181–190 of 260 posts
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Weren't you just trying to charge people to discuss with them how cryptocurrencies will change the world? That sounds much less like an ethusiast and much more like a salesman.
It was a sarcastic reply to the request the poster made of me but I guess that humor was lost on you. Why on earth would I spend the time and effort to write up a well sourced research paper to satisfy some random request on hacker news?
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What's inherently bad about deflation? It's happened routinely throughout most of history until recently. Speculation is a good thing, it's a form of entrepreneurship. Example of historic deflation: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Deflation
Deflation causes a positive feedback loop of reducing trade. If it's better to hoard currency so you can buy 10% more things next year, everyone starts hoarding currency and reducing trade, leading to suppliers dropping prices to encourage purchases, leading to further deflation, and so on. Trade grinds to a halt as everyone holds currency in anticipation of buying more later. Stake: 0.05 BTC, 1.2 ETH
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> It's created an obsession of quick wealth among a lot of otherwise normal people It's showing a demand for an asset that isn't linked to the central planning of government where they continually and arbitrarily inject as much extra currency as they want whenever they catastrophically mess up sovereign budgets. That's not greed. It's an interest in safety from a drug-addict-like government that opens the floodgates…
No, that's not what it is. That's not why people buy BTC. They buy it because it's going up.
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> It's created an obsession of quick wealth among a lot of otherwise normal people It's showing a demand for an asset that isn't linked to the central planning of government where they continually and arbitrarily inject as much extra currency as they want whenever they catastrophically mess up sovereign budgets. That's not greed. It's an interest in safety from a drug-addict-like government that opens the floodgates…
No, that's not what it is. That's not why people buy BTC. They buy it because it's going up.
I think there is a place for crypto, and I say that begrudgingly, ‘cuz ego, since I’ve been calling it all Tulips since a Bitcoin was $8. The biggest reason why Bitcoin works, and other established coins work, is because of demand from the developing world. If you don’t have reliable banks or governments then Cryptos are at least as good or better than your local banks because even if it collapses you can still acces…
From my reading it looks like the "developing world" use case is pure propaganda. E.g. someone investigated the "bitcoin in venezuela!" claim. Actually going there and tracking down use. Turns out it was a bitcoin investor who went to venezuela to do a transaction for the sole purpose of screaming "bitcoin in venezuela" to pump up the price.
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You don't think there's value in open-source, decentralized financial infrastructure? (Disclosure: I hold no cryptocurrencies, nor have any financial stake in the industry)
Hmm… taking your question at face value. Can you be more specific? Is there value in nonreversibility? No, that "feature" has negative value, and it's the reason people trust credit cards. Value in anonymity? Not at this scale, no. On net that feature just is not workable in a society built on anything other than libertarian-anarchy. And most people actually want a structured society, not fiefdoms. Take KYC and AML l…
Just as a reminder (from someone who admittedly knows little about cryptocurrencies aside from this): BTC and other cryptocurrencies are not anonymous. They are, at the most, pseudonymous, and because of their very nature, the trail linking whatever online identity you used to make the transaction lives forever on the blockchain.
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Currently national currencies are, on average, far more stable and secure places to hold assets than any cryptocurrency. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL Did you expect 20% of all US dollars would have been created in 2020? 4x in the last 20 years. That doesn't sound stable to me. When your currency can be debased by 20% in a year, with no democratic process or recourse; 6 board members appointed by Presidents…
Yes, the current use case of cryptocurrency is breaking or avoiding the law, it has yet to find a use case outside that. People who dump money into gold are idiots or speculators (or hedging larger positions.) I have lived with the ups and downs of the gold industry and it is very much not stable. The US dollar has far more infrastructure and institutional support preventing it's collapse than bitcoin. Currently the…
If the law is your baseline standard for what is moral, then you should probably try a little harder and put some thought into whether or not cryptocurrencies deserve to actually be illegal. For the most part, it is not illegal to own or trade in cryptocurrencies in the developed world.
The US dollar has far more infrastructure and institutional support preventing it's collapse than bitcoin.
We've seen this attitude before. Too big to fail, FDIC insured, Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, auto industry bailouts, airline industry bailouts, investment bank bailouts. Debt increases perpetually. Money creation increase perpetually. Mortgage rates going to 0. Treasury yields going negative.
All this is completely normal.
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OK, that makes more sense. However, your comment does not take into consideration the benefits from cars, which should be considered to accurately assess their overall effect on quality of life.
Do you think every citizen of earth should own a car?
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Regulated, cheap, mostly environmentally friendly currencies exist, they're called USD, EUR, etc.
A lot of people are not comfortable with the fact that a secretive club of bankers can produce more of these at will, and give them to who they like. The moral hazard here is off the charts, and it's too much to expect that they won't keep producing more and more until it's worthless as has happened to every fiat currency in history. See the current prices of stocks, bonds, real estate, and education for examples, an…
> For my part, I held LOL ouch. Selling prior to 2016 must sting. It makes sense that somebody who made this mistake would be bitter. This guys take of: > It has failed to be a useful currency, invented a new class of internet abuse, further enriched the rich, wasted staggering amounts of electricity, hastened climate change, ruined hundreds of otherwise promising projects, provided a climate for hundreds of scams to…
Selling bitcoin prior to any time must sting (and in fact that's a very strong argument against bitcoin as a currency). This argument holds no water.