Author Topic: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation  (Read 233737 times)

MustacheAndaHalf

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 6611
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1100 on: April 04, 2022, 08:03:34 AM »
I'm guessing you haven't watched the video? The first 2/3 of it are his abbreviated version of history leading to NFTs, which are inherently entangled with crypto.
NFTs could be another topic for a different thread.  If you view crypto as a scam, where is the scam for Bitcoin?  All code and transactions are available to download for free - it's 100% transparent.
This is all in the video. Again, I don't have a problem with you not watching it, but I have a hard time with you criticizing it without even being able to summarize it (much less having watched it). You're not presenting very good faith conversation here.
This is a thread about crypto, not about a 2.3 hour video.  When I ask for evidence that Bitcoin is a scam, I don't need to watch the video.  You need to present evidence of your claim that Bitcoin is a scam.  If you want to talk about the video, why not start another thread.  This thread is about crypto.


where is the scam for Bitcoin?  All code and transactions are available to download for free - it's 100% transparent.
No, the shortcoming of crypto is that it's literally a scam. Early adopters get rich by convincing suckas who come along later to add a "low% of crypto" to their portfolios. Anyone who already owns crypto is NOT a reliable source of unbiased information about crypto.
You insinuate the person posting the thread is one of the "Early adopters" who created a thread about "low% of crypto".  But this thread was created 6 months ago, while Bitcoin has been around for a decade.  Do you have evidence this thread's author is seeking to "get rich by convincing suckas"?  I would hope before insulting someone you would have researched that.

Do you trust US economists, even though they hold US dollars?  Because someone who already owns it can't be a source of reliable information, right?

ChpBstrd

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 6634
  • Location: A poor and backward Southern state known as minimum wage country
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1101 on: April 04, 2022, 09:04:10 AM »
So let me get this straight, when I pay my bills every month and buy stock ETFs with my crypto defi yield, that's a scam?

It works until it doesn't work. Take the Beanie Baby craze. If you bought and sold them at a profit in the early 90s when there was a market of collectors that were willing to pay a premium to get one then you could use the profit to pay your bills. But now the market is dried up and anyone who has a Beanie Baby can't sell for a profit to pay their bills.

The scam is that the only value crypto has is if other people WANT it. If/when that dries up you have no more defi yield to pay your bills.

And if my aunt had wheels she'd be a bike.  I don't deal in 'ifs' I deal in the here and now.  Crypto defi literally prints money and I like money.  I guess people that don't like money should avoid it.

Somebody put a pin in this conversation. Someday it will be as awesome to read as the original defensive rationales of the people noting their dividend checks from Bernie Madoff. If it was a scam, why am I receiving small dividends and why was I able to take out and put back in $1000?

where is the scam for Bitcoin?  All code and transactions are available to download for free - it's 100% transparent.

Pets.com and tulip bulbs were also 100% transparent about their earnings, losses, and flowering potential. People still piled into the craze, and encouraged all their soon-to-be-former friends to do the same because deep down they feared the music would stop when the holders stopped recruiting new people to the fad.

Perhaps if crypto had some hidden potential we didn't know about, such as when small-cap companies become merger targets, or when earnings surprises to the upside occur, then we could explain the craze as the pursuit of option value. However, these digital/symbolic "assets" have already revealed about 100% of their possible utility in a dozen years of non-adoption as an actual currency or as a hedge against anything. Aside from a few firms willing to barter in crypto (at the USD equivalent price, and they immediately convert it, while milking the exchange for free publicity) there are no successfully demonstrated applications besides the investment fad application. The money laundering application is looking like a failure, based on many recent arrests. It is becoming increasingly doubtful that some "killer app" is going to come along and unlock the value proponents have been talking about for a long time, leading to Bitcoin or whatever becoming a real currency. In what year is this revolution supposed to occur?

Shane

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1665
  • Location: Midtown
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1102 on: April 04, 2022, 09:20:51 AM »
I'm guessing you haven't watched the video? The first 2/3 of it are his abbreviated version of history leading to NFTs, which are inherently entangled with crypto.
NFTs could be another topic for a different thread.  If you view crypto as a scam, where is the scam for Bitcoin?  All code and transactions are available to download for free - it's 100% transparent.
This is all in the video. Again, I don't have a problem with you not watching it, but I have a hard time with you criticizing it without even being able to summarize it (much less having watched it). You're not presenting very good faith conversation here.
This is a thread about crypto, not about a 2.3 hour video.  When I ask for evidence that Bitcoin is a scam, I don't need to watch the video.  You need to present evidence of your claim that Bitcoin is a scam.  If you want to talk about the video, why not start another thread.  This thread is about crypto.


where is the scam for Bitcoin?  All code and transactions are available to download for free - it's 100% transparent.
No, the shortcoming of crypto is that it's literally a scam. Early adopters get rich by convincing suckas who come along later to add a "low% of crypto" to their portfolios. Anyone who already owns crypto is NOT a reliable source of unbiased information about crypto.
You insinuate the person posting the thread is one of the "Early adopters" who created a thread about "low% of crypto".  But this thread was created 6 months ago, while Bitcoin has been around for a decade.  Do you have evidence this thread's author is seeking to "get rich by convincing suckas"?  I would hope before insulting someone you would have researched that.

Do you trust US economists, even though they hold US dollars?  Because someone who already owns it can't be a source of reliable information, right?

Not 'insinuating' anything about anyone. Don't claim to know anything about OP's reasons for starting this thread. In an anonymous online forum, it's impossible to know, for sure, any individual's motivations for posting anything. You don't need to watch the whole 2+ hour long video to understand what Dan's saying. For any of us to try to write out even one of Dan's arguments would end up being 50 pages long and nobody would read it. In 15 minutes you could easily ffw through the video and get a quick idea of what you think. Your complete refusal to even consider doing that is pretty telling. It makes it seem like you're not honestly engaging in a conversation here. Like I said, people who already own crypto are incentivized to keep on pushing the belief that the king's new wardrobe is amazing and punishing anyone who expresses even a little bit of skepticism.

If all you're interested in is Bitcoin, that's fine. Dan's take on Bitcoin is only 11 minutes long. If you can't even be bothered to spend 11 minutes of your time and make an informed response, then this 'conversation' seems like a waste of time.

Quote
Written and performed by Dan Olson

Crowdfunding: https://www.patreon.com/foldablehuman
Twitter: https://twitter.com/FoldableHuman
00:00:00 Preface
00:01:12 0. In 2008 The Economy Collapsed
00:07:09 1. Bitcoin
00:18:18 2. Ethereum
00:24:34 3. The Machine
00:39:07 4. NFTs Exist To Get You To Buy Crypto
00:57:54 5. The Unbearable Cringe Of Crypto
01:11:46 6. A Self-Organizing High Control Group
01:16:57 7. Crypto Reality
01:25:36 8. There Is No Privacy On The Chain
01:32:52 9. If This "Looks Like Scam" Then Every NFT Room I'm In Looks Like Scam LOL
01:38:29 10. Play To Earn Exists To Get You To Buy Crypto
01:46:39 11. We're All Gonna Make It And By "We" I Mean "Us" Not You
01:56:08 12. DAOs Exist To Get You To Buy Crypto
02:13:21 13. I Know It's Rigged, But It's The Only Game In Town

talltexan

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 5344
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1103 on: April 04, 2022, 12:49:03 PM »
Damn. That video is pretty persuasive.

Scandium

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 2825
  • Location: EastCoast
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1104 on: April 04, 2022, 01:05:11 PM »
So let me get this straight, when I pay my bills every month and buy stock ETFs with my crypto defi yield, that's a scam?

What is "defi yield"?
Are you earning interest or something on crypto? If so how..? Or are you just selling for increased price?

In any case that's not in any way an argument against the claim that crypto has zero inherent value, and no plausible current or future useful applications (that aren't already solved faster, cheaper, safer, and easier with current technology, and without burning the a small town's worth of annual energy to buy some LSD).

Your argument is basically "people are still piling in, lines goes up, therefore crypto is good"? At the moment that's not really wrong. Some here are just saying there is no rational for this to continue. When will this end nobody knows..
So are you in the group that know it's worthless, but want to cash in as much as possible, or do you think it has some future/value?

BicycleB

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 5259
  • Location: Coolest Neighborhood on Earth, They Say
  • Older than the internet, but not wiser... yet
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1105 on: April 04, 2022, 03:27:54 PM »
So let me get this straight, when I pay my bills every month and buy stock ETFs with my crypto defi yield, that's a scam?

What is "defi yield"?
Are you earning interest or something on crypto? If so how..? Or are you just selling for increased price?

In any case that's not in any way an argument against the claim that crypto has zero inherent value

I have no dog in this fight, but yes, defi yield is interest, not just selling for increased price. Here's the first result from Googling defi yield - a site that defines it and gives dozens of examples updated yearly.  https://defirate.com/lend/

As someone who doesn't care one way or the other but appreciates fairness, to me the above paragraph seems to show a plausible argument against the claim that crypto has zero inherent value.

I think to sustain the argument that crypto has zero inherent value, you would have to claim that none of the interest is "real" unless converted into dollars or other fiat, and that eventually the conversions will fail because in the future, people won't pay dollars for crypto. But then you have to claim that fiat has inherent value, which it doesn't. Like crypto, it's valuable because people think it's valuable.

In each case, since the value isn't inherent, the only proof of value is behavior. "Dollars are backed by the US economy" isn't strictly true, it's a matter of faith backed by a structure that allows us to believe. I am willing to accept the possibility that crypto's strutcture is less likely to retain such faith, but that's a guess; neither fiat money nor crypto has the sort of inherent value that food or houses do.


« Last Edit: April 04, 2022, 03:35:30 PM by BicycleB »

Juan Ponce de León

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 264
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1106 on: April 04, 2022, 03:42:37 PM »
So let me get this straight, when I pay my bills every month and buy stock ETFs with my crypto defi yield, that's a scam?

What is "defi yield"?
Are you earning interest or something on crypto? If so how..? Or are you just selling for increased price?

In any case that's not in any way an argument against the claim that crypto has zero inherent value, and no plausible current or future useful applications (that aren't already solved faster, cheaper, safer, and easier with current technology, and without burning the a small town's worth of annual energy to buy some LSD).

Your argument is basically "people are still piling in, lines goes up, therefore crypto is good"? At the moment that's not really wrong. Some here are just saying there is no rational for this to continue. When will this end nobody knows..
So are you in the group that know it's worthless, but want to cash in as much as possible, or do you think it has some future/value?

I just like money so I don't really care about these petty arguments about tulip bulbs and beanie babies and any other stupid comparisons.  15 months ago I had 8k in crypto and now my pf is over 300k, plus it's paid all my bills and paid off my margin loan countless times so I can keep buying stocks.  Do I think its 'worthless'?  That's just stupid, Bitcoin has been trading on exchanges for over decade, there are millions of transactions per day and it's currently valued at ~$46000 per coin.  Very clearly it isn't worthless, it's just a matter of what it is worth at any given moment according to supply and demand.

Yes defi is 'earning interest' or yield on crypto and some of the yields on offer are extremely high.  I'll give you a tip, just because you don't know about something, doesn't make it unlikely or untrue.  It's amazing how crypto sceptics talk with such certainty, like they are somehow experts in this space which they have never participated in and haven't bothered to learn anything about. This thread is full of them and honestly I can't be bothered responding 99% of the time, I just load up this thread every now and then to have a chuckle at the ignorance and then go back to grinding out my money.
The world is changing very fast and a lot of people set in their ways are being left behind and they don't even know it.  You don't want to be the taxi company when uber come to your town.
« Last Edit: April 04, 2022, 03:59:56 PM by Juan Ponce de León »

Scandium

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 2825
  • Location: EastCoast
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1107 on: April 04, 2022, 05:50:00 PM »


So let me get this straight, when I pay my bills every month and buy stock ETFs with my crypto defi yield, that's a scam?

What is "defi yield"?
Are you earning interest or something on crypto? If so how..? Or are you just selling for increased price?

In any case that's not in any way an argument against the claim that crypto has zero inherent value, and no plausible current or future useful applications (that aren't already solved faster, cheaper, safer, and easier with current technology, and without burning the a small town's worth of annual energy to buy some LSD).

Your argument is basically "people are still piling in, lines goes up, therefore crypto is good"? At the moment that's not really wrong. Some here are just saying there is no rational for this to continue. When will this end nobody knows..
So are you in the group that know it's worthless, but want to cash in as much as possible, or do you think it has some future/value?

I just like money so I don't really care about these petty arguments about tulip bulbs and beanie babies and any other stupid comparisons.  15 months ago I had 8k in crypto and now my pf is over 300k, plus it's paid all my bills and paid off my margin loan countless times so I can keep buying stocks.  Do I think its 'worthless'?  That's just stupid, Bitcoin has been trading on exchanges for over decade, there are millions of transactions per day and it's currently valued at ~$46000 per coin.  Very clearly it isn't worthless, it's just a matter of what it is worth at any given moment according to supply and demand.

Yes defi is 'earning interest' or yield on crypto and some of the yields on offer are extremely high.  I'll give you a tip, just because you don't know about something, doesn't make it unlikely or untrue.  It's amazing how crypto sceptics talk with such certainty, like they are somehow experts in this space which they have never participated in and haven't bothered to learn anything about. This thread is full of them and honestly I can't be bothered responding 99% of the time, I just load up this thread every now and then to have a chuckle at the ignorance and then go back to grinding out my money.
The world is changing very fast and a lot of people set in their ways are being left behind and they don't even know it.  You don't want to be the taxi company when uber come to your town.

Kind of funny accusing "skeptics" of not arguing in good faith when you refuse to answer a pretty simple, legitimate question.

I never claimed to be an expert on anything. I asked what the yield was from, which you answered. Though just because someone is willing to pay you to borrow crypto doesn't really give it utility.. Well it does to you, but not in any broader sense, it could still be a fad.

That's why I asked. Your "utility" of crypto seems to be "line goes up"? which yes is (mostly, sort of) true. See the video further up.. I can't dispute this, but I don't consider that a use. It's gambling. Novelty purchases also aren't really interesting. If I can also do it in usd then I don't need crypto do I?

USD has not inherent value, but I can get paid in it, buy food, and (most important?) pay taxes with it. Without any exchange. No crypto can do this, and it is there is no plausible reason why it would in the future. It's awful at doing all of those things (again see above videos), it would be a nightmare on so many levels.

