Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Unknown Target on June 06, 2011, 05:09:22 pm
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http://www.weusecoins.com/
Also:
http://www.weusecoins.com/getting-started.php
www.bitcoin.org
I've heard a lot of criticism about this, and a lot of praise. What are some of your folks thoughts? I downloaded the app and am trying it now. So far I have no money with which to purchase Bitcoins sooo I guess I'm just looking around.
Some positives I've heard:
Predictable money supply.
Wrests control of money from countries and moves it closer to individual people.
Some negatives:
To me, it doesn't seem like it can work by only generating money at a fixed rate.
Some criticism of the encryption; if it's broken then the entire money supply may be at risk.
A blog with more criticism:
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2011/06/the-bitcoin-bubble.html
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isn't this what the .onion community largely uses?
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skeptical. what defines its value? and they said you do work to earn bitcoins, what kind of work are you doing? frankly i would prefer a currency that more central management
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Current real dollar exchange value hike is a bubble resulting in a mass ponzi scheme. Don't invest real money in bitcoins, and only use someone else's electricity if you want to mine them. :) Selling mined bitcoins to suckers is fine though.
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From what I understand:
The "work" you're doing isn't actually work; you're "mining" bitcoins to add currency to the overall pool. Mining is based on a mathematical algorithm that limits the money supply to a predictable rate of increase. The more people mining, the harder the algorithm becomes; using a basic CPU apparently it takes up to 2 years currently to mine one Bitcoin.
Swantz, can you explain how it would become a ponzi scheme? That doesn't seem likely to me; the whole system is based on not having a central authority. Ponzi schemes seem to be the opposite of that.
http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php
Here's some good discussion on Bitcoin as a bubble, including the mention of how Bitcoin could be a ponzi scheme:
http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=12414.0
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Bitcoin isn't going to catch on. If it doesn't go bankrupt the government will go after it like they did with egold.There are a lot of economic and political reasons why the fed wants to keep control of the money supply.
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http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/08/us-financial-bitcoins-idUSTRE7573T320110608
Looks like buttcoins are getting some unwanted attention. I'm also seeing reports the bubble may be bursting today. Glad I didn't invest in these things, now I can sit back and watch the show.
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Not that there's been much discussion on this, but I just had to say the exchange market absolutely plummeted today. At the time of this writing, the exchange for USD is sitting at ~$11.75. Down from ~$25 earlier today. It is still plummeting at around a dollar an hour.
The poor souls who invested in this while it was sitting around $35, I don't know if I should feel sorry for them or laugh at them.
Maybe I'll be able to pick up some cheap AMD cards on eBay from miners trying to recover their losses.
Here's a little chart if anyone is interested in watching it implode:
http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/
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Yeah we were just talking about this on IRC, bitcoin collaaaaapse
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why?
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why?
Big players seeing bubble, followed by initial selling, followed by panic selling.
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Honestly it seems to me like all the talk of a bubble created the bubble - same as always.
Actually I find the Bitcoin experiment to be rather interesting, just in how it did succeed in creating a whole seperate monetary system that wasn't pegged to anything other than an abstract concept of "work done". It had it's own little economic gold rush and then bust, seemingly independent of most outside factors; it wasn't pegged to the USD for instance, because the boom/bust had absolutely no relation to USD values. I believe the boom/bust was purely driven on people getting worried that a bust was coming, talking about it, a few people start to drop out, and a few more, and eventually it tips.
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I'd never heard of it before this thread, to be honest. Too bad that it already seems to be imploding.
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Ahahahahaha
someone tell me if this is real or not, either way it's hilarious (http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/attack-of-bitcoins.php)
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Speculative Attack!
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i've never heard about it before this thread, but who could really think this is a wise idea? fluctuating currency based on absolutely nothing. everyone should have seen this coming from a mile away.
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Oh Bitcoin. Great currency:
1. apparently every client must be aware of ~all transactions, meaning practical trouble once a certain treshold is crossed
2. It's extremely unstable. I mean, very. Might actually be good for some speculaturs, though.
3. It's used by drug dealers and Russian mob for money laundering (or so I've heard) which means it's future is already compromised. It's not wise to invest into something that is both unstable and used in illegal matters and that is not under control of any national authority.
4. The rate of income is predictable, but here's the catch: The supply of bitcoins is limited to 21 million, after that NONE. This is actually important. Once you hit the plateau of bitcoins, the bitcoins might start to gain value. Might, mind you, not certain. So if you have bitcoins then, good for you. You have made an investment. Too bad everyone else realizes this as well, meaning there is no reason to use the currency as long as deflation continues. This is ok for you, but pretty bad for whoever happens to sell a commodity in bitcoins. This could mean that they are pretty soon out of bussiness. And what good is a currency that you cannot spend everywhere?
5. You can accidentally lose all your money if you delete your wallet. Whoops!
6. No receipt -> fun hoaxes ahead :D
7. Creating bitcoins is practically always a net loss (electricity is not free, nor is the hardware)
8. people get brain damage from bitcoins lol
9. Awesome ponzi scheme: the founder and the early investors could just mine ****load of bitcoins and have a huge supply of them, but the latecomers can not :v well not exactly a ponzi scheme but...
10. Value is completely speculative. Transfer of currency is peer-to-peer and unencrypted. Suffers from hyperinflation and hyperdeflation in short term. Fixed supply of 21 million bitcoins.
11. Right now bitcoin mining uses about 59 GWh/year. The consumption increases.
12. Well anyways, most of those problems (except the ridiculous creation process and fixed supply) could probably be fixed it was accepted more widely but come one. Who, except of weird internet superheroes, is going to adopt this kind of currency?
13. This is amazing. It's WoW gold without the videogame attached to it, has no relationship to any tangible assets, there's not even the suggestion that anyone on the outside would want to own 2 of them much less 20 million, and yet humans are trading them back and forth on the assumption of "well, what if they're worth more later" and trying to hedge against the collapse of the currency that, among other things, they use to pay for Internet access so they can generate more of these phantom things.
I couldn't come up with a better way to demonstrate how a bubble arises if I tried.
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Yeah it sounds like pure fun!
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Oh Bitcoin. Great currency:
1. apparently every client must be aware of ~all transactions, meaning practical trouble once a certain treshold is crossed
I don't think that's correct.
3. It's used by drug dealers and Russian mob for money laundering (or so I've heard) which means it's future is already compromised. It's not wise to invest into something that is both unstable and used in illegal matters and that is not under control of any national authority.
...and the USD isn't used by those same people?
8. people get brain damage from bitcoins lol
What?
9. Awesome ponzi scheme: the founder and the early investors could just mine ****load of bitcoins and have a huge supply of them, but the latecomers can not :v well not exactly a ponzi scheme but...
Yea, it's not exactly a ponzi scheme. The system is actually designed for that though; when it first started, it was easy to "mine" bitcoins; as there are more people mining, it gets harder, thus limiting the supply. It's a purely theoretical currency.
10. Value is completely speculative. Transfer of currency is peer-to-peer and unencrypted. Suffers from hyperinflation and hyperdeflation in short term. Fixed supply of 21 million bitcoins.
Pretty sure that's not true. There's been a big deal made about the encryption code used. IIRC isn't it the same one that Wikileaks used on their "insurance" file? Like RS 238 or something?
12. Well anyways, most of those problems (except the ridiculous creation process and fixed supply) could probably be fixed it was accepted more widely but come one. Who, except of weird internet superheroes, is going to adopt this kind of currency?
So you negated all your points by basically saying "if more people used it, it would be ok"?
13. quote=a guy on another forumThis is amazing. It's WoW gold without the videogame attached to it, has no relationship to any tangible assets, there's not even the suggestion that anyone on the outside would want to own 2 of them much less 20 million, and yet humans are trading them back and forth on the assumption of "well, what if they're worth more later" and trying to hedge against the collapse of the currency that, among other things, they use to pay for Internet access so they can generate more of these phantom things.
I like the WoW gold comment, though there's an argument to be made that much of our money these days is the same way; that dollar bill in your hand is worthless, it can not be used for anything of value (for instance, you can't eat it). The only thing that gives it it's value anymore is that it's backed by the credit of the United States, which many people are arguing is getting less and less trustworthy.
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Oh Bitcoin. Great currency:
1. apparently every client must be aware of ~all transactions, meaning practical trouble once a certain treshold is crossed
I don't think that's correct.
