Shhh... No more tears.  |
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Your bear friend is looking for you...  |
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... I'm not disagreeing with you. My slant on this is the question is not what we believe, but how we act on those beliefs. Bitcoin, at the outset, rejected centralization. Individual miners using their spare CPU cycles to mine etc., etc. That's history. The real mining is done by megafarms, the remaining small miners point their rigs at megapools. Some don't even buy gear, just "invest" in "cloud mining." You gotta admit, already not much of the original decentralisation left. Miners don't care about the voice that they have, my guess is most wouldn't know how to go about using it. Empty concept. They distribute the risks--paying a central entity (pool) to increase the odds of having a steady paycheck. Bitcoiners invest in "Bitcoin banks" (NeoBee), no matter how absurd such a thing is. Bitcoiners ape *everything that we once wanted to leave behind*, including centralization. Christianity, and other utopias like Communism, are also all wonderful blueprints to live by--at the conceptual level. The problem is, just like Bitcoin, they tend to get corrupted, rot on exposure to IRL, and, eventually, become irrelevant. Tell me you can't already see this happening with Bitcoin  [/grumbling] TL;DR: All the signs are pointing to Bitcoin becoming progressively more centralized and, therefore, irrelevant. Sad but true. Important word= Competition , in this case between miners/new hardware operating on the network.... but also from ....... Other Cryptocurrency.... If Bitcoin for whatever reason falls out of favour, then the market can decide if it is now irrelevant, or not... if it is, and the free market is allowed to operate, then users and maybe miners, are free to decide and move on.... as long as the free market is allowed to make the decision, and there is no enforcement then either centralisation, or maybe more accurate specialisation can do its worse... OR Bitcoin, and the network will solve the problem (free miners dished out with aount of BTC, dual use technologies, or even a hardfork to render farms useless idk but not the point) Point is if the free market is allowed to operate, then consumers/users get to decide, and then the market will do , what the market wil do.. and with it the Bitcoin price. Free market is a tautology. It is not Fairy Godmother. Free market doesn't magically make good stuff succeed and bad stuff fail. Unless you believe in the Lizard People, free market is responsible* for every economic system on Earth, including those with central planning, exorbitant taxation and draconian regulations. TL;DR: Saying "free market will decide" is saying "whatever will be will be"--NOT interesting.
*If only by failing to prevent. |
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The Bitcoin applications and their security can (and will eventually) exhibit the same amount of security (or lack thereof) as those tied in with the banking system. That part is obvious, because the Bitcoin protocol doesn't address the security of this layer in any way.
... I'm wondering if that's the only way of seeing the problem. I agree with the above, but... ...the security of conventional banking applications is not the only security layer for the end users of those applications.Case in point: If my bank's ATM or webportal gets hax0rd, I don't lose a cent. If that happens with my Bitcoin wallet/app, I do. True. But this falls (imo) under my 2nd point then: security through central authority. In other words: if the ATM is hacked, you don't lose funds because you are not the de facto only owner of your funds (in the way that you are with extremely high likelihood the only owner of your funds if you are holding the private keys to you bitcoins). The same mechanism that prevents you from losing funds if the ATM is hacked (or a bank is robbed) however also enables an even higher authority to take (parts of) your funds during a banking crisis bail-in or through inflation. Which is why I said in my post: we will eventually come back to first principles. Do we believe that a central authority protects us from harm more often than it causes harm to us. I am okay with agreeing to disagree on this point. I'm not disagreeing with you. My slant on this is the question is not what we believe, but how we act on those beliefs. Bitcoin, at the outset, rejected centralization. Individual miners using their spare CPU cycles to mine etc., etc. That's history. The real mining is done by megafarms, the remaining small miners point their rigs at megapools. Some don't even buy gear, just "invest" in "cloud mining." You gotta admit, already not much of the original decentralisation left. Miners don't care about the voice that they have, my guess is most wouldn't know how to go about using it. Empty concept. They distribute the risks--paying a central entity (pool) to increase the odds of having a steady paycheck. Bitcoiners invest in "Bitcoin banks" (NeoBee), no matter how absurd such a thing is. Bitcoiners ape *everything that we once wanted to leave behind*, including centralization. Christianity, and other utopias like Communism, are also all wonderful blueprints to live by--at the conceptual level. The problem is, just like Bitcoin, they tend to get corrupted, rot on exposure to IRL, and, eventually, become irrelevant. Tell me you can't already see this happening with Bitcoin [/grumbling] TL;DR: All the signs are pointing to Bitcoin becoming progressively more centralized and, therefore, irrelevant. Sad but true. |
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...helicopters were not black at all, but rgb(6,6,6).
