Since GLBSE is in UK and doesn't deal with fiat currency, but they decided they would pay taxes. So technically they made themselves illegal but (sic) doing that, plus nefario was talking about how he wants to go legit and that would require lawyers and stuff like that. They basically shot themselves in the foot.
This is a theory that I've been mulling over for a while. Bitcoinica self-destructed after it moved to London as well. Derivative trading is completely unregulated in London. It is entirely possible that someone is quietly buying out key Bitcoin businesses, and basically paying for them to fail. Nothing prohibits it. I'm sure there are those with enough money, and enough interest in seeing Bitcoin harmed, to pay off all those involved. From the outside, all we see is "blah blah hacking terrorism money laundering investigation blah blah shutting down". While, behind the scenes, there is a lot that could be going on. So, I guess what I'm saying is, if you want to take a chance at getting rich, move to London and start a Bitcoin stock exchange. |
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I agree with the spirit of your complaint. Moderation should be unbiased. But I also recognize that the various subforums are not really the place for announcements for lots of people to see. Overall, the moderators do a good job of keeping the main forum cleared of cruft, while keeping it interesting and maintaining the ability for everyone to post there.
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I will just chime in here to join the chorus of those who are glad not to have had any dealings with GLBSE. Listing Bitcoin Island on such a vulnerable securities exchange would have been a huge mistake. Hopefully this episode will convince some of you to work towards investing in more real assets, real local economies, and real freedom from unwanted regulators, rather than any more shady anonymous "securities" and ponzi schemes. If not, I'm afraid before too long Atlas may be the only one around here with both the foresight to recognize when the emperor is wearing no clothes, and the balls to actually point it out. |
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Good talk. Very good presentation. I especially liked the ending. Scientists argued for 150 years that politicians needed to stop population growth, but it weren't new laws that stopped its acceleration. I don't know whether you can edit the description, but "weren't" is plural. |
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Labor based value theory has been replaced by supply and demand since 20th century, and it has its reason.
And that reason is the industrial revolution, and the realization of the fact that human labor is relatively worthless in comparison to resources and capital. |
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Trading Bitcoins has a cost. The cost is that of operating the network. Relying on this network without accounting for the cost is an externality. It is in your best interest to operate a node, and not to be dependent upon miners operating the network for you. Suggesting that you act in your best interest is not undue force or influence.
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Durability has to do with a currency in use and is not about loss protection. It's more about expiration. Like when the orange you traded for a brick starts to mold or the ink on your $10 bill starts running. Okay... still sounds like loss to me. Are you generally concerned about others destroying their Bitcoins, and the effect it has on you or "the currency"? If so, why? Portability has nothing to do with protection agains theft. It is about how easy it is to have it on you and use it.
And what about currencies that were not really portable at all? Were they just bad money, or perhaps is portability not a specific requirement?  Divisibility is not about liquidity or ease of exchange, it about the possibility to use fractions of the currency.
Is there some other reason, besides liquidity or ease of exchange, that you would want to use fractions of a currency? Intrinsic value is not about protection against market failure, it is about the various effects that intrinsic value has. Such as? I think you should just make your own new list instead of shoehorning them into aristotles set of ideas.
Demand for properties of a monetary system do change you know. I am not "shoehorning" anything. I am expanding upon and generalizing Aristotle's ideas. I tried to make this clear. And, no, general truths do not change. That's the entire point of seeking them out, of studying philosophy, economics, of science even. Money is information. That's all it is. Who owes what to whom.
So, what does my owning a Bitcoin tell me about who owes what to me? How about a dollar? I agree that money is information. But it isn't information about debt. It is information about supply and demand of scarce resources. The perfect money is neither inflationary, nor deflationary, it is not scarce, nor is it abundant, it just is. Yes, I agree with this. In the economic sense, a "failed" market is a less-than-perfectly-functional market.
No, in an economic sense, a market failure is a situation that leads to less than optimal results due to the shortcomings of the concept of a market itself. Naturally these situations are very rare, but include things like pollution and other externalities. On an economics board, you'd do well to use the jargon properly. Frankly, given the rather spectacular inconsistencies in the multiple schools of modern economic thought, I think I'd prefer to use words based on their regular, English meanings. And since I'm making more of a philosophical, rather than economic, assertion, perhaps you can just pretend that "market failure" has a more generic meaning than the technical meaning you might usually proscribe to it? If not, well, then here's my argument. I disagree that "market failure" is a natural consequence of "shortcomings of the concept of a market itself." I think, rather, that it is a natural consequence of something else, force and fraud, intentional harm, ie. crime. In my view, calling this "market failure" is a complete abuse of the language, newspeak even. Let's say we decide to meet at the coffee shop to exchange Bitcoins for fiat, and you decide to rob me of my fiat instead. Would you call that a failure of the market for Bitcoins? No. That's crime, something "the market" doesn't even pretend to protect against. Since we were in a coffee shop when the crime occurred, is it a failure of the coffee shop to protect against crime? No. The "concept of a coffee shop" doesn't include "protection against crime" any more than the concept of a market does. It's a failure of something else, morality, government, individuals, society perhaps, but not "the market" or "the coffee shop". So, I'd prefer to use the term "market failure" to mean exactly what it says, failure of the market, rather than failure of the concept of a market to be so expansive as to include every possible human action. If I'm going to posit a "concept of a market" at all, it would be a complete fool's errand to try to make it dependent upon all the stars in the universe aligning in order for it to function properly and not be deemed a "failure". That's why I tend to view the concept of a "market" as one of voluntary exchange in good faith between reasonably self-interested individuals, rather than some mystical all-encompassing pseudo-religion capable of solving all human problems. Externalities can and should be relegated to some other mechanism, the justice system or similar, since I also disagree with your assertion that externalities are "very rare". But that's for another post. |
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Airstotle eh, can you give more info on this reference? Thanks  Oops, I mean to quote this. I got it from this article, but the reference seems to trace back to Schumpeter's History of Economic Analysis, pp 59. Where is scarcity? Or in other words, a limited quantity and being hard to get more.
