[RurouniK]

Bitcoin has been running non-stop for the past 12 years, used by tens of millions of people,has a market cap of 1 Trillion and all that while protecting the human rights around the world: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/ldyy7s/bitcoin_is_...

But even if you are clueless enough to think that Bitcoin and blockchain isn't working at least you should appreciate all the breakthroughs in cryptography like Zero Knowledge proofs, networking like libp2p, distributed storage like ipfs etc. that emerged from the evolution of cryptocurrency tech.

[hahahahe]

Yeah they sure have. Running GPUs endlessly to execute thousands of transactions per day. Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds? You can literally run a pub-sub equivalent of BTC for 1/1,000,000,000 of the cost involved in crypto and a million times more performant while preserving all the benefits touted in cryptos. The reason why we don’t have this isn’t because we can’t. It’s because the financial institutions are too entrenched. And the same institutions have taken over the cryptocurrency space. Do you not see what’s happening?

[selestify]

> You can literally run a pub-sub equivalent of BTC for 1/1,000,000,000 of the cost involved in crypto and a million times more performant while preserving all the benefits touted in cryptos

Explain how pubsub is impervious to the operator of the pubsub shutting down, due to governmental pressure or otherwise.

[floo]

Bitcoin has all of the problems listed in the article and is, arguably, not yet providing the social value that blockchain could.

Not sure how a high market cap is a counter argument to that.

[RurouniK]

The market cap is a counter argument because it shows the trust people, and lately corporations put into Bitcoin as a store of wealth and a hedge against inflation. The market cap proves that bitcoin/blockchain/cryptocurrency enthusiasts put their money where their mouth is.

[bildung]

I hardly doubt you'll find any enconomist working in those corporations fearing inflation. Inflation has been a non-issue since the 1980s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Consumer_Price_I...

[andreaorru]

And yet...

https://wtfhappenedin1971.com

[openfuture]

USD went off the gold standard in 1971.

[bildung]

That page reminds me a bit of time cube :)

Here is a good introductory article about the topic:

https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/25/wage-stagnation-much-m...

TL;DR: Inflation plays at most a secondary role, the majority of the effect is a result of stagnant real wages, i.e. the capital owners kept a larger share of the productivity gains.

[andreaorru]

Thanks, that looks amazing. It's gonna take me a while to digest it though. :)

Does the article conclude that the correlation with the US going off the gold standard, and consequent change in monetary policy, is completely spurious?

[throw0101a]

> The market cap is a counter argument because it shows the trust people

See also Enron, WorldCom, Nortel, Bre-X (for the Canadians out there).

> […] and lately corporations put into Bitcoin as a store of wealth and a hedge against inflation.

Given its volatility, I'm not sure how useful it is as a store of wealth. Less than a year ago it lost half its value in two days (before the recent run-up):

* https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/13/bitcoin-loses-half-of-its-va...

If you think inflation is coming, then you need to stop working in economics and/or finance, as you're burning up returns hedging against it, at least in the US/industrialized world. The last time it was a problem was >40 years ago (mostly due to OPEC):

* https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FPCPITOTLZGUSA

Outside of specific circumstance, deflation is the predominant force:

> But Inflation is not inevitable. There are numerous countervailing forces that have been at work for much of the past 50 years. The three big Deflation drivers: 1) Technology, which creates massive economies of scale, especially in digital products (e.g., Software); 2) Robotics/Automation, which efficiently create more physical goods at lower prices; and 3) Globalization and Labor Arbitrage, which sends work to lower cost regions, making goods and services less expensive.

> Put into this context, Inflation is periodic, driven by specific events; Deflation is consistent, the background state of the modern economy. To fully understand this requires grasping how scarcity and abundance act as the drivers of the price of labor and goods. My suspicion is many economists who came of age during earlier eras of inflation fail to discern how the world has changed since.

* https://ritholtz.com/2021/02/stop-stressing-about-inflation/

[playingchanges]

Funny I actually viewed the 2020 BTC drawdown (and subsequent rapid recovery) as my number one buy signal for the current crypto bull market. In a time period when the Dow loses almost 13% in a single day and the fed has to use every move in the playbook to maintain liquidity, crypto holds its own with no fed assistance at all.

As for inflation, I’m guessing the exact opposite argument to yours was being made in the 80s.

