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

[Ibian]

Here's an economics problem about bitcoin as a store of value I want to see Marcus and Adam even attempt to address.  The post is a reply to a Nick Szabo quote I don't think is correct:

Any commodity that can be stored and so traded can be used as store of value that will render the owner immune from the perceived or actual risks of holding a floating currency.

First of all, just about every currency is a "floating currency" unless the entire supply has been entirely mined from the closed ecosystem and you no longer have to worry about cost of production affecting value.  But even then, you're still governed by people's sentiment for how much they value that object to trade their goods and services for vs bartering with something else.  Everything about the currency is going to be floating in one way or another.

Secondly, bitcoin having a potentially wildly floating cost of production is one of it's greatest weaknesses and one reason it's not a store of value.  A wildly volatile to the downside cost of production is a black swan event in itself and would render confidence in that asset to nothingness.  If we lived in an open ecosystem, which anyone who claims we will be mining asteroids for metals does, then the cost of production and it's ability to not plummet is the main factor that makes gold a store of value at all.  If you live in a closed ecosystem it's not that big of a factor since you're bound by supply.

As for bitcoin, the fact that mining NEVER ENDS is exactly the equivalent of using gold as money while being in an open ecosystem.  If cost of production craters, you're screwed.  This can happen in bitcoin easily.  The act of previous holders just hoarding their money and refusing to sell low doesn't help because the network is officially dead in the first place if there's no mining fees to siphon off at this new lower cost of production, so the fresh lower cost of production coins drag everything else down with it.

What's the question?

[bones261]

consider fiat's cost of production and the rate at which the FED prints it and INJECTS it into the economy... yet fiat is still a relatively stable store of value.

Fiat is not a relatively stable sore of value. Each and every year that passes by, a dollar buys less and less. I must admit, the inflation in the US has been ralatively low for quite a while. However, in the late 70s, this was not the case. As a child, it seemed every time that I went to the store, candy, pop and comic books cost 5 cents more.

[Killerpotleaf]

cost of production only has an impact on the market if that commodity is consumed and very depended on continually replenishing the supply.

for things like gold, bitcoin, and fiat cost of production is meaningless, only thing that really matter for these types is total supply + the rate at which the supply grows.

for gold and fiat, the higher their value the higher the rate at which the supply grows, but not bitcoin! and this is one reason why bitcoin is a better store of value than gold. no one can simply change the supply.

sure its hard to "change the supply-side of gold" but its not impossible, asteroid minning is a real possible future for gold. and it wont be the fact that 1 oz of gold only cost 100$ to produce that will bring down its price, the price will change because the total supply and the rate at which that supply grows, has changed.

imagine we mine an asteroid FULL of gold, so much gold we don't know what to do with it, the cost of producing that gold was 100$ an oz, but flooding the market with ALL THAT GOLD would crash gold's price to 5$ an ounce... at that point the supply of gold stops gorwing completely and its more or less forever worthless!

in contrast, if 500 Billion barrels of oil MAGICALLY appeared, the price might go down for a while... but once consumed, the cost of oil goes right back to the cost of production.

lets consider silver.
its cost of production is near 0 because it is a byproduct of copper mines.
but silver still has a bloody high market price.

case and point, production cost has very little impact on "highly durable commodities"  

  


... maybe thats why they "dont make them how they use to anymore" O_O

[Killerpotleaf]

consider fiat's cost of production and the rate at which the FED prints it and INJECTS it into the economy... yet fiat is still a relatively stable store of value.

Fiat is not a relatively stable sore of value. Each and every year that passes by, a dollar buys less and less. I must admit, the inflation in the US has been ralatively low for quite a while. However, in the late 70s, this was not the case. As a child, it seemed every time that I went to the store, candy, pop and comic books cost 5 cents more.

its not gr8 at long term storage...
but if we are looking to preserve some value for a short time.
cash is king.

[bones261]

its not gr8 at long term storage...
but if we are looking to preserve some value for a short time.
cash is king.

Not always...

[Killerpotleaf]

its not gr8 at long term storage...
but if we are looking to preserve some value for a short time.
cash is king.

Not always...

right highly sought out rare unique items might be and excellent store of value.
a bitcoin more like these stamps then it is gold.
these stamps have a strictly limited supply. not so with gold.

 

[r0ach]

Here's an economics problem about bitcoin as a store of value I want to see Marcus and Adam even attempt to address.  The post is a reply to a Nick Szabo quote I don't think is correct:

Any commodity that can be stored and so traded can be used as store of value that will render the owner immune from the perceived or actual risks of holding a floating currency.

First of all, just about every currency is a "floating currency" unless the entire supply has been entirely mined from the closed ecosystem and you no longer have to worry about cost of production affecting value.  But even then, you're still governed by people's sentiment for how much they value that object to trade their goods and services for vs bartering with something else.  Everything about the currency is going to be floating in one way or another.

Secondly, bitcoin having a potentially wildly floating cost of production is one of it's greatest weaknesses and one reason it's not a store of value.  A wildly volatile to the downside cost of production is a black swan event in itself and would render confidence in that asset to nothingness.  If we lived in an open ecosystem, which anyone who claims we will be mining asteroids for metals does, then the cost of production and it's ability to not plummet is the main factor that makes gold a store of value at all.  If you live in a closed ecosystem it's not that big of a factor since you're bound by supply.

