Martin Armstrong Discussion

[iamnotback]

Latin American countries with high tariffs are retarding their need to jump out of the agriculture age and into the Knowledge Age:

http://plus55.com/brazil-business/news/2017/01/brazilian-economy-world-economic-forum
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-01-28/latin-america-commits-to-open-trade-after-year-of-protectionism
http://www.buenosairesherald.com/article/223907/latin-america-advocates-for-free-trade-in-a-protectionist-world
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-06/latin-america-bucking-global-protectionist-trend-ministers-say

[IntroVert]

A blogger I know knows various people from E Europe (Romania and Yugoslavia).  At least two of these guys went through hyperinflation in the 1990s (or so).  Neither reported that silver (or even gold) was accepted as currency.

US dollars and German marks only.

Having lived in the Balkans for the first half of my life, I can confirm this is true. You can add the Swiss CHF to the list, and of course replace DEM with EUR today. Lots of wars fought in the past, so people usually were opting for banknotes (majority) or small gold jewelry (those who had it), both of which could be carried in case of SHF, which was often.

Also, these currencies were/are perceived as stable, so it was/is a way to preserve purchasing power during hyperinflation times. Lots of people hold reserves in these convertible currencies, just in case.

[CoinCube]

What is the difference between investing with bitcoin vs investing with fiat? One is closer to ideal money than the other and thus will win. They may work in harmony up to a tipping point where the preferred market instrument will take over due to higher transfer utility. You seem stuck in thinking that people cannot invest or will not invest with bitcoins. If the breakthrough is significant people will want bigger gains than what they would have been getting with btc.. if not then the breakthrough isn't big enough to justify large capital investments. Just as there is demand to hold coins over investing there is also likewise demand to lend bitcoins to high quality borrowers.

This brings us to the question of what is ideal money?

Ideal money is not something that just holds its value over time. Money is ultimately a signalling system. Like the nervous system it's function is to coordinate independent actors directing their activity appropriately across the fitness landscape of the world and the economy.

Bitcoin could certainly be an ideal money but it would be ideal money for a very specific society. Bitcoin would be ideal money for a society that was entirely or mostly static with limited or no technological progress and a stable population. In such an environment an entirely fixed supply of money would be ideal. It would allow stable transmission of value facilitating division of labor and coordination across the economy.

If we imposed a system like bitcoin upon a society with growth potential people would still invest, but they would not invest appropriately in response to economic opportunities. They would under-invest because a fixed supply of money creates a strong incentive against risk. With an utterly fixed money supply you receive a percentage of future economic growth simply by doing nothing. Only the most promising growth opportunities would receive investment and those with more marginal returns would be ignored. A bitcoin monetary system thus creates a strong vector against growth or in bitcoin lingo a HODL mentality.

Similarly a currency build upon the expectation of eternal exponential growth also runs into difficulties. Economic growth is unpredictable as it requires knowledge formation. Nothing grows exponentially forever there will always be periods of consolidation with limited or even no growth. Fiat does not allow for such periods as the entire system starts to collapse in a prolonged zero growth environment. This collapse is why society introduces artificial growth via government spending, central bank purchases of bonds, wealth redistribution and guaranteed incomes. All of these interventions are inefficient and inhibit growth.

It is impossible for any monetary system that requires either exponential growth (fiat) or is optimal in zero growth environment (bitcoin) to appropriately coordinate economic actors to a dynamically changing economy. To be ideal money a system must be adaptable across all future economic landscapes facilitating growth or inhibiting it in response to underlying economic opportunities.

It may be possible to approximate ideal money with some form of dynamic algorithm that changes in response to economic activity and population size but I am skeptical for this represents an attempt at top-down central planning coordinating the money supply via growth measurements or economic models. If we allow for dynamic competition between multiple currencies, however, we eliminate the need for accurate top-down omniscience. As long as the cost of converting from one currency to another is low future money does need to be a single uniform system. With a multitude of currencies to choose from (each based on differing fundamentals) actors would be able to move between currency systems depending on their economic needs and opportunities. This movement would alter the fundamental value of these currency options. The aggregate growth vector would become dynamically adaptable to all scenarios and thus appropriately coordinate actors across the broader economy (fitness landscape).

