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1  Economy / Economics / Re: Inflation and Deflation of Price and Money Supply on: August 10, 2014, 06:23:57 PM
Can anybody explain to me why, in an environment in which BTC is expected to appreciate further, anybody would use their BTC to spend?


For example, if I have 10 BTC, I can use that to buy something worth $5,000 today (just making numbers up). However, if I wait until it goes up, I can use my 10 BTC to buy something worth $10,000 a month from now.

Because I'm expecting the value of my holdings to appreciate rather rapidly, as many in the BTC community are, a rational person would hold rather than spend their BTC.

However, if everybody is under the assumption that BTC is still undervalued, everybody will hold their BTC in anticipation of further appreciation.

But because the value of a BTC depends on how many people are using BTC each day, and how large their spending is, nobody will be spending BTC. This will either cause the BTC ecosystem to collapse (if their was an economy that only used BTC), or the value of BTC to collapse.

I'm sure it has been addressed, but I skimmed through this thread and didn't see much. Thanks again for the help.
2  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: Will Bitcoin ever be more than a 'fringe' asset? on: June 07, 2014, 02:54:38 AM
I guess it depends on if you're talking about Bitcoin itself or crypto's in general.

I could see a situation in which a basket of like the top 10 biggest cryptos could make a good addition to an investment portfolio, particularly because of their unique price behavior, which could actually potentially reduce risk in a portfolio.

I could also see, as more billions come online, the need for some kind of cryptocurrency. But a lot of the explanations offered so far are unabashedly optimistically biased - in reality, they aren't wrong, but things just aren't so certain. In my opinion.
3  Economy / Economics / Re: Beginner Tips on Investing in Bitcoin? on: May 19, 2014, 08:02:06 AM
ITT: everybody talking their own book
4  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: Why Does the US Military Think Bitcoin Is a Terrorist Threat? on: May 19, 2014, 07:57:32 AM
And, by the way, preventing money laundering is one of the easiest and most effective ways of reducing terrorism.
Only if you use intellectually dishonest definitions of "terrorism".

The terrorist organization which has harmed more innocent people than any other currently-existing organization in the world is the US DoD.

OK since I can already tell we probably won't find common ground, let's just use drug traffickers as a stand-in in the example.
5  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: Why Does the US Military Think Bitcoin Is a Terrorist Threat? on: May 18, 2014, 11:55:54 PM
It's possible that it could be used by terrorists to transfer value around. But honestly at this point I highly doubt it, and I would expect most groups to have some sort of network between countries where they can exchange money. I know there is a massive non-terror related network for transferring money throughout the muslim world already.

You're thinking of something called a hawala network, and those are (probably) way more closely monitored by US intel than BTC currently is. I definitely understand why people are upset the US military is monitoring BTC, but at least it's really nothing more than par for the course. It doesn't seem like they have anything against BTC in particular, just kind of the idea of something unmonitored that can be used to launder money. And, by the way, preventing money laundering is one of the easiest and most effective ways of reducing terrorism. Just saying.
6  Economy / Economics / Re: Beginner Tips on Investing in Bitcoin? on: May 17, 2014, 09:15:22 PM
Why use abstract and vague rules of trading, they are so easy.

1) Identify the main trend, if it's a bearish or bullish one.

2) Trade accordingly, avoiding to trade against it. The trend is your friend.

3) Don't think the price is already very low and that it's time to buy. Prices can always go even lower.

4) Be careful guessing tops and bottoms. If you were wrong, jump out and assume the loss, instead of converting your move on a long-term one. If you insist in keeping them, avoid buying more to lower the median price, that is a recipe for disaster.

5) I know it goes against all the rules you learned on life (it's a violation of the rule of demand, that says that demand lowers when the price goes up), but don't think the price is too high to buy, unless it's clearly temporarily overbought or it was a fake breach of  a resistance. If it's on a bullish trend, the probability that it will keep going up is higher than the opposite. So, many times, buying higher has more sense than buying lower. Ex. I have little doubt that if bitcoin breaches clearly the 1156 top on bitstamp it will keep going up.

