Lost money on NFT

User232002

Its a question of scale. It helps hundreds of people that need it to the tune of a few thousand and helps large companies to the tune of billions, disproportionately helping the already wealthy. Data is quite clear on this, wealth inequality grew during the pandemic under these furlough schemes.

The reason the market can't take a 40% drawdown is because everyone is leveraged up to their eyeballs. This entire discussion is about public debt, but private debt is even worse. I'll remind you that Amazon suffered a 95% drawdown on its stock price (from $113 to $6) and recovered in to what it is today, so lets not pretend that 40% is terminal to all companies. Recessions are a natural part of the business cycle where zombie and weak companies get killed so that stronger competitiors can take their place. That is not being allowed to happen. 

Removing the printing press would indeed limit your available options, but that doesn't mean we need to accept that it is a good option just because its on the table. Not that I think it will ever be removed btw, hence why I own BTC.

Thrugelmir

darren232002 said:

I'll remind you that Amazon suffered a 95% drawdown on its stock price (from $113 to $6) and recovered in to what it is today, so lets not pretend that 40% is terminal to all companies. 

Not the same business as it was back then. The inherent danger when people make broad assumptions rather than spend their  time doing research. Though worth noting that Amazon's retail division is less profitable than Walmart. Perceptions can be so very misleading. 

User232002

Deleted_User said:

They are not examples of what you claimed. Putting the transactions on the blockchain wouldn't have changed the outcomes, because banks didn't rewrite the history of previous transactions.

The first example was: "In the GFC of 2008/9 some banks confiscated money above a certain threshold in customer accounts to bail themselves out." I could quibble about the wording of that statement, but never mind. Let's try imagining this on the blockchain, to see how that might help: Customers were unsecured creditors of banks (because that is what having money in a bank account means). Then the banks went bust. So the customers didn't get paid the money they were owed. That's what happens when businesses go bust. The blockchain doesn't help here.

Now, I guess your broader point is that people don't want their cash savings to disappear. A reasonable concern. But that is easily solved by keeping within FSCS limits or using NS&I (in the UK ... answers vary in different countries). That actually works. Putting your money in a volatile cryptocurrency doesn't work: you can lose half or more of the value in a very short time.

Second example: "in 1933 the USA legislated for all its citizens to hand over their gold at $20/oz, then repriced it to $35/oz". Let's try this on the blockchain: You're a US citizen owning 1oz of gold. The USA legislates that gold is being nationalised for a fixed price. The legislation is signed by the appropriate keys identifying the USA. Now you have $20 instead. Putting this sequence of events on the blockchain accurately has exactly the same outcome.

Now, I realise there's a broader point in this case, too. But I have no sympathy with it. It's that you want to be above the law. This is not actually in your interests, because you're not a billionaire. They're the ones who want to avoid nationalisations, paying their taxes, and governments taking collective actions that help most of their citizens. If you look at the 1930s, with mass unemployment and no social security system, and you think the outstanding injustice was some rich people having their gold nationalised for a price they didn't like (and the price had been fixed, so they weren't taking a loss, but just not getting a windfall gain), then your priorities are completely wrong.

I think you don't understand Bitcoin at all. People who deposit money in a Natwest bank account don't automatically want to become shareholders of Natwest and to suggest this is completely disingenuous. And yes, having a non-sovereign, seizure resistant asset would absolutely have prevented a bank from going in to 'your' account with them and taking that money from you, because Bitcoin can not be confiscated.

As for the gold scenario, its hard to hide a large quantity of gold but it is not hard to hide a large quantity of BTC. Again, a non-sovereign seizure resistant asset seems to solve the problem.

Deleted_User said:

Now, I realise there's a broader point in this case, too. But I have no sympathy with it. It's that you want to be above the law. 

Having the money I earn today be the same value as the money others earn tomorrow in addition to wanting that money to be free from government or bank interference after income taxes makes me 'want to be above the law.' Thats definitely where discourse is heading, but I imagine there will be a backlash to that rhetoric eventually.

Deleted_User said:

You've only outlined how it solves a non-problem (banks deleting past transactions). Meanwhile, it causes real problems, most notably, contributing to climate catastrophe.

Banks deleting past transactions, banks (and governments) seizing assets either directly or indirectly via debasement, an unfair and non-inclusive financial system. There are plenty of problems.

