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To answer OP's question, we might first answer a question of how regulation is implemented. Is regulation a system which functions on equality and objectivity, or is it a system which exists to maintain a precedent of privilege and favortism to some groups while keeping others on a lower scale of value?
There is also a question of how efficiently regulation functions. Is regulation imposed on citizens in the form of taxes, tariffs, fees and regulation in the form of regulatory bodies which oversee environmental protection, welfare, space exploration, certification of drivers license, mail delivery and so on function in a way that is cost effective? Efficient regulation might be described as a system which produces manageable levels of deficit and debt, while inefficient regulation could describe a system of high deficit and debt. The implications and consequences of either polar opposite can be extreme. An example of this is the USSR post economic collapse where every russian lost their state pension and death tolls climbed spectacularly as a result.
Suffice it to say there are many who claim the system (regulation) is broken. That it only exists to make the rich richer while ensuring the poor get poorer under a system of wealth redistribution. Bitcoin being unregulated may not be prone to these faults. A person could make a case for crypto being more fair and unbiased towards the poor than other financial platforms. Such might represent its main benefit.
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Many nations back their fiat currency with deposits of gold as collateral. This places them in a predicament where they need gold (and precious metals) to retain value in order to justify the value of their own paper money. Banks also hoard piles of gold for similar reasons. If not for state and banks reliance on precious metals, its value may have plummeted due to lack of demand, lack of utility and lack of interest. There's no excitement or high expectations for precious metals and there has not been any in decades.
Aside from banks and governments, the main interest in gold could come from individuals like Ron Paul and those interested in a gold standard. Overall what this could mean is there is far lower global interest in gold, silver or precious metals than there is in crypto currencies, blockchain ICO's and other new and emerging technologies which many might find interesting or exciting for different reasons. Excitement, emotion and high expectations are often coupled with growth. Though intangible these variables could represent some of the advantages of crypto with disadvantages of gold and precious metals residing on the flip side.
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There's a school of thought which claims the US military invaded Iraq in 2003 partly due to Saddam Hussein selling oil priced in the euro rather than the US dollar. Expositionary info: Iraq nets handsome profit by dumping dollar for euroSaturday 15 February 2003 20.55 ESTA bizarre political statement by Saddam Hussein has earned Iraq a windfall of hundreds of million of euros. In October 2000 Iraq insisted on dumping the US dollar - 'the currency of the enemy' - for the more multilateral euro. The changeover was announced on almost exactly the same day that the euro reached its lowest ebb, buying just $0.82, and the G7 Finance Ministers were forced to bail out the currency. On Friday the euro had reached $1.08, up 30 per cent from that time. Almost all of Iraq's oil exports under the United Nations oil-for-food programme have been paid in euros since 2001. Around 26 billion euros (£17.4bn) has been paid for 3.3 billion barrels of oil into an escrow account in New York. The Iraqi account, held at BNP Paribas, has also been earning a higher rate of interest in euros than it would have in dollars. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2003/feb/16/iraq.theeuro The above article was published in february. The US invasion of Iraq occurred a month later in march. A nation having its currency adopted as a reserve currency can be a method of control as well as a system for maintaining economic stability. China and russia choosing to denominate their oil in their own respective currencies rather than the US dollar, could be interpreted as a move on their part to escape the US influencing their affairs. Similar to russia creating their own version of the SWIFT financial network to avoid relying on a monopolized system they have no control over. It could also be interpreted as growing concern as america's deficit tops $20 trillion the rational response could be to avoid the dollar as a form of damage control if a worst case scenario occurs. The biggest story here could be the media blackout on the USA and EU having massive deficits which are more dangerous than terrorists, war or anything else the media commonly cites as looming threats. |
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Who will Represent Bitcoin? That's a good question. So far no one has been deemed worthy to fill the vacuum left behind by Satoshi Nakamoto. When people think of microsoft they think of Bill Gates. When people think of amazon they think of Jeff Bezos. There is no face or identity that goes with bitcoin. Crypto has no real spokesperson or figurehead leader to represent it. Over the long run perhaps this is a good thing. The crypto culture could grow to become more about ideas than a single person who came up with an idea. Cryptos identity is left open to be defined, rather than subject to some type of preconceived bias. Bitcoin lacking a true leader could give it a decentralized format of equals which in ways could mirror moreso a decentralized republic than a totalitarian top down regime. It is possible that's the way Satoshi would have liked it. |
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Hi guys,
I was thinking to organize a betting game (player vs player) in a third party site.
