Bitcoins

JohnRo

The banking guarantee is only valid for as long as there are others not affected who can be tapped to pick up your tab.

antrobus

Scrootum wrote: »

What can you buy with them apart from drugs?

Anything. So long as the seller is willing to accept bitcoins as payment. But then you could say the same about packets of chewing gum.

lvader

JohnRo wrote: »

The banking guarantee is only valid for as long as there are others not affected who can be tapped to pick up your tab.

For that to happen you are taking the end of the financial system as we know it, an event that makes the 2008 credit crunch look like a blip in the system. In that circumstance do you think Bitcoin would be worth anything?

[Deleted User]

Sort-of relevant to recent discussions: "Why do we value gold?"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25255957

JohnRo

lvader wrote: »

For that to happen you are taking the end of the financial system as we know it, an event that makes the 2008 credit crunch look like a blip in the system. In that circumstance do you think Bitcoin would be worth anything?

Too big to fail, the question is how many more bailouts can "the future" really afford to keep the money printing masters of the universe in the manner to which they've become accustomed.

Bitcoin will be around for as long as we have computers and electricity. As for its worth - the free market decides that, not you or I.

lvader

JohnRo wrote: »

Too big to fail, the question is how many more bailouts can "the future" really afford to keep the money printing masters of the universe in the manner to which they've become accustomed.

Bitcoin will be around for as long as we have computers and electricity. As for its worth - the free market decides that, not you or I.

Nothing to do with too big to fail, savings are guaranteed.

Just because you can't delete something it doesn't mean it is worth anything, you could say the same thing about a Twitter message.

JohnRo

lvader wrote: »

Nothing to do with too big to fail, savings are guaranteed.

It has everything to do with too big to fail, unless you want to argue what that means to deflect the issue.

Savings guarantees are funded by printing even more money and devaluing that held by everyone else further. When a financial institution is in trouble savings held with it are affected just as much as everything else.

The "guarantee" is worth about as much as every piece of paper it's written on.

JohnRo

Bitcoin / cryptocurrency is here to stay, the genie is out of the bottle. Wishing it away is all you have to cling to.

As for bailing out - you're already doing that.

I'll look forward to revisiting this in 3 or 4 years, it'll be interesting to see what has happened. It'll also be interesting to see what pejoratives the flat earth society are conjuring at that point.

Scrootum

JohnRo wrote: »

Bitcoin / cryptocurrency is here to stay, the genie is out of the bottle. Wishing it away is all you have to cling to.

As for bailing out - you're already doing that.

I'll look forward to revisiting this in 3 or 4 years, it'll be interesting to see what has happened. It'll also be interesting to see what pejoratives the flat earth society are conjuring at that point.

Why has it never happened before though? Just being digital makes little difference over any other rare but intrinsicly worthless item.

JohnRo

Why has every development that has ever happened, never happened before it did?

Being digital facilitates global movement in an instant. Being free from central control removes all barriers and privilege from that movement.

At the end of the day all this "intrinsic value" stuff is just a distraction. The people using it in a free market decide exactly what value it has, between themselves. Intrinsic , integral or whatever other label, it is all subjective.

If you're simply asking what btc is then that's already been covered ad nauseum.