Climate catastrophe is fast becoming the status grab of liberal politics. For the last two years, multiple airlines have run empty flights to maintain landing slots at airports but people still seem to think that washing out that tin of beans and recycling it will save the planet. I currently live in a country that has no recycling whatsoever, so a hundred million people or so just chucking their used plastic and paper in the bin and yet Bitcoin is bad... 

We've already been over this, the Bitcoin network (and crypto broadly) can do a lot of what the financial system can currently do at a fraction of the overall carbon emissions, plus the symbiotic relationship of miners allows for the investment, cultivation and spread of renewable energy production. How else are you planning on harvesting the wind energy from Antarctica or the hydroelectric capacity of Canada or the geothermal energy of Iceland? (Aluminum refineries are bad because they make planes obviously). 

Imagine if in 1998 greenpeace called the idea of several computers in every home and large data centers/servers a 'climate catastrophe' waiting to happen. Where would we be now without the level of growth that provided?

Deleted_User said:

Well, game theory is not all that useful in reality. The mathematical models have a spurious precision, because people lack the information necessary (about probabilities of consequences of different actions, etc) to be rationally self-interested - if that even was their whole purpose, which (I disagree with you here) it isn't.

However, in some contexts, I agree that incentives can be a way to change behaviour. For instance, take banks. Top bank executives have faced no criminal prosecutions, nor any personal financial penalty, for various kind of fraudulent activity. Occasionally, somebody much lower down is prosecuted, but the responsibility should go to the top. This is a real problem for getting banks to change their behaviour. We should be demanding changes, whether in laws, prosecutions, regulation or governance, to fix this. Using cryptocurrencies in parallel with the banks, without changing how the banks operate, does nothing to fix it.

You've just outed yourself as someone who doesn't understand the mathematics behind game theory. I spent 4 years of my life working with game theoretic models and applying them. Yes, there are some exceptions; there will be people who choose a lower salary for some asinine reason. And yes, "all models are broken but some are useful." But game theory works in terms of producing predictive patterns for large populations. To suggest otherwise is just an amateur quarterback approach. 

You are referring to moral hazard and it doesnt just apply to the banks. IAG (Owner of BA) had £9BN in cash on their balance sheet when the pandemic hit. Delta, United and AA were significantly undercapitalised because they had been buying back their own shares for years in order to boost share price and CEO pay. Those american airlines received a colossal amount of taxpayer funding. We all know how that changes IAG's strategy going forward and the implications that has for a future disruption to aviation.

As to the bolded point, if tanking the entire global economy isn't enough for meaningful change to be enforced upon them, I'd rather just opt out and join a new system. This alternative is what Bitcoin provides (noticeably so, given that DeFi in particular has safeguards in place to ensure that something like the GFC couldn't happen with BTC).

Deleted_User said:

Planning to use more energy in the near future is extremely reckless. We have an urgent need to reduce fossil fuel use rapidly. Renewables can be expanded rapidly, but it's implausible that they can expand as fast as fossil fuels need to be scaled back. The focus should be on how we can continue to do the important things that use energy with less energy. In this context, proof-of-work cryptocurrencies are an abomination.

More energy does not equate to more emissions. The Bitcoin mining network currently uses 55% renewable energy. The UK currently has about 35% of its energy come from renewable sources from the latest figures, although its normally around 40%. On this basis, the Bitcoin network is doing better than the UK so how about you moan about that first and then come back to me about the Bitcoin network.

If you want to introduce a carbon allocation where people can choose what to allocate their carbon emissions to, or a carbon tax, then I'm in. But you don't get to tell me that Bitcoin isn't allowed because you don't agree with its energy use. I don't have children and I don't own a car; two things that contribute the most emissions for the majority. 

Deleted_User said:

Your attempt to explain how QE would lead to inflation is just based on looking at the quantity of cash (viz. there's lots more of it), and saying that must lead to higher inflation, on the common-sense idea that if there are more £s, surely each one must be worth less in real terms. The problem is that there is no explanation of how this larger number of £s out there will lead to greater demand for goods and services. And without that step, higher inflation doesn't follow. In this case, the "common-sense idea" happens to be wrong when it's examined.

In any case, we have had a decade+ of QE, and inflation remained very low for most of that time, so it clearly doesn't cause a lot of inflation. If your argument says it should do, there's something wrong with your argument! (And recent inflation has other clear causes. Energy, like other commodities, goes through boom-and-bust cycles. It is not just supply chain issues. Demand has also been very on/off in some sectors as we go in and out of lockdowns, so there have been some unexpected changes in both supply and demand - hardly surprising that they don't always match up.)

