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Bitcoin Is Time

dergigi.com

941–950 of 1001 posts

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#941
post #886

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a fallacy into which they're falling. Not a logical one, just a mental fault in their thinking. You and everyone else around you are always missing out on life-changing money . I missed out on GameStop when it was $4. Roaring Kitty was posting on YouTube then... but I didn't know about him. I didn't hear anything about GameStop until it was already in the hundreds of dollars. I missed out on Tesla. I missed ou…

Yes, this is true of course. FOMO is a fallacy. Nonetheless, I think it does play a role in the nature of bitcoin criticism, which I otherwise find is somewhat odd and repetitive and moralising. You clearly don't have this problem - I think it is most severe in those people that never owned any bitcoin.

>which I otherwise find is somewhat odd and repetitive

The problem is thousands of years old. At some point you have enumerated all possible criticism.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#942
post #613
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have many severely fundamentally misunderstood ideas about Bitcoin. Bitcoin is "money" and not a "currency." Bitcoin works very wonderfully as money. Bitcoin is not very wasteful in energy, contrary to the pushed narrative by those that want everyone to believe this is truth. Bitcoin uses a tiny fraction, currently around 7-9% of the electricity that the global banking system currently uses. Bitcoin uses a very l…

It's sad reading comments like this from bandwagoners who haven't read a single academic or technical whitepaper on the technology, let alone the hundreds of them that have emerged which prove / annotate / express / clarify, in exhausting detail, all of the "fundamental problems" that Bitcoin's PoW protocol have, as well as far superior approaches that are in the process of being implemented. But it's cute. You like…

I've actually read every single paper on Bitcoin, on Proof of Work, and on Proof of Stake I've ever found. I've been involved in Bitcoin since mid 2010. What is sad is that you wrote what you just did as if that dismisses me, or as if you are in any way authoritative on the subject. Your snide passive-aggressive writing is not cute. I am not a Bitcoin cheerleader, and I'd just prefer not talk to anyone about Bitcoin. It's been years since I have done so, I no longer go to conferences or even talk to family members about Bitcoin, and it's much the same way I quit telling people about linux maybe a decade ago. HFSP.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#943

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is far too volatile to be a good store of value. There are much more stable ways to protect savings against inflation.

All that matters for a store of value is the long term moving average

If you want to exchange your store of value for something in the future, it matters very much what its value is at the exact time you want to trade it.

Unless you mean that the volatility doesn't matter if the asset appreciates so much that the volatility becomes irrelevant, but that's not a property of a store of value, that's a property of a speculative gamble.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#944

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, which is why I didn't say anything about horses. Opposition to cars, like opposition to bitcoin, isn't rustic ludditism. There are modern solutions to transportation that are superior to cars, like rail, frequent busses, and bike infrastructure, but lose out in funding and hype because they're not prestigious and utopian like cars are. Likewise, Bitcoin does not solve any problem that any other transaction netwo…

I need to haul an old kitchen oven to my dad's house so he can cook dinner, since his failed. Dad lives deep in the mountains at the end of a dirt road, far from any train station. I've got a 20 foot fishing boat sitting in my backyard. I want to take it out on the lake. I'd like to visit my in-laws who live on a farm in a rural town without bus service, 200 miles away. The temperature is a few degrees above freezing…

The vast majority of trips in a car aren't for transportation of kitchen ovens to houses deep in the mountains at the end of a dirt road guarded by an eldritch Being.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#945
post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t seem like Bitcoin has actually solved any problems for them.

According to localbitcoins, $235 million was traded in 2018 alone in Venezuela, that's a lot for such an small economy. It's solving /some/ problems, for /some/ people, maybe businessmen that create jobs or wealth even.

> It's solving /some/ problems, for /some/ people, maybe businessmen that create jobs or wealth even.

Sure, but by that logic, selling crack cocaine solves some problems for some people, maybe businessmen that create jobs or even wealth.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#946
post #891
post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my country, bitcoin guards against inflation. Local currency in relation to the dollar, in 2020, I lost 50%. Bitcoin in relation to the dollar, in 2020, did 300%. Bitcoin here is a wealth transfer from the older generation to the newer generation. The older generation owns and invests the real estate, and this keeps the prices high and exclusive. The newer generation (techn-savvy) can now use crypto profits to fun…

> I topped bickering about and promoting bitcoin on HN when the price was around 4500$. The very sentiment then: This is a waste, and a hype, and a bubble, and only criminals use it, tulip mania, gambling addicts. All the nay-sayers back then should realize they actually lost people money! Same. I did cost me dearly to listen to the loud voices on HN, people so certain about themselves that they just couldn't envisio…

>Same. I did cost me dearly to listen to the loud voices on HN, people so certain about themselves that they just couldn't envision the possibility they could be wrong.

