481–490 of 515 posts
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It's a fundamental premise of the entire discipline and it's known to be empirically false
Does it also bother you that engineers designing bridges use Newtonian physics and discount relativistic effects?
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I’d counter that buying power is the only metric that matters. All these abstractions of buying power may distract and distance you from this most important metric - often to the benefit of companies and nation states.
> I’d counter that buying power is the only metric that matters I'd counter that protection of buying power over long periods is what really matters. My CD collection had an enormous buying power in the 90s, now it's almost worthless. I reckon one cannot rely on buying power of CD or DVD or VHS. > often to the benefit of companies and nation states. In this regards people, companies and nation states interests are us…
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Totally agree. I only meant to illustrate that all abstractions of buying power fluctuate in their ability to secure basic needs - food, water, shelter, supplies.
And the "tethered to the dollar" part is important. They are basically liquidity/risk discounted dollars, as are many of these examples of "buying power". No one is tethering their Rolex price to BTC. No one is tethering their home purchase budget to BTC. Why? It's all tethered to your income, in dollars, and your savings presumably mostly in dollars as well. Even "jug of water in the desert" is tethered more to doll…
Whether you tether the purchase of a home to bitcoin or the US dollar is more a state of mind, tribalism, etc. Both the US dollar and bitcoin have no intrinsic value. They both derive value from a human belief system - I believe they have value and that others believe the same. They are both just networks in that sense.
> Even "jug of water in the desert" is tethered more to dollars than BTC because what are you more likely to have in your pocket, and why?
This is silly. But to add to the silliness - you could have bitcoin in your brain. Just memorize your words.
> Dollars are tethered to the government taxing us in dollars, so we get paid in dollars, and our government has nukes & aircraft carriers and such
Now THIS is truly different. The US dollar has violence on its side. I concede that bitcoin is a peaceful currency - at least thus far. Hopefully it stays that way.
> Other than its usefulness as "untraceable" (what people think, but not what is true.. it is more like "unblockable") cash, and for money laundering/drugs.. it is a trading instrument for punters.
This is political bias and parroting talking points of anti-bitcoiners. While your other points are thoughtful, this is not. Why not just call bitcoin a butthead?
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> So, people have no problem - say - redeeming tokens that have been through Tornado? Or trouble redeeming bitcoins that have been through known, sanctioned wallets? Nothing prevents us agreeing to trade those bitcoins for cash or anything else. You are correct that some Bitcoins are "tainted", which is why it's not the absolute, most perfect cryptocurrency. But they are still censorship resistant. That was my point.…
> It's because not even the government can confiscate your Bitcoin. They can really easily do that though. A court can say "give us your keys or you are going to sit in jail until you do and we will record your conversations so if you tell the keys to someone else, we'll sell them"
So? If sums is high enough they STILL can't confiscate it. In some cases it is preferable to spend some time in jail versus giving up outrageous fortune. They still can't take it by force. Also, only a few countries with backward laws (like the United States of America) have laws that allow that. Something insane like what you propose would never be possible in a developed country with a solid judicial branch like Estonia, for example.
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That's the "$5 wrench" argument rephrased. It's not much in its favor, but a sufficiently motivated person can resist handing over cryptocurrency better than they can any other asset.
Or they can bury the gold and refuse to tell where...
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Does it also bother you that engineers designing bridges use Newtonian physics and discount relativistic effects?
There's not a scale at which acyclic preferences is a good approximation of what actually happens, so that's not really a good comparison. But even given that, structural engineers use nonlinear models that are more complicated than Newtonian physics, whereas economists say "math is too difficult so we'll use a simplifying but false set of assumptions"
There are a lot of examples where the assumptions, especially this one, of microeconomics hold. Profit-maximizing corporations don't have cyclic desires. In many cases, people don't have cyclic desires (e.g. in the flavor of the soda they want). Microeconomics starts with those, much as becoming a structural engineer requires understanding the basics of Newtonian physics.
They get into more complicated math in more advanced courses, but they don't start there. All of engineering, science, etc, is "the math at a deeper level is too complex, here's a simplifying but false set of assumptions". And then a subset of people who learn about that care about cases when the assumptions break down and studies the next level.
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Sure, but it's still a tough scenario if the vast majority of people don't have a reliable way to convert fiat currency to or from cryptocurrencies (or to or from cryptocurrencies that regulators don't approve of). That would likely mean less liquidity, less broad appeal and application of applications using cryptocurrency, and potentially more stigma.
Less liquidity between the fiat and crypto ecosystem cuts both ways - it makes fiat less valuable since low liquidity creates a class of products and services that cannot be purchased with fiat. If people still want those services, they will barter for them instead using p2p platforms. Examples that already exist include - sending Amazon packages for crypto, providing free or discounted rent for crypto, food delivery…
I used to be optimistic, but it's 2023 and the only non-ponzi use case of crypto are stablecoins. What people actually want is to easily trade and transfer US dollars. Some tokens are pure ponzi schemes (like shib, btc) some are ownership in something that could have productive use (eth, some other smart contract platforms tokens). Yet that use isn't actually happening, so from a general pov it's all a ponzi. The mos…
Erm... https://youtu.be/-whuXHSL1Pg
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I care. You made a claim, were given a thoughtful explanation why your claim was wrong, and you don't care. Not cool.
I made no claim. I asked whats the difference and got a pedantic explanation of what a ponzi scheme technically is, like anyone whose been in one of these threads hasn't already heard that same pedantic explanation. Who cares? It really doesn't matter if its a ponzi scheme or a pyramid scheme or some other scheme. What is transparently obvious is there is nothing there there and eventually the music stops and leaves…
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> Gold has intrinsic value as a commodity though. It's scarce, has industrial uses, and has aesthetic value to a lot of people. Yet this value is a small fraction of gold's trading price. How do you explain the current price of gold?
Gold, like stocks and real estate, trades at some multiple of book (with metals this ratio is generally between 0 and 1, with stocks it's generally greater than 1). In fact, looking at the P/B ratio is often one of the first things someone does when evaluating an investment. That ratio for bitcoin is infinite which is why it's not an "investment" in the usual sense of the word.
For gold, perhaps 20% of its value is its actual use and 80% is for the scarcity. For bitcoin it's 0% for actual use and 100% of the price is its scarcity.
When you look at it like this, the difference between gold and bitcoin is not nearly as dramatic.