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I Spent A Coin (And I Liked It) — How I Bought Lunch in Manhattan with Bitcoins

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Re: I Spent A Coin (And I Liked It) — How I Bought Lunch in Manhattan with Bitcoins

#71

Post by baddox »

ars wrote: post #28
retube wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't have that - the owner first looked up the exchange rate to US dollars What? Any London store that accepts euros will check the rates daily to make sure they can convert back into the GBP price. Currency rates fluctuate all the time, every second of every day. http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=GBPEUR=X&t=1y&c=

Then they aren't accepting euros as currency. At the end of the day they will immediately convert the euros to GBP. They are willing to use euros as a medium of exchange, but only because they know they can exchange them for (to them) real currency. (Currency is relative, obviously. And just as obviously it helps that somewhere in the world there are people who use that type of money, which gives you comfort that eve…

> * They are willing to use euros as a medium of exchange, but only because they know they can exchange them for (to them) real currency.*

Any person or business is only willing to use a currency as a medium of exchange because they know they can exchange them for other goods. "Currency" and "medium of exchange" aren't mutually exclusive, the former is a special form of the latter that is recognized widely (and in modern times, usually has no intrinsic value).

> * To be money you have to be willing to save it. If all you do is use it as an intermediate it's not money - yet.*

That's an insane definition for "money." You would claim that the fast food wages of a teenager who always spends it immediately is not money.

Re: I Spent A Coin (And I Liked It) — How I Bought Lunch in Manhattan with Bitcoins

#72

Post by flatulent1 »

niklas_a wrote: post #52
ignifero wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it different from ordinary coins? (Obviously, in a hypothetical gold-coin economy credit cards would be in gold, too). Btw, practicality was not the reason the world abandoned the gold standard, political and economical needs obviated it. P.s. obviously, paperclips are not a good figurative example. The central banks might just give you a list of banknote numbers to exchange (and an API to verify their uniquen…

Giving someone coins is similar to Bitcoin. Still, Bitcoin is more practical than carrying around a bag of coins. You can send them instantly across the globe without fees and keep as many as you want in your pockets to name a few.

"Giving someone coins is similar to Bitcoin." It is quite a stretch to compare bitcoin to gold or other useful metals. Gold has significant inherent value, bitcoin is inherently worthless. The value of gold can't fall to very low levels since it is scarce and is valuable for industrial uses (excellent conductor that doesn't corrode, etc.). It is unlikely that there could be much of a change in the scarcity of gold. (This hasn't taken into account the demand for gold for jewelry)

Since Bitcoin has no inherent value, those initially creating and trading it for something of value would seem to have gotten something for nothing, or nearly so.

I was thinking about issuing pellets as a currency. It takes work units (gathering/mining and processing food) to create them. Much of the work is carried out by an organic machine called a rabbit. The currency has more inherent value than bitcoin since it has inherent value as a fertilizer. The maximum amount of currency is finite since it biodegrades and the Earth can only support a finite number of rabbits. As with all physical currency, it is wise to wash your hands after handling it.

Various units are possible for convenience. The smallest are individual pellets. They can be compressed rolled and cut into "sheet" currency, and made into bricks. For still higher value currency the rabbit may be replaced with a bull. Some bull-sheet currency should be available soon.

Re: I Spent A Coin (And I Liked It) — How I Bought Lunch in Manhattan with Bitcoins

#73

Post by maeon3 »

Bitcoins is going to be killed one way or another, the Federal Reserve is looting our USD, and will not allow any technology to hinder that ability to dilute the USD.

The question is not IF bitcoin will fail, but how this takedown will be accomplished.

Anyone who sets up a "Bitcoin bank" is entering the dragons lair. You may disappear in the night, as people who oppose the IRS in legal battles, you get your assets seized and you disappear without a blip on the media narrative.

Re: I Spent A Coin (And I Liked It) — How I Bought Lunch in Manhattan with Bitcoins

#74

Post by sorbus »

maeon3 wrote: post #73

Bitcoins is going to be killed one way or another, the Federal Reserve is looting our USD, and will not allow any technology to hinder that ability to dilute the USD. The question is not IF bitcoin will fail, but how this takedown will be accomplished. Anyone who sets up a "Bitcoin bank" is entering the dragons lair. You may disappear in the night, as people who oppose the IRS in legal battles, you get your assets se…

Do you have any examples of the IRS disappearing people?

Re: I Spent A Coin (And I Liked It) — How I Bought Lunch in Manhattan with Bitcoins

#75

Post by jamesgagan »

maeon3 wrote: post #73

Bitcoins is going to be killed one way or another, the Federal Reserve is looting our USD, and will not allow any technology to hinder that ability to dilute the USD. The question is not IF bitcoin will fail, but how this takedown will be accomplished. Anyone who sets up a "Bitcoin bank" is entering the dragons lair. You may disappear in the night, as people who oppose the IRS in legal battles, you get your assets se…

I think your claim that people who oppose the IRS "may disappear in the night" could use some evidence to back it up.

