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Is Bitcoin Down or Just Me?

isbitcoindownorjustme.com

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Re: Is Bitcoin Down or Just Me?

#191

Post by camjohnson26 »

vanusa wrote: post #174
camjohnson26 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are externalities, not service costs. Hal Finney didn’t have to pay a dollar to keep the network running, the users pay all the costs, and the users are miners or accounts. Nuclear bombs can be cheap and bad at the same time, the 2 things aren’t mutually exclusive. If you can’t admit the nuclear bomb was an engineering achievement because it had externalities, then that’s short sighted.

Those are externalities, not service costs. In strict accounting terms, yes. But in practical terms -- the cost offloading that is inherent to BTC is so blatant and direct that it barely qualifies as an "externality" (and only in an abstract, technical sense). The gist of the GP comment was, in essence: "Isn't BTC nifty because it can do all these things, and it costs basically nothing to run." When in fact the exact…

I never said Bitcoin was good or bad, I said it was an engineering achievement. Crypto discussions are so toxic.

Re: Is Bitcoin Down or Just Me?

#192

Post by beaconstudios »

notch656a wrote: post #185
beaconstudios wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's pretty simple really - I'm not a big fan of financialisation. I think it's done some pretty serious harm to the world - even many libertarians, simple minded though they may be, have the good sense to point out that wall street is bad. Now I don't really blame you personally for day trading or buying gold as a store of value or whatever, but it isn't helping your argument that bitcoin is doing anything goo…

Well what is your solution for the common man TODAY then, to do in the meantime before all your dreams of a more equitable or reasonable society come true? You don't seem to like wall street so stocks are out. You've bashed precious metals as not being a net positive. Crypto is out because it makes it makes smoky the bear cry. Dollars have reached a ~7% inflation on CPI and even worst inflation against assets. Most b…

Once again, I don't blame you at all for engaging in investment or speculation or whatever. I'm not concerned with individual action, I'm concerned with the systems that drive those actions. If bitcoin didn't exist you'd presumably be doing something else to feed your family, so the question in my mind is this:

- what real world utility is realised by the introduction of a new system?

- what real world cost is realised?

- how does it shape people's behaviour?

Note that none of these is a criticism of the individuals engaging with the system. It's about the impact of the system itself. Now from where I stand this is how bitcoin plays out:

- negative utility: high electricity and CO2 cost

- negative utility: labour does not provide material benefit (financialised)

- negative behaviour: increased cultural propagation of scamming, speculation and other results of financialisation

- mixed behaviour: cultural hub of libertarianism

- mixed utility: provides a space for unregulated financial transactions. Negative: scams, blackmail, other financial crimes. Positive: paying financially isolated and unbanked people. Mixed: purchase of contraband.

Which is to say, the ratio of positive to negative, especially weighting the impact of increased CO2 emissions (which is a potentially existential threat in the medium term and a mere catastrophic threat in the short term), is pretty shockingly bad.

Re: Is Bitcoin Down or Just Me?

#193

Post by zionic »

samarama wrote: post #167
matheusmoreira wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> can we at least agree that it is an astounding engineering achievement As the first cryptocurrency, it's certainly an incredible innovation and idea. However, it's already outdated technology. Bitcoin failed to become everything it was idealized to be. It's not anonymous. It's not private. It's not fungible. It's not decentralized. It's not unregulated. It's not even a currency since transactions are not cheap and…

It was never meant to be private or anonymous. You’re creating huge strawmen here. Bitcoin is definitely fungible and decentralised. You’re using a lot of words that you don’t know what they mean.

On the contrary, I don’t think you know what those words mean. Bitcoin is neither fungible or decentralized.

Mining is completely dominated/centralized by ASIC farms run by huge mining cartels.

Also, buying Bitcoin from someone else inherits that coin’s entire history. If those coins were stolen at some point you could become liable. Bitcoins are non-fungible.

Re: Is Bitcoin Down or Just Me?

#194

Post by OnlineGladiator »

dan-robertson wrote: post #190
OnlineGladiator wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was saying Apple is the S&P 500 and Bitcoin is a random midsize company - it was an analogy. No analogy is perfect though, and you can certainly poke holes in mine (as you have). > Secondly it doesn’t make sense to me because I don’t understand why market cap should be related to media reactions to volatility. Because larger amounts of money matter more than smaller amounts of money. That's all. Penny stocks can fl…

I put it to you that market cap is not a particularly relevant quantity but the thing that matters is mostly a mix of retail exposure and expected volatility (as well as eg media interest). Bitcoin is basically expected to be volatile (which is why 10% down is not news). I think you were trying to make a point about retail exposure rather than market cap, but that does not sufficiently describe why the media care bec…

Well the last part of my original comment was that most people just don't interact with crypto in the first place, which is what you seem to mean by retail exposure.

