Unlike the things you pointed out, Bitcoin will never give dividends or have any assets sold at an auction. Instead it's a pyramid scheme, easily replaceable by any other shitcoin out there, and the value of it should be close to $1 or less.
> Unlike the things you pointed out, Bitcoin will never give dividends or have any assets sold at an auction.
Crypto allowed me to transfer my wealth across border and helped me survive while Visa blocked my cards and local banks harassed me with their KYC/AML requirements and creative nonsense based out of fear of the US and EU sanctions. The utility of that is much higher than any dividends.
> Instead it's a pyramid scheme, easily replaceable by any other shitcoin out there, and the value of it should be close to $1 or less.
Wow, shitcoins sound so much worse than pieces of paper that are propped up by a legal decree, which legitimacy rests solely on the monopoly on violence. Wait, does it actually sound worse?
I long suspected that "monopoly on violence" is a dog whistle. So I looked it up, and actually it's quite straightforward. If you think about the number of entities in a society that can legitimately control violence, the answer is either zero, one, or many. Zero is a pipe dream. Many is civil war. The only answer that makes sense is one. Thus "monopoly on violence" is just a scary sounding way of saying that a society has a government.
In my view, society is propped up by future expectations. This includes the value of government money.
Monopoly on violence is the defining property of the state according to Max Weber, one of the most famous sociologists. In what way is it a dog whistle?
Because it's only used by people in a tiny little political segment today - far-right-wing libertarians.
No one else denies this or doesn't believe it's true, I hasten to add. For most of us, we think that this is a good thing, but also such an obvious thing that it doesn't need to be mentioned.
The people who keep mentioning it are people who think it's a bad, bad thing. They want everyone to have access to violence at all times.
In the “jungle” you only own what you can protect. Even your life. Violence is natural. Non-violence, property rights and free trade is extremely unnatural, and requires a strong central authority to write the rules and impose them.
No. If your going to targrt political stratas, don't be narrow sighted.
The BLM and Antifa riots of "Defund the police" is exactly about the same concern, and supporters caused widespread violence to prove that point. There's a different reason, but many prominent Democrats urged those protests on, making it more broad than just some leftists commies.
The major difference is that BLM/antifa targeted local police with a national organization and got their way in many places, whereas conservatives are weary of the federal government are just some disorganized people that become easily targeted by the feds.
Do you think it’s bad to put a teenager in jail for an abortion they did after they had been raped? Or is it also a good (well, it is certainly lawful) use of state monopoly on violence?
There is a saying, an armed society is a polite society.
I have no idea where you came up with "Many is civil war". Quite the opposite. Civil war erupts when one entity has a monopoly on violence and enough people decide that they've had quite enough of that, thank you very much.
> There is a saying, an armed society is a polite society.
There are all sorts of sayings. Is this one true?
The United States is the most heavily armed country of any size in the world. It is also more heavily armed than any time in its past.
And yet politeness appears to be at an all-time low. Certainly, a lot of political figures say things that are just astonishingly rude and horrible and false, things that would have destroyed their careers even twenty years ago but seem to make them very popular today.
It seems that saying is wildly false.
> I have no idea where you came up with "Many is civil war".
Probably they are knowledgeable about history, as their statement is simply true.
> Civil war erupts when one entity has a monopoly on violence and enough people decide that they've had quite enough of that, thank you very much.
I'm baffled as to how this makes sense to you.
How exactly do these people "decide they have had enough of that" without abrogating the states monopoly on violence? Surely by the time you get to civil war, there are _two sides fighting_??
It's like you just cut and paste a lot of slogans and stop thinking critically there.
Yes crypto has the evil property of bypassing KYC/AML to allow peaceful citizens to escape genocidal kleptocratic governments who seek to draft you to go into war with a WWI era Mosin a feminine hygiene product as a first aid kit and an oversized pair of rotten boots. Once again crypto proves to do nothing but aid and abet criminals such as those who refuse to invade their neighbors.
You are being downvoted but the point you make stands: there are a lot of people here who will jump at the opertunity to proclaim that crypto's only use is a ponzy scheme. That claim is not only objectively false, but they way they usually phrase it also preemptively shuts down any chance proponents of either side coming closer to seeing how this tech is actually used.
Whether it be war, tyranny and unjust sanctions, crashing economies, or just avoiding the arbitrary and often unjust fees, rules, seizures, and bannings imposed by private payment networks and services like paypal or visa, humanity will always need way to exchange cash. I for one am glad crypto (as a means to transfer funds) exists, glad it will continue to exist, and will continue to support it in any way I can.
To me, what it provides to humanity far outweighs the negatives.
