Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[jmw74]

Yes, I think the likely scenario is that, as the global slow-down continues, money will flow to the dollar first since it is perceived by many as the safest asset.

Then precious metals and housing secondly, as they will always maintain 'some' intrinsic value.  

Trust me, in a true SHTF scenario, NOBODY is going to want or care for bitcoin.  They're going to want food, shelter, clothing, and nationally recognized currency that will be accepted anywhere with historical usage that extends back thousands of years: silver and gold.

Besides the fact that I feel there is no such thing as "intrinsic" value (all values are subjective) I see the capital flowing this way:

weaker currencies --> perceived stronger currencies (U.S. Dollar) --> bitcoin

I don't see metals as useful a currency as bitcoin but they will, of course, appreciate against a collapsing dollar - just not as much as bitcoin in my opinion. Bitcoin could be the safety valve that preserves some semblance of a global economy and a somewhat civilized society since it will allow the continued trade across distance (metals not so much).

  What's that law about good money chasing out bad or something like that? I never really understood it...

Gresham's Law.  It essentially says that if you have multiple forms of money, you're going to save the form of money you think is going to appreciate and you're going to spend everything else first. Pretty much it's common sense. 

Except that's the exact opposite of Gresham's law (bad money chases out good). Between dollars and gold, which one is the "good" money?  Gold. But no one uses gold. Bad money chased out good.

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[Bagatell]

Except that's the exact opposite of Gresham's law (bad money chases out good). Between dollars and gold, which one is the "good" money?  Gold. But no one uses gold. Bad money chased out good.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greshams_law#Reverse_of_Gresham.27s_Law_.28Thiers.27_Law.29

[jaredboice]

Yes, I think the likely scenario is that, as the global slow-down continues, money will flow to the dollar first since it is perceived by many as the safest asset.

Then precious metals and housing secondly, as they will always maintain 'some' intrinsic value.  

Trust me, in a true SHTF scenario, NOBODY is going to want or care for bitcoin.  They're going to want food, shelter, clothing, and nationally recognized currency that will be accepted anywhere with historical usage that extends back thousands of years: silver and gold.

Besides the fact that I feel there is no such thing as "intrinsic" value (all values are subjective) I see the capital flowing this way:

weaker currencies --> perceived stronger currencies (U.S. Dollar) --> bitcoin

I don't see metals as useful a currency as bitcoin but they will, of course, appreciate against a collapsing dollar - just not as much as bitcoin in my opinion. Bitcoin could be the safety valve that preserves some semblance of a global economy and a somewhat civilized society since it will allow the continued trade across distance (metals not so much).

  What's that law about good money chasing out bad or something like that? I never really understood it...

Gresham's Law.  It essentially says that if you have multiple forms of money, you're going to save the form of money you think is going to appreciate and you're going to spend everything else first. Pretty much it's common sense. 

Except that's the exact opposite of Gresham's law (bad money chases out good). Between dollars and gold, which one is the "good" money?  Gold. But no one uses gold. Bad money chased out good.

Take your obfuscating word acrobatics to the circus, please.

"Gresham's law is an economic principle that states: "When a government overvalues one type of money and undervalues another, the undervalued money will leave the country or disappear from circulation into hoards, while the overvalued money will flood into circulation."[1] It is commonly stated as: "Bad money drives out good"."

I would add that you don't even need to include the government in this definition and it still means pretty much the same thing.  In summary, you hold on to that which you think will be worth more in the future and you spend that which you think might be less in the future. 

[jaredboice]

I've heard it said both ways....good money drives out bad.  Bad money drives out good.  However you say it, it just means you're not going to spend something if you think it's going to appreciate in value.  It doesn't get much simpler than that

[jaredboice]

Good money drives out bad could be interpreted as: You're going to hoard the good money until you spend all the bad money therefore the good money is eventually driving the bad money out of circulation

Bad money drives out good: you're going to hoard the good money so the bad money immediately drove the good money out of circulation since you're going to spend the bad money first.

in other words: hold on to your bitcoins and spend your dollars lol

[Wekkel]

"Gresham's law is an economic principle that states: "When a government overvalues one type of money and undervalues another, the undervalued money will leave the country or disappear from circulation into hoards, while the overvalued money will flood into circulation."[1] It is commonly stated as: "Bad money drives out good"."

I would add that you don't even need to include the government in this definition and it still means pretty much the same thing.
[...]

I like to think that bad money would not be accepted if there is no government force. I.e., Gresham's law assumes that government forces the bad medium onto the people.

