241–250 of 327 posts
That means Bitcoin has a lot more to grow. That 40% can be sold off to many more people eventually. What worries me more is the elextricity consumption: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/aek3za/bitcoin-co...
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I think you're mixing up the argument of whether property is just with whether property is coercive . The arguments you've outlined are drawing a distinction between which kinds of property are thought to be just by certain schools of thought. However, this is entirely unrelated to the fact that all forms of property are coercive -- enforcing them ultimately requires (the threat of) violence. Most people fail to make…
While this position is technically correct, it is absurd. By this logic, enforcing freedom from slavery is coercive as well, because it requires threat of violence.
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I'm not a moral realist so I think that libertarian philosophy is nothing but the most venal elements of capitalism congealed in thought, but I should add that the classical formulation of libertarianism is internally incoherent. You omit that for any transaction to be legitimate it must not only be voluntary but must also consist of the exchange of things legitimately acquired in the past, i.e. voluntarily acquired.…
So about bitcoin...
Is this the metaphor the bitcoin-digerati want?
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How are you thinking the switch would occur? It's not like the "old" currencies will suddenly lose their value, you'll be able to exchange them for a long time. Plus, most people don't own that much currency anyway; they either get a paycheck (which can start coming in BTC) or an asset like a house, which is valuable in any currency.
USD has already declined in value 3x over the past 6 weeks, compared to BTC
Edit: Nevermind, it was eight people.
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> The libertarian position on wealth inequality is that as long as the distribution of wealth was determined voluntarily (without state privilege, in particular), then there is no problem. Buuuuut, they bought it with fiat currencies, in many cases USD. So... right there the entire idea breaks down. Still, maybe that's unfair. A valid criticism of this argument is that it's a variant of the the serf comic argument (o…
> they bought it with fiat currencies No. Some people bought it with fiat currencies. Others mined for it. Still others exchanged goods and services for it.
> Still others exchanged goods and services for it.
I'm not sure what your point is here. It's not difficult to imagine existing state currencies influence these processes. I've also pointed out it's not a very good argument for either side of the libertarian fence.
But hey, let's focus on minutiae as opposed to the larger ethical and social questions surrounding bitcoin and derivatives. That seems like a rad use of time.
It's interesting to see how this is playing out. Libertarians have long argued that government-issued fiat currency is a tool of state oppression. Now we have a real-world experiment demonstrating on a grand scale what happens when you create a currency by consensual fiat. I'd be interested to hear what libertarians think about this: Is Bitcoin truly the kind of currency libertarians have been advocating? Have I misc…
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I have a very difficult time separating "true" libertarians with members of libertarian parties. Like people don't readily give up how pragmatic they are. On one end, there seem to be people who really yearn for pure individual freedom with no government at all. I'm pretty sure that was tried for the first 50,000 years of humanity and the results are well documented. (spoiler, for populations larger than ~100 people,…
I consider myself a pragmatic libertarian, which off the top of my head basically means that: 1. I believe very strongly in the sovereignty of the individual. 2. I prefer more open and incentive-driven markets. 3. I’m skeptical of governments, particularly large and powerful ones, because they’re inefficient, rely on coercion, and are too tempting as prizes to be captured for power, prestige, and wealth. However, the…
This is where I think some libertarians wander off from what those largely in favour of state actually think.
I think a lot of people would agree there's a lot wrong with government, but most would also rather have one. They just want one that's run better.
Your libertarianism seems quite pragmatic and I personally sympathise with the ideas behind libertarianism - lack of coercion, lack of people making arbitrary moral decisions (like drug laws) and imposing them on society.
However I also like public services, welfare safety nets (BI is indeed interesting) and various other things that only come with state-level cooperation.
There's absolutely no source to the claim that 40% is owned by 1000 people. Only at the very end of the article we see a lateral claim, that 17% of bitcoin is held in just 100 addresses. It's not unlikely the same reasoning (i.e. 40% of coins on top 1000 addresses) is used for the larger claim. But that says very little. A bitcoin address after all can be shared by many users, in the same way a bank vault can contain…
> There's absolutely no source to the claim that 40% is owned by 1000 people. Only at the very end of the article we see a lateral claim, that 17% of bitcoin is held in just 100 addresses. Yeah, I really dislike that the title sounds like it's a fact.
I do wonder how much people try to manipulate perception with media to serve their trading interests... fake news is so easy these days. Just look at what happened yesterday: a bunch of online news outlets output a bunch of speculation about the new 15,000 high, over the next 12 hours it created a sort of bubble going up to ~17,000 that popped and re-established it's original price point at ~15,000.
It's possible the opposite is being attempted here: trying to create a short term crash bubble, so they can get ready to buy on the down, before re-establishing it's original natural market value.