Breaking news: Poland confiscates private pension funds

[thezerg]

It seems Bitcoin has just got much more popular in Poland. Anti-fragile, bitches!

If the same happens to the real money laying around at Gox we'll see how "anti-fragile" Butts really are.

for shame trolling lk that.  I've learn3d to expect better from your other posts.  gox is not bitcoin and everyone knows that if you have x usd and y btc in gox all it means is 2 numbers in some gox db.

btc encourages or at least does not penalize holding value personally.  and when you do so noone can take it without your permission.  not counting stealing your personal private key of course.  but that is very different then being able to shift millions of balances into your sphere so you can then borrow against it.

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[ElectricMucus]

It seems Bitcoin has just got much more popular in Poland. Anti-fragile, bitches!

If the same happens to the real money laying around at Gox we'll see how "anti-fragile" Butts really are.

for shame trolling lk that.  I've learn3d to expect better from your other posts.  gox is not bitcoin and everyone knows that if you have x usd and y btc in gox all it means is 2 numbers in some gox db.

btc encourages or at least does not penalize holding value personally.  and when you do so noone can take it without your permission.  not counting stealing your personal private key of course.  but that is very different then being able to shift millions of balances into your sphere so you can then borrow against it.

I'm sorry that's my instinctive reaction to up uP UP kind of posts coming from the profiteers who did nothing besides proliferating themselves.

The point here is: What's keeping Bitcoins seemingly valuable currently is not their utility but the willingness of people to exchange Dollars for them. Pretty much everybody who wants to do that exhausted their ability to do so, and once the money vanishes for some reason nobody will hop in to compensate. OTC deals will only go as far and the people who do them would be quite reluctant to pay higher prices without the 'price fixing' taking place at gox.
I'm not saying that can't change in the future, but how it stands that's how it is now.

[thezerg]

It seems Bitcoin has just got much more popular in Poland. Anti-fragile, bitches!

If the same happens to the real money laying around at Gox we'll see how "anti-fragile" Butts really are.

for shame trolling lk that.  I've learn3d to expect better from your other posts.  gox is not bitcoin and everyone knows that if you have x usd and y btc in gox all it means is 2 numbers in some gox db.

btc encourages or at least does not penalize holding value personally.  and when you do so noone can take it without your permission.  not counting stealing your personal private key of course.  but that is very different then being able to shift millions of balances into your sphere so you can then borrow against it.

I'm sorry that's my instinctive reaction to up uP UP kind of posts coming from the profiteers who did nothing besides proliferating themselves.

The point here is: What's keeping Bitcoins seemingly valuable currently is not their utility but the willingness of people to exchange Dollars for them. Pretty much everybody who wants to do that exhausted their ability to do so, and once the money vanishes for some reason nobody will hop in to compensate. OTC deals will only go as far and the people who do them would be quite reluctant to pay higher prices without the 'price fixing' taking place at gox.
I'm not saying that can't change in the future, but how it stands that's how it is now.

I think you've underestimated the value of bitcoin to allay fear of the future.  And I'm not talking Armageddon.  10% interest with a -5% real return would be bad enough.  Its a big market -- a significant portion of the value of gold is attributable to this service.  Of course gold's role here is tarnished due to its ability to be detected, difficulty of being transferred, having been (once upon a time) declared illegal for this purpose and ultra high value density (hard to actually buy lunch with it).  So a diverse commodity strategy (gold, silver, bitcoin) makes a lot of sense... bitcoin ESPECIALLY looks good in the boiled-frog scenario (where life goes on, basic services still work, just another day where your savings are getting pilfered) compared to gold/silver.

Read the above posts from actual Portuguese people.  They are basically saying this is a non-event because no-one in Portugal ever believed that they'd see a dime from their "retirement" anyway!!!  WTF?!  That's like saying I'm not worried about radiation exposure b/c I already have cancer. 

So bitcoin HAS utility right now -- its utility is peace of mind.  And of course it does have "raw" utility -- the ability to buy tons of stuff either direct or via services like Gyft...

