781–790 of 1001 posts
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority But I must admit that using your actual dad as the source of authority is quite a stretch.
He's not arguing the position as correct because his dad told it to him. He's not arguing the belief at all, he's just stating it. So no, it's not an argument from authority.
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Because you say so?
My argument is just as substantive as the pro-bitcoin ones and spending any meaningful amount of effort arguing with these people is just like fighting windmills. But no, not because I say so but because it's obvious if you have at least a cursory understanding of the international monetary system works.
> But no, not because I say so but because it's obvious
Okay, so not because you say so but because you think so :)
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The possibility of change exists, but one of the hardest promises Bitcoin makes is that you can't change the rules mid-game like what happened with stocks. That is one of the most attractive things about this asset class - if the US regulators want to change how a crypto is traded ... tough biscuits. They have to convince the market participants, globally, to trade the new way. The bar might be orders of magnitude hi…
Aren't the vast majority of market participants already operating outside the blockchain, relying on exchanges and sometimes on so-called "L2" networks like Lightning? I think the majority of Bitcoin and Ethereum proponents are already talking about them as "digital gold" instead of digital currency. The mining pools have also blocked any attempt to make the Bitcoin blockchain more efficient at transactions (by keepi…
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this assumes USD hegemony is a distant memory. does bitcoin have the largest weapons cache and standing military in the history of humanity? best of luck to your imagined future; but it reads very naive to me.
The US really dropped the hammer on Russia last year and yet Russian troops kept advancing. There isn't much proof-in-the-pudding right now that they can stop a top-10 global economy. This isn't the 90s and it isn't clear how much the US can throw their weight around.
We're all lucky that the US hasn't dropped the hammer on Russia. A hot war between two major nuclear powers wouldn't / won't end well for anyone.
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As opposed to the US dollar, or euro, or ruble or ...? I will never understand how people fault crypto for not somehow magically solving the world's financial ills, as if humanity has ever had another (successful) plan for wealth distribution. How's that communism working out? Crypto is meant to solve the trustless distributed ledger problem, nothing more, nothing less. Expecting human nature to somehow change becaus…
Exactly the point, it’s not bringing any value to the society beyond what any currency is already providing.
I'm not a bitcoin proponent by the way, and am well aware that it has massive downsides like the proof of work energy usage (addressed by proof of stake but often ignored because of bitcoin always taking the spotlight). I'm just sick of people naysaying without understanding the fundamental problem it actually does solve, and pretending there's no value or potential in the technology at all.
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> just leave and live somewhere else, taking their wealth with Wealth can't really use to purchase anything with is not real wealth. If you can't convert bitcoin to $/€ it becomes effectively worthless > History shows that societies with the hardest money win. Objectively not true. Look at what happened with Britain after 1918 when tried doing everything they could to stick with "hard" money and avoid devaluation/dro…
They didn't try to stick with the Gold standard. They secretly left it altogether, while robbing its value to anyome buying bonds. Post WWI, they tried to stop gold from leaving Britain, which had the effect of hastening it leaving :-) You could say that they would have lost WWI without leaving the gold standard (other world governments followed suit by leaving the gold standard after Britain did) but imho the war wo…
I mainly meant their attempts to get back on the gold standard in the 1920s. Unlike e.g. France and the other European countries which didn't really have a choice and had to devalute. It put Britain industry and economy at a disadvantage during the 20s (on the brightside Britain didn't suffer from the Great Depression as much..).
e.g. between 1910 and 1930 inflation in Britain only averaged 3.0%.
And between 1920 and 1930 it was negative (with 3.7% deflation, which is huge..) while the Franc lost ~50% of its value during those years.
As a consequence in Britain unemployment stayed high and there was hardly any growth in the 1920s. While France recovered much faster despite suffering much more during WW1: https://cdn.theatlantic.com/media/mt/business/112712krugman2...
My prediction is that Bitcoin will become fully institutionalized within twenty years, to the point that the “Bitcoin” held by investors are entirely disconnected from the theoretical blockchain. A similar thing happened with stocks. Not so long ago they used to be physical pieces of paper. You could trade shares peer-to-peer and even anonymously by handing over the share certificate to someone in person. For dividen…
The difference is that they can never stop you custodying the bitcoin yourself. Bitcoin won't become "quaint" - it will always sit there as the hardest money mankind has ever seen (and likely ever will). If they try and create tokens that don't represent bitcoin i.e. creating them out of thin air, then they will go down in value relative to bitcoin, just as we are seeing with fiat currencies and people will move thei…
Sure, that doesn’t make it impossible to self-custody, but it would surely have some impact on most people‘s willingness to do so.
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I have all my savings stored in bitcoin. I do it because I've spent 100s of hours learning what money really is and can see that bitcoin is the best form of it, certainly the best long term store of value. I also know that the best long term store of value will ultimately be where the world's stored value is moved to.
I like your courage, but you really should diversify. Life is long and none of us have a crystal ball. If you don't trust USD, get some other currencies, including crypto. Get some property. Gold. Bonds. Stocks. Savings. Shit happens and you need to defend your portfolio as well as maximise profits.
It doesn't take resolve, only 100s of hours of learning and contemplation.
I'll die on this hill, and there's many more like me.
My prediction is that Bitcoin will become fully institutionalized within twenty years, to the point that the “Bitcoin” held by investors are entirely disconnected from the theoretical blockchain. A similar thing happened with stocks. Not so long ago they used to be physical pieces of paper. You could trade shares peer-to-peer and even anonymously by handing over the share certificate to someone in person. For dividen…
The tech will keep improving, there will be better and simpler user front-ends. Adoption will increase. People will be more aware of their various options.
Not your keys, not your coins. Stock performance is measured with earnings. Bitcoin performance is measured on metrics that happen on the blockchain and in the real world people holding and transferring actual Bitcoin.
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Doesn't the ETF completely bypass such rules? Now you aren't trading actual Bitcoin -- you're trading entitlements at the DTC, managed on their own settlement system and centralized databases. All you need to do is look into RegSHO to see all the ways that system can be gamed.
It doesn't bypass the rule. It just creates an alternative american market for it. You can still buy bitcoin following the rules of bitcoin if you chose so.
People can play around with derivatives all they want, there's nothing wrong with that. But to even call these a bitcoin ETF is disingenuous at best. All this is is a new fiat money with a "bitcoin" sticker slapped in the box.