[AngrySkillzz]

Or you could say that cryptocurrencies are incredibly correlated with the stock market and thus don't actually serve as a hedge for risk at all

[imtringued]

>As for inflation, I’m guessing the exact opposite argument to yours was being made in the 80s.

By definition, inflation is what happens when demand exceeds supply. If the fed keeps flooding the market with cheap credit the expectation is that the money is invested into more production, either by machines or by foreign labor (i.e. in China). Prices stop growing because supply outstrips demand. That's why the fed is failing to create sufficient inflation. Supply side stimulus is causing the opposite effect and at the same time it is leading to an asset bubble.

[smartties]

Market cap means nothing. I can create 10^32 coins out of thin air, sell one coin at 1$ to one customer. And the next thing I have is a coin with higher marketcap than bitcoin.

[tromp]

That's what makes PoW (with no premine) coins more honest. No coins out of thin air, and the price derives from actual demand for the coins that anyone can mine.

[selestify]

To get recognition as the coin with the highest market cap, you’d need to have it actually traded on an exchange. How many people on the open market are going to buy your coin for $1 on an exchange? There you go, your coin is worthless and has a market cap of roughly zero as determine by the open market exchange.

[smartties]

> How many people on the open market are going to buy your coin for $1 on an exchange?

Even if 1 client per year buy it (let's say my token purpose is to give to access to private content on my website), then my marketcap is still 10^32 $, because marketcap is just the number of supply x the last traded price of my coin.

And yes, we both agree, marketcap has 0 value. It was just to make a point that using the marketcap as argument makes no sense.

[selestify]

> Even if 1 client per year buy it

What about the people who try to sell it after buying it? If they have to sell it for 10^-32 $ before someone buys it then that immediately drops your market cap to just about nothing.

> And yes, we both agree, marketcap has 0 value

No, I just explained why marketcap correctly values your coin as absolutely worthless.

[genericacct]

Especially considering market cap is a totally made up number and if everybody tried to get out at once they would get a fraction of a fraction of it. (1) But it's pointless to tell this to a cryptofreak because they're so heavily invested in it they make zealots look reasonable.

(1) not to mention the fact that as soon as there is volatility exchange sites go down, even the bigger ones.

[RurouniK]

Wait until you find out what happens when people try to take out their money all at once from banks... I remember back in the day when people used to call early internet users internetfreaks and zealots. Now it's the same with Bitcoin. Whatever...

[janoc]

Yes, we all remember well what happened e.g. with Mt Gox.

Not sure what your point here is - as if panic and runs on the banks were somehow magically prevented by crypto.

[AngrySkillzz]

And the hilarious part is, we actually have regulations like capital requirements and FDIC insurance and central bank lenders-of-last-resort to prevent bank runs? Whereas crypto has... none of that? And unaudited Tether pumping >$1B into the crypto ecosystem every week

[seibelj]

If everyone tried to get out of any asset at once the price would tank. That’s how markets work.

[gjulianm]

How much of that usage and market cap is actual usage and how much is financial speculation?

[loceng]

There's been research done to show that multiple times just a few people manipulated the price of Bitcoin to its heights - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-14/research-... - and the Bitcoin community main mantra is "HODL" and they call themselves the "army of the HODLers" for a reason: they're waiting for enough of society to be manipulated/trick people into thinking the history of the "steady" increase to "$100,000+" is because people many people are actually valuing it (which they're arguably not) - using that as a proof point to decide to buy; which has been done by 1) misappropriating Bitcoin as being akin to a stock in the stock market, especially the term ICO - "Initial Coin Offering" vs. Public Offering, and 2) misappropriating the term currency calling them "cryptocurrencies" - in an attempt to additionally legitimize it.

I believe Bitcoin likely started to exponentially take off when the online marketing forums started rallying to put their efforts behind promoting it. Eventually then the VC-finance industrial complex joined in - and mainstream media then has been promoting it as if Bitcoin et al are stocks and a new currency. All the while the army of HODLers is growing - all incentivized to promote Bitcoin et al, and those who speak of a counter-narrative aren't financially incentivize to do so, and actually should fear doing so due to the mob; a partner at a top, international investment firm, Ray Dalio at Blackwater recently said as much - "while those who are against it (which are a few scared souls cowering in a corner)" - in his article "What I Think Of Bitcoin" - https://www.bridgewater.com/research-and-insights/ray-dalio-...