This fourth point brings up the point of scarcity, which is in essence a matter of intrinsic value. I see scarcity as being contained within protections against counterfeit and market failure. |
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Are you sure that I am you are being a bit negative?
Would you prefer if I were not sure that youre im being a bit negative? +1 |
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I imagine selling something as easily tracked as a jet aircraft is not going to work out too well for "shroomeister". Either that, or this is one of the jets that the CIA uses for renditions/drug smuggling/etc.
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I can't blame the devs for being a bit overly cautious. They started off suggesting that users use online wallet services, and that was a spectacular failure. There are good reasons for nodes to verify the blockchain independently. There are good reasons to use a new address for each transaction. These things aren't just the result of laziness or lack of care for the end-user. I'm sure there will be some scalability improvements coming in the near future. For a whole host of reasons, Bitcoin will just have to grow slowly.
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Wood. Self-replicating carbon nano-composite. Distills water, produces oxygen, filters air, makes food, sequesters carbon, improves soil, creates microclimates, shelters small animals. Useful for making houses, furniture, heating, storing information, wiping your butt.
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Well, it's sort of accurate, in the metaphorical sense. No modern currency is "backed" in the literal sense. And the ones that try to be, like the oil-producing states, are just backed by other currencies.
But holding those currencies gets you access to certain services. Holding US dollars gets you access to the US military, and to the oil market. Holding "commodity" currencies like the Canadian and Australian dollars gets you access to the commodities produced by those countries.
Holding Bitcoins gets you access to the transaction services provided by miners.
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Why Does Larry Ellison Need a $4 Billion Line of Credit?As for Lanai, the sixth largest island in Hawaii that Ellison bought for $500 million, Ellison said he has even grander plans. He said he plans to turn the island into a model for sustainable development, with solar electricity, electric cars, water filtration systems and organic farms that will export produce to Asia and other countries.
"It's going to be a little laboratory for sustainability and businesses on a small scale," he said.
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I would advise unpegging prices to USD and keep it purely in terms of BTC, especially as bitcoin is now starting to mature.
Ideally that would be great. Unfortunately, since Bitcoin's most compelling feature is as a facilitator of internet commerce, the Bitcoin economy is not made up of primary producers like farmers and miners (you know what I mean), but of merchants who have significant dollar-denominated costs. Quoting prices in BTC helps the Bitcoin economy, but adds overhead and squeezes profit margins for individual businesses when the exchange rate fluctuates. |
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In the economic sense, a "failed" market is a less-than-perfectly-functional market. Obviously Bitcoin does not provide perfect protection against market failure. It cannot regulate externalities the same way governments do, for instance. But it is competitive, is relatively information-transparent, is resistant to external threats, operates with a minimum of both public goods and middle-men, and enables rational self-government, which is one of the best defenses against externalities.
As a medium of exchange, Bitcoin is probably the medium most resistant to market failure in the history of money.
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Aristotle laid out his qualities of good money as follows: - Durability
- Portability
- Divisibility
- Consistency
- Intrinsic Value
Those are all fine and well. But they are all specific, physical qualities, which only provide for the aspects we truly value in money. So what are these, more general aspects that Aristotle's qualities provide? - Durability
- Portability
- Ease of transport
- Protection against theft
- Divisibility
- Ease of exchange (liquidity)
- Consistency
- Protection against counterfeit
- Intrinsic Value
- Protection against market failure
So, by induction, these are the major aspects that any good money should have: - Protection against loss
- Ease of transport
- Protection against theft
- Ease of exchange (liquidity)
- Protection against counterfeit
- Protection against market failure
How, then, does Bitcoin provide for these fundamental aspects? - Protection against loss
- As digital information, Bitcoins can be copied and backed-up in multiple places at once.
- Ease of transport
- Bitcoins can be transferred across the globe within minutes via the internet.
- Protection against theft
- Bitcoins can have extremely high value-density, and can be protected with wallet passwords and multiple signatures.
- Ease of exchange (liquidity)
- The 21 million Bitcoins can currently be divided into 2.1 quadrillion Satoshis, and theoretically near-infinitely.
- Protection against counterfeit
- As a 128-bit ECDSA key pair, a Bitcoin key is nearly impossible to counterfeit; and this protection can be extended if this ever changes.
- Protection against market failure
- The Bitcoin network is the largest supercomputer in existence, and would require either 51% control of this network, or extensive, coordinated internet failure to break.
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