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One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

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Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

#261

Post by yellowapple »

Yizahi wrote: post #233
lake_vincent wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, it is not that hard to imagine, right? A car title becomes an NFT. Whoever owns the NFT owns the car. Same with a house. Or a horse. I'm not a crypto expert, but that is a relatively trivial use case for NFTs. As for how this scales? I have no idea. I'm just speculating that it's gonna happen somehow . I mean, hell, look at this post - a nation adopted Bitcoin. You think that's the last time a government will…

Ok, lets go with your example. Car title. Or a house title. Just where exactly the title itself is stored? I would assume it's a at least moderately long plaintext file, describing property and conditions. Maybe some authenticity attributes, like digital signatures of multiple parties. Where do you think is this artifact located? Inside the NFT?

Plaintext doesn't take up all that much space relatively-speaking; it'd be entirely feasible to store all the data on an automotive title (for example) directly on-chain.

Also, there's no reason why the property and conditions have to be stored together; they could readily exist as separate artifacts sharing some ID or reference.

Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

#262

Post by yellowapple »

pmarreck wrote: post #117
bitxbitxbitcoin wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I want to wake up one day and internet and anything related to it just doesn’t exist. Man that’d be a great day. Remove grifters, acquire actual progress. I wonder if there were people in the 80s that said that.

Rationally, I understand what you're saying, speaking as someone who was intrigued by Bitcoin in 2012 and possibly made a little money off it while I was interested in it. Humanistically, I gotta say, perceptions matter. I left crypto because it just started "tasting gross", regardless of the technological interest I had. Clearly, I wasn't in a minority with that.

The Internet tastes pretty gross these days, too, what with the dominant business model being surveillance-driven marketing.

Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

#264

Post by xwolfi »

plebianRube wrote: post #59
benj111 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what objective metrics are you using to back up your conviction that bitcoin is worth X? Many people have conviction in their belief in God. That doesn't make the existence of God any more sound.

I may only buy when Fidelity and Blackrock say it is safe for retail, if at all. Until then, I will let institutions take the risk and I will stick with my index fund.

I think even if they say it's safe, it wont make it so: there is fundamentaly no special value in bitcoin compared to the Thai Baht and nobody's rushing to buy those.

Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

#265

Post by MomoXenosaga »

croon wrote: post #11

It's not a failure because Bitcoin tanked (relatively), it's a failure because Bitcoin tanking was and will always be a significant risk. People who got rich from Bitcoin weren't savvy, they won the lottery. It's not a sound investment decision based on outcome. Investments are sound based on probability and risk beforehand. El Salvador gambled which is stupid. Whether they won or lost at the lottery is inconsequenti…

The people who get rich from crypto are the ones running the exchanges. When this fad has run its course they'll move on.

Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

#266

Post by MomoXenosaga »

undreren wrote: post #244
throw10920 wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The “only valid use cases” of privacy is not to hide illegal or criminal activity. What are the others, in the specific context of this conversation (which is privacy from the government, not from random other citizens)?

Governments could easily use private data to blackmail or silence you, even if you’ve done nothing illegal. This is perhaps the primary reason that the right of privacy even exists.

Privacy isn't absolute otherwise we wouldn't have CPS.

Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

#268

Post by prottog »

osigurdson wrote: post #48

What I don't like about this article is it is almost entirely focused on price. If bitcoin would have went up, it would have been a wise move according to the premise of the article. I think a longer timescale is needed. I'd like to see an analysis of the situation, assuming that the value goes neither up or down, but simply holds a constant value in an inflation indexed manner. Would it still be a bad idea in that s…

> simply holds a constant value in an inflation indexed manner

Gold and currencies backed by gold come very close to this, with historical evidence to back it up. The purchasing power of gold -- that is, its convertibility to goods and services you might wish to consume -- have remained remarkably stable over time.

Countries stopped issuing currencies backed by gold for a few different reasons, but its ability to hold constant value over time wasn't one of them.

Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

#269

Post by undreren »

MomoXenosaga wrote: post #266
undreren wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Governments could easily use private data to blackmail or silence you, even if you’ve done nothing illegal. This is perhaps the primary reason that the right of privacy even exists.

Privacy isn't absolute otherwise we wouldn't have CPS.

I did not imply that it was.

Re: One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a failure

#270

Post by undreren »

yellowapple wrote: post #256
undreren wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Governments could easily use private data to blackmail or silence you, even if you’ve done nothing illegal. This is perhaps the primary reason that the right of privacy even exists.

Governments could also easily freeze bank accounts, even if you've done nothing illegal. Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin directly mitigate (if not outright prevent) that risk.

Governments can also violate all your other rights as well. But this completely irrelevant to the post I responded to.
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