6) The rule is not to buy low and sell high. Buying an active on a bearish trend, going lower and lower, is a disaster. If the active is in a bulish trend, the rule can even be buy high and sell higher.

The hard thing isn't to identify the rules, but to follow them!



Though these are generally good trading rules, he asked about investing, not really day trading... with investments things like liquidity concerns make some of those rules somewhat irrelevant.
7  Economy / Economics / Re: Beginner Tips on Investing in Bitcoin? on: May 17, 2014, 05:11:13 PM
Learn so much that you can convince yourself not to invest at all. Then maybe you're close to being ready to invest.

it doesnt make sense

I think he means play devil's advocate with oneself.  Learn about all of the potential things that could go wrong.... Government intervention, wallet theft, inflation, competing currencies, and so on.

Exactly. You make money in markets by not losing it. You don't lose it by controlling risk. To control risk, you need to be aware of the knowable risks involved.
8  Economy / Economics / Re: Jim Rickards' New Book "The Death of Money", Review on: May 16, 2014, 11:42:23 PM
We could write thousands of pages of discussion about this, but I try not to spend my time like this, sorry. I was already a bit pissed at myself for making that last post so long.

You are of another opinion, and that's cool. Your last link was interesting, hadn't seen that one before.

True, no worries. Thanks for the good discussion.


Im just going past halfway of the book. So far, another good read. I was probably more gripped by currency wars as much of the content was new to me back then.

But anyway, I really liked the few pages discussing negative rates. The true bastardry comes in the harmless sounding terms 'QE' and Op Twist and all these other easy to digest soundbite names; at heart they are deliberate policies designed to sipher your money via inflation.

This is actually quite sickening. While destroying savers and the wealth of the regular joe was previously done by bank laws on deposit rates, it now just does it a little more subtly.

And therein lies a damn good reason to be in bitcoin.

Where is the QE-caused inflation, or really inflation at all? If you don't believe official stats then use MIT Billion Price Index, or something else. Unless you try to come up with somewhat technical excuses, it's just not there. Please provide data.
9  Economy / Economics / Re: Jim Rickards' New Book "The Death of Money", Review on: May 15, 2014, 04:53:57 PM

Alright, well clearly you have some radical opinions on this. Can you provide any backing for what you just said? That was an incredibly bold statement. Which research / set of facts led you to this conclusion? It seems like you've said anybody who worked in that industry "wouldn't know about it anyways" or something along those lines. I just don't understand how that can be.

I think if there is somebody more qualified than Bernanke, Yellen, etc. it is of the utmost importance that we find them and make sure they are in the right position.

My opinion is only considered radical in the real world, but on this board, I think a lot of posters would agree.

Nothing against academics who have actually worked in economy. What I was talking about are the pure academics, who prove again and again they can just draw pretty graphs on a blackboard and tell you about theory beautifully, but they can't manage anything in reality.

Examples:

We have had 5,5 years of unprecedented money creation and ridiculously low interest rates. The US money supply is many times as high as a couple of years ago (just google "US money supply" images for graphs), yet the economy is tanking (it is, don't believe what the mainstream media is telling you). But the FED keeps on doing what they are doing. What would you have said 7 years ago if someone told you interest rates would be kept near 0 for many years (many more to come) and the money supply quadrupled or whatever? You would have declared them insane.

That's where we are living now, in an insane economic reality.

So I think it's fair to say that something isn't optimal here and Ben isn't the genius Time Magazine made him look like when they gave him their "Person of the Year" cover...

Yellen admitted herself she had no clue about the bursting bubble of 2007/2008 and didn't see it coming.

Unfortunately, the right people will never be in the right position there, because they are not in the sheltered realm of politics, but out there in the real world. And also, it can be a very unpleasant thing to face the truth sometimes...

If I was president, I would make Peter Schiff or somebody like him Fed chairman, ha ha!

Another example: I was discussing inflation with so many friends who had studied economy, and they all seemed to believe the official inflation numbers. They had learned about this stuff for years, but couldn't even keep their eyes open for price changes at the supermarket. One good friend of mine, a clever guy, said he would ask his professor about this. A couple of weeks later we talked again and of course he told me his professor had assured him the official numbers are correct.

