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Bitcoin has few attributes of money but all the attributes of a collectible

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Re: Bitcoin has few attributes of money but all the attributes of a collectible

#171

Post by Closi »

herbst wrote: post #164
Closi wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spending money without automated fraud checking, dispute resolution and the ability to do chargeback sounds like a great idea until you think for more than 2 seconds about why those things exist. And I’m not sure why I would want to maintain two currencies anyway, one for small payments where for some reason I don’t want protection, and another when I do want protection. Having to hold multiple currencies dependent o…

One big difference is that if i send someone Crypto they can't spend any more than i have sent them. If i give them my credit card (and they possibly even leak/loose it) i have a far bigger risk for fraud.

So, basically a debit card?

Or a credit card with spending limits?

In the U.K. with banks like monzo you can also raise/lower the limit instantly via an app. Also the fraud detection algorithms will automatically ask for 2FA on larger transactions or ones that look fraudulent e.t.c.

Re: Bitcoin has few attributes of money but all the attributes of a collectible

#172

Post by heckerhut »

lostmsu wrote: post #145
skohan wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> bitcoin does not have the track record that gold does. That's a heck of an understatement - Gold's track record dates back essentially to the beginning of civilization or earlier.

I would argue, that the last 100 years had about the same amount of human history as millions years before them.

There’s something true to that.

Re: Bitcoin has few attributes of money but all the attributes of a collectible

#173

Post by heckerhut »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #103
matheusmoreira wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fungibility means coins are indistinguishable from each other. Bitcoin does not have this property: the origin of each coin can be traced all the way back to its minting. Governments cannot block transactions but they can stop people from accepting the coins. Money that can't be spent is worthless.

Yes and in some cases that matters. But for most practical purposes, two coins are interchangeable. As in,if you're sending me bitcoin, I don't really care which coin in the wallet you send me. I could use your argument to say U.S cash is not fungible because each bill has a serial number. And the government occasionally tracks bills with a given number.

Not true even within the bitcoin specification itself. Look at how transaction fees are calculated. Older coins pay less fees than newer coins. They are not fungible. It’s one of bitcoins biggest weaknesses. Even Adam Back agrees with that (Google some older ltb episodes)

Re: Bitcoin has few attributes of money but all the attributes of a collectible

#174

Post by matheusmoreira »

BelenusMordred wrote: post #149
matheusmoreira wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also Monero which is everything Bitcoin was supposed to be and much more. Why bother trying to fix bitcoin when a solution already exists? There's absolutely no need for this layer 2 stuff.

> There's absolutely no need for this layer 2 stuff If XMR usage got big enough it would very much need layer 2 even more, the developers themselves acknowledge this and are upfront about it. These very basic computing problems that have been repeated ad nauseam for a decade now do not magically go away and are actually a lot worse for monero due to ring transactions being much heavier. Are you really going to store…

> the developers themselves acknowledge this and are upfront about it

I'm sure they'll be able to solve any problem that comes up. Monero isn't plagued by miners blocking progress like bitcoin is. I believe the coin will continue to improve.

> Are you really going to store a 2 TB blockchain that needs days of compute to initially confirm so you can transact with your friends privately?

Isn't it possible to prune the blockchain on local nodes?

Re: Bitcoin has few attributes of money but all the attributes of a collectible

#175

Post by herbst »

Closi wrote: post #171
herbst wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One big difference is that if i send someone Crypto they can't spend any more than i have sent them. If i give them my credit card (and they possibly even leak/loose it) i have a far bigger risk for fraud.

So, basically a debit card? Or a credit card with spending limits? In the U.K. with banks like monzo you can also raise/lower the limit instantly via an app. Also the fraud detection algorithms will automatically ask for 2FA on larger transactions or ones that look fraudulent e.t.c.

No not at all. No limits, actually only spending the exact amount with no way of spending more.

Yes there are modern banking solutions like this (we have instant transfers between banks with a comfortable QR scanning app just like google pay here in Switzerland) but this only works in Switzerland. For any international transfers we have to fall back to Swift transfers (slow) or credit cards (mentioned issue).

Re: Bitcoin has few attributes of money but all the attributes of a collectible

#176

Post by pfisch »

dagmx wrote: post #140
beambot wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It appears less than 8% of gold's annual production is for industrial use [1]. If you remove the "store of value" demand from its price, then the residual value is peanuts. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/299609/gold-demand-by-in... It's like saying, "Bitcoin has residual value because you could always sell the GPU mining equipment"

Are we just glossing over the 48% listed for jewelry which is a huge market? I'm not sure your analogy of GPU mining hardware makes sense to me. You can have Bitcoin without having GPUs. Just like you can have gold without having a mining operation. So if Bitcoin crashes to some hypothetical value tied to consumability, you're left with nothing. Whereas gold is still something you could sell for industrial and fashio…

The jewelry use is 99% tied to gold's perceived valuation and is used as a way to display opulence and wealth. It is just an extension of gold being a store of value.