No, I think everyone agrees that "evading the law" is another feature of cryptocurrencies. We simply don't think this is a good feature.
Trillions of dollars are stolen from the people by money laundering and tax evasion every year, and cryptocurrencies are one of the ways this is accomplished.
Yes, some people live in countries where the law is hostile. However, your solution, "Let's evade all laws concerning money," is WORSE, not better.
Trillions of dollars are stolen by government officials wastefully spending taxes they collect via mechanisms of force and by people who classify as "money laundering" activities they don't like -- such as people who grow weed and then sell it to a willing adult buyer and have the nerve to actually clean the cash so it can be spent on stuff like buying baby formula or the rent.
If the argument is bad stuff possible then your argument is to abolish government.
We cannot presuppose that breaking the law is necessarily bad or that following the law is not bad.
The former is actually being used to run businesses and as long as the currency is not a demurrage currency, you are going to have to accept inflation as the thing that keeps money in circulation.
> The former is actually being used to run businesses
run businesses? to say nothing about whether those businesses are sustainable or actually generating wealth & human prosperity. if you look at all the worst aspects of the economy, they're based in expansionary monetary policy and high time preference
> inflation as the thing that keeps money in circulation
it keeps people spending money on usually wasteful things and incentivizes the consumption of cheap goods, if you want an economy built on prosperity and enduring goods, you need to actually incentivize saving (not wasteful consumerism)
Are you actually using BTC as currency? Have you done anything but traded it? We all know the answer--that's why this meta commentary on money is pointless and pathetic.
An interesting read of the quoted text since the topic that is supposedly being defended isn't even mentioned.
This is an attack on this whimsical philosophizing crypto-boosters use as a defense. No one cares about this "what is money" commentary. If you believe in your moon money so much why not just actually use it as money? Of course you'll have to lose those gainz but real money is just worthless paper right?
Btc is only valuable if you can exchange it to fiat, since your liabilities are still in fiat. You need fiat to buy groceries, pay mortgage, buy energy for mining etc…
> local banks harassed me with their KYC/AML requirements
So you use crypto to break the law, and you believe you are justified in doing that. Thing is, most of the people using crypto for crime are simply using it to not pay taxes.
> Wow, shitcoins sound so much worse than pieces of paper that are propped up by a legal decree, which legitimacy rests solely on the monopoly on violence. Wait, does it actually sound worse?
Yes, it absolutely does sound worse.
On one side, we have the United States - the largest economy in the history of the world, backed by the government with the largest income of any government in history, a court system, the police and their "monopoly on violence".
On the other side, you have a cryptocurrency backed by nothing, created by anonymous individuals, with no form of conflict resolution whatsoever.
Cryptocurrencies have been around for almost as long as the smart phone. You would think one or two of you would have taken even a first year economics course during this time.
> So you use crypto to break the law, and you believe you are justified in doing that. Thing is, most of the people using crypto for crime are simply using it to not pay taxes.
Using it for crime? That just makes crypto even more similar to traditional finance.
> Yes, it absolutely does sound worse.
So you think all countries should switch their currencies to the US dollar? Do you think it is just as good for countries to give up their financial sovereignty as it is for common people?
> Cryptocurrencies have been around for almost as long as the smart phone. You would think one or two of you would have taken even a first year economics course during this time.
I was a teaching assistant for a graduate course in macroeconomics in a top 50 department during my PhD. Arrow-Debreu and all that.
I don't think _anyone_ is against using cryptocurrencies as a way of transferring money. It doesn't make sense to transfer wealth via something that rapidly changes its value, right? Because means of transferring wealth requires preserving the value of the wealth. Bitcoin today does not preserve its value, as evident by the rapid decline in value in the past few days.
You are talking about shooting police officers, judges, law enforcement, and the people who support the law, as well as as their families.
I'm not going to pretend to be surprised - many American conservatives have expressed the same sentiments to me. However, I am surprised you post it in a public forum.
1. Can you point any company in recent history that went through bankruptcy/auction to pay is retail investor their money back... or for that matter, most tech companies with negative net income does not pay dividend either...
2. So called, "Money" does not pay dividend... does Gold pays dividend? now on the other hand, I can lend you BTC or Gold and ask you to pay me back the principle + interest on it in BTC/Gold etc so that is that... Fiat money can yield as it can be created of thin air, no actual work required (i.e. mining for Gold or BTC)
3. Any currency, company also can be replaced by something else out there but won't why? network effect, trust and liquidity matters...
> Money does pay "dividend" - it's called "interest".
Only if you lend it.
Money sitting around under a mattress tends to lose value due to inflation.
Actual specie, dug out of the ground, tends to hold its value, relatively speaking. Sure, their may be shocks like discovering a whole continent made of gold but those are pretty rare.
Bitcoin, who knows? It simply hasn’t been around long enough for its place on the money pyramid to be found.
2.a. Gold is an asset and doesn't need to pay dividends as it has intrinsic market value.
2.b. Loans and interest are contractual agreements, i.e. financial instruments unto themselves that generate value. Just because you get suckered into agreeing to a hobby money loan doesn't mean the hobby money has any value.
2.c. Variable cost doesn't equal value either. You can burn a stack of $100 bills but that doesn't mean that brief fire has any value, but it sure as shit didn't help the planet either.
What exactly is the point of this mental gymnastics? For all this talk, how much of your crypto have you actually used as currency to buy things with? 50%? 20%? The typical Bitcoin holder spends 0%. The haters aren't the barrier to your libertarian wonderland--it's the people who actually buy and HODL.
Art is another example. Art is just old school NFTs. Sure you could get the utility of the image for free, but the real value is in the artificial scarcity.
The real value of (some) art is in being able to artificially inflate the book value through sham transactions, then donate it to a charity for an income tax deduction worth more than the original acquisition price.
I am an art collector. None of it is rare or wildly expensive. Nor do I expect to resell any of it.
It might shock you to discover that I collect that art simply because I enjoyed looking at it and having it. I go to art galleries to see art that I do not own, not because of its financial value, but because I enjoyed looking at it.
The idea that art is exactly an precisely an investment vehicle is simply false to the fact. And honestly, I find it horrifying and empty.
Your smug statement presumes no one trades NFTs for the same reasons you do. You managed to make an economic observation into some personal emotional feely victim statement.
Personally I love looking at a nice shiny piece of gold and artfully stacked pile of $20s.
> The model employed by artists in the West, in collusion with collectors, was to create an artificial scarcity of their own products on the market. Thus they introduced editions that gained in importance with the appearance of video art, and the same model is being attempted in the realm of digital art. Having made an arrangement with agents and galleries, artists would limit the number of copies of their works (for example, by setting the limit at 10 original copies), and sometimes they would even establish a hierarchy among the limited number of copies. A certain number of copies would be signed by the artist, and they would command a higher price, usually being fewer in number than the unsigned ones. During the Golden Age of video art, that is, in the 1980s, there was almost a consensus in the mainstream art circles to the effect that the existence of an illegal copy was tantamount to a criminal offence, even though it was easier than ever to copy a video cassette. An artificial scarcity was sometimes created by limiting the number of screenings, so that a given video work was limited to, for example, 10 screenings in the whole world during a calendar year.
Thanks for finding the exception you need to prove your point, that must've taken a while. The argument that famous artists made a limited amount of art because there's only so much they could make in a lifetime is moot because of this one quintessential example of 1980's "video art" (those really go off the shelves at Sotheby's).
I mean it doesn't really take much time at all to find counter examples, does it? There's even a detailed page at Wikipedia with concrete examples, if you haven't ever heard of the concept of a limited or special edition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_edition
The very first paragraph of the page is helpful:
> The terms special edition, limited edition, and variants such as deluxe edition, or collector's edition, are used as a marketing incentive for various kinds of products, originally published products related to the arts, such as books, prints, recorded music and films, and videogames, but now including clothing, cars, fine wine, and whisky, among other products. A limited edition is restricted in the number of copies produced, although in fact the number may be very low or very high. Suzuki (2008) defines limited edition products as those “sold in a state that makes them difficult to obtain because of companies limiting their availability to a certain period, quantity, region, or channel"
And unlike those things, Bitcoin cannot be confiscated by the government, specially third world tyrannical governments that seem to always be trying their hardest to impoverish and screw those under their administration.
There's a major difference between confiscating something that they first have to get their hands on (physically or digitally) and confiscating something like your bank account which doesn't require more than a phone call.
See for example the Canadian government freezing bank accounts[0] of anyone trying to contribute to the vaccine mandate protests.
I guess he mostly means as a way to get around currency controls. Obviously if the government comes with the police you can be confiscated
But for example, Argentina has incredibly harsh currency controls, any freelancer or company that tries to export goods or services gets paid half the value per dollar and is forced to sell their dollars to the government
While companies can't really avoid it, most freelancers go around the control by using crypto and so can get the full value of their work
Crypto bros thrive in an extremely abnormal environment where violence is controlled and outsourced to a powerful central authority. Good thread on this:
It's true. It would be a lot more difficult with something like a privacy coin. Someone could write down a 12/13 word phrase as a hot wallet and have a cold wallet with a memorized phrase. No one knows how much are in either wallet or that the two are even linked.
