Bitcoin a scam?

[cypherdoc]

So much fail in this "Internet Economist" answer, it's just funny.
I more and more with Holliday here. I'm happily answering questions, but I stopped trying to convince people who use flawed logic.
In the end, they'll be proven wrong.

i should also add that when banksters get to borrow at 0% interest, they turn around and distort markets to a horrendous degree like we have today.  the entire world's economies are going into recession and yet they ramp stock and bond markets in the name of "price stability".  bullshit.  the only price stability they want is for their investments that they've gone all in with and are terrified to actually have marked to market by free markets.  nevermind the price of gold, silver, oil, foodstuffs; the things the rest of us need to survive.

(Emphasis mine)

Cypherdoc, are you getting bullish 

certainly the price action has been good but i just can't get myself to buy.  not b/c of the prices but b/c of this Bitcoin thing; it would work so much better as a reserve currency!

[cypherdoc]

i should also add that when banksters get to borrow at 0% interest, they turn around and distort markets to a horrendous degree like we have today.  the entire world's economies are going into recession and yet they ramp stock and bond markets in the name of "price stability".  bullshit.  the only price stability they want is for their investments that they've gone all in with and are terrified to actually have marked to market by free markets.  nevermind the price of gold, silver, oil, foodstuffs; the things the rest of us need to survive.

The stock market is being propped up with printed money to save the public sector pension funds primarily and the 401k accounts of the baby boomers secondarily. It's all about political pull and buying votes.

so why didn't they do that in 2000 and 2008?

They did. The housing bubble was the mechanism for the 2000 crash and the various programs which have brought the stock market back up since the 2009 low were how they did it this time.

the 2000 crash was from the Nasdaq bubble and 2008 from the housing bubble.  my point is that all that volatility from those 3 crashes, 2 stock 1 housing, caused pensions and 401K holders to cough up their long positions right at the wrong time.  hardly a wealth preserver.

[labestiol]

So much fail in this "Internet Economist" answer, it's just funny.
I more and more with Holliday here. I'm happily answering questions, but I stopped trying to convince people who use flawed logic.
In the end, they'll be proven wrong.

i should also add that when banksters get to borrow at 0% interest, they turn around and distort markets to a horrendous degree like we have today.  the entire world's economies are going into recession and yet they ramp stock and bond markets in the name of "price stability".  bullshit.  the only price stability they want is for their investments that they've gone all in with and are terrified to actually have marked to market by free markets.  nevermind the price of gold, silver, oil, foodstuffs; the things the rest of us need to survive.

(Emphasis mine)

Cypherdoc, are you getting bullish  

certainly the price action has been good but i just can't get myself to buy.  not b/c of the prices but b/c of this Bitcoin thing; it would work so much better as a reserve currency!

You know that I agree with that, but I'm afraid others will need a crazy long time to accept it, and that they will try to fight it.

[cypherdoc]

So much fail in this "Internet Economist" answer, it's just funny.
I more and more with Holliday here. I'm happily answering questions, but I stopped trying to convince people who use flawed logic.
In the end, they'll be proven wrong.

i should also add that when banksters get to borrow at 0% interest, they turn around and distort markets to a horrendous degree like we have today.  the entire world's economies are going into recession and yet they ramp stock and bond markets in the name of "price stability".  bullshit.  the only price stability they want is for their investments that they've gone all in with and are terrified to actually have marked to market by free markets.  nevermind the price of gold, silver, oil, foodstuffs; the things the rest of us need to survive.

(Emphasis mine)

Cypherdoc, are you getting bullish  

certainly the price action has been good but i just can't get myself to buy.  not b/c of the prices but b/c of this Bitcoin thing; it would work so much better as a reserve currency!

You know that I agree with that, but I'm afraid others will need a crazy long time to accept it, and that they will try to fight it.

yeah.  my problem is sometimes i think too far ahead.  gold made one helluva reversal last night.  talk about a red flashing warning sign of what CB's are doing.

[smickles]

I find it odd that the question is whether Bitcoin is a good idea or not, and this guy repeatedly calls it a scam, and essentially claims someone is scamming people by Bitcoin's mere existence.

[beekeeper]

1. Humans get intelligence (or maybe Intelligence gets humans)
2. Humans learn to do stuff
3. Humans start exchanging stuff
4. Smart arses figure out they can get in the middle and persuade everybody to use something named money as medium of exchange
5. 6 thousand years pass
6. Someone named Satoshi came and give humans something which is not money but it can be used as medium of exchange, pretty close to initial exchange idea
7. Smart arses counter-react, "this new thing is different from money cause .... (random reason)"

Money arent more money than bitcoins only cause they are older, money are only medium of exchange, as soon as someone wants bitcoins someone else has to offer, the circle is closed.

Every other assumption about fate of bitcoins, no matter how technically is it wrapped, is just bs which will as well fit to any other currency.

[Vladimir]

Money in any form when in actual use as a medium of exchange.

Bitcoin is currency to me.

Yep.

Somehow people just fail to understand the simplest thing. Something could be currency and commodity at the same time.

Now whomever has any doubts get this:

Money is an abstract idea of using something as medium of exchange instead of barter.

Currency is simply physical or virtual representation of money.

This is it! There is nothing else to say on this topic.

[Graet]

that and the old analogy
"guns don't kill people, people kill people"
converted to
Bitcoin doesn't scam people, people scam people
and
People scam people no matter the currency/commodity/barter items used...

[justusranvier]

my point is that all that volatility from those 3 crashes, 2 stock 1 housing, caused pensions and 401K holders to cough up their long positions right at the wrong time.  hardly a wealth preserver.

