bitcoin is the worst form of currency except for all the others.
The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban
491–500 of 630 posts
Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban
#492This is typical anti-bitcoin rhetoric, it’s nothing new and not completely unfounded, but the author lacks any awareness of the true value of crypto currencies, makes no mention of proof of stake, and assumes that speculation somehow justifies outlawing trading because it’s now gambling.
A few points: There are some interesting and somewhat out there justifications for the energy use, and there are a couple very simple ones: 1. Bitcoin emits less carbon than gold mining, and does the job of gold (as a store of value) to a much higher standard. 2. Proof of Stake could replace proof of work, eliminating any carbon emissions worth mentioning.
Bitcoin offers sound, secure, reliable money / store of value. The author elects not to even directly mention this because there is no good argument or replacement for this. If you say gold, read above.
The author believes he can just straw man serious bitcoiners (not the gamblers) into idealistic yet flawed cultists or something, when in reality the technology has no replacement, is greener than its competitor, and offers to the world, the service, and asset, of sound money.
The article appears in such bad faith (I’m willing to hear criticisms of crypto currencies, but only from those who demonstrate their ability to play with its basic mission statement and functionality; this article is pop-sci parroting) that I almost believe this is some kind of paid hit piece.
Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban
#493Earlier quoted context omitted.
I never understand the counter-inflation argument...most economists understand inflation is something to be managed, but it is far from proven that target inflation is bad. There are many useful economic properties of inflation. Meanwhile, Bitcoin has undergone such massive speculative appreciation that everything around it has deflated in comparison. As a result, bitcoin is spectacularly less useful than it would ha…
Things brings up a side point I can't quite understand. How does the price of BTC, which is almost infinitely divisible, affect usage? I see comments like "We're early, price can still rise, etc". Outside of a store of value any usage / institutional use for transactions wouldn't matter right? The BTC is a proxy for the money / collateral on the sides. If I buy a hamburger with BTC: If it is settled in BTC then the b…
If the price of BTC keeps increasing then you would be foolish to spend it, lest you lose out on gains from holding onto it. There are lots of people who "punch themselves" for not buying Bitcoin back in 2013 or something but they forget that they wouldn't have the hindsight necessary to follow this strategy. For all we know you could have spent 10 Bitcoin on a pizza. But once you understand the deflationary nature, it becomes obvious that you shouldn't buy pizza, just hold onto it and do absolutely nothing.
Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban
#494I'm really getting sick of this argument that bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency is using some ridiculous/insane amount of electricity while completely ignoring the costs of running the entire existing financial system. There are companies literally tunnelling through mountains to lay fiber so that they can make thousandths of a cent on stock trades and that's not worse? Come on.
This is a straw man argument. Yes our financial systems use power but they provide the corner stone of our societies. They do provide actual tangible value.
Bitcoin doesn’t create value at al in any sense.
And HF trading is a different beast, you won’t hear me defending them. But pointing at others is just whataboutism, to distract from unpleasant facts.
Boiling the oceans to make a few people rich(er) is not a valid reason to exist.
Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban
#495Earlier quoted context omitted.
In conclusion, none of the points addressed in this article hold strong ground.
Until the environmental problem is clearly solved, it still holds strong.
What environmental problem? You mean creating additional incentives for new green energy investment? (Which is now the cheapest form of new energy...) “Environmentalists” need to be less myopic, you are holding us back.
Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban
#496What a idiotic essay, the same arguments could be made for the ban of most precious metal mining since majority of it goes to storage deposits. Cryptocurrencies actually bring several benefits and better solutions for the problem of trust in a store-of-value or exchange contract. The world needs Bitcoin now more than ever, we are already living in a multilateral world where US and China exert pressure to force intern…
Governments print money to keep society from collapsing. What you rail against is a feature not a bug. So many cryptocoin advocates don’t seem to understand how societies work. The world can do without BTC just fine. Now more than ever. It doesn’t actually solve a problem we face. Only those who have Bitcoin seem so adamant about it. No coincidence right? Because we know it needs more ‘suckers’ to buy into the ponzi…
Ah yes. Because wealth transfers to the rich via money printing and bailouts isn’t something people should try and avoid.
Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban
#497This article seems to intentionally ignore the core reason for cryptocurrencies; escaping inflation and control. The article then proposes to use the law to bring those people back within the control of fiat and government oversight. I no longer think the environmental argument is really plausible here. Clearly crypto mining is emitting using a lot of power and some of that is CO2. But the competition is fiat; backed…
I'm not the biggest proponent of bitcoin, some of that is angst from not hodling any, but a lot is I feel it was more of a "concept" or "mvp". Ethereum/Cardano and other newer chains/tech are the actual "reason" for crypto. DeFi, and De-centralized autonomous organizations are the real world-changing things, eventually we could see a coin with automated taxation/basic income and identities (sybil-proof), it could ess…
> Ethereum/Cardano and other newer chains/tech are the actual "reason" for crypto
Not according to the Bitcoin genesis block, without which Ethereum never would’ve existed.
Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban
#498Earlier quoted context omitted.
I never understand the counter-inflation argument...most economists understand inflation is something to be managed, but it is far from proven that target inflation is bad. There are many useful economic properties of inflation. Meanwhile, Bitcoin has undergone such massive speculative appreciation that everything around it has deflated in comparison. As a result, bitcoin is spectacularly less useful than it would ha…
It has never been proven that deflation is bad - Keynesians claim this is the worst thing in the world, but I still have never had it explained to me coherently way deflation is inherently a bad thing.
It's quite simple. Future prices go down which means future business incomes go down which means future wages go down. People who inherited money 100 years ago can just sit on it and do nothing with it and still earn more than you will from hard work. The inverse situation is that you invest your money to beat inflation and that investment creates jobs which then fuel consumption.
When you consider that we cannot just produce everything we need for the next 200 years in 1800 it becomes pretty obvious that we must keep working from 1801 to 2020 to get to 2021. We can't just sit and do nothing. After all, what are you going to buy with your paper wealth, if nobody is working on the farms and the population has shrunk?
Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban
#499Poor guy, he's scared of "cryptoasset" holders not voting for democrats :(
After this blanket ban, let's just move to a one-party democratic system too, like North Korea.
Re: The political case for a blanket cryptocurrency ban
#500>> "Bitcoin is the textbook speculative mania for our time" This misses the point of bitcoin entirely. People need to understand Bitcoin solves a problem: a very big problem. This problem was caused by the gov and fed defaulting on it's obligation to maintain a stable currency. As a result, cash can no longer be used as a store of value. And by artificially suppressing interest rates, the fed/gov has eliminated yet a…
Sure, people are using Bitcoin as a store of value, but I think a lot of those people think it will just keep going up. Which is not a super rational thing to believe about an asset whose value has no relation to anything in the real world, and nothing to prop it up but the people who believe the same thing. Bitcoin is up something like 800% for the year. It might be up another 800% in six months! Or it might go down…
It’s easy to take this stance and call others crazy, but what would it take for you to believe your current opinion is wrong about Bitcoin, apart from it changing to something which is in spirit and function not equivalent? If the answer is: “nothing would change my mind”, then perhaps you are the crazy one; after all, carbon copies of you have been around for every cycle of bitcoin growth.
Do speculative bubbles have cycles, has any speculative bubble grown as much, crashed as hard, then grown even larger than bitcoin has multiple times? Bubbles only pop once, and bitcoin has fell as hard as any other bubble I know you are tempted to compare it to, only to retake the ground later.
Speculative, obviously, bubble? You might be crazy for thinking so.