[cr1776]

+1.  They were being slowly robbed for years by being forced to contribute to something that they never believed in.  Now that it is official, it is a non-event.  Crazy stuff.

I think you've underestimated the value of bitcoin to allay fear of the future.  And I'm not talking Armageddon.  10% interest with a -5% real return would be bad enough.  Its a big market -- a significant portion of the value of gold is attributable to this service.  Of course gold's role here is tarnished due to its ability to be detected, difficulty of being transferred, having been (once upon a time) declared illegal for this purpose and ultra high value density (hard to actually buy lunch with it).  So a diverse commodity strategy (gold, silver, bitcoin) makes a lot of sense... bitcoin ESPECIALLY looks good in the boiled-frog scenario (where life goes on, basic services still work, just another day where your savings are getting pilfered) compared to gold/silver.

Read the above posts from actual Portuguese people.  They are basically saying this is a non-event because no-one in Portugal ever believed that they'd see a dime from their "retirement" anyway!!!  WTF?!  That's like saying I'm not worried about radiation exposure b/c I already have cancer. 

So bitcoin HAS utility right now -- its utility is peace of mind.  And of course it does have "raw" utility -- the ability to buy tons of stuff either direct or via services like Gyft...

[ElectricMucus]

So bitcoin HAS utility right now -- its utility is peace of mind.  

Nobody outside the core group of evangelists believes that.

[bitcoin carpenter]

So bitcoin HAS utility right now -- its utility is peace of mind.  

Nobody outside the core group of evangelists believes that.

You know, as much as i disagree with mucus, i will never put him on ignore because he is similar to the nagging feeling in my head whenever i see BTC prices overextend themselves to quickly without having any positive news to back it up.  Mucus has saved me a few bucks over the past few months by keeping me a bit gun shy on the buy trigger, and by convincing me every once in a while that the market is overextended and needs a correction.

[grovestr]

You don't understand that assets wasn't private. If article says that, it isn't said it's true. Stay bullish, and argue from Nigeria or where you live about Polish econimics.

I don't want to be rude or anything but you're embarrassing yourself with such silly remarks. You clearly have a poor understanding of economics.

In your face, Herp.

Prime minister of Poland telling that it wasn't private money and if that was so, everybody could withdraw that money - but they couldn't.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4V2nMa63JE

[wachtwoord]

So bitcoin HAS utility right now -- its utility is peace of mind.  

Nobody outside the core group of evangelists believes that.

True, but the non-believers will come around And those that trust the pension funds for their retirement are going to be sore out of luck.

[EvilPanda]

You don't understand that assets wasn't private. If article says that, it isn't said it's true. Stay bullish, and argue from Nigeria or where you live about Polish econimics.

I don't want to be rude or anything but you're embarrassing yourself with such silly remarks. You clearly have a poor understanding of economics.

In your face, Herp.

Prime minister of Poland telling that it wasn't private money and if that was so, everybody could withdraw that money - but they couldn't.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4V2nMa63JE

Polish prime minister is a known liar so IMO this doesn't prove anything. Even if you can't withdraw those money as you please, they still  belong to you. The government just stole your money to keep a sinking ship afloat for a few more years.

[BobbyJo]

The point is public services have to be paid for some how.  Because of the debt based economy we are all used to now, we expect lower taxes and better services, well it just don't work!

[Keldel]

This just proves that governments can manipulate the amount of official debt. Next time you see the official statistics for the debt, have that in mind.

When trying to estimate the real debt you need to add all the unfunded liabilities. In US that would be 100 - 200 trillions USD total debt with unfunded liabilities!

[Carlton Banks]

IMO the most important thing to do right now is to get our Polish law and compress it by 99%. For every 100 pages, 1 page would be enough.
Next thing would be to lay off 90% of government officials. The bureaucracy is killing every business.

Civil servants only would be a great kind of government IMO. Then the whole population become neo-politicians, and we all vote on the legislation, like politicians do now. The civil servants just have to make it happen. I doubt the population could make things any worse than they are now. I hear arguments against direct democracy saying that the citizenry would be too focused on short term goals for themselves and not on the big picture, but that's a joke when you look at how the past and current forward planning has/will turn out.