As for the rest, I disagree. If a million people lose 10% of their savings it matters more than if a thousand people lose 10% of their savings, and that's why market caps matter for anything publicly traded. The amount of money is what matters, and that's measured by market cap. Sure, we can get down into more granular details like how much of that market cap is the float, are people investing into certain stocks using their Roth IRA, or whatever other details - but the amount of money drowns out these factors in the aggregate.

Agree to disagree. Cheers.

Re: Is Bitcoin Down or Just Me?

#195

Post by vanusa »

camjohnson26 wrote: post #191
vanusa wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are externalities, not service costs. In strict accounting terms, yes. But in practical terms -- the cost offloading that is inherent to BTC is so blatant and direct that it barely qualifies as an "externality" (and only in an abstract, technical sense). The gist of the GP comment was, in essence: "Isn't BTC nifty because it can do all these things, and it costs basically nothing to run." When in fact the exact…

I never said Bitcoin was good or bad, I said it was an engineering achievement. Crypto discussions are so toxic.

An "astounding" achievement, you called it.

We get the achievement part. But the astounding part, no.

Re: Is Bitcoin Down or Just Me?

#196

Post by vmception »

recursive wrote: post #158
vmception wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2016 called and wants its arguments back

Is the argument less valid because someone made it in 2016?

Its less valid because the state of the network has changed to make the argument irrelevant sometime over the last half decade

Re: Is Bitcoin Down or Just Me?

#197

Post by flatiron »

vmception wrote: post #50
flatiron wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can buy goods and materials with visa though. Not sure people want to wait 30 minutes to buy a cup of coffee with bitcoin.

2016 called and wants its arguments back

its not an argument against bitcoin at all.

go walk into a starbucks with a gold bar. it certainly has value. they certainly want to give you coffee for value. it's just not the write medium. bitcoin is gold bars. not ready for retail but certainly ready for a hold of value. nothing wrong with that.

Re: Is Bitcoin Down or Just Me?

#198

Post by anderber »

rackjack wrote: post #165
anderber wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cryptocurrency is probably one of the worst inventions in recent memory Keep in mind that not all Cryptocurrency use mining. Nano, for example, is zero fee, environmentally friendly coin that is incredibly fast. Bitcoin gets all the talk but there are some great and interesting tech out there. Get yourself a wallet ( https://natrium.io/ ) and I'll send you some so you can try it out. https://nano.org/

Silly question: what's the problem with fees? If you need other people to do work (process your transaction) for you, you should pay them, right?

> In very basic, the computers you and the receiver own do the processing work for you. Think of it like you're the one mining your own transaction. Instead of fees there's tiny few seconds worth of extra power being used by your CPU

https://www.reddit.com/r/nanocurrency/comments/7z9pwk/what_m...

The real amount of work needed to process transactions is extremely minimal. Bitcoin and other proof-of-work coins adds unneeded work that is taxing to systems and therefore, the environment.

Re: Is Bitcoin Down or Just Me?

#199

Post by [deleted] »

notch656a wrote: post #143
Yuioup wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep hearing bitcoin apologists saying "Bitcoin is environmentally unfriendly but... check this out" as if that would solve the record temperatures we're having at the moment. How about we stop using cryptocurrency completely. Time for the UN to get together and get this banned.

You can't ban it. I mean you can say you've banned it, but you can't ban crypto. It's way harder than banning the drugs found everywhere in the world (I guess not a lot in Singapore, you willing to start chopping heads off for your goal?) The best you can do is decide you don't like it, tell people not to use it, choose not to accept it, not to buy it, and rally your friend not to. That's all cool with me. But you ca…

[deleted]

Re: Is Bitcoin Down or Just Me?

#200

Post by notch656a »

analog31 wrote: post #188
notch656a wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without bitcoin I would still advise putting savings in stocks, bonds, a little precious metals maybe. I don't see bitcoin as savings as much as a currency or insurance policy against all your material assets and bank accounts being seized and/or stolen. >that can be transported out of the country. There's a lot of value in this though, no? The 10k limit on undeclared financial instruments held in your personal custo…

Would those stocks be denominated in Syrian currency, or something else? Indeed, as I've said in the past, money is a technology, and different technologies can be applied to different purposes. The "major" world currencies are designed to be used as a temporary store of value, medium of exchange, and instrument of economic policy. Bitcoin could be applied towards different purposes. >>> There's a lot of value in thi…

Stocks would continue to be denominated in shares. I've never heard of a stock being denominated in currency, but maybe there is one out there like that. A share is usually something like I own 1/N of the interest in the company so the formula of ownership is m/N where m is number shares you own and N is the number of total shares (some simplification here, but roughly accurate). Market clearing determines how much people will pay for a stock, which happens in all sorts of currencies.
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