^Exoskeleton shill confirmed. Ignored. Mammals! Don't believe the hype! 6,6,6 is about as black as it gets!  |
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^No one cares...  BWAHAHA<twists mustache> |
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I'm wondering if that's the only way of seeing the problem. I agree with the above, but...
...the security of conventional banking applications is not the only security layer for the end users of those applications.
Case in point:
If my bank's ATM or webportal gets hax0rd, I don't lose a cent. If that happens with my Bitcoin wallet/app, I do.
All of these advantages will seems less significant when the government or bank determine that you can't withdraw from your account for a while, or that a part of them ' is just gone, because russian hackers, muhahaha', or that 40 year worth of world-wide GDP are to being introduced into the economy at once. "Black Helicopters Flown By Lizard People" is an entirely different argument. We're not talking 'bout that stuff now--just mundane shit like security. *I, for one, welcome our Reptilian Overlords. |
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you've been brainwashed!
That's because he hadn't changed the tinfoil in his hat regularly, like he should have. |
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The Bitcoin applications and their security can (and will eventually) exhibit the same amount of security (or lack thereof) as those tied in with the banking system. That part is obvious, because the Bitcoin protocol doesn't address the security of this layer in any way.
... I'm wondering if that's the only way of seeing the problem. I agree with the above, but... ...the security of conventional banking applications is not the only security layer for the end users of those applications.Case in point: If my bank's ATM or webportal gets hax0rd, I don't lose a cent. If that happens with my Bitcoin wallet/app, I do. |
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ITT: We bitch about JorgeStolfi's manipulative appeal to authority ...
The reason that I referred to Jorge's "professor" status in a snarky way is because it does (and should) NOT matter whether one is a professor or a snotty nosed 5 year old in order to post decent ideas in this forum.... ...because he stuck his PhuD in our faces ...
In the beginning, he displayed his credentials rather prominently in his posts...
...we learn that he didn't ...
If so, I was wrong.
...so now we want him to ...
are you tenured prof?
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...
The reason that I referred to Jorge's "professor" status in a snarky way is because it does (and should) NOT matter whether one is a professor or a snotty nosed 5 year old in order to post decent ideas in this forum. ... It should not matter, but it do. This crowd lusts for authorities--I keep reading posts appealing to names I should know but have to Google, like "NeoBee can't be a scam U hater--Mr. Snuffleupagus called it an excellent investment!!1!" I mean, Reptilia validates his confinement-worthy prognostications with "If I'm wrong, then how come I managed to buy the ruins of an abandoned mental hospital in the middle of nowhere a castle? Hmm?" So yeah... |
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^Then we pretty much agree on everything, but it was fun thinking that we didn't  *had too many tabs open, bitcoinwisdom somehow switched to Huobi (usually never do). Noticed "30" next to the favicon and almost... Gah! |
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The reason why deflationary money has not been used is that there is no such thing.
Price deflation arises from economy at function. When economy is doing bad, prices rise. If economy is doing good, prices fall.
Wrong and wrong. By "deflationary money" I, and the people I am talking with, mean "supply-side deflation." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflation#Money_supply_side_deflationBitcoin will be such a currency once the last coin is mined and the first paper wallet is lost. Price deflation (and inflation) arises from many factors, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflation . If the economy is doing well, prices can rise if more money is introduced. If yesterday you were able to buy one pig, and today you're able to buy two, you're doing better regardless of how many tokens the pigs cost you. This is basic and shouldn't need to be explained. TL;DR: Rising prices != failing economy; falling prices != thriving economy. |
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it's pretty funny how many people talk about the hypothetical problem of deflationary currency, even though we have never really used deflationary currency.
While at the same time you never hear anyone complain about the problems of an economy based on exponential inflation. Like the earth can sustain exponential growth.
We never used deflationary money for the same reason we didn't colonize Mars in hot air balloons: It doesn't work. And yes, many do complain about inflationary money. Heck, you are are doing it now |
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re: deflationary currency. Don't be mistaken, I'm not brushing aside the complexities of the issue. I do however claim that, current economical orthodoxy considers central bank guided inflationary currencies the de facto optimum. Agreed with that statement? Not that they're optimal, but that the vast majority of economists seem to consider fixed supply currencies broken beyond repair.
