They’re actively researching on how to make solar-to-hydrogen production economically viable, which could be one way to do this.

Wont work in practice, because not every country will do it. So any country that introduces this tax will just weaken themselves, without much effect on mining power.

But im sure there are countries who will try this for virtue signaling purposes.

Also taxing energy will affect everyone and not just miners. And if miners use renewables it will be hard to even trace their energy.

Maybe it’s somewhere in the middle, option 2 will be inevitable for the majority, because they won’t care about privacy enough or will relativise it.

But for the individual there will probably always be tools and possibilities to atleast have a private stash somewhere.

I think the only way for the masses would be privacy by default solutions, because they won’t go out there way now, to go trough the process to gain privacy themselves.

What if Goods and Services get priced in Bitcoin one day? We already saw people in failed economies like venezuela abandon their currencies for something harder like the dollar. What if we see this happening on a bigger scale with Bitcoin, because fiat will become so worthless that no one wants to use it anymore, similar to the bolivar. Bitcoin will atleast increase  the pressure on fiat to not let get things out of hand that much.

Beginner mistake:

1. There’s nations with declining populations, yet their money supply is still increasing and not adjusted, because these 2 aren’t correlated.

2. The economic output can also decrease, nothing goes up forever, yet no adjustments will ever be made to the increasing money supply, till it crashes.

3. Resources on earth are actually finite, as well as the lifespan of human life, so why do you have a problem, when the representation of these two things get nominated in something finite?

Every time the money supply increases it actually devalues the time and resources a person has spent/ gathered over the years, and gives it to someone who didn’t work for it. Does it still sound smart?

And to the point by what Bitcoin is backed by, we can also ask what Gold is backed by? The laws of the universe give gold it’s properties. And the same way Bitcoin has certain properties that are valuable, are ensured by the network.

Also when we’re creating money we’re essentially trying to solve a human problem. Taking something from nature(like gold) and trying to make it work for us, can be inefficient. That’s why gold failed. Then came Fiat which is entirely a human construct(had some advantages), but failed too. And now we came up with a better solution that is Bitcoin. Just because something is architected to fit our needs, doesn’t mean it’s bad just because it’s not used for other things.

Hahahahhahahah it’s just embarrassing. But then again, the opportunity cost for choosing to not understand Bitcoin is getting higher every year, whoever wanna afford this luxury so be it. I gave up on convincing people.

But this time we’re running into stagflation, i would suggest expanding your investment time horizon now and not touch margin etc. This could take some time.

K you convinced me, I’ll put all my money back into fiat now, because my supermarket is late to the game.

Sorry that i don’t take investment advice from supermarkets or barbershops to determine what money is.

I don’t think how Bitcoin is defined will play a big role. Because if you look at the state of government, banks and the economies finances, it’s clear that they became fragile. They opened pandoras box with inflation now, which they can’t get out of, because they rely on the printer to pay back debts.

They will need some kind of monetary reform or extreme control over how money flows to keep this system alive. Which means Fiat will continue to become worthless, to the point that it eradicates any wealth a regular citizen had stored there.

There was a situation like this in 1929 where banks started to collapse and people were rushing into gold, which then was forbidden by the government in 1933.

There will be a need and probably no alternative to escape Fiat in the future.
So Bitcoin will be adopted because there is a need for it, unconfiscatable assets have the highest chance of surviving economic turmoil and Bitcoin is the most sound money there ever was. What do you think people will do when governments shed apart their bank accounts? Waiting till they define Bitcoin differently?

Bitcoin will win because it’s better, not because the government says so.

I think the average user just does very few on-chain transactions every year tho. I also saw on glassnode that around 60% of Bitcoins supply didn’t move in over a year, which indicates people use on-chain as a store of value primarily at the moment. Scaling with blocks alone will also not work, without becoming centralized at the moment. So we will need to rely on off-chain solutions and they’re probably ready to handle 1 billion users by then, so i wouldn’t be too pessimistic.

https://studio.glassnode.com/metrics?a=BTC&m=supply.ActiveMore1YPercent&resolution=24h

Sure, they can slow things down, but don’t forget the mess fiat is bringing billions into at the moment. Bitcoins game plan is strong and you could say banks are the best marketers for Bitcoin at the moment, by their own actions. Fiat will collapse by itself, it’s like a house of cards, once there’s problems it’s unable to fix itself, so it’s just a matter of time.

