For example just walk into any computer store you can find and ask them how much the stuff they are selling today cost a year ago and if that makes it impossible to run their business at a profit.
Sorry buddy, but you are Provably Inaccurate. http://austrianeconomics.wikia.com/wiki/DeflationDeflation can cause a fall in prices. But calling falling prices "deflation" is a profound confusion between prosperity and depression. There are two distinct causes of generally falling prices. The leading cause of falling prices is economic progress, whose essential feature is an increasing production and supply of goods and services, which operates to make prices fall. The other is a decrease in the quantity of money and or volume of spending in the economic system. Falling prices is the only effect that they have in common. They differ profoundly with respect to their other effects. And importantly: Falling prices caused by increased production do not reduce the general or average rate of profit in the economic system and do not make debt repayment more difficult. These are two completely separate concepts of price deflation and they are too often confused around here for the benefit of the pro-bitcoin argument. Additionally, the argument that the same stuff today is a lot cheaper than it was a year ago is a reverse-CPI-like trick to make it look like a deflation-friendly argument. The "average" computer price stays fairly level on a year to year basis, but the equipment that you get for that money improves every year. You can wait several years for the equipment you want to become second-rate and cheap, but by then you will have yourself a second-rate and cheap computer. So no, this argument does nothing to address the question of how bitcoin's fixed money supply will affect a global economy that is likely to adopt it in spurts rather than a smooth, easy pace over centuries and how this might detrimentally affect almost everyone using it. |
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No you didn't get it unfortunately. In case your memory is that of a gold fish, not just me but most of us in this thread have already presented several indirect arguments with historical empirical evidence as perfectly valid counterarguments to your theories about Bitcoin's future which to a rational person would suffice to disprove it. The only thing we will unfortunately have to wait for about Bitcoin's future by definition is direct proof - a head on collision with reality - which with delusional people like yourself seem to be the only thing that will shut you up.
Can I get your source on historical empirical evidence used in this thread? Just a link or a quote please. And you yourself called bitcoin an experiment. From wikipedia: An experiment is a methodical trial and error procedure carried out with the goal of verifying, falsifying, or establishing the validity of a hypothesis. How exactly can you be so cocksure about bitcoin's future when the experiment has barely begun? Are you simply a fraud? Because there is simply no other explanation for one who claims to know the outcome of an experiment before that experiment is finished. Nobody in the pro-bitcoin camp can even agree on what the hypothesis is exactly as far as I can tell. Some say it will replace all currency, some say it will just be a store of value, some say it will replace MC/Visa. It is obviously not a simple experiment, nor has one like it been done before, so any "historical empirical evidence" you come up with is misguided at best, fraudulent at worst. However, the real historical evidence in the price volatility of bitcoins should add some credibility to what I say, but of course you will dismiss it for some bumbling reason or another. Totally. It must've been somebody else educating you the first time round, but I'll do my best.
The question was an ironic retort to your statement that understanding how fiat money is created is difficult. |
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And the Bitcoin experiment will show that it's not and that in fact it's you who is mental for continuing to use what we all showed to you were fallacies as evidence for your ridiculous theories.
Awesome right?
So let me get this straight: to prove my opinion to be based on fallacy, we have to wait for the bitcoin experiment to do something or act in a way in the future that we do not yet know will happen. Ergo, we need to predict the future to possibly prove me wrong, and that is the best argument you've got. Got it. Struggling with unpredictable and hard to understand money-printing?Bitcoin fixes that scourge.  ROFL want to run that "greater number of zeros" whatsit by me again? Bankers*: every economic problem known to man * footnote: not solved by bitcoin Don't worry about it, since predictable, long-term deflation of bitcoins is essentially impossible.
...
*Unpredictable* deflation, however, is very bad. But then, almost anything unpredictable is bad for an economy.
I agree with both statements! |
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lol as if I've tried to promote anything as economic truth. Am I sitting here expounding upon the benefits of an inflationary currency? No. I'm just telling you that deflation is fucking mental. I'm not trying to control anyone. I don't sticky threads that tell people not to question, nor do I make non-arguments in the same vein. You know, like telling somebody they're wrong but having nothing but at best a quote from the surely unbiased wiki rather than a single, intelligent thought of his own.