Well, yes, theoretically it wasn't, this is corrent:
Because transactions are broadcast to the entire network, they are inherently public. Unlike regular banking, which preserves customer privacy by keeping transaction records private, transactional anonymity is accomplished in Bitcoin by keeping the ownership of addresses private, while at the same time publishing all transactions. As an example, if Alice sends 123.45 BTC to Bob, a public record is created that allows anyone to see that 123.45 was sent from one address to another.
I don't know how well that would scale. Probably not well.
3. It's used by drug dealers and Russian mob for money laundering (or so I've heard) which means it's future is already compromised. It's not wise to invest into something that is both unstable and used in illegal matters and that is not under control of any national authority.
...and the USD isn't used by those same people?
Not to the extent, no. You really can't control USD money supply and use dollar for money laundering that well :D
8. people get brain damage from bitcoins lol
What?
You haven't heard? BITCOIN: http://www.bitcoinminingaccidents.com/?p=271 BITCOIN
9. Awesome ponzi scheme: the founder and the early investors could just mine ****load of bitcoins and have a huge supply of them, but the latecomers can not :v well not exactly a ponzi scheme but...
Yea, it's not exactly a ponzi scheme. The system is actually designed for that though; when it first started, it was easy to "mine" bitcoins; as there are more people mining, it gets harder, thus limiting the supply. It's a purely theoretical currency.
What happens when you cannot provide currency but the economy grows? I mean, why do people even mine bitcoins since it's so obviously a net loss? speculation
10. Value is completely speculative. Transfer of currency is peer-to-peer and unencrypted. Suffers from hyperinflation and hyperdeflation in short term. Fixed supply of 21 million bitcoins.
Pretty sure that's not true. There's been a big deal made about the encryption code used. IIRC isn't it the same one that Wikileaks used on their "insurance" file? Like RS 238 or something?
What, the unencrypted transfer? could be seriously i'm just pissing on this because it's so lol
12. Well anyways, most of those problems (except the ridiculous creation process and fixed supply) could probably be fixed it was accepted more widely but come one. Who, except of weird internet superheroes, is going to adopt this kind of currency?
So you negated all your points by basically saying "if more people used it, it would be ok"?
No it wouldn't, because it would still cause economic stagnation, there's no central control, there's no effective monetary policy re: economic fluctuations, it would still deflate... I mean, yeah, it could be good, just like Zimbabwean dollar could be good, but whatever.
You can't pay your mortgage with bitcoin. You'll have your nations' tax police in your tail if you make one wrong step. The currency's value is based on pure speculation. Right now it has no redeeming qualities whatsoever, and as such, it's extremely unlikely that it would become a real currency. If it did, it would be... Well, it's not like we hadn't tested fixed money supply before.
13. quote=a guy on another forumThis is amazing. It's WoW gold without the videogame attached to it, has no relationship to any tangible assets, there's not even the suggestion that anyone on the outside would want to own 2 of them much less 20 million, and yet humans are trading them back and forth on the assumption of "well, what if they're worth more later" and trying to hedge against the collapse of the currency that, among other things, they use to pay for Internet access so they can generate more of these phantom things.
I like the WoW gold comment, though there's an argument to be made that much of our money these days is the same way; that dollar bill in your hand is worthless, it can not be used for anything of value (for instance, you can't eat it). The only thing that gives it it's value anymore is that it's backed by the credit of the United States, which many people are arguing is getting less and less trustworthy.
Well, there are other currencies in the world as well. Since I have no direct ties with US dollar, the trust itself has only indirect consequences for me. But the point is this: you have real, practical use for $. It has a relatively stable rate, it does not fluctuate wildly, it works as a currency in one of the world's largest market, it is a global trading currency, it is a money reserve currency. US alone has 300 million people using that currency as their... well, currency. It is controlled by a central entity that can control the money flow when necessities dictate. It's value is not based on wild internet speculation.
Bitcoin is just... I just can't wait.
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If your currency value can be destroyed a Goon fakeposter I think there is a problem with your currency
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If your currency value can be destroyed a Goon fakeposter I think there is a problem with your currency
GEORGE SOROS FALSE FLAG
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(http://i.imgur.com/wkeyn.jpg)
rock solid
(http://i.imgur.com/jrgYU.png)
... okay.
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I understand the giant sag in the graph in the first image, but can you clarify the meaning and significance of the second image?
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Someone was selling a quarter of a million bitcoins (out of a couple million total in circulation, so a significant percentage) at a price of 0.01 "something" which, as anyone can imagine, caused the value of the bitcoin to spike downward.
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Now why would anybody dump 4 million dollars in a second?
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Apart from attempts to devalue a currency?
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Now why would anybody dump 4 million dollars in a second?
Sabotage.
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I can't stand it
I know you planned it
I'm set it straight this watergate
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Perhaps there should be some kind of limit on transaction volume?
That being said, the more holes they identify in the entire concept of an online and unregulated currency, the worse and worse this is beginning to look.
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I like that it exsists. If nothing else it is a very cool experiment.
I need to write a program that auto buys bitcoins when ever their value bottoms out.
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Perhaps there should be some kind of limit on transaction volume?
That being said, the more holes they identify in the entire concept of an online and unregulated currency, the worse and worse this is beginning to look.
Unregulated? It's not. It has a ****load of arbitrary rules.
For example one dude has 700 000 $ worth of bitcoin. In MTGox you can only sell 1000$ worth of bitcoin per day. HAVE A NICE TWO YEARS
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Apart from attempts to devalue a currency?
Yeah ok, so you devalued the currency. You still lost 4 million dollars. How are you gonna make up for it?
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(http://i.somethingawful.com/u/elpintogrande/june11/brainmelt.gif)
:wakka:
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Apart from attempts to devalue a currency?
Yeah ok, so you devalued the currency. You still lost 4 million dollars. How are you gonna make up for it?
That's assuming you went into it with an investment of 4 million dollars. And it's also assuming that whoever did that actually cared; if it is a deliberate sabotage attempt, that assumption is probably null and void.
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I don't get it. If you tried to sell it at current trade prices, you'd get 4 million dollars back.
And I get that people may be more worried about sabotaging the currency. What I don't get is why would one person dump 4 million dollars to the garbage to porsue such nihilistic enterprise.
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Well, if they saw it as a threat and $4 million was a relatively small sum for them, I could see why they would do that.
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I don't get it. If you tried to sell it at current trade prices, you'd get 4 million dollars back.
It's likely that whoever did this A: did not invest much, if any, actual money into bitcoin, B: did not regard those dollars as real to begin with, since as already mentioned in this thread it's not possible to simply convert 4mil worth of bitcoins to 4mil worth of cash within a reasonable timeframe, C: regarded the entire currency as illegitimate or simply stupid to begin with, and therefore worth less than nothing, and D: always intended to do this, and never wanted 4mil.
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Some men just want to watch the world burn.
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or possibly in this case attempt to bring a small amount of sanity back to it.
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Right.... people will burn 4 million dollars to bring sanity to the financial world.
Excuse me while I die laughing.
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(http://feedingthepuppy.typepad.com/.a/6a00e550f49766883401310fd54369970c-800wi)
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Right.... people will burn 4 million dollars to bring sanity to the financial world.
Excuse me while I die laughing.
we've already established this. this person (hell it doesn't even have to be a single person) likely did not actually have anywhere near $4 million actually invested in this. try to keep up.
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Right.... people will burn 4 million dollars to bring sanity to the financial world.
Excuse me while I die laughing.
I had written a lengthy message about the gold standard and MMOG currencies, but honestly, I can't be arsed to post it. This quote, though.... This quote.... Oig.
He didn't burn four million dollars. He sold a fictional currency for less than its supposed market value. He sold nothing for nothing.
[edit] Also, ninja'd. [/edit]
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I do keep up. I can eat many arguments, like for instance a bank or a very wealthy corporation investing in nuking the hell out of a dangerous currency.
What you don't seem to acknowledge is that this is equal to burn 4 million dollars. They may not have invested 4 million dollars in it, but they are wasting 4 million dollars, thus "burning" them. Can I at least get you to acknowledge that?
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What you don't seem to acknowledge is that this is equal to burn 4 million dollars. They may not have invested 4 million dollars in it, but they are wasting 4 million dollars, thus "burning" them. Can I at least get you to acknowledge that?
As noted, it's unlikely they could get 4mil out of the actual system bitcoin has set up, so they were probably wasting a far lesser number.
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have $4 million in bit coins
sell $4 million in bit coins
bit coin value plummets
buy $4 million in bit coin
bit coin value returns to original value
have $8 million in bit coins
goto start
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No. Definitely not that ;). You got the maths wrong there somewhere.