Re: I Spent A Coin (And I Liked It) — How I Bought Lunch in Manhattan with Bitcoins

#76

Post by sorbus »

gwern wrote: post #68
ralfd wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine all the money exchange and circulation of the world economy. 7 billion people. If hypothetically Bitcoin would be the "world currency" how much data (which is never deleted) would that generate per day? What data will amassed in 10 years? I wonder how that will hard limit the system...? I have no clue about Bitcoin but a quick google search seems to imply that the global history of all transactions is locally…

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability

So Bitcoin's scalability relies on a mixture of writing new software when it's needed ("The core BitCoin network can scale to very high transaction rates assuming a distributed version of the node software is built. This would not be very complicated.") and in future switching to a two-tiered structure with "supernodes" transmitting data between themselves at a rate of >1GB/s. While I suppose that it's good that someone is thinking about this, it does not inspire confidence in bitcoin's ability to scale - the fact that it's theoretically possibly to write software allowing it to scale is very different from someone going off, writing this software, and demonstrating that it does scale.

Re: I Spent A Coin (And I Liked It) — How I Bought Lunch in Manhattan with Bitcoins

#77

Post by maeon3 »

sorbus wrote: post #74
maeon3 wrote: post #73

Bitcoins is going to be killed one way or another, the Federal Reserve is looting our USD, and will not allow any technology to hinder that ability to dilute the USD. The question is not IF bitcoin will fail, but how this takedown will be accomplished. Anyone who sets up a "Bitcoin bank" is entering the dragons lair. You may disappear in the night, as people who oppose the IRS in legal battles, you get your assets se…

Do you have any examples of the IRS disappearing people?

All right you caught me with some rhetoric. What I mean to say is: "if bitcoin takes off so it takes a measurable dent out of the income of the IRS, then laws will be passed in congress shutting down anything and everything causing that dent" obviously for the good of the people" of course.

No people will be disappearing, only the threat to the Federal Reserve's ability to inflate the currency. Bitcoin represents a solution to the problem of governments stealing wealth from the workers right out from under their noses without taxation or representation.

Re: I Spent A Coin (And I Liked It) — How I Bought Lunch in Manhattan with Bitcoins

#78

Post by mmatants »

baddox wrote: post #70
shazow wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you distinguish between currency and a medium of exchange? From the sound of it, you defined currency as "a stable medium of exchange" which by definition prevents any unstable currency from being a currency. Is there a definitive reason why a less stable medium of exchange cannot be a substitute for a stable one? Especially with today's technology when increasingly many things are being done in "real time". I…

ars obviously wasn't thinking critically in that comment. You're absolutely right: his proposed definition of "currency" isn't useful at all, because it would preclude talking about "the stability of a currency." A currency is simply a medium of exchange that is widely recognized, where "widely" is subjective. Most modern currency also is notable because it has no intrinsic value (gold coins, for example, have intrin…

Gold coins have no intrinsic value, either. Gold is just another divisible and non-perishable carrier of human-assigned value.

Re: I Spent A Coin (And I Liked It) — How I Bought Lunch in Manhattan with Bitcoins

#79

Post by mmatants »

flatulent1 wrote: post #72
niklas_a wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Giving someone coins is similar to Bitcoin. Still, Bitcoin is more practical than carrying around a bag of coins. You can send them instantly across the globe without fees and keep as many as you want in your pockets to name a few.

"Giving someone coins is similar to Bitcoin." It is quite a stretch to compare bitcoin to gold or other useful metals. Gold has significant inherent value, bitcoin is inherently worthless. The value of gold can't fall to very low levels since it is scarce and is valuable for industrial uses (excellent conductor that doesn't corrode, etc.). It is unlikely that there could be much of a change in the scarcity of gold. (…

Gold's inherent value (industrial uses) is nowhere near the price it trades at. You could say that gold can't fall to zero because of that, but if it still devalues even 10 times, you can bet that people will panic.

Bottom-line - nothing is absolutely safe as a savings medium, and gold is not as axiomatically special as many people hold it to be.

Re: I Spent A Coin (And I Liked It) — How I Bought Lunch in Manhattan with Bitcoins

#80

Post by pessimizer »

csomar wrote: post #46

I really wander what if a country legalizes bitcoins. A small/poor country with less than 1 million inhabitants. Bitcoin supporters will found a great base where to make transactions legally and build bitcoin related start-ups without fear. All transactions take place in that country banks and then forward to the bank of choice of the company/person/start-up. Think of that country as a legal bridge to using/trading b…

Here's another whimsy: instead of (necessarily) a poor country, how about any country that relies exclusively on land/property taxes, VATs, and tariffs? Are there any?

As far as I can tell, those taxes can't be dodged by a virtual currency since they are levied on physical items.

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