And even if there was a "switch" to 100% crypto in the future how would this work? And which crypto?! Would the 95% of us who aren't hodlers just become poor? Would we be locked out of the economy? Or if my USD just switched to crypto at a set price what's the point of buying in now? Just trying to understand.

maizefolk

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 7396
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1108 on: April 04, 2022, 06:11:18 PM »
The scam is that the only value crypto has is if other people WANT it.

There's a legitimate debate to be had about whether or not bitcoin (or other cryptos) are likely to retain value in the long term or not.

But it always amuses me how many of the -- logically correct and irrefutable -- arguments against bitcoin people are excited to discover and deploy actually apply to any form of money at all.

Yes, crypto only has value if other people want it. I completely agree.
Renminbi only have value so long as other people want it. That's why you can directly exchange them for goods and services in Fujian (where people want them), but not in Huntsville, Alabama (where people don't want them).
Dollars only have value so long as some else wants them.
Gold only has value so long as some else wants it.

Again, that's not to argue that it makes sense to own cryptocurrencies. Just that (some) of the arguments against doing so seem to be from people starting to discover for the first time that the idea of money, all money, is imaginary. And that any form of money that only works when enough of us buy into it.

Juan Ponce de León

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 264
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1109 on: April 04, 2022, 06:32:40 PM »
And even if there was a "switch" to 100% crypto in the future how would this work? And which crypto?! Would the 95% of us who aren't hodlers just become poor? Would we be locked out of the economy? Or if my USD just switched to crypto at a set price what's the point of buying in now? Just trying to understand.

Who cares?  I absolutely do not care about any of this.  I just like making money and I'm not going to forgo hundreds of thousands of dollars in income just to represent an ideology of not believing in crypto. 

bacchi

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 7036
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1110 on: April 04, 2022, 06:57:12 PM »
And even if there was a "switch" to 100% crypto in the future how would this work? And which crypto?! Would the 95% of us who aren't hodlers just become poor? Would we be locked out of the economy? Or if my USD just switched to crypto at a set price what's the point of buying in now? Just trying to understand.

Who cares?  I absolutely do not care about any of this.  I just like making money and I'm not going to forgo hundreds of thousands of dollars in income just to represent an ideology of not believing in crypto.

Have you started hangin' with Elon yet?

Juan Ponce de León

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 264
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1111 on: April 04, 2022, 07:29:23 PM »
And even if there was a "switch" to 100% crypto in the future how would this work? And which crypto?! Would the 95% of us who aren't hodlers just become poor? Would we be locked out of the economy? Or if my USD just switched to crypto at a set price what's the point of buying in now? Just trying to understand.

Who cares?  I absolutely do not care about any of this.  I just like making money and I'm not going to forgo hundreds of thousands of dollars in income just to represent an ideology of not believing in crypto.

Have you started hangin' with Elon yet?

Just remember, you're the smart one.  I'm the dumb one right?  You're the real genius.  All the people making money in crypto and defi are the dumb ones.

Scandium

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 2825
  • Location: EastCoast
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1112 on: April 04, 2022, 07:41:56 PM »
And even if there was a "switch" to 100% crypto in the future how would this work? And which crypto?! Would the 95% of us who aren't hodlers just become poor? Would we be locked out of the economy? Or if my USD just switched to crypto at a set price what's the point of buying in now? Just trying to understand.

Who cares?  I absolutely do not care about any of this.  I just like making money and I'm not going to forgo hundreds of thousands of dollars in income just to represent an ideology of not believing in crypto.
My mistake, I foolishly thought there could be an actual debate here, and get some questions answered. Nevermind then!

Juan Ponce de León

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 264
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1113 on: April 04, 2022, 07:55:46 PM »
And even if there was a "switch" to 100% crypto in the future how would this work? And which crypto?! Would the 95% of us who aren't hodlers just become poor? Would we be locked out of the economy? Or if my USD just switched to crypto at a set price what's the point of buying in now? Just trying to understand.

Who cares?  I absolutely do not care about any of this.  I just like making money and I'm not going to forgo hundreds of thousands of dollars in income just to represent an ideology of not believing in crypto.
My mistake, I foolishly thought there could be an actual debate here, and get some questions answered. Nevermind then!

Why would I want to waste time and emotional energy debating crypto on this of all forums?  It would be like debating with a brick wall.

I could give you a 5 page dissertation on defi investing and even making money on USD$ pegged stablecoin assets that aren't even effected by the direction of the crypto markets.  But about the most intelligent responses I would receive are 'herp-a-derp ponzi scheme' 'herpaderp tulip bulbs' beanie babies' etc.  Just not worth it all and I honestly do not care if normies invest in crypto or not.  I do not even recommend that they even try, leave it to the people who just enjoy numbers/finance and are tech minded enough, they will eventually seek it out for themselves if they are that way inclined.  I don't lead horses to water and I don't care if they drink.
« Last Edit: April 04, 2022, 08:03:29 PM by Juan Ponce de León »

bacchi

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 7036
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1114 on: April 04, 2022, 07:59:25 PM »
And even if there was a "switch" to 100% crypto in the future how would this work? And which crypto?! Would the 95% of us who aren't hodlers just become poor? Would we be locked out of the economy? Or if my USD just switched to crypto at a set price what's the point of buying in now? Just trying to understand.

Who cares?  I absolutely do not care about any of this.  I just like making money and I'm not going to forgo hundreds of thousands of dollars in income just to represent an ideology of not believing in crypto.
My mistake, I foolishly thought there could be an actual debate here, and get some questions answered. Nevermind then!

Why would I want to waste time and emotional energy debating crypto on this of all forums?  It would be like debating with a brick wall.

Yet here you are, wasting time and emotional energy. Confused? I am.

Juan Ponce de León

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 264
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1115 on: April 04, 2022, 08:04:37 PM »
And even if there was a "switch" to 100% crypto in the future how would this work? And which crypto?! Would the 95% of us who aren't hodlers just become poor? Would we be locked out of the economy? Or if my USD just switched to crypto at a set price what's the point of buying in now? Just trying to understand.

Who cares?  I absolutely do not care about any of this.  I just like making money and I'm not going to forgo hundreds of thousands of dollars in income just to represent an ideology of not believing in crypto.
My mistake, I foolishly thought there could be an actual debate here, and get some questions answered. Nevermind then!

Why would I want to waste time and emotional energy debating crypto on this of all forums?  It would be like debating with a brick wall.

Yet here you are, wasting time and emotional energy. Confused? I am.

You're right, I've said enough.  I'll check back in a few months and see what laughably ignorant posts have appeared in the mean time.

MustacheAndaHalf

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 6611
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1116 on: April 05, 2022, 04:33:29 AM »
where is the scam for Bitcoin?  All code and transactions are available to download for free - it's 100% transparent.
Pets.com and tulip bulbs were also 100% transparent about their earnings, losses, and flowering potential. People still piled into the craze, and encouraged all their soon-to-be-former friends to do the same because deep down they feared the music would stop when the holders stopped recruiting new people to the fad.
Another poster claimed Bitcoin was a scam, but you're talking about bubbles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dutch_tulip_bulb_market_bubble.asp

Scandium

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 2825
  • Location: EastCoast
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1117 on: April 05, 2022, 04:35:06 AM »
And even if there was a "switch" to 100% crypto in the future how would this work? And which crypto?! Would the 95% of us who aren't hodlers just become poor? Would we be locked out of the economy? Or if my USD just switched to crypto at a set price what's the point of buying in now? Just trying to understand.

Who cares?  I absolutely do not care about any of this.  I just like making money and I'm not going to forgo hundreds of thousands of dollars in income just to represent an ideology of not believing in crypto.
My mistake, I foolishly thought there could be an actual debate here, and get some questions answered. Nevermind then!

Why would I want to waste time and emotional energy debating crypto on this of all forums?  It would be like debating with a brick wall.

I could give you a 5 page dissertation on defi investing and even making money on USD$ pegged stablecoin assets that aren't even effected by the direction of the crypto markets.  But about the most intelligent responses I would receive are 'herp-a-derp ponzi scheme' 'herpaderp tulip bulbs' beanie babies' etc.  Just not worth it all and I honestly do not care if normies invest in crypto or not.  I do not even recommend that they even try, leave it to the people who just enjoy numbers/finance and are tech minded enough, they will eventually seek it out for themselves if they are that way inclined.  I don't lead horses to water and I don't care if they drink.
But I didn't ask for an essay on the mechanics of crypto. I just asked if you think crypto has a future mass adoption practical use, a problem it's solving, and what that is? Because yes without that it just looks like a ponzi scheme.. Yet you simply keep saying how you're too good to answer anything

MustacheAndaHalf

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 6611
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1118 on: April 05, 2022, 04:45:33 AM »
So let me get this straight, when I pay my bills every month and buy stock ETFs with my crypto defi yield, that's a scam?
It works until it doesn't work. Take the Beanie Baby craze. If you bought and sold them at a profit in the early 90s when there was a market of collectors that were willing to pay a premium to get one then you could use the profit to pay your bills. But now the market is dried up and anyone who has a Beanie Baby can't sell for a profit to pay their bills.

The scam is that the only value crypto has is if other people WANT it. If/when that dries up you have no more defi yield to pay your bills.
But that isn't the definition of "scam", which is "a fraudulent or deceptive act or operation" according to Meriam Webster.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/scam

If you search for "Beanie Baby bubble", you'll see that's a more fitting description.  If you view crypto as a bubble, I'd agree it could be a speculative bubble that may collapse or continue.

Shane

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1665
  • Location: Midtown
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1119 on: April 05, 2022, 06:34:01 AM »
Crypto is a bigger fool scam.

Quote
The whole thing operates by buying worthless assets, believing that you will later be able to sell them to a bigger fool. The entire structure of cryptocurrencies, at their basic level of operation, is designed to deliver the greatest rewards to the earliest adopters, regardless of whether you're talking about proof of work or proof of stake. This is inherent to their being.

ChpBstrd

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 6634
  • Location: A poor and backward Southern state known as minimum wage country
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1120 on: April 05, 2022, 06:55:59 AM »
where is the scam for Bitcoin?  All code and transactions are available to download for free - it's 100% transparent.
Pets.com and tulip bulbs were also 100% transparent about their earnings, losses, and flowering potential. People still piled into the craze, and encouraged all their soon-to-be-former friends to do the same because deep down they feared the music would stop when the holders stopped recruiting new people to the fad.
Another poster claimed Bitcoin was a scam, but you're talking about bubbles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dutch_tulip_bulb_market_bubble.asp
But what if an investment bubble had people spending millions of USD to promote it, then the insiders quietly selling their inflated assets to the new entrants the marketing brought in, or maybe forked the code to leave behind most of the other investors while the brand name goes on in some way, and then the insiders move on to their next exciting project, repeating the process? What if all these "exchanges" that kept being set up somehow by many of these same insiders couldn't hire the same competent people your bank and brokerage use to secure their systems, and couldn't even buy off-the-shelf security, and they just kept getting hacked in mysterious ways and explaining to all their customers that all their super secure blockchain-recorded 100% transparent cryptocoins were no longer theirs? What if the number of hacks in this particular type of website were so pervasive that the mysterious and not-promoted insiders started to look suspicious?

At what point does a bubble transition into a scam? Or is it better to think of an investment bubble being the core event, and a thousand scams surrounding it, feeding off the self-selected gullible?

Scandium

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 2825
  • Location: EastCoast
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1121 on: April 05, 2022, 08:40:24 AM »
So let me get this straight, when I pay my bills every month and buy stock ETFs with my crypto defi yield, that's a scam?
It works until it doesn't work. Take the Beanie Baby craze. If you bought and sold them at a profit in the early 90s when there was a market of collectors that were willing to pay a premium to get one then you could use the profit to pay your bills. But now the market is dried up and anyone who has a Beanie Baby can't sell for a profit to pay their bills.

The scam is that the only value crypto has is if other people WANT it. If/when that dries up you have no more defi yield to pay your bills.
But that isn't the definition of "scam", which is "a fraudulent or deceptive act or operation" according to Meriam Webster.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/scam

If you search for "Beanie Baby bubble", you'll see that's a more fitting description.  If you view crypto as a bubble, I'd agree it could be a speculative bubble that may collapse or continue.

But then at least you got a Beanie baby, or a tulip bulb.. The bubble part was the belief that it would increase in value, but there was still an undelaying asset. Worth at least something >0. The problem was just the value inflated above that. I don't think the beanie babies analogy is correct for BTC, because it's worse than that

Crypto is a non-physical, virtual... "thing", representing noting in the real world, and apart from selling to someone else has zero value. And has no plausible reason it would have any in the future. It has ONLY the promise that it will be worth more in the future, it is quite literally nothing without that. People spending money to pump something that has zero (or negative) value to get others to buy in, because FOMO? Sounds pretty scammy to me.. Is it strictly, legally so? I don't really care, and think that's beside the point.

In the video you refuse to watch he goes over several instances of crypto creators getting friends to buy in early, selling to themselves back and forth, giving away tokens, or pumping their own product to create the appearance of demand to lure more people in.

And don't say "so is USD, GBP, EUR!". Crucially those are accepted by the governments as a valid representation of labor or goods, and acceptable for tax payments. Crypto does not do that, and there is no reason why it will in the future. (and even if the EU or something went fully crypto in the future it would be one they made themselves, so buying in now is pointless).


MustacheAndaHalf

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 6611
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1122 on: April 05, 2022, 08:56:46 AM »
where is the scam for Bitcoin?  All code and transactions are available to download for free - it's 100% transparent.
Early adopters get rich by convincing suckas who come along later to add a "low% of crypto" to their portfolios.
You insinuate the person posting the thread is one of the "Early adopters" who created a thread about "low% of crypto".  But this thread was created 6 months ago, while Bitcoin has been around for a decade.  Do you have evidence this thread's author is seeking to "get rich by convincing suckas"?  I would hope before insulting someone you would have researched that.
Not 'insinuating' anything about anyone. Don't claim to know anything about OP's reasons for starting this thread. In an anonymous online forum, it's impossible to know, for sure, any individual's motivations for posting anything.
[/quote]
Then why did you quote the thread title?  Putting the thread title in a sentence about "convincing suckas" seems very much a comment on the thread.

Early adopters get rich by convincing suckas who come along later to add a "low% of crypto" to their portfolios.

the_gastropod

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 470
  • Age: 37
  • Location: RVA
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1123 on: April 05, 2022, 09:12:18 AM »
For those fellow "ignorant crypto sceptics [sic]", The NYTimes has a pretty excellent interview with Dan Olson titled "A Viral Case Against Crypto, Explored" https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/05/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-dan-olson.html

the_gastropod

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 470
  • Age: 37
  • Location: RVA
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1124 on: April 05, 2022, 09:20:21 AM »
The scam is that the only value crypto has is if other people WANT it.

