Volatility IS a bug, not a feature :)

[Satofan44]

I don’t seem to get the part where you mention it to have being intentional and therefore being susceptible to manipulations, it’s a little confusing to me.

Read posts from actual members and not from signature spammers, it has nothing to do with definitions. By making such general statement posts, people are revealing themselves to not have even read the proposition in the original post by d5000 let alone subsequent posts and discussions -- If you have read it but don't understand it, then don't write a reply and go somewhere else. In the way that it is proposed, the volatility has become a bug and something needs to change for Bitcoin to mature or it is going down the wrong path. I have provided the numbers on the previous page. There is no way to deny this, because the mathematical evidence points to a catastrophe that may have prolonged effects on Bitcoin. Whether this will lead to a positive change where we experience periods of stable yet conservative growth instead of terrible cycles, or to a negative change where we experience a very long and harsh winter -- we will see. In any case, the current setup of the vollatilities and their rates of change is unsustainable. The math is there, this fact can't be denied.

Tether has frozen addresses numerous times.

Not only do they do this, but I can have your Tether frozen for fraudulent reasons. I can pay you with Tether for some service and subsequently fake a robbery or kidnapping and send Tether "evidence", they will freeze your balance and now it is up to you to prove that you are innocent. Compared to Bitcoin and fiat, this is the worst system possible. No real investigation by the law enforcement is needed, no court order, or anything of the like. You just need to convince a few employees of a private company to believe your bullshit story and you can cause a headache for someone else. Update: LLMs that we call "AI" make this extremely worse as it is. I can create very realistic documentation and even video evidence of the alleged kidnapping. Sure I would be committing a big crime, but what about it? Since when do criminals care about that? As long as this is possible, it is the worst system of all.

It's not possible to "reverse" a transaction, no. Every transaction lives forever, and is written to a decentralized WORM storage that keeps the record around even after humans go extinct. Five billion years from now, aliens will find all of the Haypenny transactions written on hard physical disks in many places.

Since it is centralized, it is absolutely possible to freeze someone's funds, and users must trust the mint with the supply of money. It is absolutely not trustless nor permissionless. If you think people will confidently use this service for high value transactions and for long-term store of wealth, knowing that a government can compromise it any time, you're foolish. 

Actually, Tether operates on many chains where a reversal of transactions is almost trivial. Any account-based chain makes reversal of transactions easy, since you don't need to revert the entire chain to do so as in the case of Bitcoin. [/quote]

For example, while Bitcoin is able to fulfill the function of (P2P digital) cash seeing it as only that is extremely limited and wrong. So many things can be done with it, and in many different ways, contrary to what is possible with normal cash.

I have tried to create a thread about the unique value proposition of Bitcoin in the Spanish forum. This goes into this direction, I think, but was much less elaborated than a finance/(micro)economics expert could do and it's still mostly centered in the "usage as money" concept, although with some points which emphasize the store of value concept too ("strong hands" importance). It's still a simple forum post, but maybe I could elaborate the idea further.

I agree that @virginorange's post should get more attention, maybe I'll reach out to him for a translation or a "derived" post.

Please do so.

I don't consider a stablecoin that is tied to another currency, which is just another form of peg, stable.

I think this is a bit too theoretic. The dollar is still a good measure for purchasing power. And you could also imagine a Dai-like stablecoin based on a currency or commodity basket (like Libra was meant to be, but more decentralized).

I strongly disagree that it is theoretical, we were discussing the possibility of making a stable crypto which I say it is not possible in free market. If you focus on any unit of account and create something that is pegged to that, then it will always "look stable" but it won't be. I can easily create a crypto that is 1:1 pegged to gold, to Bitcoin, to silver, whatever else you want. The volatility of the value will differ between those instruments, but they will never be stable. It is the exact same case with something that is pegged to USD, it is never stable, it has just even lower volatility than the examples given.
 

[BlackHatCoiner]

Actually, Tether operates on many chains where a reversal of transactions is almost trivial. Any account-based chain makes reversal of transactions easy, since you don't need to revert the entire chain to do so as in the case of Bitcoin.

The only reason they haven't ever reversed a transaction is probably because freezing funds suffices. Freezing funds is the equivalent of making outputs unspendable, which is the same thing as treating the transaction that created them as invalid, ergo it is practically reversal.

There will probably be a day when people will be 'bored out' by Bitcoin like d5000 said.

Gold has ten times the liquidity bitcoin has, and yet it has gone up by 77% in one year. People will never get bored as long as we're in the fiat circus!

[nemesis_incarnate]

USD volatility is far more worrisome.

