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Bitcoin falls from $266

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Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#411

Post by jmeekr »

mrb wrote: post #406
coldtea wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You misunderstand me. I meant it was an uphill battle to argue to all the paranoid people that the U.S. government has yet to outlaw trading in Yen, Euro, etc, even though it doesn't control those currencies either. What exactly gave you the right to call me "paranoid"? The fact that I said the US might ban the Bitcoin? For one, the Bitcoin is NOT like the Euro or the Yen at all. It doesn't have any government to b…

"Or like banning the private buying of gold (which the US had done, from 1933 to mid-seventies" ...which proves my point! This was stupid and ultimately led to all sorts of negative economic consequences, therefore the US reverted the decision in the mid seventies. Now you are arguing that the US would somehow make the same mistake with Bitcoin?!

If anything we should realize that the government is very willing and capable of making the same mistakes over and over again..

Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#412

Post by Cushman »

kragen wrote: post #391
Cushman wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dollar is backed by the word of the most powerful organization in the history of civilization. If that doesn't have value, what does?

First, the word of the powerful is worthless, because power corrupts. People might keep their word because they're honest, or because they're accountable, but the "most powerful organization in the history of civilization" is by definition not accountable, and being an organization, neither is it honest. Second, the US government doesn't give its word that dollars are usable for anything other than paying dollar-deno…

The very concept of debt, of exchange, is one enforced by the United States. If the United States says that I owe a million dollars or none, that is just as true whether it is measured in gold, or hens, or the capricious will of the Federal Reserve. What matters is the power of the United States to force me to pay, and that power is unparalleled by any other entity that has ever existed.

To say that the word of the United States is worthless is to ignore reality.

Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#413

Post by Cushman »

Houshalter wrote: post #382
Cushman wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dollar is backed by the word of the most powerful organization in the history of civilization. If that doesn't have value, what does?

No, it's not backed in the sense that it has a concrete value. No one is guaranteeing that a US dollar will buy you exactly a gallon of gas, an ounce of gold, or a bushel of wheat or anything like that. It is "backed" in the sense that people need it to pay taxes, but exactly how much value that gives it is completely uncertain and only determined by the supply and demand of people spending it/accepting it. If there…

And who guarantees that an ounce of gold will buy me some amount of wheat? Or that a bushel of wheat will give me some amount of energy when eaten? Only a very powerful entity can make such guarantees.

On that basis I would say that the word of the United States is far more intrinsically valuable than any physical object.

Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#414

Post by stevewilhelm »

thatthatis wrote: post #360
drcross wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

same as the dollar and euro then. They are not backed by anything except the status quo.

Dollar/Euro are backed by central banks who dynamically maintain money supply to maintain a promise of low price inflation. Their fundamental value is derived from fiat. It's similar, but not the same.

I am constantly amazed how little Bitcoin fans value large, stable, global financial and legal institutions like the US or EU.

Without them, Bitcoin, the Internet, and most of the other aspects of their comfortable lives would exist.

Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#415

Post by wordplay »

tvladeck wrote: post #357
drcross wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

same as the dollar and euro then. They are not backed by anything except the status quo.

not 100% true. you have to pay taxes in dollars. the currency is backed by the value of not going to jail.

You may have hit on something here.

There is no guarantee that any item will be worth any amount of another item. You can make claims about the relative likelihood that some item will be exchangeable for some quantity of another item, but you cannot claim that in every future scenario your item will be exchangeable for any amount of another item.

Just because a transaction looks more like barter than commercial doesn't magically convert the ideas underpinning fundamental economics. At this level of understanding economics is more a study of sociological systems and less about banking, fiat currencies, and all the other modern mumbo-jumbo we go on about these days.

This is really key when discussing some utopian reality where we've untethered ourselves from any form of currency--an exchange of value is tied to the very earliest societal systems. Unless society shrinks back into nomadic wandering tribes some form of value exchange (aka: currency) will exist.

Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#416

Post by MacsHeadroom »

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #392
coldtea wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a broken argument. The US does not control the Euro, or Yen, etc, yet they do not make it illegal to trade in Euros/Yens within the borders. They don't, but that's because Euros/Yens are backed by foreign governments that would mind this on a diplomatic level. Bitcoin is a much easier target. And most governments would agree to work together on banning it. Also: the US might not "make it illegal to trade in…

I'd love to see these startups springing up everywhere solely because of bitcoin :)

Coinbase, BitPay, BitSpend, BitcoinStore, CoinLab, etc. etc.

Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#417

Post by altcognito »

mrb wrote: post #396
coldtea wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a broken argument. The US does not control the Euro, or Yen, etc, yet they do not make it illegal to trade in Euros/Yens within the borders. They don't, but that's because Euros/Yens are backed by foreign governments that would mind this on a diplomatic level. Bitcoin is a much easier target. And most governments would agree to work together on banning it. Also: the US might not "make it illegal to trade in…

"They don't, but that's because Euros/Yens are backed by foreign governments" . No, that is not the reason. Replace "Euros/Yens" with "gold" in my sentence, and my point stands with gold being backed by nothing . Basically the US government is totally fine with side markets that they cannot control directly and that exist in parallel with the USD (whether it is EUR, gold, Bitcoin, whatever). Your other argument also…

> You say it can be used for money laundering, but gold and cash can already be used for money laundering (and even more discreetly since trading gold or cash does not leave a trail like in the Bitcoin blockchain)

Spoken like a person who has never tried to launder millions of dollars in gold. You don't just go down to the pawn shop and redeem millions of dollars in gold.

Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#418

Post by altcognito »

mcantelon wrote: post #400
gtirloni wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I don't trust the dollar as investment and I don't understand why people consider bitcoin something worth investing in. Sure, for trading stuff between techies it looks fair enough but it'll never reach the general public. The whole banking system works hard to earn the customers' trust and any small mistake damages that. Bitcoin doesn't provide any assurances, support, etc... Looks like another fad the compu…

>I don't understand why people consider bitcoin something worth investing in You don't understand the power of frictionless micropayments and monetary privacy?

Frictionless? Isn't the very definition of how bitcoin is secure the opposite of frictionless? It derives it's value from friction.

Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#419

Post by MacsHeadroom »

niggler wrote: post #172
eksith wrote: post #146

BTC crashed primarily because the market suddenly got flooded by Bitcoinbillionaire : http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/04/bitcoin-crashes-losi... This bares repeating... The value of BTC is in the nature of the transaction; not the currency itself. People have turned BTC into a commodity instead of actually bloody spending it. Their old fashioned thinking still ties it to traditional fiat like a smoker trying to…

Who is satoshi nakamoto?

Who is John Galt?

Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#420

Post by MacsHeadroom »

eric970 wrote: post #304

I'm sure it's been stated already... And well, I'm no Bitcoin fanboy, but didn't the price just go back up to what it was 2 days ago? That hardly sounds like a "crash" to me.

>didn't the price just go back up to what it was 2 days ago? That hardly sounds like a "crash" to me.

Every fucking time.

Oh look, Bitcoins are worth what they were two or three days ago. "BITCOIN CRASHED!"

Jesus people, really?

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