[r0ach]

The Divided States Of America (DSA):

Anonymint, I hope you posted that as a joke because it was clearly written by a Marxist.

If we imposed a system like bitcoin upon a society

Coincube, you're gonna need to settle down on the excessive religious stuff or belief you actually can impose anything on anyone.  The reason gold and silver have value is because they still have value no matter what you ATTEMPT to impose.  Gold and silver are money and everything else is credit because it can be defaulted on.  Even Anonymint's claim of some magical new coin that solves all problems even if it works is just flat out credit and will never be anything compared to gold and silver as shown below:

Fiat has always been a derivative of metals, a coupon to exchange for them.  What essentially happened is that the bank defaulted on you and you were left holding the bag if you didn't turn your coupons in beforehand.  Just like everyone who currently owns fiat is holding the bag still.  Fiat can default.  Bitcoin can essentially default if the thing becomes unusable somehow.  Metals can't default because it exists as more than a concept.

Cryptocurrency is honestly overall just a joke.  It's riddled with counter party risk and potential black swans where it's virtually the same as fiat in that regard.  The only real question is if it was launched as a government scam or failed experiment by some other entity.

As I already posted before, Bitcoin was created with a Rube Goldberg pricing mechanism that attempts to make the user believe the pricing mechanism is identical to gold and silver mining, having an actual price floor, where none really even exists:

http://steemit.com/bitcoin/@r0achtheunsavory/the-r0ach-report-vol-7-bitcoin-is-not-an-actual-store-of-value-because-there-is-no-real-price-floor-or-inelastic-demand

It's really almost identical to fiat in all aspects once you take into account inevitable centralization of all these systems whether it's by stake or mining (just externalized stake).  It just takes people a LONG TIME to cut through all the bullshit and get to the bottom of the Rube Goldberg machine and articulate why all these things are the case.  I don't consider myself an idiot and it's taken me years to articulate why all this stuff is the way it is, and Anonymint is the self proclaimed smartest person in the universe and he's still sorting through it all.

[r0ach]

And here is my theory on how Trump might actually help the jewish bankers on accident even if he tries to fight them:

but the dollar will crash and media will blame trump

I don't remember the exact number, but I think it's something like 60-80% of international trade is in USD.  A lot of that is probably from the oil sales and such.  Unless the US prints a lot of money or foreign countries switch to denominating trade in other assets, it's very difficult to bring the value of the USD down in relation to other garbage fiats.  That's the whole catch with being a reserve currency, you're required to export more currency than you bring in (a trade deficit and implosion of domestic manufacturing).

The only way Trump can "make America great again" is to destroy the dollar, China style centralized devaluation, print dollars to infinity with hyperinflation, or some other such tactic.  Some people have theorized US currency would be switched into two different units with a new domestic only dollar.  Such a tactic would likely only help the scumbag jewish bankers implement the SDR to take over the world with the SDR as the unit of account, though.  Then 1st world nations would descend into poverty as slaves of the IMF/BIS.

[CoinCube]

Coincube, you're gonna need to settle down on the excessive religious stuff or belief you actually can impose anything on anyone.  The reason gold and silver have value is because they still have value no matter what you ATTEMPT to impose.  Gold and silver are money and everything else is credit because it can be defaulted on.  Even Anonymint's claim of some magical new coin that solves all problems even if it works is just flat out credit and will never be anything compared to gold and silver as shown below:

Fiat has always been a derivative of metals, a coupon to exchange for them.  What essentially happened is that the bank defaulted on you and you were left holding the bag if you didn't turn your coupons in beforehand.  Just like everyone who currently owns fiat is holding the bag still.  Fiat can default.  Bitcoin can essentially default if the thing becomes unusable somehow.  Metals can't default because it exists as more than a concept.

Cryptocurrency is honestly overall just a joke.  The only real question is if it was launched as a government scam or failed experiment by some other entity.

r0ach that is not an honest interpretation of what I wrote. I spoke of a hypothetical economic situation where only bitcoin was money and nothing else to only to highlight what the consequences of that scenario would be.

Human history is full of individual humans and groups imposing things the hallmark of progress is that less and less of that happens over time.

