Like what? Gold?
A Prediction: Bitcoin Is Doomed to Fail
351–360 of 431 posts
Re: A Prediction: Bitcoin Is Doomed to Fail
#352Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, but I imagine coinbase has. As will many other people who accept bitcoin payments.
It doesn't matter, you still have to pay your taxes in USD. Even if you earned your salary in bitcoins you would have to convert some to USD in order to pay your taxes.
And if you're a multinational, you'll have to convert all sorts of currencies in all sorts of other currencies constantly.
Companies regularly complains that this costs them 1% or so of revenue.
Re: A Prediction: Bitcoin Is Doomed to Fail
#353Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please explain how bitcoin can discern vicarious liability. You're still going to need lawyers. Please explain how a bitcoin blockchain record can testify in court that a copy of a document is authentic. Hint, you're infront of a jury, you have a blockchain hash, and opposing council has a notary public with 40 years of experience, both copies of the document differ, the original cannot be found. Hers has an official…
> Please explain how a bitcoin blockchain record can testify in court that a copy of a document is authentic. Hint, you're infront of a jury, you have a blockchain hash, and opposing council has a notary public with 40 years of experience, both copies of the document differ, the original cannot be found. Hers has an official looking seal, you have some random numbers. Here's an imaginary possibility. A hundred and fi…
I've faced these authentication issues in Asia and the Middle East. There is an increasing willingness of authorities to trust non-traditional means of authentication through neutral third parties. For example, I recent pointed to a commercial corporate records provider as a source of authentication of a foreign corporation being in good standing and the local Middle Eastern authority was willing to go online, look for themselves and conclude that the information was correct. I beleive that such forward-thinking authorities will begin to participate in BTC hashing and be willing to gather the information for themselves.
If you think about it, this is a lot more convincing than getting a ribbon-covered document from a foreign jurisdiction that you may not be able to read, even if it authenticated by a series of trusted authorities (a chain of embassies in this case).
Re: A Prediction: Bitcoin Is Doomed to Fail
#354Just as there are lobbyists in Washing DC, and think-tanks that survey popular opinion to sway the people in a certain direction (e.g. why do you think the rich are getting richer; see Koch brothers), there are those who rely and profit from tax revenue who do not wish to see the Bitcoin experiment succeed. Just as Bitcoiners lobby for bitcoin, others will lobby against it.
I'm not Rothbard and I can't prove to you that we will be better off with an unregulated decentralized currency. But I do want to see the experiment through, for the alternative is worst from a point of view of my morality -- certain members in government shutting down the Bitcoin experiment by decree, because it is inconvenient for them.
They will cite history and circumstances to justify their centralized control of a currency and the need for income taxes, but I also know alternative lines of reasoning that negate them. What I do know for sure is that control over currency gives near-absolute power to those who handle the levers, and I would imagine that such power is not something you simply abdicate.
There are aspects of the economy that does require a policing authority, in such areas as environmental sustainability to prevent a tragedy of the commons. A growing income disparity between the wealthy I'm not sure what the future holds for us in terms of governance structures. Bitcoin shows us that not everything need be "privatized" as the old libertarians had predicted. I think we're just now entering the beginning of the end for government as we know it. It's going to be exciting, wrought with pain, and probably unfathomably rewarding.
All that I ask is that any time you encounter an argument that assumes that taxes must be paid to fund a centralized government that controls the issuance of currency (for the good of the people), think twice before nodding your head. Our technology is new and we don't yet know what is possible.
Re: A Prediction: Bitcoin Is Doomed to Fail
#355Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you use a service like BitPay, which most BitCoin merchants too, you declare your price in dollars and the API uses the current exchange rate to convert it to BitCoin, minute-by-minute. The prices float up and down with the currency, so pricing is largely a non-problem. It makes rational sense for merchants to accept BitCoin and to keep some holdings in BitCoin because the price is increasing at such a rapid pace.…
If you're valuing everything in dollars, setting your price in dollars, and converting to and from dollars, why not just use dollars. I think this is the leap BitCoin is yet to make. When we no longer have to convert it and compare it to dollars. It has loads of benefits over using the dollar, but a lot of those benefits are lost the second you're having it exchanged. For instance, if I wanted to use bitcoin for cont…
"why not just use dollars"
Simple: as a merchant, I really like Bitcoin because it reduces fraud to absolutely zero for me (transactions are irreversible)!