Re: Bitcoin has few attributes of money but all the attributes of a collectible

#177

Post by UncleMeat »

fny wrote: post #52
graeme wrote: post #7

The funny thing is that Bitcoin will basically only have value as a collectible as long as substantial numbers of people believe this essay’s argument is false . People want to collect bitcoin at current valuations because they are convinced it will become a currency/store of value of the future and hence rise in value. If everyone suddenly switched to believing “Oh bitcoin doesn’t do anything but it is a fun collect…

Here's a question: how many people do you know that buy crypto intend to spend it? You know, use it like currency? Or are they all just HODLing in the hopes that some other buyer will come along who believes it will become a medium of exchange? In my view, it's not a currency until people stop speculating and start using it like a currency. So yes, it's a collectible with ridiculously high transaction costs that make…

I know exactly one population of people who buy crypto with the intent of spending it: people who got in on the ground floor and made it so rich that now it is largely a game.

I know a few people who made $50m before they were 30. The act of spending money is now fun for them, almost independent of the outcome. Incredibly high donations to twitch streamers, denominated in BTC, tickle their fancy.

Every other person I know who owns BTC is either trying to speculate by owning a lot of it or believes that putting 5% of their investment portfolio is good for diversification. In the same way that I don't spend VTI at the store, these people don't spend BTC at the store.

Re: Bitcoin has few attributes of money but all the attributes of a collectible

#178

Post by UncleMeat »

BelenusMordred wrote: post #149
matheusmoreira wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also Monero which is everything Bitcoin was supposed to be and much more. Why bother trying to fix bitcoin when a solution already exists? There's absolutely no need for this layer 2 stuff.

> There's absolutely no need for this layer 2 stuff If XMR usage got big enough it would very much need layer 2 even more, the developers themselves acknowledge this and are upfront about it. These very basic computing problems that have been repeated ad nauseam for a decade now do not magically go away and are actually a lot worse for monero due to ring transactions being much heavier. Are you really going to store…

Do you actually need to confirm the entire history in order to publish transactions? You've already got the result of hashing everything right up at the head of the chain.

Re: Bitcoin has few attributes of money but all the attributes of a collectible

#179

Post by UncleMeat »

cyphertruck wrote: post #96
mrpopo wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I understand, certain people really hate bitcoin— and fir good reason. Bitcoin will eventually obsolete the fiat inflation system which has created all the wealth inequality in much of the world. The system that lets politicians buy power and escape responsibility for violating rights. What part of Bitcoin abolishes corruption, power-grabbing and bribes? How would it fix anything you accuse the current system of? A…

When you cannot rob from the poor via inflation then it becomes harder to oppress them. The Great Depression was caused by the government making gold illegal, effectively confiscating the nations wealth and replacing it with massive fiat inflation. It was a period of monetary inflation that caused and economic contraction. One if the ways inflation is used to indoctrinate people against their best interests is demoni…

> When you cannot rob from the poor via inflation then it becomes harder to oppress them.

As we all know, there was remarkably little oppression of the poor back when we used the gold standard and minting new money was limited.

Re: Bitcoin has few attributes of money but all the attributes of a collectible

#180

Post by thesausageking »

sosuke wrote: post #12
thesausageking wrote: post #11

This doesn't make any sense. That's a poor definitely of money. And Bitcoin does not have "all of the elements of a collectible". Collectibles have cultural, artistic, or other value on their own and are limited numbers of a set ("non-fungible"). Bitcoin is very fungible. If you own 2 BTC, there aren't specific Bitcoins that are marked for you.

I agree with you; getting that out of the way. But if I have BTC, there is a specific BTC that is mine. That is how I've understood it. The IRS tax guide for crypto says as much talking about buying and selling two coins bought from two different years.

That's not how the code works. Wallets have an amount of Bitcoin, but there are no unique identifiers to a Bitcoin. They don't have serial numbers like, say, a US dollar. There is only the transaction history that shows an amount being sent/received between wallets.

But even if Bitcoins had serial numbers, they would still be practically fungible. Dollar bills have serial numbers and 99.99% of the time, dollars are treated as being completely interchangeable (ignoring the corner case of people hanging the first dollar they made on the wall, etc.). If you give a store one, they treat it as if you gave them $1 in value and don't care which specific dollar you gave them.

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