It's funny how some people think USD is the fiat equivalent of the metric system and they don't even realize what's gonna happen in a few years.

Printer so going to do the brrrr, that's what

Really?

I hope it won't come to that extent, but, yeah.

[cryptosize]

USD volatility is far more worrisome.

It's funny how some people think USD is the fiat equivalent of the metric system and they don't even realize what's gonna happen in a few years.

Printer so going to do the brrrr, that's what

Really?

I hope it won't come to that extent, but, yeah.

The only way to avoid that scenario is to pull off yet another Executive Order 6102, only this time around it will be much easier with BTC on exchanges.

In that case it will be proven beyond any doubt that BTC is the most valuable digital asset (contrary to what naysayers/no-coiners/shitcoiners would like you to believe) and it could go really, really high (like millions of dollars each).

BTC exchange hodlers will get some kind of IOU (denominated in fiat/CBDC terms).

Maybe Trump has a plan to repay the US debt, along with bolstering FED's upcoming CBDC (which could be backed by BTC, aka Gold Standard 2.0)...

[PrivacyG]

Gold has ten times the liquidity bitcoin has, and yet it has gone up by 77% in one year. People will never get bored as long as we're in the fiat circus!

This is also true, some times I forget.  Fiat becoming more and more of a poop wagon every day is definitely not going to make things boring.

[Satofan44]

Actually, Tether operates on many chains where a reversal of transactions is almost trivial. Any account-based chain makes reversal of transactions easy, since you don't need to revert the entire chain to do so as in the case of Bitcoin.

The only reason they haven't ever reversed a transaction is probably because freezing funds suffices. Freezing funds is the equivalent of making outputs unspendable, which is the same thing as treating the transaction that created them as invalid, ergo it is practically reversal.

Exactly, they have 2 options to do this whereas Bitcoin does not have a single one. Since freezing can be done arbitrarily at practically no cost, there is no need to go the hard way and to force the network to reverse 1 transaction. Some people talk about the superiority of the account-based system over the UTXO system like we have in Bitcoin, but they are overlooking this major importance. The cost to revert a transaction in Bitcoin, putting aside mining and all those things, is enormous. It is incomparably harder and more costly than it is in ETH, the difference can't even be computed exactly. In ETH you can easily revert a transaction that is weeks or months old, and in Bitcoin that is a practical impossibility as it would undo everything that has happened since then. No major economic participant would ever agree to that.

There will probably be a day when people will be 'bored out' by Bitcoin like d5000 said.

Gold has ten times the liquidity bitcoin has, and yet it has gone up by 77% in one year. People will never get bored as long as we're in the fiat circus!

I look forward to the day when people are bored that Bitcoin is only worth $1.1m instead of going up more.   But as we have been talking about it here, such prices and events are not possible without a downside volatility that gets reduced much more aggressively. If it continues as it has so far, we will have issues long before we reach such a state of maturity.

The only way to avoid that scenario is to pull off yet another Executive Order 6102, only this time around it will be much easier with BTC on exchanges.

In that case it will be proven beyond any doubt that BTC is the most valuable digital asset (contrary to what naysayers/no-coiners/shitcoiners would like you to believe) and it could go really, really high (like millions of dollars each).

BTC exchange hodlers will get some kind of IOU (denominated in fiat/CBDC terms).

That could only work with US-only based exchanges, and it would come at a huge downside to the US. Therefore, while we are correct in telling people that they should self-custody for a variety of reasons -- one of which is this, it is extremely unlikely to happen. The volatility that would ensue from this kind of event is unimaginable. I would put the probability of such a scenario as extremely low. What do you think @d5000, I'd take it that you see it the same in terms of the possibility at least?

Maybe Trump has a plan to repay the US debt, along with bolstering FED's upcoming CBDC (which could be backed by BTC, aka Gold Standard 2.0)...

You are confused as to which side wants CBDCs and totalitarian control, it is the democrats and the current ruling EU politicians.

[gunhell16]

Some people say that if you look at the volatility of Bitcoin, it is not really negative; rather, it is helpful for Bitcoin holders, whether you are a short- or long-term investor for it.
Which is in accordance with my experience; it seems to be true.

Maybe the volatility of Bitcoin is the reason why it is interesting to other investors; in fact, this is what seems to be a catch or trap for investors to buy, which I think is an effective
way to obtain many investors to buy Bitcoin.

[legiteum]

You are confused as to which side wants CBDCs and totalitarian control, it is the democrats and the current ruling EU politicians.

Nobody in the USA is seriously talking about a CBDC, and I doubt it's a much of a thing anywhere else. Countries like Brazil have a government-sponsored payment app (pix), but that's not the same thing. CBDCs simply don't solve any problems that private sector technologies don't already solve, and governments have little to gain from them since they can regulate private sector products just fine and have for centuries.

