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Bitcoin Is Not Backed by Nothing

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Re: Bitcoin Is Not Backed by Nothing

#21

Post by simple-thoughts »

SrslyJosh wrote: post #13
simple-thoughts wrote: post #5

> bitcoin possesses far more credible monetary properties than the dollar Sorry this is complete BS. Inflation makes the dollar more useful for exchange. Not only that, the dollar is great for consumer goods as it is pegged to a basket of them unlike Bitcoin. Then on top of that, the liquidity available for trading and moving USD across markets is at least 2 orders of magnitude greater than BTC. I sold all my btc a l…

Cryptocurrencies are, thus far, utterly useless as currencies. They're accepted by almost no one, slow, more difficult and risky than cash and credit cards, and subject to wild price fluctuations. They are, however, a nearly perfect vehicle for scams and fraud. =)

Luxury goods, blockchain games, access to usd for unbanked, international remittances, international contracting, alternative governance, p2p lending, trading micro cap assets, asset self custody, and more are all legal use cases of cryptocurrencies.

Re: Bitcoin Is Not Backed by Nothing

#22

Post by smoldesu »

simple-thoughts wrote: post #21
SrslyJosh wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cryptocurrencies are, thus far, utterly useless as currencies. They're accepted by almost no one, slow, more difficult and risky than cash and credit cards, and subject to wild price fluctuations. They are, however, a nearly perfect vehicle for scams and fraud. =)

Luxury goods, blockchain games, access to usd for unbanked, international remittances, international contracting, alternative governance, p2p lending, trading micro cap assets, asset self custody, and more are all legal use cases of cryptocurrencies.

A pittance relative to it's utility for bad actors. I like Bitcoin, and I cheered it on as a pimply-faced nerd who wanted to watch numbers do funny tricks. It's protocol is incompatible with what society deems acceptable though, so something's gotta change before the world goes all-in.

No fiat will ever be perfectly solvent, but that's a poor excuse to argue for the superiority of a currency as fickle as Bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin Is Not Backed by Nothing

#23

Post by simple-thoughts »

smoldesu wrote: post #22
simple-thoughts wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luxury goods, blockchain games, access to usd for unbanked, international remittances, international contracting, alternative governance, p2p lending, trading micro cap assets, asset self custody, and more are all legal use cases of cryptocurrencies.

A pittance relative to it's utility for bad actors. I like Bitcoin, and I cheered it on as a pimply-faced nerd who wanted to watch numbers do funny tricks. It's protocol is incompatible with what society deems acceptable though, so something's gotta change before the world goes all-in. No fiat will ever be perfectly solvent, but that's a poor excuse to argue for the superiority of a currency as fickle as Bitcoin.

For good or for bad, what “society” wants doesn’t really matter. People onboard through extremely difficult and regulated processes to blockchain applications because their desire for the products is stronger than the blockages. Sure you can minimize that as a pittance but it doesn’t change the reality of desire.

Re: Bitcoin Is Not Backed by Nothing

#24

Post by mattwilsonn888 »

simple-thoughts wrote: post #20
hyperfuturism wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Inflation does not make it more useful for exchange. You want something that holds 1-to-1 exchange through time for it to be useful for exchange. E.g. stock market appreciate versus goods, and dollar depreciates. You want something that's actually stable. 2. Just because there's more liquidity available, does not the dollar have better monetary properties than Bitcoin. I think the author is talking about monetary…

> You want something that holds 1-to-1 exchange through time for it to be useful for exchange. There’s three issues. First, 1-1 to what? For daily expenses, people want their currency to be stable against consumer goods in a practical way. Second, price inflation doesn’t matter if it’s a small enough that day to day prices don’t change significantly. Third, for a variety of complex macroeconomic factors, the economy…

Please stop conflating price and value. In speculative markets the price of a small cap asset can wildly outperform the price of a larger one and that fact has nothing to do with value - this is proven by the fact that most top 10 altcoins cycle in and out of favor and usually trend towards zero against Bitcoin in the long run.

I am not a "Bitcoin maxi," but your reasoning is flawed - if you believe other layer-1 blockchains have superior value you should have more justification than price to back that up. I'll start:

https://mukdde.substack.com/p/the-economic-solution-to-the-b...

Re: Bitcoin Is Not Backed by Nothing

#25

Post by superchroma »

simple-thoughts wrote: post #21
SrslyJosh wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cryptocurrencies are, thus far, utterly useless as currencies. They're accepted by almost no one, slow, more difficult and risky than cash and credit cards, and subject to wild price fluctuations. They are, however, a nearly perfect vehicle for scams and fraud. =)

Luxury goods, blockchain games, access to usd for unbanked, international remittances, international contracting, alternative governance, p2p lending, trading micro cap assets, asset self custody, and more are all legal use cases of cryptocurrencies.

Access to USD for the unbanked extends to illegal use of cryptocurrency. Some of those people are unbanked for a reason.

Re: Bitcoin Is Not Backed by Nothing

#26

Post by gregjor »

Bitcoin and crypto have demonstrated one great strength, and I don't mean crime and fraud (which crypto does excel at facilitating).

Crypto has demonstrated an unbelievable ability to survive repeated failures, debunking, scams, fraud, and even government bans. What other technology has failed to deliver on any of its promised benefits for over a decade and survive in "any day now" mode for so many people? What other technology has enabled so much fraud and financial ruin and evaded regulation for this long. As a meme crypto shows more tenacity than COVID does as a virus.

Re: Bitcoin Is Not Backed by Nothing

#29

Post by ashwagary »

mattrighetti wrote: post #9
blibble wrote: post #3

bitcoin is backed by CO2 or wasted energy

I’m playing the devil’s advocate here but the concept of wasted is subjective. Definitely not wasted if it gets me a couple thousand dollars a month.

He's right in a certain sense, Bitcoin is increasingly backed by energy that would be otherwise wasted due to lack of transmission infrastructure.

Not sure if that was the point he was trying to make.

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