iexplainbtc

What I meant is that it's not a hassle free process. You'll be reported to the IRS (or equivalent) and even be asked to bring an "approved intermediary" in some EU countries. I wish I was making this up.

Hard and soft real time depend entirely on the context. An example of hard real time is flight control. The whole sensor - actuator - decision process must happen within the given threshold.

You can't go to a bank, ask them to give you all your money in cash and hide it under a mattress (not in most countries at least).

You can go to Coinbase and simply transfer all your funds to your own wallet in a matter of seconds.

I don't understand all this confusion about what RT means, this is the definition of a RT system. If you can't complete the computation within the given deadline whatever partial result is discarded and the computation starts from scratch.

Decoding video and interactive rendering is a great example of an RT system. If you can't construct a frame within (usually) 16 ms you skip it and start with the next one.

These live streams are anxiety inducing for us, I can only imagine how they must feel!

That live stream was epic! It was great to see them so happy :)

Proof of work was not invented (or envisioned to be used with digital currencies) by Satoshi. It's been around since 1993. I can't really find a reference to prove what I claimed so I would agree I might have been misled to think that. But the truth is that it doesn't matter whether it was taken into account or not, what matters is that you can mine Bitcoin (or do any PoW) using untapped renewable resources (which is why big mining operations are based in places with abundant geothermal/hydropower and very little, if any, population) but you wouldn't be able to do much else in those places.

The environmental impact of "Proof of Work" could have been a problem but the inventors did think about that and realized that mining can be done pretty much anywhere, using renewable resources that would otherwise be untapped. As usual the ethical burden should be on the user of the tool, not the tool itself.

In the long run miners who do not use untapped (cheaper) renewables are going to be priced out, it just takes some time. That said other protocols much less computationally intensive, such as "Proof of Stake", are starting to be tested.

Anyhow, good idea NVIDIA!

> How's GME performed as a store of value since WSB pumped? It's just as scarce as it was 10 days ago, but apparently not guaranteed to go up after all...

I was simply responding to what you said earlier:

> The same does not apply to Bitcoins, because unlike Bitcoins, people hold necklaces for the intrinsic pleasure of having a shiny necklace.

It does, instead, apply.

Again, I apologize. It was a knee jerk reaction to being told I don't understand something without proof. I believe that also violates numerous guidelines:

> Be kind. Don't be snarky.

> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

And I disagree with:

> You've crossed noticeably into that here [emphasis mine]

I've only done that in 2 comments towards the same user who also behaved similarly towards me. All my other comments have been polite, constructive and filled with references.

Apologies @maclured. Thank you @dang!

> That energy is used in production, not securing the existing stock of gold.

Safes and transportation equipment have to be built too. And we already have layer 2 infrastructure that minimizes the amount of energy spent to secure transactions on chain. It needs a lot of work, sure, but it's not unfeasible for Bitcoin to use a fraction of the energy used today, at some point.

Furthermore mining gold requires mining equipment to use whatever source of energy is nearby or ship expensive tanks of fuel and/or batteries. With Bitcoin you could set up a mining rig where there's a source of energy that would otherwise be left unused. Meaning we could be using a lot of renewable resources that would otherwise be wasted to create and exchange value.

> I'm sorry to hear you find the aesthetic preferences of virtually every culture in history and the role they have played in promoting gold as a symbol of wealth laughable.

I don't and you took what I said out of context. Of course aesthetic properties are important. But quartz is arguably "prettier" than gold in most cultures. Gold is scarcer. That's why only considering the aesthetics is laughable.

> And yet gold necklaces of a given design are invariably more scarce in supply than Bitcoin!

Gold necklaces of a certain brand. Not any custom designed necklace. It's an important distinction. A brand is a very real and important source of intangible value. And a brand can be related to a company's IP or to other less predictable events (think Banksy).

> because unlike Bitcoins, people hold necklaces for the intrinsic pleasure of having a shiny necklace.

You seem to be unaware of how many people hold Bitcoin just because they like doing so (think GME and WSB). A strong niche of Bitcoin holders has ties with libertarianism and, therefore, attributes a non-zero intangible value to it in terms of it being an instrument against totalitarianism and governments in general.

You fail to understand 3 things:

1. There is no such thing as "intrinsic value" and I explained clearly why in a different reply to your comment.

2. What goes up is the value of land, not houses. If houses themselves were valuable movable homes would also increase in value. They don't. The reason why land goes up in value is that (residential) land is scarce.

3. Gold isn't a safe haven because of its track record (in fact gold is relatively volatile [0] and if you had bought gold in 1980 you'd have lost money today, adjusted to inflation), it's considered a safe haven because it's the only commodity that has a historically predictable stock to flow and can (and normally does) act as a hedge against inflation. Bitcoin does that and more.

> It's an early-stage speculative asset IMO

So was gold in its early stages as a store of value. So is any valuable company's stock in the first few months after IPO. Speculation is uncorrelated with the lack of fundamental valuable features.

