Bitcoin and other crypto-The CR thread

[wildcat09 29359]

26 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

The blockchain tech isn't the cure-all for any legal or tech issue. In fact it can add problems. But arguing this point is a strawman as I think you're hard pressed to find any legitimate crypto source saying crypto/blockchain will automatically leading to world peace.

That's a very strange thing to say because that's not at all what we've been talking about.

[GW Hayduke 1953]

I get there are lots of folks pushing crypto to create some wealth from rubes using a ponzi scheme, but other than purchasing illegal things and considering the amount of fraud and theft going on, why wouldn’t anyone just use a bank for their purchases?  

[Immaculate Vibes 114]

32 minutes ago, GW Hayduke said:

I get there are lots of folks pushing crypto to create some wealth from rubes using a ponzi scheme, but other than purchasing illegal things and considering the amount of fraud and theft going on, why wouldn’t anyone just use a bank for their purchases?  

As Bravo said USD, cash money is by far the best way to buy something illegal. The only cryptocurrencies that I would recommend trying to do that with are Monero or ZCash, but they are smaller shitcoins. 
 

Again, by far the best use case so far for any cryptocurrencies is bitcoin. Censorship resistant wealth preservation outside of the financial system. Almost all the rest is hand waving VC promises as I think Ant said. Maybe they’ll deliver, but for example the Eth 2.0 update has been in the works for 5 years I think. 

[GW Hayduke 1953]

4 minutes ago, Immaculate Vibes said:

As Bravo said USD, cash money is by far the best way to buy something illegal. The only cryptocurrencies that I would recommend trying to do that with are Monero or ZCash, but they are smaller shitcoins. 
 

Again, by far the best use case so far for any cryptocurrencies is bitcoin. Censorship resistant wealth preservation outside of the financial system. Almost all the rest is hand waving VC promises as I think Ant said. Maybe they’ll deliver, but for example the Eth 2.0 update has been in the works for 5 years I think. 

But why would anyone use bitcoin rather than a bank? To create/maintain wealth from rubes through a ponzi scheme?

[Immaculate Vibes 114]

2 minutes ago, GW Hayduke said:

But why would anyone use bitcoin rather than a bank? To create/maintain wealth from rubes through a ponzi scheme?

For wealth preservation? 
 

Hold your own bitcoin vs having depreciating cash in bank account earning minimal interest?

Edited January 26, 2022 by Immaculate Vibes

[GW Hayduke 1953]

5 minutes ago, Bravo said:

explain how BTC is a ponzi scheme? you keep saying it. there are definitely ponzi scheme coins but bitcoin is a ponzi?

Isn’t bitcoin simply an investment where future returns are contributed by new investors?  And that investment doesn’t have any actual legitimate purpose - like it isn’t to increase production capacity of a good? There might not be any “fraud” in that someone isn’t out there promising a certain return, but it still fits the ponzi pyramid model.

I get that folks think it is school and that they are creating or maintain wealth, but isn’t it still just ponzi/pyramid model?  How is it not?

[GW Hayduke 1953]

1 minute ago, Bravo said:

uh no, that isn't it at all. oh boy.

Then what is it?

[Immaculate Vibes 114]

3 minutes ago, GW Hayduke said:

Isn’t bitcoin simply an investment where future returns are contributed by new investors?  And that investment doesn’t have any actual legitimate purpose - like it isn’t to increase production capacity of a good? There might not be any “fraud” in that someone isn’t out there promising a certain return, but it still fits the ponzi pyramid model.

I get that folks think it is school and that they are creating or maintain wealth, but isn’t it still just ponzi/pyramid model?  How is it not?

By your definition things like fine art are ponzis. Or how about rental properties. Sure you can make small amount of cash flows but you’re buying them to sell higher to someone later. 

[Captainant 27689]

5 minutes ago, Bravo said:

explain how BTC is a ponzi scheme? you keep saying it. there are definitely ponzi scheme coins but bitcoin is a ponzi?

 

6 minutes ago, Immaculate Vibes said:

For wealth preservation? 
 

Hold your own bitcoin vs having depreciating cash in bank account earning minimal interest?

I'm not who yall are asking but since this is Surly I'll give my opinion anyways

 

BTC is designed to be deflationary. It's one of its defining features, and it's designed to reward holding and not spending (or even transacting with) the currency. The thing you should be asking yourself is: "Why is bitcoin increasing in value?"

