Bitcoin Forum

Hillary Clinton is alarmed by the rise of BTC.

Crypto was looked upon as some kind of a weird speculative currency/asset in the past. BTC is getting more and more mainstream now.

With the rise of Defi's crypto is pretty much detaching itself from the Govt. and it looks like it cannot be stopped. If the govt knew about crypto and its implications years ago they could have stamped it out. Now, it is too late for them.

The US Govt has a right to be concerned because BTC is acquiring "trust" among the masses.

Just like El Salvador, US could also try and capture the entire BTC circulating supply. And, if the US Govt. doesn't then Kremlin or other countries might. We never had "One Currency" through out the world. In US $BTC = 1 Canadian $BTC = 1 Nigerian $BTC.

So, the US Govt. can easily print out $1 Trillion Dollars which is not really all that much when you compare it to gold and then capture the entire circulating supply and use it as a reserve.

Then they can pretty much make dollar reign in supreme again by backing $BTC to the dollar just like how they backed it to the gold standard in the past.

My point is we could see major Govt. could rush in and buy as much BTC as possible if it becomes mainstream. Major institutions are already starting to use BTC as a hedge. Only a matter of times before the really Big Boys will step in. This way the US could actually control the Global Financial System.

Who is Hillary Clinton that anyone in the world needs to worry about what she thinks?


If you think they didn't know then you are grossly mistaken, because they knew and were aware from the very beginning, especially if you mean the US government. If you know who Gavin Andresen (https://bitcointalk.org/?topic=6652.0) is, it's interesting to whom he lectured on Bitcoin back in 2011.




El Salvador is not trying to buy all the Bitcoin that exists, nor would any other country try such a stupid move that would cost much more than just $1 trillion. But let's say the US does just that, how much do you think 1 BTC would be worth then?

As somebody very well said, it's a person who can't even get her e-mails right.
She just wanted to get some attention. And.. mission accomplished: now everybody is talking about her and bitcoin.
Still, it doesn't mean she has a clue.


Sad to say, but you don't seem to have a clue either. (1. This is not what El Salvador did; 2. $1T won't be enough).

This would not work at all since dollar is more of a stable option which does mean if we back it up using something like bitcoins, it would make the whole ecosystem of financial side shake. That does mean that adding bitcoins as a secondary system might be sustainable but using it to back dollar up would be not a good option at all.

A currency needs :
Stability
Value

They can totally take a page out of El Salvador's book and think about accepting bitcoins more in the US. This would not only be beneficial for them but for the whole community as well.

Crypto is not getting mainstream. It is mainstream. Stocks, fiat anything crypto performance is undoubtedly way better than them especially during the pandemic. Crypto is here to stay..

Not just US, but no government in this world will buy out the bitcoin supply and use them asa reserve currency for their fiat money. No government would ever try to do that. Because bitcoin not a thing that they can control, even if they buy out all available supply from the market.

Governments can surely invest in bitcoin to receive higher return than the market rate, but won't make it as a reserve currency because everyone understands that bitcoin thrives in decentralized manner. Buying out available supplies is not going to help the network.

Even if countries start investing significant amounts to buy BTC. They will be out whaling the whales. The prices might shoot up high initially but they might also stabilize as well. El Salvador is just a start. If major institutions and even countries start HODLing BTC then the times would only get more interesting. The cycle lengths will change quite a bit.

I agree. Whether the other countries find value in Bitcoin or not, it cannot be denied that it has value. The company of the richest person on earth has more than a billion in Bitcoin. Some people on Wall Street have accumulated Bitcoin.

The ball is not in the US government's hands anymore. The value of Bitcoin is to be determined by the people all over the world and they have already spoken. The numbers are saying that Bitcoin is indeed valuable. It is coveted. Bitcoin is worth more than $1 trillion.

It is too late to insist that Bitcoin is just another internet novelty, a sort of a fad, or whatever. The time for buying is now.

Does BTC (Bitcoin Community) care who and what they are thinking? The US has enough money to accumulate circulation of Bitcoin and reserve it. Then what? Will not it be useless? It's not easy to accumulate all the circulation at all but it won't happen in cryptocurrency. Decentralized things if you make it centralized then definitely it will be useless. If there is no Community for a coin means just a piece of code. To increase the value of a cryptocurrency must need a strong Community. So what you are thinking not gonna happen. But yes, everyone could their own cryptocurrency they need.

El Salvador are doing first steps to bring Bitcoin to more nations and have more bonds with governments. In the near future I think small countries will have more interests and real activities to follow El Salvador.

The next stage is the responses from traditional agencies and foundations. It will be another important phase because it will be a boost or a barrier for further growth of Bitcoin legally. I don't think this phase will be finished too easily but let see.