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Luis, we don't need your logic let the mother****er burn
Burn mother****er burn.
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I do keep up. I can eat many arguments, like for instance a bank or a very wealthy corporation investing in nuking the hell out of a dangerous currency.
What you don't seem to acknowledge is that this is equal to burn 4 million dollars. They may not have invested 4 million dollars in it, but they are wasting 4 million dollars, thus "burning" them. Can I at least get you to acknowledge that?
i will acknowledge he could have had SOME money out of it. but look at the chart again. the price had already plummeted before the huge selloff. he just made it hit absolute rock bottom. and even so, still made over $2000.
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Had he sold by 1 dollar he would have made $200 000. It would still be 15 x under market price.
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So someone told me it was a hacker from Hong Kong that acquired a password for an account in mtgox, and then got rid of it as quickly as he could.
He only got a thousand dollars for all his work however, and all the transactions were nullified, etc.
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NECROTHREADED!
Bitcoin hasn't yet collapsed after all these years! Amazing! It has however deflated like hell and is now worth between 500 and 800 dollars depending on the minutes and hours you are watching this (or smth). And it has even got good reviews in the american congress or so I heard (or read).
So what's up with that?
Well, it's crazy it's what. People are getting more and more hyped about this shenanigan as if this is the Next Big Thing(tm) like the TCP/IP and so on. And on that note, I got this on reddit. It's absolutely crazy, it's a sign of perhaps starting to be absorved by the social system, conspiracy theories already mount up on what Bitcoin "really is all about".
Who is the single largest holder of BTC right now? "Satoshi". Who is he? I will say it again. NSA/DARPA created bitcoin under the guidance of the IMF. The IMF has been openly calling for a digital, one-world, deflationary currency for 2 decades. OPENLY. It has been discussed and promoted OPENLY at G8 and G20 summits.
from the early 90s-96 the NSA was OPENLY investigating cryptographic money networks.
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/money/nsamint/nsamint.htm
One of their researchers and investigators is a man named Tatsuaki Okamoto. When they actively started writing the code they chose the pseudonym "Satoshi Nakamura" to ultimately promote the idea that Tatsuaki Okamoto to any and all who investigated the source of bitcoin long enough. But Tatsuaki Okamoto is just a cog. He's not some rogue savoir out to topple centralized banks. Not at all. He is a crypto scientist who was paid by government and intelligence agencies to do research.
Bitcoin is an NSA/DARPA lab set into the wild. Scientific technology grants issued by government and intelligence agencies are how these labs are funded and promoted. The regulation and control of bitcoin has been actively developed alongside the development of the network. In fact, the controls, policy and regulation are WAY WAY more mature than the bitcoin protocol itself. That's why we see things like Greenlist written into law without a mention of bitcoin until recently.
This is not tinfoil hattish. This is just reality. No one forced ANYONE to believe the Satoshi fairytale.. The libertarian Satoshi myth has been promoted in stealth to specifically promote ADOPTION and DEVELOPMENT. It's no different than the internet and WWW itself. EXACTLY the same. That is why you see many www early adopters saying bitcoin "feels" the same as the early internet. I am one of those people.
... etc
http://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/1r7iks/bitcoin_was_created_by_darpa_xpost_rbitcoin/
So what people think nowadays about it? Seems just like the perfect bubble that keeps on giving... forever! It's like the Tulips all over again but without having to bother with actual physical tulips at all. I'm actually somewhat amazed at this social phenomena.
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bitcoin was kind of a test run for the technology. its quite amazing that its still running and that all coins havent been cashed in. it still has exploitable bugs to hammer out.
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So what people think nowadays about it? Seems just like the perfect bubble that keeps on giving... forever! It's like the Tulips all over again but without having to bother with actual physical tulips at all. I'm actually somewhat amazed at this social phenomena.
I read about this in the newspaper yesterday and thought it interesting:
http://news.yahoo.com/cypriot-university-accept-bitcoin-payments-132125253--finance.html
Cyprus' largest university becomes the first university in the World to accept bitcoin tuition fee payments.
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and last.
my opinions on bitcoin haven't changed.
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(http://i.imgur.com/jrgYU.png)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24986264
The value of virtual currency Bitcoin has soared to over $900 (£559), after a US Senate committee hearing.
So, let's say I had $2000 to invest 2 years ago.
If I bought $2000 worth of bitcoin for $0.01 each, today I'd have some 180 000 000 USD...
Doing absolutely nothing at all.
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It's like reversed Weimar! :D
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This may be potentially topic derailing, but:
What's the next big thing that will give a 90 000x return rate in 2 years? It would be fun to go to work every day in a personally owned jumbo jet.
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Isn't the point of those sorts of things precisely that no one knows what it might be? I mean, by definition. If people knew how bitcoin would have fared today two years ago, then the price of bitcoin would have incorporated that knowledge already back then. It's in this sense that markets are "100% efficient". Of course, bias and all that, but if I knew how to be better than the system I'd be rich by now.
Thing with bitcoin is its absolute risk. Also, even if you had 180 million bucks, it would be hard to get them out of bitcoin into a real coin.
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if (rich) people (or the government) really wanted to get rid of bitcoin, all they would need to do is offer to exchange bitcoins for cash. then just sit on them. since there is a hard limit on how many coins will be generated, its just a matter of time till they become so rare that people will exchange them for a fraction of their value. this is probibly going to be what happens when bitcoin 2.0 comes around.
the other way to devalue bitcoin, is to nuke all the things.
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Luckily there's plenty of bitcoin exchanges. The easiest one to use if you're in america is coinbase. No need to do money orders with them, unless you want to, then use campbx instead. The one thing most people complain about is how long it takes to get their bitcoins, or their money from selling bitcoins. Bitcoin transactions are not instantaneous. It takes some time for transactions to propogate through the bitcoin network before bitcoins get to their destination. The area of selling bitcoins and getting your money back also takes time. Wiring money to an exchange takes a while, and a bank ach transfer takes a while too. People use to be able to buy with credit cards, but this practice was mostly stopped with scammy people doing charge backs with the credit card since bitcoin is not possible to perform a charge back (receive your new bitcoins and get your money back). It's why paypal and google wallet don't deal with bitcoin. Link a bank account, or money order. The fastest way i could find to sell and buy bitcoins was localbitcoins.com. However, it was easier buying bitcoins a long time ago. It's harder to buy them today, especially if you're in america.
For the recent market with bitcoin has been pretty interesting. The silk road take down did make bitcoin more popular by giving it more exposure to people via news (which drove more people to use it). Then china got into the action and was a very big part with increasing the value (which got even more people to use it). China's bitcoin exchange became big very fast surpassing mt gox. The one thing that we all should be careful with here is that it is still a new currency. It's still maturing, it's still being adopted, it's still normalizing. Or, it's in a bubble and will crash. That however doesn't get rid of the fact that it's still a new currency that's maturing and being adopted for use (this is in no way saying that bitcoin can't crash). People that have bitcoin, and new people that just got some, sort of don't exactly know how to think of the currency. It's good for buying stuff on the internet, but should it be invested like a hedge, and how long will the profitability of selling bitcoins last? Luckily people do make money by buying and selling different currencies based on exchange rate and arbitrage selling. Investing in bitcoin like a hedge, really just has yet to be seen (in my own opinion, i'd call doing that a mistake, there's better hedges to invest in).
The really cool news on the evolution of bitcoin:
Bitcoin has more or less been evolving in the area of how to store it. It has gotten to the point of being able to go back and forth from intangibility to tangibility. We all have probably heard of casacius physical bitcoins. Not a good way to buy bitcoin, and only buy from the maker (people selling these on ebay have a very high chance of selling an "unused" coin that actually is used and you just bought an over priced bitcoin container that's empty). Casacius coins are more or less about increasing popularity of bitcoin with collectible novelty coins. Casacius coins can also physically be cracked with a seringe and some kind of polymer that doesn't degrade the glue on the sticker of these coins. After cracking a casacius bitcoin is when you ship to that poor sucker on ebay who bought it :P
(http://media.coindesk.com/2013/08/Casascius-coin-cracked.jpg)
The better way is printing your own bitcoin bills, a practice of maintaining a paper wallet. It's also the most secure way to store your bitcoins (removes having any digital wallet get hacked).