Is BTC becoming easier to utilize or improving on current financial mechanisms? No.

Is BTC itself inherently useful or have real-world utility, like gold/silver/precious metals do? No.

 

The reality is that the only reason BTC is increasing in value is that there's enough new money coming in to incentivize miners to sell what they've mined. Those miners are simply capitalizing their electricity usage, which you are paying a premium for in your purchase.

How will you get your wealth back out of BTC and into usable currency? By selling it to someone else who is willing to speculate harder than you did in your original purchase. Or in the case of miners, you're looking to sell your BTC for however much it cost in electricity to generate PLUS whatever the current market premium is - which again is driven purely by speculation.

In my view, that looks, smells, and quacks like a ponzi scheme. 

Just now, Bravo said:

it is a digital asset with a finite supply. there is value in it being finite. it is traded similar to assets on the stock market but it is borderless. There are real world uses for it also. It is also the backbone of the entire crypto market. 

Again, what real world utility does BTC represent that is not already serviced more effectively and efficiently by existing mechanisms? I'm not disagreeing that BTC is a very useful and interesting technology - but it's just waaaayyyy too inefficient and slow to even start competing with existing mechanisms. By and large, he people who are buying BTC aren't doing so for the utility. They're doing so only because they hope to sell it at a higher price later to someone else for real-world currency.

That's not a characteristic of a highly useful and valuable commodity. 

[GW Hayduke 1953]

Just now, Immaculate Vibes said:

By your definition things like fine art are ponzis. Or how about rental properties. Sure you can make small amount of cash flows but you’re buying them to sell higher to someone later. 

Rental properties provide an actual legitimate purpose. They provide housing. People need housing.

Art is art. People obtain benefit and enjoyment from it.  I purchased some music a few days back.  

If you are referring to high value art pieces that are used to mask wealth transfers for things like money laundering, then yeah I agree that isn’t an actual legitimate purpose.  I can see how that could be somewhat analogous to bitcoin.  

[Immaculate Vibes 114]

1 minute ago, Captainant said:

.

Again, what real world utility does BTC represent that is not already serviced more effectively and efficiently by existing mechanisms? I'm not disagreeing that BTC is a very useful and interesting technology - but it's just waaaayyyy too inefficient and slow to even start competing with existing mechanisms. By and large, he people who are buying BTC aren't doing so for the utility. They're doing so only because they hope to sell it at a higher price later to someone else for real-world currency.

That's not a characteristic of a highly useful and valuable commodity. 

Bitcoin is superior to gold in every characteristic other than the amount of time/history supporting its usage. That’s it. 
 

An asset that cannot be debased in this era of fiscal and monetary policy is inherently useful and valuable. 

[wildcat09 29359]

Pretty basic explainer here:

Quote

In late 2016, we were approached by a brilliant entrepreneur with an interesting investment opportunity. We mask the full details here to protect anonymity but believe us when we say this person has a knack for being incredibly early to imminent megatrends at the bleeding edge of technical and social disruptions. His pitch involved a company he and some colleagues were starting that had something to do with “bitcoin,” which he described to us as a form of “crypto currency.” We knew precious little about bitcoin or crypto currencies back then, nor did we understand what the newly formed company intended to do, but in a classic “bet the jockey, not the horse” move, we agreed to participate in the seed round at the minimum investment level. We immediately marked this equity investment to zero on our personal balance sheets.

In the following months, we engaged in a series of philosophical conversations about crypto currencies with our friend to learn more. Concurrent with this quest for knowledge, the paper value of our modest investment began to soar, which had the understandable effect of increasing the urgency of our research. We distinctly recall drawing two circles on a piece of paper. In the circle on the left, we wrote “real economy,” while in the circle on the right we wrote “crypto universe.” We drew two pipes between the circles – one flowing into the crypto universe and the other flowing back to the real economy – and labeled both pipes with “fiat currencies.” While we understood how fiat currencies from investors could flow in, we failed to grasp what could be occurring within the crypto universe that would create more fiat currency for investors to take out at a later date. There seemed to be many brilliant people excited to be working in the space and using a technical language foreign to us, so we concluded that our inability to understand this rather pertinent issue was a fault of our own making.

Then bitcoin went bananas in late 2017.