The game will be like players will enter the game by paying x value (including my fee).
And then all of the players will play the game to stay at the positions of 1-10 to win prizes.
Lets say, there will be 24 players participating in a single game with a participation fee of BTC0.01050000
Total prize pool will be BTC0.24
Prize Distribution
1st 25%
2nd 20%
3rd 15%
4th 10%
5th 5%
6th 5%
7th 5%
8th 5%
9th 5%
10th 5%
So will you be interested to join the game?
Please make a vote and share your thoughts of every angle you may think to show your support.
There are existing crypto platforms like https://www.onehash.com which utilize a similar PvP format in sports betting. Over the years I've seen many sites like the one you're proposing monetized in both fiat and crypto. Many were established and then shut down years ago. Some allowed betting on topics like election results and who would win the next WWE wrestling event. Others allowed users to create their own terms for bets which could be literally anything. At the top of the food chain are large websites like fanduel and draftkings which accept millions of dollars in deposits and are known for big pay days. There were crypto based sites which were similar that shut down. I think you would need to post more information before I could say whether I would be interested. |
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Derek Brunson has knocked out many top notch MMA fighters in the 1st round. I don't think the loss means Machida is done.
The sequence leading up to the finish was Brunson ducking down and throwing a punch that came from far beneath Machida's line of sight where Machida couldn't see it coming. That could have finished anyone no matter how old or young they were. I had Machida winning the fight up until he got KO'ed. I think Machida could have another fight in the future the same way that Anderson Silva still fights even though everyone thought he might retire after losing to Chris Weidman 2x.
Colby Covington, Robbie Lawler, Stephen Thompson, Jorge Masvidal and a few others are likely in contention to fight Tyron Woodley for the title next. Its tough to see a clear favorite getting a title shot. There isn't anyone who is finishing their fights in impressive fashion. The fighter who finishes their fights is usually the one who fights for the title.
Next up is UFC 217: Michael Bisping versus Georges St Pierre @ Madison Square Garden, New York.
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The vast majority of scientific research is funded by one percenters. Due to this lopsided precedent, there could be a positive slant to crypto funded science via increasing the quantity of independent research conducted.
People might support independent research conducted on controversial topics like: climate change, marijuana, depression, GMO's, abortion, etc. Research results are often influenced by funding sources. Paving a way towards independent research less influenced by paid agendas or conflicts of interest is something with a real potential to benefit society.
Science of the people, could be a neglected precedent in this day and age. Science for the most part is a thing reserved for corporations and governments. A paradigm shift towards science enveloping the values and self interests of the common man could be a movement that would benefit society.
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Here's a screencap of the front page of http://golix.io an african crypto exchange.  As you can see bitcoin was trading there at an all time high of $10,200/btc. This could be evidence of bitcoin being in high demand in that region. Reasons for crypto benefiting africa are numerous. Transaction rates and fees internationally are likely to be lower for btc. Taxes and tariffs could also be lower for exchange and retail. Unfortunately there is no clear answer to this other than speculation. Blockchains impact on africa isn't an issue that I can remember anyone covering to date. |
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always keep in mind that his family belongs to a long line of martial artists, passed from father to son (not really sure, it's the impression I got. Lol). So they're into all that bushido, warrior spirit stuff.
Fighting is in their blood.