This (http://blog.coinbase.com/post/51573799308/use-coinbase-to-export-your-bitcoins-to-a-paper-wallet) more or less explains how bitcoin bills work. Now, you can print these out on your own sheets of plain paper if you want. Or, you can use the coinbase export to paper wallet (how cool of coinbase to do this yesterday btw). Or you can get these (https://bitcoinpaperwallet.com/) nifty bills to shove through a printer if you really wanted something nice i guess.
(https://en.bitcoin.it/w/images/en/e/e7/BitcoinPaperWallet-sample.jpg)
Now, one area of bitcoin that i have not cared for hearing whatsoever, is that it's only used for buying illegal stuff, and only used by criminals. This is true to a point, just like cold hard cash. The bitcoin system is great because of how it operates by getting rid of any third party to handle money between buyer and seller (paypal, western union, etc.). Bitcoin is the digital equivalent of handing cash over to the seller and the seller handing over the goods (except through the internet). The main thing about criminals and buying illegal stuff is that there's always the use of cash to leave less of a paper trail (the taliban isn't going to use a debit card to buy a nuke). All criminals use cold hard stacks of cash in this manner. Before bitcoin came along, in my country and around the world, the american dollar was used for the same thing if you were a bad bad person doing bad bad stuff (american bills are still popular). In reality any cash is used in this manner. People not wanting to use bitcoin because of this stigma that only bad people use it is retarded. That's like people not wanting to buy cd-r/rw's because only pirates burn music cd's and sell them at a profit. If having bitcoin makes you be seen as a criminal...well, having cash does the same thing. Fud is fud in this case.
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It should be noted that the chinese trades amount to at least 1/3 of the whole bitcoin exchange, and this is because of the very protectionary laws that China has regarding investment abroad (money flowing inside is a - ok, outside, not so much!). So they are currently using this bitcoin technique as a work around, making rich chinese people able to invest in other countries.
This is why probably the US congress and others were really positive about this thing. It points to a much more globalized world where big capital doesn't pay taxes whatsoever, money flows wherever it wants to and how much it wants to, it's basically any billionaire's wet dream come true.
And that's what really irks me the most, this bitcoin **** is something that is being promulgated as something that will "free up" the individuals from "big government", arbitrary rules and other bad bad things from some kind of skynet or Prism or whatevah, but what this is really all about is about creating the perfect flowing trade money that suddenly will make billionnaireland independent from any country whatsoever. Like they say, "taxes are for the poor to pay".
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It's kind of sad, really, how many libertarians have been duped into thinking they're working against corporate domination by undermining all the checks on their power.
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bitcoin is nothing more than a public beta test at this point. every technical article ive read about it has the words "experimental currency" in it. its a good idea on paper, but its still got bugs and isnt currently viable to replace existing currencies.
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There are a ****ton of alternative cripto currencies on the nets right now, all deflating like a mad hockey stick at the moment. Bitcoin is the "leader" right now but it can be defeated if some alternatives prove their worth.
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Some of the other cool cryptocurrencies are litecoin and peercoin. Peercoin (PPC), is still quite new. It's worth getting up on mining for it. Litecoin has value, and addresses some of the problems with the bitcoin protocol. Litecoin is not as new peercoin, but mt gox is in the middle of considering allowing people to trade it on the exchange. Litecoin was likened by the developer to the be silver to the gold of bitcoin.
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Do any of those currencies address the issue of inflation (or more concerning, deflation as is the case with bitcoin)?
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Anyone fancy dumpster diving for $7.5m?
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/11/it-pro-says-he-threw-out-7500-bitcoins-now-worth-7-5-million/
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Anyone fancy dumpster diving for $7.5m?
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/11/it-pro-says-he-threw-out-7500-bitcoins-now-worth-7-5-million/
I'm tired of reading stories of people losing their bitcoins :nono: It's not how much value they lost, i don't care, because it wasn't mine. But, the forever loss of coins that won't get back into the network is what i like least since bitcoin has the 21 million limit.
Do any of those currencies address the issue of inflation (or more concerning, deflation as is the case with bitcoin)?
My best guess is why the creators let bitcoin be denominated all the way down to .00000001, not so much in the area of inflation, but dealing with fractions of a bitcoin helps.
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Do any of those currencies address the issue of inflation (or more concerning, deflation as is the case with bitcoin)?
My best guess is why the creators let bitcoin be denominated all the way down to .00000001, not so much in the area of inflation, but dealing with fractions of a bitcoin helps.
But that doesn't help deflation. And a currency that can only deflate as the economy surrounding it grows just encourages hoarding it.
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Hoarding something that is deflating is not the only thing you can do with a currency. You can also spend it. Being able to denominate a bitcoin down to .00000001 definitely helps, in the area that we should be glad when creating bitcoin they did allow for the spending of fractions of a bitcoin when they could have easily made the bitcoin system with this forgotten. There's also a lot of people who don't hoard the currency who use it every day. The market can go either way right now (methinks that adoption is growing and a crash is less likely bubbly). Hoarding of bitcoins is also in my own opinion the same as using it as a hedge; a big mistake. If you bought it when it was low and intend to sell high, by all means do that, but that window of opportunity i wouldn't say is going to be open forever.
Sell a few bitcoins if you must; the value went up from $730 on the 22nd of november (up from october when it was $202) to around $1121 on bitstamp and coinbase today (sell higher on localbitcoins.com, this site does away with most wait times). People can hoard too, but people should definitely spend their bitcoin. When something goes up in value, it's nice to use it, for when you spend less you saved more. If the american dollar doubled in value last night to being worth $2 for every $1, you bet i'm going to get up on a bunch of deals for it would mean that i would be spending 50% less. With bitcoin being able to be denominated down to .00000001, this just means anything requiring payment by bitcoin is going to be less expensive because of the deflation; a few months ago compared to today, we have people spending fractions of a fraction of their bitcoins now. This is also great because items for sale on the internet (where bitcoin is an accepted form of payment) are already valued by a fiat currency price converted to bitcoin. In other words, that $121 video card would be slightly over 0.1btc, where as last october the price would be something like 1.8btc. If you have nothing to buy, i would sell a few bitcoins since we honestly have yet to see if hoarding them is a mistake :lol:
I have a few bitcoins, but my intention is to sell (there's better things to hoard).
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Hoarding something that is deflating is not the only thing you can do with a currency. You can also spend it. Being able to denominate a bitcoin down to .00000001 definitely helps, in the area that we should be glad when creating bitcoin they did allow for the spending of fractions of a bitcoin when they could have easily made the bitcoin system with this forgotten. There's also a lot of people who don't hoard the currency who use it every day. The market can go either way right now (methinks that adoption is growing and a crash is less likely bubbly). Hoarding of bitcoins is also in my own opinion the same as using it as a hedge; a big mistake. If you bought it when it was low and intend to sell high, by all means do that, but that window of opportunity i wouldn't say is going to be open forever.
Sell a few bitcoins if you must; the value went up from $730 on the 22nd of november (up from october when it was $202) to around $1121 on bitstamp and coinbase today (sell higher on localbitcoins.com, this site does away with most wait times). People can hoard too, but people should definitely spend their bitcoin. When something goes up in value, it's nice to use it, for when you spend less you saved more. If the american dollar doubled in value last night to being worth $2 for every $1, you bet i'm going to get up on a bunch of deals for it would mean that i would be spending 50% less. With bitcoin being able to be denominated down to .00000001, this just means anything requiring payment by bitcoin is going to be less expensive because of the deflation; a few months ago compared to today, we have people spending fractions of a fraction of their bitcoins now. This is also great because items for sale on the internet (where bitcoin is an accepted form of payment) are already valued by a fiat currency price converted to bitcoin. In other words, that $121 video card would be slightly over 0.1btc, where as last october the price would be something like 1.8btc. If you have nothing to buy, i would sell a few bitcoins since we honestly have yet to see if hoarding them is a mistake :lol:
I have a few bitcoins, but my intention is to sell (there's better things to hoard).
The fact that you can use fractions of bitcoins doesn't help dealing with deflation.
The issue with deflation isn't that "oh, I can't buy/sell bitcoins because they are so expensive", it's that when you have any quantity of them, spending them is worse than not spending them. Why would you want to sell something that is going to be more valuable some time later?
Check more info regarding the problems of deflation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflation)
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I agree with you. The thing i wanted to raise with bitcoin is that it's unlikely to stay deflated. This is why i said, while it is still deflated, buy what you can with bitcoin, or sell your bitcoin (why in my opinion this would be a mistake to use as a hedge, and even an area to grow your money (not unless you sell at the right time before bitcoin inflates)). Before it's too late. The currency is still normalizing, or on the verge of a crash.