They say we are shaped by our experiences, and as bitcoin went parabolic it certainly impacted us. Watching our modest foray into a little understood technology skyrocket in paper value several hundredfold left a jagged mark as it crashed with the rest of the crypto market back to where we had always kept it marked – zero.  Along the way, we did make a few half-hearted efforts to get the outflow pipe turned on – life-changing fortunes are worth bending over and picking up, after all – but since we could not get an answer to our foundational question, we never held out much hope of converting paper into reality. There would be no lambos for the green chicken team.

It is through this tortured lens that we read with some interest a recent article by Sohale Mortazavi, published in the socialist magazine Jacobin. Sporting the provocative title Cryptocurrency Is a Giant Ponzi Scheme, the author pulls no punches in stating what he really thinks of the entire space. What caught our eye was his observation that cryptos aren’t merely a zero-sum game – in fact, inherent in the design of the entire system is a negative-sum occurrence in which the outflow pipe of fiat currencies available to investors must always be smaller than the inflow pipe (emphasis added throughout this piece):

 

“The majority of cryptocurrency mining is now conducted in commercial mining farms, essentially huge warehouses running thousands of high-powered computer processors day and night. The electricity expended mining Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is rapidly approaching 1 percent of global usage, which is famously greater than the total electricity consumption of many smaller developed nations.

Given that cryptocurrencies don’t produce anything of material value, this enormous waste of resources renders the whole enterprise a negative-sum game. Investors can only cash out by selling their coins to other investors — but only after the miners and various cryptocurrency service providers take the house’s rake. In other words, investors cannot — in the aggregate — cash out for even what they put in, as cryptocurrencies are inefficient by design.”

There’s simply no arguing that if one uses fiat currencies as the determining scorecard, the crypto universe is a Ponzi scheme. The structural costs of mining – which must ultimately be paid for using fiat – aren’t the only thing that shrinks the outflow pipe for regular investors. Outright theft of fiat deposits, whether via hacks, rug pulls, or illegal front-running by lawless market “participants” are a substantial drain on the total fiat floating around in the crypto universe.

Before the bitcoin maxis fill our comments with well-worn whataboutisms, we readily concede the real economy is filled with government-backed Ponzi schemes, legal or otherwise. Take the US Social Security system. New money will forever be needed to pay off old promises and absent the US government’s ability to print unbacked fiat, the entire edifice would collapse. But those systems are blessed by the state, and – by and large – the crypto universe is not. More critically, we believe precious few crypto participants today are in it to support their belief that the final chapter for fiat currencies has been written. They’re in it as a trade and are hoping to leave the crypto universe with more fiat in their traditional banking accounts than they entered with. Most won’t. If you don’t know who the sucker is at the digital poker table, you are probably a HODLer.

 

[Immaculate Vibes 114]

3 minutes ago, GW Hayduke said:

Rental properties provide an actual legitimate purpose. They provide housing. People need housing.

Art is art. People obtain benefit and enjoyment from it.  I purchased some music a few days back.  

If you are referring to high value art pieces that are used to mask wealth transfers for things like money laundering, then yeah I agree that isn’t an actual legitimate purpose.  I can see how that could be somewhat analogous to bitcoin.  

If someone is able to save in an asset that they hold themselves and can’t be debased then they don’t have to speculate in stock markets or real estate markets to try to generate returns that equal inflation. Again, that is a purpose. You may not appreciate it, but it is.
 

And y’all keep talking about selling it, but there’s plenty of people that aren’t going to sell the majority of their holdings. If I sell my bitcoin what am I going to buy? Some real estate? Pour it in stock market? Those are inflated markets. They could go higher but they could get pricked too and real estate can be illiquid if you want out. 

[GW Hayduke 1953]

11 minutes ago, Bravo said:

you just described the stock market.

The stock market provides a platform to allow trading and exchange of capital and vital components of a free market economy.  They provide efficient dealing and price discovery. That is nothing like bitcoin IMO.  

[Captainant 27689]

2 minutes ago, Bravo said:

you just described the stock market.

I disagree - stocks in themselves represent fractional ownership of a (ideally) revenue generating business. BTC represents fractional ownership of..... what? A number on a ledger that represents....? What? What utility is granted to you by holding that BTC but the ability to send it to someone else? It does not represent any usable computational capacity and it is not a store of physical utility (IE: you can't spend a BTC to get a MWh of electricity back).

