The economics of BitCoin

GreatApe

A crash cheerleader

Thing is your talking about an Altcoin, its not even second in market cap, it distracts from the main discussion on actual bitcoin. Going around in arguments for something none of us can know at this stage. Only time will tell. I even said if BCH becomes the main coin then BCH becomes the real bitcoin, and BTC becomes an alt-coin thats fair, but thats just not the situation right now or for the medium term.

Bitcoin has the potential to change the world, to destroy buy to letters, boomers, and bankers. It will hopefully be the biggest bloodless revolution and right a lot of wrongs.

Constantly pumping an attack on the main coin (steeling value - so attack is the right word) is not very helpful when we all suffer from the effects of the current monetary situation. If BCH was the main coin i would be saying the same for BTC pumpers, but thats not what is happening.

We all suffer here on HPC, there is a solid way out bitcoin holds that promise. Then we have one of our own attacking the solution. Might as well be a buy to letter! (apologies thats a bit strong, no-ones as bad as the BTL morons!)

Translation:

Stop trash talking my chosen magic beans and pumping your chosen magic beans. Clearly my beans are superior they have a larger market cap.

We have all suffered from the hands of greedy bankers landlords and boomers who made speculative gains transferring money from the young to them, my chosen magic beans is how we will recover and then come out on top and finally win our speculative housing shorts.

HPC_Ghuol_Hunter

GreatApe wrote: »

A crash cheerleader




Translation:

Stop trash talking my chosen magic beans and pumping your chosen magic beans. Clearly my beans are superior they have a larger market cap.

We have all suffered from the hands of greedy bankers landlords and boomers who made speculative gains transferring money from the young to them, my chosen magic beans is how we will recover and then come out on top and finally win our speculative housing shorts.

This is as tragic to see as it is to witness Crashy persisting to rent over these last 25 years or hearing of a decade of lies that the CountOfNowhere will move out of his Hull bedsit to a palacial French Chateau. What's worse is that these HPC loons now see magic internet money beans being their way out of years of denial and self-inflicted poverty to jump the queue of hardworking familiies straight into the worlds top list of 1%er's. It's farcical.

westernpromise

HPC_Ghuol_Hunter wrote: »

This is as tragic to see as it is to witness Crashy persisting to rent over these last 25 years or hearing of a decade of lies that the CountOfNowhere will move out of his Hull bedsit to a palacial French Chateau. What's worse is that these HPC loons now see magic internet money beans being their way out of years of denial and self-inflicted poverty to jump the queue of hardworking familiies straight into the worlds top list of 1%er's. It's farcical.

It's farcical but it's also to be expected. The consistent thread is shockingly poor judgment when it comes to matters of money, which has informed the decision both to go short property and to go long magic moneybeans. It's the same ineptitude in each case.

Malthusian

westernpromise wrote: »

The token was tulips (or whatever) in the past and is bitcoins now, but the fact is that the best way to know whether something is a bubble is whether there's any utility for the underlying.

That's a dreadful way of knowing whether something is a bubble. Dot-coms had utility. Tulips had utility (they're nice to look at). Canals, railroads and trams in the 18th and 19th centuries had utility.

This may be the first bubble in history that is based on something that has no utility - and I'm only saying that because I'm yet to be convinced that the blockchain isn't an inefficient solution searching for a problem. Most tech experts seem to believe that Bitcoins have utility via the blockchain.

Herzlos wrote:

Apparently, the founder has 1m coins across addresses which means he's in the top 50 wealthiest individuals @ $19bn, but is completely unable to turn any of it into cash because it'll either flood the market and drop the price right down, or worse it'll be seen as a lack of confidence and trigger a run. So he's loaded on paper but essentially unable to use it.

The mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto? I think he's lost most of that $19bn, and whatever he still has access to he's already cashed out.

westernpromise

Malthusian wrote: »

That's a dreadful way of knowing whether something is a bubble. Dot-coms had utility. Tulips had utility (they're nice to look at). Canals, railroads and trams in the 18th and 19th centuries had utility.