It could be too risky for the country to buy all of the bitcoin supply and hold it and I do not think that the government will do that. They are just worried if the bitcoin price is soaring so high before they fully learn the details about bitcoin and how they can use it for their benefit. They consider bitcoin a threat to their currency because bitcoin is for individual choice and is not related to the country's currency. In the end, people will sell their bitcoin to have fiat money.

But any country can buy as many bitcoin as they want, like what El Salvador did but we never know their reason to do that. But they can learn from what El Salvador did and who knows, they can get something from that story.

DeFi crypto can and will be stopped because, unlike Bitcoin, they are extremely centralized. Even government officials clearly understand that: DeFi Not Immune to SEC Oversight, Gensler Says: Report (https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2021/08/19/defi-not-immune-to-sec-oversight-gensler-says-report/)

Bitcoin is acquiring trust because there are no corrupted rulers behind it that can manipulate its supply at will.

El Salvador didn't capture the entire BTC supply, as far as I know they managed to obtain less than 1000 btc. The US Government can't buy the whole supply either because it is being held by diamond hands who would rather die than sell their bitcoin.

Actually, we once had "One currency". It was gold. Later governments seized people's gold and gave them paper currency in return. Bitcoin is not so easy to confiscate due to its beautiful design.


First, it would cause unprecedented devaluation of the dollar. Second, Bitcoin's price would skyrocket and everyone would become even less willing to sell their bitcoin.

They can't control Bitcoin, they won't be able to control a financial system based on it.

They can't simply because circulating bitcoin supply is not for sale. Only a small portion of it is. For example I won't sell the amount of bitcoin I have accumulated to anyone least of all the US gov!

Why should I give a rats behind?

Crypto (ie. altcoins) are pump and dump which is why they are looked down on.

Wrong on both part.
DeFi is just another scam method to take people's money and it will stop on its own in near future when the hype goes away.

They can at any time stop "crypto" that is centralized such as majority of altcoins. But they could never stop something as decentralized as bitcoin. Not in early days and not now and not in the future.

LOL.

You also answered your own question in second sentence. If one government does it, they will do it so "all circulating supply" won't be in hands of one gov.

When governments print money, that money loses its value. So if currently they can swap 60000 of their paper money with 1 bitcoin, if they start printing more they soon realize that they have to swap 600000000 of their paper money for 1 bitcoin.
This is what has been happening for as long as paper money existed and is known as inflation. You usually see it in rising food, rent, utility, etc. prices.

USD hasn't been backed by gold for a very long time and time for it to "reign supreme" is already up as the world is very slowly moving away from it.

DeFi is just a market for trading altcoins to altcoins in a more or less decentralized way, despite its loud claims, it's not going to ever replace traditional finance, DeFi can't even do a fraction of what traditional finance does.

The government always knew about crypto and it wasn't a threat to them back then, and it's not really a threat now, cause otherwise they would stopped it. And inb4 you say crypto can't be stopped, I will say yes it can, as long as you control or block large centralized services, adoption will be stifled.

Hah! Yeah, every time someone talks about defi and finance detaching itself from traditional finance I just wonder which world they live in. Do people on defi forget newcomers still need a way to buy crypto to use defi, or that they also still need a link to traditional finance to realise their gains?

Never mind that the products and services of defi aren't even able to substitute traditional finance, let alone displace it... Defi people largely ignore the fact that those most in need of finance are less able to access defi services than traditional ones. Be it due to a lack of tools or even the technological infrastructure. Makes my eyes roll up every time someone says defi is for the people and the masses and the unbanked when clearly the only ones able to use defi are crypto able and those most benefiting are the wealthy.

Official data says that the number is over 1000 BTC, more precisely 1120 BTC after the last purchase, and since Bukele always buys dip, it is possible that this number will change in the coming days.


No one can buy the total supply not only because there are people who will never agree to the sale, but also because there is an unknown percentage of BTC that is irretrievably lost. In addition, 2+ million BTC has not been mined yet.

In theory,the US government can print 1 trillion dollars and try to buy all circulating BTC.Here's what will happen:
1.The Bitcoin price will hit the moon.Good for us! ;D
2.Many BTC HODLers and traders might decide not to sell,which will pump the price to the moon even further.
3.Such decision will be heavily criticized by the political opponents.What's the point of printing 1 trillion dollars and spending them for a cryptocurrency,instead of helping the poor people and small business owners?
4.Inflation in the US and the US dollar decreasing it's value even more.

Kremlin buying Bitcoins?Are you kidding me,OP?Russia will never become a pro-Bitcoin country.
The idea of Russia buying Bitcoins is beyond my wild imagination.