That is 100% true. One controversial & secret training method Lyoto inherited from his warrior spirit ancestors is urine therapy. The practice of drinking one's own piss to gain an athletic advantage. That's one thing people tend not to take into account when discussing the Machida family's warrior traditions and possibly a neglected point. Sports don't get much more hardcore than people voluntarily drinking their own pee. It is also true that there are other MMA fighters in the Machida family. Chinzo Machida (Lyoto's brother) fought in bellator earlier this year. Chinzo was choked out in the 1st round against James Gallagher. I hope Lyoto does better tonight than his brother did. Betting wise this card looks tough. Good luck to everyone. |
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Warren Buffett say "You can’t value bitcoin because it’s not a value-producing asset." If it is true that "non-value producting assets" can't be priced, one might wonder how precious metals like gold or silver are priced. Price relative to earnings (P/E ratio) is commonly cited as the most valuable pricing metric in equities trading. It would be interesting to know what the best pricing method for precious metals has been for a historical perspective. That could be a topic to research. I like Buffett's comment, its a very good point. Buffett has made interesting comments on gold in the past.  |
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This is such a good point. It is hard to use a decentralized currency as the backing of a country's currency.
The theory behind central banks creating policy guidelines on how nations run their economies is: privately owned banks which are independent of a state promote decentralization in a way which leads to greater economic stability and reduced conflict of interest. The federal reserve (central bank) of the united states is a privately owned institution rather than a socialist, state run, enterprise. If decentralization between privately owned central banks and state run governments is a good thing. It may naturally follow that a more decentralized currency such as bitcoin being utilized as a reserve currency could be superior to a private central bank, as crypto is more decentralized than central banks. Decentralization is a main argument for central banks having as much power and influence as they do. It could mean that decentralized currencies have a historical precedent for performing roles traditionally taken by central banks. This could be evidence for crypto performing well as a reserve currency. |
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If a good number of people adopt Bitcoin and agree that it's money then it can be self-fulfilling prophecy, but this should be based on real rational expectations, Bitcoin as a store of value, unit of account, and medium of exchange, not merely a speculative vehicle which would end up in a self-fulfilling irrational speculative equilibrium which isn't good.
Bitcoin is dualistic in nature, as a currency and a commodity, it is good and bad, speculators make it a too volatile medium of exchange, but for widespread adoption and putting an end to bubble theory, Bitcoin needs to get adopted as a currency. Merchant adoption is the key.
Brilliant comment! Thanks for that! Question. Might it be accurate to say everything said in your quote above applied to gold and precious metals in previous eras when gold and silver were commonly utilized as both speculative vehicles and currencies? I'm far from being an expert on volatility and trading history of precious metals. Would not be surprised to learn there are interesting analogies which might be drawn between the crypto of today and the gold/silver of past ages. Also in regard to crypto volatility, it is possible we might eventually reach a saturation point where enough relative unknowns in crypto are quantified or eliminated for volatility to decrease by a significant proportion. Being near to the early adoption phase leaves room for growing pains but there could be a future era where the technology matures enough for the wild price fluctuations to become minimalized. |
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The headwinds that capped gold’s rally this year have hit silver with gale force, spurring an exit from exchange-traded funds backed by the metal. Silver has tumbled about 7 percent since trading at a four-month high in September as precious metals lose favor amid the record-breaking rally in U.S. equity indexes. Solid earnings reports from companies including Caterpillar Inc. are fueling optimism about global growth, bolstering the case for the Federal Reserve to keep raising borrowing costs and hurting the investment appeal of non-interest-bearing assets including gold and silver. Investors pulled $362 million from iShares Silver Trust this year, setting it on course for the biggest redemption in six years. The exit has shrank holdings in the world’s largest ETF backed by the metal to the least since March 2016. IShares owns about half of the total silver holdings in all silver-backed ETFs tracked by Bloomberg.  ... Looks like precious metals are on a steep decline. The article doesn't mention it but there is a chance investors are pulling their money out of silver and using it to invest in btc or crypto instead. Equities have been doing well but not nearly as well as crypto. Bitcoin could be a more attractive investment than equities at this point. I would feel bad if gold & silver are being abandoned. I know there are a lot of die hard precious metals suporters out there who would take a hit if that ever happened. |
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Bitcoin may be a bubble - so what?
