Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion

[JorgeStolfi]

I guess I'll give you points for being consistent: you're probably not simply 'anti Bitcoin', but against the larger development of excessive 'financialization' (through financial derivatives), right?

You bet.

Money is not real wealth, it is just a token that one can exchange for real wealth.

Some kinds of money have reasonably stable exchange value, and nearly universal acceptance (at least within one country) that we get used to think of them as wealth; and for the purposes of personal wealth accounting, that is a good principle. 

For the purpose of understanding the world's economy, however, it is important to distinguish wealth from the money that merely represents it.

The "hyperfinancialization" of the economy has created excessive amounts of money, that, if taken at its market value, would correspond to immensely more wealth than actually exists.  Many people believe that they own (through the money proxy) a lot of cars, land, pizzas, etc; but there is not enough wealth to actually realize those claims. 

The financial system is like a land registrar that keeps multiple records of ownership for the same piece of land; except that, since money is not attached to any specific piece of lad, no one can tell which money is good and which is bad.  Sometimes the fiction becomes untenable, and then politics or violence decides, more or less arbitrarily, who keeps the real wealth (usually big financial corporations) and who loses it (usually the plebs).

[billyjoeallen]

You still haven't read any books on economics.

I rather stay a stupid electronics engineer turned computer scientist turned appled mathematician..

"appled" mathematician? Like Newton?

Satoshi's trillions will come from the same place as Gates, Jobs, Buffet's billions came from:valuation of assets.

Real wealth is houses, land, cars, food, services, etc.  Wealth gets created and destroyed, sometimes both in quick succession, as when a cook prepares a meal that gets eaten right away.  

Bitcoin does not create any wealth. Its contribution to productivity, by (allegedly) being a more efficient payment instrument is tiny.  In fact, the contribution of bitcoin to world's production of wealth, so far, has been humongously negative: 100 times (at least) more wealth has been destroyed by the bitcoin network than has been created thanks to it.

It is not because of that tiny positive contribution that large early adopters have become wealthier, either on paper (if they are still holding) or in reality (if they cashed out).  Bitcoin's effect has been mainly to move property from some people to other people, mostly independently of their actual contribution to society.   The gains from the early adopters, in particular, came from the (substantially bigger) losses of  those who have bough coins and are still holding them.  If bitcoin's price ever reached a million, as the holders dream, then trlliions of wealth would be transferred -- little by little, imperceptibly -- from those who buy bitcoins to those early adopters who hold most of the coins.  If a country like Greece adopted bitcoin, that wealth would be taken from its citizens.  

That is the same trick that governments and banks use when they create more money, indeed. But when the government does it, it is just another kind of tax: the government is supposed to use the wealth that it buys with that new money for the benefit of its citizens.  When banks do it, of course, there is no such return: there is net and permanent transfer of wealth from the general people to bank owners.

And that is the case too when private entities create new money, whether it is gift certificates or Linden Dollars -- or cryptocurrencies.  *That* is why cryptocurrencies are a scam, even if they were to succeed.  

There is more relation to work done with bitcoin than any other currency ever. It is documented proof of work that makes a bitcoin a bitcoin.

The work of the miners is not constructuve but destructive: the world gets poorer by their work -- with less coal, less water in the hydro dams, etc..  If someone gets rich by destroying wealth, he must be taking more wealth from someone else.

ok, miners produce heat that keeps them warm. They buy equipment which gives people jobs. They make money and stay off of welfare, which reduces the tax burden.  If they mine full time then they reduce unemployment.

These are actually bogus answers, but no more bogus than yours. The real answer is that they are ENTREPRENEURS. Entrepreneurs make guesses about the FUTURE demand for their goods and services and bet their own money that there will be enough demand to make a profit. Traders do the same thing, betting that there will be future demand for liquidity that they can provide. If they fill a market need then they profit and deserve to do so because they took a risk that benefited their trading partners. They have to benefit their trading partners or no trade would take place. The market is people. A person who is successful in the market is successful at serving his fellow man.