With stock, its value will increase when the business it represents becomes more valuable. Sure, it can also increase in value when there's market hype (which is pretty typical of contemporary markets), but it still represents an actual REAL thing with a REAL utility. 

When there's a big DIY boom, Home Depot stock goes up because more people are buying tools and lumber. When BTC booms, what's driving it but speculation?

1 minute ago, Immaculate Vibes said:

Bitcoin is superior to gold in every characteristic other than the amount of time/history supporting its usage. That’s it. 
 

An asset that cannot be debased in this era of fiscal and monetary policy is inherently useful and valuable. 

You're getting high on your own supply if you don't think BTC is vulnerable to manipulation. It has happened multiple times, and it's always been at the interface between "real" and "crypto" currency. MTgox was the first most notable of these because it nearly caused a fork of the original blockchain, but you can see this behavior in virtually every exchange.

[GW Hayduke 1953]

6 minutes ago, Immaculate Vibes said:

If someone is able to save in an asset that they hold themselves and can’t be debased then they don’t have to speculate in stock markets or real estate markets to try to generate returns that equal inflation. Again, that is a purpose. You may not appreciate it, but it is.
 

And y’all keep talking about selling it, but there’s plenty of people that aren’t going to sell the majority of their holdings. If I sell my bitcoin what am I going to buy? Some real estate? Pour it in stock market? Those are inflated markets. They could go higher but they could get pricked too and real estate can be illiquid if you want out. 

So you are under the impression that bitcoin is infallible and can’t be debased? Ok, I guess.

Either way, that is all fine.  It doesn’t mean bitcoin isn’t an obvious ponzi pyramid scheme.  IMO folks should be ok with that if they want to participate. 

[Captainant 27689]

1 minute ago, Bravo said:

all markets are manipulated by whales. even the stock market.

You're not addressing the same point as me here. The fundamental thing underpinning a stock's value is the company it represents. Sure, it can be affected by manipulation, but ultimately, it represents a real portion of a real thing.

What is the fundamental thing that underpins the value of BTC?

[Immaculate Vibes 114]

2 minutes ago, Captainant said:

I disagree - stocks in themselves represent fractional ownership of a (ideally) revenue generating business. BTC represents fractional ownership of..... what? A number on a ledger that represents....? What? What utility is granted to you by holding that BTC but the ability to send it to someone else? It does not represent any usable computational capacity and it is not a store of physical utility (IE: you can't spend a BTC to get a MWh of electricity back).

With stock, its value will increase when the business it represents becomes more valuable. Sure, it can also increase in value when there's market hype (which is pretty typical of contemporary markets), but it still represents an actual REAL thing with a REAL utility. 

When there's a big DIY boom, Home Depot stock goes up because more people are buying tools and lumber. When BTC booms, what's driving it but speculation?

You're getting high on your own supply if you don't think BTC is vulnerable to manipulation. It has happened multiple times, and it's always been at the interface between "real" and "crypto" currency. MTgox was the first most notable of these because it nearly caused a fork of the original blockchain, but you can see this behavior in virtually every exchange.

Where did I say price can’t be manipulated? I said it couldn’t be debased. You can’t just make more of them. 
 

2 minutes ago, GW Hayduke said:

So you are under the impression that bitcoin is infallible and can’t be debased? Ok, I guess.

Either way, that is all fine.  It doesn’t mean bitcoin isn’t an obvious ponzi pyramid scheme.  IMO folks should be ok with that if they want to participate. 

Your half hearted concession of the first point shows your basic knowledge deficit in this topic. Given that, it makes it hard to take your criticisms/points very seriously. 

[Immaculate Vibes 114]

1 minute ago, Captainant said:

You're not addressing the same point as me here. The fundamental thing underpinning a stock's value is the company it represents. Sure, it can be affected by manipulation, but ultimately, it represents a real portion of a real thing.

What is the fundamental thing that underpins the value of BTC?

What gives gold or the dollar value? There’s nothing inherent that gives any money value. It’s all what we agree on.

 

I guess I’d say what gives bitcoin value is that it’s an open, permissionless system for transmitting value that has no rulers and is only governed by math. As more people see that as something valuable its value will increase. 

