BITCOIN

User232002

seatbeltnoob said:

It's not a scam (mostly), it's a tulip bubble and the ones holding it at the end when it all crashes will be the people who sold their houses for a few sacks of tulip bulbs thar are now worth pennies.

Almost nobody sold their houses for tulips. The tulip bubble was driven by options contracts, many of which were voidable by the buyer or voided by the government soon after the collapse of tulip prices. The tulip bubble wasn't actually even a bubble. 

Apologies for the inconvenient history lesson.

seatbeltnoob said:

Bitcoin hashing takes an unrealistic amount of computer resources, using both energy and precious computing power which are both in short supply right now. 

I mean it clearly uses a realistic amount of resources because it is actually using them.

If your argument is that its using too many resources then I'd suggest reading about 3 pages back from here where it was discussed.

seatbeltnoob said:

The more tokens are generated, the harder it will be to mine more and at some point, very soon, the cost to mine will nothave a positive ROI. When that happens mining will cease, no mining means no transactions can take place. It will create a whirlwind of factors causing the value to freefall. 

This is so wrong on so many levels. It appears you have no knowledge whatsoever of Bitcoins mining algorithm and how it contains a difficulty function that acts against this.

However, even without this knowledge your argument is clearly fatally flawed. As miners ROI turned negative, they would shut down their operations which would result in more output for the remaining miners which would make them more profitable. By this metric, only the most efficient miners survive. Its the same process that operates in the oil, gas and gold mining operations. In mid/late 2000's, oil price was double what it is today - As the price fell, some producers turned off their production but not all producers did (because some were still profitable).


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I think we really need a moderator intervention here. Its just ridiculous that on a 1600 page thread people can come in and post an opinion that isn't new or novel and the same arguments have to be dredged up again. People don't like to be told their opinion isnt valuable or intelligent because its offensive, but honestly this thread is turning in to evidence for the prevalence of the Dunning-Kruger effect in modern society.

Scottex99

Yeah it’s pretty boring tbh. People turn up with the same views that were already debunked 150 pages ago and we have to explain it all over again.

I’m finally reading The Bitcoin Standard, highly recommended for everyone. I’m halfway through and BTC has barely been mentioned because we’re still on the history of money and how unsound it’s always been when not managed properly.

At least the NFT thread had some new points to argue/discuss.

We won’t even be able to get a decent BTC vs ETH chat going because it’s over 90% of people’s heads. 

This will be excellent to come back to in 5-10 years though, I’m already looking forward to it 

Zola.

100% @darren232002 . It's odd that many of the same people keep coming back to moan about Bitcoin.

I don't go into threads about bond funds to say I think they are a complete waste of money, repeatedly, I just stay away from it as I have nothing positive to say about it. 

I admire your energy to reply to everyone, I can barely be bothered anymore and I don't know why I do. I think maybe it's because I look forward to reviewing this in a few years time to see how we are all doing....I really hope we are all still active on here.. Even if Bitcoin hits a million dollars they'll still be the "old man yelling at the cloud" posts. 

RogerIrvine

Well, to be fair, darren232002, I only came aboard to ask Zola about game theory and the domino effect, and he was a bit coy about it. So thanks for the heads up. I get it now.

"I think the game theory was always going to play out such that countries with little to lose would be the first adopters and then it would gradually move up the ladder. As the volatility reduces, I think you'll see more central banks and commodities trading taking place in it I believe. Of course, if you follow the ladder up you eventually get countries making speculative attacks on their own currencies."

Right, so El Salvador is merely the first domino. Here's how that went, Darren.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/12/06/bitcoin-city-el-salvador-nayib-bukele/

Second domino, presumably, is the city of Rio De Janeiro putting 1% of its treasury into Bitcoin. Don't you see a slight problem of scale extrapolating this? The whole value of Bitcoin couldn't buy Central Park, if it came up for sale.

"There are openly pro-Bitcoin countries, senators, congressmen/women, mayors and presidents. It provides tens of thousands of very well paid jobs. If you ban it, a good number of us just us and move, taking our skills and wealth with us, to another country that treats us better." 

Try El Salvador, it's perfect. Nice climate and the President wears a baseball cap backwards on his head, darren232002, 

SonOfPearl

darren232002 said:

I think we really need a moderator intervention here. Its just ridiculous that on a 1600 page thread people can come in and post an opinion that isn't new or novel and the same arguments have to be dredged up again. People don't like to be told their opinion isnt valuable or intelligent because its offensive, but honestly this thread is turning in to evidence for the prevalence of the Dunning-Kruger effect in modern society.

Hello to all the folks on this thread. I've been lurking here for a long time but haven't posted before. To me, the most telling thing is that despite such a long discussion, those who see inherent value in Bitcoin have been unable to convince most (any?) of the sceptics here. I don't think Bitcoin sceptics are suffering from the Dunning-Kruger effect - we just don't see that Bitcoin has any real value and nothing I have read here has convinced me (an enquiring person with a reasonable education) otherwise. Of course I may be wrong, but it won't be from overestimating my knowledge of the subject.

Ultimately, time will tell and I'll continue to read news about Bitcoin as I find it interesting, but I think it's time for me to stop reading this thread as (apart from the occasional laugh) it's not a productive use of my time. Thanks to all who have contributed with constructive comments and links. 