Hunt Brothers tried it in past with silver and they failed, besides U.S. government already aware of Bitcoin existence in 2011 and they didn't perform such action. So it's unlikely they'll attempt to buy all Bitcoin now.


IMO it's not that wild if you consider economic sanction faced by Russia.

Bitcoin's popularity has pros and cons. I stand tall to stand tall to the defender line btc..

The advancement of crypto is making financial services colorful. Because every hodler / investor many types of styles. Art investing.
Developed countries are indeed one step ahead hopefully will continue to bring fresh air by following other countries enthusiastically san gradually

Speaking a country certainly includes suplay for 1 such country even though it has not fulfilled its fullness.

Is what in your country is available? Or reject it? ;D

That's not gonna happen knowing the US government is so skeptical about bitcoin existence and maybe you shouldn't think about deeper which almost impossible to happen. For sure they will never go to bitcoins and back their dollars unto it since they have gold option which already happen to them before. Maybe there are sort of adoption will happen but for sure they will never give a huge priority on its acceptance knowing the volatility of it can be manipulated.

I'm not particularly concerned about the opinion of a rich granny. I'm pretty sure my interests aren't in line with hers.
I'm just glad she never got access to nukes.

Do you know what's the "beauty" of fiat money printing? Value doesn't come from a printer (unless you're selling books), so no matter how much they print, the total value can't go up! They can print as much as they want, and it will only inflate away people's savings while Bitcoin gets more expensive (in dollars).

People don't really care about what Hillary Clinton says or even who she is, she wanted about bitcoin and crypto that's because she knows she and the other political men and women won't have much power to monitor and control people funds when people start to use a decentralized system such as bitcoin so she warns about it. About the US government buying many bitcoin and making dollars backed by bitcoin I would say this can be very much unreal because bitcoin is accepted as an asset in the world but they usually use other assets such as gold for that kinda purpose.

People who put their money into some yield farming smart contracts need to convince themselves and others that they made a smart choice, so they keep telling everyone that DeFi the future. It's the same story as with ICO, people were telling that IPO and other funding methods are now obsolete and everyone will be launching an ICO. Fast forward, ICO is synonymous with "scam" today. I'm sure a similar fate awaits DeFi, with all the hacks and rugpulls that happen all the time.

And do you know what's the tricky part of fiat money? That what you said is an illusion in the short term.

Yes, in the long term you can't “print” value as the new money will enter the circulation and prices will rise due to supply & demand, but until they enter the market (which is the short term), they are regular, non-changed-in-value money. So, if they printed/added another billion dollars in their bank balance, they could accumulate more BTC which would obviously rise the price.

So while the total value can't go up, they can deceive the exchange by trading a currency that is guaranteed to lose value afterwards.

I forgot to add "" around "beauty".

Money printing is basically transfering purchasing power from anyone to the guy controlling the printer. Why would anyone work for $8 per hour if someone else can just create ten billion times that amount by pressing a button?

You tell me... Probably due to lack of financial intelligence. As I've quoted before;

However, by the way you've responded I can't understand if you disagree with me or being further informative. What I said is that this transfer of purchasing power happens in the long term, when the new money is included into the market's circulation. Until then, the freshly-printed banknotes represent the same value with the rest.

If USA rush to actually do this it would be horrible for BTC because it will cause huge surge in bitcoin on-chain transactions.  Any move by USA to actually adopt BTC as legal tender would most likely crush bitcoin network and likely be successfully to bring bitcoin network to an halt; unless all merchants in United States are require to run their own lightening node to accept payment; which obviously can be done by passing new infrastructure bill.

We agree.

Let's put it this way: If you have $100 and I have a $100 bill printer, who do you think is going to get hungry when a bread costs $200?
Fiat is based on eternal debt, and I don't like it.

Oh dear, the US already left the gold standard in Brenton Woods (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system) and I do not see any Government (other than Salvador) wanting to use a deflationary asset to back their own coins, as they would not be able to cover up their shit and win elections printing money with "quantitative easing". Now that I think of it, El Salvador is not backing its currency with bitcoin, jus making it legal tender.

In fact, using bitcoin as collateral is even worse for that purpose than using gold. It would make the dollar automatically deflationary and that has terrible implications for the economy beyond mere politics.

The great thing about bitcoin is that is already giving you the ability to opt-out. Individually, without having to ask "dad".