I don't even want to get into what happened when I told my friends about the massive gold price suppression (which is a proven fact), ha ha...

I have seen it again and again... those are just a couple of examples.

You seem pretty new to this way of thinking, you can check out websites like zerohedge.com, if you are interested. You get a lot of info there the mass media would never tell you...


Base money is not money supply, it seems like you're confusing the two.

When does working "in the economy" inform your macroeconomic decisions? Like I said, complete and totally different things. This is like saying you need to know arcane technical requirements to be a superior general in wartime. Sure, some things can help, but grand unified strategy and leading a military would be totally different than what is required of an individual soldier on the ground.

You also didn't really show me how the economy was deteriorating, and expected me to trust your claims despite no proof being provided and directly contradicting what lots of hard data show.

Why are low interest rates and changes in the base money considered so "crazy"? You kind of made a logical jump there.

How does it work that you would probably use the laws of supply/demand to justify lots of these positions, but when your "supply" goes up (in your equation, not mine) nothing happens to value? Has the supply of money really increased, or is the monetary system more complex than that?

I actually "grew up" on ZeroHedge, thanks for the recommendation. I like it - it is thought provoking and frequently addresses things that many other people don't. I was able to learn quite a great deal from that website, but ultimately that site taught me so much about how to think about things that I now realize the huge flaws in it. Why is ZeroHedge so consistently wrong or incorrect? You claim the CPI is invalid, but how do you reconcile that with this? http://www.pricestats.com/us-series
10  Economy / Economics / Re: Jim Rickards' New Book "The Death of Money", Review on: May 15, 2014, 03:48:29 AM
Thanks for the answer, I think your approach actually makes some sense. I still think the macroeconomy can be managed somewhat well for a complex adaptive system, but like you said, who knows. That being said, I think it's very prone to <b>mis</b>management. If you don't know what's what, you are probably going to make things a lot worse. On that front, I think Bernanke is brilliant, and think formal education (in a university setting, in a professional setting, etc.) is all but necessary (with maybe the occasional exception).
11  Economy / Economics / Re: Jim Rickards' New Book "The Death of Money", Review on: May 15, 2014, 02:32:08 AM
He is probably talking about self bias.   A university is part of the government system it then intends to study.   We could argue education is independent but the amount of money put out by government and the large amounts spent by universities I think puts them into a mutual relationship.    I think Timothy Geithner, Ben Bernanke and BHO have between them one years experience in the real world of business unfunded by taxes and yet they spent trillions with their high qualification and almost zero experience

Quote
clearly you have some radical opinions on this
Whats radical now used to count as common sense

I suppose he would have a good point on that front, but I still think that ultimately universities and corporations are very competitive and very decentralized, so it would require a global front to unify economists and get them on the same page for n amount of time. n being forever, in this case.

I guess I would shutup when somebody could tell me what running a business (microeconomy) has to do with stabilizing the global economy (macroeconomy). The problem, in my mind, is this hugely flawed idea that "countries work like households." Would you at least agree that this is probably where we're ultimately differing?
12  Economy / Economics / Re: IRS says mining is "income" (40% tax) instead of cap. gains (20% tax) on: May 15, 2014, 02:14:28 AM

http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical-fallacies/97-faulty-comparison
13  Economy / Economics / Re: IRS says mining is "income" (40% tax) instead of cap. gains (20% tax) on: May 15, 2014, 02:04:38 AM
The IRS can go fuck them selves, Absolutely anyone trying to "tax" bitcoin mining income can go fuck themselves.
It's intolerable and just plain screwed up.
Anyone trying to do such a thing is basically saying "lets send all bitcoin miners offshore to centralized could hashing facilities that can be easily shut down in comparison"

Fuck Right Off, All bitcoiners should stand up with the middle finger to the IRS about this.
I am Canadian... *crosses arms* I am willing to fight a war over this and give my life to defend the future from tyranny
No government should be allowed to "tax" an income source that they have Nothing to do with.

........well good thing the IRS isn't trying to tax you
14  Economy / Economics / Re: Jim Rickards' New Book "The Death of Money", Review on: May 15, 2014, 01:58:32 AM
So just out of curiosity, how many people here have formally studied debt? (Economics, finance majors / grads, credit traders, etc.?)

