• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Merged Bitcoin - Part 3

yeah i think it's fairly compared to a collectible, like pokemon cards or something, moreso than gold. i'm not saying those things don't exist, i'm saying they make bad investments. it's really bad in bitcoin's case because it's often presented as some kind of sound financial tool when it's more like a superman comic imo. you possess this thing that there's only so many of that you can't really do anything with. but it's great if you like it, then enjoy owning it.

edit

maybe it's more like one of those q link golf bracelets that cost a bunch of money and supposedly make you better at golf and a lot of people really believe that but really just are nothing.
 
Last edited:
Opcode said:
:rolleyes: One of the unique and alarming aspects of cryptocurrency is that it has unhooked monetary assets from wealth creation. Dollars and other fiat currency are earned through wealth creation (you exchange work for money). Stocks represent shares in wealth creation. Cryptocurrency represents nothing.
Click to expand...
Whereas you don't do anything to get crypto. It just magically appears in your crypto wallet for nothing. :rolleyes:
 
psionl0 said:
Whereas you don't do anything to get crypto. It just magically appears in your crypto wallet for nothing. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
How many hamburgers were flipped, cars washed, nails hammered, meals cooked, hospitals built, medicines invented or roads built for somebody to get one of those cryptocoins?
 
Opcode said:
How many hamburgers were flipped, cars washed, nails hammered, meals cooked, hospitals built, medicines invented or roads built for somebody to get one of those cryptocoins?
Click to expand...
As many as were necessary for the buyer to get the fiat currency needed to buy the crypto.
 
steenkh said:
There are lots of things where value is not dependent on work. Take paintings: if a Rembrandt painting is found out to be painted by someone else, the value plummets. If a piece of silverware can be shown to come from the Titanic, the value soars.
Click to expand...
Arguably, a Rembrandt painting is valuable because Rembrandt was a brilliant artist of great renown. So great, in fact, that his reputation increases the value of other people who could convincingly imitate his work. The connection to some great event also has a lot to do with the value of collectibles. Admittedly, the psychological component makes a large share of the perceived value, but that connection to greatness is real. I doubt that anybody is going to become that attached to any specific cryptocoin.
steenkh said:
And then we have gems that are worth a fortune, but if they happen to be made artificially, the value is much less, although they are practically indistinguishable from the gems. In this case, the value seems to be connected to the work involved.
Click to expand...
The value of gems often is psychological, too. People value natural gems over artificial. I'm told that diamonds are horribly overpriced, as they aren't particularly rare, but one diamond company has spent a century ensuring that the global diamond market will be priced high.
 
Opcode said:
See, it is the fiat currency that buys the crypto, not the creation of wealth that buys the crypto.
Click to expand...
No, it is the "hamburgers flipped, cars washed, nails hammered, meals cooked, hospitals built, medicines invented and roads built" that enabled the purchase of the crypto. Money is just a medium of exchange. Fiat is only necessary because few employers/customers will pay for these items directly with crypto.
 
psionl0 said:
No, it is the "hamburgers flipped, cars washed, nails hammered, meals cooked, hospitals built, medicines invented and roads built" that enabled the purchase of the crypto. Money is just a medium of exchange. Fiat is only necessary because few employers/customers will pay for these items directly with crypto.
Click to expand...
If what you say were true, it would undermine the claim made by many cryptocurrency advocates that cryptocurrency is the replacement for fiat currency. However, what you say is not true; there is no inherent connection between the work performed to earn the dollars and the cryptocurrency bought with those dollars. The connection you mention is coincidental, if only because your ability to purchase cryptocurrency is independent of how you got the dollars. If you had found the money, been given the money or stole the money, it's all the same to your ability to purchase cryptocurrency. It is true that the normal way of getting fiat money is performing work, creating wealth, but cryptocurrency doesn't care how you got the dollars. You have to buy cryptocurrency, either with fiat money or with your own compute.
 
Opcode said:
If what you say were true, it would undermine the claim made by many cryptocurrency advocates that cryptocurrency is the replacement for fiat currency.
Click to expand...
It does no such thing (assuming that it is widely claimed that cryptocurrency will replace fiat currency*).

