Safe? I bought silver a few years back at around $40. It went up a little from there but then the bubble popped. I managed to dump mine at $34, which made me happy because at least I wasn't holding on to it as it dropped below $20. Now where is it? Gold has recovered since then but silver still has a way to go.


The world is constantly changing. If there no reason for a 40-to-1 ratio, then there is no justification for believing that it will ever return to 40-to-1.

It's like the GBTC discount. There is nothing forcing its price to align with the price of BTC, so there is no reason to believe that the discount will go away. If the situation changes, then perhaps we will return to the status quo.

But at this point it is just wishful thinking, for both GBTC and silver.

Gold has not lived up to its role as an inflation hedge. Prices have risen about 25% over the last 10 years, but the price of gold is the same as it was 10 years ago despite that inflation.

I believe it is due to the falling demand for gold.

Only tradition has supported demand after the gold standard was finally abandoned in 1971. As time goes by, that tradition will continue to fade and people will have less desire to hold gold as an asset. Its falling value will also cause a reduction in demand by central banks, and that will eventually result in the abandonment of gold as a purely financial asset.

I decided all of this recently, and I plan to sell my gold as I don't see prices ever going up from here.

Here are my responses, but seeing how much people disagree, I don't think anyone cares.

There are generally two ways to describe inflation/deflation.

• The more common definition these days is the change in prices. The benefit is that it is a much more practical definition. It describes what people see. The problem is that it is result of many factors and that makes it difficult to measure and impossible to control.
• The other is simply the change in the amount of the money supply. The benefit of this definition is its simplicity and its preciseness. The problem is that its real world prices are not predictable because of the many other factors that affect prices.

Question: Regarding the premise, is Bitcoin deflationary?

Bitcoin's money supply follows a schedule. It increases over time but the rate slows over time until it reaches 0. Whether you are measuring inflation/deflation by changes in prices or changes in the money supply, the effect is inflationary until the rate of creation is exceeded by the rate of loss, at which point it becomes deflationary. If you disregard loss (because it can't be measured), then the effect goes from inflationary to disinflationary instead.

Assertion: Bitcoin's annual inflation rate is ~5%.

Bitcoin's inflation rate as measured by the change in the money supply drops as the total supply increases and the subsidy is halved. At this moment, the annualized inflation rate is 6.25 btc per block / 19190512 btc * 52596 blocks per year = 1.71%. As measured by the change in prices, the inflation rate is simply the change in the value of a fiat currency in terms of BTC plus that fiat currencies inflation rate. I'm not going to calculate that because Bitcoin's price is too volatile.

Assertion: Deflation is when supply reduces over time. It is not a finite supply metric.

As I wrote above, there are two ways to define inflation/deflation.

Assertion: Bitcoin's divisibility will solve demand issues.

If the issue is that there is not enough bitcoins to go around, then I just have to point out that there are 2100000000000000 satoshis -- 100 times the world base money supply in USD. As afar as dust goes, the Lightning Network solves that problem.

Assertion: Bitcoin is neither deflationary nor inflationary.

It depends on how you define inflation/deflation, whether you disregard loss, and whether you are referring to now or in the future.

Debate: Has Bitcoin shifted to store-of-value over being a medium of exchange or unit of account?

Bitcoin has aspects of all three. It isn't one or the other. In order to be a store of value, there must be some source of value and that source is the value as a medium of exchange. In order to be a medium of exchange, Bitcoin must be a store of value because there must be value to exchange. In order to be a unit of account, the value must be stable. The stability comes from Bitcoin's ability to store value and be exchanged.

Reasons "why" deflation is an admirable feature:

Deflation is not an admirable feature. It causes just as many problems as inflation. High deflation is just as bad as high inflation. In the optimal scenario, there would be no inflation or deflation. The benefit of Bitcoin in this case is that nobody can manipulate the money supply for their own benefit.

Of course there is some diffraction, but it is negligible in this case. The fuzziness of the shadows that we see are caused by the apparent size of the sun. I don't doubt your microwave diffraction experience, but the the wavelength of visible light is 400 - 700 nm and the wavelength of microwaves is 150000000 - 300000000 nm. That difference in wavelengths has a huge effect on diffraction.