Sir, I don't need to be told how QE works; I know what it is and I know the official narrative on how 'not to worry, its perfectly fine and won;t cause any problems,' works. Regarding the first paragraph, I'd think that helicoptering money to everyone and almost all businesses is probably a good way to increase the velocity of money and drive up inflation. 

That's what the official line is, but I don't think anyone rational believes that living costs have remained largely static since 2010. There is also a very good argument that whilst inflation may not been seen in goods and services, it has been rampant in hard assets like RE and stocks. Again, if you graph the S&P500 / M2 supply it's been flat for the last decade which feels more representative than the all time booming economy Jetson's type civilization picture that the nominal graph would present. 

Lastly, I'll remind you that when this all happened, the Fed said that inflation would not happen, then it wouldn't go beyond 3%, then that it was transitory, before finally (seemingly) admitting they were wrong. Its MMT'ers that seem to have the wrong argument at the minute, because the facts aren't supporting what they said would happen. If the official narrative has been woefully incorrect for nearly two years, I think its fair to say their reasoning might be 'BS.' Meanwhile, I've been fairly consistent since April 2020 that persistantly high inflation and deeply negative real rates would be here for 5 - 10 years.

Deleted_User said:

However, for endless deficits to be sustainable, we don't actually need growth. Precisely what we need is that the interest rate on government debt is less than nominal economic growth, i.e. less than inflation + real growth. So that could be no growth, and interest rates less than inflation. If the interest rate is less than inflation, the size of the debt shrinks in real terms, even when you pay the interest by borrowing more.

The interest rates on cash savings and gilts not the same, but are loosely linked. So bear in mind that sub-inflation rates have a good as well as a bad side. As savers, we lose out with savings worth a bit less in real terms. But as citizens who pay taxes and use public services, we benefit from it being sustainable for public spending to exceed tax receipts (by a small percentage).

Again, I know this. It's one of the many reasons why I buy BTC.

Its in the Fed's interest to maintain real rates at around -5% for some considerable time, basically as deeply negative as possible to reduce the debt in the shortest time whilst not increasing living costs enough to be pointed to and not awakening the masses to the fact that their currency is turning in to mush in front of them. 

And the next narrative begins, that sub inflation interest rates are a good thing 'because its sustainable for public spending to exceed tax receipts.' Keeping your life savings in an interest account paying 0.1% whilst inflation runs at 7% for 5 years is doing your civic duty!

Good luck with that. I'll put my wealth in an alternative system though thank you very much.

Thrugelmir

darren232002 said:

Its in the Fed's interest to maintain real rates at around -5% for some considerable time, basically as deeply negative as possible to reduce the debt in the shortest time whilst not increasing living costs enough to be pointed to and not awakening the masses to the fact that their currency is turning in to mush in front of them. 

Not the narrative I've been reading. Reigning in inflation and shrinking the balance sheet are the priorities. Interest rates are going to rise further this year. First rise in March. 

BOE may well increase rates next Thursday. 0.25% rise to 0.5% wouldn't come as any surprise to the markets.

User232002

Thrugelmir said:

Not the narrative I've been reading. Reigning in inflation and shrinking the balance sheet are the priorities. Interest rates are going to rise further this year. First rise in March. 

BOE may well increase rates next Thursday. 0.25% rise to 0.5% wouldn't come as any surprise to the markets.

Interest payments on US debt currently stand at $420BN per year on a 0.25% interest rate. US GDP is twenty odd trillion, but federal tax receipts are $4T per year. They are currently saying they will hike rates to four times their current position, to 1%. Do you really believe that a government would voluntarily hike their debt payments from 10% to 20, 25 or 30% of their tax receipts?

There will be no great unwinding because it is just not mathematically possible. The idea that they will hike AND reduce the balance sheet is fanciful thinking. I'll take the under on interest rates being 1% in 12 months time.

User232002

Deleted_User said:

This a waste of time. You are not amenable to reason.

You've just <snipped> my post full of data, facts and statistics and made a post that didnt contain a single shread of evidence, but yes; it is I that is 'not amenable to reason.' 