You seem to ignore or are incapable of understanding the crucial difference between VOLUNTARY action and COERCION. If Bitcoin fails, it's no more of a waste than any other business venture that doesn't pan out. It's not like a government that takes money BY FORCE and may or may not do good things with it, or forces us to use some particular banknotes as currency, with no assurance as to their future supply. You want to make the world more safe. I can respect that. Can you not see the benefit of making the world more free? Unfortunately, we can't do both. I for one do not want to live in a zoo. I prefer the jungle.

[nanobrain]

I guess I'll give you points for being consistent: you're probably not simply 'anti Bitcoin', but against the larger development of excessive 'financialization' (through financial derivatives), right?

You bet.

Money is not real wealth, it is just a token that one can exchange for real wealth things and stuff.

Real wealth is something that most of the "intellectual powerhouses" here will never understand or have; they are too busy obsessing over accumulating stuff and things, measuring themselves against illusions and performing in a loaded game.

[Fatman3001]

What a fucking clown. Using bitcoin as a currency for a country:
https://twitter.com/jonmatonis/status/570609094438088705

Until now I believed that Jon Matonis was one of the few sensible and realist people in the bitcon scene (even though he is a bitcoin salesman).  But that is just too naive (or insincere).  Oh well...

e

[1]So what is YOUR take on nations spending money that the unborn will have to repay? [2] If that's not taxation w/o representation, then what is it? You think that's moral? [3]We fought a war against the strongest empire on earth to stop that kind of tyranny.

Are you gonna make some bullshit argument that the ends justifies the means as long as they invest the loot right?

Bja, you know I love you. You often want my coins to appreciate, which I like. But this is just retarded.

1) They will inherit the country as well. If the elected government thinks they need to build up some debt to avoid a worse faith for the country, then that's what they must do.
2) It's regular taxation. Most of the choices made by the current generation affects the next. They were represented by their parents and grandparents.
3) If you think you think that the problem with Nazi-Germany was taxation, then your ignorance is close to offensive. Which is quite a feat.

[1] Surely you know I was referring to the American Revolutionary War where taxation w/o representation was explicitly a casus belli. By your reasoning, the colonialists were represented by the King and the Founding Fathers were traitors. [2]You must also know that an heir can inherit wealth if the deceased has a positive net worth but is NOT obligated to take on debts of the deceased if he doesn't. We all have an obligation to our children that we don't have to our parents because nobody chooses to be born.

1) I'm sorry, I forgot who I was talking to.
2) There are very good reasons why that applies to personal debt and very good reasons why they don't apply to public debt. A country is not a person. It doesn't die. If and when it is dissolved, vanquished, conquered, then it is reasonable to ask where the debt goes.


But yes, there is a lot of risk involved with adding to an already huge debt. But sometimes the alternatives are worse. There was no reason to keep adding to the deficit after the dot-com crash of 2001 had been dealt with. So from 2002/2003-2008 both congress and the president should have focused on turning the deficit into a surplus. But instead they decided to gamble the nations future on an oxymoron called big-government conservatism. Kicking the dollar and replacing it with Bitcoin is not going to make republicans (both voters and politicians) less stupid. That requires education, publicly funded education. Even those on the right should recognize this.

[nanobrain]

I for one do not want to live in a zoo. I prefer the jungle.

LOL.

You wouldn't last 5 minutes in the jungle, fireman.

[billyjoeallen]

I for one do not want to live in a zoo. I prefer the jungle.

LOL.

You wouldn't last 5 minutes in the jungle, fireman.

That should be my decision to make.

[sporket]

...
ok, miners counterfeiters  produce heat that keeps them warm. They buy equipment which gives people jobs. They make money and stay off of welfare, which reduces the tax burden.  If they mine counterfeit full time then they reduce unemployment.

These are actually bogus answers, but no more bogus than yours. The real answer is that they are ENTREPRENEURS...

I think you got something there.
Good morning, gentlemen.