Not me.

But the people sitting at university teaching theory have no idea about the real economy anyways (see Bernanke, etc...). It's not about having formally studied this. 

Alright, well clearly you have some radical opinions on this. Can you provide any backing for what you just said? That was an incredibly bold statement. Which research / set of facts led you to this conclusion? It seems like you've said anybody who worked in that industry "wouldn't know about it anyways" or something along those lines. I just don't understand how that can be.

I think if there is somebody more qualified than Bernanke, Yellen, etc. it is of the utmost importance that we find them and make sure they are in the right position.
15  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: What are the biggestest threats to Bitcoin? on: May 15, 2014, 01:48:42 AM
If governments end up really deciding they want crypto's gone... they're gone. That's my bet at least.


Music: Napster sued by Metallica. Bigass congressional hearing over Metallica tunes being shared for free online. (Really, Lars? Really? Took 2 days to download a three minute song on dial up and you felt violated?) Ripping music CDs and P2P music sharing pissed off government and music industry corporations, and some artists. Fear mongering: ZOMG!! You're stealing from Metallica! Courtney Love, of all people, wrote a fabulous 5 page essay/commentary on the thievery of the record labels and supported *decentralization* of the industry.

And lo, record labels either adapted and learned to accept people, when given a choice between paying 30 bucks for a CD of crap they might not even like, most of which went to the label and not the band, and P2Ping any given tune for free and eventually making micro payments for what they wanted, they all chose option B.

And the government AND corporations lost to the people choosing decentralization of the music industry.

Movies: MPAA and RIAA decided the pirates were costing (them) billions. Bigass congressional hearing over it and various assorted one hit wonder actors testifying about how hard done by they were to be losing all those royalties when people illegally download/stream their movies. Then came the fear mongers and threats...we will find you and kill you!...or, find a 13 year old and make an example of him when we sue him for 49.2 billion dollars for all the movies he jacked from Pirate Bay. And let's go stop Pirate Bay! And China!

TPB came back better than ever with renewed P2P numbers and now there are all kinds of streaming freebie sites to watch anything and everything absolutely free - right alongside Netflix...because given a choice between paying 60 bucks to go to a crowded (or empty) theater and put up with idiots kicking the seat, yapping, or the kids crying, or the $12 box of popcorn, and jacking the same movie for free online, or watching their favorite tv series/shows free online, the people chose to cancel their cable tv subscriptions and haven't stepped foot in a theater in years.

And the government AND the movie studios lost to the people choosing decentralization of the movie industry and the television networks who caved and signed deals with online movie houses who charge a fraction of a movie ticked for unlimited viewing.

Books: Big name publishing houses set the rules by which any of us ever see an author's work. They had sole authority to determine who was worthy of being published and who was rejected. Until someone figured out a way to digitize books and then Amazon came along and opened up self publishing. Out came all the fear mongering and law suits. ZOMG! You're stealing food off the tables of starving authors! And self publishing? Anyone can PIRATE YOUR STUFF and you lose money!

And the government AND the publishing houses made examples of various "unscrupulous" authors faking reviews and whatnot, and held hearings on digital content prices and media harped that nobody would ever take self published authors seriously, nor would anyone choose a computer device to read on in place of real books.

And the government AND publishing houses lost to the people choosing decentralization and the ability to publish and create and own 100% of their work...so the publishing houses either adapt and promote digital format options or they go out of business.

Same for the video game industry, the electric companies, the telecom industry, and every other industry that has been controlled by corporations backed by government enforcers.

In the end, it doesn't matter what the government wants because the government isn't an entity. It's a conglomeration of smaller agencies made up of people with self interests over business interests at the end of the day and they also have a choice to support a dying currency in a weak economy or an alternative with much more security and potential for much wealth...

Bitcoin is doing and experiencing the same, exact "conflict of interest" and "threat" from the same two "entities" - government AND corporations (banks included) who have a vested interest in NOT making the USD worse than it is already...but the people have seen the reality of incompetence, corruption and psychosis of those "in charge" and are quite willing to look closer at THE ALTERNATIVE to USD.