Torture works a lot better if you know what you're looking for. With BTC you know exactly what it is you're looking for and how much. If all you know is they paid with a privacy coin then you have no idea how many wallets they have or how much money, there's no more advantage to giving up 2 wallets than 1 as there's no reason for an attacker to not think there's a 3rd you're holding out on if they didn't believe you the first time -- the options would be give up everything and get blow torched or give up only some and get blow torched
> Bitcoin cannot be confiscated by the government, specially third world tyrannical governments that seem to always be trying their hardest to impoverish and screw those under their administration.
Maybe so, but there was another article not long ago talking about how, while originally bitcoin was expected to act like gold - ie go up when people worried about the stability of the financial system, what happened instead is that it's basically just correlated with the stock market. So in that light, the GP comment is useful context. Even if you think that long term it's a pyramid scheme, its short term performance is basically explained by the stock market, and is not evidence of the scheme unravelling, or whatever you might call it
- BTC was originally intended to support smart contracts
- but people pitched “digital gold” because they didn’t understand that vision
- then the capability was removed for “safety”
- and then later ETH came along (with a different model), but one that still is too costly for general compute trade and which is inflated by the gimped-BTC bubble
- we’re watching that fools gold bubble pop
- and new ideas about compute for sale emerge [1]
And in the near future:
- eventually, tokens will represent real things with the interop currency being the one for buying compute time
it correlated with the stock market because the local courts allowed public companies to let the public decide whether or not they could buy into crypto currencies and put it on their balance sheet.
I'm a big fan of crypto but at least the idea of passing the hot potato til it crumbles in to nothing is a reasonable worry. Every stonk has that same exact issue.
Well, no, some stocks actually have value, because there's a money-making company behind the stock. (Or are you using "stonk" to refer to a stock that has a money-losing company behind it?)
A lot of cryptocurrencies are part of projects that I believe in. I see the code, see commits, discussions, details of the project being used in the wild. I don't blame the people behind the project for ridiculous fluctuations in their coin's price or blind hysteria in the space.
Bitcoin's project is that it's a collectible with limited supply.
Thing is, the market doesn't care whether or not you believe in the underlying asset. The difference is that when you buy shares you're buying shares in a company that actually produces something, and those shares usually pay dividends.
Buying crypto because you believe in a given project is the same as buying a beanie baby because you happen to like the particular appearance of said beanie baby.
I read it as stonk to mean stock that would be a bad decision to put money in at any time (not just because it is overvalued at this time). Like GameStop.
Value ( and by extension price ) of anything is what people are willing to pay for it. Some digital cards in a Blizzard game were purchased for thousands of dollars. There is some digital real estate that was purchased for millions. We can argue all day long whether it makes sense and what the value should be, but that is the wrong perspective to begin with.
<< will never give dividends
Even now I can easily point to stocks that never paid dividends.
<< it's a pyramid scheme
At this point, it is a pyramid scheme the same way US dollar is a pyramid scheme.
It was purchased for millions AT THE TIME OF PEAK MANIA . big difference
Also it was purchased for millions by the only guy in the world willing to pay millions for it…
Don’t extrapolate or you risk making an hypothesis of liquidity and price permanence which is just not there
A mansion in Naples or San Mateo was worth millions in the 1980s, 90s , 00s , 10s , 20s and there are millions of potential buyers globally who’d happily pay that price. That’s an asset which proved both liquidity and price permanence (matter of fact appreciation) but still it’s not a given that it will prove to be such going forward
<< A mansion in Naples or San Mateo was worth millions in the 1980s, 90s , 00s , 10s , 20s and there are millions of potential buyers globally who’d happily pay that price. That’s an asset which proved both liquidity and price permanence (matter of fact appreciation) but still it’s not a given that it will prove to be such going forward
If there is one thing that 2008 should have taught anyone, it is that nothing is permanent. I am not going to get philosophical here and say that possessions are fleeting, but to pretend that real estate is not propped up hard and effectively is guaranteed to "prove to be such going forward" is about the same faith that keeps ANY asset including bitcoin up.
Why are you so certain that this timeline will never see Naples mansion price go to zero? I can easily see several scenarios where that could happen.
>At this point, it is a pyramid scheme the same way US dollar is a pyramid scheme
Yeah the dollar is a pyramid scheme. It has the same construction flaws as Bitcoin. You can withdraw it from the markets and just hoard it which causes deflation. The central bank then allows commercial banks to increase the money supply instead of increasing the circulation velocity. The problem with newly created money: it can be hoarded too, resulting in an infinite doom loop.