There's a legitimate debate to be had about whether or not bitcoin (or other cryptos) are likely to retain value in the long term or not.

But it always amuses me how many of the -- logically correct and irrefutable -- arguments against bitcoin people are excited to discover and deploy actually apply to any form of money at all.

Yes, crypto only has value if other people want it. I completely agree.
Renminbi only have value so long as other people want it. That's why you can directly exchange them for goods and services in Fujian (where people want them), but not in Huntsville, Alabama (where people don't want them).
Dollars only have value so long as some else wants them.

So far so good, but I think it's important to draw a very important distinction: nobody wants dollars *because they expect their value to increase*. They want dollars because they know they can be used to buy food, televisions, gas, lamp shades, coffee beans, and even pay their taxes!

Gold only has value so long as some else wants it.

Again, there's an important distinction: people don't just want gold because they expect the price to go up. People want gold because it's broadly used in manufacturing, jewelry, etc. And yes, there is a sizable speculation market around it, too. But, at a minimum, there is some very real-world value there.

Again, that's not to argue that it makes sense to own cryptocurrencies. Just that (some) of the arguments against doing so seem to be from people starting to discover for the first time that the idea of money, all money, is imaginary. And that any form of money that only works when enough of us buy into it.

So no. I think trying to "both sides" this is flawed. Bitcoin is not a currency—it is not used to buy anything in any meaningful degree, virtually nothing is priced in Bitcoin, etc. People buy Bitcoin with the expectation that they'll be able to sell it for more money later. Not because there's value added by economic productivity. They're expecting the price to go up because more people will buy it because they, too, will expect the price to go up.

lifeanon269

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 566
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1125 on: April 05, 2022, 09:31:11 AM »

But then at least you got a Beanie baby, or a tulip bulb.. The bubble part was the belief that it would increase in value, but there was still an undelaying asset. Worth at least something >0. The problem was just the value inflated above that. I don't think the beanie babies analogy is correct for BTC, because it's worse than that

Crypto is a non-physical, virtual... "thing", representing noting in the real world, and apart from selling to someone else has zero value. And has no plausible reason it would have any in the future. It has ONLY the promise that it will be worth more in the future, it is quite literally nothing without that. People spending money to pump something that has zero (or negative) value to get others to buy in, because FOMO? Sounds pretty scammy to me.. Is it strictly, legally so? I don't really care, and think that's beside the point.

In the video you refuse to watch he goes over several instances of crypto creators getting friends to buy in early, selling to themselves back and forth, giving away tokens, or pumping their own product to create the appearance of demand to lure more people in.

And don't say "so is USD, GBP, EUR!". Crucially those are accepted by the governments as a valid representation of labor or goods, and acceptable for tax payments. Crypto does not do that, and there is no reason why it will in the future. (and even if the EU or something went fully crypto in the future it would be one they made themselves, so buying in now is pointless).

Can't believe I am putting myself back in this threat again, but I'm bored at the moment, so here goes...

There are plenty of things in this world that are not physical that people value, would you not agree? Just because something isn't physical, doesn't mean it can't have value. I would think that's a pretty obvious and factual statement.

Furthermore, in reality, bitcoin isn't just a virtual asset. It is a computer network that has real-world assets that secure the network and keep it operational. People value a lot of computer networks in the information age. What we value in those might not be tangible, but the systems that keep them functional certainly are. Bitcoin is a digital ledger and it would be difficult to operate a ledger if it didn't have a means of accounting. And if it needs to be truly decentralized, that means of account must be contained within the system itself and not resort to any external source measure of accounting. The fact that there is a "virtual" measure of accounting shouldn't distract from the very real system that it is as that is where its value is actually derived from...the decentralize system of computing that ensures bitcoin's security worldwide.

As you can read from my many previous points, I'm not going to argue that there hasn't been a slew of scams and fraud within the crypto-currency space. That just comes with the territory of any new technology (happened with internet companies during the .COM boom too). Hype and hopium leads people to latch onto that buzz and scammers will use that buzz to draw in victims. That's not a new tale in human history.

That doesn't mean that bitcoin, which is unfortunately associated with the rest of the industry, is a fraud and can't have value among people.

At the end of the day, bitcoin can, does, and will provide value to people. Traditional financial systems that are centralized can and have failed people. Whether it is because of geopolitical turmoil, discrimination, monetary policy, war, economic costs, availability/access, speed, business hours, borders, etc. The list goes on. There are a whole host of reasons that traditional financial systems can't and don't serve many people around the world. Bitcoin obviously won't fill the void in many cases, but in many cases it also will. And in those many cases bitcoin will serve the needs of those people as a financial tool of last resort. That means bitcoin will have value and be serving a need to those people because nothing else will or can. These are just facts. You can only call instances of this taking place around the world "outliers" for so long before you appear to be in outright denial.

So if bitcoin, being a worldwide decentralized and neutral financial network serves the needs of a growing group of people worldwide, how can you make the claim that it has no value? Just because you don't find value in it? No doubt that speculation drives the majority of bitcoin's price movements. That's not the argument here. But to make the claim that bitcoin has no value just because it isn't physical is a complete departure from reality.

I have no idea what its price will be tomorrow. I don't make predictions like that. But given everything that is taking place in the world at the moment, it seems pretty fitting that something like bitcoin came along at the same time. I can only imagine that the number of people finding a use case for bitcoin in their lives will continue to grow.

You can only make the beanie babies and tulip argument so many times before you start to lose credibility on the matter.

GuitarStv

  • Senior Mustachian
  • ********
  • Posts: 23048
  • Age: 42
  • Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1126 on: April 05, 2022, 09:50:46 AM »
Furthermore, in reality, bitcoin isn't just a virtual asset. It is a computer network that has real-world assets that secure the network and keep it operational. People value a lot of computer networks in the information age. What we value in those might not be tangible, but the systems that keep them functional certainly are. Bitcoin is a digital ledger and it would be difficult to operate a ledger if it didn't have a means of accounting. And if it needs to be truly decentralized, that means of account must be contained within the system itself and not resort to any external source measure of accounting. The fact that there is a "virtual" measure of accounting shouldn't distract from the very real system that it is as that is where its value is actually derived from...the decentralize system of computing that ensures bitcoin's security worldwide.

This virtual measure of accounting is a huge problem for bitcoin though.  It's extremely costly from an energy consumption and hardware perspective . . . and these costs are entirely paid for by speculation right now.  It has a great potential to collapse if/when this speculation runs out.

Bitcoin is like a beanie baby that requires an army of bearded network administrators toiling endlessly in their server farms to exist.  Right now, they're happy to keep toiling for pay in beanie babies because 'number go up'.  The assumption that this will be the case forever seems like a risky one to make though.  And if these network admins stop what they're doing, bitcoin collapses - any utility it could offer ends.  The blockchain seems like a tremendous unacknowledged weakness being touted as strength.


At the end of the day, bitcoin can, does, and will provide value to people. Traditional financial systems that are centralized can and have failed people. Whether it is because of geopolitical turmoil, discrimination, monetary policy, war, economic costs, availability/access, speed, business hours, borders, etc. The list goes on. There are a whole host of reasons that traditional financial systems can't and don't serve many people around the world. Bitcoin obviously won't fill the void in many cases, but in many cases it also will. And in those many cases bitcoin will serve the needs of those people as a financial tool of last resort. That means bitcoin will have value and be serving a need to those people because nothing else will or can. These are just facts. You can only call instances of this taking place around the world "outliers" for so long before you appear to be in outright denial.

So if bitcoin, being a worldwide decentralized and neutral financial network serves the needs of a growing group of people worldwide, how can you make the claim that it has no value? Just because you don't find value in it? No doubt that speculation drives the majority of bitcoin's price movements. That's not the argument here. But to make the claim that bitcoin has no value just because it isn't physical is a complete departure from reality.

It's certain that Putin is moving his massive wealth around using crypto.  We appear to differ in our view of how great it is that he's able to circumvent traditional financial systems - and thus has less incentive to stop the genocide he's involved in.  Giant win for bitcoin / loss for humanity.  Tack it on to the best use cases for the stuff, along with human trafficking, illegal drug trade, hacking ransom payouts, and hiring hitmen.  Seems to be a common theme when discussing crypto - and part of why I'd consider it to be of minimal real value.

the_gastropod

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 470
  • Age: 37
  • Location: RVA
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1127 on: April 05, 2022, 10:00:21 AM »
Can't believe I am putting myself back in this threat again, but I'm bored at the moment, so here goes...

There are plenty of things in this world that are not physical that people value, would you not agree? Just because something isn't physical, doesn't mean it can't have value. I would think that's a pretty obvious and factual statement.

Sure. Facebook has value. But it's important to be able to understand and explain that value. Facebook has value because it has billions of active users that Facebook is able to "sell" to advertisers, who expect some portion of these users to purchase their products or services. That is valuable to marketers.

Just because some intangible things have value does not mean all intangible things have value. I opened a new Excel spreadsheet. It function perfectly fine as a ledger. It is ~intangible. And it is worth approximately $0.

Furthermore, in reality, bitcoin isn't just a virtual asset. It is a computer network that has real-world assets that secure the network and keep it operational. People value a lot of computer networks in the information age.

Again, just because some networks have value (e.g., Visa) does not mean all networks have value. Limewire is a massive decentralized network, for example. It's not worth a hill of beans.

What we value in those might not be tangible, but the systems that keep them functional certainly are. Bitcoin is a digital ledger and it would be difficult to operate a ledger if it didn't have a means of accounting. And if it needs to be truly decentralized, that means of account must be contained within the system itself and not resort to any external source measure of accounting. The fact that there is a "virtual" measure of accounting shouldn't distract from the very real system that it is as that is where its value is actually derived from...the decentralize system of computing that ensures bitcoin's security worldwide.

It's unclear why that's valuable, and even if it is, how that relates to a Bitcoin (as an alleged asset/currency/??) being valuable.

As you can read from my many previous points, I'm not going to argue that there hasn't been a slew of scams and fraud within the crypto-currency space. That just comes with the territory of any new technology (happened with internet companies during the .COM boom too). Hype and hopium leads people to latch onto that buzz and scammers will use that buzz to draw in victims. That's not a new tale in human history.

I think this is inaccurate. Bitcoin (and crypto, generally) isn't wrought with fraud because it's a new technology. It's wrought with fraud because its reason for existing is to bypass laws and regulations. Where there is lack of accountability, there is going to be fraud. This isn't just a coincidental "new technology!" whoopsies. This is by design.

That doesn't mean that bitcoin, which is unfortunately associated with the rest of the industry, is a fraud and can't have value among people.

What is the value? "Decentralization", itself, is not value.

At the end of the day, bitcoin can, does, and will provide value to people. Traditional financial systems that are centralized can and have failed people. Whether it is because of geopolitical turmoil, discrimination, monetary policy, war, economic costs, availability/access, speed, business hours, borders, etc. The list goes on. There are a whole host of reasons that traditional financial systems can't and don't serve many people around the world. Bitcoin obviously won't fill the void in many cases, but in many cases it also will. And in those many cases bitcoin will serve the needs of those people as a financial tool of last resort. That means bitcoin will have value and be serving a need to those people because nothing else will or can. These are just facts. You can only call instances of this taking place around the world "outliers" for so long before you appear to be in outright denial.

Yes! The traditional financial system has a great number of massive problems. It has failed countless people, and will continue to do so. An alternative to this system isn't, by default, "better", by virtue of just being different. You have to ask why those problems exist, and how they can be solved. Throwing out centuries of lessons, and going back to digital wildcat banking is very obviously not the solution to any of these problems. These problems all exist because of a lack of accountability. Removing the anemic systems of account that exist is only going to inflame these problems you outline.

So if bitcoin, being a worldwide decentralized and neutral financial network serves the needs of a growing group of people worldwide, how can you make the claim that it has no value? Just because you don't find value in it? No doubt that speculation drives the majority of bitcoin's price movements. That's not the argument here. But to make the claim that bitcoin has no value just because it isn't physical is a complete departure from reality.
Firstly, Bitcoin is not neutral. It has a deep philosophy that it is explicitly designed around.

Secondly, if your argument is that there is value, I think the onus is on you to explain it. What is the value? How is it better than alternatives?

I have no idea what its price will be tomorrow. I don't make predictions like that. But given everything that is taking place in the world at the moment, it seems pretty fitting that something like bitcoin came along at the same time. I can only imagine that the number of people finding a use case for bitcoin in their lives will continue to grow.

You can only make the beanie babies and tulip argument so many times before you start to lose credibility on the matter.

What is the "everything that is taking place in the world at the moment" that is eased by buying Bitcoin?

lifeanon269

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 566
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1128 on: April 05, 2022, 10:12:50 AM »
This virtual measure of accounting is a huge problem for bitcoin though.  It's extremely costly from an energy consumption and hardware perspective . . . and these costs are entirely paid for by speculation right now.  It has a great potential to collapse if/when this speculation runs out.

Bitcoin is like a beanie baby that requires an army of bearded network administrators toiling endlessly in their server farms to exist.  Right now, they're happy to keep toiling for pay in beanie babies because 'number go up'.  The assumption that this will be the case forever seems like a risky one to make though.  And if these network admins stop what they're doing, bitcoin collapses - any utility it could offer ends.  The blockchain seems like a tremendous unacknowledged weakness being touted as strength.

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how bitcoin functions.

Yes, bitcoin uses a lot of energy at the moment. The beginning of bitcoin's life is essentially the minting phase of bitcoin in order to get more bitcoin into circulation. This phase of its life is only temporary though. Unless its price goes up exponentially forever (not possible), then the mining incentives change from being "minting" based, to economic utility based. Once the block reward subsidy diminishes and transaction fees become the brunt of mining incentives, bitcoin actually becomes extremely energy efficient in that regard. If bitcoin is still using a lot of energy at that point, it will be energy used as a direct result of economic activity. No different than the energy expenditures of our financial world today, except it will be much more transparent and much more energy efficient. If there isn't much economic activity in bitcoin by that point, then incentives to mine will come down, the difficulty adjustment will adjust like it always does, and bitcoin will use much less energy as a result. It would seem like disservice to discount bitcoin for its early energy use while ignoring the potential it could serve in the future. Bitcoin will not collapse in either of this scenarios because of this however like you insinuate. If the Chinese mining migration was any demonstration, bitcoin has a large tolerance for hashrate changes.