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It would only "further" anything if people hold more coins than they usually hold. I did say "If the balance of the long-term wants changes vs. the short-term wants/needs" and further explained it in the later post. The other thing that is BS is the fact that in a large economy it won't cause swings anywhere regardless of how the short term wants/needs change. How is it again that bitcoin has solved every economic problem known to man again? "Swings have never happened in large economies... DERP" We would have less growth, less bubbles, less crashes. It would be boring in many respects but the economy would be much more sound. We would have real growth and real growth alone, not growth boosted by keeping cheap credit available at all times. Right in about 12 years when almost all the bitcoins are mined, businesses will have only high-interest credit available to expand the bitcoin economy. The economy that won't be expanding. While it's one thing to argue that inflationary currency may cause runaway growth and the business cycle, bitcoin will hinder the growth process every step of the way. Since the majority of bitcoin "growth" would actually just be existing economies adopting bitcoin, these existing economies must somehow be convinced that borrowing bitcoins is the way forward. Borrow the currency that is easier to pay back as time goes on, or borrow the currency that is harder to pay back as time goes on. Hrmm. I'll do it for him: this is absurd. Nobody knows if Bitcoin will explode or not, grow or not. People will keep selling, in fact they will sell more the higher the price is. Have you not seen the Bitcoin market in the last 6 months? It is getting more liquidity. It is much more stable, much more mature. It is this liquidity that will make things better. It's still likely that we will experience more bubbles in the future but the overall stability will only increase with further growth and increased liquidity. Wowee 6 whole months where bitcoin only doubled and a half in value just after exponentially growing and catastrophically falling. Looks stable to me! And broseph, the point I am making is if bitcoin starts growing, not when. Imagine if walmart were to put in bitcoin checkouts and accept BTC for everything and in fact at a reduced price. Assume they just stored all revenue for a year, $400 billion or so. How many coins are for sale on the market right now? 1% maybe? I can't get on mtgoxlive to check for sure. Let's just say they're all for sale, $400 b/10m = 8,000x the value of today's bitcoin. If only 1% are ever available for sale, it could be 800,000x. And that is just one big business. So far, to this date, Bitcoin adoption and Bitcoin growth is not phased by the volatility. It's growing, getting more serious, getting more liquidity, slowly but surely. Everything Etlase2 is talking about is empirically proven wrong by Bitcoin each and every single day. The single most important reason why Bitcoin-enthusiasts usually sidestep this whole issue is because it HAS NO MERIT. I will worry about this whole "issue" if it ever becomes an issue, meanwhile Bitcoin is doing quite fine just like this.
"So far, to this date, Bitcoin adoption and Bitcoin growth is not phased by the volatility." This sounds like a statement that requires facts. Where are you getting your bitcoin adoption numbers and where are you getting the opinion that non-adopters are unphased by the volatility? The issue has plenty of merit, bitcoin-enthusiasts sidestep it because the issue is ugly. Instead you'd rather kick the can like so many politicians do with the world's debt. Good show, works on suckers. Maybe if enough people say it has no merit others will believe it to be true. |
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Oh waaaahhh... Says he who keeps using the dreaded "deflationary spiral" boogieman, even though he knows that it relies on a flawed theory that all people (or at least an overwhelming majority) base their personal valuation of bitcoin on recent moves in the exchange rate. Surely the mere existence of people like AnonymousBat makes it less likely that 'everyone' will naively invest in a herd-like manner and thus create another bubble?