Metals are just a token that facilitate economic signaling. They are useful for this purpose because they are rare, durable, take work to obtain, and are difficult to debase. Metals actually can be defaulted on. All that has to happen for this to occur is for people to stop accepting them as a store of value. Their physical presence guarantees only their industrial value. Metals have a monetary value in excess of their industrial value only because there is someone willing to buy them from you who also believes metals have monetary value. Over time this metals network is gradually shrinking and in the long run it will continue to shrink.

This won't effect gold anytime soon. We do not yet have a token that is demonstrably better then gold but silver is a much weaker case as gold is obviously better. Your essay argues that historically silver and copper were also necessary as there was not enough gold in small enough denominations to provide the required liquidity. This may have been true in the past but will only be true in the future if one hypothesizes a collapse of society. If society and government don't collapse (which they won't) then we will simply transition to some new fiat. As a result silver is slowly being demonetized over time and this process will continue. Silver will probably do well in the short term as people look for safe havens to ride out an upcoming monetary reset to some form of global electronic fiat but medium to long term gradual demonetization will continue and therefore I expect silver to underperform both bitcoin and gold.

I also disagree with your dismissal of cryptocurrency. The technology is the first thing to come along in human history that offers the (yet to be fuilfilled) possibility of someday providing a superior token for economic signaling than gold. Dismissing it as a joke is unwise. I agree about the lack of a price floor though. Industrial demand gives metals a price floor cryptocurrency lacks.

Gold can essentially be thought of as an eternal partially anonymous POW blockchain. It is mined and mining requires work limiting its supply and allowing it to be used as a store of value. Gold does have counterparty risk. The counterparty is society. The purchaser of gold takes the risk that the gold network (the network of individuals in society willing to buy and own gold) will continue to exist. Governments play a role here in that they have the power through their actions to strengthen or weaken this network but they lack the ability to destroy it entirely. The gold network has existed for thousands of years it has also survived multiple government attempts to eliminate it so the counterparty risk is lower than with anything else that exists.

To displace gold cryptocurrency would need to have a counterparty risk that was lower than gold.
This would require
A) Demonstration of enternal nature currency would need to hold its value over several generations
B) Demonstration of resilience cryptocurrency network it would need to show its ability to survive outlast and not be broken or destroyed by hostile government action.

The jury is still out on whether bitcoin can meet these very high hurdles. However, even if bitcoin fails it seems almost inevitable that something will come along someday that can meet them.

[iamnotback]

I agree about the lack of a price floor though. Industrial demand gives metals a price floor cryptocurrency lacks.

I posit this will be the transactional demand that will develop because crypto-currency is the only way possible to exchange value (and other things such as data, blockchains are not just for money exchange) globally that is supranational, decentralized, and occurs at the speed-of-light. The Internet gave us decentralized networking, but it did nothing to decentralize the data persistence and coordination issue. Blockchains do.

This is why I have argued for a bifurcation, because it is impossible for the world government's SDRs fiat to provide those capabilities.

Software (more generally knowledge) ecosystems do not invest in closed source, i.e. centralized paradigms. We all invest in the Internet, because we know nobody controls it.

Note those possible attributes are not yet perfected in any published technology (e.g. Bitcoin), but I claim they are theoretically perfected in some technology I have written down and am just awaiting my treatment so I can get back to being a programmer as I was before I was infected.

P.S. my doctors have discovered that I have a curable infection (most certainly had this infection since 2012 or before). It is not yet certain if that infection is (active and is) the cause of my current symptoms, but I think it is.

[r0ach]

This won't effect gold anytime soon. We do not yet have a token that is demonstrably better then gold but silver is a much weaker case as gold is obviously better. Your essay argues that historically silver and copper were also necessary as there was not enough gold in small enough denominations to provide the required liquidity. This may have been true in the past but will only be true in the future if one hypothesizes a collapse of society.

This is the bullshit FOA argument.  He argues that only one metal is needed because people "can just trade 1 gram of gold".  I'm sorry but nobody is inserting one gram of gold in vending machine or paying the Dominoes pizzaman with one atom of gold.  The FOA argument was ENTIRELY central banker propaganda and assumes central bankers will not only maintain their current power structure, but accelerate it EVEN MORE where everyone is forced to store all of their net worth inside the bank in the form of gold the bankers then leverage.