If bitcoin is a bubble, the price of btc should fall significantly after the bubble pops. There would be a massive bust cycle to compliment the large boom cycle we've witnessed recently. That could be why its a relevent and sometimes hotly debated point. There are a lot of people were convinced bitcoin was a bubble after it hit $2,500. There's a chance the media is fooling people into believing btc is a bubble when its not, which could cause the price to decrease. Those are some of the main implications and circumstances surrounding it. To help put things into perspective, the 2008 economic crisis was caused by a housing/derivatives bubble bursting. A btc bubble wouldn't be nearly as damaging. But there could be some damage done. Sometimes it might be worth discussing bubbles, if it means those types of crisis can be averted. |
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The majority look at price history. To get an accurate indication of bitcoin's true price potential growth is the area that factors into the discussion the most. To say that bitcoin will never be valued above $1,000 is to say that bitcoin will never grow beyond a phase where its based solely in china. A large percentage of bitcoin's recent increase in valuation is tied to bitcoin growing in russia, australia, japan, africa the philippines & other nations. The increase in the size of bitcoin's userbase and rise in transaction/trading volume have also propelled bitcoin forward.
To put things into perspective, it might be accurate to say that bitcoin is still an infant. It hasn't reached adolescence yet. If it lives long enough to become an adult, its growth should be mirrored by an increase in value and price. Bitcoin is like a pokemon that is in its first or second evolution. It hasn't reached the final form which represents its peak yet.
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Peter Thiel – PayPal co-founder and billionaire venture capitalist, for a long time now has been a backer of the virtual currency Bitcoin. Thiel did again indicate out the ‘real potential’ of BTC at the Investment Initiative in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, pointing out that people are truly underestimating it.
Peter Thiel has long been one of the early proponents of Bitcoin. As early as 2013, he stated that Bitcoin has the potential to change the world. As one of the co-founders of PayPal, he recognized the ability of Bitcoin to revolutionize the monetary space. He had long held the view that monetary sovereignty’s time is limited and encrypted money would be the future. Earlier Peter Thiel did comment on how Bitcoin unlike PayPal, was really able to create a currency.
Bitcoin BTC could very well be the virtual gold of our time and replace it as a reserve currency – according to Peter Thiel. Many ‘similarities’ were compared between the two by Thiel like it is mineable and its limited supply.
“It’s like a reserve form of money, it’s like gold and it’s just a store of value. If Bitcoin ends up being the cyber equivalent of gold, it has a great potential left.”
On the other hand, Peter did not really have any enthusiastic feel about the other virtual assets and altcoins which could be discouraging for altcoin followers which have put their hopes for most part of the year on them.
While Peter Thiel is pretty bullish on the potential of Bitcoin, in Riyadh, a certain Saudi prince has a different view. Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the richest Arab in the world, believes that Bitcoin will implode like Enron. While Bitcoin trading is allowed in Saudi Arabia, the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority has warned people about the risks of investing in Bitcoin. The Middle East is a region teeming with billionaires and if Peter Thiel has managed to convince a few people to invest their oil-dollars in Bitcoin, the price of Bitcoin could receive a boost. http://ethereumworldnews.com/gold-yesterday-comes-bitcoin-reserve-currency/Tired of "is bitcoin is a bubble"? Now you can enjoy the wonders of "is bitcoin a reserve currency"? On a serious note, it is possible bitcoin could eventually become a reserve currency to replace gold. This paradigm could represent the natural evolution of cryptocoins with limited supply if it is established that limited supply and algorithmic based regulation are best methods to promote stability and long term value. Would be interested to know public opinion on this. Would people feel safer having bitcoin as a reserve currency than they would having fiat like the dollar or euro as reserve? |
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Khabib Nurmagomedov vs Edson Barboza.  Khabib Nurmagomedov vs. Edson Barboza targeted for UFC 219A monstrous lightweight matchup is being targeted for the UFC’s year-end show, as the previously discussed fight between top-ranked 155-pound contenders Khabib Nurmagomedov and Edson Barboza is currently in the works for Dec. 30 at UFC 219. Barboza announced the booking on Friday, however the fight has yet to be formally signed, according to sources. “I just got the news a few minutes ago that my next fight will be on Dec. 30 in Las Vegas against Khabib Nurmagomedov,” Barboza announced at a UFC Sao Paulo fan Q&A. “I’m really happy with this opportunity. It’s going to be a war." UFC 219 takes place at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. https://www.mmafighting.com/2017/10/27/16561696/khabib-nurmagomedov-vs-edson-barboza-targeted-for-ufc-219 I'm glad Khabib isn't retiring yet. He has had many injuries and was on the verge of retiring. Even Khabib's father said he wants him to retire, soon. I think I'm taking Derek Brunson over Lyoto Machida. Derek Brunson is similar to Phil Davis, except Brunson seems to have better punching power with more finishes and is more dangerous with his hands. Phil Davis vs Lyoto Machida was a close fight. There's a chance that Machida lost his power fighting at 185 pounds. It has been 3 years since he's hurt anyone with his strikes. Lyoto doesn't have Anderson Silva helping him train or prepare for fights anymore. I like to side against the person testing positive for PED's, too. |
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There are many comparisons drawn between bitcoin and gold. Some go so far as to label bitcoin as "gold 2.0".
