Thankfully I had not yet gotten around to ignoring kkaspar yet, so I saw this. Of course I have to ignore him now that he caught my attention, since he is a troll who adds nothing of value, regardless of viewpoint. Having seen the accusation of mendacity, I reply.
including billions of dollars of investment going into its infrastructure and its wider and wider network of acceptance and use.
Billions of dollars? Really? That's hype on a whole new level.
Really.
I can enumerate a billion in ventures without trying hard. It's only a thousand millions, and a 5-10 million startup is begun practically every week. Then there are miners, the foundation, numerous apps for every platform in currency, exchanges, miner manufacturers, purveyors of plastic, shopping sites, not to mention the dark net. BTC turns over 6 times annually. For each dollar of recurring cash flow multiple dollars of investment are rationally expected.
yeah try again. LIAR
->
http://www.coindesk.com/following-money-trends-bitcoin-venture-capital-investment/On the Bitcoin side, the $97.5m in venture capital that has been publicly reported underestimates the total, which would include unreported venture investment, by tens of millions of dollars. (...) Finally, it has been estimated that upwards of $200m has been invested in bitcoin mining hardware and infrastructure to date, a figure which exceeds even a less conservative estimate of the total venture capital invested in bitcoin to date.
we're far from a billion
I am a liar, but you don't qualify to call me one, hd. In a more romantic world (not necessarily a better one) we would be drawing pistols at dawn. I know I am a liar, because I have to wage war against myself every day, to stay on a path of truth. I admit to indulging all too much rhetoric, by purely rationalistic standards (but definitely not by romantic ones). More struggle remains, I guess. But that rhetoric is not intended to deceive, and if I am in factual error I am eager to correct it, if only to steel my rhetoric against facile attacks by nattering nabobs of negativity.
I played loosely with words, and you called me out on it. For that I commend you, in that it was an excellent call, accurately identifying your perceived opponent's weakness, and maximizing it to your perceived advantage. I say perceived because I believe that, in fact, your own interests would be better served by seeking win-win collaboration and value-enhancing synergies than by exercising your oppositional personality disorder.
It would not, in fact, be "easy" for me to enumerate a billion in ventures full stop. I would have to include "miners, the foundation, numerous apps for every platform in currency, exchanges, miner manufacturers, purveyors of plastic, shopping sites, not to mention the dark net". Correction made.
One small aspect of the brilliance of bitcoin in its conception and execution is that it aggregates to its own agenda the resources previously dedicated to the fiat economy. While resources
freshly allocated to bitcoin may be less than 2 billions (but certainly more than 1 billion, and hence deserving of the term "billions", rather than "millions", which would be mendaciously misleading) the resources now
commanded by bitcoin, subservient and leveraged to its design goals, are on the order of tens of billions in USDnow terms. If bitcoin achieves its maximum conceivable penetrative success, without the expense of more than X USD of fresh purposefully dedicated infrastructure, it will have done so my commandeering trillions is pre-existing infrastructure, and re-purposing it.
By the way, hd, your attack, while well placed, lacked force. You quoted (to your credit) parts of the source which supported my position, and the conclusions of the quote were weak refutation, if they even qualified as refutation. The source enumerates 300 millions and explicitly states that this underestimates the total. Moreover the source does not include resources which I explicitly mentioned (without estimating). If the source were to underestimate by a factor of 3, it would not be incorrect as a result, thus both the source and my statement can be simultaneously true. Thus the source is no refutation at all. (That you choose obsessive oppositionalism over a synergetic approach, which would seek to extract what valid truth can be found instead of finding fault where perfection is lacking - everywhere, in fact - is probably not doing you good service.)
I should not have said "easily" but I persist that I can enumerate in excess of a billion,
without excessive stretching. This would involved many disputable numbers and perhaps even disputable resources. They would still be enumerated, and their total would still be serving the interests of bitcoin's design, some in a dedicated manner, some in a multipurpose manner, the latter mostly inherited from pre-existing infrastructure, but fractionally co-opted by bitcoin. It would also include ventures not considered in the total reported by your source.
(If both law and principle prevent me from defending myself with lead or steel, I can at least man up enough to use the tongue granted me, in the most temperate but penetrating manner which I can promptly muster.)
Poll