LOL, yes, if the USD blows up, that does sound like a great deal for the banks as a fallback option doesn't it?  Too bad nobody cares about what the banks want.  Nobody will trust the banks for decades after an enormous percent of the population loses their life savings to them.  Since the only other noble metal that functions as currency at all is silver, there is no way they could possibly contain it or prevent people from using it to avoid the counter party risk.  FOA's complete FAILURE in predictions shows this, where he claimed silver would go from $5 to $0.50 and it went to $50 instead.

You CANNOT rig the universe to fit your will in an actual aggregate market.  The only reason gold has value is to prevent counter party risk and gold alone is not capable of the task.  Silver has to be utilized as well in any circumstance where the price of gold skyrockets.  And please, do not even try to claim Bitcoin solves all these problems to prevent counter party risk.  Bitcoin endgame is basically as centralized as fiat is, with the added bonus of additional black swans on top of it to make it even more unstable.  

Then you get to add additional counter party risk above and beyond fiat even if it doesn't implode in a black swan because the tokens aren't fungible.  If someone can tell you if the coin is spendable or not or if it's India style "black money", then you're trapped inside of some permissioned ledger hell that puts everything we already use to shame.

[sidhujag]

What is the difference between investing with bitcoin vs investing with fiat? One is closer to ideal money than the other and thus will win. They may work in harmony up to a tipping point where the preferred market instrument will take over due to higher transfer utility. You seem stuck in thinking that people cannot invest or will not invest with bitcoins. If the breakthrough is significant people will want bigger gains than what they would have been getting with btc.. if not then the breakthrough isn't big enough to justify large capital investments. Just as there is demand to hold coins over investing there is also likewise demand to lend bitcoins to high quality borrowers.

This brings us to the question of what is ideal money?

Ideal money is not something that just holds its value over time. Money is ultimately a signalling system. Like the nervous system it's function is to coordinate independent actors directing their activity appropriately across the fitness landscape of the world and the economy.

Bitcoin could certainly be an ideal money but it would be ideal money for a very specific society. Bitcoin would be ideal money for a society that was entirely or mostly static with limited or no technological progress and a stable population. In such an environment an entirely fixed supply of money would be ideal. It would allow stable transmission of value facilitating division of labor and coordination across the economy.

If we imposed a system like bitcoin upon a society with growth potential people would still invest, but they would not invest appropriately in response to economic opportunities. They would under-invest because a fixed supply of money creates a strong incentive against risk. With an utterly fixed money supply you receive a percentage of future economic growth simply by doing nothing. Only the most promising growth opportunities would receive investment and those with more marginal returns would be ignored. A bitcoin monetary system thus creates a strong vector against growth or in bitcoin lingo a HODL mentality.

Similarly a currency build upon the expectation of eternal exponential growth also runs into difficulties. Economic growth is unpredictable as it requires knowledge formation. Nothing grows exponentially forever there will always be periods of consolidation with limited or even no growth. Fiat does not allow for such periods as the entire system starts to collapse in a prolonged zero growth environment. This collapse is why society introduces artificial growth via government spending, central bank purchases of bonds, wealth redistribution and guaranteed incomes. All of these interventions are inefficient and inhibit growth.

It is impossible for any monetary system that requires either exponential growth (fiat) or is optimal in zero growth environment (bitcoin) to appropriately coordinate economic actors to a dynamically changing economy. To be ideal money a system must be adaptable across all future economic landscapes facilitating growth or inhibiting it in response to underlying economic opportunities.

It may be possible to approximate ideal money with some form of dynamic algorithm that changes in response to economic activity and population size but I am skeptical for this represents an attempt at top-down central planning coordinating the money supply via growth measurements or economic models. If we allow for dynamic competition between multiple currencies, however, we eliminate the need for accurate top-down omniscience. As long as the cost of converting from one currency to another is low future money does need to be a single uniform system. With a multitude of currencies to choose from (each based on differing fundamentals) actors would be able to move between currency systems depending on their economic needs and opportunities. This movement would alter the fundamental value of these currency options. The aggregate growth vector would become dynamically adaptable to all scenarios and thus appropriately coordinate actors across the broader economy (fitness landscape).