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I agree with you. The thing i wanted to raise with bitcoin is that it's unlikely to stay deflated. This is why i said, while it is still deflated, buy what you can with bitcoin, or sell your bitcoin (why in my opinion this would be a mistake to use as a hedge, and even an area to grow your money (not unless you sell at the right time before bitcoin inflates)). Before it's too late. The currency is still normalizing, or on the verge of a crash.
Supposing bitcoin gets adopted as a standard currency, why do you think it won't deflate with time?
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bitcoin wasn't designed to be a permanent currency. once there are 21 million bitcoins, mining stops working. mining is ultimately just a clever way to get people to setup servers for the system. once miners stop getting paid, the number of servers will drop drastically and it will be harder to use bitcoin. so within the system are the seeds of its own demise. this was intentional.
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That seems exceedingly silly.
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it makes perfect sense when you consider that its just a big science experiment to test a technology.
think about it, the only reason people have bitcoin miners is to make money. but what happens when it becomes impossible to mine bitcoins? you think all the people running miners are going to leave their hardware plugged in with no net gain? as the number of miners decreases, transactions take longer, and become less reliable and secure and people will be doing what ever they can to get rid of their coins.
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it makes perfect sense when you consider that its just a big science experiment to test a technology.
think about it, the only reason people have bitcoin miners is to make money. but what happens when it becomes impossible to mine bitcoins? you think all the people running miners are going to leave their hardware plugged in with no net gain? as the number of miners decreases, transactions take longer, and become less reliable and secure and people will be doing what ever they can to get rid of their coins.
Bitcoin will move to transaction fees instead of mining rewards. Its already happening now.
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shiiiit, when you put it that way the idea of bitcoin representing any kind of long-term solution is just laughable
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The fact that you can use fractions of bitcoins doesn't help dealing with deflation.
The issue with deflation isn't that "oh, I can't buy/sell bitcoins because they are so expensive", it's that when you have any quantity of them, spending them is worse than not spending them. Why would you want to sell something that is going to be more valuable some time later?
I disagree with your point that it doesnt matter to be able to be able to spend fractions of a bitcoin. The reason this matters is it could have been something easily forgotten from the bitcoin protocol. Sorry if i wasn't quite so clear with that earlier, i was thinking of what if bitcoin didn't have it's own version of pennies. That would be a radical factor leading to people hoarding because they had too. What would you do then if you didn't want to hoard? By a car? :lol:
Supposing bitcoin gets adopted as a standard currency, why do you think it won't deflate with time?
Deflating with time? You actually care about it deflating over the long term where i only care about the short term. It's current deflation is unlikely to last. Which is why it's a mistake to hoard bitcoin currently. There's temporary hoarding of course, and that's all i'd recommend given that the value could drop at any time (which today it did).
Standard currency? What do you possibly mean? Global standard? A standard currency to be spent in your country? Or, just simply your "standard"? The question that you answer...it's rather unknown right now if it will deflate over the long term let alone even being adopted as a "standard" currency. The bitcoin market and politics for adoption are still changing everyday. Any kind of future outlook for bitcoin that anyone can come up with right now is sort of next to hopeful and wishful thinking since it's all difficult to foresee. I'd like to think that it will deflate over time. But, wishful thinking matters not at all with what bitcoin will be doing in its market. Who knows what it will happen with it's trends, values, and adoption rate; all of these are new and unseen before with this new and even unorthodox digital currency. We've seen digital currencies around before, and even their convertability to cash. But cryptology based, peer to peer networked, mining for them (this one is pretty alien, but was a good idea), not from a video game, intended to be used everywhere (internet and real life) all over the world, etc.. This is quite different than second life lindens or world of warcraft gold, etc.
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i do love how bitcoin advocates brush off most of the bull**** surrounding Bitcoin as just a trivial consequence of it existing in the real world rather than some platonic plane of anarcho-capitalism
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think of it as a beta test.
thats the problem with digital currency. you have to project what the state of digital technology will be 50 years from now. you can make predictions based on moores law. but what to do in case of unexpected breakthrough (such as intel putting out a quantum processor) or setback (we might hit the semiconductor wall before anticipated)? the system has to take that into account. hashing algorithm is supposed to grow more complex over time to keep up with technology, but if your predictions are wrong you either end up with machines that take forever to compute hashes. or you cause instability because machines are hashing so fast you end up corrupting transaction chains. these problems are mind boggling.
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The fact that you can use fractions of bitcoins doesn't help dealing with deflation.
The issue with deflation isn't that "oh, I can't buy/sell bitcoins because they are so expensive", it's that when you have any quantity of them, spending them is worse than not spending them. Why would you want to sell something that is going to be more valuable some time later?
I disagree with your point that it doesnt matter to be able to be able to spend fractions of a bitcoin. The reason this matters is it could have been something easily forgotten from the bitcoin protocol. Sorry if i wasn't quite so clear with that earlier, i was thinking of what if bitcoin didn't have it's own version of pennies. That would be a radical factor leading to people hoarding because they had too. What would you do then if you didn't want to hoard? By a car? :lol:
I still fail to see your point regarding the fractions of bitcoins. The only thing that it does is that instead of a fixed maximum total of 21 million units of currency you have a larger amount of units of fixed maximum total. It is a non sequitur regarding deflation.
Supposing bitcoin gets adopted as a standard currency, why do you think it won't deflate with time?
Deflating with time? You actually care about it deflating over the long term where i only care about the short term. It's current deflation is unlikely to last. Which is why it's a mistake to hoard bitcoin currently. There's temporary hoarding of course, and that's all i'd recommend given that the value could drop at any time (which today it did).
Standard currency? What do you possibly mean? Global standard? A standard currency to be spent in your country? Or, just simply your "standard"? The question that you answer...it's rather unknown right now if it will deflate over the long term let alone even being adopted as a "standard" currency. The bitcoin market and politics for adoption are still changing everyday. Any kind of future outlook for bitcoin that anyone can come up with right now is sort of next to hopeful and wishful thinking since it's all difficult to foresee. I'd like to think that it will deflate over time. But, wishful thinking matters not at all with what bitcoin will be doing in its market. Who knows what it will happen with it's trends, values, and adoption rate; all of these are new and unseen before with this new and even unorthodox digital currency. We've seen digital currencies around before, and even their convertability to cash. But cryptology based, peer to peer networked, mining for them (this one is pretty alien, but was a good idea), not from a video game, intended to be used everywhere (internet and real life) all over the world, etc.. This is quite different than second life lindens or world of warcraft gold, etc.
By standard I mean a commonly accepted currency used by everyone. I don't think this will ever happen for a number of reasons, but the most obvious one, at least to me, is the issue I bring forth time and time again, deflation.
Now, the fact that bitcoin is not ever going to be a "standard" currency as I call it, means that it will fluctuate freely with whatever whims the bitcoin economy suffers. However, should it be "standardized", you have a problem. There is a limited, even shrinking amount of currency units available, and (hopefully) a growing economy. These two facts will inevitably lead to a deflation where the currency needs to keep up with its economy, otherwise you will eventually cease to make any meaningful transations.
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I still fail to see your point regarding the fractions of bitcoins. The only thing that it does is that instead of a fixed maximum total of 21 million units of currency you have a larger amount of units of fixed maximum total. It is a non sequitur regarding deflation.
I was only bringing it up for a what if the bitcoin protocol was made without being able to spend anything less than a bitcoin. This what if the currency were like this would definitely make deflation of the currency something that would be problematic for those who do have to and will spend their money. It would result in hoarding even when you don't want to, or buying expensive items only :lol: In this what if scenario, yeah the currency would definitely fail :lol:
By standard I mean a commonly accepted currency used by everyone. I don't think this will ever happen for a number of reasons, but the most obvious one, at least to me, is the issue I bring forth time and time again, deflation.
Now, the fact that bitcoin is not ever going to be a "standard" currency as I call it, means that it will fluctuate freely with whatever whims the bitcoin economy suffers. However, should it be "standardized", you have a problem. There is a limited, even shrinking amount of currency units available, and (hopefully) a growing economy. These two facts will inevitably lead to a deflation where the currency needs to keep up with its economy, otherwise you will eventually cease to make any meaningful transations.
