I'm going to warn you guys one last time.

[Robert Paulson]

...when the people start to realized the paper money BTC they're holding is only worth as much as what they think it to be...

FTFY.
Also works with gold.

Well touché. But you're wrong, it's different. Here's why: for fiat, say a 1 dollar note is worth 1 dollar. for Bitcoin, one btc can worth 100, 1, 1000, 1000000 dollars. It's not up to me to think how much a btc is worth and that's how much it's worth. With fiat, if I have a one dollar note, I know it's worth one dollar and anyone else I trade that one dollar note to knows it's worth one dollar. And that one dollar note is worth one dollar because it's printed to be a one dollar note, decided by the government. Capisce?

can you eat dollars?
the only thing that matters is how many goods can a dollar buy, and the answer is less and less every year.

Can you eat BTC?
*More importantly, does ur mom know ur on the interweb?

the point is that bitcoin will maintain its purchasing power just like gold did simply because it can't be printed.
the USD is a bunch of paper the bankers print all day long, no paper money ever survived in history.

[NotLambchop]

...when the people start to realized the paper money BTC they're holding is only worth as much as what they think it to be...

FTFY.
Also works with gold.

Well touché. But you're wrong, it's different. Here's why: for fiat, say a 1 dollar note is worth 1 dollar. for Bitcoin, one btc can worth 100, 1, 1000, 1000000 dollars. It's not up to me to think how much a btc is worth and that's how much it's worth. With fiat, if I have a one dollar note, I know it's worth one dollar and anyone else I trade that one dollar note to knows it's worth one dollar. And that one dollar note is worth one dollar because it's printed to be a one dollar note, decided by the government. Capisce?

can you eat dollars?
the only thing that matters is how many goods can a dollar buy, and the answer is less and less every year.

Can you eat BTC?
*More importantly, does ur mom know ur on the interweb?

the point is that bitcoin will maintain its purchasing power just like gold did simply because it can't be printed.
the USD is a bunch of paper the bankers print all day long, no paper money ever survived in history.

The point is both gold and Bitcoin lost purchasing power this year, Bitcoin spectacularly.  My shitcoin is an exact clone of bitcoin.  It also can't be "printed all day long." How much should I put you down for?

Re. "no paper money ever survived...":  No digital currency ever survived in history.  How old are you?

[Melbustus]

...

the point is that bitcoin will maintain its purchasing power just like gold did simply because it can't be printed.
the USD is a bunch of paper the bankers print all day long, no paper money ever survived in history.

I wouldn't say "simply because it can't be printed", but a combination of the fact that it can't be printed AND the fact that's incredibly useful for reducing the friction of exchange. That's what a good money does: makes it easier for people to transact. Ultimately, bitcoin may be the best money system humanity has ever had, because its core properties (*one* of which is scarcity) all contribute to this friction reduction.

When it comes down to it, all money is just an accounting system. Be it wampum, gold coins, paper dollars, or bank account balances, these are all tools for keeping track of who has given value to who. Sound familiar? They're all mechanisms for keeping track of a ledger, either literally (bank account balances) or abstractly (people holding gold). Note that Narayana Kocherlakota at the Minneapolis Fed branch wrote a paper to this effect in 1996, concluding that good money is just a subclass of this societal memory function, and that a good memory tool is therefore a superset of money: http://www.minneapolisfed.org/research/sr/sr218.pdf (pdf warning). Academics have more recently applied this idea to bitcoin: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2275730

The bitcoin blockchain *is* the theoretically ideal global accounting ledger. Compared to every other money system we know, it provides that function with less friction (and note that supply-uncertainty can be considered friction since it distorts people's natural allocation decisions). The ledger is global, nearly free and instant to use, open, transparent, authoritative, always available, and uncensorable. It doesn't require the hassle of moving around physical objects to secure space in the ledger, and the validity of entries in the ledger is globally *credible* (no one can mess with it, and everybody knows that). If you study the tools/technology humanity has historically used for money, you should realize just how much of an ideal advance on the technology of money and societal recordkeeping/accounting bitcoin represents. This is why some have the audacity to claim that bitcoin will, eventually, replace gold and/or fiat.


tldr:
For those who don't like reading, you can watch Wences Casares explain this all very well in 31 minutes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NERAN-89j8M

[Robert Paulson]

...when the people start to realized the paper money BTC they're holding is only worth as much as what they think it to be...