[JorgeStolfi]

Here is an even nicer number:

000000000000000000000000000000000dffb334bffcaaff3333fffffffffffffffffff

You say that a couple thousand dollars of electricity were used to find your number?  How stupid.  I found mine by just typing hex digits at random.  Yet it is a hash of some string too, like yours.  So, explain again, why is your number "wealth", as much wealth as a laptop or a good bike?  Why isn't mine "wealth", too?

The challenge isn't to create a hash with leading numbers. That's easy as you proven. The challenge is, to find some random data that combined with given data (the actual transactions) and passed into a defined hashing algorythm will return this kind of hexdecimal number with the required amount of leading zeros.

That's not something, that's easy to do.

I really don't know whether he or she is truly interested in this or merely trying to combat Bitcoin itself and not the proof if work algorithm. People need to understand that this is the solution to the Byzantine generals problem. Nothing more but also nothing less!

At least we have agreed that Marcus's number is not valuable by itself; the supposed "value" is in the blockchain.  That number is just a seal on the door of a safe, that guarantees that the land deeds that are stored inside the safe have not been adulterated since they were placed there.

That seal contributes in part to the value of the land plots recorded in those deeds, but in a very indirect way.  The "value" of bitcoins is not defined by the protocol, it is defined by beliefs and feelings of the people who buy or sell them.  That value is not proportional to the amount of energy spent in the computing that hash, just as the seal's land's value is not proportional to the cost of the wax and stamp used to make it the seal.

The hashes of the earliest blocks had only a few leading zeros, yet the bitcoins mined in those blocks are assumed to be as valuable as those mined today: that "fact" is not in the protocol either, it is just a belief that bitcoiners have chosen to share.

Every week, several blocks get orphaned: their hashes cost as much as the hashes of the surviving blocks, but the coins mined in them are worthless... unless some day a bunch of people decides that a certain orphan block was legitimate, and starts building a new blockchain branch from that block, and agrees to believe that the coins in that branch have value to them.

Proof of work is not "the" solution to the Byzantine General's Problem, it is only "a" solution, even if it is the only one known.  As used in bitcoin, it is a tremendously expensive solution; but its worst defect is that it leads to centralization of mining, which in the end defeats its goal. For that reason, some (myself included) conclude that the PoW "solution" is not really a solution.

(There is also the question of whether the bitcoin PoW puzzle is really hard, or whether there is a clever algorithm that solves it in a millisecond.  No, it is not "guaranteed by math" at all. But let's not get into that now.)

Edit: seal and land analogy.

[billyjoeallen]

1) I'm sorry, I forgot who I was talking to.
2) There are very good reasons why that applies to personal debt and very good reasons why they don't apply to public debt. A country is not a person. It doesn't die. If and when it is dissolved, vanquished, conquered, then it is reasonable to ask where the debt goes.


But yes, there is a lot of risk involved with adding to an already huge debt. But sometimes the alternatives are worse. There was no reason to keep adding to the deficit after the dot-com crash of 2001 had been dealt with. So from 2002/2003-2008 both congress and the president should have focused on turning the deficit into a surplus. But instead they decided to gamble the nations future on an oxymoron called big-government conservatism. Kicking the dollar and replacing it with Bitcoin is not going to make republicans (both voters and politicians) less stupid. That requires education, publicly funded education. Even those on the right should recognize this.

1) no problem.
2) a government is not a country.

I'm not conservative (except culturally). I don't want to end the dollar. I want to end the forced use of the dollar by ending legal tender laws. Bitcoin may not ever catch on, but we should be free to use whatever form of money a buyer and seller agrees on.

Education is important, but politicians, bureaucrats and teachers don't have the incentives to do it well, which is why the don't do it well. Public choice economics predicts this and test scores confirm it. Online resources like The Khan Academy is free and take no tax money. That's not the whole solution, but part of it.  https://www.khanacademy.org/

[tarmi]

I guess I'll give you points for being consistent: you're probably not simply 'anti Bitcoin', but against the larger development of excessive 'financialization' (through financial derivatives), right?