It is possible that in the event of a stock market collapse bitcoin will behave similar to gold during past market collapses.
It is also possible that if the stock market crashes investors will look for investments other than stocks which could create a massive influx of bitcoin/crypto investment. This in turn could drive the price of btc, and crypto market caps, higher.
I haven't been following the stock market enough to think of a big crash other than 2008. There haven't been any big crashes that I know of since bitcoin's inception. If there is a crash: we will found out how btc/crypto reacts to stock market collapses.
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For anyone interested in seeing a counter argument to what OP posted, read this: The Curious Case of Bitcoin’s “Moby Dick” Spam and the Miners That Confirmed ItThe scaling debate has dominated the Bitcoin space for well over two years now. As a central issue, Bitcoin’s one-megabyte block size limit was often insufficient to include all transactions on the network. This ultimately led to the replacement of this block size limit for a block weight limit through Segregated Witness, allowing for up to four megabytes of transaction data. And a group of Bitcoin companies plans to deploy a hard fork to double this by November. But there is reason to believe the “crisis” may have been fabricated, at least partly. A recent analysis by “LaurentMT,” the developer of blockchain analytics tool OXT, in cooperation with Antoine Le Calvez, creator of Bitcoin statistics resource p2sh.info, shows that the Bitcoin network has had to deal with a load of spam transactions throughout the past two years. Now, in a three-part blog post series dubbing the spam attacks “Moby Dick,” their findings suggest that several major Bitcoin mining pools may have had a hand in this. “Six or seven pools have played a major role in stuffing blocks with spam transactions,” LaurentMT said. “And charts display what looks like a coordination between these pools.” The Spam SituationThe very concept of “spam” in the context of Bitcoin is sometimes disputed. Differentiating between “good” and “bad” transactions can be controversial on a network designed for permissionlessness innovation and censorship-resistant payments. But there is little doubt that certain transactions serve no other purpose than to stuff the Bitcoin network and blockchain. LaurentMT and Le Calvez more specifically define spam as transactions that send lots of tiny fractions of bitcoins to lots of different outputs (“addresses”). These kinds of transactions can’t feasibly have been used to make actual payments, while they do present a significant burden on the Bitcoin network: all nodes need to receive, validate, transmit and (at least temporarily) store all this data. The analysts found that the Bitcoin network has seen many transactions that fit this category: almost three gigabytes worth of data within a two-year span, adding up to more than 2 percent of the total size of the blockchain, or the equivalent of about a month’s worth of normal Bitcoin use. “We found that there were four waves of ‘fan-out transactions’ during summer 2015,” LaurentMT told Bitcoin Magazine, referring to the transactions that create lots of outputs. “We think that the first two waves were spamming users and services. The third and fourth waves instead mostly sent the fractions of bitcoins to addresses controlled by the attackers themselves.” These four waves of spam have been relatively easy to notice, as sudden bursts of transactions clogged up the Bitcoin network for brief periods of time. In some cases these spam attacks were even announced as “stress tests” or “bitcoin giveaways.” What’s more interesting about LaurentMT and Le Calvez’s analysis is that the two focused on the second half of the puzzle. Almost all the fractions of bitcoins that were sent to all these different addresses have slowly been re-spent back into circulation since. These “fan-in” transactions were not as obvious as the initial waves of spam — but were similarly burdensome. And, LaurentMT explained, blockchain analysis suggests that most of this spam can be tracked down to one or two entities: “We’ve identified two wallets that seem to have played a central role in the attacks. They’ve funded long chains of fan-out transactions during summer 2015, and they later aggregated the dust outputs.” The analysts also suggest that the perpetrator(s) of the spam may have been customers of the Canadian exchange QuadrigaCX. But that’s where their analysis stops. The Mining PoolsPerhaps