And I think the root cause of that is that productivity growth in areas needed for basic survival - housing, health care, not getting screwed (legal) - hasn't grown nearly as fast as productivity in consumer goods. Combined with population growth and the entry of the developing world into the developed world, it means that more people are increasingly chasing the same limited pool of houses and doctors, and basically all disposable income goes to them. The focus on get-rich-quick schemes is a rational reaction to being stuck in a game of musical chairs where there are not enough chairs to go around.
You are _supposed_ to buy and hold Bitcoin for a long time, because Bitcoin is most important where it gives you an alternative when government money is poor (or even just as a threat to governments that are making monetary decisions - they need to know that their population has a viable alternative if their currency doesn't add enough value).
That necessarily drives a big focus on price.
"The market structure is fundamentally built on layers of intermediaries and settlement of both securities and payments happen on a delayed net settlement basis. By contrast in crypto, the markets are decentralized, no layers of intermediaries, settlement happens on a real time gross settlement basis..."
That is, the size of the population at which the welfare/wealth of the median individual is maximized.
Given that, as you say, prime land, prime housing, prime infrastructure, prime tourist destinations don't easily scale, yet more people enable better technologies/more efficient production of other consumer goods and services.
Have too few people (in the extreme - a dozen), and you cannot have many nice things - not enough people to create nice art, build houses and cars and computers. Have too many (in the extreme - 100 billion), and there is too much competition for the same houses and tourist spots and what not.
There are quite a few fields you could at least slash in half overnight too. Bureaucracy is one: here (small European country) we have way too many managers and people that are only there to move boxes around and cause communication overhead to explode, offering practically no benefit whatsoever.
I look back at things you could buy 30,40,50 years ago, much of it sucks and doesn’t compare to what you find today. Back then you didn’t need much money because there wasn’t much to buy. I look at the ads and they’re garbage, not engaging at all and doesn’t convince me to want the product. And because people weren’t posting pics of things they purchased to some social media, seeing something cool that I might want to buy usually only happened when going over to a friends house, or seeing a random passerby in the streets. And that meant those people were usually close to your own economic class, so the items weren’t out of your league.
All this is actually starting to make me doubt global warming. The banks certainly never gave a damn about global warming before. Do I think that people in power suddenly became more altruistic over the past few years? No, from my experience, they became much more selfish! The whole timing with Greta Thunberg media hype followed by COVID19 then multi-trillion dollar bailouts followed by talks of 'green new deals' and the great reset (which is actually just a continuation of existing policies; not a reset by any definition of the word) is starting to all look a bit too convenient.
I've seen first hand how money can corrupt everything. So I'm wondering if it is the science which is attracting the money or the money which is attracting the 'science'. All the climate models are oversimplified and phony; it's pseudoscience... They have tens of thousands of different models and each year they cherry-pick the ones which guessed correctly... Then they keep switching to newer models which keeps proving them right claiming that they did so to keep up with technology (of course not because they were running out of correct old models to cherry pick from)... It's a joke.
It's a way to justify why we should all be playing the game of musical chairs instead of the game of 'make more chairs' or even 'make more chairs, but each person should only have one chair'.
It all stinks like corruption. If you really wanted to solve global warming, the best solution would be to limit population growth, you could just give people tax incentives to have fewer children. Could be implemented as UBI: You get less basic income if you have more children. That is a much simpler and fairer solution and doesn't require deceiving billions of people with an epic global monetary ponzi scheme. Also we could get rid of useless bureaucratic jobs which are making the lives of billions of people miserable.
You just need a handful of people to independently see a few opportunities to profit from different activities (which are related in non-obvious ways) and together they can effect great malice without any single individual being aware of their collective malice.
The Upton Sinclair principle ensures that the perpetrators of malice are not aware of it: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
Only the victims of malice can see it as such, the perpetrators are the last to see it.
Just wanted to add that the track record of predictions about the environment doesn‘t shine a bright light on the (popular) science in the ways you mentioned. Just have a look at the club of rome report. When a part of science gets overly politicised you should get wary.
Though I still have a lot of hope that the community can steer in the right direction."
He has worked with the UN world food program, and posts a lot of material on voting, economic fairness, and social aspects of blockchain in general. It seems like he is genuinely interested in using blockchain for general societal good, rather than just speculative price chasing.
The reasoning is Ethereum is an early project, its design is highly centralized like a startup because very few people have the convictions and breadth of knowledge that Vitalik and co. possess. It's aspirations are not the same as Bitcoin: Bitcoin wants to provide value by being irrefutable property. Ethereum wants to be the world computer.