At this point I'm not sure your intent is to try to understand more about Bitcoin (or economy, for that matter) but rather to force a narrative that isn't at all obvious, unlike what you're trying to imply. And I'm not saying you're wrong, rather that you're unable to corroborate your statements with data and facts.

"And for that reason, I'm out".

[0] https://www.macrotrends.net/1333/historical-gold-prices-100-...

> The very fact it can be fabricated into something of value gives it some intrinsic value.

That's a plain contradiction. Oil is valuable because there is demand for products manufactured with it. In a world where there's no demand for gasoline, plastic or any other derivative of oil the "intrinsic value" of oil is zero, which proves there is no such thing as intrinsic value that isn't relative to a market.

Just to be clear we're discussing commodities and not company stocks, for which there is a very specific definition of "intrinsic value", according to fundamental analysis at least.

I'm pretty sure you're the one who's confused, but ok.

> Gold does not take the electricity resources of a large country to render it secure and make transactions possible.

Except it does [0].

> Gold is pretty to look at and can be made into jewellery, not intrinsically worthless.

The first argument is laughable, the second is simply incorrect. Oil is intrinsically worthless. It's worth something only if you can turn it into fuel, plastic or some other product for which there is demand. Same goes for gold.

And although it's true that you can turn a piece of gold into a piece of jewelry that piece of jewelry will decrease in value over time unless it gains intangible value because of its history. Try buying a gold necklace and selling it the next day at the same value.

Nothing has "intrinsic" value. All value is relative.

[0] https://medium.com/@hillpot/bitcoin-vs-gold-which-hurts-the-....

Most subjectively "useless" objects are used as a store of value. Only 7/8% of gold is used in the manufacturing industry, the rest is sitting there with no active purpose other than existing. Same goes for collectibles (you can't eat or live in a baseball card or a valuable artwork).

Also the "live in" is a big misconception. Real estate doesn't increase in value. What does is the land on top of which it sits. A house depreciates over time exactly like a car (prefabs on rented land are a great example of that).

The only question that matters is: is Bitcoin better than commodity X? Where X can be gold, silver, oil or whatever else. And if the answer is yes there's no reason to believe it wouldn't take over X in terms of market capitalization (and, therefore, value).

> all they have are a load of strings of characters

Most things valuable nowadays are strings of characters. It's not the byte sequence that's valuable, it's what it represents. Bitcoin is, conceptually speaking, an asset that is orders of magnitude better than most existing financial instruments and commodities. The fact that it's implemented using bits instead of atoms is completely irrelevant.

I really don't understand this urge of breaking down anything digital into its fundamental units to try and diminish its value. It's the equivalent of evaluating anything in the physical world as "just a bunch of atoms".

Extremely unlikely. Bitcoin has been around 12 years and it's just now starting to go mainstream. Most people still have no idea what it even is. You can count the number of publicly traded companies that have Bitcoin in their treasury on 2 hands and that's only destined to increase.

I can't give you an actual estimate of how long it will take for Bitcoin to lose its market share but I can confidently say it will take decades. At very least until it replaces a good chunk of gold's market cap.

Yep and that's Bitcoin's network effect. There is demand for Bitcoin. 2017 was the year of retail interest, 2021 is the year of institutional interest. It's easy to see that the price is now uncorrelated with the retail interest, using Google Trends as an example. [0]

> there is no particular reason to believe that people will be more willing to pay over $45k to update ledgers to indicate possession of a particular alphanumeric string in a couple of decades' time than they are now

Absolutely. Nobody can know with certainty what will happen but if you compare Bitcoin with something like gold you immediately realize that Bitcoin is better in any possible way. There is literally no reason to think that Bitcoin won't replace gold in terms of market capitalization (except for the 7.5% actually used in manufacturing) [1].

[0] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&ge...

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/299609/gold-demand-by-in...

I'd rather invest into something that is highly volatile but almost certainly appreciates over time rather than something that depreciates at a predictable yet increasing rate.

We could discuss the fact that BTC might be overpriced or underpriced, nobody really knows. But that it's going to go up in value (in terms of purchasing power) in the long term is, black swan events aside, almost a certainty because of its engineered stock to flow.

Scarcity is real whether it's physical or digital (as we've seen with art, collectibles or more recently NFTs). Gold is a good store of value because of historically predictable scarcity but it's not predictable with certainty. Bitcoin is. We'll know exactly how many bitcoins are in circulation 10 minutes, 10 days, 10 or even 100 years from now. If anything many will be lost, which will contribute to its scarcity.

Will Bitcoin be replaced by something else in the future? Almost certainly. But let's not forget that unbacked cash has been around for just half a century. Even if Bitcoin is replaced by something 50, 100 years from now that's plenty of time for a couple of generations to use it as a store of value (and payment system).