[Erdogan]

Driven out - means driven out of circulation and into hoards.

It is only relevant for money that has the same unit.

For instance a freshly minted coin was driven out, and the old worn and clipped coins circulated.

[smooth]

I've heard it said both ways....good money drives out bad.  Bad money drives out good.  However you say it, it just means you're not going to spend something if you think it's going to appreciate in value.  It doesn't get much simpler than that

That doesn't work. For a transaction to occur, buyer and seller must agree on the terms. If the buyer won't spend his money because he thinks it will appreciate, then the seller won't accept money he expects to depreciate. They have to meet in the middle somewhere.

[79b79aa8d5047da6d3XX]

Wtf is this? Listen to this interview of Tim Swanson. At 53 min,  he says he talked to gmax about "Smart property" whereby mining manufacturers, with the assistance of core devs (sounds like Blockstream core devs)  would build in miner "kill switches" in the event they were found to be attacking SC's. THAT is a stupid, ridiculous, un-open source idea. Supposedly, they are keeping it hush hush.

https://epicenterbitcoin.com/

i did not watch the video, but it does not seem this could work. who would buy the zombie miners? it's not like hackers wouldn't be able to tell they are running supervised gear.

on the other hand, who knows, we seem to be listlessly driving around in death-by-remote-control machines (article from 2011, it has gotten and will get far worse):
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/10/business/10hack.html?_r=0

[jmw74]

I've heard it said both ways....good money drives out bad.  Bad money drives out good.  However you say it, it just means you're not going to spend something if you think it's going to appreciate in value.  It doesn't get much simpler than that

That doesn't work. For a transaction to occur, buyer and seller must agree on the terms. If the buyer won't spend his money because he thinks it will appreciate, then the seller won't accept money he expects to depreciate. They have to meet in the middle somewhere.

They do that with a thing called "price".

[Erdogan]

The blockchain is a fantastic invention, and can surely be used for other purposes. For instance settlement of stock sales. Why would that be a good idea? Listen to our friend Patrick M. Byrne in this movie, starting from 16:50. (The whole film is well worth listening to). It turns out that the system of settlements have fault tolerance, which means that the number of shares in circulation for a company is not necessarily consistent with the number of shares listed in the reports.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGyPQ_cO6l8

I envision a block chain system, run by an association of interested parties, where each listed company and broker has a miner running, and the coins=shares are centrally issued, and the payment for the mining is just agreed upon in the association. The addresses could be just the name of the current owner of the stock. Just as in the bitcoin blockchain, it will be consistent, guaranteed by the majority of all miners, and nobody could sell a stock they didn't own, by mistake.

The big point here is: It does not have to be in the bitcoin blockchain. As long as the "coins" represent something in real life, trust is required, and that trust could easily be extended to include mining for an agreed upon reward (or the burden could be shared equally).

[justusranvier]

Gresham's Law is statement about the effects of legal tender laws - not a statement referring to any kind of intrinsic property of money.

[NewLiberty]

Gresham's Law is statement about the effects of legal tender laws - not a statement referring to any kind of intrinsic property of money.

Yes, though it may include the notion of an intrinsic property being in contrast with the governmentally defined value:

http://archive.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard260.html

As an outpost of Great Britain, colonial America of course used British pounds, pence, and shillings as its money. Great Britain was officially on a silver standard, with the shilling defined as equal to 86 pure Troy grains of silver, and with silver as so-defined legal tender for all debts (that is, creditors were compelled to accept silver at that rate). However, Britain also coined gold and maintained a bimetallic standard by fixing the gold guinea, weighing 129.4 grains of gold, as equal in value to a certain weight of silver. In that way, gold became, in effect, legal tender as well. Unfortunately, by establishing bimetallism, Britain became perpetually subject to the evil known as Gresham's law, which states that when government compulsorily overvalues one money and undervalues another, the undervalued money will leave the country or disappear into hoards, while the overvalued money will flood into circulation. Hence, the popular catchphrase of Gresham's Law: "Bad money drives out good." But the important point to note is that the triumph of "bad" money is the result, not of perverse free-market competition, but of government using the compulsory legal tender power to privilege one money above another.

So the notion of overvaluing and undervaluing suggests that there is some other value, (perhaps intrinsic), abstracted from and in contrast to, the value defined by a government.

[smooth]

I've heard it said both ways....good money drives out bad.  Bad money drives out good.  However you say it, it just means you're not going to spend something if you think it's going to appreciate in value.  It doesn't get much simpler than that

That doesn't work. For a transaction to occur, buyer and seller must agree on the terms. If the buyer won't spend his money because he thinks it will appreciate, then the seller won't accept money he expects to depreciate. They have to meet in the middle somewhere.