what is more interesting is who used this spam to fill up Bitcoin blocks: Bitcoin mining pools. The spam outputs, generated by the first four waves of fan-out transactions, had been starting to move since autumn of 2015 — sort of. Whoever controlled these addresses had been broadcasting transactions to spend these outputs over the network. However, for a long time, miners did not include these “spam broadcasts” in their blocks; the transactions were ignored. Up until the second half of 2016, that is. At a very specific point in time, a group of seven mining pools started to suddenly accept these spam broadcasts and include them in the blocks they mined: 1-Hash, Antpool, BitClub Network, BTC.com, HaoBTC, KanoCKPool and ViaBTC. “So, either these seven pools had an ‘aha moment,’ and suddenly discovered that Bitcoin is about censorship resistance. Or, they had another motivation to fill up blocks with these transactions — perhaps related to the block size debate,” LaurentMT suggested. For more clues, LaurentMT and Le Calvez looked for notable events that happened around the time of the mining pools’ sudden change of heart. In their research, they did find some correlation with “strange” occurrences. The first is an open letter from HaoBTC (now rebranded as Bixin) to the Bitcoin Core development team. The second was a rumor about a group of Chinese pools planning to end their cooperation with Bitcoin Core: the Terminator Plan. Of course, something notable happens in Bitcoin just about every week. These events may well be coincidences and, therefore, there could be a very different explanation for the mining pools’ behavior, LaurentMT acknowledged: “An alternative explanation could be that the different mining pools adopted new mining policies for completely different reasons. I tend to think political motivations are more likely … but that’s just a personal opinion.” Bitcoin Magazine reached out to the seven mining pools in question. The only mining pool willing to comment on the issue was KanoCKPool, which denied being involved with any sort of manipulation or coordination, stating it just confirms “any and all transactions available.” UPDATE: After publication of this article (and on reading the comment from Kano CK Pool), LaurentMT pointed out that Kano CK Pool, along with 1Hash and Bitclub Network, are the only pools that had been confirming some of the spam transactions even before the second half of 2016, indicating that the pool could be telling the truth. For a full analysis of the “Moby Dick” spam, read LaurentMT and Le Calvez’s three-part blog post series: Part 1: https://medium.com/@laurentmt/good-whale-hunting-d3cc3861bd6bPart 2: https://medium.com/@laurentmt/when-moby-dick-meets-the-terminator-d014c315af85Part 3: https://medium.com/@laurentmt/the-canadian-connection-7f48cafe2369Or watch Le Calvez’s presentation at Breaking Bitcoin in Paris earlier this month. Source: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/curious-case-bitcoins-moby-dick-spam-and-miners-confirmed-it/[/quote] Previously posted here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2277787.0Maybe I should repost in this section where it might receive more traffic. This conflict has never really been about blockstream or segwit. It has more to do with miners wanting to replace core devs with puppet devs to give themselves development control over btc. |
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There's a school of thought known as "thermoeconomics" where the exchange of money is compared to energy being conducted with the 2nd law of thermodynamics and other observations or laws revolving around how these interactions occur being applied.
In attempting to analyze markets or economics, I like what Einstein said about his law of relativity. He said "energy can never be truly created nor destroyed, it can only change forms".
There may be a question of whether Einstein's quote on relativity can be applied to economics, markets or finance. Can money be truly created or destroyed or does it merely change forms? An as you call it "asymmetric monetary system" or system of debt where debt's are automatically paid and money is seemingly created or destroyed out of thin air could be relevent to this.
One perspective says printing an unlimited supply of money will decrease its value through heightened supply. There could be limits to the amount of cash a nation could create and possibly also a limit to the amount of cash a nation could destroy before suffering negative effects.
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