Re: A Prediction: Bitcoin Is Doomed to Fail
#356Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any protocol could come along and displace http, or a parallel internet could come along and displace it. But we're going on 22 years now and that's how we're communicating. What if these protocols are not so easily displaced as you imagine?
yeah as ars mentions, it's already happened... plus there is litecoin, buttcoin, etc etc When people compare to internet & DNS & things like that I get kinda pissed off. Those are standard protocol that we agree to because it helps ensure successful communication. Bitcoin is not anything like this stuff, it falls more into the category of "some code that runs on the internet". Think of it more like a website (Faceboo…
Bitcoin is a (peer-to-peer) protocol. It runs on port 8333/TCP. It "helps ensure" transactions are recorded successfully and permanently.
Very much fits the analogy with Internet or the web.
Re: A Prediction: Bitcoin Is Doomed to Fail
#357Gold and silver etc. are all alternative "money" "loosely" coupled with dollars. Basically Bitcoin is not different form that.
The reason I believe bitcoin will continue to exist and even be supported by states like USA is because transactions are public and traceable. The identity of wallet owner can sometimes even be determined through that.
I guess Banks feel threaten because this currency is not (yet) ~ 80% depth. It is so by design. The depth bubble grown by banks and countries will soon or later burst. Get ready for that moment. I'm not sure that bitcoin is the best placement, but in an placement diversification strategy, this would definitely be one of my picks.
Re: A Prediction: Bitcoin Is Doomed to Fail
#358Earlier quoted context omitted.
That punchline would make no sense. The client would reply "to the market of two buyers".
that's right, I had a momentary lapse in judgement, sorry
But a few days later the second person would sell and then we would be back at the punchline for the only remaining stock holder :)
Re: A Prediction: Bitcoin Is Doomed to Fail
#359Earlier quoted context omitted.
The author of the Article summons Graeber in an abysmal way. In 'Debt' Graeber proposes two main ideas, that the State is by no means necessary to have a great economy (he is an anarchist, with small 'a'), and that our current debt-based monetary system is a mess. Bitcoin is debt-free because no one needs to take loans or create bonds since bitcoins are mined. I think Graeber would be (is?) fascinated by them.
"Bitcoin is debt-free... since bitcoins are mined" That's not true. Debt is perfectly possible with a fixed currency base, and mining or grabbing transaction fees is not a substitute for debt in any way. In fact, you can have a whole expansionary currency system on top of a fixed asset like BTC, in the same way that the USD was once convertible in and out of gold.
No, it is true. To describe a currency as 'debt-free' means that it is not created through the process of creating new debt. The way modern currencies like the dollar are emitted is through the generation of new debt (government bonds are government debt, and banks create new currency when they 'loan' money). The negative consequences of not paying what you borrow (forclosure, etc.) are ultimately what backs debt-based currencies. Graeber argues (and I agree) that it is therefore the threat of violence from the state what gives value to currency in the modern era.
Bitcoin is fundamentally different because new currency is created through mining. Yes, you could create a secondary market on top of Bitcoin that handles loans, but not new Bitcoins, therefore it is debt- free currency. When Nixon decided to decouple the dollar from gold in the seventies, what he did was effectively to move from a debt-free currency to a debt based currency. The move had huge implications in shaping the world until today, because it meant that the US became free to print dollars endlessly. The external market for dollars was solid because of the world reserve status, enforced through the US military. In this way the US could print away AND keep internal inflation very low in relation to the amount of circulating currency.
Breaking this cycle, which is what feeds the US empire, is why I think Bitcoin will in the end provide a great service to mankind.
Re: A Prediction: Bitcoin Is Doomed to Fail
#360Bitcoin is not privately issued legal tender.
Article fails right there in its premises.
The rest is intellectual masturbation.