Not everybody jumped on the internet/email/website/doing business online bandwagon the first half dozen years. Tons of people vowed it was a fad that nobody would take seriously - in the face of mega corporations, banks, and agencies moving business online. It was beating them in the face and still they hollered fad, nobody's gonna do all that, it's too hard.


Government can make all the laws it wants about bitcoin, same as they made all the laws they wanted with pirating movies, music, books, and games, or trying to regulate solar panels to pacify the electric companies who'd lose business to el sol...but ones the P2P genie is let out of the bottle, the government can't enforce a damn thing...they can't afford to pay enough people who have the technological capacity to do anything other than go after a few people to use as examples...Mt Gox may as well be Napster. May have gone out of business, but P2P music sharing is stronger than ever...

Government can outlaw it, which will only reinforce the black market. They can't enforce it anymore than the government can "turn off the internet".

Just a matter of time before the money thrown at the infrastructure gets things stable enough for Joe Blow to easily grab some bitcoin over the counter as a gift card and store it securely - and those two things will be when the rest of society gets on board.

IMO the biggest threat to bitcoin is the information overload and convoluted, overly technical aspect of learning how to get it and secure it and use it...as long as it's over the head of Joe Blow it's not going to gain traction. It just isn't.

Joe Blow can get on you tube, watch half a dozen reviews and figure out what kind of smart phone to get, go to WalMart, buy it, get the pay as you go plan (because given a choice between a corporation's 2 year $100 a month plus first born child contract plan and a $50 pay as you go card with unlimited use and no horse shit, people choose option B without hesitation), set up the account and start using the damn phone within 15 minutes or so.

When Joe can go to WalMart or the local vape shop or coffee shop and grab a bitcard over the counter, scan the barcode to set up the account via the smart phone, pay the merchant the value amount and activate the card same as a gift card, and the bitcard is also the wallet that isn't hackable, then it'll catch on.

Government is not a threat. It's just a nosey, fear mongering, psychotic pain in the ass - same as it's always been. This fight will be more interesting to watch though because the ones who control the money control civilization...and when the people choose the P2P option of currency, the government loses its control short of a tyrannical retaliation...which is the line in the sand...it won't happen in this country. No matter how lazy Suzy Homemaker is, there are millions of people who won't for one second tolerate any government official trying to pull it off without blood in the streets...which includes LEO, feds, and soldiers refusing to enforce the dictatorship.




TLDR - 1. bite me, 2. we've fought all this already with music, movies, books, games, power and they lose to p2p, 3. government aint shit, don't sweat it.  Grin

I think you're wrong for a few reasons, although I do agree with you in some aspects.

Taking this from a few different angles...

1. You cannot use Napster, The Pirate Bay, etc. to launder money.

2. None of your examples involve violence as a result of the theft.

3. All of your examples amount to the government not being able to stop piracy. The energy and traditional finance industries are where I've made my living to this point - they are still firmly controlled by the government and must obey all those regulations, of which there are many. Sure, "deregulation" as a whole has been a trend, but deregulation and decentralization (although they're admittedly similar) do not always produce similar or comparable outcomes.

4. You say, "but the people have seen the reality of incompetence, corruption and psychosis of those "in charge" and are quite willing to look closer at THE ALTERNATIVE to USD." This makes for a great soundbite, but I really just don't think it's true. Look, I don't think anybody is wrong saying the government is inherently coercive, tyrannical, etc. But the way I've thought about it: look at a developing 3rd world country. First, the rebels are petty criminals. Then they're organized criminals. Then they're terrorists. Then they're rebels. Then they're a political party. Then they win, and they're politicians and diplomats and war heroes. If they lose, they're evil people going to hell and "those scummy rebels" or whatever. But the government is just the gang/party/whatever that has the *most* legitimate *and* enforceable (that part is key) claim on ruling a country than anybody else.