There was a decent article that was just written about bitcoin's energy use that I felt was one of the rarer and more fair/unbiased opinions. I think it is a good read:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/martinrivers/2022/04/03/is-bitcoin-really-that-bad-for-the-environment/



It's certain that Putin is moving his massive wealth around using crypto.  We appear to differ in our view of how great it is that he's able to circumvent traditional financial systems - and thus has less incentive to stop the genocide he's involved in.  Giant win for bitcoin / loss for humanity.  Tack it on to the best use cases for the stuff, along with human trafficking, illegal drug trade, hacking ransom payouts, and hiring hitmen.  Seems to be a common theme when discussing crypto - and part of why I'd consider it to be of minimal real value.

Ahhh, claims of certainty without much evidence. Parroting the common trope that it is loved by druglords all over the world is tiring and frankly there just aren't make national security experts that would agree with you there. It is actually almost a certainty that Putin isn't using bitcoin for his vast wealth. There just simply isn't the liquidity in the market yet for that kind of wealth.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/crypto/bitcoin-putins-economic-savior-s-unlikely-experts-say-rcna17724
https://casebitcoin.com/story/former-cia-director-finds-bitcoins-use-in-illicit-finance-to-b

Scandium

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 2825
  • Location: EastCoast
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1129 on: April 05, 2022, 10:29:00 AM »
There are plenty of things in this world that are not physical that people value, would you not agree? Just because something isn't physical, doesn't mean it can't have value. I would think that's a pretty obvious and factual statement.
I'm curious now; like what? And notice I didn't just say virtual, but also has no utility! What are examples of things that are entirely virtual, which represents nothing in the real world (e.g. as USD, or stocks), and has zero function or use (like mp3s, videos).
I can think of clothes for your character in Fortnite etc? I guess? But the character gets clothes they wouldn't otherwise, so I think it's dumb, but it's a "use".
Virtual casino chips? It let's you play and win more..
Please help me out.

Furthermore, in reality, bitcoin isn't just a virtual asset. It is a computer network that has real-world assets that secure the network and keep it operational. People value a lot of computer networks in the information age. What we value in those might not be tangible, but the systems that keep them functional certainly are. Bitcoin is a digital ledger and it would be difficult to operate a ledger if it didn't have a means of accounting. And if it needs to be truly decentralized, that means of account must be contained within the system itself and not resort to any external source measure of accounting. The fact that there is a "virtual" measure of accounting shouldn't distract from the very real system that it is as that is where its value is actually derived from...the decentralize system of computing that ensures bitcoin's security worldwide.
this is a bit of mumbo, that just says "BTC exists, it's a computer network". Well duh. Says nothing about why it should have value. All those other networks exists and are maintained because they DO SOMETHING. Netflix exists because it shows movies. Wikipedia store and show info etc. BTC doesn't "do" anything.

At the end of the day, bitcoin can, does, and will provide value to people. Traditional financial systems that are centralized can and have failed people. Whether it is because of geopolitical turmoil, discrimination, monetary policy, war, economic costs, availability/access, speed, business hours, borders, etc. The list goes on. There are a whole host of reasons that traditional financial systems can't and don't serve many people around the world. Bitcoin obviously won't fill the void in many cases, but in many cases it also will. And in those many cases bitcoin will serve the needs of those people as a financial tool of last resort. That means bitcoin will have value and be serving a need to those people because nothing else will or can. These are just facts. You can only call instances of this taking place around the world "outliers" for so long before you appear to be in outright denial.

So if bitcoin, being a worldwide decentralized and neutral financial network serves the needs of a growing group of people worldwide, how can you make the claim that it has no value? Just because you don't find value in it? No doubt that speculation drives the majority of bitcoin's price movements. That's not the argument here. But to make the claim that bitcoin has no value just because it isn't physical is a complete departure from reality.
I think others have addressed this, and the videos posted above go into it too. This fake concern for poor people from scumbag crypto-bros who have never given a shit about anyone before is quite hilarious. And regardless, it's solving a real problem, with a stupid solution. (and btw; since every transaction is open on the blockchain, wouldn't a repressive government just monitor all transactions inside the country, then lock people up as soon as they do anything with crypto? The total openness seems like a major issue in this scenario)
And thirdly (?): no, I don't see how this applies to me. Even assuming that, a relatively small number of people, can use crypto to flee war or whatever, why is that a reason why everyone else living comfortably in the west (i.e. pretty much everyone here for example, 99% of reddit etc) should use crypto?? Ok, if I think there will a war here I'll buy some crypto? Why would I then hold it if I live in a stable county?

You can only make the beanie babies and tulip argument so many times before you start to lose credibility on the matter.

Well I rejected those comparisons for crypto, because I think it has less value. At least you can grow a tulip, even if you overpaid by 40 ducats for it. With crypto you only get to pay thousands of dollars say you burned down some rainforest..
« Last Edit: April 05, 2022, 10:32:18 AM by Scandium »

maizefolk

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 7396
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1130 on: April 05, 2022, 10:48:53 AM »
The scam is that the only value crypto has is if other people WANT it.

There's a legitimate debate to be had about whether or not bitcoin (or other cryptos) are likely to retain value in the long term or not.

But it always amuses me how many of the -- logically correct and irrefutable -- arguments against bitcoin people are excited to discover and deploy actually apply to any form of money at all.

Yes, crypto only has value if other people want it. I completely agree.
Renminbi only have value so long as other people want it. That's why you can directly exchange them for goods and services in Fujian (where people want them), but not in Huntsville, Alabama (where people don't want them).
Dollars only have value so long as some else wants them.

So far so good, but I think it's important to draw a very important distinction: nobody wants dollars *because they expect their value to increase*. They want dollars because they know they can be used to buy food, televisions, gas, lamp shades, coffee beans, and even pay their taxes!

Gold only has value so long as some else wants it.

Again, there's an important distinction: people don't just want gold because they expect the price to go up. People want gold because it's broadly used in manufacturing, jewelry, etc. And yes, there is a sizable speculation market around it, too. But, at a minimum, there is some very real-world value there.

Again, that's not to argue that it makes sense to own cryptocurrencies. Just that (some) of the arguments against doing so seem to be from people starting to discover for the first time that the idea of money, all money, is imaginary. And that any form of money that only works when enough of us buy into it.

So no. I think trying to "both sides" this is flawed. Bitcoin is not a currency—it is not used to buy anything in any meaningful degree, virtually nothing is priced in Bitcoin, etc. People buy Bitcoin with the expectation that they'll be able to sell it for more money later. Not because there's value added by economic productivity. They're expecting the price to go up because more people will buy it because they, too, will expect the price to go up.

It sounds like we're in agreement about the actual facts of the matter: lots of things have value only because other people want to have them, and all those things lose their value if other people stop wanting them. The statement "The scam is that the only value crypto has is if other people WANT it." is a completely valid one and I don't think anyone is arguing otherwise. But if a person is using that statement as their argument against cryptocurrency without applying it to all those other things that also have value only because other people want them it's clear they haven't thought through the implications of that statement.

Now you clearly don't like crypto and are making a different argument that the scam is that people (which people? all people? some people?) who own it are doing so only because they expect other people to value it more in the future than that do today. But that's not what the original poster said.

lifeanon269

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 566
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1131 on: April 05, 2022, 11:04:43 AM »
Sure. Facebook has value. But it's important to be able to understand and explain that value. Facebook has value because it has billions of active users that Facebook is able to "sell" to advertisers, who expect some portion of these users to purchase their products or services. That is valuable to marketers.

Just because some intangible things have value does not mean all intangible things have value. I opened a new Excel spreadsheet. It function perfectly fine as a ledger. It is ~intangible. And it is worth approximately $0.

I feel you're completely misunderstanding value here. Sure, Facebook has value to investors because they can sell "eyes" to marketers and develop a business model off of it. But there is more in this world than value to just investors. Step back and away from the world of economics for a moment. Facebook also didn't always have advertisements. Did the people using Facebook prior to advertisements not value Facebook for what it was? You're being shortsighted in your analysis here.

You're also introducing a strawman argument here that I never made. I never argued that "all" intangible things have value. I simply argued that things that are intangible can have value as well as bringing up the real truth that bitcoin is not strictly an "intangible" idea.


Again, just because some networks have value (e.g., Visa) does not mean all networks have value. Limewire is a massive decentralized network, for example. It's not worth a hill of beans.

Another strawman argument.


It's unclear why that's valuable, and even if it is, how that relates to a Bitcoin (as an alleged asset/currency/??) being valuable.

It is unclear to many people that have a vast array of trustworthy financial services at their disposal because of very real financial privilege they enjoy.

I think this is inaccurate. Bitcoin (and crypto, generally) isn't wrought with fraud because it's a new technology. It's wrought with fraud because its reason for existing is to bypass laws and regulations. Where there is lack of accountability, there is going to be fraud. This isn't just a coincidental "new technology!" whoopsies. This is by design.

The lack of accountability comes from it being a new industry with governance that was slow to follow. There have been countless cases recently of law enforcement agencies cracking down on fraudulent activity in the space. Whether that is securities violations, theft, investment scams, etc. If there is a lack of accountability, it most certainly has to do more with the fact that LE and regulations were slow on the uptake. As I showed in my previous post, the claims of illicit activity in the space are almost always greatly exaggerated and to say that the space is unregulated is also wildly off base.

What is the value? "Decentralization", itself, is not value.

That's part of it. People will find various use cases for it which means its value could be derived in different ways to different people. Some people might find value in it for being able to raise funds for a cause against tyranny. Some people might find value in it because they can monetize their content easier. Some people might find value in it as means to store their wealth outside of the debasement of their local currency. Some people might find value in it as a means of remittance to their family across borders. Some people might find value in it because it is a cheaper means of e-commerce exchange. Some people might find value in it simply because it is more accessible.

Who are we to judge why these people would find value in such a thing? I am certainly not going to go to someone and chastise them for using something that they find value in simply because I don't. If someone is enjoying some classical music that I might find boring, do I chastise them for their taste in music?

Yes! The traditional financial system has a great number of massive problems. It has failed countless people, and will continue to do so. An alternative to this system isn't, by default, "better", by virtue of just being different. You have to ask why those problems exist, and how they can be solved. Throwing out centuries of lessons, and going back to digital wildcat banking is very obviously not the solution to any of these problems. These problems all exist because of a lack of accountability. Removing the anemic systems of account that exist is only going to inflame these problems you outline.

Many of these problems are inherent to their design that can't fundamentally be resolved without a completely different design. Centralization is a part of it. Humans are not infallible creatures. Any system that leaves humans in a position of power to make broad decisions that impact millions of people is bound to have catastrophic failures and/or corruption throughout. Our world inherently has governing borders as well. So any system that is inherently tied to those borders will always fail to serve and compete with a system that isn't bound by them. For what it is worth, for a vast majority of human history humans did not have currencies that were managed and issued by centralized authorities. The fiat currency experiment and modern monetary theory is actually relatively new and we're just coming to terms with what that means.

Firstly, Bitcoin is not neutral. It has a deep philosophy that it is explicitly designed around.

What does this even mean??

What is the "everything that is taking place in the world at the moment" that is eased by buying Bitcoin?

Vast amounts of currency debasement and record levels of inflation. Currency collapses in many places around the world. Over 2 billion people world-wide are experiencing double digit inflation. Financial censorship is rampant. Look at how mild-mannered Canada pushed authoritarian financial censorship on its citizens. I don't agree with the truckers' cause, but I am not biased enough to be blind to what took place and how wrong it was. This is a common across across the globe as more than half of the world lives under an authoritarian government. With a growing number of governments looking to implement CBDC's, it doesn't take a conspiracy theorist to realize how bad of a turn that could take for financial freedoms. CBDC's are a quick route to privacy invasions, surveillance, censorship, discrimination, and oppression. Look at China's own currency they're developing and some of the things they're planning to do. Things like making the currency have an expiration to force people to spend the money they worked hard to do. Negative interest rates and the push to get rid of physical cash will push a lot of people into digital accounts they don't want or can't afford to be in. Monetary policies of today really have become another means of taxation without representation. Why issue a new tax when you can just debase the currency to the point where government debt becomes negligible. Wars that cause millions to become refugees and climate crises to come that will cause even more refugees forcing people to leave behind their entire wealth.

I know I just spewed a lot out there and it wasn't meant to come off crazy sounding, but if you're ignoring much of this that is taking place around the world, then it is likely the main reason for that is because you're just privileged enough to not be impacted or bothered by it.
« Last Edit: April 05, 2022, 11:07:24 AM by lifeanon269 »

talltexan

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 5344
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1132 on: April 05, 2022, 11:47:34 AM »
If Bitcoin is meant to protect people against inflation, why has it fallen in price by 1/3 during a six month period when (in US) inflation has been highest?

lifeanon269

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 566
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1133 on: April 05, 2022, 11:59:39 AM »
If Bitcoin is meant to protect people against inflation, why has it fallen in price by 1/3 during a six month period when (in US) inflation has been highest?

Because you're only looking at things from the perspective of your own experience and not realizing that there is a world beyond the US...

Venezuela, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria, Suriname, Zimbabwe, Argentina, Turkey, Iran, Ethiopia, Russia, etc. So many countries experiencing inflation well beyond what we're experiencing in the US. It is very difficult to flood in other stores of value across borders at times when they're needed the most to give citizens of these places an option for their wealth. But bitcoin being both digital and decentralized globally can allow it to fill voids where other currencies may fail to reach.

the_gastropod

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 470
  • Age: 37
  • Location: RVA
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1134 on: April 05, 2022, 12:17:30 PM »
I feel you're completely misunderstanding value here. Sure, Facebook has value to investors because they can sell "eyes" to marketers and develop a business model off of it. But there is more in this world than value to just investors. Step back and away from the world of economics for a moment. Facebook also didn't always have advertisements. Did the people using Facebook prior to advertisements not value Facebook for what it was? You're being shortsighted in your analysis here.

Ah, ok. So your argument here kind of hinges on conflating two meanings of "value". You're using "value" in the end-user case. In this definition, Limewire is tremendously valuable, though no money changes hands. But you're using this to suggest Bitcoin's price is based in reality, if I'm understanding your argument correctly. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

It is unclear to many people that have a vast array of trustworthy financial services at their disposal because of very real financial privilege they enjoy.

I know this type of thing gets trotted around in crypto circles all the time. But frankly, it stinks. Crypto enthusiasts didn't care about helping the poor until they were convinced it was an opportunity for shilling crypto. They didn't care about governments seizing assets of the vulnerable until it recently happened to a bunch of white supremecists, and figured Bitcoin could help. They didn't care about payment infrastructures denying access to sex workers, but were at the forefronts of making sure funding for bigoted hate-groups weren't cut off.

