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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

#181

Post by Closi »

herbst wrote: post #175
Closi wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

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

Yeah you can do that exactly with a debit card - just ask your bank to remove the spend limit and give you zero overdraft.

Once you realise effectively you are describing a debit card with less options then suddenly it doesn't look like such a good feature.

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

#182

Post by DubiousPusher »

skohan wrote: post #168
DubiousPusher wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's a bit different. Yes it's true that, for instance, if a pallet of USD with sequential serial numbers went missing, the FBI would probably knock on your door if you tried to put some of them in the bank. But as far as I know, if those dollars made it into circulation and you obtained them by legal means, it doesn't become illegal for you to spend them.

It's not that different though. At times there are dollars which have become not fungible. We don't say this makes the whole system not fungible. Because in most transactions, most of the time, people don't distinguish between the units of exchange.

In some highly technical way, is the medium not fungible? Sure. Just as in prison exchange of cigarettes there might be someone who won't take Parliaments and someone else who wants only Marbs. But most of the time, most people, exchanging most coin, consider them interchangable. And in any financial tool that is what matters. Not theory but how people treat it.

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

#183

Post by thesausageking »

brbsix wrote: post #97
beefield wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, as I do not know enough details: 1. Alice owns one BTC 2. Bob owns one BTC 3. Both send their BTC to Charlie 4. Charlie sends one BTC to David Question: Is there unambiguous way to define whether David got the BTC originally owned by Alice or the one owned by Bob? If yes, how? If no, doesn't that mean that there exist no specific bitcoins anywhere?

Yes, absolutely. I'm not sure why I have been downvoted for this, as I haven't exactly said anything revelatory. However I just want to give an obligatory caution that this is a very contrived answer. In the real world it can be difficult, there are typically many inputs and outputs to a transaction (and we are rarely able to associate names with addresses). There exists an entire field devoted to this called blockch…

Your link contradicts what you're arguing for. Note that the block explorer only shows "total sent", "total received", and "final balance", not which specific coins.

If your wallet has 10 BTC in it and you send someone 1 BTC, there is no way to know which one of the 10 Bitcoins was sent. It is literally not part of the implementation of Bitcoin.

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

#184

Post by DubiousPusher »

heckerhut wrote: post #173
DubiousPusher wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

> Older coins pay less fees than newer coins.

And some circulated currency becomes more valuable because of its collectability or changes in its composite metals. But we do not say the system of currency itself has been rendered I fungible. I have ceded the technical point here several times. But for most practical purposes it is fungible because most users of bitcoin do not care which coin they get when they recieve it nor which one they lose when they recieve it.

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

#185

Post by purplecabbage77 »

travisgriggs wrote: post #27
purplecabbage77 wrote: post #8

Something this article misses though is that Bitcoin, unlike stamps and Beanie Babies, is digital, which I'd argue makes a huge difference. Imagine if you could exchange Beanie Babies with anyone in the world with an internet (or satellite) connection. That seems...at least a little more useful?

I'll bite. Isn't that essentially what eBay and the like are? Among other things, a beanie baby exchange? I'm curious why you feel that being digital "makes a huge difference"? Sure it's different. And coincident with a current popular disruption (digitization of everything we can think of), but does that make it transcendentally different? Or just different because times are different? Honestly curious.

I would say transcendentally different.

Unlike eBay, with Bitcoin I can transact nearly instantly and without going through any middle men like PayPal and the like. This is huge.

I can also store 1bitcoin and 1million bitcoin on the same USB drive, and know that also unlike beanie babies, they won't deteriorate at all ever.

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

#186

Post by Spivak »

swensel wrote: post #117
Spivak wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then the issue is that the settlement layer becomes an arbitrary implementation detail. The second layer is the thing that really matters. The settlement can happen in dollars or some stock in a portfolio of assets like what Libra wanted to do. Is Bitcoin the best thing to use as an settlement layer?

If a credit card is the example of a layer 2, with dollars being the base layer, would you say that dollars don't matter then, and the only thing that matters is the layer 2?

You have it backwards. With credit/bank cards the second layer is dollars that we're transact in. If financial institutions decided to settle amongst themselves with commodity stocks, government bonds or FedCoins would you even notice? It just happens that in the US dollars also make a good settlement layer.

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

#187

Post by viklove »

fny wrote: post #170
beambot wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people I know keep less than 3 months of their net worth in currency. The vast majority of their net worth is placed in real estate (largely, their primary residence), stocks, or ETFs. You can make a case about net-present value of future dividends, but the S&P dividend yield is 1.4% -- i.e. less than inflation. So quite literally, every asset they have as a store of wealth is "just HODLing in the hopes that som…

Primary residence has utility. Additional properties typically have a real cash flow. Stocks have price appreciation typically due to higher current and projected earnings, dividends, and buybacks, and yes they are somewhat inflation resistant since they also have limited supply. This makes for average returns of 10% plus dividends. Bitcoin is a collectible. It is very much like gold, which has a far longer history a…

> Stocks have price appreciation typically due to higher current and projected earnings

Yes, projected earnings. Speculation. Just like cryptocurrencies.

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

#188

Post by dnautics »

gajotron wrote: post #151
dnautics wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Better is defined as causing less harm to individuals Inflation sucks for more people than deflation. It causes social strife, environmental destruction through overconsumption, a widening gap between the rich and the poor, more expensive healthcare for lower classes, stress and the need to live on the corporate treadmill, a general inability to identify worthwhile investments versus ponzi schemes because TINA, pus…

You're confusing the economic effects of inflation and deflation with environments of low and high real interest rates. I'd counter by saying that the strongest decades of median real wage growth and general GDP growth were during the high inflation 1960s and 1970s. I'd argue that the fact nobody was starving at the beginning of the great depression means that the economic mess didn't cause the starvation is a bit of…

> You're confusing the economic effects of inflation and deflation with environments of low and high real interest rates.

No I'm not. The one is the primary mechanism that is being used to create the other.

> Of course, the real problem...

The real problem was policymakers believing dumb shit, if we're being charitable, confusing correlation for causation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsAnssN1cxM

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

#189

Post by dnautics »

gajotron wrote: post #151
dnautics wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Better is defined as causing less harm to individuals Inflation sucks for more people than deflation. It causes social strife, environmental destruction through overconsumption, a widening gap between the rich and the poor, more expensive healthcare for lower classes, stress and the need to live on the corporate treadmill, a general inability to identify worthwhile investments versus ponzi schemes because TINA, pus…

You're confusing the economic effects of inflation and deflation with environments of low and high real interest rates. I'd counter by saying that the strongest decades of median real wage growth and general GDP growth were during the high inflation 1960s and 1970s. I'd argue that the fact nobody was starving at the beginning of the great depression means that the economic mess didn't cause the starvation is a bit of…

> the strongest decades of median real wage growth and general GDP growth were during the high inflation 1960s and 1970s.

How about 1860-1900. A deflationary era when median wealth increased ( even without taking into account that a chunk of the population was liberated from chattel slavery) and the us went from failed state to international colonial expansionist superpower

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

#190

Post by heckerhut »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #184
heckerhut wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

> Older coins pay less fees than newer coins. And some circulated currency becomes more valuable because of its collectability or changes in its composite metals. But we do not say the system of currency itself has been rendered I fungible. I have ceded the technical point here several times. But for most practical purposes it is fungible because most users of bitcoin do not care which coin they get when they recieve…

The point everyone is trying to make is that because the bitcoins are technically not fungible they will, over time, also become practically not fungible due to, eg government intervention (AML, CO2, whatever). That is pretty much set in stone.
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