Ethereum's technical complexity makes Bitcoin look like a Ford Model T, while Ethereum is trying to be a space ship with warp speed capability. Obviously it is not the within the spirit of blockchains to conduct a rollback to save people's funds from hackers. But at that early stage, it might hurt adoption more than help if people get burned so badly. If we look at the tradeoffs, I think its worth it. If people prefer absolute immutability, they can use Ethereum Classic.
Bitcoin people will object and say that was a bug with the blockchain itself. However, sample code on ethereum.org had vulnerabilities similar to TheDAO's bug, so arguably it was a platform issue on Ethereum as well.
There have been large thefts from contracts since then, including a >$100M theft from Parity, the most popular client at the time. Parity made several attempts to get another fork to recover their funds, and they were roundly rejected by the community.
>Bitcoin people will object and say that was a bug with the blockchain itself. However, sample code on ethereum.org had vulnerabilities similar to TheDAO's bug, so arguably it was a platform issue on Ethereum as well.
I think the main difference here was that bitcoin never had a "code is law" belief, whereas ethereum did.
It was also necessary for success, but the Bitcoin community has little grounds for moral superiority here.
1) There wasn't a rollback of the blockchain - the method to fix this was an irregular state change (I.e - at block z, change balance at address x to address y). This was only possible because the nature of the attack left all of the compromised funds locked in place for 30 days. Arguably, if it required a rollback of the blockchain, people probably wouldn't have gone along with it. (Though node operators and miners may still have as evidenced by the bitcoin supply bug and rollback in 2010)
2) The funds in the DAO at the time were roughly 14% of the total supply at the time. This is ~1.5x the amount of ether currently custodied by the largest ether custodians today.
3) The common argument of this event being a slippery slope and that it would lead to frequent recovery of hacked funds has turned out to be false.
4) Since the state change was introduced as a software upgrade, node operators (mining pools & infrastructure providers) all had to opt into the change - which a large majority did. This would indicate that most organizations and individuals were either in favor of this solution or were apathetic to the solution
The reasons for it, even on their own, all make a lot of sense:
- Ethereum has always wanted to move to Proof of Stake, a move that would have been impossible if 25% of the networks funds were suddenly in the hands of a nefarious actor.
- The DAO was intended to seed development into projects that would benefit ethereum and the blockchain space as a whole. It was an incredible amount of capital that was all intended to help evolve the network. Losing all this capital and momentum would have been detrimental to that goal.
- The DAO was arguably an unlicensed security and losing the funds of that many investors would have been a problem for many who had a hand in building it. By returning investments, they basically made this a non-issue.
So again, do I agree with the choice? Absolutely not, you should not proclaim "code is law!" until it's inconvenient for you. Did they have a choice? No, the roll-back was inevitable as soon as the DAO contract was deployed.
This was quietly slipped through with no debate. ETH shouldn't be trusted.
Issuance right now is 2 ETH/block. The white paper just promised 5 ETH/block forever.
So in relation (for this particular scenario) the USD is undergoing hyperdeflation..?
Whatever you call it the psychological effect with computers is the same as with a rising bitcoin price - you get more bang for the buck the longer you hold off on your purchase.
Relative to computers/processing power, yes, although you generally wouldn't describe it that way, since USD is (comparatively) stable with respect most other stores of value - it's computers that are changing in value, so it's computers that should be described as undergoing inflation.
Relative to (the relevant average of) other stores of value, dollars are undergoing inflation, just more slowly than computers.
Edit for a bit more clarity: Inflation / Deflation is relative to a "base asset" which is considered unchanged in value. For USD this is normally a standard basket of assets (foreign currencies or a "market basket").
Exactly. Similarly, if you buy a dollar, its value will drop (though not as quickly).
OTOH, bitcoins are the opposite of both dollars and computers: bitcoins are deflationary, and rise in value. This is a terrible property for a currency, since it encourages speculation and hording in preference to circulation.
The truth is excitement and hype around price is the lowest common denominator for people interested in cryptocurrency so naturally it would be the most visible topic.
Tech around this is still very... technical, young non-vital, niche.
I understand why people worry and even discard the value of price-obsession, but (at least for bitcoin) price of the token (along with other variables that indicate adoption) is crucial for security and growth of the platform.
Even Satoshi recognized that hype-cycles would be important for adoption of bitcoin.
Echoing this, I'm involved in several more technical cryptocurrency groups, and there is little reference to the price, even today. Pretty much all of the discussion is around the technology itself, and what it can do.
[0] https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/14/business/mastercard-visa-disc...
> We can argue about whether or not all of the opportunities are a good thing for society or not, but crypto does solve a problem for them.
Agreed. I'd argue that being able to buy drugs online is a great solution, but there are good arguments against it as well.
