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The Meaning of Bitcoin

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Re: The Meaning of Bitcoin

#21

Post by PartiallyTyped »

HermanMartinus wrote: post #8
imabotbeep2937 wrote: post #4

"I've seen people get rich off crypto" and I've seen hundreds of gambling addicts lose their house and put their family on the street when the bet didn't go right. Even when you're talking about serious coins, ignoring the rug pulls. That money comes from somewhere. Who's holding the bag? Crypto people tend to have an infinite dose of "f** you got mine" even if they didn't get theirs.

Yep, for every person who gains a dollar someone had to lose a dollar. No value was created. In this way crypto is actually a less than zero sum game since some money is always lost to the machine through sending to abandoned wallets, lost private keys, etc. So on average everyone loses.

The counter argument is that such cases contribute to scarcity, which reduces supply and therefore those who sell can demand more.

I don’t know though how sound this argument really is as I don’t see what value bitcoin has outside its monetary worth.

Can you really use this stuff? Not really. At best is a difficult to scale — if at all — database for transactions.

Though similar things could be said about paper money as well — that it is nothing but the agreed upon value — but at least that can exchange hands far more easily in a much more scalable and flexible manner.

Re: The Meaning of Bitcoin

#22

Post by XorNot »

mjburgess wrote: post #10

Hmm.. the government effectively owns the network, the land, and the police force. The idea that the government cannot stop a monetary transaction is woefully naive; the only reason they haven't in the case of BTC is that it isnt money. If it came anywhere close to rivalling a state-backed currency, you'd be undermining the monetary and financial ability of a democratically elected government to exercise its economic…

You're thinking too far ahead: governments define the currency that can be used to extinguish debts, particularly to the state (taxes).

You can't pay your taxes in Bitcoin: you can only use Bitcoin to buy enough local currency to pay your taxes from someone else who has some. Which they get from the state.

While the endpoint of this is jail and the monopoly on violence of government, it's also just regular economic reality: you can't buy something if you don't have anything the seller will accept. And the government doesn't accept Bitcoin.

Re: The Meaning of Bitcoin

#24

Post by realusername »

eterpstra wrote: post #13
yaybitcoin wrote: post #5

Argentina may have serious monetary problems, but does the USD? Do we really need financial innovation to move at the "pace of programmers?" Is "bitcoin" really money when you can't use it to buy anything without converting it to money first?

No. If you're happy with USD, then use USD. If you are Argentinian (or Venezuelan, or Iraqi, or Zimbabwean) and your currency is getting devalued to nothing and the government is restricting access to your funds and preventing you from holding USD, then Bitcoin or Stablecoins are a pretty good option. The attitude I see a lot (mostly by Americans and Western Europeans) is that "Crypto is not useful to me, therefor it…

> and the government is restricting access to your funds and preventing you from holding USD, then Bitcoin or Stablecoins are a pretty good option.

If your government is going as far to prevent you to own USD, they aren't going to view cryptocurrencies any more favorably anyways.

Re: The Meaning of Bitcoin

#25

Post by cantSpellSober »

lxgr wrote: post #15
abetusk wrote: post #9

This is a very welcome counterpoint to a lot of the cryptocurrency hate that tends to be promoted. I think this is more along the lines of a "strong man" argument for cryptocurrency.

You’re making it sound like there’s a uniform blob of unreflected hate, when it’s really specific criticisms for many different aspects. I feel like a steelman argument for Bitcoin specifically is somewhat easier to make than one for NFTs or quasi-investment share tokens, in that it’s at least not a transparent Ponzi scheme by its issuers (one might argue it is one by its current holders, though). The problems of Bit…

A decentralized "Ponzi scheme?" Do you understand what Charles Ponzi or Bernie Madoff did?

