The "statement" on my software does not indicate you have sent me 10 BTC. Please give me the transaction ID so I may verify it. Thank you.

You're obviously wrong, OP thought that when he/she gets bitcoin, OP thinks that someone will send him physical coins like quarters and cents but I guess got disappointed and started to rant in this forum.

Ive offered to buy the guy coffee with BTC but hes refused to put up an address.  So unserious in his arguments.

"Proof of gods existence" is another clue of what we are arguing with.   You cannot prove the existence of god. You also cannot disprove it.   Which is why most scientists ignore the question.  Its not a question which science is capable of answering.

So I've come to the conclusion what we are dealing with here is a philosopher.  Of which most are thinkers but never really get anywhere.  A few definitely do but most do not.  Our philosopher has already decided his answer and is attempting to apply science in the wrong direction.

If you can give me 10 BTC or provide the private keys to the address that have them, and allow me to transfer it to my own address, then I will accept that you have given me 10 BTC, provided at least 1 confirmation or block of the transaction.

If you have no problem arranging for all that, then I accept you have given me the BTC. But you have not made any arrangements at all. There is an address in my profile, you can try sending there if you want to prove something. So far, there is not.

I have no interest in your Ferraris and I'm certainly not paying for them. If you give them to me, that's different.

You have not given me 10 BTC yet, so ... this is all pointless.

If you are merely talking semantics, it makes no difference to me whether it's a quantity statement of a supposedly non-existent Bitcoins. We all know it's control or access to the same quantities but everyone accepts it as just "you sent me bitcoin, or I paid you bitcoin" which can be easily confirmed, if you actually sent it.

So send or do not send, I don't care if you think it exists or it doesn't, if it shows up in my wallet and I can confirm it independently from you, together with all the thousand of other full nodes out there, then I will accept you sent me BTC. If it's on the blockchain, it exists on the blockchain.

Satoshi has been out of the picture for several years, you can leave him out of it.



You said you believe in God but you also sound like an atheist. That seems contradictory.

Why the wall of text OP? You tryin' to be different from other people who spread FUD in this forum? Because this isn't the way that you should've worked because not everyone will have the patience to read your rhetoric or essay whatever you want to call it because it is a wall of text, try again next time. By the way, why do you believe in God when you can't see him/her but don't believe in bitcoin when there is a code that proves it's existence?

I will not accept that you gave me 10 eggs if you didn't actually give me 10 eggs, nor will I accept that you gave me 10 Ferrarris if those cars are not in my garage and I have possession of the key that turns them on.

If you say you give me 10 BTC or 10 bitcoins though, I will also not accept that you actually gave me 10 bitcoins until I see the quantity in my wallet, verified by miners. If it's nothing to you, I could care less, because to me, it is something.

But until I can verify in my address that I control, that I have the private keys to, that the transaction was confirmed in a block, then you did not send me any bitcoins.

At this point, it is irrelevant what the US dollar (or fiat) price is of those bitcoins. If a block explorer does not say I have it, you did not send it, then I don't have the bitcoins. If my wallet software (that does not look too fancy as I just use either Bitcoin Core or Electrum) does not indicate the addresses contain bitcoin, then you didn't send me any bitcoins.

Beyond all this discussion, it becomes either academic or moot or pointless as most of us don't have time to explain anything else to you. If it's being talked about, that's something, not nothing.

Again, exchanges have the liability for you when you buy bitcoins from it. Exchanges are required to hold at least enough bitcoins in their systems to stay solvent, for their users to be able to withdraw (It's common sense, although there is yet to be legislation anywhere that enforces this). The ability to withdraw the bitcoins is how the liability is paid back to you.

It is worth noting that there is no concept of claims, liabilities, or reserves outside exchanges, at software and hardware wallets. This is what makes it a successful decentralized currency in the first place, because outside the exchanges there is no company or bond issuer or bank that can become insolvent and alter the value of a bitcoin.

Outside exchanges, bitcoin is not connected to any other currency's exchange rate.

Inside exchanges, it's connected to whatever exchange's currency rates it has.

Also inside the exchanges, the bitcoins inside exchange cold storage/hot wallets aren't connected to any exchange rate, because it only in the exchange software that connects to the bitcoins (however it represents them in its software) these rates. The exchange software is the one that enforces these rates, by sending or receiving the appropriate amount of cash from its bank & payment processor when a bitcoin withdrawal or deposit happens, respectively.

It also happens to be the way stock, bond and forex exchange software works as well. Even these assets can have different prices on different exchanges and it happens all the time.

So you want a real comparison to company equity and bond principal and not exchanges, OK. But it will be an apples to oranges comparison because bitcoin is a currency, not a stock, bond or loan.