If you actually take the time to read and digest what I wrote.. It doesn't have to be 'everyone' doing anything. It is the balance getting upset that causes problems. The balance can be anything between saving/spending/hoarding/investing, but it is the change in those factors that matter. Upsetting that balance is something that financial minds have been instigating for centuries now. Why everyone is so gung-ho to run headfirst into a system of money with ultimate financial control laying with those who hold the most coins is beyond me. "Personal valuation" is a red herring because it matters not what you think you're worth, it matters what the economy thinks you're worth. If your argument eventually boils down to "it's a better version of gold", then that's fine, but you don't see people trading gold for short-term needs. And while bitcoin may be convenient in the transactional sense, it is, like gold, not so in the financial sense to trade it over something that will depreciate. Since it is unlikely for the reasons in my last post that any significant portion of an economy will ever get paid in bitcoins, the exchange and transactional costs of bitcoin will remain rather high and probably provide little appreciable benefit over credit cards. If you can't work the whole system through bitcoins, it is always going to be measured by its exchange rate. If you try to work the whole system through bitcoin, you are going to get cycles of massive deflation followed by inflationary sell offs (or spending sprees; or better yet, new loans!). That is bitcoin's only means of expanding its economy in any manner other than the utmost crawl. |
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This theory is absurd and false, can we focus on real stuff now? Thanks. What is with this attitude among bitcoin users? It almost feels like an indoctrination. There is no guarantee that Bitcoins will be worth more in the future, but even if they are worth more, people prefer to have stuff they want NOW rather than LATER. Some people. Anyone who makes a statement regarding economics that says "All people do this" is in for a bruising. Many, many people save via investments. This means they have stuff they want LATER rather than NOW. Like a good retirement plan. Of course there are always the needs that take precedence like food and shelter. It isn't the needs or the lack thereof that could potentially cause a deflationary spiral or just a general sluggishness to the bitcoin economy, it is the wants. But in bitcoin, the long-term wants can often be satisfied just by holding currency instead of actually investing. This, in turn, further reduces the liquidity and further increases the value of bitcoins. If the balance of the long-term wants changes vs. the short-term wants/needs, you can have lots of deflation and inflation and economic turmoil every time it seesaws. For example, I know that in six months, I can get a better and cheaper computer for less money than I can today, so why do I buy one today? BECAUSE I WANT IT NOW. Although I feel like a broken record, I will link this site again since it explains this misinformation so well: http://austrianeconomics.wikia.com/wiki/DeflationSo even if Bitcoins might appreciate in value in the future, a rational person is going to take advantage of the $2.50 discount today rather than hope you'll get more than that $2.50 in the future. (Or, more likely, will replenish for the bitcoins from the stash that was used to buy the mobile refill card.)
Unfortunately this example is disconnected from reality until bitcoin is pervasive in an economy. Instead, exchanges will be the ones more than making up for that $2.50 discount as well as bank transferring fees. If you want businesses to do business in bitcoins, they're eventually going to need bitcoin loans. Bitcoin loans will always be inherently dangerous for both the lender and the borrower because of the volatility. More people using bitcoin in actual commerce will not lower volatility, it will increase it as bitcoins become more and more scarce. How many decades will it take for bitcoin to be pervasive? How many massive economic swings will bitcoin have on periods of decades? With this system of money having almost half of all the coins to ever be produced already produced, a banking cartel must either pop up among the early adopters and start giving out bitcoin loans, or we will see more bubbles and bursts like last year, turning away any self-respecting businessmen and heavily delaying any real adoption. This is my opinion, but feel free to call it absurd in your opinion. |
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Irregardless is a pretty silly word though in the sense that it literally means exactly the opposite of what you intend it to mean though.