There was a freakout a few years ago over CBDCs from the crypto community because some people got it in their head it would compete with Bitcoin and thus drive the price down, but Bitcoin already has thousands of competitors so a CBDC would just be one more--and Bitcoin's appeal is as a speculative instrument, not as a stable means of value transfer. Anything "stable" won't seriously compete with Bitcoin, therefore.

In a perfect political pandering move, several politicians in the USA touted a law that would ban the US from issuing a CBDC--in other words, a law against something the government is not doing nor plans to do (and if they were to do it, they would need to pass a law, which would presumably start with... repealing this law LOL). I guess they will keep doing that as long as it gains them a few thousand more in donations.

[cryptosize]

FED can do whatever they want, it's an independent institution. They don't have to ask the President. They don't have any political affiliations.

When China invades Taiwan in 2027, both SP500 and USD will be demolished in a single night.

Then FED will propose CBDC as a way to "reboot" the economy.

But the USD will no longer be the global reserve currency, so BTC will step in as the new standard (Russia & China will adopt it too for that reason).

Feel free to screenshot/bookmark me for future reference.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Unpopular take: CBDC is a psyop to distract people from fiat. By inventing this term, the fiat lords have partially succeeded in making people subconsciously defend the fiat system by portraying it as more preferable to the "bad CBDC".

Fiat is a Central Bank Digital Currency. Most transactions are already happening digitally. There's only a minority of low value transactions being conducted in cash. The central bank of the EU and the FED already control and regulate ALL the banks.

Maybe fiat is "rebranded" at some point as "CBDC" (linguistic manipulation), but I highly doubt physical cash ceases to exist.

[legiteum]

Then FED will propose CBDC as a way to "reboot" the economy.

LOL, that doesn't even make any sense.  It's up there with Trump proposing he will "pay off the national debt with Bitcoin"...

Unpopular take: CBDC is a psyop to distract people from fiat. [...]

If that's the case we can certainly see it working in... some places... 

[cryptosize]

Unpopular take: CBDC is a psyop to distract people from fiat. By inventing this term, the fiat lords have partially succeeded in making people subconsciously defend the fiat system by portraying it as more preferable to the "bad CBDC".

Fiat is a Central Bank Digital Currency. Most transactions are already happening digitally. There's only a minority of low value transactions being conducted in cash. The central bank of the EU and the FED already control and regulate ALL the banks.

Maybe fiat is "rebranded" at some point as "CBDC" (linguistic manipulation), but I highly doubt physical cash ceases to exist.

Physical cash won't cease to exist (just like vinyl records still exist today as collectible items), it will just become very uncomfortable to use due to hyperinflation (just like in Weimar Germany).

There are laws that can prohibit physical cash from being banned, but Rothschilds don't care about laws, since they own almost all central banks.

Yes, people defend cash because it's supposedly "untraceable" (not really, every banknote has a unique serial number).

Card transactions are not the same thing as CBDC.

With a card transaction the commercial bank (not the central bank) knows that you spent 30 euros to buy groceries (they don't know if and how much red meat you bought).

CBDC transactions will be monitored by both the central bank and the tax authority on a real time basis.

CBDC will introduce new variables, such as carbon credits and social credit score.

So no, it's not the same thing.

That's like hearing no-coiners saying BTC is a bad thing, because it's digital and it's a Psy-Op to make people feel comfortable with digital cash (that's how Satoshi described it in the whitepaper).

[cryptosize]

Then FED will propose CBDC as a way to "reboot" the economy.

LOL, that doesn't even make any sense.  It's up there with Trump proposing he will "pay off the national debt with Bitcoin"...

Steve Thomas, you're a flip-flopper, aren't you?

Proof:

We already know who (or rather, what) created Bitcoin: the US government. It was a team within either the CIA or the NSA.

This is the only way to explain "Satoshi" sitting on $120 billion $60 billion, and the only way to explain why the inventing entity wouldn't convert any of his invention just to see how it worked. A team within the US government could not spend a single dime of the stuff because of the mess it would cause in the bureaucracy. And then when Bitcoin got bigger, the problem just multiplied.

And it has to be the US government, since any other government in the world wouldn't be able to overlook this much money just to maintain a state secret, except maybe China, but they would't care and would probably blow up Bitcoin just for fun if they could.

Before he was elected Trump said he would, "pay off the national debt with Bitcoin". That is consistent with the US government owning a large portion of Bitcoin as well.