But anyways, I would just disagree about this idea that the government is inevitably going to collapse. When you stack them side-by-side, the average, everyday person is going to choose USD every time. You don't need tech (as you mentioned) to make it simpler for you. You know that the world's superpower will help you collect any debt owed in USDs. You know that the currency has served its role that it's meant to in your everyday life for your whole life. You know things can go wrong, but you've lived through the last 10 years (or even better, the last 20-30) and seen the "government is collapsing under the weight of its own corruption" crowd be wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong again. None of the predictions ever come true, which leads me to think the underlying logic may be flawed.

The everyday person can probably see that things have actually improved significantly over time, albeit at a slower pace than in the past. How can they respond that the government is inept when, in reality, we have some of the best governance in the world here in the US? Sure, there's bad things that happen in a massive country, but look at all the good. Furthermore, the Collapse Camp completely fails to address much of modern macroeconomic thought and why the monetary system works how it does. They completely fail to address its complexity and how counterintuitive it is, and so they call things like QE "money printing" and so on. But then they can't explain why all their predictions end up being wrong.

So, tldr: the everyday person will choose cash+US Legal System+US Military+superpower/reserve status trade deals all but ensuring a longer store of value than digital codes + no legal system + no backing + sketchy legality and little formal economic integration.

So I get that that's the problem BTC adopters are trying to solve, but I think that's something of a chicken/egg problem. BTC bulls seem to justify anything that reality presents them with. (Fixed supply money being a good idea, widespread crypto adoption "right around the corner", etc.)

Quick Edit: let's assume the government does not collapse in the next 15-20 years and maintains stable, relatively peaceful control, and that things generally go as they have in the past. In this "base case" (which we should probably assign at least a 40% probability based on history), what happens to cryptos? What about a "bull case" (for the USA / world economy), in which things actually end up getting significantly better pretty soon, rather than worse? What happens to cryptos then?

Furthermore, in your scenario that the global economy will collapse, or that the government will be overthrown by corruption (http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2013/results/ tell me why the US in particular is the one about the collapse?), why would you choose BTC as the asset of choice? There are far more investments that could yield a higher ROI and prove more practical/usable in such a scenario.
16  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: What are the biggestest threats to Bitcoin? on: May 14, 2014, 04:15:17 AM
If governments end up really deciding they want crypto's gone... they're gone. That's my bet at least.
17  Economy / Economics / Re: Beginner Tips on Investing in Bitcoin? on: May 14, 2014, 03:52:31 AM
Learn so much that you can convince yourself not to invest at all. Then maybe you're close to being ready to invest.
18  Economy / Economics / Re: Jim Rickards' New Book "The Death of Money", Review on: May 13, 2014, 10:16:28 PM
So just out of curiosity, how many people here have formally studied debt? (Economics, finance majors / grads, credit traders, etc.?)
19  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: Crypto-currencies in 10 years on: May 13, 2014, 05:09:15 AM
why should it be inflationary?

It's an opinion thread but my thoughts, or examples of them, could probably be found in the inflation vs. deflation thread, found here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=11627.0

I tend to side pretty strongly with the inflationary side, but again - opinions...
20  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: BitPay raising $30 million of capital, gives itself a ridiculous valuation on: May 13, 2014, 02:28:08 AM
I wonder how those valuation models the VCs used deal with BTC and other cryptocurrency volatility in their pricing (aren't revenues generated in those coins?)... Sorry but does risk of 50% drawdown in currency not put some kind of cap on the multiple they pay? Then again, 50% appreciation could make the valuation look cheap. But you just don't know. Also, what kind of assumptions does it make about liquidity (or is that the whole point between the relatively huge chunk of capital - another possible explanation)?

Somebody on this thread or another said something to the tune of "well maybe they're paying for potential growth, and not just basing a price off fundamental value." This is actually exactly how VCs operate - the idea has been around awhile, most recently Nassim Taleb described it as "harvesting optionality," but in the past it's been called "asymmetric returns" and other things. Basically, potential for asymmetric returns + diversified portfolio leads to a portfolio with a more favorable risk/return profile than the regular, overall market. In theory. (<-- big emphasis..) This blog post talks about it for anybody interested: http://25iq.com/2014/04/05/the-best-venture-capitalists-harvest-optionality-dealing-with-risk-uncertainty-and-ignorance/

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