Are you serious? This isn't a topic that is about being "right or wrong". You can massively criticize Bitcoin and still invest in it, precisely because you understand the risk and are fully aware of its mechanisms and how it relates to other assets. The price doesn't prove anything since its completely arbitrary.

>Fortunately, I did not suffer from this hubris, so when confronted to evidence that I was wrong, I changed my mind.

Sorry, but what hubris? If anything, an increased understanding allows you to be aware of the risks and thus correctly choose your bet size.

>It served me well, but like you I feel so sad these stupid people caused so many hackers to remain poor, and are still hurting the community.

I'm not poor because I worked hard to obtain assets that directly benefit me every month. Meanwhile that expectation doesn't even exist for Bitcoin. It's a pure gamble. The fact that some people got rich is meaningless because that happens with gambling and lotteries as well.

>These negative people are the reason may bright minds will remain chained to a day job at a FANG selling ads and dopamine, instead of really innovating.

Is this supposed to be a joke? FANG employees with 6 digit salaries who are earning more than enough to afford stocks? I said I am not poor but that doesn't change that there is still a huge gap between me and someone who earns $200k per year at that salary the effort and risk needed to increase your wealth is so low that any dead horse can become financially independent.

>Sad, really sad.

The real sadness is that people think that Bitcoin is the solution to economic problems. Instead of building a working economy that helps everyone we get a second generation of people with legacy wealth. A new generation to hate because they got the spoils early. How long until there is a third generation? A fourth? Because you are going to need a lot of these if you want everyone to benefit.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#947

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All that matters for a store of value is the long term moving average

If you want to exchange your store of value for something in the future, it matters very much what its value is at the exact time you want to trade it. Unless you mean that the volatility doesn't matter if the asset appreciates so much that the volatility becomes irrelevant, but that's not a property of a store of value, that's a property of a speculative gamble.

Network effects are well studied. If you cant deduce an action based on that and where btc is, than you can just sit it out. A very high number of the most successful people in the world are not and recognize the directionality. You can call that a gamble if you want.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#948
post #69

This is the article that made things finally click with me. Thinking about the pre-WWI gold standard and the issues that existed there and the improvements that Bitcoin brings around time, consensus, etc. The baseless negative comments with no interaction with the article content confirms for me that Bitcoin is on to something. Sour grapes syndrome is a result of pride, I think.

I recently decided to think deeply about Bitcoin and I think my initial skepticism about Bitcoin was wrong. Most of the criticisms of Bitcoin are centered around the fact that Bitcoin has a very low throughput. However this is not necessarily a problem. And here is one hypothetical example of how we can overcome this issue: When countries owe each other money they used to transfer gold back and forth or trust someone…

But why use bitcoin? It is completely inferior to a lot of the coin technology that came after which can be used as "moneY' and not a store of value. I think that ultimately this will be its downfall and something else will replace it. Unlike gold it doesn't have any inherent value and isn't necessarily forever. It's almost impossible to lose a few tons of gold, whereas bitcoin can be wiped out (on a national "store" level) with one dumb (or insane) wallet holder(government official)

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#949

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing baseless in saying that using 0.1% of the entire world's energy in order to do 3 transactions per second is beyond ludicrous, and an environmental disaster of massive proportions.

Here me out. What if it was the only way to defund the US military? Would you be interested then? Why do we waste so much energy building killing machines? Why is there not a daily hackernews thread complaining about the energy consumption of the US military? Because it’s a necessary to ensure you can buy and sell things when you want to.

Why do we "waste" so much energy building killing machines? How long do you think the USA would last as a nation if all the armies suddenly went to zero and we became complete pacifists? How long before an invasion?

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#950
post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being driven down to zero I think means people would lend at 0% interest - I would think thousands of years of anecdotal evidence would speak to the contrary - how would it ever get to zero? Who would lend like that? What would their motivation be?

"Being driven down to zero I think means people would lend at 0% interest " Banks can't get rid of reserves at the central bank in aggregate. They can only get rid of them to other banks. So there is no need for the central bank to pay them. You can't hold reserves so the bank can charge you for borrowing money. Since there are more reserves than required, and no alternative source of interest, the inter bank rate wo…

You went way over my head I'm afraid. I don't know how banks/reserves/etc work.
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