Deleted_User said:

E.g. I just explained what kind of thing is you need to do to explain inflation, and all you have in response is stuff like saying the Fed got their predictions of inflation wrong; happy to grant they are bad at predicting inflation, but so what? Nothing about the causes of inflation follows from that.

You're either blind or deliberately attempting to mislead. Did you miss this:

I'd think that helicoptering money to everyone and almost all businesses is probably a good way to increase the velocity of money and drive up inflation. 

That's what the official line is, but I don't think anyone rational believes that living costs have remained largely static since 2010. There is also a very good argument that whilst inflation may not been seen in goods and services, it has been rampant in hard assets like RE and stocks. Again, if you graph the S&P500 / M2 supply it's been flat for the last decade which feels more representative than the all time booming economy Jetson's type civilization picture that the nominal graph would present. 

If you want an academic debate about the minutiae of where inflation comes from, I'm not particularly interested. I can't be bother defining which of the like 7 types of inflation we are discussing and so and so on.... What I care about is effects. CPI is 7% and prices of hard assets are through the roof. Money printer going brrr. Its all consistent with the death of a fiat currency.

Deleted_User said:

And once again, you've returned to claiming bitcoin is efficient or less environmentally harmful in some sense. When I explained exactly why it is wasteful by design earlier in the thread. Earth to Darren: you lost the argument.

Claiming? I presented facts. Bitcoin used 58.5% renewable energy in Q4 2021. If you think that is inefficient or environmentally harmful then I'd point out that its a much higher percentage than most of Europe (and therefore, probably most of the worlds countries). When the UK has a higher renewable energy usage then I'll listen to you preaching about Bitcoin being a waste of energy. Until then, jog on because BTC is doing it better.

The design is beautiful. Its elegant, solves a real academic problem and needs energy to ensure it works. That's not wasteful anymore than a car is wasteful because it uses energy to get from A to B. You think its wasteful because you dont want to use it; thats fine, but it doesnt follow that it is wasteful for everyone.

Repeating that Bitcoin is a climate issue over and over is dogma. Its not fact.

Deleted_User said:

To take a step back ... It is obvious what is going on here. You have made, or hope to make (you haven't made anything until you've sold, BTW)

This is an investment forum; we are all here to make money and that is not a bad thing. But I also believe that Bitcoin will create a far fairer and more transparent financial system. This is a scenario where I can make money unselfishly.

Deleted_User said:

 i.e. from a zero-sum game, in which some people can make money only by others losing it. 

Bitcoin isn't zero sum, and even if it was the idea that I'm on a forum such as this stoking demand to support the price of an asset that trades $30B daily is mathematical illiteracy. 

Deleted_User said:

You want to believe that bitcoin is not just a zero-sum game, but something of broader value to society. As also discussed up-thread, [ ] But you simply have no other examples whatsoever of broader value added by bitcoin. 

'No other examples whatsoever' he says! Hilarious. Quotes, from myself, just in my previous post;

(1) having a non-sovereign, seizure resistant asset would absolutely have prevented a bank from going in to 'your' account with them and taking that money from you, because Bitcoin can not be confiscated.
(2) As for the gold scenario, its hard to hide a large quantity of gold but it is not hard to hide a large quantity of BTC. Again, a non-sovereign seizure resistant asset seems to solve the problem.
(3) Having the money I earn today be the same value as the money others earn tomorrow
(4) wanting that money to be free from government or bank interference
(5) Banks deleting past transactions
(6) banks (and governments) seizing assets either directly or indirectly via debasement
(7) an unfair and non-inclusive financial system.
(8) the Bitcoin network (and crypto broadly) can do a lot of what the financial system can currently do at a fraction of the overall carbon emissions
(9) the symbiotic relationship of miners allows for the investment, cultivation and spread of renewable energy production. How else are you planning on harvesting the wind energy from Antarctica or the hydroelectric capacity of Canada or the geothermal energy of Iceland? 
(10) [The dangers of] moral hazard
(11)  DeFi in particular has safeguards in place to ensure that something like the GFC couldn't happen with BTC

And that's just the stuff I pointed out in my last post! But sure, keep telling me that Bitcoin has no broader economic value to offer the world and that I've provided no examples of it. 

Deleted_User said:

All you've done is dive into details about how the distributed blockchain is implemented, and claim value is magically created from that. But implementation details are just that; they can never give a purpose.