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It has a proprietary license. That means it will not be open, even if they let people see the source. Why is this a problem? The holder of the rights to a proprietary license can revoke your permission to use the software. Then you cannot get at your currency. They can also force you to upgrade your client to include features you deem inappropriate. All a bunch of made up bullshit, once again. Either you've seen some license we haven't, or the best I can go by is the light client: "Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software, including the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:" And the only way your permission could be revoked is if you used the source code in a project other than microcash without permission. And I think it might just be a *tad* difficult for them to associate a person who uses their source in a different project with a MC account balance and make it so that "you cannot get at your currency." This is the absolute definition of made-up FUD. Do you think it is a good idea to launch and release the code for inspection at the same time? That is a recipe for idiocy. The code is reviewed only after it is in production? Nonsensical. "Bitcoin did it" This is standard operating procedure for the SoiledCoin crowd. They operate in secrecy and all critics are trolls. True security operates in the light of day, inviting all criticism. I can hardly disagree with you here. But sentence #2 is exactly what satoshi did and critics of bitcoin are called trolls just the same. But since only 10 people use SC and 3 of those are the developers who are rather immature, they get involved in the name-calling as well. |
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The thing is... you seem to be assuming that it won't be open source. Why? Just because SC2 was closed source for a period of time? Has RS or any of the developers confirmed anywhere that it will not be open source? Why do you keep making all of these assumptions before the software is even released? Asking for the math and the code for security software is not an unreasonable request. Do you think that it is necessary for a developer to release code in development? It is reasonable to whine about it not being released after a date was given, but it's not like this is the 1st or 10,000th time that's happened. Jesus christ man, you are raging to the world about software that, as far as we know, doesn't even exist. |
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3) You ask for proof that I own the bridge, I say you must prove that I don't own it otherwise you must buy it.
how is anyone even supposed to follow nonsense like this? You are not the standard we must satisfy. yeah the standard you're looking to satisfy is of the fecal flinging variety. |
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SHA-256's way of hashing arbitrarily-sized data allows for trivial "extension attacks". Given only the hash of "password; command", an attacker can trivially produce the hash of "password; command; attacker'sArbitraryData" (ie. he can append any data he wants without knowing what he's appending to).
Isn't this the likely reasoning behind using a hash of the hash? |
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No. Fail. Wrong. Incorrect.
The onus of proof is on those who claim to have created a cryptocurrency. Natchwind made an awful lot of claims in the post I quoted and you responded to, none of which are backed by any actual evidence. Are you going to stand in front of a judge or magistrate, accuse someone of wrongdoing, then say "now they must prove they did not do anything wrong"? I hope you like having books thrown at you. We do not have to prove anything. We need only critique the "proof" SoiledCoin provides to demonstrate that it is either not secure, not decentralized, and/or not a currency. I'd sure like to see some of the SC haters on this board show some provable lack of security in the design of a cryptocurrency. And "decentralized" and "currency" are definitions that are basically in the eye of the beholder, so I foresee any argument for those definitions will be "it's not like bitcoin." In this case, our effort is minimal. They have supplied nothing but claims so far.
Unless they released the code for the nodes (not the thin client) that control the currency.
And a paper that discusses their methods and reasoning behind choosing those methods.
Perhaps you should wait until it's actually live before making more assumptions then? |
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Well the digital portion also has significant cost. The Treasury dept budget is ~ $1.6B per year. The fastest growing segment is FinCEN. If the US were to drop the dollar and adopt bitcoin, do you think FinCEN would disappear? While I know it is impossible, you need to try to compare apples to apples. What is the true cost of securing the currency? Additionally, most of the treasury's budget is in salaries. While you could get meta and say that those human resources were wasted when they could be doing something more productive, it is hard to argue that electricity used to attempt to solve an unsolvable problem is anywhere near the same level of productivity. It is quite literally burning coal to secure the network. And you have to burn more coal than the bad guys. |
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I can only imagine what you think about the costs of handling cash, armored cars, and flying treasury agents around to deal with counterfeiting.  To be fair, these costs are related to only 3% of the money supply whereas the other 97% that is digitized is a hell of a lot cheaper. You've raised an interesting question in my mind though: if we get down to the brass tax, how much money must be thrown at a certain value of transactions to be considered secure in the sense that it would cost more money to attack it? If we have millions+ in transactions per hour, what is the ratio to secure those transactions? What percentage of bitcoin GNP is wasted in unrecoverable, worthless resources? Would it be less than than the cost of paper money? Would it be less than the resources squandered on mining gold for reserves? |