Edited January 26, 2022 by Immaculate Vibes

[Captainant 27689]

Fucking hell it's like talking to dyed in the wool evangelicals in here. Yall have not yet been able to articulate why BTC is valuable aside from scarcity. 

1 minute ago, Immaculate Vibes said:

What gives gold or the dollar value? There’s nothing inherent that gives any money value. It’s all what we agree on.

The utility of those things is what gives them value. USD's are valuable because they spend all over the world. Gold is valuable because of its scarcity AND its industrial utility. 

As covered at length already (and agreed upon as far as I can tell), BTC is not a very useful thing. It's slow, expensive, and complicated to use - and has been for more than a decade now lol. Its value is propped up purely by speculation. It's an apples to assholes comparison.

[GW Hayduke 1953]

18 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

Pretty basic explainer here:

 

That was a good write up that makes sense based on my limited understanding of crypto currency.

It seems that not only are new investors funding the returns for older investors but they are also funding the electricity and infrastructure needed for the thing to operate. 

[GW Hayduke 1953]

6 minutes ago, Immaculate Vibes said:

Where did I say price can’t be manipulated? I said it couldn’t be debased. You can’t just make more of them. 
 

Your half hearted concession of the first point shows your basic knowledge deficit in this topic. Given that, it makes it hard to take your criticisms/points very seriously. 

I conceded your first point because it was obviously wrong and also because it isn’t relevant to whether cryptocurrency is a ponzi pyramid scheme.

[GW Hayduke 1953]

8 minutes ago, Bravo said:

I believe most getting into BTC know it is currently high risk. it is a new emerging market with little regulation so you take the good with the bad. i am not one that thinks this couldn't crash to 0. My brain tells me that is unlikely and worth the risk. I have a portion of my portfolio in crypto and a vast majority spread out all over the place in more traditional markets and assets. I personally believe in the future overall of BTC and I am willing to lose $ if it goes to 0.

Yeah, that is cool. It is probably the right mindset to have. I’m honestly new to all of this so appreciate the discussion

[Immaculate Vibes 114]

3 minutes ago, Captainant said:

Fucking hell it's like talking to dyed in the wool evangelicals in here. Yall have not yet been able to articulate why BTC is valuable aside from scarcity. 

The utility of those things is what gives them value. USD's are valuable because they spend all over the world. Gold is valuable because of its scarcity AND its industrial utility. 

As covered at length already (and agreed upon as far as I can tell), BTC is not a very useful thing. It's slow, expensive, and complicated to use - and has been for more than a decade now lol. Its value is propped up purely by speculation. It's an apples to assholes comparison.

The Lightning network on top of bitcoin is fast, cheap, not difficult to use.
 

But you’re right I don’t think anyone is changing minds here. You’ll have to come to it in your own time. Just remember the money printer is always going brrrrrrrrrrt

[Immaculate Vibes 114]

1 minute ago, GW Hayduke said:

Yeah, that is cool. It is probably the right mindset to have. I’m honestly new to all of this so appreciate the discussion

Click the link in post 255 to get quick explainer on how Bitcoin is monetary breakthrough. 
 

As to whether or not to invest in BTC, “It might make sense to get some, just in case it catches on”

 

[GW Hayduke 1953]

5 minutes ago, Bravo said:

lots of things require great consumption of energy to manufacture/work. Always found that an odd point against BTC. Also, as technology changes that will change.

And I think the point is that “things” do require energy and that those things are usually widgets or whatever, but in the case of crypto there isn’t an actual “thing” except for the “thing” being the ponzi pyramid system to provide returns to older investors.

There is nothing wrong with using energy IMO as long as that energy usage provides an actual legitimate purpose

[Captainant 27689]

4 minutes ago, Bravo said:

lots of things require great consumption of energy to manufacture/work. Always found that an odd point against BTC. Also, as technology changes that will change.

When you spend electricity to build a machine learning model, you have a finished and usable artifact to use and operationalize. When you spend electricity to spin webserver cores, you have a message board for dumbasses to shitpost and collect advertising money and donations.

When you use energy to manufacture steel, you have a physical good that can be used to make other goods.

When you spend electricity to mine BTC, you have a number in a ledger that everyone agrees on. So what? What utility does that grant you?

2 minutes ago, Immaculate Vibes said:

The Lightning network on top of bitcoin is fast, cheap, not difficult to use.

