When buying "gray market" prescription medications from India, Bitcoin is the main way to pay. US credit cards refuse such transactions.
In the UK, using bitcoin is a taxable transaction, and acquiring bitcoin requires you to do so through regulated exchanges with full know your customer checks. So the government know you have bitcoin, they know your wallet address and they can see that you made a transaction, that you should be declaring and paying tax on. I don't want a tax evasion charge hanging over my head and I can't be bothered declaring crypto…
When Bitcoin was conceived economists said it would have built-in deflation and it seems they were right
No economist said that. Deflation refers to the behaviour of the price level. As such it isn't a property that assets can have.
Incorrect - the term inflation is rooted in the inflation of a money supply, which leads to devaluation of the monetary unit and therefore a rise in prices.
Bitcoin is deflationary as at some point in the future the total supply will decrease each year (through people dying with their money etc.)
No economist said that. Deflation refers to the behaviour of the price level. As such it isn't a property that assets can have.
The original intent of bitcoin was to be a currency so that's how it was evaluated. The point of this thread is that despite it's increasing popularity it has never functioned as a currency. Calling it an asset is dubious since it carries no equity nor pays a dividend nor is it tied to the performance of any institution. That's why I say commodity since it trades most akin to gold although gold (like most commodities…
The first step in the growth of any medium of exchange is to prove itself as a stable store of value. Otherwise it can't be used as a unit of account. And the first step in proving itself a stable store of value, is to begin storing value which is where bitcoin is at right now.
So I suppose people must use it all the time to buy goods and services. Right?
I don't know about you, but I routinely pay for groceries with crypto. I just ask the checker for the store's wallet address and preferred currency. Sometimes we have to negotiate about which currency I use that they also use, but this is a detail that only takes 5-10min. Once we agree on a proper currency, I pull out my 2FA dongle to auth my phone wallet app, scan their QR code, check the address twice and click sen…
The fact that you interchange the words "bitcoin" and "crypto" says all I need to know.
Anybody have a reliable, up-to-date pc build guide, for a full node? I find very fragmented information everywhere. I get that "most pc's can run Bitcoin core" but I'd like some more detailed information.
I thought Bitcoin and crypto is just fools gold, why get involved with blockchains and worst of all, proof of work?
really is depressing that Trump has brought along the absolute worst people - tech oligarchs, cryptcurrency enthusiasts (Bitcoin still uses more electricity than SPAIN, for truly horrific what people will do to get less SEC regulation or a slightly lower CGT rate.
Have you looked into how much power gold mining uses?
Bitcoin vs Spain - I'd turn the power off to Spain every time.
You are the brainwashed result of a system that is able to print as much money as it needs to brainwash you into believing that it should be allowed to print more.
Soon this will all collapse, reaching all time highs isn't a good thing. Pyramid scheme at best, ponzi scheme at worst. I still don't know any use case for this other than speculation and people aren't even using it in the real world.
In terms of significance, bitcoin ranks alongside the wheel, the printing-press and the internet.
The use-case is to stop the wide-spread theft of your wealth, often (as in your case) without you realising, enabled by the fiat money printers around the world.
Don't buy bitcoin because it will crash... https://www.youtube.com/shorts/vII3xWrXzwY
Over its history more money has been pump into bitcoin than come out. This is an inherent from the way the system works because unlike stocks, bonds, property etc there’s zero inherent income generation from dividends, rent etc. Making it on average across all transactions past and future a bad investment as miners have real world expenses. The common argument is the current value makes up for this, but trying to act…
Many people won't ever sell their bitcoin - they will spend it (once Gresham's and Thier's laws have played out)
The original intent of bitcoin was to be a currency so that's how it was evaluated. The point of this thread is that despite it's increasing popularity it has never functioned as a currency. Calling it an asset is dubious since it carries no equity nor pays a dividend nor is it tied to the performance of any institution. That's why I say commodity since it trades most akin to gold although gold (like most commodities…
The first step in the growth of any medium of exchange is to prove itself as a stable store of value. Otherwise it can't be used as a unit of account. And the first step in proving itself a stable store of value, is to begin storing value which is where bitcoin is at right now.
How does an asset prove itself to be a capable store of value? I say the first condition is that it must have a stable (non-speculative) demand, which bitcoin notoriously lacks, and can never have because it doesn't do anything. It doesn't exist physically, therefore it can't be consumed or used as raw material. And as a financial asset it's nobody's liability, so like an IOU that promises to pay nothing. In conclusion, bitcoin's market value is driven 100% by a speculative demand and that's not a basis for a reliable store of value.
I suspect it's going to become increasingly normalized for people to put some fraction of their retirement accounts (perhaps 3% - 10%) into crypto, now that there are ETFs. I'm not saying the supply of new money won't eventually get exhausted, but there's still a ton of untapped boomer wealth out there that has yet to flow in.
So cryptos are rediscovering pension funds? Younger people financing retirement of older people.
No the open-minded young see the potential, buy the asset while it's cheap and the slow pension funds in the legacy financial system eventually catch on and buy in with much larger quantities, pumping the value as they do so.
The boomers' pensions will effectively fund the pensions of the young who will be living off the 0.1BTC that they bought at $3000 but which is later worth $1M by the time they retire.