Growth means prosperity and the more ideal money will allow for more sustainable growth. While currently we all believe that supply expansion and contraction should be based on a publically auditable metric such as gdp it may not be the best answer because of what we spoke about before... maybe the entire thinking that more ppl means more supply is skewed and we need to rethink it because bitcoin is infinitely subdividable.. although that does kind of make harder and harder for later generations to accumulate wealth (that is why supply expands essentially)..

[r0ach]

Growth means prosperity and the more ideal money will allow for more sustainable growth.

It appears you have not discovered the inevitable endgame of our civilization unless humans turn the earth from a closed to open ecosystem by leaving the planet:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steady-state_economy

But things like the speed of light means it will likely always be a closed ecosystem.  Instead of "more growth" it's also likely the human population craters down to 500 million since the earth only has that much sustainable arable crop land to support humans with.  That and the whole peak oil and natural gas thing.  Growth is over.

The 500 million number on the Georgia guide stones wasn't arbitrary.  Que Anonymint "ya'll beez Malthusian Luddites!"

[sidhujag]

Growth means prosperity and the more ideal money will allow for more sustainable growth.

It appears you have not discovered the inevitable endgame of our civilization unless humans turn the earth from a closed to open ecosystem by leaving the planet:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steady-state_economy

But things like the speed of light means it will likely always be a closed ecosystem.  Instead of "more growth" it's also likely the human population craters down to 500 million since the earth only has that much sustainable arable crop land to support humans with.  That and the whole peak oil and natural gas thing.  Growth is over.

The 500 million number on the Georgia guide stones wasn't arbitrary.  Que Anonymint "ya'll beez Malthusian Luddites!"

It may be over in this time in history which is kinda how we all feel but through any major recession a tech breakthrough is usually the thing to spark confidence back up.. and blockchain is that kind of tech. Thing of.the market as an organic mechanism that lives and dies.. all cities all stocks and extension all markets do it... but a breakthrough lets it come.back to life. There was a nice ted talks.on that ill try to look it up but i just extended the idea.to market in general.

[CoinCube]

LOL, yes, if the USD blows up, that does sound like a great deal for the banks as a fallback option doesn't it?  Too bad nobody cares about what the banks want.  Nobody will trust the banks for decades after an enormous percent of the population loses their life savings to them.  Since the only other noble metal that functions as currency at all is silver, there is no way they could possibly contain it or prevent people from using it to avoid the counter party risk. FOA's complete FAILURE in predictions shows this, where he claimed silver would go from $5 to $0.50.

I do not know who FOA is or his relevance to this discussion. It sounds like he has previously presented a similar argument to my argument above. Every market has noise. Identifying a trend is not necessarily helpful for short term predictions. I think silver will do just fine over the next few years and closely track gold.

The flaw in your thinking r0ach is a misunderstanding of the immediate future. You seem to believe there will be a global hyper-inflationary collapse a worldwide Weimar Republic scenario leading to a global dark age and a return to a simpler time with  metals used for day to day transactions. This is not going to happen.

“It amazes that otherwise bright people can’t understand the simple concept that economic collapse doesn’t convert collectivists into anarchists.”

Economic collapse will be likely be staggered not simultaneous it will indeed threaten the life savings of those with money in the banks, those with pensions, and even to some degree those in stocks. It will result not in a return to metallic currency but an unstoppable political pressure to replace corrupt and "incompetent" national governments with "superior" global institutions. SDR or a similar electronic concept will be exchanged for sovereignty stabilizing unsteady markets. The immediate future involves the uncertainty of transitioning from multiple nation state fiats to a global fiat. All precious metals will probably do well during this transition period.

Global government will maintain stability via limited wealth transfers to contain unrest (universal guaranteed income) coupled with universal surveillance to destroy malcontents. Such a government will likely be at somewhat stable. However, the inefficiencies introduced will result lower growth rates then has been the recent historic norm.

[r0ach]

You seem to believe there will be a global hyper-inflationary collapse a worldwide Weimar Republic scenario leading to a global dark age and a return to a simpler time with  metals used for day to day transactions. This is not going to happen.