Try this: view a shadow of yourself on a wall when lit with a larger source like a lightbulb and when lit by a smaller source like a phone's flash, both at the same distance. You will see a difference due to the change in the the size of the light.

Ask any photographer and they will tell you that the size of the light determines the softness of the shadows.

Sorry, the fuzziness of a shadow is not caused by diffraction. The edges are fuzzy because the sun is not a point. A solar eclipse, which is the shadow of the moon on the earth, demonstrates the effect well. In the fuzzy part of the moon's shadow, you see see a partial eclipse.

This is the appropriate wikipedia article: Umbra, penumbra and antumbra

My guess is that his wife has them.

Off-topic, but it is amusing to me how often scrypt and script are confused.

I suppose it is possible in theory. but step 3 is a problem because the exploit would have to be in Bitcoin's messaging protocol, which does not have a very big attack surface.

You did waste my time. I was looking or an explanation on why Bitcoin would never be a unit of account and found a bunch of nonsense. E=mc²? Really?

Those articles are not accurate.

Japanese law only makes it legal to use cryptocurrencies for payment. It does not require anyone to accept cryptocurrencies.

Germany declared Bitcoin as a "unit of account" and "private money", but not as "legal tender".

I guess it comes down to your definition of "legal tender". In the U.S., "legal tender" means it must be accepted for payments of debt, taxes, and dues. In El Salvador, not only is Bitcoin "legal tender" by that definition, but it must also be accepted for payments (when possible).

My understanding is that the meaning of "Sybil Attack" is more specific than what you are describing. It is a way to get around a per-identity limitation by creating multiple identities.

As far as I know, there are no explicit per-identity limitations in Bitcoin, so I don't think Bitcoin is vulnerable to any kind of Sybil attack.

The idea of creating a large number of nodes to control the information sent to other nodes is called an "Eclipse attack".

Here is an example of a hypothetical Sybil attack against Bitcoin. Many people have naively suggested that to prevent any one miner from getting more than 51% of the hash rate, we would simply limit the miner's contributions. The obvious evasion is a Sybil attack. The miner would to split their identity into multiple separate identities who all belong to the same miner. The individual identities would be limited, but the miner would not.

There are plenty of examples of Sybil attacks outside of Bitcoin and cryptography. Creating fake voters to influence the outcome of an election is a Sybil attack. Creating fake users to boost product reviews and reputation scores are Sybil attacks.

Also, blockchair.com decode Omni transactions. Go here: https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/transaction/1104f8c17d7d03772e31e142e5f9311aaa0ec50c11d83e8799c15f660da9356b

If you send USDT over bitcoin (via Omni, if that is still a thing) you can't see the amount on a Bitcoin blockchain explorer.

My understanding that the threats to a wallet on a phone generally don't come from the browser or email. They come from downloaded apps.

As others have mentioned, fingerprint and face recognition locks are not as secure as passwords and pins.

I am not a tax expert, but my understanding (I have been dealing with this for years now) is that moving or withdrawing money or coins is not a taxable event. However, selling or converting coins, including USDT, is a taxable event. The conversion is considered as capital gains or losses.

That is odd. The same email published elsewhere shows this:

The federal Reserve intends to continue raising interest rates until inflation declines or employment is severely impacted. A lower unemployment rate indicates higher inflation and means that employment is not impacted. So, the Federal Reserve is more likely to continue raising interest rates.

A rising interest rate ...

• 1. reduces demand for non-income-producing assets.
• 2. lowers the net present value of an asset.
• 3. causes a stronger dollar and lowers the value of assets when measured in dollars.

These three effects of rising interest rates cause the price of a bitcoin to fall.

The block chain is the "ledger". A miner collects new transactions and places them into a block. These transactions have been "added to the ledger" when the block is added to the block chain.

In addition to the new transactions, the miner is paid by including a transaction that sends the block reward to an address. This is called the "coinbase" transaction. Just like every other transaction, the coinbase transaction "added to the ledger" when the block is added to the block chain.

You must provide more context. Where do these come from?

Here is what the DER-encoded private key decodes to:

I'm just going to park my car on these railroad tracks. What could go wrong?