FTFY.
Also works with gold.

Well touché. But you're wrong, it's different. Here's why: for fiat, say a 1 dollar note is worth 1 dollar. for Bitcoin, one btc can worth 100, 1, 1000, 1000000 dollars. It's not up to me to think how much a btc is worth and that's how much it's worth. With fiat, if I have a one dollar note, I know it's worth one dollar and anyone else I trade that one dollar note to knows it's worth one dollar. And that one dollar note is worth one dollar because it's printed to be a one dollar note, decided by the government. Capisce?

can you eat dollars?
the only thing that matters is how many goods can a dollar buy, and the answer is less and less every year.

Can you eat BTC?
*More importantly, does ur mom know ur on the interweb?

the point is that bitcoin will maintain its purchasing power just like gold did simply because it can't be printed.
the USD is a bunch of paper the bankers print all day long, no paper money ever survived in history.

The point is both gold and Bitcoin lost purchasing power this year, Bitcoin spectacularly.  My shitcoin is an exact clone of bitcoin.  It also can't be "printed all day long." How much should I put you down for?

Re. "no paper money ever survived...":  No digital currency ever survived in history.  How old are you?

nothing keeps purchasing power exactly flat all the time, the gold the romans used 2000 years ago still buys products today.
bitcoin is only 5 years old it will pick up exchange volume and will be less volatile and much much more expensive in the future.
you're shitcoin is not a clone of bitcoin, for it to be a clone of bitcoin it needs to be as accepted by merchants and have the same hashing power securing it.
digital currencies (that is crypto currencies) only exist for 5 years, since 2009 they have exploded in value, and that's without anyone with a gun forcing people to accept it, the free market chose bitcoin as money.

the dollar lost 90% of its purchasing power since 1913 and in the last 5 years it has been printed to oblivion, it is clear it will fail the same way as all the other paper currencies have failed in human history,
but hey, don't worry, im sure its different this time...

[NotLambchop]

@Melbustus:
You're talking about an improvement on gold, not fiat.  Controlling the money supply is a useful property of fiat, a tool not available with Bitcoin.
TL;DR:  Deflation is not "a good thing."  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflation

At this point, Bitcoin's inflation rate is way higher than USD--that's what mined coin is.  Bitcoin supply will continue to inflate throughout our lifetime.
As was pointed out by Satoshi, the price of Bitcoin tends to the cost of mining it (and vice versa).  In other words, the price of producing one bitcoin tends to the cost of producing it.  This means that if Bitcoin ever becomes substantially more valuable, the value dumped into mining it will proportionally increase.  Do you think that ~10% of the world's wealth is going into maintaining today's fiat "ledger" every year?

[NotLambchop]

...
the dollar lost 90% of its purchasing power since 1913 and in the last 5 years it has been printed to oblivion, it is clear it will fail the same way as all the other paper currencies have failed in human history,
but hey, don't worry, im sure its different this time...

Another chunk of terrible logic.
Yes, the dollar buys less than it did in 1913.
To compensate for that, the average income has risen from $740 per year.
Things I have to explain...

[Robert Paulson]

@Melbustus:
You're talking about an improvement on gold, not fiat.  Controlling the money supply is a useful property of fiat, a tool not available with Bitcoin.
TL;DR:  Deflation is not "a good thing."  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflation

At this point, Bitcoin's inflation rate is way higher than USD--that's what mined coin is.  Bitcoin supply will continue to inflate throughout our lifetime.
As was pointed out by Satoshi, the price of Bitcoin tends to the cost of mining it (and vice versa).  In other words, the price of producing one bitcoin tends to the cost of producing it.  This means that if Bitcoin ever becomes substantially more valuable, the value dumped into mining it will proportionally increase.  Do you think that ~10% of the world's wealth is going into maintaining today's fiat "ledger" every year?

controlling the money supply is just a nice way of saying the banks get to print money and loan it with interest, it is not a useful property, it is a fraud and theft.
deflation is not good? do you like paying high prices? technology improves productivity all the time why is it bad that prices come down, would you be happy if cellphones still cost the same as a car?

