631–640 of 697 posts
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Sure, but the issue is not demand but supply. Enforcing the scarcity of USD requires a large military. Enforcing the scarcity of BTC merely requires electricity.
Not following this line of thinking now. How does the military enforce scarcity? Also, scarcity of fiat currency is relative to the amount of goods and services available for sale in the economy and the demand for them.
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Really enjoyed this convo, if you want a bit more of a long form of my thought process on this, read the Sovereign individual (With a grain of salt, it gets a bit wild) My main point is don't completely dismiss a nescient technological field based on it's lack of utility now. Sustained development effort with real venture capital only dates back to around 2017, 2018. All major silicon valley firms have launched funds…
I love discussing both this topic specifically, and all sorts of things I have a strong opinion on with folks who disagree. I'm always open to being wrong; I've added The Sovereign Individual to my Kindle library and my reading list. Hope you have a great evening. Enjoyed the back-and-forth as well.
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> Do you think we will forever be organized and segregated by governments? Since you asked, yes. I do. To me, it's like asking if a beehive will always have a queen. It's in our DNA. > Also, you're right. POW as a consensus method is flawed. But again, all V3 cryptos have essentially transitioned to delegated proof of stake at this point. I honestly don't know enough about "V3 cryptos" to speak to it, and I'm not try…
Really enjoyed this convo, if you want a bit more of a long form of my thought process on this, read the Sovereign individual (With a grain of salt, it gets a bit wild) My main point is don't completely dismiss a nescient technological field based on it's lack of utility now. Sustained development effort with real venture capital only dates back to around 2017, 2018. All major silicon valley firms have launched funds…
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Counterfeit USD is a small, inexpensive problem because of US military might. The biggest guy in the playground never actually needs to fight. Imagine for a moment the world suddenly adopted the Nicaraguan Córdoba as the common reserve currency. How long before it gets printed everywhere? Who is going to stop it? And how far do you think Nicaragua's AML/KYC regime would actually reach? Iceland's currency wouldn't wor…
> Counterfeit USD is a small, inexpensive problem because of US military might. The biggest guy in the playground never actually needs to fight. [citation needed] > Imagine for a moment the world suddenly adopted the Nicaraguan Córdoba as the common reserve currency. How long before it gets printed everywhere? Who is going to stop it? And how far do you think Nicaragua's AML/KYC regime would actually reach? Why would…
Please tell me, what stops North Korea (or Iran, or any other US-hostile nation) from printing as many USD as it likes? Don't tell me "risk of being cut off from the US financial system"; they already are. Furthermore, NK already tries:
https://www.google.com/search?q=north+korea+counterfeit
> Why would any state on earth illegally print Nicaraguan money when they can instead print their own legally? What's the goal? Is this really the easiest path to achieve that goal?
You seem to have just asked "Why would any state on earth illegally print the world reserve currency when they can instead print their own legally?" That seems pretty self-evident, but you can look to Venezuela or Zimbabwe for answers.
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Somebody holds large chunks of the $70.5 billion in USDT. Presumably, people who hold hundreds of millions of the stuff are well aware of every accusation made against Tether. If they wanted to, they could trade their USDT for actual US fiat on a 1:1 basis if they thought USD was worth more than USDT. The really smart money with large crypto stashes could borrow USDT with crypto as collateral, and trade the USDT for…
> The really smart money with large crypto stashes could borrow USDT with crypto as collateral, and trade the USDT for greenbacks. Have you looked into the mechanics of this trade? The crypto loans I'm aware of are all significantly overcollateralized. You would have to pledge say 1m BTC to get 0.8m BTC worth of USDT which you could then sell for dollars. If you succeeded USDT tanks, everyone who holds USDT would be…
Love to hear this.
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>I’ve been shorting a few bitcoin-related public companies on the theory that in a run on Tether they will have to liquidate large bitcoin holdings I doubt a run on tether would even cause a 50% drop in BTC price. Hope your account doesn't blow up when Bitcoin inevitably reaches 1 million per coin ;)
50% price fluctuations are normal in bitcoin. 31273 on 26 Aug, 65701 on 20 Oct.
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Sure, but the stock collapses are always correlated to income issues Either expectations of future income, or present circumstances.
The stock market can be priced in BTC and I think this maybe shows that a currency and a stock contract for ownership are fundamentally different. You can't put your money to work in a currency, you just speculate that it might rise in value and have higher conversion rates in the future. Stocks are also used like a currency in mergers which seems odd but is practical in some circumstances. Stocks and currency can bo…
Did the stock market value drop by 50% in the past couple of weeks?
Because BTC has doubled. If you're saying "BTC's price is the fundamental measure" of our economy, then it means we're in a horribly deflationary spiral right now.
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Alternatively, it means that BTC is in a bubble and maybe we can't price things in terms of BTC, because BTC is a horribly volatile asset that almost has no rhyme or reason behind its price movements.
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> the government might choose to block you from using your hard earned money because you posted a criticism of the president on twitter Um, I don't really see how cryptocurrencies are going to help you much when that same government just tosses you in jail instead. In fact, there are governments in our present reality that will throw people in jail for saying the wrong thing on twitter, so that really isn't an outrag…
I'm sure the government would love to throw Edward Snowden in jail, but he is out of their reach. They would love to shut down Wikileaks and Sci-Hub too. On the other hand, governments can very easily weaponize financial services to deny people the ability to send individuals and organizations money - which is how Wikileaks found itself digitally embargoed by Visa, PayPal and Mastercard. Not so with cryptocurrencies.…
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I can already use the us dollar easily online.
Yes, but you likely live in a first-world country with generous options for banking. Bitcoin can serve anyone anywhere, regardless if they live in a privileged country or not. Try using your USD bank to send/receive money as a citizen of Iran or Libya or Nigeria. There are over 1 billion unbanked in the world today. They cannot use the US dollar easily online.
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Visa or PayPal are quite expensive to transact. It ranges from one to three percent overhead on every purchase you make. I don't think btc is that high is it?
21 billion in mining rewards / 100 million transactions per year is about 210 dollars per transaction. You'd need an average transaction size of $7,000 for a 3% fee to be comparable which it most certainly is not.
[0] https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-median_transact...