Does this mean that also owning gold is a ponzi? I don't see how Bitcoin differs from gold in this regard.
Bitcoin is a Ponzi
621–630 of 684 posts
Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi
#622Earlier quoted context omitted.
>the majority of demand for gold comes from non-investors (which appears to be the case in I think most quarters but perhaps not most recently) There's actually been far more industrial usage proportionally recently than any prior year. Prior to 2020, the highest industrial usage year was 2016, at ~7%. The article is wrong; the VAST majority of the demand for gold does indeed come from investors. This is ignoring gol…
Gold's coveted status is fairly easy to identify. It's one of the few physical elements that is (a) somewhat rare and difficult to mine (b) has an exceptionally long shelf life, even under harsh conditions e.g. under ocean water and (c) can be authenticated with simple tests e.g. nitric acid.
(A) applies to a number of metals, including ruthenium, iridium, rhodium, and osmium, all of which are less abundant than gold. Although industrial demand has caused the price of those to rise in recent years, the difficulty of extracting them gave them essentially no value historically. Production difficulty may cause the production cost of a given asset to rise, but in a market that must also be met with equivalent demand lest the effort be in vain. For example, I could go outside, pick up a large rock, and spend the next several days crushing it into a fine powder. This would be a fairly difficult process, and yet the end product would be worthless. Rarity does not automatically equate to value.
(B) is perhaps gold's most unique physical property, but given the historical prominence of silver (a metal that corrodes rather easily), I seriously doubt that this alone justifies a single ounce of gold historically having been worth an average person's months of wages.
(C) is true of many metals, and has only come into existence as a method for verifying gold in more recent years, which again belies its historical value.
Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi
#623Earlier quoted context omitted.
Okay, so what you're saying is that the crypto community is what pushed crypto in that direction.
This does not follow from what I said at all.
Are you claiming that crypto-finnews was not dominated by the crypto community prior to, say, 2018? The same community that complained at every turn that real media/finance is not taking crypto seriously?
Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi
#624Earlier quoted context omitted.
What other ways could you benefit? Imagine that you had no expectation of selling your share for a higher price in the future, then what other way is there to benefit? You have a shareholder vote, okay but the percentage of shareholders who actually vote is roughly 9%. The only people doing the voting are large institutions, not individuals: https://www.broadridge.com/proxypulse/reports/2013/second-ed...
I could collect dividends for a time and then sell the share for what I paid.
Dividends have no net effect on how much you earn from a share. If a stock is currently priced at X and then pays out a dividend of Y, the price of the stock decreases by Y so that there is no overall effect on the value.
The reason for this can be understood in many different ways, but one way I like to look at it is if paying a dividend had no effect on the price of a stock, then one could in principle buy a share of the stock at a price of X just before the dividend is paid and then sell the stock at a price of X just after the dividend is paid just as you describe, effectively pocketing the dividend and earning an almost risk free return.
Of course in practice we know that on average the price of a stock drops by the exact amount of the dividend paid, and hence collecting a dividend has no overall effect on the value of a stock.
Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi
#625Earlier quoted context omitted.
No it's not real, the cost to do a simple transfer up until yesterday has been in the ballpark of 0.1-0.15. This very moment it's around $1. You can see the current estimated cost here: https://mempool.space In addition to that, there's always the Lightning Network as well wherein you can transact for fractions of pennies.
The lightning network only allows you to transact if you fund a channel first, which requires an on-chain Bitcoin transaction to create and eventually one to close, thus incurring transaction costs twice. You should fund a LN channel for more than one transaction because you cannot change the channel funds after creation, so you better make sure enough is in it. This makes it unsuitable for things that require more t…
What? You can download a lightning wallet right now and I can send you sats without you having to fund anything or even provide any personal information.
Yes, that makes it a closed system, but it was never realistic to have every single person on earth access bitcoin via on-chain transactions.
Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi
#626Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean my bank (Monzo) charges $0.40 for a small international transfer, and $3.20 for one that is $1000, so depending on the transaction size in most scenarios for me personally bitcoins fees would be WAY higher and will presumably only grow more if Bitcoin gains further adoption. The problem is that the Bitcoin fee is also payable on all domestic transfers too, which of course are free in traditional banking.
If your account is frozen for whatever political reason your bank can't help you. Bitcoin fees can be 15 cents. I think it is a dollar now. Plus the 10,000 or 100,000 limit you would have could prevent you.
Yeah but the question was about transaction fees so why are we now talking about freezing accounts?
Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi
#627Earlier quoted context omitted.
gold has no value to typical people. i can’t walk into a store and buy with gold. i can’t use gold for any purpose in day to day life. it’s an asset
> gold has no value to typical people. The whole point of an economy is that something has value if it's valuable to someone , not just the person who's holding it. I'm not going to use a chunk of gold for anything, but it has intrinsic uses that aren't tied to being an exchange of value. It can be used to make jewelry, electronics, food, and medical devices. In some of those applications, there is no substitute for…
bitcoin has the same utility as paper money. that doesn’t mean it has no value
Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi
#628How do BTC believers explain the very suspicious fact that the creator of bitcoin hid away?
Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi
#629Earlier quoted context omitted.
El Salvador’s recent decision is a Hail Mary attempt at solving a tiny impoverished country’s crippling financial situation. They make their citizens use a government approved wallet where they process transactions off chain. This is the antithesis of what crypto used to stand for. The worlds largest country just banned Bitcoin too. I don’t think either event is indicative of btc’s intrinsic value.
I meant to say it is not a major economy, so thank you for not being pedantic on that point. But, can you give me a source on how their transactions are being processed off chain. I know that they use a government backed wallet. It was my understanding that any transactions handled in this way eventually have to be settled back into the main chain.
> It was my understanding that any transactions handled in this way eventually have to be settled back into the main chain.
I'm unaware of the exact details, but the govt approved wallet uses a proprietary payment processing system in addition to the LN. Yes eventually in theory those transactions should make it back to the main chain when tokens exit the system (requiring El Salvador's permission).
At any rate, we've gone in a big circle and reinvented settlement banking on top of bitcoin.
Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi
#630Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, people hold cash because they can get things done on short notice. Like if a storm blows over your fence, you can write a check and have it replaced. If you held stocks, bonds, or real estate, you’d have to sell that asset and withdraw cash to get your fence back up which is pretty unacceptable. I hold cash knowing full well that I’m bleeding due to inflation, but the versatility is well worth it. That’s pretty m…
A credit card or some other line of credit is the best form of liquidity, more widely accepted than cash (I can easily use it internationally or online). The reason to hold cash is its low volatility. You can store it in a savings account and even with inflation potentially driving your return negative when risk adjusted it may beat other assets and you don't even have to speculate on forex!
Twice in my life I've had to hire a lawyer. One took wire transfers and the other took checks/money orders.
The vast majority of attorneys require the establishment of a retainer account (and in most jurisdictions it's one of the criteria to tell if the guy is officially 'your lawyer' or not yet)
And yet a lawyer is exactly one of those things where you say "oh shit I need one right now".
There's a reason the saying goes 'cash is king'
Good luck with your credit card