Crypto was not designed to address the problems of the unprivileged. To reiterate, the sole purpose of its existence is to skirt laws and regulations. Through that, yes, it can skirt the laws and regulations of corrupt nations and financial systems, too. Maybe those are good use-cases? Valuable? Sure. But I think it's important to acknowledge what that means. Anarchy is certainly a better system of (non)-government than the very worst systems of government. But it's not something that we should really be striving towards.

The lack of accountability comes from it being a new industry with governance that was slow to follow. There have been countless cases recently of law enforcement agencies cracking down on fraudulent activity in the space. Whether that is securities violations, theft, investment scams, etc. If there is a lack of accountability, it most certainly has to do more with the fact that LE and regulations were slow on the uptake. As I showed in my previous post, the claims of illicit activity in the space are almost always greatly exaggerated and to say that the space is unregulated is also wildly off base.

Noooooo. No. There *is* regulation coming, sure. But it's only enforceable at the exchange level. Again—and this is important to understand—the only point of crypto's existence—and the reason for its massive deliberate inefficiency—is to bypass law and regulation. Any benefit or value ultimately stems from this fact.

That's part of it. People will find various use cases for it which means its value could be derived in different ways to different people. Some people might find value in it for being able to raise funds for a cause against tyranny. Some people might find value in it because they can monetize their content easier. Some people might find value in it as means to store their wealth outside of the debasement of their local currency. Some people might find value in it as a means of remittance to their family across borders. Some people might find value in it because it is a cheaper means of e-commerce exchange. Some people might find value in it simply because it is more accessible.

Every example here is either: a case of breaking the law or is flatly inaccurate. It is never cheaper to do e-commerce with Bitcoin than with a legal existing payment system like Visa. It is only cheaper if you're doing something illegal. Again, maybe there are cases where this is perfectly moral, and a "good thing". But it's important to acknowledge that you're advocating for allowing anyone who wants to to punch a hole into the legal system to do what they want. Yes, this can be people sending remittances back to their families. But via the same mechanisms, it can just as easily be used for payments to kidnappers or sex traffickers. It can be for funding terrorism. It can be for sending money to nations with widespread international sanctions...

Who are we to judge why these people would find value in such a thing? I am certainly not going to go to someone and chastise them for using something that they find value in simply because I don't. If someone is enjoying some classical music that I might find boring, do I chastise them for their taste in music?

I understand why you'd say such a thing. But... think about what you're suggesting. It's plain ol' ugly nihilism. "Who's to say what's good or bad? What does anything even mean or matter?". We have laws. If you're truly an anarchist and/or nihilist... that's fine and good, and you're being completely consistent. We don't need to debate any more. But if you aren't an anarchist or a nihilist, it may be worth thinking through the ramifications of what cryptocurrencies were designed to do.

Many of these problems are inherent to their design that can't fundamentally be resolved without a completely different design. Centralization is a part of it. Humans are not infallible creatures. Any system that leaves humans in a position of power to make broad decisions that impact millions of people is bound to have catastrophic failures and/or corruption throughout.

Wait... who do you think is in a position of power when it comes to cryptocurrencies?

Firstly, Bitcoin is not neutral. It has a deep philosophy that it is explicitly designed around.

What does this even mean??

I think it's lost on many why Bitcoin was developed, and the philosophies that back many of the decisions made in its design.

No technology is neutral. It has human opinions, biases, ideas baked into it. Sometimes technology's effects are un-neutral by design, sometimes by happenstance. Bitcoin is designed around pretty extreme libertarian ideas. I do not agree with these ideas, and I think many crypto enthusiasts also would not agree with these ideas. I think they're—excuse the offensive language, but it's a useful term—useful idiots perpetuating libertarian ideals.

Vast amounts of currency debasement and record levels of inflation. Currency collapses in many places around the world. Over 2 billion people world-wide are experiencing double digit inflation.

Cool. Bitcoin's YoY inflation is around 30%. So... that's clearly not it...

Financial censorship is rampant. Look at how mild-mannered Canada pushed authoritarian financial censorship on its citizens.
Yep! It's problematic. I'm with you—I think the trucker's cause was gross. And the government's response was also gross. I hope those in the government are held to account, and systems are put into place to prevent that from re-occurring. I do not think the solution is to throw out the entire legal system, and embrace unregulated wildcat private banks.


<...snip>
I know I just spewed a lot out there and it wasn't meant to come off crazy sounding, but if you're ignoring much of this that is taking place around the world, then it is likely the main reason for that is because you're just privileged enough to not be impacted or bothered by it.

Yea, again the "privileged" thing. I addressed that a few paragraphs up. I think that's a cynical talking point Alex Gladstein started, and it spread like wildfire. It's the same sleazy strategy as "NFT's are enabling artists!", ignoring the fact that the people saying this directly benefit from artists spending money to "mint" NFT's to try to sell them. It's grift all the way down, as I see it.
« Last Edit: April 05, 2022, 12:33:54 PM by the_gastropod »

MustacheAndaHalf

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 6611
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1135 on: April 05, 2022, 12:22:40 PM »
It's certain that Putin is moving his massive wealth around using crypto.
Do you have evidence Putin has even 80% of his wealth in crypto?

In the Panama papers, I recall a violinist had staggering sums of money moving through his offshore accounts.  Makes no sense, until you know he is close friends with Putin.  More recently, I saw a news story mention that these superyachts owned by Russian elites also have opaque offshore ownership.  From past evidence, Putin hides his wealth in offshore companies with people he trusts.

GuitarStv

  • Senior Mustachian
  • ********
  • Posts: 23048
  • Age: 42
  • Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1136 on: April 05, 2022, 01:03:14 PM »
It's certain that Putin is moving his massive wealth around using crypto.
Do you have evidence Putin has even 80% of his wealth in crypto?

In the Panama papers, I recall a violinist had staggering sums of money moving through his offshore accounts.  Makes no sense, until you know he is close friends with Putin.  More recently, I saw a news story mention that these superyachts owned by Russian elites also have opaque offshore ownership.  From past evidence, Putin hides his wealth in offshore companies with people he trusts.

Nope . . . no evidence at all that Putin is using cryptocurrency.

But he has huge sums of money to move around, can't do it through financial institutions, and wants to hide the movement from others.  Based on everything pro-crypto people have been telling me, this is the perfect use case for crypto, and he'd be stupid not to be using it.

Telecaster

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 3543
  • Location: Seattle, WA
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1137 on: April 05, 2022, 01:12:06 PM »
Well I rejected those comparisons for crypto, because I think it has less value. At least you can grow a tulip, even if you overpaid by 40 ducats for it. With crypto you only get to pay thousands of dollars say you burned down some rainforest..

Less value to you maybe.   But the person buying the Bitcoin believes it has value. 

lifeanon269

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 566
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1138 on: April 05, 2022, 01:30:20 PM »
But you're using this to suggest Bitcoin's price is based in reality, if I'm understanding your argument correctly. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

I never brought up price at all. This was my original statement that you responded to:

Quote
There are plenty of things in this world that are not physical that people value, would you not agree? Just because something isn't physical, doesn't mean it can't have value. I would think that's a pretty obvious and factual statement.

Price is secondary to something having value, wouldn't you agree? In fact, there is proof to this by the fact that bitcoin circulated for several years before it ever even had a US dollar denominated price. People still valued it prior to that though. They wouldn't have worked so hard on it if they didn't feel it had value to them and that it couldn't also serve some value to others in the future.

I know this type of thing gets trotted around in crypto circles all the time. But frankly, it stinks. Crypto enthusiasts didn't care about helping the poor until they were convinced it was an opportunity for shilling crypto. They didn't care about governments seizing assets of the vulnerable until it recently happened to a bunch of white supremecists, and figured Bitcoin could help. They didn't care about payment infrastructures denying access to sex workers, but were at the forefronts of making sure funding for bigoted hate-groups weren't cut off.

Noooooo. No. There *is* regulation coming, sure. But it's only enforceable at the exchange level. Again—and this is important to understand—the only point of crypto's existence—and the reason for its massive deliberate inefficiency—is to bypass law and regulation. Any benefit or value ultimately stems from this fact.

No, there is quite a bit of regulation in the industry. But that is besides the point. The original claim was about a lack of accountability in the space. But accountability falls on humans. Furthermore, no one in their right mind looks for accountability within the places you're seeking accountability from. That would be quite the idealistic fantasy to ever expect organizations and systems to always hold themselves accountable for everything they do. Do we expect oil companies to hold themselves accountable for their oil spills? Do we expect financial institutions to hold themselves accountable for all the billions in money laundering they help commit? Did we expect the tobacco industry to hold themselves accountable for all the toxic substances they put in their products? The truth is no one in their right mind expects industries to hold themselves accountable, so why are you starting now with the crypto-currency industry?

In reality, accountability falls on our systems of governance and if we ever expect scams in the cryptocurrency industry to subside and for humans to change their behavior in that space, then we must look to our governments, legislative bodies, and law enforcement agencies to hold scammers and fraudsters accountable for their actions.

Every example here is either: a case of breaking the law or is flatly inaccurate. It is never cheaper to do e-commerce with Bitcoin than with a legal existing payment system like Visa. It is only cheaper if you're doing something illegal. Again, maybe there are cases where this is perfectly moral, and a "good thing". But it's important to acknowledge that you're advocating for allowing anyone who wants to to punch a hole into the legal system to do what they want. Yes, this can be people sending remittances back to their families. But via the same mechanisms, it can just as easily be used for payments to kidnappers or sex traffickers. It can be for funding terrorism. It can be for sending money to nations with widespread international sanctions...

Ohhhh, man. OK well tell me you haven't ever used bitcoin without telling me you haven't used bitcoin. Or maybe you haven't used a number of various financial services that requires moving any substantial amount of funds. I had to send a wire transfer the other month to pay off a loan and it cost me $50 and took over a day to fully settle and I had to fill out clunky forms to get it processed. And that is supposedly one of our faster forms of moving large sums of money. I had another bitcoin collateralized loan I had as a temporary move to make a cash offer on a house and was able to move hundreds of thousands of bitcoin within minutes for less than a dollar.

I run a bitcoin Lightning network node that settles thousands of dollars for people that is real economic activity. Over the last year it settled about $62,000 in transactions and I collected about $1.60 in fees for that. That was over the course of about 600 transactions. So do the math on that and that's about an average of $100 per transactions for an average fee of about $0.0026 per transaction. I'm sorry, but "legal" VISA which generally charges somewhere between 2-3% or so in fees is several orders of magnitude more expensive. Your continued posturing that simply using bitcoin is somehow "illegal" is off-putting.


I understand why you'd say such a thing. But... think about what you're suggesting. It's plain ol' ugly nihilism. "Who's to say what's good or bad? What does anything even mean or matter?". We have laws. If you're truly an anarchist and/or nihilist... that's fine and good, and you're being completely consistent. We don't need to debate any more. But if you aren't an anarchist or a nihilist, it may be worth thinking through the ramifications of what cryptocurrencies were designed to do.

Ya, sorry, but that isn't nihilism. That's actually almost the polar opposite of nihilism. Nihilism is the idea that values are baseless and meaningless and life is essentially meaningless. What I am saying here is that peoples' personal values, regardless of what I think of them, still have value to them personally! Nothing I say can change that. That's the exact opposite of what you're claiming I said here.

Wait... who do you think is in a position of power when it comes to cryptocurrencies?

Huh? Read that again maybe? I am not sure what you're asking here and why and I think there might have been a misinterpretation.

I think it's lost on many why Bitcoin was developed, and the philosophies that back many of the decisions made in its design.

No technology is neutral. It has human opinions, biases, ideas baked into it. Bitcoin is designed around pretty extreme libertarian ideas. I do not agree with these ideas, and I think many crypto enthusiasts also would not agree with these ideas. I think they're—excuse the offensive language, but it's a useful term—useful idiots perpetuating libertarian ideals.

I would argue that bitcoin is one of the more bipartisan subjects these days. You'll find people on "both sides of the aisle" both completely for bitcoin and completely against it. Just look at some of the votes and amendments that have come and gone on capital hill and it is one of the rare cases that you'll have a subject these days that isn't split evenly down party lines. And I'll stand by the argument that bitcoin the technology is neutral regardless of whatever beliefs its progenitors might have held. It is actually rather refreshing to see nowadays and I think it is important that we can share our differing opinions on various subjects without denigrating our fellow humans as less than such because of the beliefs they may hold.

Cool. Bitcoin's YoY inflation is around 30%. So... that's clearly not it...

How do you figure that? It's monetary inflation is about 1.6% annually. 18.7 million circulating supply in April of last year and 19 million as of today. That equals about a 1.6% increase in monetary supply.

Yea, again the "privileged" thing. I addressed that a few paragraphs up. I think that's a cynical talking point Alex Gladstein started, and it spread like wildfire. It's the same sleazy strategy as "NFT's are enabling artists!", ignoring the fact that the people saying this directly benefit from artists spending money to "mint" NFT's to try to sell them. It's grift all the way down, as I see it.

NFTs are dumb and really aren't anything new either. You're not going to find me arguing in favor of NFTs here. They're not decentralized and they're just latching onto the hype of decentralization to sell "art" on centralized platforms that we've long been able to do prior. The art itself, which is where the NFT gets its value, is not decentralized and we don't have good scalable systems for decentralizing art. So for as long as the art isn't decentralized, then it remains pointless to try and decentralize any token that is supposed to represent it. If the art disappears, then the value of the NFT disappears as well. Maybe that problem will be solved in the future.
« Last Edit: April 05, 2022, 01:40:58 PM by lifeanon269 »

MustacheAndaHalf

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 6611
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1139 on: April 05, 2022, 01:33:48 PM »
It's certain that Putin is moving his massive wealth around using crypto.
Do you have evidence Putin has even 80% of his wealth in crypto?

In the Panama papers, I recall a violinist had staggering sums of money moving through his offshore accounts.  Makes no sense, until you know he is close friends with Putin.  More recently, I saw a news story mention that these superyachts owned by Russian elites also have opaque offshore ownership.  From past evidence, Putin hides his wealth in offshore companies with people he trusts.
Nope . . . no evidence at all that Putin is using cryptocurrency.

But he has huge sums of money to move around, can't do it through financial institutions, and wants to hide the movement from others.  Based on everything pro-crypto people have been telling me, this is the perfect use case for crypto, and he'd be stupid not to be using it.
Well, regardless if that's true, it was worth it for your joke (in another part of the forum) about the $2 billion in crypto moving around.  While Bitcoin accounts are created anonymously, transactions between accounts record the exact time, date and amount.  It's not the perfect solution to hiding money transfers.