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/040815/how-does-deflation-impact-consumers.asp#:~:text=Deflation%20Creates%20Higher%20Rates%20of%20Unemployment,-At%20the%20beginning&text=Eventually%2C%20these%20falling%20prices%20begin,declining%20and%20consumer%20confidence%20decreasing. (https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/040815/how-does-deflation-impact-consumers.asp#:~:text=Deflation%20Creates%20Higher%20Rates%20of%20Unemployment,-At%20the%20beginning&text=Eventually%2C%20these%20falling%20prices%20begin,declining%20and%20consumer%20confidence%20decreasing.)

And that is just simplified! The worst part of the current monetary system is the federal reserve lending. Once I deposit the hundred dollar bill on my bank, I will have inflated the currency when another person requests a loan. And as of 2020, that the reserve requirement went to 0% (https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/reservereq.htm) (!), the banks can ultimately inflate the currency as long as there's demand for new loans.

And among this fraudulent business, there are the interests! Now how can you not like Bitcoin?

If the US government wanted to do that, it would have been done a long time ago before Bitcoin huge growth in price and acceptability.
Personally I think the USG actually allowed Bitcoin to grow for their own selfish reasons and the moment Bitcoin becomes a threat, they will put Bitcoin in its place.
Bitcoin might just be a tool of the US government.

Such a politician-like thing to say. When they fail to do something they wanted to and things go the other way they didn't want, they immediately change position and say "we wanted that other thing to happen" :D

The thing about Peer to Peer networks is that nobody can do anything to them. When there is monetary incentive involved and the said network grows globally then it also becomes impossible for anyone to do anything to that network.

Impotence and inaction are similar yet very different.

Something else (re)occurred to me: let's say government wants to use Bitcoin, and let's say Central Banks get involved. What's stopping a large government to create 100 million Bitcoin in debt? They first abandoned the gold standard and then abandoned paper money. They don't even bother printing the banknotes anymore.
So if they start using Bitcoin, they'll create their own internal accounting system, and there's nothing stopping them from turning it into fractional reserve Bitcoin. No more on-chain settlements, no more physical ownership, it will just be like "paper gold". And in a way it's started already (by private corporations): "Wrapped Bitcoin" has nothing to do with Bitcoin, and yet people use it. It's not that hard to imagine they'll sell more Wrapped Bitcoin than the Bitcoin they hold, just like Tether sells more than the dollars they own.
The current government debts will never be paid back, and as long as they do the same with their 100 million "Bitcoin" debt, most people will just accept it.

I am not sure where you got that idea from. El Salvador never attempted to purchase the entire circulating supply. How would that even work? The entire supply is not for sale. How do you purchase the coins in my cold wallet and thousands of other private wallets that people have scatter all around the world? The number of bitcoins on exchanges have never been as low as they have in recent months.  

And we aren't going to have that with Bitcoin either.  

Who knows what that manipulator owns? Didn't he first say that Tesla didn't sell any of its bitcoin, but later claimed that they only sold 10% to check how much of an affect it would have on the market? More precisely, he wanted to show that it didn't have big consequences.

Not directly to the networks. But they can increase taxes on Bitcoin. They can make POW mining illegal. Sweden is already suggesting that to the EU. They can make it illegal to use certain exchanges, etc. There are ways for a country to hurt it, but not to stop it entirely.  

I don't think that could affect bitcoin in any meaningful or long term way.
The benefit of bitcoin is its transparency and how easy it is to store on your own. Take gold for example, it is not easy to stock up millions of dollars worth of gold at home without spending a ton of money on security which may not be effective enough. Using it is also extremely hard since you can't just cut the gold bar into tiny pieces and sell those.

With bitcoin you can create a practically free wallet with a piece of paper (encrypted of course) or a cheap hardware wallet and store from 1 satosho to millions of bitcoin, all with a super high security.

Besides we already have a ton of wrapped bitcoins and fake bitcoins (forkcoins) that attempted doing the same and failed. The only people who were ever interested in garbage like this have been short term market gamblers.

A most excellent point. They're a lot of the same guys too, I suspect. Telling everyone who cared to listen that IPOs were outdated and ICOs were the way. Now they're telling people on public transport ads to invest in Floki, and seriously telling kids not to waste time with 0% interest bank accounts and putting their money to work in high-yield Defi with XXX% ROI.

Because blockchain and "decentralization" makes interest sustainable...

The bet is that people won't need a third party to transact when it comes to bitcoin. I won't exaggerate it with gold. Take for instance, cash, banknotes. You can't send me your hundred dollar bill, unless we make an arrangement, which is definitely impractical if we're far from each other. Due to that, we need a third party.

In this case, it's the bank. The bank abuses this impracticality and creates debt. If the people suddenly stopped depositing money, the global debt would start reducing.

That being said;

There is. Non-custodial wallets.