Edit: And no, I don't think it would affect the price too much if this open secret came out. Big holders of Bitcoin probably already know this, and in the last few years Bitcoin has become deeply intertwined with the US government, and buyers don't seem to care, or even think it's a good thing.

+

Bitcoin being created by a US agency e.g. the CIA or the NSA is thus far the most plausible theory.

If I were an intelligence agency, I would rather push a digital currency that is not truly decentralized. Something like Ethereum, with infinite supply. Also, I would not create bitcoin with privacy features to opt-in to. I would rather make it impossible to escape the chain analysis. A more plausible theory is that just enthusiasts created it, with all the academic work (digital signatures, hashcash) in mind.

If you were some hacker working at the NSA you would... do whatever you felt like doing that day. Those "enthusiast(s)" were just like any enthusiast(s), except that they worked for the US government, which explains why they weren't able to sell even a single sat.

There's no direct evidence of this or any other theory, but this is the only one I've ever heard that is consistent with reality and human nature.

And Trump did say that he was going to pay off the US national debt with Bitcoin...

Absolutely true. PoW and decentralization are no longer necessary now that digital currency is 100% legal.

Laws are letters written on a piece of paper. Laws can change. Laws also promised 1:1 parity with gold, until they didn't.

I know, right? They changed the law taking the US dollar off of the gold standard just recently in [checks notes].. 1933. So who knows, maybe in another 93 years things might be different again.

Trump's voting base has given him essentially dictatorial powers at this point: he can do anything he wants and they will keep supporting him, regardless of any US laws he violates. It's very telling therefore, that he is not messing with the basic structures of the US markets, like basic securities laws, and the essential structure of the Fed and the US money supply. Why? Because if he even thought about it the markets would nose dive, and his political support would vanish.

In other words, if they suddenly made it legal for corporations to issue additional shares without informing stockholders (i.e. commit criminal fraud), then every single investor in the world would bail out of stocks in milliseconds, and the market would crash, and everybody would lose their retirement savings, and the party that did this would be politically incinerated.

If Trump even hinted at making Bitcoin illegal, then the price of Bitcoin would crash and it would clearly be Trump's fault, which would be highly undesirable, politically. Trump's massive support from the crypto industry would vanish overnight. (Although to be fair, the crypto industry is extreme pro-Trump and extreme anti-Democrat, which isn't very wise, so you could make the case that if Democrats win the White House again they may well make Bitcoin illegal since today Bitcoin is so deeply associated with Trump).

So there's probably a 0.001% chance that they will effectively make stocks non-viable by failing to enforce laws against fraud, but probably a 10% chance Bitcoin could be made illegal again in the future. Without mainstream investors, Bitcoin would drop back down to the levels it was when it was illegal, e.g. $0.01 per coin. I mean, sure, technically speaking the Bitcoin network would probably "survive" in the same way child porn networks "survive" today, but governments could make it extremely difficult and dangerous to possess.

The only reason, in other words, that Bitcoin's price is more than $0.01 is that it's perfectly legal to purchase and hold in the USA and elsewhere. If that law changed, Bitcoin would be essentially worthless.

So if you are truly concerned about US laws suddenly changing, Bitcoin is surely the last thing you'd ever want to hold...

Crazy to see a leftist guy believing in crazy conspiracy theories.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Maybe I'm wrong about the CBDC, and it inevitably comes to replace commercial banking's invoices with stricter measures and more Big Brother-like privacy invasions.

I may have become paranoid the past year, but it feels like the system often pushes narratives that are extreme, not to normalize those per se, but to overshadow existent narratives and make people subconsciously normalize those. For example, the system might not want to completely normalize LGTBQ. However, when this is everywhere, and everyone is constantly bombarded with LGTBQ content, and everyone is frustrated by the hypocrisy and talks about it, it is easier to consider something less extreme like same-sex marriage as something normal.

[Betwrong]

The high volatility makes  bitcoin ideal for DAY TRADING  and SWING TRADING.
High volatility is the kind of thing that short-term traders love to trade and always seek out for short-term profits: The more volatility the better.

It is quite odd to me why people can think something with such huge volatility makes it ideal as a long-term store of value.
It is exactly the opposite.

Yeah, but ... We have "huge volatility" only in the short term, maybe 2-3 years max. Take into consideration any 4-year period and Bitcoin is no longer so volatile, it's on a stable rising. I mean, you can check the price every day, but imaging you were doing it every 4 years.

[PrivacyG]

Maybe fiat is "rebranded" at some point as "CBDC" (linguistic manipulation), but I highly doubt physical cash ceases to exist.

