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Ending Bitcoin Support

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Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#141

Post by prostoalex »

chocolatebunny wrote: post #36
montrose wrote: post #15

This reads a bit like the sort of things people say when breaking up so as not to upset the other person too much. You're a great person, but you're just more of an asset than a medium of exchange, and what I need in my life right now is a medium of exchange. What future does an asset have if people don't actually buy stuff with it? That is not a purely rhetorical question; cryptocurrencies change things a lot. But t…

Bitcoin is definitely acting more like an asset than a medium of exchange, and yeah, I don't see why it would hold any value if it's treated like an asset. But as soon as people realize that then it should go back to being a medium of exchange and then it'll hold value again as an asset? Either way, just because Bitcoin isn't functioning correctly doesn't mean that all cryptocurrencies are not. But I guess at the mom…

One side effect is that stores of value tend to have smaller and more expensive infrastructures than media of exchange.

People are hoarding, so there are fewer transactions. Miners still need to pay the bills somehow, so transaction fees are likely to increase.

With fewer transactions the price discovery mechanisms, i.e. exchanges, are now somewhat illusory due to thin trading volume (not like BTC exchanges were the paragon of transparency before). Unlike NYSE or Nasdaq, which support trading lithium or platinum ETFs but also make money from other sources (just in case precious metals themselves don't bring in much revenue today), Bitcoin exchanges are heavily concentrated on Bitcoin, and even the ones that support expansive lists of cryptocurrencies generally peg it to BTC, not USD.

So now that exchanges are not such a swell business, this will lead to a wave of consolidation, reduced price discovery and higher fees/commissions to transact.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#142

Post by notyourday »

ujal wrote: post #111
luckydata wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the confusion. Care to explain?

Countries and their economies collapsing now and then are not that rare.

Seems rather rare to me.

If a Dotcom type of an event affected bitcoin ecosystem, it would not have recovered - it had millions of participants actively winding up and unwinding positions in real time, which is not something that bitcoin is capable of supporting at this time.

If a Housing Bubble type of an event affected bitcoin ecosystem, it would not have recovered. Lots of special purpose leveraged positions needed to be de-leveraged. Something that bitcoin is not capable of supporting.

If LTCM type event affected bitcoin ecosystem it would not have recovered. I dont even want to think about the effect of LTCM type event on a bitcoin.

All three were absolutely survived by the modern economies.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#143

Post by janekm »

UnbornSoul wrote: post #79
0xcafecafe wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gold as a metal has an inherent value though. If not only for jewelry, it also has important uses in electronics. The value associated with bitcoin seems purely sentimental.

That's the case now, but that was certainly not the case in the late 19th century when gold fever struck. The only use back then was jewelry and the fact that is was rare.

And teeth.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#144

Post by criddell »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #99
tedunangst wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you highlight the part of the white paper you're referring to? https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

"The incentive can also be funded with transaction fees. If the output value of a transaction is less than its input value, the difference is a transaction fee that is added to the incentive value of the block containing the transaction. Once a predetermined number of coins have entered circulation, the incentive can transition entirely to transaction fees and be completely inflation free." It's the design, folks. Re…

Of legacy electronics payment systems and their need to be mediator, Satoshi says this:

> The cost of mediation increases transaction costs, limiting the minimum practical transaction size and cutting off the possibility for small casual transactions

If enabling small casual transactions was one of the goals, then they've failed terribly on that point.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#145

Post by richardwhiuk »

duiker101 wrote: post #123
blhack wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of people (myself included) have used lightning on mainnet successfully. People know the risks. It's just fun technology to play with.

I actually don't know the risks. Have a short version?

You lose all the money you invested, and any money you had in progress, and nothing is worth anything and you have wasted a bunch of time.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#146

Post by kgwgk »

UnbornSoul wrote: post #79
0xcafecafe wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gold as a metal has an inherent value though. If not only for jewelry, it also has important uses in electronics. The value associated with bitcoin seems purely sentimental.

That's the case now, but that was certainly not the case in the late 19th century when gold fever struck. The only use back then was jewelry and the fact that is was rare.

Gold has been used in dentistry for centuries (and millenia).

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#147

Post by gizmo385 »

mamon wrote: post #107
gizmo385 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bitcoin is currently the crypto equivalent of gold. Why is this a good thing? Nobody uses gold as a store of value anymore because it just wasn't viable going forward. Why would Bitcoin be any different?

Most of the central banks have gold reserves as a store of value, some of them expanding them (most notably China and Russia). For individuals it is less popular, but still I wouldn't say "nobody uses gold".

But aren't those gold reserves a tiny fraction of the actual cash circulating in the economy? What use does Bitcoin serve in this aspect? And I don't think that Bitcoin and Gold are really comparable. In the event of some national/international crisis, the gold is still going to be there. I don't think you can reasonably make the same guarantee about something like Bitcoin.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#148

Post by freeone3000 »

avenoir wrote: post #104
koheripbal wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't know what use-case remains for Bitcoin. If you have large value transactions you'd probably choose something with privacy like Monero, and if you want something cheap and fast, maybe Bitcoin Cash. In both use-cases, you have a few competing alternatives. In no circumstance is Bitcoin preferable to one of the mature alternatives. ...and if no one is using it as a transaction medium, then acting as a s…

With South Korea trying to regulate anonymous trading on Korean exchanges, makes me wonder how long we have before regulations become more widespread. And if this happens do you think privacy coins even stand a chance?

Well, the problem with regulating anonymous transactions is you don't know who's doing them.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#149

Post by theptip »

moduspol wrote: post #46
montrose wrote: post #15

This reads a bit like the sort of things people say when breaking up so as not to upset the other person too much. You're a great person, but you're just more of an asset than a medium of exchange, and what I need in my life right now is a medium of exchange. What future does an asset have if people don't actually buy stuff with it? That is not a purely rhetorical question; cryptocurrencies change things a lot. But t…

> What future does an asset have if people don't actually buy stuff with it? Lots of assets have value without people buying things with them. Gold, houses, stocks, etc. The more interesting question is how long Bitcoin will remain top dog merely as a store of value if other cryptocurrencies solve this on-chain / off-chain scaling problem better / faster. There's definitely some amount of value in the name alone, and…

Indeed, I'd go further and say that almost all assets are not used to buy stuff. That's what makes cash special, it's (one of?) the only asset you can freely spend.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#150

Post by teilo »

LeonM wrote: post #109
0xcafecafe wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gold as a metal has an inherent value though. If not only for jewelry, it also has important uses in electronics. The value associated with bitcoin seems purely sentimental.

So is gold. Most gold ends up in vaults (see [0]), where absolutely nothing is done with it. If we would price it for practical stuff (for it's thermal and electric properties), it would be worth much, much less. Also, gold is not scarce by any means, just expensive to mine. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTtf5s2HFkA

The difference is that cryptocurrency is ephemeral, and gold is not. One can create a new crypto-currency at any time. One cannot conjure up gold at any time. Crypto-currency can be wiped out with a hard drive crash or a lost password because it is a social contract. Gold cannot because it is physical. That still makes a difference.
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