Bitcoin is also a speculative bubble. It has no use value. It is not in any way living up to its original goal as electronic cash. (Contrast transaction volume and adoption with MPesa, for example.) Its main practical uses are speculation and some financial crime.
Well, I left one out. It's also great for market manipulation. The recent runup has been driven by "the largest fraud since Madoff": https://www.kalzumeus.com/2019/10/28/tether-and-bitfinex/
Eventually, like all frauds, you run out of dumb new money and accounting chicanery. That day will come: https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2020/12/13/tether-is-to...
I only have a notion that ignorance is ignorant.
I can back up all my arguments with facts, information, research study and understanding.
Your articles on Tether is just red herring fallacy since your original argument has no merit.
As for Bitcoins uses, there are many. For instance I recently acquired large amounts of bullion at a steep discount via bitcoin. Why? Because it’s cheaper and less trouble transaction wise for the bullion seller. All above board. All taxes reported. Nothing criminal.
Defi loans allow collateralization of crypto assets. People in business are currently using them to secure extremely large multimillion dollar notes in minutes to do business transactions. I’ve been in the rooms when these occurred. Again all above board, all tax legal.
Simply using banks for certain situations are a pain.
Clearly you’ve never experienced such situations, hence why it seems a scam to you.
I guess you’re smarter than me and Elon Musk. I would absolutely believe it if you had facts and arguments that didn’t have logical fallacies.
There’s political arguments on both sides of the crypto currency debate. Your arguments seem politically motivated. I have no political agenda.
The discovery of fission changed the world. There was no keeping it under wraps or going backwards after the physics were discovered.
The ability to transfer and store wealth online via blockchain and consensus algorithms will exists from now on. There’s no going back. It’s simply a fact of information science and physics.
Remember this discussion. Think on it when in 30 year’s cryptocurrency is considered a norm, and when multiple governments finally transition to digital currencies.
Or you know... you can quote more non relevant, poorly educated sources to support a point you wish for. It’s like the old timers laughing that the internet was just a play thing in the 90s... Now if the internet went down it would be a national emergency.
Oh... and here’s an actual intelligent article from a fairly respected source rather than some random blogger. Here’s the important point
“Many people think that bitcoin is a bubble, and that's predicted on the concept that bitcoin has no value. But there's reason to believe that that just isn't true. By definition, bitcoin is scarce. And the cryptocurrency may have utility as a superior way to store and exchange wealth.”
Edit: I also hope you understand that this debate is an intellectual exercise, not a personal issue. So I am somewhat annoyed that you would call my comments tedious :). No one should accept ignorance. And disagreement is wonderful, but it should be an educated discourse. Silent downvoting or flagging of things that are unpleasant isn’t the way forward. I tend to only downvote comments that are provably factually incorrect, make comments that are based on ignorance or misunderstanding, non constructive, or outright hostile.
If you truly are interested in open understanding, it’s not a bad thing to say “I am ignorant on this subject.” In the past when I have said that, I have learned a lot.
Cryptocurrency and Bitcoin causes emotions or brings up political divides for a lot of people... I can only begin to guess at the reasons why. But burying your head in the sand or listening to the “bubble” crowd chorus is doing yourself a disservice.
That you think a pseudo-debate is a good idea explains why you're flooding the zone with nonsense, condescension, and a refusal to even look at what you're saying and how you're saying it. Which is indeed tedious. Maybe you don't have any better ways to spend your time, but I sure do.
Damn... guess that Socrates was a dominance driven asshole then huh?
It’s only “dominance driven” if you take it personally. If instead you realize that strong conversations are a way to elucidate clear logical thought and arguments on both sides, then you see it as a tool for understanding.
> condescension, and a refusal to even look at what you're saying and how you're saying it
That’s not me. I’ve been adding to the discussion with fact, and discourse. You’re the one who has quickly taken to dismissive ad hominem attacks.
> Maybe you don't have any better ways to spend your time, but I sure do
Says the man who’s cultivated a karma of 38876. You clearly spend wayyyyyyy more time on here than I do. Again, you turned this personal quickly... why?
Look if your so badly triggered by a discussion on HN about bitcoins, to the point where your thinking this is condescending and dominance driven on my half then do yourself a favor and read this book or at least the article.
The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intention... https://www.amazon.com/dp/0735224897/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_awdb_im...
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-cod...
And maybe that’s condescending? Or maybe I’m trying to actually help (which I am).
You don’t know me... I don’t know you. But I recognize areas when I know less than someone else and I open myself up to it. Did your teachers in school “condescend to you”?
Reread all the discussions and you’ll simply see that I attempted to shine information and fact where there was ignorance.
Not every human being has equal knowledge and understanding of all fact. I know for a fact I have a greater understanding of this than you do.
And when you post ignorant things, or post conspiracy theories then I respond in kind. And yes, I do have better things to do. But honestly it pains me there is so much ignorance, and conspiracy stuff online rather, retweeted and reposted without thought, than actual facts.
If enough people sat down with those Trump supporters who marched on the capital and actually condescended to them for a bit to get them to face reality and fact, you could get through to some of them. Not all. But some. And that’s the start of change.
So which kind of person are you. Do you take criticism and seek more knowledge, or will you come away from this never questioning yourself and only seeing condescension in differing opinions?
Good luck, and if you believe it or not, I do wish you the best.
It doesn’t matter if there are a finite supply of integers. I’m guessing you are alluding to being able to “print more Bitcoin” by moving decimal places or changing code or some such. That’s probably not going to happen, since you’d have to convince 51% of Bitcoin holders to dilute their own stake, since that’s how the consensus algorithm works. And if you don’t, we’ll then you have a fork, and as we’ve seen with Bitcoin cash etc, those typically don’t hold value, because fundamentally the value of a store of wealth is that everyone agrees that it’s a store of wealth.
No one ever agreed or assumed beanie babies or tulips were stores of wealth. Those were speculative bubbles based on the assumption that tomorrow you could sell it for more.
Bitcoin doesn’t need to be worth more tomorrow to make it valuable. It simply needs to hold wealth in a convenient, transferable, counterfeit proof manner that’s also not easily manipulated. And it does all of those things very very well. Ethereum likewise stores value, and also permits useful decentralized finance systems that also provide for storage and transfer of wealth.
If you told dollar holders 100 years ago, that the money in their pocket would only be good based on the good faith of the US Federal Reserve they’d look at you cock eyed, because back then the dollar was gold backed. To the average joe, that gave them confidence in its value.
And don’t get me wrong I’m not a gold bug that thinks we should go back to the gold standard. Just the opposite. Instead what the US did was brilliant. They simply said “trust” “believe” that the dollar is valuable and will remain valuable.
And it’s been incredibly successful, again because it comes down to faith in the ability to hold wealth and have others respond in kind when transferring that asset.
So do you believe the US dollar will hold value over the next 20 years? If you base it on the word of the government then that’s not as different as the the word of millions of Bitcoin miners. (Democratic consensus) If you base it instead on the value of the underlying economy using the dollar as a wealth exchange medium, well then again, Bitcoin currently does 87 billion USD worth of transactions per day.
So it should be pretty clear that it’s incredibly different than tulips or beanie babies. If it’s not clear, I’d research a little more about the concepts of wealth historically, along with macro economics and monetary policies the world over.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Store_of_value
If you think Bitcoin is an odd thing to believe in to store value and wealth, check out this island that uses giant stones...
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/02/15/131934618/the-...