Thanks for answering what you meant by standard. I run into a bunch of tards of whom i later found out their version of standard is instead some complete off the wall personal beliefs, what they like to do, stuff they hate, what they wish, how cleveland steamers are great, pepperoni pizza is awesome, etc....in other words something that is hardly standard but too highly personally custom (stuff that only applies to that person). Glad to find out you did mean what you actually said :yes:
Back on topic. No comment, that's an awesome assessment of the likelihood of bitcoin becoming standard is low, and why it's better to have it nonstandard.
EDIT: I must add that i'm not entirely getting on the bitcoin wagon. I saw an opportunity to make money, so i took it. That was an easy $500 i made from selling today. I should have sold yesterday, but the moment i saw the price of bitcoin lowering today; i wasn't going to take any chances, i sold. Whether it be a really cool ****ty currency, there is money to be made off of it in the mean time. And i'm off the wagon.
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think of it as a beta test.
tell that to the people trying to build an economy on it, not me
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I wouldn't even qualify bitcoin as being a test. It's quite not a test. A flawed implementation at most. I hope bitcoin 2.0 doesn't come out. I'd rather litecoin and peercoin mature and take it's place since those two were direct improvements over bitcoin. However, we probably will see a subtle bitcoin 2.0 (something tells me the people running bitcoin won't want to shut it down in favor of superior alternative cryptocurrencies; they're making money off of it after all, no one likes giving up an empire). Subtle would be adding more bitcoins to the ecosystem at most, and perhaps some improvements on the protocol. We'll see bitcoin continually along with the other cryptocurrencies.
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think of it as a beta test.
thats the problem with digital currency. you have to project what the state of digital technology will be 50 years from now. you can make predictions based on moores law. but what to do in case of unexpected breakthrough (such as intel putting out a quantum processor) or setback (we might hit the semiconductor wall before anticipated)? the system has to take that into account. hashing algorithm is supposed to grow more complex over time to keep up with technology, but if your predictions are wrong you either end up with machines that take forever to compute hashes. or you cause instability because machines are hashing so fast you end up corrupting transaction chains. these problems are mind boggling.
This is not what happens in bitcoin. Every week, the algorithm checks how fast the last searches were and reacts accordingly. So there is no need to "guess" how the future pans out, it is simply observed and corrected each week.
This means that a lot of new investments of certain people on hardware to "mine" stuff must be used as fast as possible, before the algorithm corrects itself to the new hardwares, and then they lose their window of opportunity. Lots of sad faces out there nowadays due to these shenanigans. And I could not give one gram of **** to it.
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All of these potential problems with bitcoin, and none of them have happened. Bitcoin has proven itself to be pretty durable and even be worth something. The protocol could have been made better like what peercoin and litecoin show us, but it operates as intended. Really for now one of the big down sides if a wallet or an exchange gets hacked. I think it's safe to say it's operating as intended by the creator very well. Potential problems aren't actual problems until potential for that problem gets met. The problem with digital currency probably won't happen since no one's had an issue with it over the years bitcoin has been around (not many years, but it wasn't born yesterday). Perhaps issues with mining corruption will be prevalent in the future. I just don't think so. Bitcoin put into implementation has been a success. The technical intricacies of bitcoin has also been a success.
However, people saying that digital currency has no intrinsic value is starting to get old. Bitcoin definitely has extrinsic value, otherwise you couldn't spend it. Bitcoin has intrinsic value, and having intrinsic value doesn't just get down to simply being able to touch and hold something. I liked my bitcoin a lot when i had them. I knew it had worth, and it was going to make me money. And how dare we tell people who do have bitcoin it has no intrinsic value (i'm not offended, i'm talking about miners and people who actually use the currency, i don't hardly apply to this since i was a temporary bitcoin trader). When a miner gets a bunch of bitcoin coming from mining, people are going to tell me that they don't have any favoritism, like, appreciation, and use for what they were able to mine and what they can turn that into?
None of us are bitcoin miners, and as far as i know i'm the only guy in the thread who actually bought some bitcoin and had them in my possession (i bought cheap and sold when it was high, i hope other people got in on it). To assume that digital currencies are intrinsicly valueless; that's just too much to assume from otherwise people that don't know. Digital goods do have intrinsic value, and intrinsic value is more than just about the physical. The intrinsic value of bitcoin is all the goods and services that can be bought and bartered for by using it. That's a lot of services and stuff you can get with bitcoin right off the bat, and it's increasing.
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The phrase "bitcoin has no intrinsic value" refers to the simple fact that it is uncontrolable by governments and central banks. Anonymity is a key characteristic of the process (the fact that it is still possible to track people "down" is evidence that bitcoin is still version 0.something, not that it won't reach that level of purity in the future), and by having such a characteristic it can avoid being taxed and escape any means of control by the countries' government.
If this is so, and it is largerly so, it means that there is no incentive whatsoever by governments to have this currency made legal. It will only create an extremely fluid circulation market of capital from one corner of the planet to another escaping any border controls, etc. And because of these facts, I had seen this currency as dead-on-arrival. Of course, I missed the point that politics (especially in the US) is not about governments vs the people, but "people vs people", that politicians are corrupt and easily misled. That their friends are telling them to allow this to happen, that the chinese rich guys are circulating the cash outside of chinese controls to the rest of the world, that's it's all awesome and daisies, but eventually the hammers will start to fall down.
The chinese are already trying to kill off this thing, and it eventually crashed this last week. I think we'll see more of this.
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I see what you mean why it has no intrinsic value.
After i made my $500 off of my get in get out market bubble scheme. I saw the value start to go down. It went way down. The lowest i think i saw it tank was $614 three or four days ago. Then it leveled off at $730. Tonight it's up to $940. I knew the value would go back down. But, i didn't think it'd go back up so soon. Debating buying some more.
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I see what you mean why it has no intrinsic value.
After i made my $500 off of my get in get out market bubble scheme. I saw the value start to go down. It went way down. The lowest i think i saw it tank was $614 three or four days ago. Then it leveled off at $730. Tonight it's up to $940. I knew the value would go back down. But, i didn't think it'd go back up so soon. Debating buying some more.
As an amateur speculant who got his first trading experience during the grand IT bubble over a decade ago, I can not tell you just how amusing such notions are. ;)
Word of advice ... write anything you spend / "invest" off as "teaching money", then it won't hurt as much when it is gone.
And before you start ... no, it will be gone. It's not so much about bitcoin, but rather about the amateurish notions you display here. i.e. no strategy, no diversification, only faith/hope in a single investment option while avidly watching for any course changes to react to - without any kind longterm strategy or safeguards.
My advice would be to buy some lottery tickets ... would give you a better chance at "winning big" than playing investment newbie with bitcoints lol.
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The right strategy at this kind of exponential casino investment is always selling a percentage of your gains at some x amount of time, always making sure you get out of the experiment richer than poorer, no matter how the future fares. And yeah Mikes is 100% correct, treat it as a lost fund.
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As an amateur speculant who got his first trading experience during the grand IT bubble over a decade ago, I can not tell you just how amusing such notions are. ;)
Word of advice ... write anything you spend / "invest" off as "teaching money", then it won't hurt as much when it is gone.
And before you start ... no, it will be gone. It's not so much about bitcoin, but rather about the amateurish notions you display here. i.e. no strategy, no diversification, only faith/hope in a single investment option while avidly watching for any course changes to react to - without any kind longterm strategy or safeguards.
My advice would be to buy some lottery tickets ... would give you a better chance at "winning big" than playing investment newbie with bitcoints lol.
Previously, i did have a strategy, it may not have been much, and i did keep my head on straight through the whole thing too. But i just didn't see bitcoin being anything more than a short term investment which is why i was looking for the right time to react. I knew i wouldn't be winning big as i didn't invest that much so as also to make sure i didn't lose big either. My "faith" was more or less not seeing bitcoin get to $1300-$1400 (getting that high just didn't seem realistic). What i did know was that bitcoin had a few months of steady increase in value, where my brain clicked in saying easy fast money.
Now for getting back into it again, i would definitely say is riskier and forethought is harder to use here which more or less gets down to with the recent gain, and that i didn't formulate a plan yet, if one could even be formed, let alone a strategy. Finding out it's current trend definitely helps. But, something tells me this recent gain won't last too long, and not long enough for me to want to worry putting money out there again despite whatever trend x is. Bitcoin sounds pretty risky currently. At least for curiosity i'm still researching bitcoin trends because i'm still fascinated with it.
