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Why I’m Cryptophobic

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Re: Why I’m Cryptophobic

#271

Post by benreesman »

mattnewton wrote: post #229
benreesman wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone can invent quasi-financial terms to make grandiose claims. The beauty of the market is that loudmouths don’t participate in the market for long. I’ll sell an American-style options contract to someone who thinks BTC is going anywhere near there at Black-Scholes -75. And I’ll have no trouble financing it. You want the other side?

Not the person you are responding to, but is there somewhere reputable offering these kinds of contracts to no-name retail investors like myself? I would absolutely load up on something like 12,000 - 15,000 USD bitcoin puts depending on the time decay people are offering and how certain I could be that they would actually let me exercise them, and not freeze trading or even go belly up during the crash. I am somewhat…

Also, not to pile on, but GP said 100-1000USD BTC. I’ll sell puts at that until my Saudi buds run out of money to lend me.

You’re talking 12k-15k, which is a much more interesting options chain.

Re: Why I’m Cryptophobic

#272

Post by anbende »

mathattack wrote: post #233
mjburgess wrote: post #4

There needs to be some basic economics here.. Money has value because of the value of the economic transactions in which its conducted. Government-backed currencies are forced to have value in the sense they force people to use it for their taxes. The US, additionally, forces the world to use it for oil trades. Value is in those economic transactions. A currency is just a "liquifying" of that value, to make it easier…

I will play the devils advocate here. What if it’s value is more like a store of value (gold) rather than a currency. We can’t pay all of our bills in gold, but it’s a store of value you can buy in and out of. I don’t have a horse in the race, just trying to understand.

Right, except that gold has inherent value. Historically we thought it was pretty and made jewelry out of it. It’s important for a variety of technology products. It’s a value store because it is consistently valuable first. Bitcoin skips that step.

Re: Why I’m Cryptophobic

#273

Post by eropple »

mathattack wrote: post #233
mjburgess wrote: post #4

There needs to be some basic economics here.. Money has value because of the value of the economic transactions in which its conducted. Government-backed currencies are forced to have value in the sense they force people to use it for their taxes. The US, additionally, forces the world to use it for oil trades. Value is in those economic transactions. A currency is just a "liquifying" of that value, to make it easier…

I will play the devils advocate here. What if it’s value is more like a store of value (gold) rather than a currency. We can’t pay all of our bills in gold, but it’s a store of value you can buy in and out of. I don’t have a horse in the race, just trying to understand.

Gold's shiny and has industrial applications. What's Bitcoin's inherent value floor?

Re: Why I’m Cryptophobic

#274

Post by jrm4 »

babypuncher wrote: post #193
mjburgess wrote: post #4

There needs to be some basic economics here.. Money has value because of the value of the economic transactions in which its conducted. Government-backed currencies are forced to have value in the sense they force people to use it for their taxes. The US, additionally, forces the world to use it for oil trades. Value is in those economic transactions. A currency is just a "liquifying" of that value, to make it easier…

Just using BTC to replace all of McDonald's daily debit/credit card transactions would completely destroy the system. I don't know why people think they are refuting your argument by pointing out low-volume examples like porn sites.

But this feels like "Just using Model T's to transport all of the corn in the early 1900's would destroy the Model T system." Doesn't really say anything meaningful about "the impact of cars and trucks."

I don't get why this is a useful argument; BTC and/or Crypto is definitely going to evolve. The question is how.

Re: Why I’m Cryptophobic

#275

Post by bendtheblock »

TrapLord_Rhodo wrote: post #265
bendtheblock wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't follow the automatic assumption that giving the info to centralised entity like a bank is bad? What is that you are fearing? And why is that more likely than Crypto sinking or going to zero, you losing your wallet key or someone hacking your wallet? Code is law - so you're left with nothing.

My point is that the current financial system is not secure in any sense. Why would i have to give you my entire credit card information to make a payment. Why are you 'pulling' money from my account instead of me sending it to you. Why have we failed to implement a public/private key relationship with our financial data? >giving the info to centralised entity like a bank is bad? Well my first and prime example would…

My question to you is: what's the problem? On the few times I've lost money to online fraud, the bank returned it to me.

