481–490 of 992 posts
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The dollar doesn't change value like Bitcoin, not cash as a whole.
What we define as a good currency doesn’t. A currency that inflates or deflates dramatically is foundering.
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I wonder how many Bitcoin users have read and understand the following extensive list of privacy "pitfalls" (mistakes that can reveal information about unwary Bitcoin users): https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Privacy Are you careful to avoid these numerous privacy pitfalls? If not, you're leaking information about yourself, into the public ledger (blockchain)
Wow that's a ludacris list of pitfalls. I've overwhelmed just looking at the list of sections in that document.
"It never fails to amuse me how so many cryptocurrency enthusiasts imagine they have deep new economic insights when they are just reinventing the past, badly."
Bitcoin's value prop isn't in its anonymity. Early adopters weren't enthusiastic about bitcoin because they hoped it would end fractional reserve banking or any other financial product. Rather, it was incredible to see the entire financial industry quickly rebuilt on top of sound money. I agree that small transactions and mining can be (and are being) improved, but not for the same reasons. It's silly to blame bitcoi…
> Early adopters weren't enthusiastic about bitcoin because they hoped it would end fractional reserve banking Just to amplify your point: There is a weird idea that that monetary multiplication (like fractional-reserve banking) is not possible with bitcoin. However, anytime someone lends bitcoin or shorts it on an exchange, they increase the bitcoin in circulation past the base count of 21 million btc (or however ma…
You are correct, but unlike with banks, at least there is an escape hatch: "not your keys, not your coins", which is a lot simpler to implement than walking to your bank and withdrawing all your savings in cash.
Sadly, the vast majority of Bicoin buyers just leave their coin on the exchange (or worse: in the case of Paypal, they can't do anything else), thereby opening the door to all kind of shady practices, including FRB.
Bitcoin is a disaster alright but a disaster for the fiat system and for the parasites who need the fiat system to survive. Funny thing is bitcoin is only a small technology that will hurt the fiat system, there are more such disruptive technologies on the way but governments are far too stupid to see the writing on the wall.
Examples?
Related: the current rise of Bitcoin prices has been peculiar to me, and seems to be a bit of a canary in an inflationary coal mine. We've injected trillions of dollars of fiat into the economy this year. It feels like the sky-high valuations of technology companies and Bitcoin are "shock absorbers" of sorts, or early signals of inflation-yet-to-come. If we assume the market is efficiently pricing these assets (like…
BTC prices have approximately zero relation to inflation in the real economy (for whatever definition of that you want to use). Rising BTC prices are driven by pyramid scams, fraud, and speculation. There is no useful signal here related to anything else.
Over the long term (several decades) you can expect it to perform like gold once it has turned into a mature market.
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The only reason BTC works in this scenario is that the authorities are not chasing it down. If they decide to, it will be just as unviable as the other options and authorities have many methods at their disposal to make bitcoin transfers difficult. BTC is cool, but no amount of tech can solve what is essentially a policy issue: overseas remittances.
Why is it obvious that no amount of tech can solve it? Tech can also influence policy. If something is nearly impossible to stop, it likely won't be stopped. The policy will be changed instead.
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> I use Bitcoin where ever possible, so your opening claim is wrong. Just because a random guy barters bitcoins for goods/services, that by no means implies that bitcoin is anything close to money. There is a very specific definition of what money is, and bitcoin's volatility alone rules it completely out.
Well bitcoin is as much money as FIAT money, except if you consider money credit. Than indeed, bitcoin would not be money.
No, it's not. It’s too volatile to be an efficient store of value or a useful unit of account for general purposes; it's got some use as a competitive medium of exchange for certain circumstances (but again not really with the generality of any major fiat currency.)
It's commodity that seems to (retrospectively, at least, and there is some reason to expect this to continue for the near future) have good investment performance if you are in a position to wait out down periods, which makes it nice as a component of an investment portfolio.
It's good at things that aren't the purpose of money, but mostly not good for things that are the purposes of money, except for a narrow subset of one of three major purposes of money.
I agree with most of the points raised by the author but as a Venezuelan Bitcoin is a godsend. If you live abroad and want to send remittances to your friends and family it can be pretty easy in a normal country , with wire transfers,western union and so on. If your family lives in Venezuela your options are extremely more limited. These are some of the options Venezuelans have had to use: 1. Ask the money to be sent…
Why are they using bitcoin rather than dollar stablecoins? Too new?
I agree with most of the points raised by the author but as a Venezuelan Bitcoin is a godsend. If you live abroad and want to send remittances to your friends and family it can be pretty easy in a normal country , with wire transfers,western union and so on. If your family lives in Venezuela your options are extremely more limited. These are some of the options Venezuelans have had to use: 1. Ask the money to be sent…
And yet, it still has practically useful properties.
The coins that win as a currency will have to loosen their grasp on the rentier-merchant aspects, become more energy efficient, more usable, more integrated into society(within and without its institutions).