Yes there are better things to invest in, especially for the long term. I'm not disagreeing with mikes aside from him assuming that i'm trying to win big with bitcoin. You can't win big off of bitcoin unless you were an early miner, or bought them when they were $200 or less a coin. Since i'm neither of those, i would say realistically for myself that i'm not going to be making anything more than a few hundred dollars if not just a hundred dollars. That goes for the money i did make off of bitcoin and any future profit if i did buy more.
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think of it as a beta test.
tell that to the people trying to build an economy on it, not me
technologies seldom have a chance to mature and get all the bugs out before going to market. linux users have been happy running alpha and beta code for years. bitcoin is pretty much the same. this is forseeable, so it makes me wonder if bitcoin wont self destruct after they have the data they wanted. a clever design is one that accounts for the incompetence and other quirks that come with human nature.
reguardless bitcoin mining has become big buisness. people have actually gone out and had asics made to mine coins. it costs a couple million to have an asic made, thats not including design time, thats just the fab cost. you make it back by doing a large run selling the surplus chips to other miners (you of course keep most of them for yourself). that leaves people who use general purpose cpus and gpus pretty much in the dust, and resources wasted on chips that do one thing only. fpga miners work pretty good but cant go as fast and use more power than an asic but are flexible (say the algorithm changes, rewrite the "hardware") and can be re-purposed when mining dies out.
instead of backing currency with gold or debt, you are backing it with flops (or iops). it doesn't make sense to use all those flops to solve artificially complex algorithms. taking a page from seti@home, folding@home, etc, why not instead use those cycles for scientific computing power, you could run fusion research simulations or run climate models with that power. so while in the process of making the rich richer, and the poor poorer, you can get some globally useful data out of it. because of the wide variety of algorithms, you also get away from the custom hardware being made for mining, and instead have to commit general purpose cpu assets to mining, which will drive cpu innovations (instead of having a chip that solves one problem).
so there is room for improvement. or we could just use the beta test version. human nature always takes the stupid path.
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The phrase "bitcoin has no intrinsic value" refers to the simple fact that it is uncontrolable by governments and central banks. Anonymity is a key characteristic of the process (the fact that it is still possible to track people "down" is evidence that bitcoin is still version 0.something, not that it won't reach that level of purity in the future), and by having such a characteristic it can avoid being taxed and escape any means of control by the countries' government.
If this is so, and it is largerly so, it means that there is no incentive whatsoever by governments to have this currency made legal. It will only create an extremely fluid circulation market of capital from one corner of the planet to another escaping any border controls, etc. And because of these facts, I had seen this currency as dead-on-arrival. Of course, I missed the point that politics (especially in the US) is not about governments vs the people, but "people vs people", that politicians are corrupt and easily misled. That their friends are telling them to allow this to happen, that the chinese rich guys are circulating the cash outside of chinese controls to the rest of the world, that's it's all awesome and daisies, but eventually the hammers will start to fall down.
The chinese are already trying to kill off this thing, and it eventually crashed this last week. I think we'll see more of this.
When they say that the Bitcoin has no intrinsic value, it doesn't really get the point across. All commodities, even gold, are only worth what someone else will pay for it. What they mean by it having no intrinsic value is that it does not have what a true currency has: something to give it value beyond its value as a fashionable medium of exchange or as a purely speculative asset. All true currency is either backed by taxation or by debt; they are valuable because you need the money to settle your liabilities owed to your government or to your bank, who will only accept payment in that currency. THAT'S why the value of token credit and fiat money has been on average so much more stable than any commodity means of exchange, and it's why bitcoin simply cannot assume all the functions of a true currency. It's useful as a medium of exchange where evading the law is a big enough issue to put up with its instability, and it's the ultimate speculative asset (terminal value of zero), but its success so far has been because it doesn't do what a true currency does. They moment anyone tries to use it like a true currency (creating debts or signing long term contracts with payment commitments denominated in bitcoin), its built-in deflationary tendencies will push the currency into a debt deflation spiral followed promptly by hyperinflation as people realize that the now-deflated debts can't be paid (even if they could be enforced). A true currency must have an elastic supply that can expand and contract to meet the needs of its users and it needs an issuer that will take the currency back in exchange for settling liabilities to stabilize its value enough to make it workable in the long run. Bitcoin has neither.
Paul Krugman explains it more succinctly. (http://www.businessinsider.com/paul-krugman-on-bitcoin-2013-12)
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The problem with words like "intrinsic" is their own realistic bias. It exposes the thought process behind it as thinking there is something like a TRUE currency or a TRUE X of any sort (like morality, etc.) that can only be standartized by a TRUE authority. This mode of thinking goes back to absolutism and was rightly shattered by Nietzsche and many more ever since. There was never an "intrinsic" value in paper money, and all the examples we have of hiperinflation mania in our history attest to this. Money is worth what the common conscience of the entire economy thinks it is worth. There are some issues here that are important to underline though. It is true that to make people believe that the currency is worth something and its worth will be stable, you will need "stories" and tradition. You need a kind of a mythology that convinces you that this money thing is really really stable and you should really really trust it. If these levels of trust reach a certain level, then the currency meets its own mythological objectives.
Bitcoin's price is now a fool's game, a proper bubble in Schiller's own terminology: a "fad". And we do know that speculation is what is driving most of the price right now.
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The problem with words like "intrinsic" is their own realistic bias. It exposes the thought process behind it as thinking there is something like a TRUE currency or a TRUE X of any sort (like morality, etc.) that can only be standartized by a TRUE authority. This mode of thinking goes back to absolutism and was rightly shattered by Nietzsche and many more ever since. There was never an "intrinsic" value in paper money, and all the examples we have of hiperinflation mania in our history attest to this. Money is worth what the common conscience of the entire economy thinks it is worth. There are some issues here that are important to underline though. It is true that to make people believe that the currency is worth something and its worth will be stable, you will need "stories" and tradition. You need a kind of a mythology that convinces you that this money thing is really really stable and you should really really trust it. If these levels of trust reach a certain level, then the currency meets its own mythological objectives.
Bitcoin's price is now a fool's game, a proper bubble in Schiller's own terminology: a "fad". And we do know that speculation is what is driving most of the price right now.
Confederate money hyperinflation: because the states resisted all attempts by the central government at Richmond to levy taxes upon their populations the Confederacy was unable to create demand for its currency and so had to just keep pumping it out to squeeze what little purchasing power out of it that they could. As the war devastated the South the supply of goods fell which added to inflationary pressures.
Weimer Republic Hyperinflation: The result of a massive debt burden levied upon the German government NOT denominated in Marks. Due to the Treaty of Versailles Germany was not able to export resources like coal directly to acquire the foreign currency needed to pay the debts, so they had to print money for use on the international exchange market to acquire the funds. The problem with doing this is that currency markets are sensitive to supply and demand like any other market and the astronomical amounts of debt Germany had meant the German government had to flood the market with Marks. This caused a collapse of the exchange rate of the Mark which sent the prices of goods imported to Germany through the roof at the same time the French had invaded the Ruhr and shut down Germany's main industrial center. That was what caused the hyperinflation - a foreign debt burden that could only be serviced by money printing and a collapse on supply - it was NOT domestic money printing that did it.
Zimbabwe - Same story as in Germany - foreign debt burden (from IMF loans) combined with a collapse in the food supply thanks to the disastrous land reform policies put in place by Mugabe.
To get hyperinflation, especially if you have a floating exchange rate, you either need a government that can't create demand for its paper money with taxes or you need a large foreign debt burden combined with a collapse in the supply of real goods. Otherwise, fiat paper money has a pretty decent track record. The value of paper money has very little to do with "mythology" and everything to do with the fact that you'll be imprisoned for tax evasion if you don't give the government some of its paper back every year.
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As I said, you need a convincing story to get inflation levels really close to 1, 2% a year. We have those convincing stories, and they are convincing exactly because they have a government behind them that has been historically commited to keep the inflation that low.
There are always justifications for any narratives that go outside the convention. Convincing stories. Note that by "convincing stories" I didn't say they were untrue in their basis. This is a bit irrelevant, what counts is the convincing aspect of it. And of course if the story is "robust" in the sense that you can't really detect falsehoods in it, then it is both probably a somewhat true story and a very convincing one.
There is no convincing story as of yet that manages to convince people what the right price of bitcoin should be. Should it be 1$? 1000$? 100.000$? There is some objectivity to it (it depends on the amount of its "market cap"), but it fluctuates wildly because no one really knows how large it will go or can go or will the governments let it go, it's guessing time.