You probably know that in bitcoin we have miners who extract a block reward that becomes increasingly smaller every 4 years. So the total supply of bitcoin that has currently been mined can be used as a statistic by which to calculate the bitcoin price. It cannot determine the price by itself. Just like equity, principal and how much your bank loaned you can't determine those prices as well (in the last case it would be the price of the debt should you want to sell it to a third party).

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Finally, I got enough talking points to write my opinion piece. Now I can spend my time doing more productive things

That's pretty much what I was talking about when I mentioned "ownership of debt".


In fact there are claims and liabilities. The owner of the private key for an address who sends bitcoin to another owner owns a "claim" of the BTC over the other person, who holds the "liability".


Yes.


Even though the only thing happening was the nodes writing the transaction on the public ledger, that does not mean that funds are not moving around as reserves. Bitcoin completely abstracts this concept because its own protocol has no concept of financial reserves, which also happens to be the reason why random new cryptocurrencies have almost $0 market value when they are listed. It is the process of listing the cryptocurrency on an exchange that enables the exchanges themselves to attach their financial reserves (their own users' cash) onto bitcoin, hence why every exchange has a slightly different price.

This widget on Google that we call the "BTC price" is not an aggregation of all these prices, it is nothing more than Coinbase's BTC-to-USD ticker.

Spending of old investors' money, by itself, does not imply that those investors are not getting claims to their spent bitcoins (or liabilities for their bought bitcoins).

Well I always like a constructive debate.


Going back to your analogy about bitcoin and MS Office licenses, you are right that there is something behind the quantity of MS office licenses - the MS office programs.

In bitcoin you can't benefit from the transaction outputs behind the quantity of bitcoin. That's because MS office licenses are goods, and not financial assets.

Gold, cash, Tesla stock, futures, these are all financial assets because they are backed by something that doesn't have a tangible benefit to people (ownership of debt). Same reason why sneakers, phones etc. are not financial assets because there's no ownership of debt backing them, it's some physical benefit backing them.

Now let's prove that bitcoin does have an ownership of debt:

When some country mints new banknotes (the US did that in 2013 if my memory's correct), they must find something to back this quantity of banknotes. So they take a ton of foreign exchange reserves (such as cash or precious metals) and use that as the basis of the debt - ownership debt relative to these foreign assets.

In Bitcoin, the "foreign exchange reserves" are investors' fiat currency. So you can view the quantity of bitcoin backed by ownership of investors fiat reserves and this is precicesly why the price is able to go up and why it was originally zero: The more fiat that investors bring, the more reserves that can be repurposed as debt.

Combine that with the bitcoin supply being fixed, and you have a constant total quantity versus an ever increasing asset reserve.


You can't. That's precisely what my last two paragraphs were about.

I don't see a wallet address where I can send Bitcoin.

Still not serious I see.

I have personally called your bluff and put money on the line that Bitcoin is Nothing, by offering you that Nothing to Buy coffee with.  

Since you are currently refusing the bitcoin for coffee you are unserious in your arguments.  Any serious truth seeker would have taken the offer and opportunity to prove me wrong.

I know that I like proving people wrong.  =>

What if I told you that there is something backing those BTC numbers?

Just like there is a tangible item backing each MS office program (the license key), the item that backs the quantity of BTC is the transaction output.

Whereas you can get more than one copy of a MS office program in the activated state by possessing more than one key, by possessing more than one "mass" of BTC you get a transaction output in a different size.

Just as not all MS Office keys are created equally (those 10 keys might as well be for Personal, Business, Office 365 and Enterprise), neither are transaction outputs.

MS Office license keys (just a string of alphanumeric "codes") the "numbers" back the virtual tangible MS office "source code", the "program".

And similarly, the BTC "numbers" back the virtual tangible transaction outputs which are stored on the ledger.

Get it?

Hey, this could be a good guest post for Bitcoin Magazine, "Bitcoin exists; beyond the numbers on the balance".

It has a lot to do with Bitcoin, because YOU are using it as a comparison. Answer me this... Can computer code have value? (Let me answer for you, because I know you are cherry picking certain things in people's responses and you are just answering those... Yes, it can have a value, because we are paying for digital software like MS Windows or Office / Applications in Play Store etc.. etc.)

So if a well-known artists creates digital art work and he/she link that to a transferable Blockchain (Smart Contract) ...then people will pay for that art... because there are a demand for it.

So, Satoshi created a "digital" token that are limited and transferable, so people can take ownership of that digital token and it is displayed on a public ledger that are shared.

Soon Governments and Banks will have their own tokens & Blockchains ....and Fiat slaves like you, will once again be forced to use that. (Why is there not a global ban on Crypto currencies?.... because government and Banks want to develop their own)  

Okay so Bitcoin is a data and nothing else according to op. So what? We are holding that data because it is valuable.
What is fiat? Just a piece of paper with some promisory note written on it?