As for bitcoin, the fact that mining NEVER ENDS is exactly the equivalent of using gold as money while being in an open ecosystem.  If cost of production craters, you're screwed.  This can happen in bitcoin easily.  The act of previous holders just hoarding their money and refusing to sell low doesn't help because the network is officially dead in the first place if there's no mining fees to siphon off at this new lower cost of production, so the fresh lower cost of production coins drag everything else down with it.

cost of production has very little effect on price
even if ( for no good reason ) the cost of mining the remaining 9million coins was 0, price would not be affected.
so what if the miner dumps 12.5BTC every 10mins and makes a profit.
its NOTHING compared to the global trading volume, and the market itself dosnt really care about how much or how little the miner is profiting

consider fiat's cost of production and the rate at which the FED prints it and INJECTS it into the economy... yet fiat is still a relatively stable store of value.

You're acting like bitcoin has a finite supply.  In theory it does, but not in practice since transaction fees are recycled and mining continues FOREVER.  It's the equivalent of if platinum costs $1000 an ounce to mine at some point but people are recycling old cars and getting it for $100 an ounce.  The lowest available price is the only one that matters.  It doesn't matter if the cost of production was $1 million for a coin at some point.  It's an open entropy system so if the cost of production goes to zero, people simply plug into the system and mine those recycled coins for free rather than paying you $1 million.  

If there are no recycled fees to mine, it means the system was already dead in the first place.  The act of making fees recycle is the equivalent of infinite supply when a bitcoin is an arbitrary unit in the first place, just with the store of value aspect of that supply resting on cost of production instead of scarcity.  Each halving doubles cost of production, which enables you to increase price or lower mining input.  If you run out of halvings and then lower cost of production, you should have a corresponding effect to devalue other already existing coins.  Do you see now why cost of production actually does matter?

Most people with an IQ of 70 that don't know their head from a hole in the ground call bitcoin a ponzi but have no idea how it even works, yet if you really do understand how it works, it actually does resemble somewhat of a ponzi where arbitrary dates are inserted and proclaimed that on this date, the price must rise if mining input stays the same.  If that's not a "scheme" of some type, then I don't know what is.

[AZwarel]

its not gr8 at long term storage...
but if we are looking to preserve some value for a short time.
cash is king.

Not always...

[bones261]

its not gr8 at long term storage...
but if we are looking to preserve some value for a short time.
cash is king.

Not always...

right highly sought out rare unique items might be and excellent store of value.
a bitcoin more like these stamps then it is gold.
these stamps have a strictly limited supply. not so with gold.

 

These stamps were from Germany in 1924. LOL. The are not rare or valuable at all. The point is they were going for 5000 to 500,000 marks, and then they had to cross that out and they were going for 2 million marks. I was refuting your claim that cash is king for the short term. That has not always been the case.

[Killerpotleaf]

its not gr8 at long term storage...
but if we are looking to preserve some value for a short time.
cash is king.

Not always...

right highly sought out rare unique items might be and excellent store of value.
a bitcoin more like these stamps then it is gold.
these stamps have a strictly limited supply. not so with gold.

 

These stamps were from Germany in 1924. LOL. The are not rare or valuable at all. The point is they were going for 5000 to 500,000 marks, and then they had to cross that out and they were going for 2 million marks. I was refuting your claim that cash is king for the short term. That has not always been the case.

i assumed you were point to some super rare stamps or somthing ...idk...

ahhh the Gr8 Germany " wall-paper money experiment "

[savetherainforest]

ROFL!...





Actually we did got a lot of free publicity.   

[Killerpotleaf]

[Killerpotleaf]

[Karartma1]

Yes, if there was any need to confirm that we got some maturity in the btc market well now it's confirmed.
We had all the eyes of the financial world on us and the big fellas expected a big drop to come onboard without the etf but they got it wrong.

As we usually say around here: GO BTC GO!

[kurious]

The assumption that a new paradigm of 'stability' has arrived in Bitcoin is often found to be false before very long.

[Ted E. Bare]

Breakout to the upside in progress? Happening?

[mckk]

Breakout to the upside in progress? Happening?

Pre-dump breakout 

[savetherainforest]

its not gr8 at long term storage...
but if we are looking to preserve some value for a short time.
cash is king.

Not always...

right highly sought out rare unique items might be and excellent store of value.
a bitcoin more like these stamps then it is gold.
these stamps have a strictly limited supply. not so with gold.

 

These stamps were from Germany in 1924. LOL. The are not rare or valuable at all. The point is they were going for 5000 to 500,000 marks, and then they had to cross that out and they were going for 2 million marks. I was refuting your claim that cash is king for the short term. That has not always been the case.

i assumed you were point to some super rare stamps or somthing ...idk...

ahhh the Gr8 Germany " wall-paper money experiment "

Dude... u'r giving me ideas to do that with some ucrainian Hrivnas or some russian Rubles!

That is just epic... Think of all those plastic moneyz that will be so good for insulating my bathroom.. I think australian $$ or canadian $$ will do just fine for keeping the moisture out of the walls!

[becoin]

But, but, but why is price going up? SEC rejected Bitcoin! It must vanish and disappear in matter of days!

[Ted E. Bare]

A lot of people sold at ETF news and are out of coins talking their books. Dump my ass. They get forced to buy back at a loss.