561–570 of 704 posts
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That is impossible: the numbers on your bankaccount are multiplied, thanks to fractional reserve. The cash in your hand is not. Maybe not a big deal now, but at some point it might be. And then it's "surprise! The numbers on your account != cash in your hand"
How do I put bitcoins in my hand? Sounds painful.
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Bitcoin is smart engineered gold. It's perfectly rational compared to the endless printing in fiat. Most engineers just accept keynesian economics because that's what they were taught. They have a narrow world view beyond their tech expertise. I saw somebody criticize BTC because they couldn't imagine using so much energy "just to secure money". I was like what you just took for granted is perhaps society's most impo…
The endless printing is more necessary than the strict stock control fot a currency. You cannot avoid people starving unless you do it, and you cannot live in peace unless you avoid people starving and getting desperate. You do know there was no printing in the middle age. Good old days these all were.
Oh come now, there was plenty of printing in the latter days of Rome or Wiemar Germany and people managed to starve just fine despite it. Inflation correlates with optimistic times because it implies a debt taken on today will be easier to pay off with money earned tomorrow. That doesn't mean printing money reliably makes people optimistic.
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hindsight is 20/20
The parent commentor said the losers keep quiet. But in this market, it's really hard to be a loser.
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I think you misread their comment. They said that not being pegged to state-controlled currency is a dealbreaker , whereas you seem to be thinking they said it was something they wanted.
> I think the author lives in a country with a trustworthy government because that's not the case for many people including me. Well, given OP distrusts his government...
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I'm very much looking forward to seeing the way cryptocurrency revolutionizes the world in the next 20-50 years, but even I don't see any difference between Dogecoin and Bitcoin other than Doge having a dog on it. Yes, it's pretty unorthodox to consider Bitcoin a memecoin, but it is fundamentally nearly identical to doge, but with even less energy efficiency. The fact that it's a more established asset class with wid…
It's the same code but doge has inflation?
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But the alternative here is that you have to place all your trust in an unknown and untrusted 3rd party to ever actually make an exchange. Even the silk-road used an escrow service that required that the seller trust the buyer, and both parties trust the silk-road. (a buyer places coins in escrow with the silk-road, the silk-road confirms it has the coins to the seller, the seller ships the product, the buyer unlocks…
After enough confirmations a transaction is final and I can trust that the transaction is final and my account balance on the ledger is correct. Present forms of digital cash do not offer this. A payment can be reversed if the buyer claims the transaction was fraudulent and the banks involved agree to reverse the transaction. Money can be accidentally withdrawn from my account and I have to ask the bank to return it.…
Lets say you and I decide right now that we're going to use these comments to make an exchange. I will give you $5 of bitcoin in exchange for you mailing me a postcard.
Now what? How do we proceed in a meaningful manner?
How do we go about making that exchange happen if we assume that either party is self-interested, and not interested in actually completing the deal?
If I send the bitcoin first? - the second it hits your account you know for sure it's yours: No need to bother sending the postcard - that's just cash out of your pocket.
If you mail the postcard first? - Well, job's done for me, no need to send any bitcoin at all.
What if we both agree that we trust Bob, and you send him the postcard, and I send him the bitcoin, and he only forwards them along after he gets both? - Oops, now Bob can do all those things you complained about letting the bank do! He can send that bitcoin back and I won't ever get a postcard. He can mail the postcard back and you won't ever get any bitcoin (Transaction reversed!). Worse, he can take anything you give him and do what he wants while he has it (like disappear!) - or hold them much longer than you'd like after he gets them. (Freeze it).
How do you get your stuff back from Bob? Same way you would from a bank - appeal to the government.
Basically - Bitcoin without enforcement is only a ledger. The thing that keeps it in check with reality is an appeal to an authority somewhere, who provides trust that both parties in an exchange aren't getting screwed.
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The parent commentor said the losers keep quiet. But in this market, it's really hard to be a loser.
It's actually quite easy, you just have to stay out of the market. But contrary to the parent commentor, those people have no problem being vocal about their investment decisions!
Anyway, when you keep it in cash, you're one of the losers as the current high inflation is clearly indicating.
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Beginning in the 1960s, Clair Cameron Patterson was very vocal against the widespread use of leaded gasolines. He was ignored and mocked for over 20 years, but kept going because he knew it was damaging, and fought to end its use. He didn't just "not like it", he was compelled to improve the world. Whether you agree with him or not, Stephen believes crypto is damaging to society. As such, he is driven to help root it…
Stephen has a competing product, and a hidden financial motive for slagging cryptocurrency.
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I see your perspective. There's another perspective from which you could look at the details of your situation. You deferred to a trusted party to secure your wealth and because that third party was untrustworthy, you have to defer to an intermediary. Had you deferred to yourself to secure your wealth you wouldn't be in this situation. The ledger would be the canonical one of ownership and possession, and you wouldn'…
Ok - so follow along with me here: I owned no bitcoins at the time I desired to trade bitcoins for a physical product (in this case: ~7g of Cannabis) What recourse do I have that does not require trusting a third party? I do not own the required compute power to mine it myself (not technically true at the time, although certainly true today) I'd like to have you walk me through the exact set of steps to acquire my bi…
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> From Bitcoin, to Ethereum, to Uniswap, there is a strong development of the early ideas and technology. To do what useful thing, that isn't crime? > From what I can tell massive segments of finance are just money games. This is a form of that, which is a real and tremendous market. For what, except speculation and crime? What application? It's been twelve years. Crypto is almost as old as the smartphone. > A natura…
I could replace your use of “cryptocurrency” here with “Pokémon cards” and nothing would change. Yet you don’t seem concerned with the buying, selling, trading, owning of Pokémon cards with regard to their utility. You are not the arbiter of utility. Nobody is. If you have no utility for digital cash, great. That doesn’t mean others don’t. You don’t have to play Pokémon if you don’t want to.
It might be justifiable if cryptocurrencies were providing real economic value, but if we're drawing analogies to Pokemon cards, then they are net-negative value to humanity and we should hope for them to fail as soon as possible.