There's also a giant loophole in Russian sanctions: their most profitable industry continues untouched as they sell oil & gas to Europe.

the_gastropod

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 470
  • Age: 37
  • Location: RVA
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1140 on: April 05, 2022, 02:02:30 PM »
I know this type of thing gets trotted around in crypto circles all the time. But frankly, it stinks. Crypto enthusiasts didn't care about helping the poor until they were convinced it was an opportunity for shilling crypto. They didn't care about governments seizing assets of the vulnerable until it recently happened to a bunch of white supremecists, and figured Bitcoin could help. They didn't care about payment infrastructures denying access to sex workers, but were at the forefronts of making sure funding for bigoted hate-groups weren't cut off.

Noooooo. No. There *is* regulation coming, sure. But it's only enforceable at the exchange level. Again—and this is important to understand—the only point of crypto's existence—and the reason for its massive deliberate inefficiency—is to bypass law and regulation. Any benefit or value ultimately stems from this fact.

No, there is quite a bit of regulation in the industry. But that is besides the point. The original claim was about a lack of accountability in the space. But accountability falls on humans. Furthermore, no one in their right mind looks for accountability within the places you're seeking accountability from. That would be quite the idealistic fantasy to ever expect organizations and systems to always hold themselves accountable for everything they do. Do we expect oil companies to hold themselves accountable for their oil spills? Do we expect financial institutions to hold themselves accountable for all the billions in money laundering they help commit? Did we expect the tobacco industry to hold themselves accountable for all the toxic substances they put in their products? The truth is no one in their right mind expects industries to hold themselves accountable, so why are you starting now with the crypto-currency industry?

In reality, accountability falls on our systems of governance and if we ever expect scams in the cryptocurrency industry to subside and for humans to change their behavior in that space, then we must look to our governments, legislative bodies, and law enforcement agencies to hold scammers and fraudsters accountable for their actions.

You missed my point completely, but I think we're very close to agreeing here. Yes! Accountability comes from the outside. That's a little thing we call: law! We have law. We have systems that maintain and enforce laws. And I want to turn up the volume to 11 here and reiterate for the nth time: crypto's reason for existing is to bypass those laws!.

Every example here is either: a case of breaking the law or is flatly inaccurate. It is never cheaper to do e-commerce with Bitcoin than with a legal existing payment system like Visa. It is only cheaper if you're doing something illegal. Again, maybe there are cases where this is perfectly moral, and a "good thing". But it's important to acknowledge that you're advocating for allowing anyone who wants to to punch a hole into the legal system to do what they want. Yes, this can be people sending remittances back to their families. But via the same mechanisms, it can just as easily be used for payments to kidnappers or sex traffickers. It can be for funding terrorism. It can be for sending money to nations with widespread international sanctions...

Ohhhh, man. OK well tell me you haven't ever used bitcoin without telling me you haven't used bitcoin. Or maybe you haven't used a number of various financial services that requires moving any substantial amount of funds. I had to send a wire transfer the other month to pay off a loan and it cost me $50 and took over a day to fully settle. And that is supposedly one of our faster forms of moving large sums of money. I had another bitcoin collateralized loan I had as a temporary move to make a cash offer on a house and was able to move hundreds of thousands of bitcoin within minutes for less than a dollar.

I run a bitcoin Lightning network node that settles thousands of dollars for people that is real economic activity. Over the last year it settled about $62,000 in transactions and I collected about $1.60 in fees for that. That was over the course of about 600 transactions. So do the math on that and that's about an average of $100 per transactions for an average fee of about $0.0026 per transaction. I'm sorry, but VISA which generally charges somewhere between 2-3% or so in fees is several orders of magnitude more expensive.

Oh boy... Lightning network is a centralization scheme that completely obviates the entire point of Bitcoin. To be frank, I don't think you have a great understand the systems you're dealing with or the reason things are the way they are.

Let me pose another question: If blockchain technology would allow Visa and Mastercard and banks to be more efficient, and save money, why aren't they using it? They've had over 10 years—are they just that slow to adapt? Or is there another reason, do you imagine?

I understand why you'd say such a thing. But... think about what you're suggesting. It's plain ol' ugly nihilism. "Who's to say what's good or bad? What does anything even mean or matter?". We have laws. If you're truly an anarchist and/or nihilist... that's fine and good, and you're being completely consistent. We don't need to debate any more. But if you aren't an anarchist or a nihilist, it may be worth thinking through the ramifications of what cryptocurrencies were designed to do.

Ya, sorry, but that isn't nihilism. That's actually almost the polar opposite of nihilism. Nihilism is the idea that values are baseless and meaningless and life is essentially meaningless. What I am saying here is that peoples' personal values, regardless of what I think of them, still have value to them personally! Nothing I say can change that. That's the exact opposite of what you're claiming I said here.

... lol. I'm sensing a pattern of difficulty thinking of second-order effects here. Having 0 opinion on other people's values is.... nihilism. "Some people value cannibalism. Who am I to say if that's not valuable?".

Wait... who do you think is in a position of power when it comes to cryptocurrencies?

Huh? Read that again maybe? I am not sure what you're asking here and why and I think there might have been a misinterpretation.

You stated: "Any system that leaves humans in a position of power to make broad decisions that impact millions of people is bound to have catastrophic failures and/or corruption throughout." Are you suggesting that humans are not in a position of power w/r/t Bitcoin? If that's not your point, what is?

I think it's lost on many why Bitcoin was developed, and the philosophies that back many of the decisions made in its design.

No technology is neutral. It has human opinions, biases, ideas baked into it. Bitcoin is designed around pretty extreme libertarian ideas. I do not agree with these ideas, and I think many crypto enthusiasts also would not agree with these ideas. I think they're—excuse the offensive language, but it's a useful term—useful idiots perpetuating libertarian ideals.

I would argue that bitcoin is one of the more bipartisan subjects these days. You'll find people on "both sides of the aisle" both completely for bitcoin and completely against it. Just look at some of the votes and amendments that have come and gone on capital hill and it is one of the rare cases that you'll have a subject these days that isn't split evenly down party lines. And I'll stand by the argument that bitcoin the technology is neutral regardless of whatever beliefs its progenitors might have held. It is actually rather refreshing to see nowadays and I think it is important that we can share our differing opinions on various subjects without denigrating our fellow humans as less than such because of the beliefs they may hold.

As always, yes, "both sides" have crypto proponents. But it's very skewed. For instance, in 2021, 7 representatives in Congress traded crypto. 6 were Republicans. This is disingenuous to pretend it's "bipartisan" or "neutral". It's absolutely not neutral as....once again: its entire purpose is to circumvent government regulation. Which party has, for at least 50 years, been touting regulation as evil?

Here's a Slate article talking about the partisan nature of Bitcoin in the US legislature: https://slate.com/technology/2022/01/crypto-bitcoin-republicans-josh-mandel.html

Cool. Bitcoin's YoY inflation is around 30%. So... that's clearly not it...

How do you figure that? It's monetary inflation is about 1.6% annually. 18.7 million circulating supply in April of last year and 19 million as of today. That equals about a 1.6% increase in monetary supply.

What in the world? That is not how inflation is defined. Inflation in the reduction in purchasing power. In the last year, the purchasing power of 1 Bitcoin has dropped about 30%.

This is a bit of an aside: but this is exactly what I'm talking about when I say crypto helps spread Libertarian ideals. This idea that an expanding monetary base is problematic is Libertarian. I'm guessing you learned this bizarro definition of inflation via your interest in cryptocurrencies, and not from an Economics class or textbook.

Yea, again the "privileged" thing. I addressed that a few paragraphs up. I think that's a cynical talking point Alex Gladstein started, and it spread like wildfire. It's the same sleazy strategy as "NFT's are enabling artists!", ignoring the fact that the people saying this directly benefit from artists spending money to "mint" NFT's to try to sell them. It's grift all the way down, as I see it.

NFTs are dumb and really aren't anything new either. You're not going to find me arguing in favor of NFTs here. They're not decentralized and they're just latching onto the hype of decentralization to sell "art" on centralized platforms that we've long been able to do prior. The art itself, which is where the NFT gets its value, is not decentralized and we don't have good scalable systems for decentralizing art. So for as long as the art isn't decentralized, then it remains pointless to try and decentralize any token that is supposed to represent it. If the art disappears, then the value of the NFT disappears as well. Maybe that problem will be solved in the future.

Yea, we agree. My point was: it's very common in the Crypto community to cynically advocate for things that sound good, as if they're helping less-privileged people. Artists, as a group, tend to struggle quite a bit. The whole NFT thing really exploited artists for profit. The talking point that crypto helps the "financially unprivileged" is, similarly, little more than a con. These people do not care about the poor. They care about their bags being inflated.

You see similar "up is down" rhetoric with Bitcoiners talking about the impact on climate change. "Bitcoin is a battery", "it incentivizes renewable energy", etc. These are just lies, plain and simple.
« Last Edit: April 05, 2022, 02:21:09 PM by the_gastropod »

Telecaster

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 3543
  • Location: Seattle, WA
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1141 on: April 05, 2022, 02:15:52 PM »
How do you figure that? It's monetary inflation is about 1.6% annually. 18.7 million circulating supply in April of last year and 19 million as of today. That equals about a 1.6% increase in monetary supply.

But each Bitcoin is less valuable than it was a year ago.  A basket of goods today purchased with Bitcoin would be about 25% smaller than the same basket of goods purchased with Bitcoin a year ago.   That's hyperinflation territory.   From a strictly inflation standpoint, you would have been better off keeping your money rubles during that same time period. 

lifeanon269

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 566
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1142 on: April 05, 2022, 03:06:47 PM »
Oh boy... Lightning network is a centralization scheme that completely obviates the entire point of Bitcoin. To be frank, I don't think you have a great understand the systems you're dealing with or the reason things are the way they are.

Let me pose another question: If blockchain technology would allow Visa and Mastercard and banks to be more efficient, and save money, why aren't they using it? They've had over 10 years—are they just that slow to adapt? Or is there another reason, do you imagine?

Oooof. OK, we can get as technical here as you want as I feel it would expose some things being said. I all for getting technical but I feel it would be off topic to do so. No, lightning is not a "centralization scheme". I'd love for you to elaborate on that. Whether node channels will eventually gravitate toward central points remains to be seen. But the fact that I can create a node completely outside of any centrality remains and I can avoid any node's channels I so chose. As with any economy there will always be major players in the space that many individuals use (Amazon for example), but that doesn't mean that the overall network is centralized. At no point in actively using the lightning network or conducting a lightning transaction are you ever not in possession of the keys to your bitcoin (as long as you're not using a custodial service). That's a fact. Decentralization is a spectrum after all. To say that the lightning network does away with the decentralization benefits of bitcoin ignores this fact. Broadcast networks (like bitcoin) inherently don't scale, so there will always be some trade-offs at play if you are looking to scale things beyond what is capable with a fully decentralized public blockchain like bitcoin.

Lightning transactions ARE bitcoin transactions. There is fundamentally no difference between a raw lightning transaction and a raw bitcoin transaction. Bitcoin scripts are what enables lightning transactions to take place securely off-chain. The ability to use bitcoin scripting and opcodes like CheckSequenceVerify to allow for revocation and time locks means that you can conduct transactions with the full security of the bitcoin blockchain/network with instant settlement between parties without requiring a confirmation on each transaction.

You criticize me for "not understand[sic] the systems you're dealing with" and then follow that up with a question pondering why VISA and Mastercard aren't using blockchains? For real? The entire reason to use a blockchain is to remove trust from a system. That's it. To remove trust, you must remain decentralized as much as possible. VISA and Mastercard are legal corporate entities that inherently rely upon trust to exist. There is absolutely nothing to gain by them using a blockchain in any of the systems they operate. No, blockchains will not revolutionize shipping, voting, lending, real estate, etc. All these things that are often touted as being the next thing blockchains will revolutionize inherently require trust to exist and have some form of centralization exhibited upon them. So no, VISA and Mastercard have nothing to gain from blockchains and if they come out saying they're dabbling it in, it is almost certainly just for marketing buzz.


... lol. I'm sensing a pattern of difficulty thinking of second-order effects here. Having 0 opinion on other people's values is.... nihilism. "Some people value cannibalism. Who am I to say if that's not valuable?".

Read what I wrote again. I am not having zero opinion on their values. If someone is a cannibal, I will absolutely have an opinion on that. I am a vegan, I have an opinion people eating meat all the time, lol. Here is what I said once more, please read carefully:

Quote
What I am saying here is that peoples' personal values, regardless of what I think of them, still have value to them personally! Nothing I say can change that.

What I said is that my opinion toward's someone else's value won't change how they value what they value. If someone is cannibal and they value being a cannibal, my opinion of their supposed value won't change the fact that they value being a cannibal. That's not nihilism. The fact that you regularly insinuate the legality of even just using bitcoin tells me you hold quite the contempt for it. I do wonder why. If someone finds value in using it for their own personal reasons, who are you to say they don't value it without knowing their personal circumstance? That is what you do when you say that bitcoin has no value. You're claiming that all the people the world over that are using bitcoin, all for their own personal reasons, don't value it or somehow don't understand it enough to even know why it is that they don't value it like you say they should. To me, that almost sounds more nihilistic than anything that has come out of my mouth in this thread, that's for sure.

You stated: "Any system that leaves humans in a position of power to make broad decisions that impact millions of people is bound to have catastrophic failures and/or corruption throughout." Are you suggesting that humans are not in a position of power w/r/t Bitcoin? If that's not your point, what is?

I would say that no central authority, individual human, or organization is in power over bitcoin. That's kind of the entire point of it.

Quote
What in the world? That is not how inflation is defined. Inflation in the reduction in purchasing power. In the last year, the purchasing power of 1 Bitcoin has dropped about 30%.

Your comment was in reply to my remark about currency debasement. There is monetary inflation and there is price inflation. Monetary inflation brings about price inflation (more money chasing goods). With bitcoin we know what its monetary policy is and will be in the future. As far as your comment on a 30% decrease in purchasing power with bitcoin, you're once again looking at things from your own personal perspective and not placing yourself in other peoples' shoes around the world. Price inflation is relative to the goods you're looking to buy with the currency you're going to use to by them. My original comment was in regards to all the countries around the world experiencing crippling inflation levels and that trend I don't think will reverse in the future. There will be more Venezuelas and Lebanons in the future and if you think bitcoin's price history will have a discouraging effect on people looking to escape those dystopian nightmares, you're being naive.

