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Bitcoin is fiat money, too

economist.com

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Re: Bitcoin is fiat money, too

#331

Post by rdiddly »

mseebach wrote: post #254
labster wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're telling me that government money, where everyone gets a say in policy through republican institutions, is worse than a system where the most wealthy users get more control of the currency. Um, okay. I guess the oligarchy is more explicit in the cryptocurrency.

Just download a mining program and run it on your computer. Voilà, you now have "a say" that is exactly equivalent to your say in the policy of republican institutions.

So you're saying, cryptocurrency and fiat currency are the same, because you don't have a meaningful say in either one, unless you have a lot of money. Yes. True.

Re: Bitcoin is fiat money, too

#332

Post by mrb »

rblatz wrote: post #303
mrb wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin has a lot of legit use cases: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15228983

I find the claim of being able to cheaply and quickly transfer large amounts of money to be comical. The argument breaks down to, traditional transfer methods take too long, so let’s add two layers of traditional transfer methods on top of a bitcoin transfer. Then we just ignore the bid/ask spread and the transfer time on either side.

You are not thinking outside of the box: the advantages of Bitcoin multiply when you stay in bitcoins without converting to/from fiat currency.

For example my brother in France owns some bitcoins. One day he sent me, who live in the US, some bitcoins. I was able to spend them instantly (~10 minutes) on NewEgg to buy computer hardware. None of us had to convert to/from fiat. The fees were small and the transfer was incredibly fast compared to a regular bank wire.

Re: Bitcoin is fiat money, too

#333

Post by mirimir »

ycombobreaker wrote: post #330
mirimir wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't control what miners do, sure. But you can fork code that changes the game for them. Contrary to all the noise, Bitcoin does not need commercial miners. They are parasites. Allowing them to dominate mining was a serious bug. It's users who should be mining.

It's not about need. If it is profitable to mine, professional miners will exist. You can't create an incentive structure and then call it a "bug" when somebody optimizes for it.

So you can create a disincentive for non-user mining.

What would be the downside?

This is supposed to be a distributed system.

Re: Bitcoin is fiat money, too

#334

Post by Dylan16807 »

tboyd47 wrote: post #289
sneak wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, even with 51% of hashpower, you cannot force all the other nodes to forward or propagate your invalid blocks if you decide to start changing the rules. This is a common misconception about bitcoin. Every single node on the network validates every single block, not just miners.

Thank you. I see this argument pop up on HN all the time and can't understand why it's so common. You'd think if a 51% attack were such a threat to Bitcoin it would have at least been attempted by now, after so many years.

Why do you think that?

Being able to fake blocks isn't significantly more useful than being able to double spend. I don't see why that would be the tipping point.

The reason you don't see these attacks is that they are difficult and very expensive and they would ruin the value of the coin so you can't even profit off it.

Re: Bitcoin is fiat money, too

#335

Post by Dylan16807 »

ric2b wrote: post #297
jdietrich wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The top four pools have ~55% of the total hashing power. They could orchestrate a 51% attack with a conference call. As we've seen with the BTH/SegWit2X fiasco, Bitcoin is anything but democratic or decentralised. A cartel is every bit as dangerous as a monopoly.

And what exactly do you think a 51% attack can do? I'll tell you what: censor transactions and make double-spends. Not exactly end of Bitcoin danger, is it?

If someone had unrestricted ability to double-spend, getting around any attempted countermeasures, they would be able to turn every exchange into a money printing machine. It's hard for me to see how it wouldn't be the end of Bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin is fiat money, too

#336

Post by takeda »

KGIII wrote: post #152
noddy1 wrote: post #145

Had a chat with a high ranking public tax official last week who said that the age of secret offshore bank accounts is over - mass leaks resulting from bounties mean that any rogue employee with a USB of account information can get a 7 figure payout from major goverments. So where to now for high net worth people/families? I would absolutely be piling my wealth into anonymous cryptocurrencies - zcash, monero, and wel…

They can renounce their citizenship to the United States and then use any one of a number of different countries to do their banking. Citizens of other countries aren't subjected to the same laws and banks aren't pressured to report on them due to US influence. An example would be Lebanon. Everyone except US citizens gets pretty good banking privacy protections. Due to US pressure, Lebanon carved out an exception to…

You are talking as if every country will accept you with open arms to become their citizen.

Re: Bitcoin is fiat money, too

#337

Post by ojr »

vkou wrote: post #322
ojr wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you need permission which could take weeks, to take donations through kickstarter or send micropayments to 1000 people through paypal, losing bitcoin or ethereum is a possibility but security strategies are improving, there will be growing pains in a new financial software platform but you already know that?

You need permission to turn your BTC into USD, in order to pay for your rent and food. This could take weeks, too. The reason the regular financial system has all these high-friction components is because of AML/KYC/fraud. If you think the interface between BTC and the real world won't eventually have to be compliant will all those onerous regulations, background checks, and business processes, you are vastly underes…

It will always be possible to exchange you can't stop everyone from trading bitcoin even if it became illegal, people trade illegal things everyday but that's irrelevant bitcoin is legal in many countries so I am not worried

Re: Bitcoin is fiat money, too

#338

Post by KGIII »

takeda wrote: post #336
KGIII wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can renounce their citizenship to the United States and then use any one of a number of different countries to do their banking. Citizens of other countries aren't subjected to the same laws and banks aren't pressured to report on them due to US influence. An example would be Lebanon. Everyone except US citizens gets pretty good banking privacy protections. Due to US pressure, Lebanon carved out an exception to…

You are talking as if every country will accept you with open arms to become their citizen.

If you have that much money, pretty much every country in the world will take you. In many countries, they openly state that you can buy citizenship or resident status. The US will grant you LTR just for investing as little as $500,000. If you don't want to invest it into a business, you can put $1,000,000 into an American bank.

Other countries are much the same, only usually a bit less money. Canada, for example, will fast track you to LTR, and a path not naturalization, for just depositing $30,000 CAN.

Yeah, if you've got money, like the OP said, then you're going to be able to live pretty much anywhere you want. They use more polite legal language, but you can buy citizenship pretty easily. It's not even all that expensive, depending on where you want to live.

Re: Bitcoin is fiat money, too

#339

Post by mcguire »

Finnucane wrote: post #20
dnautics wrote: post #18

Interestingly the economist misses the traditional definition of Fiat: a currency whose value is determined by the Fiat of a state. Whether or not Bitcoin exhibits similar trends as currency that isn't backed by the state is immaterial to the ethical appeal (to some) of a medium of exchange where participation is voluntary and consensual.

Is Bitcoin actually a medium of exchange? It seems to be functioning more as an investment to be hoarded rather than spent.

Is it true that the number of Bitcoins in existence is limited?

Re: Bitcoin is fiat money, too

#340

Post by mcguire »

ryan_j_naughton wrote: post #216
meric wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like saying the decreasing price of hard disk space discourages people from purchasing it.

Knowing that there will be better hard drives in the future for less money has some effect on your willingness to purchase. Expectations of the future matter. The US Treasury is getting considerably less revenue right now from capital gains than usual because tons of financial entities are holding off on realizing returns from their investments now and are holding them until possible tax reform in the hopes of paying…

"Knowing that there will be better hard drives in the future for less money has some effect on your willingness to purchase."

It'd probably be surprising to know how many businesses have been killed by intentionally or inadvertently releasing information about an upcoming product.

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