You bet.

Money is not real wealth, it is just a token that one can exchange for real wealth things and stuff.

Real wealth is something that most of the "intellectual powerhouses" here will never understand or have; they are too busy obsessing over accumulating stuff and things, measuring themselves against illusions and performing in a loaded game.

+1

real wealth is knowledge.

all other things are...well...things.

[ChartBuddy]

Coin
Explanation

[silverfuture]

Best comments from Matonis' tweet feed RE: Greece and Bitcoin:

[silverfuture]

1) I'm sorry, I forgot who I was talking to.
2) There are very good reasons why that applies to personal debt and very good reasons why they don't apply to public debt. A country is not a person. It doesn't die. If and when it is dissolved, vanquished, conquered, then it is reasonable to ask where the debt goes.


But yes, there is a lot of risk involved with adding to an already huge debt. But sometimes the alternatives are worse. There was no reason to keep adding to the deficit after the dot-com crash of 2001 had been dealt with. So from 2002/2003-2008 both congress and the president should have focused on turning the deficit into a surplus. But instead they decided to gamble the nations future on an oxymoron called big-government conservatism. Kicking the dollar and replacing it with Bitcoin is not going to make republicans (both voters and politicians) less stupid. That requires education, publicly funded education. Even those on the right should recognize this.

1) no problem.
2) a government is not a country.

I'm not conservative (except culturally). I don't want to end the dollar. I want to end the forced use of the dollar by ending legal tender laws. Bitcoin may not ever catch on, but we should be free to use whatever form of money a buyer and seller agrees on.

Education is important, but politicians, bureaucrats and teachers don't have the incentives to do it well, which is why the don't do it well. Public choice economics predicts this and test scores confirm it. Online resources like The Khan Academy is free and take no tax money. That's not the whole solution, but part of it.  https://www.khanacademy.org/

Well said BJA.  Education certainly does not need to be publicly funded and controlled by bureaucrats to be effective or accessible at all. Why does this myth exist in spite of the myriad evidence against it?

[KryptoFoo]

The moment is nigh. Meltup. Chinese panic pump.

[NotHatinJustTrollin]

Best comments from Matonis' tweet feed RE: Greece and Bitcoin:

I see three rambling nutjobs:

[Globb0]

Best comments from Matonis' tweet feed RE: Greece and Bitcoin:

I suppose if a transparent mechanism replaced a it might be there it might not banking system there could be beneficial side effects.

[empowering]

http://youtu.be/LYnnm3L12fA



    "Such a waste of time, he chose money over power. In this town, a mistake nearly everyone makes.

    Money is the McMansion in Sarasota that starts falling apart after ten years.

    Power is the old stone building that stands for centuries.

    I can not respect someone that doesn’t see the difference."



 

[silverfuture]

Best comments from Matonis' tweet feed RE: Greece and Bitcoin:

I suppose if a transparent mechanism replaced a it might be there it might not banking system there could be beneficial side effects.

^ come again?

[phoenix1]

Best comments from Matonis' tweet feed RE: Greece and Bitcoin:

I suppose if a transparent mechanism replaced a it might be there it might not banking system there could be beneficial side effects.

^ come again?

Yeh, I really have no idea what that means either  

[billyjoeallen]

I guess I'll give you points for being consistent: you're probably not simply 'anti Bitcoin', but against the larger development of excessive 'financialization' (through financial derivatives), right?

You bet.

Money is not real wealth, it is just a token that one can exchange for real wealth things and stuff.

Real wealth is something that most of the "intellectual powerhouses" here will never understand or have; they are too busy obsessing over accumulating stuff and things, measuring themselves against illusions and performing in a loaded game.

+1

real wealth is knowledge.

all other things are...well...things.

That's so fucking profound. Thanks for that original and enlightening thought.
I'm curious what YOU measure yourself against and how you think you're doing. Don't say you don't do it.  All that would mean is you have no interest in self improvement.

Tell me, oh wisetits, how should I measure myself?