No, I actually don't think anyone knows what's going to happen, even the bankers themselves.  Unlike Anonymint, I do not believe we live in a deterministic universe.  The only thing I know is that somewhere in the timeline where all this occurs is that people holding both metals will see a large increase in buying power.  When you see metals spike to something crazy like $10,000 gold and hundreds of dollars for an ounce of silver, with real estate prices imploding at the same time, that's when you start selling off metals and buy a house or boat or something.

[CoinCube]

No, I actually don't think anyone knows what's going to happen, even the bankers themselves.  Unlike Anonymint, I do not believe we live in a deterministic universe.  The only thing I know is that somewhere in the timeline where all this occurs is that people holding both metals will see a large increase in buying power.  When you see metals spike to something crazy like $10,000 gold and hundreds of dollars for an ounce of silver, with real estate prices imploding at the same time, that's when you start selling off metals and buy a house or boat or something.

We agree on this but by your own logic we cannot know with certainty how high gold and silver will go so it is best set a fixed plan now to cash out gradually incrementally selling a portion at preset benchmark.

[sidhujag]

You seem to believe there will be a global hyper-inflationary collapse a worldwide Weimar Republic scenario leading to a global dark age and a return to a simpler time with  metals used for day to day transactions. This is not going to happen.

No, I actually don't think anyone knows what's going to happen, even the bankers themselves.  Unlike Anonymint, I do not believe we live in a deterministic universe.  The only thing I know is that somewhere in the timeline where all this occurs is that people holding both metals will see a large increase in buying power.  When you see metals spike to something crazy like $10,000 gold and hundreds of dollars for an ounce of silver, with real estate prices imploding at the same time, that's when you start selling off metals and buy a house or boat or something.

Lol you have convinced yourself that your strategy to own lots of hard assets in rei is somehow going to come to fruition and for it to happen will require two things to be at extremes with gold (obviously you hold) and home or boat (you obviously need).. well all im saying is market is generally punishing to pipe dreams (not saying yours is) but in general it does the opposite of what people think before taking on direction you thought itd go after most participants are insolvent... good luck anyway.. ill stick with the direction the world is turning in today and not hope it spins the other way tomorrow.

Case in point.. you held lots of btc based on your comments of bitcoin being held down by invisible hands or limitless funded entities margin shorting. Yet you continued to hope it would rise based on your knowledge assessment as to what true value was. The thing was you probably ended up selling off during the last rise and now hold a less biased view of the market.. your biased in metals its quite obvious. Helps from external perspective.

[r0ach]

Case in point.. you held lots of btc based on your comments of bitcoin being held down by invisible hands or limitless funded entities margin shorting. Yet you continued to hope it would rise based on your knowledge assessment as to what true value was. The thing was you probably ended up selling off during the last rise and now hold a less biased view of the market.. your biased in metals its quite obvious. Helps from external perspective.

Speaking solely in terms of monetary speculation in Bitcoin, there's been a lot of developments since then.  For one, LN was billed as some type of savior to make Bitcoin a million times better and able to take over the world.  It seems like LN would need to do things like que channel closings in some type of centralized manner, so I never knew exactly how the hell they were planning to pull this off.  I thought, hey, maybe they can do this in some way I'm not anticipating, but the miners aren't even approving segwit, so Bitcoin has kind of lurched into stagnation for the moment at least.

I've always said Bitcoin needs at least 50 TPS (around 8 MB blocks + Schnorr sigs) to function as a viable global currency, so with no block size increase or LN, it's in a problematic state IMO.  At current block size, I feel it might not be able to go higher than $10,000 to $20,000 a coin at most due to transaction fees and load capability.  If that's the only upside I see in this thing (while also easily being able to go to $0), stuff like silver starts to become a fuck load more enticing than Bitcoin does since it has even higher upside with less risk.

Do you really think Bitcoin can go higher than $10k - $20k each with no block size increase or LN?  This is assuming it doesn't get stuck where it is now.  I know these markets better than anyone and the last 3 cliff wall rises like from the halving and recent $1150 were all done by a single entity (single entity meaning 1 guy or several people pooling all their resources to one trader).

The only time I noticed more than 1 entity moving the market (they all have unique signatures) was when the Bitfinex price TEMPORARILY went higher than Huobi during halving.  And then the naked shorter on Finex right before it goxed (who were likely Finex employees).  Regardless, I don't think people understand how few people rule this market.  There are not many!

