Merged Bitcoin - Part 3

psionl0 said:
Your original point was

Clearly, if neither can exist without the other then they must have come into existence simultaneously.
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And where in that post did wayerin say that both were created simultaneously. Ah well when you've been spending the lat ten years creating strawman versions of what those disagreeing with you have argued, and then claiming to be "winning", why should anybody expect you to start being honest from now?
 
Gulliver Foyle said:
And where in that post did wayerin say that both were created simultaneously.
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Wayerin posted that "crypto has no utility outside of the exchanges, and the crypto exchanges have nothing to do without crypto" in response to the claim that bitcoin doesn't need an exchange to exist.

How could one be created without the other if this is the case?
 
Dr.Sid said:
Is that good or bad ?
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It means that anyone who bought bitcoin since then and held on, is currently showing a loss (on paper). That loss doesn't become real until they try to sell.

(Of course it could get worse or better if they keep holding on, that's the nature of speculation.)

But anyone who took out a loan to buy bitcoin during that period, could be struggling, because they'd be paying interest on the loan, and not getting any growth on their asset.
 
novaphile said:
It means that anyone who bought bitcoin since then and held on, is currently showing a loss (on paper). That loss doesn't become real until they try to sell.

(Of course it could get worse or better if they keep holding on, that's the nature of speculation.)

But anyone who took out a loan to buy bitcoin during that period, could be struggling, because they'd be paying interest on the loan, and not getting any growth on their asset.
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Sure .. on the other, even with bitcoin being this "low", if you bought in March 2020, you would be still up 400-500%. And as you said, the loss is unrealized .. as long as you don't sell or the bitcoin crashes for good.
Which can IMHO totally happen. And it may be happening right now. While there were many crashes before, and bitcoin raised stronger than before, it's also slightly different every time. Especially the ecological burden in new thing. With every peak and crash the fame of bitcoin raises .. making it more likely it will get regulated, which might be great blow, possibly fatal.
 
psionl0 said:
Exchanges can certainly be regulated but how do you regulate a computer algorithm?
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Of course the algorithm will be fine.
But ownership of crypto can be made right out illegal .. even though that would be really hard to enforce. Exchanges are indeed the easiest to regulate. Without reliable exchanges bitcoin would drop to fraction of today's price.
But it would have to coordinated effort .. let's say EU and US. I think first will be China though .. and based on the effect, western countries may join.
 
Dr.Sid said:
Of course the algorithm will be fine.
But ownership of crypto can be made right out illegal .. even though that would be really hard to enforce. Exchanges are indeed the easiest to regulate. Without reliable exchanges bitcoin would drop to fraction of today's price.
But it would have to coordinated effort .. let's say EU and US. I think first will be China though .. and based on the effect, western countries may join.
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Cryptos won't be made illegal - unless vested interests find it more profitable to deal with a banned asset (as happens with drugs).

As for the notion that bitcoin would drop to a fraction of today's price without exchanges, that is a baseless claim.
 
Dr.Sid said:
Of course the algorithm will be fine.
But ownership of crypto can be made right out illegal .. even though that would be really hard to enforce. Exchanges are indeed the easiest to regulate. Without reliable exchanges bitcoin would drop to fraction of today's price.
But it would have to coordinated effort .. let's say EU and US. I think first will be China though .. and based on the effect, western countries may join.
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Actually enforcement would be easy and there is no need to ban bitcoins per se. Just prohibit servers' bitcoin blockchains. That would make it economically unfeasible for miners. The bitcoins owned by the multitudes would still exist but no ability to transfer. Bitcoin depends on having a mutitude of the same blockchains with miners blessing the new blocks as bitcoins are minted.
 
marting said:
Actually enforcement would be easy and there is no need to ban bitcoins per se. Just prohibit servers' bitcoin blockchains. That would make it economically unfeasible for miners. The bitcoins owned by the multitudes would still exist but no ability to transfer. Bitcoin depends on having a mutitude of the same blockchains with miners blessing the new blocks as bitcoins are minted.
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I don't see how that would work. Get rid of the big miners and the mining difficulty will drop until you could mine BTC using a simple PC. I'm sure that there is no shortage of people who would mine BTC if they didn't need expensive equipment or a cheap source of electricity.
 
psionl0 said:
I don't see how that would work. Get rid of the big miners and the mining difficulty will drop until you could mine BTC using a simple PC. I'm sure that there is no shortage of people who would mine BTC if they didn't need expensive equipment or a cheap source of electricity.
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Sure. And if you could mine bitcoins with a PC what do you think bitcoins would then be worth? The briliance of bitcoin is the increased capital needed to start and operate mining. A lot of outside capital has gone into mining. But mining all depends on multiple blockchain servers that miners can drop into for validation. My point was that if the world decided to ban bitcoin the simple approach is to ban the servers, not the bitcoins themselves. Far easier.

That said, I don't see any risk of the world doing that given how much capital investment has gone into mining. But it certainly could be done.
 
marting said:
Sure. And if you could mine bitcoins with a PC what do you think bitcoins would then be worth?
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Too many people have tried to predict a bitcoin price and ended up looking like idiots so I won't hazard a guess.

However, the mining rate is constant and independent of the mining difficulty so getting the big players out won't affect the supply of bitcoins. Of course, as long as there is a demand for bitcoins, the mining difficulty is unlikely to quite get down to PC level anyway.
 
psionl0 said:
Too many people have tried to predict a bitcoin price and ended up looking like idiots so I won't hazard a guess.
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It's not a prediction. Quite simply if bitcoin mining profitability declined to the point that it was worth it to use PCs to mine bitcoin then bitcoin value would be proportional to the capital need to buy and use PCs (electricity and initial capital for the PCs. That's the intrinsic supply and demand relationship.

Again, It's not a prediction. It's a fact if bitcoin mining drops to that level. You were the one that mentioned PC's used to mine BTC. I don't see that as likely.
 
marting said:
It's not a prediction. Quite simply if bitcoin mining profitability declined to the point that it was worth it to use PCs to mine bitcoin then bitcoin value would be proportional to the capital need to buy and use PCs (electricity and initial capital for the PCs. That's the intrinsic supply and demand relationship.

Again, It's not a prediction. It's a fact if bitcoin mining drops to that level. You were the one that mentioned PC's used to mine BTC. I don't see that as likely.
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This is a different argument to the one you originally made which was that if you "just prohibit servers' bitcoin blockchains" then there would be no ability to transfer bitcoins.
 
psionl0 said:
This is a different argument to the one you originally made which was that if you "just prohibit servers' bitcoin blockchains" then there would be no ability to transfer bitcoins.
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You are quite correct. It was a response to your notion that somehow, if the big players drop out, mining costs would drop. I was just pointing out that if they did drop to the point PCs would be useful, the price of bitcoins would have to have droped as well.

But my main argument stands which was to Dr. Sid re outlawing bitcoin as it wouldn't be hard. If bitcoin blockchain servers were outlawed it would be a simple task to monitor their existance since knowledge of them is essential for folks to transfer BTC as well as miners to aggegate and validate transfers. BTC would cease to be exchangeable. No need to outlaw individual BTCs held by millions.

But again, I don't see that happening. At least in the forseable future.
 
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