Sure, but we’ll only find out when it’s too late. But that’s where self custody comes into play, everyone can do it now. Doesn’t make sense to wait till it’s too late. Self custody is also in the interest of every hodler, because it can help the price out, the more people do it.

Economy is always about incentives and exchanges have no incentive to be transparent, if they make more money like this, because after growing to a certain size companies are only ruled by profit.

How will this work in practice? Burning peoples bank accounts? It actually doesn’t make sense to mint, because if it’s distributed equally everyone has the same as before, if it’s not distributed equally we have fiat 2.0.

Why not use Bitcoin directly, what’s the advantage of creating a shitcoin first? Luna was “backed” by Bitcoin too, yet they couldn’t and wouldn’t protect their holders, because it doesn’t work in practice. Bitcoins deflationary mechanism(lost coins) is actually interesting, because it’s distributed to every address automatically(their coins become worth more) without a central authority deciding this, which could work like an inbuilt savings mechanism for everyone.

This just sounds like adding crypto for the sake of crypto, without actually solving anything.

Sure, but on a centralized exchange a fraud or an error would be catched fast since there’s no redeeming period, and yet we see frauds happening there. Also they’re in competition with each other, while it will be harder here to just switch to a competitor for a different bill. Also we’re already trying to get people of centralized exchanges, because of the damage that can be done.

Offline payments are neat, but i see a potential problem on not relying on PCs or smartphones, because

1. They will need a computer or smartphone to redeem it anyways.

2. I think if we’re trying to bring people into Bitcoin, it’s crucial they have access to all tools, to really use it. Just relying on a centralized authority can bring them into a vulnerable position.

I like your idea tho and you seem like a smart and well intentioned guy. So my advice is to change the trust model and make it a top priority to not require trust, and this will succeed. See even if you as the owner have well intentions, as the business grows it will be harder and harder to control the whole supply chain, and many things won’t be in the owners control anymore, one bad apple can rot the whole tree here.

Wouldn’t trusting the issuer bring in the same danger, Fiat brought us into? E.g. inflating the money supply. How can the user verify the same bill wasnt printed twice, without waiting for years? Also how do we make sure there isnt another copy of the private key with the issuer? One bad merchant could open the door to mass fraud. I think its crucial for a Bitcoin bill to be trust minimized, otherwise we can run into Fiat 2.0. There needs to be some element of verification by the user.

Also: how will the issuer make money? He has to pay transaction fees, has to pre-fund the bill and has to make a high quality bill. These factors all cost money and could be way higher than the fees that are actually saved with this approach. Its important to calculate the cost of low quantity bills to see if this approach even brings in savings.

Isnt it just cheaper in the end to just open a lightning channel(and more secure and efficient)?

If you’re asked to research the underlying factors that influence the market price of Bitcoin, it’s not enough to just write supply&demand, because we already know this.

But what actually influences the demand, what actually influences the supply? This is what is here to find out. Saying just supply&demand is saying nothing, then we can just stop doing science altogether. The driving factors behind Bitcoin are completely different than something like a loaf of bread, yet they’re both just supply&demand(that’s why it’s not enough to say this). So the question here is, what are they really? This what the job of researchers is, to try and find out. It’s not about calculating the Bitcoin price manually on the basis of these factors, it’s about finding out the determining factors behind the market price.

There is a catch in this, because not all of the coins are mined yet and not all of the 21 millions coins will be sold on the market. In Bitcoin itself the supply is fixed, when the block rewards run out. But on the free market the supply actually varies(Bitcoins being sold).

You’re welcome. It’s always nice having people from different areas come here, since Bitcoin is really that interdisciplinary.

Also trying to define the intrinsic value of something like Bitcoin is really hard, because the traditional methods to determine this, aren’t designed for this. We’re really on novel ground here. This question made me curious myself now.

I think d5000 made an amazing point, by taking hashrate, security, store and transfer of value into account.

You could even look at Bitcoin like a social consensus mechanism geared towards, how humanity can safely store and distribute their resources, without invalidating the individual. While at the same time building a worldwide distributed network of people, that can interact with each other, without the need for trust. The whole game theory behind Bitcoin takes many social dynamics into account and then Technology was used to find a way to solve these issues.