No they didn't. Dotcoms were essentially worthless. ZooDoo.com? Boo.com? They contained nil value. Tulips likewise.

Something can have minimal utility and be mistaken for something hugely valuable. An ingot of gold can be placed under your PC monitor to raise its height, as can a self help book, but that doesn't make your self-help book worth the same as an ingot of gold.

If nobody can explain why a bitcoin is worth anything, there is a problem.

pantaiema

westernpromise wrote: »

If nobody can explain why a bitcoin is worth anything, there is a problem.

From my reading, the value of bitcoin comes from scarcity, the supply and demand.
What is the value of Salvator Mundi by Leonardi da Vinci painting ??
Well for ordinary people it is just a canvas, oil painting. But it were sold for US $450,312,500.
http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/62456-most-expensive-painting-sold-at-auction

Because there is only one Salvator Mundi by Leonardi da Vinci painting and there are a lot of extremely rich people want it.

economic

pantaiema wrote: »

From my reading, the value of bitcoin comes from scarcity, the supply and demand.
What is the value of Salvator Mundi by Leonardi da Vinci painting ?? For ordinary people it is just a canvas, oil painting. But it were sold for US $450,312,500.
http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/62456-most-expensive-painting-sold-at-auction

Because there are only one painting and there are a lot of extremely rich people want it.

But if the buyer of the painting were to sell it now, do you think it would sell for more then he paid for it? Probably not right, so he has made a loss on it if he were to apply the market value to it.

With btc its the same thing (as is with anything else really) but its how the supply and demand develops that determines the price that really matters. It all comes down to confidence. confidence in btc can easily fall.

Its questionable whether confidence in the painting would fall unless it were found out it was a fake or something.

GreatApe

Malthusian wrote: »

That's a dreadful way of knowing whether something is a bubble. Dot-coms had utility. Tulips had utility (they're nice to look at). Canals, railroads and trams in the 18th and 19th centuries had utility.

This may be the first bubble in history that is based on something that has no utility - and I'm only saying that because I'm yet to be convinced that the blockchain isn't an inefficient solution searching for a problem. Most tech experts seem to believe that Bitcoins have utility via the blockchain.

I think >99% of the cheerleaders for blockchain and bitcoin have no understanding of what it is. I am not a computer person but I do know mathematics and I think I understand how the blockchain works

The thing is a central database will work for almost all the supposed problems the blockchain is going to solve without the massive problems of the blockchain

The only thing new about blockchains are that they are publicly visible and distributed so anyone can open an 'account'. Like you say that is an exceptionally inefficient solution looking for problems to solve.

It is amazing that these magic beans (Bitcoins+Alts) have managed to gain a market cap of over $600Billion.

My guess is they will survive and last for years maybe decades and just go up and down up and down a form of gambling

GreatApe

economic wrote: »

But if the buyer of the painting were to sell it now, do you think it would sell for more then he paid for it? Probably not right, so he has made a loss on it if he were to apply the market value to it.

With btc its the same thing (as is with anything else really) but its how the supply and demand develops that determines the price that really matters. It all comes down to confidence. confidence in btc can easily fall.

Its questionable whether confidence in the painting would fall unless it were found out it was a fake or something.

Some of these art sales must be fake just to drive up the price of the stock of art

So I own a painting and you own a sculpture.
I convince you to pay me double what I paid for the painting and I will pay you double what you paid for the sculpture. So long as there are no capital gains taxes in the locations we live we have not lost anything but the world just saw our assets supposedly double in value.

economic

GreatApe wrote: »

Some of these art sales must be fake just to drive up the price of the stock of art

So I own a painting and you own a sculpture.
I convince you to pay me double what I paid for the painting and I will pay you double what you paid for the sculpture. So long as there are no capital gains taxes in the locations we live we have not lost anything but the world just saw our assets supposedly double in value.

Non-zero sum game basically.