61–70 of 113 posts
Not sure if Bitcoins are a good investment. All it takes is a western country (say Switzerland) to create an online currency and Bitcoins will sink faster than a Carnival ship.
Do you even Bitcoin? One of the main features of Bitcoin is that it can't be manipulated by a central authority like a bank or government (ie: they can't steal from the people by printing money).
It's fun how hard it is for a layperson to buy a Bitcoin in USA. CCs do not work, you need bank transfer, your funds can be frozen, you have to wait in line, etc, etc. I live in Russia and it's amazingly easy. First, everyone here owns a virtual money account. It works like this: you put some money into it and then you can pay your bills (especially internet and mobile phone), small purchases over internet and you ca…
>It's fun how hard it is for a layperson to buy a Bitcoin in USA. CCs do not work Because it's too easy to claim fraud and have your CC provider initialise a charge-back. I don't know why you can't go to an ATM or a 7-Eleven and use your CC with your PIN to make a purchase. The CC company will know it's probably you because you entered your PIN and the merchant doesn't risk a charge-back.
Bitcoins are just a right to participate in a digital crypto economy. They don't have any value in themselves. Its like holding passes to a show in the big theater. If the show doesn't start you passes are worthless. If there is any meaningful possibility of a show in the theater, you might get lucky for holding those passes. The main problem is that people who will participate in the show also need to get the passes…
Serious question, why does the price of a single bitcoin matter when they're divisible to 8 decimal places? Beyond a psychological barrier people have thinking about the 1:100 thing, it's really irrelevant if your cup of coffee costs 10 bitcoins or 0.00001 bitcoins, especially if the calculation is made at the time of purchase relative to an underlying stable value like a basket of the largest fiat currencies in circ…
If BTC was ever worth a million USD, they would probably be talking in Satoshis.
It isn't any more complicated than thinking of the difference between $1 and 0.01 cent.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Do you even Bitcoin? No but I lift, .... mostly functions, sometimes they have multiple variables ;-) > One of the main features of Bitcoin is that it can't be manipulated by a central authority Q: What can a central authority with power to imprison and/or garnish your wage manipulate? A: anything it damn wants. Yes the Fed Gov. can't print more bitcoin it sure can come after you with a rubber hose expecting to get…
By themselves, laws don't prevent actions (see copyright infringement), you need enforcement, and if a very large fraction of the population starts using Bitcoins, it can be very hard to stop, at least without taking some very drastic measures. My guess is that the US government would just get enough computing power to control the network and prevent it from working well.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If by that you mean a democratic government (violent extortionate power) empowered to stabilise the currency via a variety of means, including supply inflation (engaged in parasitism of the monetary base)... It's funny how many different ways there are to paint over the underlying unpleasant reality of the situation with pretty words designed to lend a veneer of legitimacy to the enterprise. It's almost like there'…
No, what's funny is how differently people see the world. You see a violent extortionate power, I see a cooperative, democratic government. You see parasitism of the monetary base, I see an important stabilising role in the common currency that keeps the economy ticking. These are not words I use to gloss over "the underlying unpleasant reality", there is no "uncomfortable underlying truth that many people would pref…
But I suppose I am not one for the acceptance that things are only what we label them with. If no differences can be iterated between one thing with a pretty label, say a democratic government for argument's sake, and another thing with an ugly label, say an organised crime ring with a byzantine structure designed to convey the perception of community support but which retains the core underlying features of being impossible not to participate in under threat of violence, parasitic and corrupt even by it's own rules; it just never occurred to me someone might truly be naive enough to honestly accept that the labels alone change the nature of the underlying labelled things.
It's a fine trick if you can find enough suckers to pull it off I suppose.
Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme in that everyone is counting on someone else to want them. However this is no different from any currency or monetary commodity with no use value. With bitcoin, the "bag holders" at the end of the scheme have something for their trouble: a global, secure, low fee transaction settlement system. Given that such a network would be quite valuable, there's no reason for it to crash to 0, barrin…
"Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme in that everyone is counting on someone else to want them" Exactly like gold. Yet you don't see people claiming gold is a "pyramid scheme", now do you? Most of gold's value is dictated purely by speculation and jewelry use (people want it because it is... rare - there is no other underlying reason). (People say that gold has value because it has industrial uses, but these uses only justif…
The problem with Bitcoins is that market has already proven it is capable of spiking to zero. Gold could drop, but it is very unlikely to drop too far below its historical levels (since there is demand for it by itself) in contrast, Bitcoins don't have any straight demand.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>It's fun how hard it is for a layperson to buy a Bitcoin in USA. CCs do not work Because it's too easy to claim fraud and have your CC provider initialise a charge-back. I don't know why you can't go to an ATM or a 7-Eleven and use your CC with your PIN to make a purchase. The CC company will know it's probably you because you entered your PIN and the merchant doesn't risk a charge-back.
In the UK this is called Chip and PIN. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_and_PIN
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm217/papers/oakland10chipbroken.p...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, what's funny is how differently people see the world. You see a violent extortionate power, I see a cooperative, democratic government. You see parasitism of the monetary base, I see an important stabilising role in the common currency that keeps the economy ticking. These are not words I use to gloss over "the underlying unpleasant reality", there is no "uncomfortable underlying truth that many people would pref…
No, as a matter of fact it simply never occurred to me that you might simply disagree thereby changing the underlying nature of reality in so doing. But I suppose I am not one for the acceptance that things are only what we label them with. If no differences can be iterated between one thing with a pretty label, say a democratic government for argument's sake, and another thing with an ugly label, say an organised cr…
I don't think that most western nations do have a government that could be described as an organised crime ring. I don't think you can cite this as an empirical fact. In fact I think that all of the words you used there are overly-emotional negative labels you use to reinforce your own belief that democratic government is necessarily evil, a view I don't subscribe to.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>It's fun how hard it is for a layperson to buy a Bitcoin in USA. CCs do not work Because it's too easy to claim fraud and have your CC provider initialise a charge-back. I don't know why you can't go to an ATM or a 7-Eleven and use your CC with your PIN to make a purchase. The CC company will know it's probably you because you entered your PIN and the merchant doesn't risk a charge-back.
In the UK this is called Chip and PIN. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_and_PIN
I keep wondering whether I should be buying bitcoins now, but I have mixed feelings about it. I'm pretty sure its value will continue going up for a while, but I guess I'm still skeptical.
it's basically a bet,but you have more chance to win than in a casino, or at the lottery.