Merged Bitcoin - Part 3

[SpuriusMaximus]

no blacks allowed

It's even sillier than that. For a start it essentially says they believe in freedom so much, they're gonna enforce border controls.

But it's even sillier, when you think about it. So they only want upper class people. OK. So... who's gonna be the border police? How much do you intend to pay a crypto-bro millionaire to drive a garbage truck? Sweep the streets? Unclog toilets? Sweep the floors for other crypto-bros? Show up in the middle of the night to fight off a hack and keep the Internet running?

Maintain the dams? Because that area is subject to flooding.

Or do military training to fight off criminals? Because you just know that they painted a big bullseye on their back as the area with the rich people.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

But yeah, more generally, every couple of years someone comes with the idea that, hey, there's this piece of uninhabited land, we could make a crypto-bro paradise here... missing the fact that there's a reason a piece of land is uninhabited.

Like, the previous one was Cryptoland... on an island that was subject to violent typhoons every year. I mean, the whole project was a scam anyway, because it turns out they hadn't actually purchased the island anyway. And there were no plans for where the workers would live to make those places work, or how to ferry them there. But still, it was fun seeing a bunch of ignorant crypto bros get excited to move to a hellhole. Like, yeah, let's buy some expensive estate on the beaches, where the waves are going to hit hard enough to damage a destroyer in the next typhoon

Or this one. That's a prime piece of fertile land, next to a major river as infrastructure, and there's not even a village there. Hmm... I wonder why. Oh right, because it gets periodically flooded by that river. Not saying it's unsolvable, but you have to wonder when and on whose money, if they plan to have almost no taxes. And in any case, personally I'd wait until AFTER those dams are built, before getting excited about it.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Don't forget The MS Satoshi.
It was a short-lived cryptocurrency 'Seastead' ship. In 2020, three entrepreneurs purchased the former Pacific Dawn for $9.5 million to create a floating, libertarian utopia off the coast of Panama.
It fell apart pretty quickly and money was lost all round.

As detailed in the Old Salt Blog.

MS Satoshi, Attempt to "Seastead" on a Bitcoin Cruise Ship Fails, Not Surprisingly

The Guardian recently published “The disastrous voyage of Satoshi, the world’s first cryptocurrency cruise ship.” Thanks to Joan Druett for pointing it out. In 2020, three cryptocurrency enthusiasts bought a pandemic-bargain cruise ship with plans to create a libertarian utopia, … Continue reading →

oldsaltblog.com

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Ya know, the more I read about Liberland, the more it sounds like a joke, and not even a funny one.

Even the claim on that land is incredibly stupid. Basically one crypto-bro decided that if a piece of land is claimed by both Serbia and Croatia, it means neither owns it, and he can claim it himself. That's literally like saying that since both Russia and Ukraine claim Crimea, it means I can just claim it myself.

Neither Serbia nor Croatia have recognised the crypto-bros' claim, any more than they recognise each other's. Nor did any other country. And as even the BBC article mentions, Croatia just blocked land access to it completely. It also repeatedly arrested the crypto-bros trying to go there and claim it.

I've also looked at their renderings of futuristic buildings and all, but I see no dams. Again, that place floods regularly.

It's also probably telling that they claimed it since 2015, it's been 11 years now, and still they didn't DO anything there, other than coming by boat to plant a flag.

I mean, even in the Satoshi idiocy, they actually went and bought a ship. These guys just claimed some country's land and called it a day.

It's got to be just a publicity stunt, right?

 

[psionl0]

the similarity is people are speculating on the future price of bitcoin, so a lot of people compare it the time people were speculating on the future price of tulips. that's why it's such a great analogy.

The reason why it is such a stupid analogy is that tulips were all about futures contracts. In a futures contract, the buyer pays for a product now and the seller guarantees to deliver the product at a specified date in the future. Of course, a speculator has no intention of taking delivery of the product (they probably wouldn't be able to use it or store it if they did). Their aim is to sell the contract before the delivery date - hopefully at a profit.

When you buy a bitcoin, you get the product immediately and have no timeline on when you have to sell it. This is no different to buying any other product with the hope of making a profit by selling it in the future.

In case this doesn't make sense to you, the fact that the tulip mania collapsed permanently within a year has no bearing on the future of bitcoin.

 

[psionl0]

That's about as silly as saying there's nothing in common between digital cash (which is how all banks do it now) and having a bag full of gulden florins back then.

