231–240 of 302 posts
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Except this isn't going to make sense unless my paycheck is in Bitcoin. I'll still have to do the currency conversion in my head because I get paid in USD.
Actually the bigger news would be if you could pay taxes in Bitcoin. If that happens a currency has arrived.
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I like your first point, but your second point makes no sense. Products are not currency, and talking about inflation/deflation in products does not make sense, unless people buy them as a long-term value-store in which case "assets" might be more appropriate. Except they're still not fungible so they can appreciate or depreciate, but that's not inflation or deflation.
To explain: The fear that often is associated with deflationary currency (like bitcoin) is that no one will spend it, because waiting always gets you a slightly better deal. And if that happens the economy will grind to a halt with everyone waiting to spend. The point of my second statement is that we have examples of cases where even though every month your money buys more, people still do buy things.
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Bitcoin is different in that is the purest form of a fiat currency in the sense that it is backed by nothing and thus has no intrinsic value whatsoever. Traditional currencies, on the other hand, are at least fractionally backed by (usually) gold and government bonds which in itself are backed by a government's ability to tax its citizens. There is also a second problem in that BTC is deflationary by design. Deflatio…
You could argue that deflation is the cure to consumerism, and the start of environmentalism. HDTV's have had strong deflation for years, but I still have one.
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The problem is that few people are willing to fix their price to a BTC value because it is so unstable. It is a chicken and egg problem.
Absolutely! A first step could be updating prices periodically, perhaps on an hourly or daily basis, rather than every second.
When prices in some system have to be updated constantly to reflect another metric (say, USD), it may be more efficient to just use that other metric in the price. This is what happened in Zimbabwe.
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Just because someone expresses skepticism that makes them a hater?
Skepticism is different from hating, absolutely, but the user didn't say they were skeptical - they said there was "no way". That's hating and you have to ignore it - skepticism and critical feedback you value, treasure, and seek out.
Regardless, i'm sure if you looked through anybody's comments in HN (including your own) then there is bound to be one that dismisses the next best thing as "no way this will work". Difference here, it's on a post with only 2 comments. If this had made it to the frontpage of HN then that comment would have been buried so deep no one would have batted an eye-lid.
One of my favorite quotes (forgot by whom): " Great ideas are fragile at birth because they are indistinguishable from crazy stupid ideas."
Yeah, I think the lesson I've learned from not embracing Bitcoin sooner, is that I should spend more time analyzing a novel idea, and not be dismissive of one that might seem crazy initially. However, with all the information flow these days, it's kinda hard, but sure worth the effort.
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But those attributes can be replicated by another crypto-currency right? So the distinct edge of both bitcoins and tulips are the maddened crowds. They have that in common.
This is actually a really good point that I don't feel has been adequately answered -- usually people say something like "well, bitcoin has momentum" or somesuch, which strikes me as being nonsense if you accept the idea of why bitcoins have value as being an intrinsic property related to their fungibility, scarcity, and non-consumability; in theory the same things that give all currencies their value. The only expla…
Which is exactly why its so difficult to replicate "easy functionality" such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram et al.
If the vice president of ReThink DB could be wrong, I have all the liberty to make 100s of mistakes
The only person that I know that is always right is my wife.
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Some people getting rich of bitcoin doesn't make everyone else worse off. And a "new aristocracy" is a huge stretch. A few people will get rich off it but not like that. And the value of bitcoin won't deflate forever. Eventually the price will stabilize.
If you view a change in currency as fundamentally pretty useless, then yes, giving massive amounts of financial control of resources and labour(which is what money represents) to people with BTC hoarded does indeed take away from others. And if BTC were to become (for instance) a primary currency for a country, and that country were to experience economic growth, then deflation must necessarily continue.
People are voluntarily paying them for their coins because they, for whatever reason, value them. You can say that's silly but it's not like you are being forced to buy bitcoins or anything.
>And if BTC were to become (for instance) a primary currency for a country, and that country were to experience economic growth, then deflation must necessarily continue.
Isn't the same true for any other finite resource? Everything will deflate/increase in value relative to rest of the economy.