Crypto is also immune to confiscation of funds, due to whatever reasons (tax fraud investigation, whatever), this can also be argued whether it's a good thing or not. Many countries have banks and governments that most certainly can't be trusted.
The bottom line with crypto is what I would expect Americans in general to appreciate - freedom/choice.
(a) changed its policies radically within days, spurred by the threat of being dropped by credit card processors (thus demonstrating that they had no faith in cryptocurrency picking up nearly sufficient slack).
(b) those changes were almost universally considered to be for the better (a crackdown on non-consensual porn), so if cryptocurrency HAD succeeded in stepping in, it arguably would not have been a social good.
That being said, I think that major Bitcoin forums like /r/bitcoin serve a good purpose because it acts as a containment board for people who just want to talk about the price.
The price of Bitcoin is largely irrelevant given how interesting the tech. that powers it actually is.
Bitcoin is a fluid that aims to power a hydraulic machine, and once Lightning gets to where it should be (it's been a while, yes :\), my bet is that many of the naysayers will have no choice but to take a second look at it.
The rise in price is just a side-effect.
It was all about adoption - new merchants accepting it, new people spending it, new use-cases enabled by its peer-to-peer electronic cash and immutable and permissionless record-keeping functionality, etc.
Everything changed after the 'purge', where the head moderator took a harsh stance against members trying to build consensus for a hard fork that would help realize Bitcoin's potential as a global peer-to-peer electronic cash, and started banning people left and right. The Bitcoin subreddit turned into a full time price pumping forum after that.
Ironically, Bitcoin saw more rapid price growth before 2015, when the primary topic of discussion was consciously steered away from price, than after.
The serious crypto currency developers out there who are working on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Stellar, and a few others are definitely focused on how the technology can be useful for society and they have been so for years.
That's why their prices are going up (over time, not today specifically)... because a lot of people with a lot of money see the potential value of holding them.
But yes in general 99% of the "community" you see in crypto related social media spheres only cares about price and profit, I would agree with that statement.
But you are very incorrect if you believe that is the only topic of conversation. Perhaps using /r/Bitcoin is not a valid sample size.
In my day job, I'm neck deep in blockchain and cryptocurrency use cases - and there are conferences, webinars, real-world enterprise adoption, etc.
The blockchain is a critical part of the infrastructure because the hosts need to be paid for the services they provide, but as untrusted entities we need assurances from them. Also, if you don't have a blockchain in the middle you need something like PayPal in the middle, which is a single point of failure.
Just saying "this will help the poor because they have nothing" over and over with no real plan, let alone action, doesn't make it true.
One guy I argued with once told me about him donating his bitcoins to buy pizzas for people who needed it. Which, cool. That's awesome. But the donation argument makes it sound like people dont donate dollars or euros. Or even like theres some grand mechanism that makes bitcoin better than traditional currencies... even though crypto gets converted to traditional currency so it can become useful.
I used to work at a bitcoin company, and we had large user communities in countries where the local currency was subject to very high inflation, and access to stabler currencies (like dollars or euros) was severely limited. We were actually helping proper deal with real problems, and we were proud of it.
Then the investment-tool-for-rich-white-kids mentality took over. :(
Look, I'm not trying to be a dick, but bitcoin was sold on the lie that it helps poor people. You're not wrong for wanting to help poor people. But people need to come to the realization that bitcoin has been Theranos-like the whole time. It's a waste of time if you're goal is to help the poor.
At any rate, the price instability is exactly that — unstable. It’s not systematic hyperflation. For when you don’t have access to conventional forex, it’s better than nothing.
> You're not wrong for wanting to help poor people. But people need to come to the realization that bitcoin has been Theranos-like the whole time. It's a waste of time if you're goal is to help the poor.
Yeah. That’s a large part of why I used to work at a Bitcoin company.
The local regime cannot take your Bitcoins away from you, which it could by hyperinflation, reform etc with the traditional currency. In other words, the trust in the owner of the currency is in fact higher.
Local gangsters as well, cannot take your Bitcoins away from you as easily. You have a higher chance at keeping your stash.
I can see what you're doing, you won't get away with this.
While I get it's beneficial for average citizens looking to save a bit on tax/duty fees... it's a lot like wearing a condom when both of you dont care to know each other's name. You have that practice for a reason.
I think it's important to separate Bitcoin itself from the general concept of blockchains as a new type of data structure. Personally I think the real benefits to society will be had by applying Bitcoin's concepts to brand new unrelated things, and hopefully Bitcoin mindshare can help spark that creativity in people. To me, someone saying "The Blockchain" is like someone saying "The Linked-List". They're not thinking about it generically yet.
It is more like a discord server than it is like a data structure.
change my mind with an actual existing application that's not done by anything else.