Then you also have the fact ScamFinex has been pulling higher volume than Bitstamp even though it's a completely insolvent exchange with no margin enabled that no real human would ever trade on in current state.  The Bitcoin market is currently a giant MtGox time bomb waiting to destroy everyone with stuff like this going on.  If Bitstamp can't even beat Scamfinex in volume post Finex goxing, it means there is no actual, real interest in Bitcoin and the whole thing is just powered by fraudulent exchanges pumping and dumping in collaboration with the Chinese attempting to move money west.

[iamnotback]

Unlike Anonymint, I do not believe we live in a deterministic universe.

Readers please note that r0ach continues to write lies both about my and Armstrong's stances.

I even explained to him upthread how the universe remains unbounded in entropy (and thus not deterministic), yet cycles can be still be valid. A cycle doesn't tell you every damn little detail.

The sun rises every day, but that doesn't mean the bugs wake up or visit the same flower every sunrise.

It is really annoying the various crap that writers do on these forums by insinuating or attributing positions to others which are not their positions. It is not professional behavior.

[r0ach]

Anonymint, are Bitcoin holders living in complete delusion?

I've told them to go buy them on the exchanges and do KYC/AML.
I think for the first time in their life they realized what their fiat money real value is and what that's value of financial freedom.

Lol, what?  I'm sorry you couch potatoes, but buying Bitcoin does not give you financial freedom.  Fighting a war with an AR15 against whoever is trying to take your financial freedom is how you get financial freedom.  Just like the days of the revolutionary war, you will probably have to get off your couch at some point.  There is no mouse click shortcut to freedom.  Even metals holders get worried about the government trying to confiscate or legislate against metals in some way.  TPTB can impede the usage of Bitcoin about 5 billion times easier than metals, so you are definitely not getting financial freedom by smoking some stuff out of a bong and clicking something on Coinbase.

[deisik]

Growth means prosperity and the more ideal money will allow for more sustainable growth.

It appears you have not discovered the inevitable endgame of our civilization unless humans turn the earth from a closed to open ecosystem by leaving the planet:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steady-state_economy

But things like the speed of light means it will likely always be a closed ecosystem.  Instead of "more growth" it's also likely the human population craters down to 500 million since the earth only has that much sustainable arable crop land to support humans with.  That and the whole peak oil and natural gas thing. Growth is over

This is not how things work in general

Some two-three thousand years ago people most likely had been thinking along the same lines, though the numbers were a few orders less of course (say, that the Nile river could only feed a few million people). What you call as the end of growth is only the end of growth in the current technological paradigm. But we have already been through a few of such, and there is absolutely no reason to think that there won't be a few next technological shifts in the future. Basically, what you refer to as growth being over in fact refers only to the limits of our current knowledge and understanding. A simple but explicative example (your example really), a few hundred years ago people thought there was no speed limit, then they started to claim that the speed of light is such a limit. Now this position is no longer considered valid and people again think there is no such limit

[criptix]

Growth means prosperity and the more ideal money will allow for more sustainable growth.

It appears you have not discovered the inevitable endgame of our civilization unless humans turn the earth from a closed to open ecosystem by leaving the planet:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steady-state_economy

But things like the speed of light means it will likely always be a closed ecosystem.  Instead of "more growth" it's also likely the human population craters down to 500 million since the earth only has that much sustainable arable crop land to support humans with.  That and the whole peak oil and natural gas thing. Growth is over

This is not how things work in general

Some two-three thousand years ago people most likely had been thinking along the same lines, though the numbers were a few orders less of course (say, that the Nile river could only feed a few million people). What you call as the end of growth is only the end of growth in the current technological paradigm. But we have already been through a few of such, and there is absolutely no reason to think that there won't be a few next technological shifts in the future. Basically, what you refer to as growth being over in fact refers only to the limits of our current knowledge and understanding. A simple but explicative example (your example really), a few hundred years ago people thought there was no speed limit, then they started to claim that the speed of light is such a limit. Now this position is no longer considered valid and people again think there is no such limit

Not neccesary.
Think about the fermi paradox and the great filter.

Today we are able to destroy our species completely from the surface of the world and the chances arent that bad either.

Of course we could also not do it and start space exploration, colonisation and live for the next bilion years.