Is Europe not getting ready for a Digital Euro that includes a digital 'physical Cash' too?  How this is going to work, I have no idea.  I suppose either NFC Bank notes or similar technology.  Digital Euro will have ownership limits too, unless the current version of Cash disappears I do not see how any body would be stupid enough to use the new, limited one.  It would not have any kind of appeal.

I may have become paranoid the past year,

Welcome to my World.  I like to believe that I am not becoming more paranoid but actually more aware of the surroundings.  More awake.  It definitely feels like that at least.

Or.  We are both mentally ill.

Anyway.  Welcome to my World!

[cryptosize]

I suppose either NFC Bank notes or similar technology.

No need to, RFID banknotes is a very old plan, that was scrapped long time ago (most people are not aware it's possible to make physical cash fully traceable).

CBDC will be offered by a mobile app (think of PayPal/e-banking apps).

Digital ID will be mandatory.

Digital Euro will have ownership limits too, unless the current version of Cash disappears I do not see how any body would be stupid enough to use the new, limited one.  It would not have any kind of appeal.

/UBI has entered the chat...

[BADecker]

Bitcoin, originally, was not meant to be an investment. It was meant to be a decentralized trading mechanism. The thing we need is a practical method for trading Bitcoin for products and services, like cash.

How many Satoshi's would a Big Mac cost at any moment as the price of Bitcoin goes up and down?

[Satofan44]

Nobody in the USA is seriously talking about a CBDC, and I doubt it's a much of a thing anywhere else. Countries like Brazil have a government-sponsored payment app (pix), but that's not the same thing. CBDCs simply don't solve any problems that private sector technologies don't already solve, and governments have little to gain from them since they can regulate private sector products just fine and have for centuries.

You have no idea what you are talking about. The EU is making concrete steps towards the Digital Euro all the time, it is well underway. Even the most recent updates on this matter are clear, this is the direction in which Europe is going.

In October 2025, the ECB’s Governing Council decided that the Eurosystem will move to the next phase of the digital euro project.

FED can do whatever they want, it's an independent institution. They don't have to ask the President. They don't have any political affiliations.

This is incorrect. The people that run the FED are extremely partisan, don't be stuck in childish and naive views of the world. Just because something says "independent" it does not actually mean that it is independent, did you ever consider that?

Unpopular take: CBDC is a psyop to distract people from fiat. By inventing this term, the fiat lords have partially succeeded in making people subconsciously defend the fiat system by portraying it as more preferable to the "bad CBDC".

Fiat is a Central Bank Digital Currency. Most transactions are already happening digitally. There's only a minority of low value transactions being conducted in cash. The central bank of the EU and the FED already control and regulate ALL the banks.

Maybe fiat is "rebranded" at some point as "CBDC" (linguistic manipulation), but I highly doubt physical cash ceases to exist.

This is not true. Current fiat does not even have 10% of the capabilities that a CBDC has. Anything that is trivial to do for Tether is extremely annoying and painful to do with the fiat system. I assume you have never been in contact with the software and infrastructure that these things run on. All of this is a bit off topic though, people can go with all sorts of conspiracy theories and speculations how CBDCs will or will not be implemented.

The high volatility makes  bitcoin ideal for DAY TRADING  and SWING TRADING.
High volatility is the kind of thing that short-term traders love to trade and always seek out for short-term profits: The more volatility the better.

It is quite odd to me why people can think something with such huge volatility makes it ideal as a long-term store of value.
It is exactly the opposite.

Yeah, but ... We have "huge volatility" only in the short term, maybe 2-3 years max. Take into consideration any 4-year period and Bitcoin is no longer so volatile, it's on a stable rising. I mean, you can check the price every day, but imaging you were doing it every 4 years.

This is not correct, don't put every kind of volatility in the same category. As is clear from this thread, or maybe if you read between the lines, there is nothing wrong with upward volatility. The primary obstacle for Bitcoin is the downward volatility, and it is the same for the concept of store of value. Who would complain about upwards volatility? Why? You'd prefer it to not appreciate in value over time instead?

[BlackHatCoiner]

Is Europe not getting ready for a Digital Euro that includes a digital 'physical Cash' too?  How this is going to work, I have no idea.  I suppose either NFC Bank notes or similar technology.  Digital Euro will have ownership limits too, unless the current version of Cash disappears I do not see how any body would be stupid enough to use the new, limited one.  It would not have any kind of appeal.

I just know that there's a massive part of the economy in my country that is surviving by evading taxes, and I know that this part will not ever like the idea of receiving their payment digitally nor by "NFC Banknotes", whatever that is. Physical cash is often just preferable by every metric, except having to carry change perhaps. Cash is also accepted everywhere, not like cryptocurrencies which are also cash but need an off-ramp for practical use.