Oh, I'm sorry. When you're telling people who don't understand the Byzantine generals problem why the Bitcoin PoW solution is 'wasteful by design' and they can't tell the difference, I realise its inconvenient when someone who does actually understand it goes in to detail on it and points out how wrong you are.

As to 'claiming value is magically created,' then yeah I guess you missed the eleven points I made above in the last post. And thats just the last post I made. Its by no means an exhaustive list. Yet non-Bitcoiners love to claim that we are all ponzi merchants hoping to shill our bags for a profit.

Malthusian

(1) having a non-sovereign, seizure resistant asset would absolutely have prevented a bank from going in to 'your' account with them and taking that money from you, because Bitcoin can not be confiscated.

True, but replaces an imaginary tinfoil risk (the risk that your bank will steal all your money) with a real risk (the risk that the price of Bitcoin dumps).

(2) As for the gold scenario, its hard to hide a large quantity of gold but it is not hard to hide a large quantity of BTC.

All those bros who forgot their passwords or accidentally threw away their USB stick would disagree with you.

Not to mention that most people who aren't freemen on the land are not interested in hiding money. The fact that innocent shopkeepers in Venezuela may have a good reason is neither here nor there on a UK Savings and Investments forum.

(3) Having the money I earn today be the same value as the money others earn tomorrow

Cannot be achieved by Bitcoin given that if you earn money in Bitcoin it might be worth 20% less than the sheeple's fiat earnings tomorrow.

(4) wanting that money to be free from government or bank interference

Cannot be achieved by Bitcoin. See SEC v Joby Weeks for where "can't touch muh Bitcoin" Wolf of Wall Street memes get you. The only way to be free of the government's interference is to live off the grid.

(5) Banks deleting past transactions

The loss of irrelevant historic transaction data is a non-problem.

(6) banks (and governments) seizing assets either directly or indirectly via debasement

Replaces the risk that your money is worth 2.5% less in a year's time with the risk that your money is worth 20% less tomorrow. People in developed countries with stable inflation aren't interested.

(7) an unfair and non-inclusive financial system.

Given that mass adoption of Bitcoin would result in a large transfer of wealth from the general population to existing hodlers, who are overwhelmingly white men, this is certainly not a problem that can be solved by Bitcoin.

(8) the Bitcoin network (and crypto broadly) can do a lot of what the financial system can currently do at a fraction of the overall carbon emissions

A bunch of computers competing to process a transaction cannot use less energy than a single computer processing a transaction, other things being equal. Besides, you said earlier that melting the planet doesn't matter because airlines fly empty planes.

(9) the symbiotic relationship of miners allows for the investment, cultivation and spread of renewable energy production. How else are you planning on harvesting the wind energy from Antarctica or the hydroelectric capacity of Canada or the geothermal energy of Iceland?

Haven't a clue, but if it was economic to tap energy from any of those sources, it would be far better to do something productive with that energy rather than using it to increase the supply of crypto tokens.

(10) [The dangers of] moral hazard

(11)  DeFi in particular has safeguards in place to ensure that something like the GFC couldn't happen with BTC

Please elaborate on how "Defi" would prevent mortgage lenders from loaning money to people that they couldn't pay back.

User232002

Malthusian said:

(1) having a non-sovereign, seizure resistant asset would absolutely have prevented a bank from going in to 'your' account with them and taking that money from you, because Bitcoin can not be confiscated.

True, but replaces an imaginary tinfoil risk (the risk that your bank will steal all your money) with a real risk (the risk that the price of Bitcoin dumps).

You realise this actually happened right? A bank forcibly converted all account holdings over 100k euros in to equity during the GFC. Do you happen to remember the abuse of CPA's by payday loan companies and banks refusing to interfere with them? And the risk of a currency dumping is not unique to Bitcoin.

Malthusian said:

(2) As for the gold scenario, its hard to hide a large quantity of gold but it is not hard to hide a large quantity of BTC.

All those bros who forgot their passwords or accidentally threw away their USB stick would disagree with you.

Not to mention that most people who aren't freemen on the land are not interested in hiding money. The fact that innocent shopkeepers in Venezuela may have a good reason is neither here nor there on a UK Savings and Investments forum.

I'm not suggesting Bitcoin completely replaces the day to day banking system, so if you're not intelligent enough to remember your password you can pay the tax to the middleman for holding it for you. Oh and btw, banks are currently doing a sterling job of handing out peoples account money to people who pretend to be them and then denying responsibility for it; so it seems compromised passwords aren't a non issue in the regular banking world either.