Not to mention the fact that the YoY number for bitcoin is extremely shortsighted given how volatile bitcoin is. Bitcoin's YoY return ignores the fact that bitcoin was trading below what it is today for as much time during that time frame than it was trading above. This isn't like your typical YoY price inflation number for any other fiat currency where it only ever goes up. Not to mention the fact that if you're looking to escape your country's debased currency as a means of livelihood, the bitcoin you're holding in the short term isn't exposed to those YoY numbers and if you're holding bitcoin as a longer term store of value you're probably looking at a longer term than just 1 year.
« Last Edit: April 05, 2022, 03:19:24 PM by lifeanon269 »

the_gastropod

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 470
  • Age: 37
  • Location: RVA
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1143 on: April 05, 2022, 04:40:51 PM »
Oh boy... Lightning network is a centralization scheme that completely obviates the entire point of Bitcoin. To be frank, I don't think you have a great understand the systems you're dealing with or the reason things are the way they are.

Let me pose another question: If blockchain technology would allow Visa and Mastercard and banks to be more efficient, and save money, why aren't they using it? They've had over 10 years—are they just that slow to adapt? Or is there another reason, do you imagine?

Oooof. OK, we can get as technical here as you want as I feel it would expose some things being said. I all for getting technical but I feel it would be off topic to do so. No, lightning is not a "centralization scheme". I'd love for you to elaborate on that. Whether node channels will eventually gravitate toward central points remains to be seen. But the fact that I can create a node completely outside of any centrality remains and I can avoid any node's channels I so chose. As with any economy there will always be major players in the space that many individuals use (Amazon for example), but that doesn't mean that the overall network is centralized. At no point in actively using the lightning network or conducting a lightning transaction are you ever not in possession of the keys to your bitcoin (as long as you're not using a custodial service). That's a fact. Decentralization is a spectrum after all. To say that the lightning network does away with the decentralization benefits of bitcoin ignores this fact. Broadcast networks (like bitcoin) inherently don't scale, so there will always be some trade-offs at play if you are looking to scale things beyond what is capable with a fully decentralized public blockchain like bitcoin.

Lightning transactions ARE bitcoin transactions. There is fundamentally no difference between a raw lightning transaction and a raw bitcoin transaction. Bitcoin scripts are what enables lightning transactions to take place securely off-chain. The ability to use bitcoin scripting and opcodes like CheckSequenceVerify to allow for revocation and time locks means that you can conduct transactions with the full security of the bitcoin blockchain/network with instant settlement between parties without requiring a confirmation on each transaction.

You criticize me for "not understand[sic] the systems you're dealing with" and then follow that up with a question pondering why VISA and Mastercard aren't using blockchains? For real? The entire reason to use a blockchain is to remove trust from a system. That's it. To remove trust, you must remain decentralized as much as possible. VISA and Mastercard are legal corporate entities that inherently rely upon trust to exist. There is absolutely nothing to gain by them using a blockchain in any of the systems they operate. No, blockchains will not revolutionize shipping, voting, lending, real estate, etc. All these things that are often touted as being the next thing blockchains will revolutionize inherently require trust to exist and have some form of centralization exhibited upon them. So no, VISA and Mastercard have nothing to gain from blockchains and if they come out saying they're dabbling it in, it is almost certainly just for marketing buzz.

Look, man. I have a CS degree, and have been a professional software engineer for 15 years. I'm happy to get technical :) Thus far, I don't think it's necessary. As you state: decentralization is a spectrum. The more decentralized something is, the less efficient it is. Lightning adds centralization to the scheme to alleviate some pains of decentralization. I don't think any additional techno-babble is necessary here. Lightning is more centralized that vanilla Bitcoin. It also requires: opening the channel and closing the channel, for which Bitcoin's astronomical fees are still present. You also must trust the lightning network itself, which is susceptible to myriad of attack vectors, including forced expiration of transactions, fraudulently closing the channel while the counterparty is offline, and so on.

Let's continue with this Visa/Mastercard thing. Trust. Bitcoin is designed to not need trust (in governments, in laws, in financial systems). This design necessarily makes it less efficient than systems that can rely on trust. This is precisely my point: Bitcoin cannot beat a definitionally more efficient system on cost. The examples you've given haven't been clear enough for me to point at why they're absurd, but I can know with complete confidence that they are not apples-to-apples comparisons the same way I know an 18-wheeler will require more energy to go the same distance as a Toyota Prius, regardless of the distances involved. It's just physics. Bitcoin is colossally inefficient by design. It is literally thousands of times less efficient than traditional alternatives.
... lol. I'm sensing a pattern of difficulty thinking of second-order effects here. Having 0 opinion on other people's values is.... nihilism. "Some people value cannibalism. Who am I to say if that's not valuable?".

Read what I wrote again. I am not having zero opinion on their values. If someone is a cannibal, I will absolutely have an opinion on that. I am a vegan, I have an opinion people eating meat all the time, lol. Here is what I said once more, please read carefully:

Quote
What I am saying here is that peoples' personal values, regardless of what I think of them, still have value to them personally! Nothing I say can change that.

What I said is that my opinion toward's someone else's value won't change how they value what they value. If someone is cannibal and they value being a cannibal, my opinion of their supposed value won't change the fact that they value being a cannibal. That's not nihilism. The fact that you regularly insinuate the legality of even just using bitcoin tells me you hold quite the contempt for it. I do wonder why. If someone finds value in using it for their own personal reasons, who are you to say they don't value it without knowing their personal circumstance? That is what you do when you say that bitcoin has no value. You're claiming that all the people the world over that are using bitcoin, all for their own personal reasons, don't value it or somehow don't understand it enough to even know why it is that they don't value it like you say they should. To me, that almost sounds more nihilistic than anything that has come out of my mouth in this thread, that's for sure.
Ayyy, fellow vegan high-five :)

I don't recall saying such a thing? Correct me if I'm wrong. Sure—people value things that I don't. I don't find that particularly insightful or interesting, to be honest. What is interesting is our opinions on why these things are valuable. I'm asking you to explain what you find valuable about Bitcoin. I haven't heard a particularly coherent answer, yet.

And re: my contempt. Yes. Like I have contempt for cannibalism or gold bullion commercials, I have contempt for Bitcoin. I think it's harmful and runs counter to virtually everything I believe in: accountability, democracy, environmental responsibility, the common good, equity, etc.

You stated: "Any system that leaves humans in a position of power to make broad decisions that impact millions of people is bound to have catastrophic failures and/or corruption throughout." Are you suggesting that humans are not in a position of power w/r/t Bitcoin? If that's not your point, what is?

I would say that no central authority, individual human, or organization is in power over bitcoin. That's kind of the entire point of it.

Miners. Developers. They're a hell of a lot more human and a hell of a lot more centralized than you're letting on... And getting more so centralized by the day.

Quote
What in the world? That is not how inflation is defined. Inflation in the reduction in purchasing power. In the last year, the purchasing power of 1 Bitcoin has dropped about 30%.

Your comment was in reply to my remark about currency debasement....

C'mon man. We can all read the thread and see what you said. But let's beat this dead horse: You said: "Vast amounts of currency debasement and record levels of inflation. Currency collapses in many places around the world. Over 2 billion people world-wide are experiencing double digit inflation"

debasement and record levels of inflation... experiencing double digit inflation. Moving along...

There is monetary inflation and there is price inflation. Monetary inflation brings about price inflation (more money chasing goods).

It can. But it doesn't necessarily. This is quacky Libertarian economics. In a sufficiently growing economy, the monetary base can increase and simultaneously experience deflation.

With bitcoin we know what its monetary policy is and will be in the future.

A few points:
1. No. You don't. Developers can change these rules at any time, so long as there's sufficient agreement.
2. Why is this a good thing? This, too, is Libertarian economics talk. Virtually all economists would tell you: having a monetary policy that responds to change is strictly superior to one that is static. There's a reason no modern economy is still on the gold standard. And when it's been tried in recent history, it's been catastrophic.

As far as your comment on a 30% decrease in purchasing power with bitcoin, you're once again looking at things from your own personal perspective and not placing yourself in other peoples' shoes around the world. Price inflation is relative to the goods you're looking to buy with the currency you're going to use to by them. My original comment was in regards to all the countries around the world experiencing crippling inflation levels and that trend I don't think will reverse in the future. There will be more Venezuelas and Lebanons in the future and if you think bitcoin's price history will have a discouraging effect on people looking to escape those dystopian nightmares, you're being naive.

You're the one suggesting Bitcoin somehow solves the problems in Venezuela or Lebanon. I do not think you understand the problems in Venezuela or Lebanon. Once again, you're regurgitating talking points you've heard in crypto circles. You did not arrive at these things out of genuine concern for the people of Venezuela or the people of Lebanon. You arrived at this after reading some Bitcoin Magazine article or some such nonsense.

Let's look at the shining city on the hill for Bitcoiners: El Salvador. Bitcoin is their national currency! What's happening? How's that going? Bitcoiners' favorite Dictator, Bukele, just suspended human rights protections in El Salvador. Even in this hellscape, 86% of businesses report having never conducted a single transaction in bitcoin.

I don't think I'm the one being naive.

Not to mention the fact that the YoY number for bitcoin is extremely shortsighted given how volatile bitcoin is. Bitcoin's YoY return ignores the fact that bitcoin was trading below what it is today for as much time during that time frame than it was trading above. This isn't like your typical YoY price inflation number for any other fiat currency where it only ever goes up.

Ah, yes! Volatility! The attribute most sought after in "stores of value" and "currencies".

Not to mention the fact that if you're looking to escape your country's debased currency as a means of livelihood, the bitcoin you're holding in the short term isn't exposed to those YoY numbers and if you're holding bitcoin as a longer term store of value you're probably looking at a longer term than just 1 year.

Dude! Bitcoin just went down like 8% yesterday! As you said: it is massively volatile. Holding it short term is still a massive risk exposure, often much worse than the shitty currencies you're poo-pooing.

lifeanon269

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 566
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1144 on: April 05, 2022, 07:05:58 PM »
Lightning adds centralization to the scheme to alleviate some pains of decentralization. I don't think any additional techno-babble is necessary here. Lightning is more centralized that vanilla Bitcoin.

At the very least, regardless of whether you spout "techno-babble", you could explain why you think it is a "centralization scheme that completely obviates the entire point of Bitcoin". So far all you have done is make the claim without any reasoning explained to back up your point whatsoever.

It also requires: opening the channel and closing the channel, for which Bitcoin's astronomical fees are still present. You also must trust the lightning network itself, which is susceptible to myriad of attack vectors, including forced expiration of transactions, fraudulently closing the channel while the counterparty is offline, and so on.

Yup, Lightning requires opening a channel. But there are also options like channel factories that will allow for new channels to be created or closed in the same way that lightning transactions are without requiring on-chain transactions. What do you mean you must trust the lightning network? Can you elaborate on that further? I'm not claiming that there are no attack vectors possible. But it is important to understand what the word "trust" means and I don't think it is being used appropriately here. Also, as I specifically said previously, lightning network is an active network and if you're going to use it, you must be present for it. So yes, this means that you must either always be online with your channels (or at least online frequently enough to watch your channels with the csv_delay you set for your channel peers) or use a watchtower that can watch your channels for you. There is a huge risk in attempting to close a channel fraudulently. Even if your peer has been offline for some duration like you say, you never know a forced channel close is being watched by someone. If you get caught trying to close a channel fraudulently, then you risk losing all the funds in the channel as a penalty by your peer.

The examples you've given haven't been clear enough for me to point at why they're absurd, but I can know with complete confidence that they are not apples-to-apples comparisons

I gave you my real-world numbers for my actual lightning node that I have been hosting for over 3 years now. I am not sure why you assume they're "absurd". The numbers are absolutely real and if you actually used the lightning network yourself and hosted a node yourself, you'd have a similar experience. It seems odd that you're claiming something with complete confidence for something that you obviously have not used.

I think it's harmful and runs counter to virtually everything I believe in: accountability, democracy, environmental responsibility, the common good, equity, etc.

The strange thing is that I feel it exemplifies all of those things.

Bitcoin is accountable in the sense that it is 100% transparent and 100% auditable. That lends itself well when it comes to accountability. It is hard to hold a system accountable if there is no transparency in how it operates and you can't audit what it does. I think there will need to be human accountability that comes from governance and legislation, but bitcoin itself is absolutely accountable. Contrast that with our central bankers of today that aren't even elected officials in most instances. Central bankers are almost never held accountable for poor policy that is put in place.

Bitcoin exemplifies democracy in the truest sense. Democracy literally means "rule by the people" and that is what bitcoin does. It is a network operated by the people and anyone can participate it. Again, contrast that with central banking that is ruled by nepotistic politicians and bureaucrats.

I've already spoke earlier to its environmental impacts. At the end of the day everything we do has an energy cost. Every output in our economy consumes energy to produce and operate. Bitcoin is no different and I spoke earlier about how it would be foolish to write off bitcoin because of its early life energy costs during its production phase without acknowledging its future efficiencies that could be gained. In the grand scheme of things, bitcoin's climate impact will be negligible and if there is any future efficiencies to be gained from it (which I believe there are), then I think it is worthwhile to pursue. Bitcoin, after all, is agnostic to the type of energy it consumes.

I think bitcoin also speaks to the common good. Our current KYC/AML regulations do the opposite of just that. They punish the common good through enacting massive surveillance and privacy violating regulations all to try and punish an extremely small minority that commit crimes. KYC/AML law is widely regarded as being complete failures at what they set out to do. Not only do they violate our personal freedoms, but they also fail to actually catch a vast majority of money laundering crime (less than 1%). Bitcoin fights back for those freedoms with the acknowledgement that there might be a small percentage of people that utilize it in their crimes.
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JFC-08-2017-0071/full/html
https://www.forbes.com/sites/haileylennon/2021/01/19/the-false-narrative-of-bitcoins-role-in-illicit-activity/

I also feel bitcoin is in the pursuit of equity. Bitcoin does not discriminate against who you are. It doesn't matter what your race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, education level, or political party is, you can still use bitcoin. Bitcoin will not redline you.



Miners. Developers. They're a hell of a lot more human and a hell of a lot more centralized than you're letting on... And getting more so centralized by the day.

That last part is factually false. Mining has been getting more decentralized over the last several years and there are now more developers actively developing with bitcoin than ever before. I agree they are human, but bitcoin as a decentralized governance system takes away a lot of the governance risk you'd have compared with a centralized organization.

C'mon man. We can all read the thread and see what you said. But let's beat this dead horse: You said: "Vast amounts of currency debasement and record levels of inflation. Currency collapses in many places around the world. Over 2 billion people world-wide are experiencing double digit inflation"

debasement and record levels of inflation... experiencing double digit inflation. Moving along...