User232002

RogerIrvine said:

Right, so El Salvador is merely the first domino. Here's how that went, Darren.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/12/06/bitcoin-city-el-salvador-nayib-bukele/

I would not pretend to know what the situation is in El Salvador. In my experience, there are incredibly biased reporting standards around anything to do with Bitcoin. I've watched interviews with Bukele and he does not come across as a dictator to me; he makes arguments based on rationality & logic and seems firmly grounded in reality. I've seen videos of Bitcoin being used as a currency in isolated areas of El Salvador. Either way, the success or failure of it is not going to be measured in weeks or months, it will be measured over years.

In any event, if a country wants to offer a bond on the open market that is backed by the purchase of Bitcoin, what is wrong with that? Its a free market and people are able to either purchase or not purchase such bonds as they see fit. Microstrategy has essentially used the same method to finance the purchasing of $3-$4BN of BTC.

RogerIrvine said:

Second domino, presumably, is the city of Rio De Janeiro putting 1% of its treasury into Bitcoin. Don't you see a slight problem of scale extrapolating this? The whole value of Bitcoin couldn't buy Central Park, if it came up for sale.

I can't really fathom how someone would make this point to be honest. You just can't be serious. You realise that gold wasn't an $11T asset class in 1933 right? You realise that there weren't $21T of USD back in say 1933 right? Hell, you do realise that Bitcoin, at one point, was worth under $1BN?

RogerIrvine said:

Try El Salvador, it's perfect. Nice climate and the President wears a baseball cap backwards on his head, darren232002, 

Dubai just signed a deal with the largest crypto exchange to co-operate. Most of the largest exchanges and crypto investment companies are currently located in Singapore. Portugal offers no CGT on digital assets. If you think our options are limited to tiny South American countries you are sorely mistaken.

Scottex99

I can't really fathom how someone would make this point to be honest. You just can't be serious. You realise that gold wasn't an $11T asset class in 1933 right? You realise that there weren't $21T of USD back in say 1933 right? Hell, you do realise that Bitcoin, at one point, was worth under $1BN?

Dubai just signed a deal with the largest crypto exchange to co-operate. Most of the largest exchanges and crypto investment companies are currently located in Singapore. Portugal offers no CGT on digital assets. If you think our options are limited to tiny South American countries you are sorely mistaken.

Lol at 1.

And for 2, There's a few places in Europe that are already pro crypto.
Portugal, Gibraltar, Estonia, Germany/Switzerland (to some extent), Malta (although they have wider problems).

 Outside of Europe there is Dubai and Bahamas is soon to become a crypto hub due to the bankrolling from FTX

RogerIrvine

"In my experience, there are incredibly biased reporting standards around anything to do with Bitcoin."  :

That made me chuckle. Its zealots are postulating the overthrow of fiat currency. 

Scottex99

SonOfPearl said:

darren232002 said:

I think we really need a moderator intervention here. Its just ridiculous that on a 1600 page thread people can come in and post an opinion that isn't new or novel and the same arguments have to be dredged up again. People don't like to be told their opinion isnt valuable or intelligent because its offensive, but honestly this thread is turning in to evidence for the prevalence of the Dunning-Kruger effect in modern society.

Hello to all the folks on this thread. I've been lurking here for a long time but haven't posted before. To me, the most telling thing is that despite such a long discussion, those who see inherent value in Bitcoin have been unable to convince most (any?) of the sceptics here. I don't think Bitcoin sceptics are suffering from the Dunning-Kruger effect - we just don't see that Bitcoin has any real value and nothing I have read here has convinced me (an enquiring person with a reasonable education) otherwise. Of course I may be wrong, but it won't be from overestimating my knowledge of the subject.

Ultimately, time will tell and I'll continue to read news about Bitcoin as I find it interesting, but I think it's time for me to stop reading this thread as (apart from the occasional laugh) it's not a productive use of my time. Thanks to all who have contributed with constructive comments and links. 

Nice post but I don't think "convince" is really the word. 
Personally I dont see how it's possible to do a bit of research and not see how BTC/Crypto is going to have use in the future, but people are different.

Imo time already has told but it certainly will tell when we come back to this in a few years.

Cheers!

RogerIrvine

darren232002 said

I can't really fathom how someone would make this point to be honest. You just can't be serious. You realise that gold wasn't an $11T asset class in 1933 right? You realise that there weren't $21T of USD back in say 1933 right? Hell, you do realise that Bitcoin, at one point, was worth under $1BN?

The point being, for Bitcoin to replace USD, it has to keep rising in value exponentially. But whereas USD is backed, in principle, by the land value of Central Park, or Wyoming, Bitcoin is essentially of no value and can keep growing only by appealing to an ever widening base of users. Hence 40,000 crypto adverts on London Underground between April and September last year. 

RogerIrvine said:

Try El Salvador, it's perfect. Nice climate and the President wears a baseball cap backwards on his head, darren232002, 

Dubai just signed a deal with the largest crypto exchange to co-operate. 

What does that even mean?

Let me put the credibility issue another way  - What is wrong with the existing money supply strategy?