The VC-financially industrial complex with billions have started to jump into the speculation game, the MLM, and with their billions I believe have stared to attempt to invest just enough to offset crashes in price - along with the "army of HODLers" learning to be more obedient and listening to their war mantra of HODL, along with Coinbase likely purposefully engaging in price manipulation by multiple times making their platform unaccessible to users - so those who would impulse sell when the price starts to skyrocket are blocked long enough for them to instead hold; I'm guessing Coinbase also have a certain amount of large buy orders from large institutional investors that they manage, and they use these funds in part to counter a crash from happening.

This same price manipulation happens in the stock market - https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/lg0ial/jim_cramer_e...

I also believe Tesla's recent acquisition of Bitcoin was to seem aligned with the growing mob of HODLers - who you don't want to be maligned with if you want them to speak positively about your product and buy your product, or in reality be less critical of you and your company because you're then financially aligned; Elon Musk recently tweeted "Bitcoin is almost as bs as fiat money" - https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1340588909974200321

Unfortunately the world may go mad, greed taking over, regulatory capture occurring where a generally small amount of people could lead to trying to engage most of society in helping realize whatever value Bitcoin et al reaches - unreasonably and unnecessarily transferring wealth from later adopters to earlier adopters. It could be the next war to be fought after tyranny is solved - Bitcoin in fact making tyranny easier as you can't implement policy like the Magnitsky Act; it's always a non-response when asking a pro-Bitcoiner to address this question/problem.

I believe an organization needs to be started and funded somehow to put a concerted effort to organize and educate people by creating, compiling, everything necessary - and making whatever easy to understand educational material to go along with it - and to be promoted, along with as a resource for people to reference when they're in discussion with others.

[scsilver]

The money transfered from late adopters to early adopters is the massive amounts of old money mad from the wealth of kingdoms and colonialization. Personally I think having an infinitely divisible, fixed asset, protected by cryptography and not statutes, is a democratic upheaval of captured financial systems. You dont need blood, legacy, heritage to capture these assets, just information.

Maybe having physical wealth ripped from my family multiple times in the past 150 years makes me feel this, this asset is a bit more useful than gold or jewelry when dealing with an uncertain future.

[loceng]

I like that you brought up money of old - and find it disturbing that people are happy to repeat the same pattern - "they did it, so why can't we;" two wrongs don't make a right.

So great, we have regulatory capture of financial systems - and you want to replace it with a system that can't protect against bad actors via financial punishment for known bad behaviour e.g. via the Magnitsky Act? Don't you think that's a problem?

You like Bitcoin because it allows you revenge - but the problem is it's not taking out revenge on the people who may deserve it, it's taking it out on all of society. That's disturbing that you, and I imagine others, aren't thinking critically of those consequences - or if you are that you don't care; in fact this is a fundamental element of Bitcoin and how the mob/"army of HODLers" grows - the price drops and the buy people who bought later, at or below the current price, have now lost money and haven't realized any - so they are now entrenched in the MLM scheme.

[scsilver]

Do me a favor and watch some of this class by the future SEC head https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/sloan-school-of-management/15-s1...

I dont think the current thresd we are on is useful and you are misunderstanding my point of view. The class above gives some background to my points of view on Bitcoin and Blockchain.

Ultimately, I think blockchain is an interesting technology that necessarily has value, hopefully our regulators can understand its nuances and find ways to channel it to provide more security to every human around the world, (like vaccines or education) than the currently impeded(for whatever reason, its gotta deal with alot of red tape and hundreds of noncoordinated jurisdictions) financial systems.

There is value in having centralized and decentralized finance. The world rewards/will reward recognizing that.

[AngrySkillzz]

citation needed, most of the increases in global wealth and output are due to technological innovation and increased trade and improved governance. If you are going to claim that all the worlds wealth is just extractive you are going to need a big source for that. Most economic historians disagree with you.

[Tomte]

> all the breakthroughs in cryptography like Zero Knowledge proofs, […] that emerged from the evolution of cryptocurrency tech.

Zero knowledge proofs date back to the mid-eighties.

[rullelito]

Maybe you should try to read the linked page.