Is that an "analogy" or a "counterpoint"? Is any conclusion supposed to be drawn from it?

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Well, technically it lasted more than a year. It collapsed in 1637. Speculation started in earnest at least as early as 1634, and by 1635 we have a recorded sale of 40 tulip bulbs for 100,000 gulden, which is 2500 per bulb. But prices had been rising long before even 1634, most likely at least even since 1624, when a specimen with the mosaic virus was described and everyone decided they wanted one. And trading in futures was even earlier, since the law making those unenforceable is from 1610, and you don't pass a law unless something is becoming a problem.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

When you buy a bitcoin, you get the product immediately and have no timeline on when you have to sell it. This is no different to buying any other product with the hope of making a profit by selling it in the future.

Bitcoin isn't supposed to be a product - it's 'digital cash', a number in a ledger that you can use to buy a product. You're saying it's a commodity with intrinsic value, which makes it analogous to a tulip bulb. But is it? A tulip bulb has a unique pretty flower. A bitcoin has (hopefully) a greater fool to buy it. Maybe it looks pretty to criminals, until the authorities get a handle on it.

In case this doesn't make sense to you, the fact that the tulip mania collapsed permanently within a year has no bearing on the future of bitcoin.

All analogies break down when you try to match every characteristic - that's why they're analogies.

Analogy

Analogy is a comparison or correspondence between two things (or two groups of things) because of a third element that they are considered to share...

In this case the 'third element' is a price which is disconnected from the intrinsic value. That doesn't tell you when Bitcoin will collapse, but it does suggest that at some time in the future it probably will.

From nothing bitcoin came, and to nothing it will return

at the London soiree I also warned that when the cheap money era ended, bitcoin would fall back to earth. That moment may now have come... The more likely scenario is a long era of pricier money. In the years ahead, interest rates will probably go higher. Bitcoin has enough true believers that it will stick around for a while. It will rise and fall, but the broad trend will likely now see it returning to its origin. It had its day in the sun, but the easy-money sun is now dipping below the horizon.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

The Line at least had space for armies of servants on lower levels so you wouldn't have to see them most of the time

 

[psionl0]

Bitcoin isn't supposed to be a product - it's 'digital cash', a number in a ledger that you can use to buy a product.

Whatever. It depends on your meaning of the word "product". It is something that is produced (but not by human hands) and can be bought or sold.

You're saying it's a commodity with intrinsic value, which makes it analogous to a tulip bulb

I am absolutely NOT saying either of these two things.

All analogies break down when you try to match every characteristic - that's why they're analogies.

That doesn't mean that you can predict that bitcoin will fail just because something else failed. You can just as easily compare bitcoin with something that hasn't failed.

For example, the ONLY reason that I buy gold or silver is in the hope that its price will rise (at least enough to cover inflation). Neither has failed investors for centuries.

Although the Australian government is now cracking down on it, "negative gearing" has been popular in Australia for decades. People would buy houses to rent them out. The problem was that the rent didn't cover costs. You were actually losing money while you had the property (although you could mitigate the loss somewhat by claiming it on your tax return).

So why would people negative gear (buy houses that simply cost them money)? Hint: the only reason is the same reason that people would buy bitcoin. This is a major reason why houses are priced well above their "intrinsic value" today.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

I don't think that the comparison to housing is very encouraging. Housing also goes through boom and bust cycles, aka bubbles, where it shoots above and eventually corrects to a value based on rent. Probably the most notable and dramatic was the 1990 Japan crash, which downright stalled the Japanese economy. They just follow much longer cycles than credit bubbles, so yes, it can go on for decades, but the correction is eventually coming.

But at least houses do have an intrinsic value to fall back to. People still need somewhere to sleep, preferably close enough to where the workplaces are.

If Bitcoin corrects to its "intrinsic value", like houses eventually do, that's not a great outlook.

 

[dirtywick]

gold may be in a bubble as well, we will have to see if and how far it continues to drop in the next couple of years. silver was just in a bubble too and has plenty of room to go lower as well. go look at a chart.

i agree that comparisons to other assets of other speculative bubbles are valid. psion is acting like there's no comparison to be made at all. if he doesn't believe a similar situation will behave similarly, why not? he never gets to that part.

i don't want to get back into "these other bubbles are assets with intrinsic value" thing, since we all how that will go. we also all know gold and silver has some industrial use and is made into physical objects which is somewhat valuable, and houses you get to live in which is pretty valuable, and even tulips you get to grow and enjoy smelling which is not very valuable but something, bitcoin is a really risky way to send someone money for something illegal, trade it to safely traverse the strait of hormuz, or simply lose it to a scam or a hacker. it's trading volume is almost entirely traders speculating, which kind of gives you an idea of the actual demand and roughly where the floor will be if the speculation slows or stops or the mining becomes too cost prohibitive. intrinsically value-wise, closer to tulip territory imo

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Kinda brings me to another difference from tulips. If people stopped overspending on tulips (like they did in 1637,) yeah, sure, the speculators would be hopping mad, but anyone who wanted a tulip would just think, "great, I can get it cheaper."