I agree that most economists consider inflationary currency optimal. I suppose, in a sense, that makes them the orthodoxy. "Orthodoxy" sounds a bit odd to me. In my mind the word is linked with religious orthodoxy--inflexibility, unwillingness to adapt, resistance to new ideas--"crusty." Your usage makes Evolutionary biology today's orthodoxy, and Creationism ...what? More of a feelsy peeve than an objection. My point is not that a deflationary currency is necessarily better (sorry PMers), but that it will be an interesting experiment in about 100 years from now to see if modern economical development is really impossible with a deflationary currency (if Bitcoin does indeed become a major factor in global finance in the future).
Bitcoin is already an amazing experiment. No way to overstate this. Re. "[is] economical development ... impossible with a deflationary currency": It's not a binary thing (just stressing this, I doubt you meant to say it was). Better questions: Is deflationary currency optimal for economic growth? Is the type of economic growth likely to happen with deflationary currency optimal for society? Is economic growth a prerequisite or even a measure of society's worth/wellbeing? re: Linux. Wasn't the point who is using it. We were talking price. (and I'm sure you know this, but while consumers barely use Linux, the Internet infrastructure relies heavily on it.)
The point is for many companies, initial savings of going with *nix (initial cost being nothing) are countered by higher overheads of using it. If I'm paying my guy $70/hr to do X, and it takes him a few minutes less to do it on a winbox, I recoup the licence cost in a day. This does not mean that my company won't be using Linux, but it won't replace Windows. I'd love to maximize profit, but going with freeware/shareware to the exclusion of rapeware isn't the way to do it.* This is relevant to Bitcoin and fiat because OMG the parallels. *Hypothetical, I'm not paying anyone to do X. Edit: ...
Not to mention that, in terms of divisibility, until digital currencies came along, with decimal places that could be extended out, a deflationary currency wasn't practically implementable past a certain point. Physical currencies can only be split so much into smaller units, printed, and distributed, to maintain liquidity.
You know that old money is destroyed, and new printed/coined regularly, right? Here's how we deal with divisibility in fiat: For every dollar bill we destroy, we print 10 decidollars. For every penny we destroy, we mint 10 decicents(I know, but it sounds right:)). And sneak in a few extras because baker's dozen and inflation. Problem solved! |
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..."OMG, a deflationary currency can NEVER work!" argument...
I don't think you're presenting the argument against deflationary currencies in the best light [smiley]. It is an argument that predates Bitcoin by at least a century, and one at the root of *every economy on Earth.* Not just the orthodoxy. At least what I know of it has nothing to do with tx fees. ...tx fees after emission is done will gravitate towards: total cost of running network * share of current transaction of total transactions on network, plus a small premium to make it worth miners time and effort. I don't see this as ever being more costly than current commercial payment providers, similarly to how there is no cheaper operating system than, say, Linux.
Considering that today's cost of running the network is around the value of all the coins mined, I see no reason to make this assumption. Re. "no cheaper operating system than, say, Linux": Why do you suppose major corporations use Windoze? Stupid? Like Bill? Don't care about profits? |
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Perhaps, or miners will shut off for lack of profits until the transaction fees are sufficient to sustain the hashrate. Whether that hashrate will then remain resilient against attack is an open question. IIRC, Satoshi's vision had institutions with vested interest in BTC providing hashing power to secure their investment, not to gain profits from transaction fees directly.
What sort of institutions?  Kidding, but if you mean "invisible to the end user (consumer)," credit cards do that. |
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Let me quote the points which you consider to be on topic, since you have listed them in your first post. ...
it's new (still)
Meh. 2009. Not sure how this is either a plus or a minus. Dogecoin is newer  it's deflationary (!!!)
As others have pointed out, that's not currently true. The coin mined by the miners is inflation, many times that of US dollar inflation. Bitcoin will not become deflationary until 2140, when the last coin is mined. In other words, so wrong it's embarrassing (!!!) the demand is growing
... I have already responded: ... If the demand is growing faster than the supply, the price increases. That is one of the most fundamental concepts in economics, and the basic tenet of free market economy. Not all economy, mind you. Not planned economies like Soviet Russia, for instance. Are you a Communist, Comrade?  Is there anything topical I have missed? |
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^If I understand him correctly, jjdub7 is suggesting that, on top of managing AM, Friedcat is also taking care of our Bitcoin--by keeping as much of it out of your hands (and, consequently, off the market) as he can.
Not being invested in AM, I applaud that (if true).
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