Why does having a huge public web of transactions on the slowest ledger ever created help? What happens to your "sovereignty" when everyone can see your purchases patterns? What happens when grandma loses her wallet key?

re: Greece, worth hearing Yanis Varoufakis on crypto: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS0W-Whl0T0

Re: Why I’m Cryptophobic

#276

Post by pmw »

solotronics wrote: post #6
mjburgess wrote: post #4

There needs to be some basic economics here.. Money has value because of the value of the economic transactions in which its conducted. Government-backed currencies are forced to have value in the sense they force people to use it for their taxes. The US, additionally, forces the world to use it for oil trades. Value is in those economic transactions. A currency is just a "liquifying" of that value, to make it easier…

Gold having value over a long period of time is a counter argument. Nobody is transacting in gold yet it is valuable.

Both the argument and your counter argument are discussed by Lyn Alden here: https://www.lynalden.com/cryptocurrencies/.

She proposes three ways, including valuing cryptocurrency as we do precious metals.

Re: Why I’m Cryptophobic

#277

Post by luma »

jrm4 wrote: post #270
mjburgess wrote: post #4

There needs to be some basic economics here.. Money has value because of the value of the economic transactions in which its conducted. Government-backed currencies are forced to have value in the sense they force people to use it for their taxes. The US, additionally, forces the world to use it for oil trades. Value is in those economic transactions. A currency is just a "liquifying" of that value, to make it easier…

Weird argument, you're presuming that it has no value today because it doesn't work YET. But, that's like the whole point of e.g. IPO's. People sometimes put money in something in the belief that it, or something related to it, will work later.

So when, exactly, is "later"? Bitcoin is nearing it's 14th birthday which seems like plenty of time to make it "work".

Re: Why I’m Cryptophobic

#278

Post by FabHK »

silentsea90 wrote: post #269

Imagine a world where you live as a slave with your owner having rights over your time to the extent they'd like. That sucks. Well, fiat is that with the Govt stealing your productive time (since your time was spent on earning money) to the tune of 7-8% (officially) and likely 10-15% unofficially. This is in addition to 40% tax. You effectively spend 50% of your working time serving the Govt. Would you vote yes on se…

Nonsense. Inflation has been running at below 2% for decades, and everyone is free to invest their savings in shares, gold, other currencies, or even crypto. Comparing that to slavery is not only fundamentally wrong, but distasteful.

Re: Why I’m Cryptophobic

#279

Post by Night_Thastus »

jrm4 wrote: post #274
babypuncher wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just using BTC to replace all of McDonald's daily debit/credit card transactions would completely destroy the system. I don't know why people think they are refuting your argument by pointing out low-volume examples like porn sites.

But this feels like "Just using Model T's to transport all of the corn in the early 1900's would destroy the Model T system." Doesn't really say anything meaningful about "the impact of cars and trucks." I don't get why this is a useful argument; BTC and/or Crypto is definitely going to evolve. The question is how.

[deleted]

Re: Why I’m Cryptophobic

#280

Post by syzygyhack »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #225
syzygyhack wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong. Smart contracts can be updated. If they are deployed with the ability to update, any outcome can be revoked. It is as simple as adding a new function.

?? Updating a smart contract does not rollback the history of transactions, a wallet drained due to a buggy contract is drained for good, that’s what “irrevocable outcome” refers to.

You're missing the point. You don't need to rollback past transactions that make unwanted changes to the contract state. If you have the ability to update a contract, you can add whatever functionality you need to undo a given state transition. You invoke the new function with a new transaction. The old transactions don't suddenly not happen. Your new transaction simply reverses the state changes, making it as if they hadn't affected the state at all.

It's likely that you aren't considering this possibility because, of course, the average token contract does not do this. It would be a significant trust violation if a contract controller circumnavigated the need for signature checking or allowance setting in order to perform arbitrary token transfers. That does *not* mean the possibility for it to be done does not exist.

At the end of the day, token balances are just key-values in the contract storage, and how those values are changed is enforced at the contract code level. That code can say whatever its controller wants it to say, and if they deploy with the ability to update, they can alter the code as necessary in the future. Token contracts are extremely simply, easy to audit, and so are seldom deployed to be updateable.

To summarize, "irrevocable outcome" is not a fundamental trait of a smart contract application. It is a choice at the code level, with tradeoffs, which can be adapted to suit the application.

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