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Given that the value of bitcoin has had a rather sharp drop (again) (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/19/business/international/china-bitcoin-exchange-ends-renminbi-deposits.html?_r=0), Charlie Stross wrote an opinion piece (http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/12/why-i-want-bitcoin-to-die-in-a.html#more) about it, which I completely agree with.
Like all currency systems, Bitcoin comes with an implicit political agenda attached. Decisions we take about how to manage money, taxation, and the economy have consequences: by its consequences you may judge a finance system. Our current global system is pretty crap, but I submit that Bitcoin is worst.
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Libertarians love it because it pushes the same buttons as their gold fetish and it doesn't look like a "Fiat currency". You can visualize it as some kind of scarce precious data resource, sort of a digital equivalent of gold. Nation-states don't control the supply of it, so it promises to bypass central banks.
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It's also inherently damaging to the fabric of civil society. You think our wonderful investment bankers aren't paying their fair share of taxes? Bitcoin is pretty much designed for tax evasion. Moreover, The Gini coefficient of the Bitcoin economy is ghastly, and getting worse, to an extent that makes a sub-Saharan African kleptocracy look like a socialist utopia, and the "if this goes on" linear extrapolations imply that BtC will badly damage stable governance, not to mention redistributive taxation systems and social security/pension nets if its value continues to soar (as it seems designed to do due to its deflationary properties).
To editorialize briefly, BitCoin looks like it was designed as a weapon intended to damage central banking and money issuing banks, with a Libertarian political agenda in mind—to damage states ability to collect tax and monitor their citizens financial transactions. Which is fine if you're a Libertarian, but I tend to take the stance that Libertarianism is like Leninism: a fascinating, internally consistent political theory with some good underlying points that, regrettably, makes prescriptions about how to run human society that can only work if we replace real messy human beings with frictionless spherical humanoids of uniform density (because it relies on simplifying assumptions about human behaviour which are unfortunately wrong).
TL:DR; the current banking industry and late-period capitalism may suck, but replacing it with Bitcoin would be like swapping out a hangnail for Fournier's gangrene. (NSFL danger: do not click that link)
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Damnit, the NSFL warning goes BEFORE the link, not afterwards...
:shaking: :eek2: :(
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Gamers are feeling the bad effects from this. It bump up the price of Radeon cards, some by $100.
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I have seen worse things from crash documentaries. That is nothing.
I have not had much of an opinion on Bitcoin, other than it felt too... unsafe to invest on. Seems I was right.
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Not many people here are aware of bitcoin mining, or interested at all though it already caught the attention of the central bank. On the other hand, the price of the hardware right here in Indonesia is not affected much. It gives me idea sometime, maybe I should buy some local brand R9 280X for IDR 3.8 million (around $360) and sell it on ebay for $400.
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Given that the value of bitcoin has had a rather sharp drop (again) (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/19/business/international/china-bitcoin-exchange-ends-renminbi-deposits.html?_r=0)
such correction
wow
good thing I now hold all my assets in dogecoins
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Gamers are feeling the bad effects from this. It bump up the price of Radeon cards, some by $100.
Yeah, online vendors are suddenly selling AMD's top three models at a much higher price then AMD themselves recommend. AMD is not happy about this situation at all, as they lose a significant edge over NVIDIA when it comes to the high end segment.
Hopefully the situation will have piped down next summer 0_o.
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Given that the value of bitcoin has had a rather sharp drop (again) (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/19/business/international/china-bitcoin-exchange-ends-renminbi-deposits.html?_r=0), Charlie Stross wrote an opinion piece (http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/12/why-i-want-bitcoin-to-die-in-a.html#more) about it, which I completely agree with.
Like all currency systems, Bitcoin comes with an implicit political agenda attached. Decisions we take about how to manage money, taxation, and the economy have consequences: by its consequences you may judge a finance system. Our current global system is pretty crap, but I submit that Bitcoin is worst.
...
Libertarians love it because it pushes the same buttons as their gold fetish and it doesn't look like a "Fiat currency". You can visualize it as some kind of scarce precious data resource, sort of a digital equivalent of gold. Nation-states don't control the supply of it, so it promises to bypass central banks.
...
It's also inherently damaging to the fabric of civil society. You think our wonderful investment bankers aren't paying their fair share of taxes? Bitcoin is pretty much designed for tax evasion. Moreover, The Gini coefficient of the Bitcoin economy is ghastly, and getting worse, to an extent that makes a sub-Saharan African kleptocracy look like a socialist utopia, and the "if this goes on" linear extrapolations imply that BtC will badly damage stable governance, not to mention redistributive taxation systems and social security/pension nets if its value continues to soar (as it seems designed to do due to its deflationary properties).
To editorialize briefly, BitCoin looks like it was designed as a weapon intended to damage central banking and money issuing banks, with a Libertarian political agenda in mind—to damage states ability to collect tax and monitor their citizens financial transactions. Which is fine if you're a Libertarian, but I tend to take the stance that Libertarianism is like Leninism: a fascinating, internally consistent political theory with some good underlying points that, regrettably, makes prescriptions about how to run human society that can only work if we replace real messy human beings with frictionless spherical humanoids of uniform density (because it relies on simplifying assumptions about human behaviour which are unfortunately wrong).
TL:DR; the current banking industry and late-period capitalism may suck, but replacing it with Bitcoin would be like swapping out a hangnail for Fournier's gangrene. (NSFL danger: do not click that link)
I dont think his tax evasion concerns are ultimately a very good point. Bitcoin could indeed threaten present income/sales tax systems that rely on perfect knowledge about citizen's transactions if it spreads, but things like land value or property tax would be unaffected by it. If push comes to shove, government will cancel income/sales tax and ramp up those alternative taxes that dont need to take into account your personal transactions or currency you use. Its not true that Bitcoin economy would be inherently untaxable. It just requires different tax approaches than a present fiat economy.
Even with BTC, there is ultimately not much you can do to protect your wealth from government taxation because it has monopoly on force in the area you live in. Worst case scenario: Government takes some of the things you buy with your "untaxable" BTCs and sells them back to obtain currency.
I have read Accelerando from Stross, and I am pretty surprised such transhumanist is hostile towards the idea of cryptocurrencies.
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He says in the article that he has nothing against cryptocurrencies, just Bitcoin and its political underpinnings.
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He says in the article that he has nothing against cryptocurrencies, just Bitcoin and its political underpinnings.
I dont think there can be a cryptocurrency that does not share the problems for the present tax system he talks about (pseudonymity is an intergal part of the cryptocurrency concept), so criticism of Bitcoin in that issue is criticism of the cryptocurrencies in general. Its true though that cryptocurrency does not have to be deflationary, that part of his criticism is true and can be fixed by some Bitcoin successor cryptocurrency (indeed, there is already MemoryCoin running which has eternal 1% annual inflation).
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I dont think his tax evasion concerns are ultimately a very good point. Bitcoin could indeed threaten present income/sales tax systems that rely on perfect knowledge about citizen's transactions if it spreads, but things like land value or property tax would be unaffected by it. If push comes to shove, government will cancel income/sales tax and ramp up those alternative taxes that dont need to take into account your personal transactions or currency you use. Its not true that Bitcoin economy would be inherently untaxable. It just requires different tax approaches than a present fiat economy.
That's true, but it's also irrelevant: Tracking property is infinitely harder than tracking income, any government that tries to finance itself by property taxes alone would have to be massively more intrusive about it than what we are used to. That is not likely to go over well with the populace, I imagine.
I have read Accelerando from Stross, and I am pretty surprised such transhumanist is hostile towards the idea of cryptocurrencies.
You haven't read anything by him since, have you? He has pretty much sworn off the singularitarian mindset in recent years.
Also, as PH said, it's not the concept of Cryptocurrencies that he attacks, it's the specific implementation called Bitcoin that he sees as problematic.
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You haven't read anything by him since, have you? He has pretty much sworn off the singularitarian mindset in recent years.
Yes, I have read nothing from him since he released Accelerando. Didnt know that.
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Must admit, when I first heard of Bitcoin, the concept kind of reminded me of the SETI program I used to run in the background on my old computer years ago, which crunched data in the computers spare time to help find alien life. The weird bit is, even then I felt I had more chance of finding alien life with SETI than actually making a meaningful profit from Bitcoin.
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good thing I now hold all my assets in dogecoins
How does one pronounce "dogecoin"?
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First part "doge"
Second part "coin"
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is there a corgi on the coin?
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a shiba inu, but yes.
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il wait for kitty coin thank you.