However this was just an example into the social factors that play a part in Bitcoin.

I found another source that also looks at the intrinsic value of cryptocurrencies.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12525-021-00491-2

That’s actually an amazing idea, also former customers could be the suited for this, since they used services/ products themselves.

 
Idk if wages in Germany are really higher than in Uk/ nordics. Work/life balance in Germany is really good(but also depends on the sector, low paying jobs can be terrible and non natives often get exploited, because they don’t know that the law protects them), but i see many Eastern Europeans take illegal contracts with no protection, where they then work for 12 hours a day and not enough pay. 


Definitely, i would consider going back to southern europe, if the conditions were similar to the north, its just way worse to build something under these weak conditions. Imagine starting a company now and depending on what you’re selling, it would be hard to just rely on a souther european market, because the purchasing power is way lower there. Which makes it harder to build high quality products and sell them there. You will be always reliant on a foreign market with more purchasing power at the moment. So the company could just move to a foreign market directly instead of settling in southern europe, it would be way more efficient. I think something like this is more of a project for people like me, that wanna see their country thrive, instead of a smart business decision. It’s hard for the south to catch up, when at the same time you will have the state working against you, when trying to improve the situation.

I think it’s also about, that in Southern European countries the state established a framework that just works against the working individual and favors the corrupt and well connected.

You have a combination of broken economic incentives, weak property rights(which makes it hard to build companies etc., the state can just take your belongings without real justice systems), low mobility of the population(good luck moving around Italy when you’re poor, the highway tolls are huge), educated population moving to other places like Germany, and the list goes on.

While in Northern European countries the state tries to enable the individual to do better. Free university, high mobility of the population, strong property rights, strong minimum wages, better economic incentives, the state protects their industries instead of working against them. Northern Europe is for sure no paradise, but much better in this regard.

And the result of that is that the people in the south stop trying or move to other places like Germany and thrive there.

In the statistic i would also take into account that Italy made vaccination mandatory for workers over 50 years old, otherwise they can’t show up to their workplace. It’s a nice example of a state working against the individual, and destroying their own economy in the process. Even tho i think they took it back now, but depending on how much covid tests cost, it could also be that people can’t afford to go to work.

Idk which of these laws are still into effect, because they change every 5 minutes, but they definitely influenced the statistic.

No question is too dumb to be asked. I’ll try to explain it simplified.


Think of what you see on the exchanges like the lowest price someone is willing to sell his bitcoin for at this particular moment in time, this is the exchange rate.

The supply is basically -> how much Bitcoin is sold at the moment.
The demand is -> how much Bitcoin is bought at the moment.

If more Bitcoin is bought than sold -> the price increases.
If more Bitcoin is sold than bought -> the price decreases.

Bitcoin itself is it’s own monetary system and there will be never be more than 21 million of them, so what you see on the exchange is someone trading Bitcoin into another currency like the dollar for example, similar to when u travel to another country you will trade your currency into the local one.

In Bitcoin itself there’s no fluctuation if you own 1 Bitcoin it will always be 1 Bitcoin, so the fluctuation that you see is just the exchange rate into other currencies.

And sure the more people buy Bitcoin the higher the exchange rate will be.

And depending on what exchange you’re on, there can be different exchange rates depending on supply and demand in each individual exchange.

The reason you’re seeing similar prices on different exchanges is because of arbitrage.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/arbitrage.asp

Newly mined Bitcoin go into the miners possession, who just attached a new block. Typically they have running businesses expenses, so they sell them on a exchange to cover them, but they can also keep the bitcoin if they wanted to. So mining currently increases the amount of Bitcoin that are being sold on exchanges, but the subsidy miners get decreases every 210.000 blocks, so over time they will have less and less new bitcoin to sell on exchanges(or keep).
https://www.investopedia.com/bitcoin-halving-4843769

And don’t forget Bitcoin exists apart from exchanges in its own network, you can hold your own funds like being your own bank. To sell them on an exchange they’re sent to the bitcoin address of the exchange and from there you can trade them into other currencies. They keep the bitcoin you get the money. Or when you’re buying, they get the money and you can send the bitcoin to your own Bitcoin address.

You can check out Germany in 1923 to understand why this won’t work, everyone was a billionaire yet poor.

https://alphahistory.com/weimarrepublic/1923-hyperinflation/