taleb’s black paper. It does a great job outlining every major problem and (while in its current version and even a few iterations from now) it won’t succeed as a currency.
This is a pretty simplistic view as for most of the last few decades Europe and Japan has been expanding the money supply without causing any deflation - and still caught in a deflationary spiral.
But the question of money supply should be flexible - it has to be. Eg if US population expands and the economy expands every year you need more money every year. It was a problem with the gold standard - you needed to get more gold in order for your economy to expand.
To those with hopes and dreams in Bitcoin I suggest reading Nassim Taleb’s black paper. It does a great job outlining every major problem and (while in its current version and even a few iterations from now) it won’t succeed as a currency.
Whilst I can appreciate why people think it might not succeed as a mainstream consumer currency — do you recognise how successful it is becoming as an asset, like gold?
Worth a read: https://www.lynalden.com/gold-and-bitcoin/
> By increasing the number of U.S. dollars in circulation...the U.S. government can also reduce the value of a dollar in terms of goods and services, which is equivalent to...inflation This is a pretty simplistic view as for most of the last few decades Europe and Japan has been expanding the money supply without causing any deflation - and still caught in a deflationary spiral. But the question of money supply shoul…
You really don’t. This is one of those weird Keynesian constraints that doesn’t actually match reality. Deflation is totally harmless as long as it’s predictable. A fixed money supply in particular (which is deflationary if the economy is growing) is great specifically because unit purchasing power tracks total productive output.
BTC does not eliminate the need for security. The USB in question would need military grade security, and the exclusivity of the claim of its holder over the ledger entries recorded in it would never be demonstrably secure, because BTC's value is information that can simultaneously exist in multiple locations.
The article reads like a high school term paper. BTC is a fiat currency whose scarcity is determined by the actions of some random computer programmers who, for now, aren't leveraging that power for their own personal benefit. Gold is a natural element whose scarcity is a function of the laws of nature, and there are no people today who can measurably exercise their own power to reduce its scarcity.
Also, not to nitpick, but a single gold bar also could theoretically have value equivalent to the entire BTC Blockchain. A single dollar bill could too. This would be the case if BTC was valueless. The article isn't very well reasoned.
To those with hopes and dreams in Bitcoin I suggest reading Nassim Taleb’s black paper. It does a great job outlining every major problem and (while in its current version and even a few iterations from now) it won’t succeed as a currency.
Meanwhile Bitcoin is up another 50%!
Nassim has a bone to pick with Saifedean, whom he wrote the forward of "The Bitcoin Standard" apparently without understanding what Bitcoin was.
https://mobile.twitter.com/saifedean/status/1382408549343580...
To those with hopes and dreams in Bitcoin I suggest reading Nassim Taleb’s black paper. It does a great job outlining every major problem and (while in its current version and even a few iterations from now) it won’t succeed as a currency.
> In other words, governments with fiat currencies — including the United States — have the power to expand the quantity of those currencies. If they choose to do so, they risk inflating the prices of necessities like food, gas, and housing. > In recent months, consumers have experienced higher price inflation than they have seen in decades. A major reason for the increases is that central bankers around the world —…
Says who?
I wonder how it works with the private banks.
Say some entrepreneur goes to their bank and borrows $100k. They try to build a business, pay rent, employees, SAAS license costs, advertising and ... goes bankrupt.
So the $100k never comes back to the bank.
Did this create $100k?
>Third, bitcoin is more secure than gold. A single bitcoin address carried on a USB thumb drive could theoretically hold as much value as the U.S. Treasury holds in gold bars — without the need for costly militarized facilities like Fort Knox to keep it safe. BTC does not eliminate the need for security. The USB in question would need military grade security, and the exclusivity of the claim of its holder over the le…
Which is widely available and effectively free.
> BTC is a fiat currency whose scarcity is determined by the actions of some random computer programmers who, for now, aren't leveraging that power for their own personal benefit
Statements like this are a sure sign of not actually understanding how Bitcoin works. There is no person or cartel in the world who could successfully unilaterally change the Bitcoin consensus rules.
> Gold is a natural element whose scarcity is a function of the laws of nature
The amount of gold we’ve mined compared to the amount of gold in nature (on earth, in asteroids, etc) is infinitesimal. The amount of Bitcoin we’ve mined is 89.5%.