Lol lightning is just a side-chain that's just resetting the clock on the exact same scaling issues that face BTC. It exists to take payment OFF OF the blockchain, which is an admission of the lack of utility intrinsically granted by using a distributed blockchain.

Quote

But you’re right I don’t think anyone is changing minds here. You’ll have to come to it in your own time. Just remember the money printer is always going brrrrrrrrrrt

It'll go brrrrrrrt for as long as there's more new dumb money willing to keep the line going up. Cashing out of BTC is a zero-sum game. There's going to be bagholders. 

[Fudge Nuggets 19209]

1 hour ago, Immaculate Vibes said:

Hold your own bitcoin vs having depreciating cash in bank account earning minimal interest?

How has that been working out the last couple of months?

[Immaculate Vibes 114]

1 minute ago, Fudge Nuggets said:

How has that been working out the last couple of months?

Eh, it happens. The trend is up and to the right historically. I put a drop in the bucket everyday no matter what so I’ve been getting a little more for my $ lately. 

[MonkeyDoughnut 10329]

5 minutes ago, Captainant said:

When you spend electricity to mine BTC, you have a number in a ledger that everyone agrees on. So what? What utility does that grant you?

The same utility you get from your bank spending electricity processing your mortgage payment, recording it in a database and sending you a bank statement.

[wildcat09 29359]

1 minute ago, MonkeyDoughnut said:

The same utility you get from your bank spending electricity processing your mortgage payment, recording it in a database and sending you a bank statement.

Lol

[Fudge Nuggets 19209]

Just now, Immaculate Vibes said:

Eh, it happens. The trend is up and to the right historically. I put a drop in the bucket everyday no matter what so I’ve been getting a little more for my $ lately. 

And that's fair, but to point out the problem of cash depreciating while having no concerns about a 40% debasement is kind of weird.

[Immaculate Vibes 114]

6 minutes ago, Captainant said:

.

It'll go brrrrrrrt for as long as there's more new dumb money willing to keep the line going up. Cashing out of BTC is a zero-sum game. There's going to be bagholders. 

No, the brrrrt comes from the unelected central bankers that determine the strength of our economy and how much inflation we get. Fed meeting today with Powell speaking. 

[Captainant 27689]

2 minutes ago, MonkeyDoughnut said:

The same utility you get from your bank spending electricity processing your mortgage payment, recording it in a database and sending you a bank statement.

Each of those transactions costs fractions of a penny and happen on a millisecond latency. In BTC, each of those transactions are tens of dollars and can take upwards of an hour to confirm + have a following block for protection against loss of quorum in the mining pool.

 

That's my entire point.

[MonkeyDoughnut 10329]

3 minutes ago, Captainant said:

Each of those transactions costs fractions of a penny and happen on a millisecond latency. In BTC, each of those transactions are tens of dollars and can take upwards of an hour to confirm + have a following block for protection against loss of quorum in the mining pool.

 

That's my entire point.

so your bank doesn't also maintain backups? off-site redundancy? audit division? employ a bunch of people? light it's buildings? spend money on envelopes?  BTC mining happens subsecond too if just looking at the end product and not considering everything else involved in the process.

[Fudge Nuggets 19209]

6 minutes ago, Bravo said:

Dunce of the day post. I got in during 2017. Such a ridiculous statement. It is doing quite well since $1500. You snap shot one point in time to make a point?

People that get in early on speculative bubbles can do very well.  No one is arguing otherwise.

[wildcat09 29359]

7 minutes ago, Captainant said:

Each of those transactions costs fractions of a penny and happen on a millisecond latency. In BTC, each of those transactions are tens of dollars and can take upwards of an hour to confirm + have a following block for protection against loss of quorum in the mining pool.

 

That's my entire point.

More importantly, those transactions facilitate home loans, which is something that is incredibly desirable for a majority of Americans.

[Immaculate Vibes 114]

1 minute ago, MonkeyDoughnut said:

so your bank doesn't also maintain backups? off-site redundancy? audit division? employ a bunch of people? light it's buildings? spend money on envelopes?  BTC mining happens subsecond too if just looking at the end product and not considering everything else involved in the process.

😂 exactly

I love people up in arms attempting to determine what is a valid use of energy in the market. Always comes up. It requires energy to secure a monetary network.

Whats the carbon footprint of the petrodollar? 