And stop all this special pleading. If somebody has crypto and a seller is willing to accept the crypto in exchange for what they are selling then you can use your crypto to pay for it. This is exactly the same for every item that you might wish to barter with. There is no magical exception when the item happens to be a crypto.

* This is not widely claimed at all. Originally, bitcoin was proposed as a possible replacement in the event that fiat currencies collapsed but as long as fiat currencies are usable, nobody seriously believes that cryptos will replace them. Cryptos are generally used as objects of speculation or as a hedge against inflation or to make payments that the payer would hope to be clandestine.
 
steenkh said:
Really? I thought Bitcoin was introduced to free mankind from state oppression.
Click to expand...
Libertarian hyperbole.

Satoshi Nakamoto's intention was to create an electronic currency that didn't require trust in banks (this was in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis).

In his white paper released in 2008 he wrote:
Commerce on the Internet has come to rely almost exclusively on financial institutions serving astrusted third parties to process electronic payments. While the system works well enough formost transactions, it still suffers from the inherent weaknesses of the trust based model.
Click to expand...
and
What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust,allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trustedthird party
Click to expand...
 
steenkh said:
No, I can’t, and I can’t see the relevance, because it is not the weight of the vault doors, but the cost of producing the gold that is the basis of the value of gold (before speculation).
Click to expand...

No. The basis of the value of gold is that it is rare and shiny and stays shiny.

Aluminium costs a lot to produce but it doesn't have nearly as high a value because it is not rare.
 
jeremyp said:
No. The basis of the value of gold is that it is rare and shiny and stays shiny.

Aluminium costs a lot to produce but it doesn't have nearly as high a value because it is not rare.
Click to expand...

aluminum was once rare, and when it was, it was also used for decorative purposes. now, mostly in production of goods as a raw material. the same would happen with gold if it was more common, where gold would be a better or cheaper, or both, alternative than whatever raw material it would replace in any number of products. in any case, the point is there's a real demand beyond speculation, which means if the bottom falls out you're not left with nothing
 
psionl0 said:
It does no such thing (assuming that it is widely claimed that cryptocurrency will replace fiat currency*).

And stop all this special pleading. If somebody has crypto and a seller is willing to accept the crypto in exchange for what they are selling then you can use your crypto to pay for it. This is exactly the same for every item that you might wish to barter with. There is no magical exception when the item happens to be a crypto.
Click to expand...
psionl0 said:
* This is not widely claimed at all. Originally, bitcoin was proposed as a possible replacement in the event that fiat currencies collapsed but as long as fiat currencies are usable, nobody seriously believes that cryptos will replace them.
Click to expand...
You should stop hand-waving. Yes, in theory, any seller could accept crypto as payment for debt. In theory, any seller could accept *anything* as payment for debt! The fact that they don't is a testament to its utility as currency. In fact, Bitcoin has failed so badly as currency that now the fanboys deny that's what Bitcoin is. Now it's "a store of value." It's impractical for legitimate real-world uses, which is the reason it isn't used for real-world uses.

Getting back to my point, though, nobody exchanges the creation of wealth for cryptocurrency. The two work in different worlds. They were created for different purposes. The dollar was created because society needed to compensate workers for their work. Cryptocurrency was created originally to modernize currency, making a digital version of cash. This didn't begin with Bitcoin. I read about digital currency in a book in the '90s, and all the key attributes of cryptocurrency were specified in that book. However, few people (other than criminals and theoreticians) were interested in cryptocurrency until it became a huge lottery system, with coins going for thousands of dollars. Note that all the value of a crypto coin is the real money that somebody spent buying it. That means, among other things, that cryptocurrency is a parasite on the real money economy. Money that could have been spent creating wealth is spent instead on this lottery system.
psionl0 said:
Cryptos are generally used as objects of speculation or as a hedge against inflation or to make payments that the payer would hope to be clandestine.
Click to expand...
I would say that the overwhelming majority of interest in cryptocurrency (>80%) is speculation, outright gambling on a lottery ticket. The reason that cryptocurrency was created, and its only real-world use, is evading regulation, especially regulations enforced by national laws. Using an asset that has huge swings in value, whose price went from $100 a coin up to $100k a coin in just a decade and still swings wildly, as a hedge for inflation is insane.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom