Bitcoin Forum

It is of course no surprise that some among the big beneficiaries of the status quo will denounce Bitcoin and cryptos.

That is not what I want to write about.  The really interesting thing is what these three *didn't* say.  They didn't use the biggest argument against Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, the new systems' biggest weakness.

That weakness is that cryptocurrencies are not limited in supply, as a whole.  Anyone can copy some code, rewrite some code, and 'create value' out of thin air.  This will dilute the value of current coins and can become no different from today's inflationary fiat money.  Unlike gold, the value of crypto is not protected by nature.

So these three VIPs threw everything they had against cryptos (including phrases like 'rat poison,') but forgot to use their biggest weapon!

Why?  My guess is that they've been directed by the elites to say bad things about cryptos (and trust me, the elites have plenty of leverage against people like these.)  The goal was to cool down public speculative demand for cryptos, at this moment, but not cause a big drop.  This would be consistent with my theory that the top Western elites are really behind cryptos, for their own reasons.

I suspect on some level, the message of Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and other bitcoin haters is coordinated. Their stance resembles a unified front. People typically do not have opinions or views which are as identical as what Gates, Warren B and others are saying, unless political agendas are present. I would guess the last thing btc haters want is for the public to become educated or informed on crypto currencies and so on some level they agreed to divulge zero information on crypto, including whether coins have limited or infinite supply.

If people want bitcoin to succeed. The best method may be for each active person on this forum to give away a small amount of bitcoin to someone they know who has never owned or used crypto currencies before. The more knowledgeable the public is about crypto currencies the more difficult it will be for the media and moguls like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to mislead or misinform them.

I'm trying to do this right now. But I think I look too much like a "nigerian prince" for anyone to take me up on it. People always seem to think its a scam or something if I tell them I want to give them some bitcoin for free.

Yes they just want to spread negativity against bitcoin.They have already tried this tactic and they feel that normal people are all fools and they could be easily influenced every time.

We actually had this exact conversation last week, and we basically came to the conclusion that they are purposefully manipulating the markets in order to either test resistances and see where the price of Bitcoin bottoms out, they are clueless or that they are feeling threatened about losing their stranglehold over the financial systems of tradition.

Bill Gates used to talk about the innovation that Bitcoin could bring to the world and these days he lumps it in with your average scam ICO. I don't know if he is willfully misinforming people or if he is innocently ignorant to what he is saying. Warren Buffet almost always means the opposite of what he says, in my opinion. It just seems shameful when men of such expertise are able to speak so incorrectly with confidence. especially when they words have tremendous influence.

The entire system is deceptive, and has been for hundreds of years.

Just look back to the late 19th century, for example.  All mainstream economists said the gold standard was good for the economy.  Fast forward to today, and they are all saying the exact opposite.  Both times, their message just happens to be what the elites want the public to think, at the time.

(The difference between the two periods is that all countries have now defaulted on their obligations to pay gold, because there was a general run on the elites' gold reserves, that the elites could no longer contain, because the bubbles they had created were too big.)

I'm not buying into the conspiracy theories here.  All of those guys are free thinkers who made money doing their own thing.  They just don't like bitcoin.  They know what it is, believe me, and it's not for them.  They're entitled to their opinions, even if everyone on this forum disagrees.

Bitcoin has a lot of disadvantages that tend to get overlooked by members here, and if you wonder why it hasn't been adopted by the masses yet, it's because the masses don't need bitcoin.  People get so emotionally attached to bitcoin that they fail to see that it's not really solving many real-world problems.  Buffett, Munger, and Gates don't make that mistake.  All three are very rational and just don't like bitcoin--so be it.

I like conspiracy theories too, but I don't think these peopl collaborated to throw negative thoughts about bitcoin. These people are already rich enough to bother investing in bitcoin, or to even have some higher-ups or superiors that tell them what to do or to say publicly. Needless to say, these people won't benefit on bitcoin's low prices since they have had enough money on their pockets. They simply don't like the hype surround cryptocurrencies since they're used in the the atmosphere of traditional assets and investments. They'd still prefer fiat any day since it is used widely all over the world and people acknowledge it everywhere, and bitcoin hasn't really proved anything, except for achieving a ridiculously high price. Unless a certain use-case proved bitcoin's worthiness and feasinility for general transactions, these billionaire's won't give a damn about cryptos.

Millionaires doesn't suffer from traditional banking system anyways.Certainly,Bitcoin in general has some downsides but they forget that Bitcoin is only 9 years old.They will say it's volatile but they forget that the market cap is low compared to fiat currency.
Give Bitcoin and cryptos some time before judging it,it's just the beginning after all.

I don't see any coordination at all. They're in the public eye and constantly have reporters asking them their opinions on Bitcoin and they all happen to think poorly of it for their own reasons. People are interested in what Buffet and Munger think because they're two of the most famous and well-respected investors in history, and people are interested in what Gates thinks because he's one of the preeminent technology moguls and also does a tremendous amount of investing through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for philanthropic causes. There's no conspiracy here. I actually agree with Buffet that Bitcoin doesn't represent anything substantial as far as investing goes because it doesn't generate income and isn't a productive asset. It's purely a speculative vehicle, and that's fine if you want to gamble on it, but it's not investing. Investing is the use of capital to create something new of value, and the added value creates more wealth. Bitcoin doesn't create any new wealth, it only transfers it between people when they sell it from one to the other. People getting rich of Bitcoin should not be confused with creating new wealth, which by contrast is what investing does.

Well said.

Sad to accept the fact that we do know in deep on our minds on whats the disadvantage of bitcoin but we do just neglect it or not paying attention because we do hope and trust bitcoin and there were people who would really stick on what they do observe and say out their own views no matter what would be the community do have the reaction.Its always have a negative side this is why we do see slow progress of adoption.

It's the people making them look like monsters trying to disrupt the crypto market for their personal gains. They are nothing more than a bunch of trolls altogether -- the more we grant them attention, the more they will talk trash about everything concerning this market. Warren Buffett made a very interesting statement that clearly shows that he is out to troll everyone here. His point was that if you like something and see value in it, why would you get mad when someone is discrediting it? The sole reason is that people are in for the profits, and I completely agree with him on that part. We shouldn't talk about their trolling and shouldn't try to correct them, because it only confirms their thoughts and fuels further trolling from their side. Bitcoin doesn't need anyone to prove them wrong because it's proving wrong all naysayers on a daily basis already, and that with progress and development....

You can always take this perspective.  You can say things are just as simple as they appear in public, and it's hard to prove you wrong.  Whether there is a deliberate (dis)information campaign, we really have no evidence either way.  What I try to do is to look at incentives.

I would disagree with 'Bitcoin doesn't solve real world problems,' however.  Bitcoin is the new gold (not entirely, but largely.)  The elites clearly prefer something like a gold standard (they just won't say so at this point!)  Whether it's good or bad for the economy, it does provide for more stability compared to 'totally fiat' money we have today.

The reason Bitcoin has come this far may well be due to behind-the-scenes support by the top Western elites, who would like to return to something like the gold standard, but don't have enough gold to do it (or have to devalue currency against gold to an extraordinary and embarrassing degree to obtain any stability.)

It's amazing how many of these conspiracy theories you see, when you look for anything Bitcoin related on Youtube for example.
No wonder people start copying that and basically spread unfounded claims of mass market manipulation.

I'm not saying that there isn't market manipulation going on, just saying that I haven't seen any credible source provide us with any real evidence.

I'll be honest, I don't even know what Gates, Buffett, and Munger said exactly, because I don't read news or watch it.  However my guess is that they were asked about it because crypto is hot and has made the mainstream news lately--so the media people wanted their opinion on it, because they know all three people are old-school (except maybe for Gates, who's a technology pioneer).  I really think they believe that bitcoin is useless. 

I've seen the disadvantages of bitcoin since I've been into crypto.  It just doesn't match fiat in terms of cost or speed.  The average person won't want to buy bitcoin in order to spend it, and nobody I know gets paid in bitcoin--and everything is priced in terms of fiat!  I get that bitcoin doesn't depend on governments or banks, and that's why I like it, but I understand that's why people like Buffett couldn't care less.  Buffett looks at things very rationally and unemotionally, and he has no need for bitcoin--or even more fiat at this point in his life.  So I don't think this is any sort of campaign of mis- or disinformation; I think it's their honest opinions, which they gave because they were asked to by the media.

Dilute the value hm! Actually copy the codes, creating the value and then letting the value for current coin dilute is what done by mots of the forked coins. But it seems that there is no underlying proof of this which supports that statement. I mean I believe that they all have failed all the time when they come out as forked coins. You know very well what happened with them and today bitcoin still stands at the top. I am just counter arguing the statement of diluting the coin value and nothing much.

Bitcoin only does one thing new, and that's decentralization. It's a poor store of value due to instability in the price, it's an even poorer currency for the same reason. When he says Bitcoin doesn't solve any real world problems, it's acknowledging the reality as it is right now. The best you can say about Bitcoin is it has potential to change things, but nobody who needs to conduct day to day commerce is taking Bitcoin seriously. To the extent it's used at all, it's to appeal to the niche part of the market that wants to use it for transactions. Bitcoin hasn't proved any ability to be the new gold, the best you can say again is that it has potential, but it's much more of a speculative asset than a store of value.

Bitcoin can't even hold it's value for an hour, the notion that it's more stable than the USD is idiotic. Sorry, there's no sense in sugarcoating that. It's absolutely absurd.

No elite prefers the gold standard because the fiat standard is what made them wealthy. The gold standard was abandoned because it constrained the economy by limiting debt-fueled growth. It wasn't until the abandonment of the gold standard that you got this explosion of ultra wealthy elites, and since the abandonment of the gold standard, the wealth accumulation by the top .1% has really accelerated relative to the rest of the populace. It defies logic they would abandon the system that created their wealth to a larger degree than the gold standard would have allowed, so if you want to sell that, you need to provide some substantiation, because it's not a compelling theory.

Absolutely. It's too much of a coincidence for me that Bill Gates, Munger, and Buffett all presented their points on bitcoin at the same time, and just coincidentally they were all completely negative stances on bitcoin.

So if they were connected by some way or another, I would not be surprised whatsoever.

Buffett even goes to say that bitcoin is not an investment, which is completely absurd. They seem to be trying too hard to discredit bitcoin completely right now, and with Buffett's influence, can definitely influence a lot of prospective investors.

we dont know what the elites are planning, sometimes cornering and making bad comments about bitcoin and cryptos, sometimes they also say good things and give very good eagerness and desire to hear about this bitxoin, one thing for sure, every time commenting about bitcoin, it will affect the price, that's my opinion on this

Does this old folks affecting you guys?because for me its not..
They have been showing disliking to bitcoin then why need to be bother while we can expect more of this or much hated words in future,

Lets just dont give a damn with this 3 musketeers and continue support bitcoin anyway this is the best way to do thn reading and buying their press releases

Check out two books: 'Gold Wars,' and 'The Gold Cartel.'

If the top elites dislike the gold standard so much, why did every gold standard get abandoned only when the elites were about to run out of gold?

'Fiat money' might have created a lot of the wealth of the elites of today, but the system is also much more unstable than the gold standard days, and on the whole less desirable from the top elites' point of view.

Bitcoin hasn't achieved a stable exchange rate against fiat money, yet.  It will likely go up a lot more (if with a lot of turbulence) before it does.  No, it will probably never serve as a unit of account or means of exchange (the trustless blockchain arhitecture makes those impossible pretty much from the start.)  But store-of-value is money's most important function.

Nothing other than this could be expected from these corporate guys.They would still continue to speak in this way against cryptos.They don't want any such new technology like cryptos to spread all over the world disturbing the traditional economic firms.