The second bit is indicative of your privilege. But every fiat currency inevitably suffers the same fate, its just that some can prolong the party for a little longer than others.

Malthusian said:

(3) Having the money I earn today be the same value as the money others earn tomorrow

Cannot be achieved by Bitcoin given that if you earn money in Bitcoin it might be worth 20% less than the sheeple's fiat earnings tomorrow.

The dollar has been on a one way downward path for the last 50 years and Bitcoin could also be worth 20% more tomorrow. All currencies have volatility so that's not inherently an argument one way or the other. Bitcoin is a new asset; You can't birth a multi trillion dollar asset without volatility. The volatility will decrease in time.

Malthusian said:

(4) wanting that money to be free from government or bank interference

Cannot be achieved by Bitcoin. See SEC v Joby Weeks for where "can't touch muh Bitcoin" Wolf of Wall Street memes get you. The only way to be free of the government's interference is to live off the grid.

What? Please elaborate on how the case of an obvious scammer has anything to do with this argument. I've paid taxes on my income and put that money in to Bitcoin. I don't need a bank or governments permission to send that value to anyone I deem fit once its on the Bitcoin network. And more importantly, people don't need a bank or governments permission to receive it either.

If I've paid my taxes, and done nothing illegal, any government operating under the rule of law has no right to seize my assets.

Malthusian said:

(5) Banks deleting past transactions

The loss of irrelevant historic transaction data is a non-problem.

Plenty of people and businesses have lost money due to chargebacks sometimes up to 180 days after the original transaction took place. The system has got better I imagine, but 5 - 10 years eBay and PayPal were basically scam central due to this; facilitated by the banks. I've seen businesses exclude whole countries from their service because they were getting scammed in this way.

When you grant control to a large central entity (ie. a bank) they are going to be slow, cumbersome and inefficient at reacting to exploitation of their systems.

Malthusian said:

(6) banks (and governments) seizing assets either directly or indirectly via debasement

Replaces the risk that your money is worth 2.5% less in a year's time with the risk that your money is worth 20% less tomorrow. People in developed countries with stable inflation aren't interested.

Or worth 50% less, because thats how many more dollars were printed in the last two years.

Are you sure about the latter? The US has the second most Bitcoin holders. The percentage of UK Bitcoin holders is about half that of Venezuela. 

Malthusian said:

(7) an unfair and non-inclusive financial system.

Given that mass adoption of Bitcoin would result in a large transfer of wealth from the general population to existing hodlers, who are overwhelmingly white men, this is certainly not a problem that can be solved by Bitcoin.

Worst argument of the lot this one...

Actually, India has the most Bitcoin holders in the world. And didn't you just, in the same damn post, argue that countries with stable inflation (ie. the privileged, predominantly white, countries) aren't interested in Bitcoin and that its only use was for the people of countries like Venezuela (and by analogy, Turkey and Nigeria)? Its contradictory to say that predominantly white countries aren't interested in Bitcoin but that we can't adopt Bitcoin because its only owned by white men. Yet one more example, upon a litany of others, that you aren't interested in debating truth - you're backing up an emotional viewpoint. I love the new narrative though - Bitcoin is only owned by men; its sexist!

I have stated before that the transition to a Bitcoin standard won't remove entrenched privilege immediately, even though Bitcoin is far less concentrated than many people understand. But as you play it out over decades, the ability to retain financial dominance via contacts diminishes in an open and fair system based on a finite currency, and so wealth disperses over time.

Malthusian said:

(8) the Bitcoin network (and crypto broadly) can do a lot of what the financial system can currently do at a fraction of the overall carbon emissions

A bunch of computers competing to process a transaction cannot use less energy than a single computer processing a transaction, other things being equal. Besides, you said earlier that melting the planet doesn't matter because airlines fly empty planes.

But those computers are also backed up by hundreds of offices around the world, filled with millions of computers and more in datacenters and occupied by millions of workers who have to commute to those offices every day. The entire carbon footprint of the banking industry stretches far beyond one computer.