I never claimed they were competent, just that they were reacting to political pressure.

CALPERS is still bankrupt but by getting the primary dealers to prop up the stock market with money borrowed from the Fed the current crop of politicians got at least one extra election cycle before the cash flow dries up.

[tiberiandusk]

This is not a scam.
http://nessieneedstrefity.tumblr.com/

[cypherdoc]

my point is that all that volatility from those 3 crashes, 2 stock 1 housing, caused pensions and 401K holders to cough up their long positions right at the wrong time.  hardly a wealth preserver.

I never claimed they were competent, just that they were reacting to political pressure.

CALPERS is still bankrupt but by getting the primary dealers to prop up the stock market with money borrowed from the Fed the current crop of politicians got at least one extra election cycle before the cash flow dries up.

if i were calpers i'd sell now.  this chump is bound to dump.

[bb113]

This paper was an interesting read regarding the history of money: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=105682.0

tl;dr:
Money is anything that facilitates delayed reciprocal altruism (lets call it DRP). Better money extends DRP to a greater number of people, across both space and time.

[Draino]

Bitcoin does not have a central bank capable of printing and lending bitcoins; it has an "algorithm" which through some convoluted mechanism allows bitcoins to be "mined".

well this early sentence set off alarm bells for me, putting algorithm in quotes really seems disingenuous and condescending to computer scientists and mathmeticians

As a quick thought experiment, let's say demand for bitcoins grew as more people found out about them. Well, you'd expect the price of Bitcoin in dollars to grow rapidly. Now assume I own one bitcoin. I also have a dollar bill. I would like to purchase a Pepsi. Which one of those will I spend? Obviously the devaluing dollar gets spent before the skyrocketing bitcoin.

In the best case scenario [the one where it becomes popular] the limited supply of bitcoins will cause crippling deflation, drying up most Bitcoin-denominated commerce save whatever speculative buying and selling happens on exchanges. Some new world order. All that transparency and all those low interchange fees aren't going to do you much good if you don't ever want to spend these things and no one wants to give them to you anyway.

i don't follow, is the premise that it makes buying things you don't need/living within your means more intuitive, and that's destructive to the economy?

i think extreme language masks whatever point is trying to be made

As a result, my ability to turn a bitcoin into a dollar or a euro or a yen is no greater than my ability to sell my laptop on eBay. I can probably do it, but that doesn't mean I'm going to start measuring my bank account in MacBook Pros, because one day I might not be able to find a buyer, and then what?

Because of this, Bitcoin is not really a currency, it's an asset [and a particularly useless one at that].

i'm not sure what's up with the brackets, but that quote is unchanged.

he's saying bitcoin has ever increasing demand, and then compares it's sell-ability with something that devalues massively year over year?

i agree that MacBook Pros are an unappealing asset if you're measuring their value by sell-ability (only)—i think apple tries to unload them pretty quickly—but i'm not sure what that has to do with bitcoin

i thought i wouldn't ever want to sell my bitcoin, anyway

Bitcoin (and really, any e-currency) is inherently unstable. And with currency, stability is everything.

maybe, but i don't think his evidence leading to this point makes a ton of sense and i'm too tired to dig through the extreme language to find what is actually being said

[justusranvier]

if i were calpers i'd sell now.  this chump is bound to dump.

They can't - their actuarial projections required 7% annual returns forever in order to fund the promised benefits. Now to make up for the losses they have to go chasing returns even higher than 7%. It will never work but they and a lot of other public sector pensions are going to keep playing the game until they blow up.

[cypherdoc]

if i were calpers i'd sell now.  this chump is bound to dump.

They can't - their actuarial projections required 7% annual returns forever in order to fund the promised benefits. Now to make up for the losses they have to go chasing returns even higher than 7%. It will never work but they and a lot of other public sector pensions are going to keep playing the game until they blow up.

i understand what you're saying but there are so many problems with this i don't know where to begin. 

[Boussac]

Lets go over the claim of the self-proclaimed internet economist - attention whore that bitcoin is a scam.

Since bitcoins are non-renewable commodities, early adopters have a one time advantage that disappears on the day they sell out their bitcoins; It's a one time gain, as opposed to the happy few bankers who control central money creation, whose advantage is lasting and growing over time.

Early adopters are necessary to bootstrap innovation: only the state or a similar tentacular organization has enough clout and propaganda mechanisms at its disposal to bootstrap a new currency to everybody at once.

Hence, saying that bitcoin profits early adopters too much amounts to negating the possibility to offer an alternative to central money.

[lebing]

Lets go over the claim of the self-proclaimed internet economist - attention whore that bitcoin is a scam.

Since bitcoins are non-renewable commodities, early adopters have a one time advantage that disappears on the day they sell out their bitcoins; It's a one time gain, as opposed to the happy few bankers who control central money creation, whose advantage is lasting and growing over time.

Early adopters are necessary to bootstrap innovation: only the state or a similar tentacular organization has enough clout and propaganda mechanisms at its disposal to bootstrap a new currency to everybody at once.

Hence, saying that bitcoin profits early adopters too much amounts to negating the possibility to offer an alternative to central money.

Leave replies on Quora please =)

[Comodore]

Made, downvoted. But you guys do so too!

And upvote   
Sean Lynch

[paraipan]

Made, downvoted. But you guys do so too!

And upvote   
Sean Lynch

Done, Bitcoin FTW

[ElectricMucus]

Cypherdoc, are you getting bullish 

lol that's funny 

I think the point here is: The early adopter advantage is similar to the bankster advantage, at least at the part about economic power.