Well, it's not really a new one. I already mentioned that nobody went "HODL!" or "TO THE MOON!" about tulips, and preaching about how everyone ELSE should get into speculating on tulips. It's only the crypto-bros that do that. Because without a steady supply of greater fools on the demand side, and everyone else refusing to take part in the supply side, they're not even left holding a bag. They're not even left holding a picture of a bag. (That was NFTs) They're left with nothing. They HAVE to do that spiel.

 

[Andy_Ross]

They won't even have any nice flowers to look at.

 

[psionl0]

psion is acting like there's no comparison to be made at all.

There is no sensible comparison to the tulip mania - especially if you infer that this means that bitcoin will collapse. There is no magical connection between them.

Like it or not, digital assets are a new category and there is no reliable comparison between them and any other asset (bubble or not).

 

[Roger Ramjets]

I already mentioned that nobody went "HODL!" or "TO THE MOON!" about tulips, and preaching about how everyone ELSE should get into speculating on tulips. It's only the crypto-bros that do that. Because without a steady supply of greater fools on the demand side, and everyone else refusing to take part in the supply side, they're not even left holding a bag. They're not even left holding a picture of a bag. (That was NFTs) They're left with nothing. They HAVE to do that spiel.

This is why I call Bitcoin a 'distributed Ponzi'. In the early days it was promoted as a better alternative to 'worthless' fiat, then it got some publicity and people noticed the price going up. From then on the primary attraction has been that it's an incredible money machine guaranteed to make you rich so long as you keep buying and HODLing. Those who got in early and HODLed are indeed now rich, but to stay rich they have to continue the deception.

According to this site the last Bitcoin is projected to be mined in 2140, 114 years away. I don't think it will last that long though, because when it doesn't go much higher than the last peak many people will cash out. This could happen as soon as 2030, when the next peak is expected to occur.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Technically the price only started going up significantly when the silk road came around and one could buy drugs online with it. Until then it had a funny claim to be better than fiat money... when at least you could buy something with fiat money.

 

[psionl0]

I already mentioned that nobody went "HODL!" or "TO THE MOON!" about tulips, and preaching about how everyone ELSE should get into speculating on tulips.

You can't "hodl" a futures contract. That is why your <whatever name you want to give it> has no relevance to crypto. And if you don't expect any conclusions to be drawn from it . . . .

It's only the crypto-bros that do that.

If it is your contention that the only reason there is any demand for cryptos is because the "crypto-bros" hyped it up then you need to prove that (or you would in any other thread where critical thinking is valued).

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

You could still HODL the bulbs and mine... err... produce more. In fact the craze started because the main owner of tulips with the mosaic virus refused to sell any of his. Which left a very limited supply of such bulbs on the market. Literally. The OG HODLer

Difference is, he didn't preach that the others should too

 

[Roger Ramjets]

If it is your contention that the only reason there is any demand for cryptos is because the "crypto-bros" hyped it up then you need to prove that (or you would in any other thread where critical thinking is valued).

Not the only reason, but it is a big driver.

Cryptos and the Celebration of Unfettered Hegemonic Masculinity

The cryptocurrency industry is “deeply entwined with masculinity, especially the norm of the entrepreneurial, tech-savvy male investor/developer” (Henshaw 2022, 10). This market is “at best, characterized by a “bro culture” and, at worst, dominated by sexual harassment and exclusionary practices”. (Henshaw 2022, 10). If we look at the numbers, we can see that 86% of the Bitcoin community are men

The concept “HODL” or “hold” puts everything together. To hold it is also a proof of belonging, of strength...

The crypto market is populated by men who embrace the traditional, hegemonic, masculine traits, such as strength, courage, independence, leadership, risk-taking, not showing emotion, and confidence... For these men, cryptocurrency has become a new way of asserting their dominance and beholding their masculinity by gaining more money, power and status.