[Captainant 27689]

10 minutes ago, MonkeyDoughnut said:

so your bank doesn't also maintain backups? off-site redundancy? audit division? employ a bunch of people? light it's buildings? spend money on envelopes?  BTC mining happens subsecond too if just looking at the end product and not considering everything else involved in the process.

Bruh. I do enterprise-scale IT for a living. It's part of my job to know how much a single customer transaction or recommendation costs down to the fraction of a penny and I can demonstrate it to my customers. Including backups, redundancy, auditability, and everything else. Efficiency and scalability is the name of the game. 

BTC mining (aka hashing) happens subsecond, but blocks arent mined subsecond. Adding a single new block to the chain, which is a singleton process with a defined upper limit of transactions to be processed in a single block, is designed by the BTC spec to take around 10 minutes. That's part of the mechanism that guarantees scarcity and apparently magically imbues it with value. There is not a guarantee of your transaction getting into the next block.

Apples to apples, BTC is horrifically inefficient and slow.

Edited January 26, 2022 by Captainant

[Blotto 23560]

19 minutes ago, Immaculate Vibes said:

The Lightning network on top of bitcoin is fast, cheap, not difficult to use.
 

But you’re right I don’t think anyone is changing minds here. You’ll have to come to it in your own time. Just remember the money printer is always going brrrrrrrrrrt

While this is certainly true, Satoshi (whoever the fuck that was) just decide to create this magical digital entity known as BTC and said we'll have 21 million of them max. thats the ultimate brrrrrrrrrrt. And then another 8000 crypto currencies popped up, also created out of nothing, more brrrrrrrt. BTC deriving its value due to its scarcity is foolish. What if the crypto world decides BTC is trash and anoyther crypto ( ETH, Cardano, or some other creation yet to be brrrrrrrrrrt'ed) is the way to go. What intrinsic value would BTC have at that point. ETH market cap has been catching up to BTC and it has no "cap" that I am aware of. People keep creating new crypto all the time. Its value is purely determined by financial speculation. I would guess that 90%+  of BTC transactions are purely to buy or sell to make money off the crypto itself, rather than the exchange of BTC for real goods or services. 

I get the promise that blockchain and other technologies underlying the crypto market can offer. But its a mistake to confuse  BTC or any of the other 8000 cryptos  with the promise of the technology. If I use the analogy of digital music, the mp3 format existed long before Ipods, and there were other mp3 manufacturers. Who knows if BTC is the Ipod, or the Zune? Companies like spotify dont even use mp3 compression any longer. Who gives a fuck if there can only be 21 million BTCs if everyone is using something else. If BTC is the pinnacle of crypto, why are so many newer crypto developments based on other blockchains? Its value is derived purely from financial speculation. 

[MonkeyDoughnut 10329]

3 minutes ago, Captainant said:

Bruh. I do enterprise-scale IT for a living. It's part of my job to know how much a single customer transaction or recommendation costs down to the fraction of a penny and I can demonstrate it to my customers. Efficiency and scalability is the name of the game. 

BTC mining (aka hashing) happens subsecond, but blocks arent mined subsecond. Adding a single new block to the chain, which is a singleton process with a defined upper limit of transactions to be processed in a single block, is designed by the BTC spec to take around 10 minutes. That's part of the mechanism that guarantees scarcity and apparently magically imbues it with value. There is not a guarantee of your transaction getting into the next block.

Apples to apples, BTC is horrifically inefficient and slow.

You are not understanding the purpose of BTC then. It's not about efficiency or scalability. It is inefficient and slow comparatively. The BTC blockchain not designed to compete in that market space (there are other blockchains that do).  Consider BTC to be more the "gold" of the crypto space and a store of value. Could you use gold to pay your mortgage each month - sure, but it's not really designed for that purpose and would be very inefficient, cumbersome and slow in doing so.

[Captainant 27689]

1 minute ago, MonkeyDoughnut said:

You are not understanding the purpose of BTC then. It's not about efficiency or scalability. It is inefficient and slow comparatively. The BTC blockchain not designed to compete in that market space (there are other blockchains that do).  Consider BTC to be more the "gold" of the crypto space and a store of value. Could you use gold to pay your mortgage each month - sure, but it's not really designed for that purpose and would be very inefficient, cumbersome and slow in doing so.