They do that with a thing called "price".

Exactly. At which point the buyer will be willing to spend "better" money or the seller will be willing to accept "worse" money, or both.

So the bad doesn't drive out the good after all, in any meaningful sense that applies here.

[cypherdoc]

Wtf is this? Listen to this interview of Tim Swanson. At 53 min,  he says he talked to gmax about "Smart property" whereby mining manufacturers, with the assistance of core devs (sounds like Blockstream core devs)  would build in miner "kill switches" in the event they were found to be attacking SC's. THAT is a stupid, ridiculous, un-open source idea. Supposedly, they are keeping it hush hush.

https://epicenterbitcoin.com/

ok, just got off Skype with vcorem, founder of Spondoolies.

i'm not sure which i'm more relieved by; that gmax didn't add another techno commie maneuver to his resume or that Tim Swanson did add another anti-Bitcoin douchbag red herring rumor to his resume.

apparently, Tim has misunderstood what Spondoolies wants to try and implement; an RTL logic that would lock an ASIC miner to a particular cloud mining customer up to a specific block height thus preventing fraud in cloud mining contracts.  that sounds like a reasonable thing to do.  it's NOT a kill switch like Tim was blathering on about.  what an idiot.

sigh.  what we have to endure.

[lunarboy]

Pretty disappointed Reddit seems to be abandoning it's cryptocurrency plans. 

https://twitter.com/ryanxcharles/status/560922573769170944

I was hired as cryptocurency engineer in September, for which I left my job at BitPay. I was won-over by the then-CEO Yishan, who had an awesome vision for the future of reddit, including cryptocurrency as the financial system of the internet city that is reddit. However, Yishan suddenly and unexpectedly resigned his position a month or two later, probably due to exhaustion. This was in the midst of great existing turmoil at the company, such as moving the entire, formerly-remote company to SF, raising a new round of $50 million

probably those silly SEC folk again making things difficult

[cypherdoc]

Pretty disappointed Reddit seems to be abandoning it's cryptocurrency plans. 

https://twitter.com/ryanxcharles/status/560922573769170944

I was hired as cryptocurency engineer in September, for which I left my job at BitPay. I was won-over by the then-CEO Yishan, who had an awesome vision for the future of reddit, including cryptocurrency as the financial system of the internet city that is reddit. However, Yishan suddenly and unexpectedly resigned his position a month or two later, probably due to exhaustion. This was in the midst of great existing turmoil at the company, such as moving the entire, formerly-remote company to SF, raising a new round of $50 million

probably those silly SEC folk again making things difficult

why would they want to go up against Bitcoin as an altcoin anyway?  needless pain.

let 'em just accept Bitcoin pmts.  that's all they need to do.

[tvbcof]

Pretty disappointed Reddit seems to be abandoning it's cryptocurrency plans. 

https://twitter.com/ryanxcharles/status/560922573769170944

I was hired as cryptocurency engineer in September, for which I left my job at BitPay. I was won-over by the then-CEO Yishan, who had an awesome vision for the future of reddit, including cryptocurrency as the financial system of the internet city that is reddit. However, Yishan suddenly and unexpectedly resigned his position a month or two later, probably due to exhaustion. This was in the midst of great existing turmoil at the company, such as moving the entire, formerly-remote company to SF, raising a new round of $50 million

probably those silly SEC folk again making things difficult

It would be a no-brainer to just wait a quarter or two for sidechains then commission Blockstream to help with design.  Alt's are history though I'm sure there will still be a few lingering dead-ender scams.  Any alt with at least semi-pure motives would be delighted to switch to a sidechain backing.

[thezerg]

this is trouble; for the Europeans and major lenders of Greek debt:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-29/alexis-tsipras-open-letter-germany-what-you-were-never-told-about-greece

note how some leaders actually think like we think.

Wow he's so far "left" he's come full circle and is on the right.  No more bailouts.   Just declare bankruptcy and move on

[sickpig]

Just for the sake of being OT

2nd Workshop on Bitcoin Research is a very interesting event organized at "Financial Cryptography and Data Security 2015" conference.

And more to the point the proceedings is freely available, really interesting stuff, just to name a few talks:

• On the Malleability of Bitcoin Transactions
• Trends, Tips, Tolls: A Longitudinal Study of Bitcoin Transaction Fees
• Privacy-Enhancing Overlays in Bitcoin

@zooko is even sharing his workshop minutes on twitter.