If you go and ask an economist about the definition of currency, He will most likely tell you that the stuff issued by the "National Credit" endorsement is currency.
But that is the national legal tender, and history shows that currency appeared before the concept of "country".
So, what exactly is currency?
It's actually two words: consensus.
It is you, me and him, our common recognition and common understanding.
Bitcoin has global consensus.

So your idea for a "perfect" currency is a currency that are based on debt? ===> https://www.usdebtclock.org/world-debt-clock.html

The imaginary "debt" that are being controlled or rather uncontrolled by corrupt governments around the world? You might be one of the lucky people who live in a first world country where the demise of fiat currencies are slowed down and manipulated by a very clever government... but for many people living in third world countries... that reality is already showing it's ugly face. (Hyperinflation -- Venezuela, Hungary, Zimbabwe, and Yugoslavia)

Satoshi Nakamoto created this technology to eliminate the corrupted "middleman" (Governments & Banks) and to stop the manipulation of the currency by replacing that with real "Supply and demand".

Why should people only have one currency? Why should the use of that currency be enforced with guns and violence? Why should a few elites determine the value of that currency? ====> Bitcoin was created to give people an alternative option and a choice if they wanted to use the Fiat currency or if they wanted to take the control of their own wealth and to use it as an alternative.  

In my mind I have around 1500 BTC, but in reality I won't be accepted by the network if I told them so. So is it really in fantasy?

Money is anything that is accepted by a community of people as a medium of exchange. Whether if it's physically (banknotes, coins) or digitally represented, in this case an immutable ledger, if some of us agree that it's useful, its units will start having value.

It depends on that number. If the number

• Cannot be erased no matter the excuse.
• Can only be transacted by the owner.
• Can be accessed by anyone in the world 24/7/365.

Then, I don't find any reasons why it shouldn't be valuated.

Just because it isn't used for expressing the ownership of governments' debts, doesn't mean that it can't.

Your argument is so funny ...

So it is more valid if a government prints a number on a piece of paper and tells you what the value of that piece of paper is, because they determine that by printing more or less of that toilet paper money?

What happens if a software developer creates a software program or a application for your mobile phone? (Example : Apple Pay / debit/credit cards / Internet Banking / NFC payments / IMPS, NEFT, RTGS, IMPS)  .....all of these use digital "numbers" reflected of a centralized database to transfer value.)

You are such a Fiat sheep....     ....The world of payment systems and currencies are changing and people like you are clinging to the past.  

You are holding onto a "Titanic" that are sinking... and you are still singing and dancing and ignoring the tragedy that are happening with government controlled currencies.  

drop a bitcoin wallet address.

i will send you 10 bucks in bitcoin.  Money where my mouth is.  note.  it tends to move around since markets havnt yet come in to large scale agreement of what bitcoin is worth.  

Once you have that 10 bucks.  go buy a coffee with it and then tell me its not money.  

=>

drop a bitcoin wallet address.

i will send you 10 bucks in bitcoin.  Money where my mouth is.  note.  it tends to move around since markets havnt yet come in to large scale agreement of what bitcoin is worth.  

Once you have that 10 bucks.  go buy a coffee with it and then tell me its not money.  

=>

This is actually Bitcoin. It is immaterial and intangible, but it does exist, and this is what Satoshi said and he did not lie to anyone. You deny the existence of Bitcoin because you cannot see it or touch it, but you believe in the existence of electricity even though you do not see it or touch it either??!!!
The era of money that can be touched by hand and carried from one place to another is over, when you own bitcoin you really don't own a tangible physical thing but only exists as data on the block chain and that's enough for everyone. As long as everyone recognizes it and accepts it as a means of payment, where is the problem then??

It's a matter of social agreement what do we use numbers for.

But let's do not confuse machines and software that operate on numbers (computers, applications) with numbers themselves.
Bitcoin as software (an application capable of creating a monetary network, a network protocol) is a tremendous achievement, perhaps the greatest in the history of mankind.

Satoshi invented money harder even than gold (no one can modify the BTC supply cap, even social agreement might not be enough anymore), and infinitely more useful than gold.

There is nothing nonsensical about my argument.  By replying you have acknowledged the existence of time.  If time didn't exist then you would Not have been able to reply.  

Time is a human concept.  Humans free falling in space was just a concept.  

MONEY is just a concept.   Bitcoin....  Just a concept.   its not even money not really its just a method of counting that is very difficult to mess with.   We invest that phantom number with imaginary value  .... Just Like Money.  weird isn't it?  

And since you didn't understand My Basic idea of things that clearly don't actually exist But, also clearly Do exist. I don't think you can wrap your head around bitcoin and you should just let the adults do the thinking.

And we have refuted your argument something like 30 times now.  Which is why I think you are a bot or a Child at this point.