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Imagine that you open an account on a website (eg, a forum or wiki) and wish to establish your trustworthiness with the operators, but you don't have any pre-existing reputation to leverage. The user is punished by not being able to use the money for 6 months or whatever, therefore lowering his spam liquidity. It's always the users money, they just can't do anything with it while they are attempting to gain reputation, or something. It's kind of an odd scenario. |
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I don't have my panties in a twist. I couldn't care less about solidcoin. But you guys are giving a shit ton of free advertising for it. The webpage for Solidcoin was incredibly deceptive and lacking information on all kinds of important subjects. Since none of you want to provide any evidence, people will type in " www.microcash.org" and see that everything looks legit there--there might even be some favorable propaganda to let them know that the BTCTalk members are just full of shit and afraid. "They're scared of our new and improved awesome protocol blah blah blah" sound familiar? |
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The way I see it there is no "need" to tax small transactions - these will go through the nodes/servers and won't require an additional tax - the ones that will be taxed will be those that have substantial value in them - for example every tx above $10 USD. What is special about higher value transactions that they will need your service and will be willing to pay for it, but microtransactions won't? Is there going to be something that blocks them from going through nodes/servers? Will microtransactions not need the benefit of an online service that precludes the need for storing the block chain? From $10 taking out $0.001 for the bitcoin network fee, and adding to that a 0.1% (or less, much less, say 0.001%) of the transaction value would only add additional $0.001 to the fee - nothing that I AS A CONSUMER would rage about or even care about. Maybe the consumers won't care, but the miners who have a maximum amount of data per block will care. To a standard transaction, your extra pay out is going to add 33% more data to every transaction. This means the consumers will not only have to pay for your service, but also pay extra to the miners when data starts becoming an issue. Looking from a consumer point of view (which I'm doing right now) a tiny transaction of 0.1% of my whole transaction value above $10 is worth the features I'm getting for the money I'm spending.
Thing is, you're not really offering much in the way of features. I would not be surprised at all if many people provide this service for free. I think Electrum is already doing so, but I don't know exactly how electrum operates. Ok, so that is reasonable. As a node operator I could simply give all of these micro-transaction fees low priority, and wait them out - I don't really need them right away, and once the flow of transactions starts, it wouldn't be noticeable (getting 5btc tomorrow for the work done today, is not a big deal if you get 5 btc every day...).
This *might* work now, although I'm not entirely sure how the age of coins vs. the tx size comes into play for the tx fee. But in the future, miners will be running out of space in blocks and may perpetually ignore your very large, very little fee tx. When the TX fee becomes a bigger portion of the block payout (or even a significant chunk), I could see this service being free to users and then charging miners to get the "freshest and most transactions" delivered immediately. Maybe. But that's the only way I really see this working. |
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You have to understand that people like you pop up about once a week. You haven't been following the conversation since the beginning of Solidcoin and for some reason can't click on a persons post history (Coinhunters) and read what has already been said on the subject. I've read most of the solidcoin threads. The whole purpose of "people who pop up once a week", which I have not, is to give them an easy way to learn this information without the poo-covered cherry on top. If you don't provide any evidence, all you do is give credit to any SC supporter who says "they're just afraid it will take down bitcoin." You then claim that the information you have seen so far is incomplete, and you cannot draw any conclusions from it. That statement is true, and you should not draw any conclusions from the small bit of the play you have seen. Unfortunately, some of the best actors deleted their own performances when their true identities were discovered (Viper and Psi). So? You have evidence available, for now, here: http://forums.microcash.org/index.php/topic/600-as-we-migrate/ that is probably going to be deleted soon, so get some screen shots and archive them somewhere. You have evidence available in the block chain which may disappear as soon as microcash starts with what I assume will be with something new and just carrying over old accounts. That history of award changes will be gone forever if someone does not actively get it and archive it somewhere. The onus of proof is on the accuser. So how's about some of you grow the f* up and do something constructive for a change. |
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Why bother to actually put some thought and evidence into a thread to dissuade newbies rather than them wading through the myriad of unsubstantiated FUD that all of you who love to rage against solidcoin do?
Nah let's just continue the 10-year-old style back and forth between two sets of mouth foamers.
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