My point still stands and a cherry-picked statement with a YoY exchange rate is hardly refuting of the points I laid out. One search for "bitcoin" and the name of any of the countries I've mentioned and you'll find examples of citizens who've lost the trust in their native currencies and have decided that bitcoin is where they can put their wealth instead.


It can. But it doesn't necessarily. This is quacky Libertarian economics. In a sufficiently growing economy, the monetary base can increase and simultaneously experience deflation.

I agree. I've already had this discussion with ChpBstrd and that lasted for several pages, so I doubt there will be anything new brought up on this topic, but if you'd like you can read the discussion we had on it. It started around page 20. I agree that other deflationary pressures (technology, savings, aging population, etc) can mask the impacts of inflationary monetary policy, but they in no way diminish its impacts. No matter what, its impacts are felt through the economy regardless of whether the price of goods rises. I didn't mean to imply that monetary inflation always yields price inflation, so I apologize for the miscommunication there.

A few points:
1. No. You don't. Developers can change these rules at any time, so long as there's sufficient agreement.
2. Why is this a good thing? This, too, is Libertarian economics talk. Virtually all economists would tell you: having a monetary policy that responds to change is strictly superior to one that is static. There's a reason no modern economy is still on the gold standard. And when it's been tried in recent history, it's been catastrophic.

I would argue that the uncertainty brought about by fiscal policy and the current modern monetary theory of running deficits in exchange for currency debasement is far more damaging to the economy than a stable currency supply ever would be. You, like ChpBstrd, make the claim that when it's been tried it was catastrophic and yet neither he nor you will provide examples of a deflationary spiral from a rigid monetary base that was not preceded by a crashing bubble.

You did not arrive at these things out of genuine concern for the people of Venezuela or the people of Lebanon. You arrived at this after reading some Bitcoin Magazine article or some such nonsense.

If I am to engage with honest debate with you, I expect there to be a certain level of civility. Insinuating anything about how I arrived that the beliefs I hold when you know little about me is hardly in the best spirits here. You can debate me and the remarks I've made on their own merit as they stand here without the generalizations of however you may see others who may hold similar views as my own. In reality, I think you'd find that I am quite the mash of beliefs as are most people when you get to know them.

Let's look at the shining city on the hill for Bitcoiners: El Salvador. Bitcoin is their national currency! What's happening? How's that going? Bitcoiners' favorite Dictator, Bukele, just suspended human rights protections in El Salvador. Even in this hellscape, 86% of businesses report having never conducted a single transaction in bitcoin.

You won't find me courting dictators like Bukele at all. I even think forcing businesses to accept bitcoin as a currency is bad policy all the same as it is bad policy to force business to accept any other form of currency. That being said, I don't think the statistic you laid out is hardly the negative stat you think it is; with 14% of business having accepted bitcoin after only a year in without any prior infrastructure in place.

Dude! Bitcoin just went down like 8% yesterday! As you said: it is massively volatile. Holding it short term is still a massive risk exposure, often much worse than the shitty currencies you're poo-pooing.

It can be volatile, but that being said it is an uncertain volatility. When you're in a currency collapse like Venezuela, Lebanon, Zimbabwe, Turkey, etc. you're faced with a feeling of certain of collapse. When the currency is debased beyond any means of recovery, people will lose trust in it and will flee that feeling of certain loss into something like bitcoin even with its uncertain volatility. As I said, price inflation is relative to the region of goods you're in and we can often even see the price of bitcoin rise independent from global markets in these regions facing currency collapse as bitcoin liquidity struggles to meet the increased demand. You don't need to take my word for it though, the increased usage of bitcoin in these regions stands as evidence on its own regardless of how you feel about it.

the_gastropod

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 470
  • Age: 37
  • Location: RVA
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1145 on: April 05, 2022, 09:49:29 PM »
Lightning adds centralization to the scheme to alleviate some pains of decentralization. I don't think any additional techno-babble is necessary here. Lightning is more centralized that vanilla Bitcoin.

At the very least, regardless of whether you spout "techno-babble", you could explain why you think it is a "centralization scheme that completely obviates the entire point of Bitcoin". So far all you have done is make the claim without any reasoning explained to back up your point whatsoever.

The lightning network’s efficiency is a direct result of the centralization of its hubs. This isn’t particularly interesting or even novel. It’s just network topology in action. I’m confused why this is contentious? This centralization obviates the point of Bitcoin’s decentralized design because it adds risk for censorship, invasion-of-privacy, etc.

It also requires: opening the channel and closing the channel, for which Bitcoin's astronomical fees are still present. You also must trust the lightning network itself, which is susceptible to myriad of attack vectors, including forced expiration of transactions, fraudulently closing the channel while the counterparty is offline, and so on.

Yup, Lightning requires opening a channel. But there are also options like channel factories that will allow for new channels to be created or closed in the same way that lightning transactions are without requiring on-chain transactions. What do you mean you must trust the lightning network? Can you elaborate on that further?

Sure. Again, centralization is the reason LN is as efficient as it is. The more centralized LN is, the more you must trust the operators of the big LN hubs.

I'm not claiming that there are no attack vectors possible. But it is important to understand what the word "trust" means and I don't think it is being used appropriately here.

Sure. Let’s define it. In this context, I understand “trust”. In the context of Bitcoin, users do not need to trust the payment system. Bad actors (miners) cannot change order-of-transactions, block transactions, etc. because it would be too costly to do so (thanks to PoW).

My point is, on the LN, bad actors can—and do—absolutely do these things.


The examples you've given haven't been clear enough for me to point at why they're absurd, but I can know with complete confidence that they are not apples-to-apples comparisons

I gave you my real-world numbers for my actual lightning node that I have been hosting for over 3 years now. I am not sure why you assume they're "absurd". The numbers are absolutely real and if you actually used the lightning network yourself and hosted a node yourself, you'd have a similar experience. It seems odd that you're claiming something with complete confidence for something that you obviously have not used.

You gave numbers. But it’s not clear the full picture. And again, I understand the mechanisms at play well enough to know what you’re suggesting is just not realistic. Again, I don’t need to know the details of a semi truck’s route to know that a Prius  will always do it by burning less gas. I add more detail on this below…

I think it's harmful and runs counter to virtually everything I believe in: accountability, democracy, environmental responsibility, the common good, equity, etc.

The strange thing is that I feel it exemplifies all of those things.

Bitcoin is accountable in the sense that it is 100% transparent and 100% auditable.

Perhaps your definition of accountable differs from mine. Who holds people accountable? How’s that “100% transparency” working for people who lost all their money in the Quadriga CX scandal? Who’s being held accountable there? How about the $625M Axie Infinity heist? It’s fully transparent! Should be easy to solve, right? How’s that going? Who’s being held to account?

That lends itself well when it comes to accountability. It is hard to hold a system accountable if there is no transparency in how it operates and you can't audit what it does. I think there will need to be human accountability that comes from governance and legislation, but bitcoin itself is absolutely accountable. Contrast that with our central bankers of today that aren't even elected officials in most instances. Central bankers are almost never held accountable for poor policy that is put in place.

If this is what you want, why not advocate for widespread Merkle trees? They’re 100% transparent, auditable, and all that, too! And thousands of times more efficient. No. You’re arguing for public Blockchains, which bypass governments—the very invention of humankind to enforce laws. Law and elections are pretty much our only tools for accountability. Bitcoin is designed to bypass these very things.

Bitcoin exemplifies democracy in the truest sense. Democracy literally means "rule by the people" and that is what bitcoin does. It is a network operated by the people and anyone can participate it. Again, contrast that with central banking that is ruled by nepotistic politicians and bureaucrats.
Ohhh my. Who do you think is mining Bitcoins? The poor? Or the already-ultra-wealthy, who can afford millions of dollars of mining equipment, facilities, electric bills, etc? What about Proof of Stake? That is even more transparently a scheme where the already-wealthy are granted the most votes.

Democracy is 1 person 1 vote. Bitcoin couldn’t be further from that ideal.

I've already spoke earlier to its environmental impacts. At the end of the day everything we do has an energy cost. Every output in our economy consumes energy to produce and operate. Bitcoin is no different and I spoke earlier about how it would be foolish to write off bitcoin because of its early life energy costs during its production phase without acknowledging its future efficiencies that could be gained. In the grand scheme of things, bitcoin's climate impact will be negligible and if there is any future efficiencies to be gained from it (which I believe there are), then I think it is worthwhile to pursue. Bitcoin, after all, is agnostic to the type of energy it consumes.

This argument just pains me. It’s incredibly dismissive of the colossal waste in the system. “Everybody exhales CO2, and my tire fire factory is no different!! LOL And one day, it may be more efficient, just you wait!” It’s a bad argument, man. Bitcoin is thousands of times less efficient than existing payment systems. Are its use-cases (which I maintain are already also detrimental) worth that? I think that’s a tough argument to make.

But the energy-use is only part of the equation. The other is: e-waste from discarded/broken ASIC mining equipment, video cards, servers, etc. A single Bitcoin transaction is responsible for nearly 300 grams of e-waste—that’s about 2 iPhones. Bitcoin alone produces more ewaste than the entire country of Germany, a nation of 83 Million.

I think bitcoin also speaks to the common good. Our current KYC/AML regulations do the opposite of just that. They punish the common good through enacting massive surveillance and privacy violating regulations all to try and punish an extremely small minority that commit crimes. KYC/AML law is widely regarded as being complete failures at what they set out to do. Not only do they violate our personal freedoms, but they also fail to actually catch a vast majority of money laundering crime (less than 1%). Bitcoin fights back for those freedoms with the acknowledgement that there might be a small percentage of people that utilize it in their crimes.
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JFC-08-2017-0071/full/html
https://www.forbes.com/sites/haileylennon/2021/01/19/the-false-narrative-of-bitcoins-role-in-illicit-activity/

It sounds like your definition of “common good” differs from mine. Common good, commonwealth, general good, etc. I mean this in the sense of having a society—a community—that protects people from “the minority that commits crimes”. Common good means: elected governments enforcing laws and regulations for the good of the many. Once again, you’re perfectly reciting Libertarian/anarchist “FREEDOM!” talking points. This is the antithesis of what Common good means.



I also feel bitcoin is in the pursuit of equity. Bitcoin does not discriminate against who you are. It doesn't matter what your race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, education level, or political party is, you can still use bitcoin. Bitcoin will not redline you.

Another libertarian line. The US Dollar didn’t redline anyone, either. Banks did. And we held them to account via the political process. That is now illegal thanks to that accountability.

Trying to deliberately “decentralize” a human system only serves to push its power structures into deniable, unaccountable territory.

Miners. Developers. They're a hell of a lot more human and a hell of a lot more centralized than you're letting on... And getting more so centralized by the day.

That last part is factually false. Mining has been getting more decentralized over the last several years and there are now more developers actively developing with bitcoin than ever before. I agree they are human, but bitcoin as a decentralized governance system takes away a lot of the governance risk you'd have compared with a centralized organization.

Last year, a single coal mine in China flooded, and Bitcoin’s hash rate dropped to the tune of 35%. Just 0.1% of miners control half of all mining capacity (source: https://fortune.com/2021/10/26/bitcoin-mining-capacity-ownership-concentration-top-investors-nber-study/ ) Additionally, there are very few manufacturers of ASICS, which is yet another source of centralization.

Do you have a source showing mining getting more decentralized in the last several years?

C'mon man. We can all read the thread and see what you said. But let's beat this dead horse: You said: "Vast amounts of currency debasement and record levels of inflation. Currency collapses in many places around the world. Over 2 billion people world-wide are experiencing double digit inflation"

debasement and record levels of inflation... experiencing double digit inflation. Moving along...

My point still stands and a cherry-picked statement with a YoY exchange rate is hardly refuting of the points I laid out. One search for "bitcoin" and the name of any of the countries I've mentioned and you'll find examples of citizens who've lost the trust in their native currencies and have decided that bitcoin is where they can put their wealth instead.

Cool research! Try doing the same with USD instead of Bitcoin ;-)

You did not arrive at these things out of genuine concern for the people of Venezuela or the people of Lebanon. You arrived at this after reading some Bitcoin Magazine article or some such nonsense.

If I am to engage with honest debate with you, I expect there to be a certain level of civility. Insinuating anything about how I arrived that the beliefs I hold when you know little about me is hardly in the best spirits here. You can debate me and the remarks I've made on their own merit as they stand here without the generalizations of however you may see others who may hold similar views as my own. In reality, I think you'd find that I am quite the mash of beliefs as are most people when you get to know them.

Sorry, I’m not trying to disparage you. Maybe it’s a coincidence that you’re talking about the same few countries every other Bitcoin enthusiast I’ve listened to brings up. Were you interested in the problems in Venezuela and Lebanon before you got interested in cryptocurrency?
« Last Edit: April 05, 2022, 09:54:44 PM by the_gastropod »

erjkism

  • 5 O'Clock Shadow
  • *
  • Posts: 33
  • Age: 34
  • Location: MN
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1146 on: April 06, 2022, 05:41:09 AM »
"What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation"

Why ask this to a forum where 90+% of the people here have been completely wrong and missed the entire crypto wave?

ChpBstrd

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 6634
  • Location: A poor and backward Southern state known as minimum wage country
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1147 on: April 06, 2022, 07:04:49 AM »
"What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation"

Why ask this to a forum where 90+% of the people here have been completely wrong and missed the entire crypto wave?
...as measured by buying crypto in mid-2020 and selling it for USD in April or November 2021. Had you instead bought crypto in November 2021 and sold today, you'd have lost a third of your USD in 5 months.

And that's IF you we fortunate enough not to have been a victim in one of 11 crypto exchange hacks perpetrated in that timeframe worth undisclosed hundreds of millions of USD, which would have moved your losses up to 100% with no recourse.

The point is, it's not exactly a "wave" that could have benefited everyone taking that advice at every time.

LateStarter

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 262
  • Location: UK
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1148 on: April 06, 2022, 07:09:53 AM »
Nice to see some good discussion on this again.

It would be better if we could get away from the underlying assumption that every pro-crypto person is either a greedy scammer or a gullible victim of said scammers, and is motivated purely by selfish interest and fuck everyone/everything else.

It's a fairly safe bet that most on this forum generally share similar Mustachian values - and I think we'd all agree that Mustachians are, by and large, good people with good intentions. A few of us have an interest in crypto too . . .

LateStarter

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 262
  • Location: UK
Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1149 on: April 06, 2022, 07:11:14 AM »
"What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation"

Why ask this to a forum where 90+% of the people here have been completely wrong and missed the entire crypto wave?

Missed it ? Do you think it's all over ?

 

Wow, a phone plan for fifteen bucks!