Re: The Meaning of Bitcoin

#26

Post by MuffinFlavored »

HermanMartinus wrote: post #8
imabotbeep2937 wrote: post #4

"I've seen people get rich off crypto" and I've seen hundreds of gambling addicts lose their house and put their family on the street when the bet didn't go right. Even when you're talking about serious coins, ignoring the rug pulls. That money comes from somewhere. Who's holding the bag? Crypto people tend to have an infinite dose of "f** you got mine" even if they didn't get theirs.

Yep, for every person who gains a dollar someone had to lose a dollar. No value was created. In this way crypto is actually a less than zero sum game since some money is always lost to the machine through sending to abandoned wallets, lost private keys, etc. So on average everyone loses.

for every buyer that is a seller

if the seller is happy at the price they are selling at and the buyer is happy at the price they are buying at, where does the "someone had to lose a dollar" come from?

if the seller sold to the buyer, then it went up, the only "dollars lost" would be hypothetical opportunity cost had the seller decided to hold instead.

am i missing something?

Re: The Meaning of Bitcoin

#27

Post by eterpstra »

righthand wrote: post #14
throwaway22032 wrote: post #6

The author describes precisely my reason for being interested in Bitcoin. Things which other people seem to readily accept, such as ATM's having limits, the nature of card payments being inherently asymmetric, the middlemen, "know your customer", etc. All of that stuff just seems insane to me. It's as if someone were standing at my door, telling me that I can't take more than seven items out of my house per day, aski…

How does crypto solve any of that if its future is just more regulation pressing it into the molds of already established systems? I can’t pay my moving guy in crypto, I have to convert it to cash and all that “protection” is easily surmountable.

Different countries have different regulations and differing levels of permeation within society. Nobody in the US will take crypto as payment (other than a few niche retailers), but it's a pretty popular payment option in places like Argentina, Estonia, El Salvador, Vietnam, India, Singapore, and Nigeria. So popular in Nigeria, in fact, that it's displacing the local currency and the government is (unsuccessfully) trying to ban p2p transactions.

Re: The Meaning of Bitcoin

#28

Post by pavlov »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #6

The author describes precisely my reason for being interested in Bitcoin. Things which other people seem to readily accept, such as ATM's having limits, the nature of card payments being inherently asymmetric, the middlemen, "know your customer", etc. All of that stuff just seems insane to me. It's as if someone were standing at my door, telling me that I can't take more than seven items out of my house per day, aski…

Money isn’t like your house. It’s like the roads and other infrastructure that connects your house to other places.

You can’t drive at 100mph on the wrong side of the road. You can’t mess with the plumbing and electricity in ways that would affect the grid, even if you do it on your own property.

There are of course places in the world that are so empty or so undeveloped that you can make your own rules off-grid. But most people don’t want that because it’s a lot of work and means you’re largely disconnected from others. Bitcoin as a currency has the same problem.

Re: The Meaning of Bitcoin

#29

Post by grugagag »

ric2b wrote: post #19
HermanMartinus wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, for every person who gains a dollar someone had to lose a dollar. No value was created. In this way crypto is actually a less than zero sum game since some money is always lost to the machine through sending to abandoned wallets, lost private keys, etc. So on average everyone loses.

By that logic stocks of companies that don't issue dividends are the same.

Maybe but in theory those stocks are ‘usually’ tied to some other econmical activity other than mere speculation that the price will go up. In practice though, a lot of stocks have no fundamental value tied to their prices…

Re: The Meaning of Bitcoin

#30

Post by grugagag »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #26
HermanMartinus wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, for every person who gains a dollar someone had to lose a dollar. No value was created. In this way crypto is actually a less than zero sum game since some money is always lost to the machine through sending to abandoned wallets, lost private keys, etc. So on average everyone loses.

for every buyer that is a seller if the seller is happy at the price they are selling at and the buyer is happy at the price they are buying at, where does the "someone had to lose a dollar" come from? if the seller sold to the buyer, then it went up, the only "dollars lost" would be hypothetical opportunity cost had the seller decided to hold instead. am i missing something?

Yeah, it’s called greater fool theory for a reason.
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