To a large extent there is some reason in what you have expatiated but the convincing factor is not there in that everything is still based on speculation. The argument about the unlimited about of crypto and the dilution afterwards is very much valid and with the advent of forks, it makes it very easy than we all thought. If it had been the creation of other coins, I wouldn't have any issue with it because I believe that for such coin to gain popularity, it needs to add some value to the market through some level of advertisement unlike the forked coins that relies on exiting market structure and thereby diluting the portfolios of people depending on where loyalty lies and not bringing in new investment because only existing markets participants knows about them.

On the theory, there is always some group of people behind the market position and because of the current market capitalization, its fairly easy to manipulate but I hope this won't last for long.

Go back and look at all the financial crises that happened under the gold standard. It was not the bastion of stability you make it out to be. Deflation caused by the gold standard created the Great Depression. If the "elites" run things as you seem to think and they want a gold standard, there'd be a gold standard. Congress (the Senate) especially is made up of substantially richer than normal folks in our society, and if they have so much power and desire for the gold standard and are doing the bidding of even richer people who also want a gold standard, we'd have a gold standard. In fact, it was the elites who wanted out of the gold standard because it was capping economic growth and limiting their wealth. I never see Bitcoin achieving any kind of price stability. Nobody wants it to have that. They'd rather gamble on a speculative vehicle and dream about the moon.

http://www.nber.org/papers/w3488
http://www.nber.org/papers/w18616

There's plenty more.

The economy is susceptible to deflation on the gold standard. The world has moved on for good reason.

Do not mind the statement of the 3 people. They will never declare not to hate bitcoin, their three statements always contain to suggest that we do not use cryptocurrency especially bitcoin. I do not understand why those 3 characters do not support the existence of cryptocurrency and technology when they know that the potential of cryptocurrency is very promising for a safer economy without being controlled by anyone or any party.

It is.  There's no way to really know what anyone thinks.

Well, even the forked coins claim to have some technical merit.  Bitcoin Cash is supposed to be more scalable, right?  But the major reason for all of this inflation is still IMO someone wants to make a profit.  This is not to say technical improvements are not real, but the reality is that somebody benefits big.  And, even more importantly, a market of many coins is much easier for the elites to manipulate in the future.

Everyone can have their own opinion about the market, investing in the market have its risk and there is nothing wrong in it but some people clearly do not want to take the risk and every market had its risk when it all started, the stock market was a revolution when it started centuries back and i am sure there were many people having negative thoughts about it and we all know how it is going, this is another revolution and i am sure this will change the economics in the future.

See, for example, the multi-century statistics of financial crises here:

https://qz.com/1096237/deutsche-bank-analysis-on-the-frequency-of-financial-crises/

Now it is true that gold-standard era crises may have been more severe, if less frequent.  But that is only because democratic and trade-union forces were not powerful enough to oppose the elites' tight-money policy after a crisis, in an attempt to protect the their system (ie to avoid or minimize devaluation against gold) by imposing even more pain on average people.

I don't for a minute think the elites want to go back to a hard-money-standard in the same form as the classical gold standard.  What they will hope to achieve is the best of both worlds from their point of view: the relative infrequency of crises of the gold standard, combined with the ability to prevent political 'crises' by lessening the pain.  It will most likely be a 'flexible hard-money standard' with continuous devaluation of state money over the long term.  And of course the new mantra won't be 'gold is money and dollars are debt,' but that 'gold/Bitcoin are subject to market supply and demand and we have to let these values go up if we mess up and inflate too much of a bubble.'  (Of course, the reality will be that they will try to manipulate hard-money values down, most of the time, much like what they have done with gold since 1971.  It's just that since they have more Bitcoin, they can be more market-friendly with it, and that makes sense for them too.)

This would not be very different in essence from the gold and silver standards. The public narrative will be completely different, but that doesn't matter, since that has been deceptive from day one.

It's just a statement or maybe it's something they're on hold and waiting for the opportunity. Gradually they will understand and adapt to electronic money, then give out thoughts again. I believe they will change their minds and adapt to the technology of the day.

What to expect from people of old school. They really can not believe this because they simply do not understand the phenomenon of crypto currency. However, what the author writes about is also completely impossible to exclude