And what makes BTC be that store of value? What is the basic thing that makes it valuable? All that yall have been able to articulate is that it's scarce and used to prop up other cryptocurrencies/shitcoins - which we all (seemingly) agree are rife with scams and ponzi schemes.

If a commodity exists only to index derivatives and speculation, it is nothing more than a speculative instrument.

[wildcat09 29359]

It's so hard to tell the marks from the grifters. 

[MonkeyDoughnut 10329]

1 minute ago, Captainant said:

And what makes BTC be that store of value? What is the basic thing that makes it valuable? All that yall have been able to articulate is that it's scarce and used to prop up other cryptocurrencies/shitcoins - which we all (seemingly) agree are rife with scams and ponzi schemes.

If a commodity exists only to index derivatives and speculation, it is nothing more than a speculative instrument.

IMO it absolutely is a speculative instrument. It only has value in people beliving it has a future as the "base" currency in the crypto space. And a belief that there is value in crypto/blockchain technology/space.  There are more and more projects in the DeFi space in particular which are very appealing. There is a "currency" required for the space and BTC is that store of value currency from which other are exchanged.

[TexArcher 37989]

25 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

It's so hard to tell the marks from the grifters. 

The marks can't even tell themselves, which is part of what makes them the marks.

[Captainant 27689]

This chick has some funny stuff on youtube, she coincidentally just put out a goof vid on NFT's. It's about as coherent as the defenses of BTC here lol

[elfenix 34330]

1 hour ago, Bravo said:

it is volatile af

not exactly great for a store of value

[Fudge Nuggets 19209]

17 minutes ago, Captainant said:

This chick has some funny stuff on youtube, she coincidentally just put out a goof vid on NFT's. It's about as coherent as the defenses of BTC here lol

The "no funge list" cracked me up.

[elfenix 34330]

1 minute ago, Bravo said:

Has been terrific for me. Best investment I've made in my entire life. 

"store of value" != "investment"

[Immaculate Vibes 114]

1 hour ago, Blotto said:

While this is certainly true, Satoshi (whoever the fuck that was) just decide to create this magical digital entity known as BTC and said we'll have 21 million of them max. thats the ultimate brrrrrrrrrrt. And then another 8000 crypto currencies popped up, also created out of nothing, more brrrrrrrt. BTC deriving its value due to its scarcity is foolish. What if the crypto world decides BTC is trash and anoyther crypto ( ETH, Cardano, or some other creation yet to be brrrrrrrrrrt'ed) is the way to go. What intrinsic value would BTC have at that point. ETH market cap has been catching up to BTC and it has no "cap" that I am aware of. People keep creating new crypto all the time. Its value is purely determined by financial speculation. I would guess that 90%+  of BTC transactions are purely to buy or sell to make money off the crypto itself, rather than the exchange of BTC for real goods or services. 

I get the promise that blockchain and other technologies underlying the crypto market can offer. But its a mistake to confuse  BTC or any of the other 8000 cryptos  with the promise of the technology. If I use the analogy of digital music, the mp3 format existed long before Ipods, and there were other mp3 manufacturers. Who knows if BTC is the Ipod, or the Zune? Companies like spotify dont even use mp3 compression any longer. Who gives a fuck if there can only be 21 million BTCs if everyone is using something else. If BTC is the pinnacle of crypto, why are so many newer crypto developments based on other blockchains? Its value is derived purely from financial speculation. 

IMO the best framework to look at cryptocurrencies from a high level is to put them into two buckets. There's BTC and then everything else. Here's why. BTC has already won the store of value, monetary network race. It has been attacked through multiple vectors over a decade and has only gotten stronger over time. It's been bought for that purpose by multiple companies and one sovereign nation (although soon there will be others). It's by far the most decentralized of all of them. You also say oh they'll just make a new bitcoin but that has already been tried and failed spectacularly. It's just very unlikely to be displaced in this segment of the industry.

The rest of the coins have a myriad of proposed uses, but most of the biggest ones are smart contract platforms. They're pursuing innovation in different directions whether it be NFTs or lending or whatever. They're much more centralized in who holds the coins, who makes the rules, and who's building on the platforms. It's just much more of silicon valley VC mindset behind it all. Some may be wildly successful, but their addressable market is still smaller than bitcoin. 

1 hour ago, elfenix said:

not exactly great for a store of value

Its value continues to go up year after year.