The point about the planes was that nobody, particularly in the west, wants to actually face the truth about climate change; its all a status grab to show that "I'm better than you," which is exactly what the Bitcoin rhetoric is. I said earlier, if you want a carbon based emission tax or allocation, sign me up right now. But people don't actually want to pay for climate change, they want to feel better about themselves and pretend they are doing something whilst everything stays the same. People want to have kids, two cars, eat a steak/burger once or twice a week and go on at least one holiday a year to the south of Spain and think that washing out the tin of beans and organising your plastic in to coloured compartments can compensate for that. It can't. 

Malthusian said:

(9) the symbiotic relationship of miners allows for the investment, cultivation and spread of renewable energy production. How else are you planning on harvesting the wind energy from Antarctica or the hydroelectric capacity of Canada or the geothermal energy of Iceland?

Haven't a clue, but if it was economic to tap energy from any of those sources, it would be far better to do something productive with that energy rather than using it to increase the supply of crypto tokens.

Firstly, its not economic to tap some of them because there is no investment in them - which is the whole point of my argument. Tesla didn't just one day wake up with the (semi efficient) batteries they have now, it took billions in R&D to get there.

Secondly, would you like to point out a use case for say geothermal energy in Iceland? How about Aluminum refining... You see, this is a process that requires cheap energy to be economical and is location agnostic, so we send all the Aluminum to Iceland and have it done there. But we can't send our farming emissions or our banking system to Iceland at the minute. We could with Bitcoin, and I'm not talking about sending the cows over there.

Thirdly, renewable sources need buyers of last resort because they generally can't store energy. This isn't groundbreaking, its GCSE science. Solar produces energy when most people don't want to use energy, which is why you need buyers of renewable energy that can turn on and off their operations in opposition to consumer demand periods.

Malthusian said:

(10) [The dangers of] moral hazard

(11)  DeFi in particular has safeguards in place to ensure that something like the GFC couldn't happen with BTC

Please elaborate on how "Defi" would prevent mortgage lenders from loaning money to people that they couldn't pay back.

The GFC was exacerbated because rating agencies were complicit in covering up holdings, in an opaque system, were nobody knew who owned what. The Fed had no idea who was on the verge of or about to fail. And of course, it wasn't in the banks interest to declare it was about to fail until it had cleared the deadwood from its balance sheet. So how do we think that all plays out in a system where you can see every companies assets and holdings in real time on a blockchain? Well, firstly the idea of ownership becomes a lot clearer. Secondly, the market is able to react in a more efficient manner with the additional information; instead of a crash in 2007/8, you get a gradual deleveraging from say 2005 and the bubble probably never gets as big as it did.

Right now, the Fed say they have some amount of gold in their vault. Whether they do or don't is questioned by a lot of respectable sources and not simply fringe conspiracy theorists. If it was on the blockchain, I could audit it with a couple of clicks in my browser. Bill Hwang doesnt happen with a blockchain. Last week, as the price of ETH collapsed, many crypto natives watched with popcorn as a $600M collateralised position started to be sold off from a DeFi protocol. This was all open and viewable by anyone on the blockchain.

The GFC was caused by the value of assets (RE) went down on the balance sheet which put many businesses and people in a hole. Bitcoin has suffered two 50%+ drawdowns within the last twelve months and I'm unaware of any DeFi protocol that has a financial hole despite them all lending out hundreds of billions in crypto. The system has been stress tested, and it works. It didn't need a bailout of taxpayers money. That's what happens when your system is run on smart contracts.

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For the avoidance of doubt, it should be obvious that I don't consider every one of the points above equally important. They were raised in response to a comment that I had provided no evidence in my post of value created by Bitcoin by another poster. Chargebacks are a problem and cause business inefficiencies of tens of millions per year, but that's chump change in the grand scheme of things. The real benefits of Bitcoin are the monetary policy, digital value and its global, permission-less nature.

User232002

Deleted_User said:

darren232002 said:

<snip>

Oh noes, I snipped a whole quote again, so that means I lost the argument. </s>

Another post that provides no facts, statistics or data. Another post that doesn't in any way attempt to refute or rebut any of the various statistics and points I've made. 

Deleted_User said:

Meaningful discussion is not about who types the most, or comes up with the largest quantity of half-baked arguments. The rule (I forget who said this) is that it takes several times longer to debunk bullsh*t than to spout it; a corollary is that when somebody spouts too much of it, there is never time to debunk it all in discussion, and the quality of the discussion is degraded.

Agreed. Which is why I, and probably every other Bitcoiner on this forum, gets immensely frustrated when we have to go over the same old BS all the time about why Bitcoin is not a 'climate catastrophe.' More on this later....

Deleted_User said:

Deleted_User said:

Your attempt to explain how QE would lead to inflation is just based on looking at the quantity of cash (viz. there's lots more of it), and saying that must lead to higher inflation, on the common-sense idea that if there are more £s, surely each one must be worth less in real terms. The problem is that there is no explanation of how this larger number of £s out there will lead to greater demand for goods and services. And without that step, higher inflation doesn't follow. In this case, the "common-sense idea" happens to be wrong when it's examined.

In any case, we have had a decade+ of QE, and inflation remained very low for most of that time, so it clearly doesn't cause a lot of inflation. If your argument says it should do, there's something wrong with your argument! (And recent inflation has other clear causes. Energy, like other commodities, goes through boom-and-bust cycles. It is not just supply chain issues. Demand has also been very on/off in some sectors as we go in and out of lockdowns, so there have been some unexpected changes in both supply and demand - hardly surprising that they don't always match up.)

Four points;

(1) Denying that inflation exists because the cause can't be explained is like a firefighter turning up to a burning building and denying that its on fire until we find the cause. Its nonsense and just academic circle jerking. 

(2) I've already made this very obvious point, yet you keep ignoring it because you don't actually want to admit you're wrong. World governments printed trillions of dollars and airdropped them in to consumers and businesses accounts. Savings rates during the pandemic hit a generational high. So yes, it was patently obvious that as soon as things began to open up there would be more dollars (those extra that were printed and then saved above the usual amount) chasing fewer goods (even without supply chain issues). And a large number of people leaving work restructured the job market. When McDonalds are paying people $50 to turn up to an interview its again fairly obvious that wages are going to go up across the board, which is going to result in price increases and more money in the system chasing the same amount of goods.

(3) I think there has been inflation for the last decade, its just not been seen in things measured by the CPI. Hard asset prices, specifically RE and equities, have gone vertical whilst shrinkflation and deflationary pressures have kept consumer prices generally low. Its a giant gaslighting of the nation to suggest that the last 14 years since the GFC has been economic nirvana. People feel poorer; they have less disposable income. Again, divide the markets by the central bank balance sheets and the decade has been flat. There is no real wide level of growth; its just nominal growth reflective of asset price inflation caused by rampant money printing. Except the youth, the millenials and others, hold record low levels of equities and RE, and so they've been absolutely shafted by this inflation.

(4) I don't need inflation to be high for my Bitcoin thesis to be correct and this is why I really don't care about it either way. I think inflation is present and will continue for some time but the success of Bitcoin doesn't depend on it.

Deleted_User said:

Malthusian said:

Besides, you said earlier that melting the planet doesn't matter because airlines fly empty planes.

And frankly, perhaps we should have stopped talking to you at your denial of climate science which Malthusian refers to here.

I've tried to respond to your more coherent arguments, but when many of your arguments are so dishonest or delusional (I don't presume to know what's going on in your head), what is the point?

At no point have I denied climate science or that climate change isn't happening. Stop with the leftist BS.

You stated 'Proof of work cryptocurrencies are an abomination.' They use 0.08% of global emissions. 0.08 god damn percent! So, that statement seems hyperbolic. Here it is in pie chart form as you've already expressed your inability to follow worded arguments;




Bringing up the issue of the world running out of energy in 50, 100 or 600 years or w/e based on unbounded compound growth rates is nonsense. Its like nobody taught you either the nature of exponential functions or the difference between interpolation and extrapolation in mathematics class. Since you love a good prediction, I figured I'd raise this oldie-but-goodie;



Also loving the hilarity of talking about climate catastrophes in a thread on NFTs when a lot of them are on like SOL and other PoS chains anyway.

Gary1984

The figures I found are 121 TWh for bitcoin (so all other crypto, NFTs etc will be more again). Anyway, let's say it's 0.1% of global energy use. That's still an enormous amount of energy and emissions for so little utility. As has been pointed out the entire global financial system, every bank account, transfer of wages, insurance payout, business loan, currency exchange, share deal, bond issuance, IPO etc only uses about double that. 

I find it breathtakingly arrogant that you think your little Ponzi schemes are entitled to gobble up so much of the earth's resources. It's just so insanely wasteful and if we can't even stop people from their harmful speculation what chance have we got of stopping people from using actually useful and life enhancing things like flying or meat? Selfish selfish crypto bros.