Bitcoin's monetary inflation rate is higher than USD's but the amount of goods and services sold for bitcoin grows much faster than the inflation rate and so purchasing power increases.
you are ignoring the fact that the mining reward is halved every 4 years, even if bitcoin doubles its value every 4 years the miners still get the same purchasing power (because they get less bitcoins)

[Robert Paulson]

...
the dollar lost 90% of its purchasing power since 1913 and in the last 5 years it has been printed to oblivion, it is clear it will fail the same way as all the other paper currencies have failed in human history,
but hey, don't worry, im sure its different this time...

Another chunk of terrible logic.
Yes, the dollar buys less than it did in 1913.
To compensate for that, the average income has risen from $740 per year.
Things I have to explain...

what about people's savings? they lost 90% of their purchasing power.
the average income did not rise as fast as inflation, not nominally and sure as hell not after taxes.

[NotLambchop]

...
the dollar lost 90% of its purchasing power since 1913 and in the last 5 years it has been printed to oblivion, it is clear it will fail the same way as all the other paper currencies have failed in human history,
but hey, don't worry, im sure its different this time...

Another chunk of terrible logic.
Yes, the dollar buys less than it did in 1913.
To compensate for that, the average income has risen from $740 per year.
Things I have to explain...

what about people's savings? they lost 90% of their purchasing power.
the average income did not rise as fast as inflation, not nominally and sure as hell not after taxes.

Money is not mattress stuffing.  You want savings, by bonds or invest.  Or simply buy stuff that has real value.

Anyhow, this is all purely academic.  If you have "invested" in BTC this year, you have fared substantially worse than the rubes who kept their savings in USD.
Way worse.

[Robert Paulson]

...
the dollar lost 90% of its purchasing power since 1913 and in the last 5 years it has been printed to oblivion, it is clear it will fail the same way as all the other paper currencies have failed in human history,
but hey, don't worry, im sure its different this time...

Another chunk of terrible logic.
Yes, the dollar buys less than it did in 1913.
To compensate for that, the average income has risen from $740 per year.
Things I have to explain...

what about people's savings? they lost 90% of their purchasing power.
the average income did not rise as fast as inflation, not nominally and sure as hell not after taxes.

Money is not mattress stuffing.  You want savings, by bonds or invest.  Or simply buy stuff that has real value.

Anyhow, this is all purely academic.  If you have "invested" in BTC this year, you have fared substantially worse than the rubes who kept their savings in USD.
Way worse.

bonds are a loan and like any loan carries a counter party risk, investing also carries a risk.
buying real stuff that can't just be diluted out of thin air is good for saving.
how about we just make that money instead of some papers? that way whenever i don't want to invest and just want to save my purchasing power for later use i can just hold my money without having my purchasing power arbitrarily robbed by a bank.
something like i don't know... gold?

bitcoin had one bad year after four years of insane returns, nothing always goes up.

[NotLambchop]

...
the dollar lost 90% of its purchasing power since 1913 and in the last 5 years it has been printed to oblivion, it is clear it will fail the same way as all the other paper currencies have failed in human history,
but hey, don't worry, im sure its different this time...

Another chunk of terrible logic.
Yes, the dollar buys less than it did in 1913.
To compensate for that, the average income has risen from $740 per year.
Things I have to explain...

what about people's savings? they lost 90% of their purchasing power.
the average income did not rise as fast as inflation, not nominally and sure as hell not after taxes.

Money is not mattress stuffing.  You want savings, by bonds or invest.  Or simply buy stuff that has real value.

Anyhow, this is all purely academic.  If you have "invested" in BTC this year, you have fared substantially worse than the rubes who kept their savings in USD.
Way worse.

bonds are a loan and like any loan carries a counter party risk, investing also carries a risk.
buying real stuff that can't just be diluted out of thin air is good for saving.
how about we just make that money instead of some papers? that way whenever i don't want to invest and just want to save my purchasing power for later use i can just hold my money without having my purchasing power arbitrarily robbed by a bank...

Modern money is an awful long-term store of value, that's how and why it works.
I know the anal retentive in you is jonesing to hoard stuff, but hoarding money is not only amoral, it's [fortunately] also stupid.
As stupid as hoarding steaks or delicious caek--why not complain about that?

*You're not being "robbed by a bank," unless you mean Bitcoin banks like Neo Bee etc., etc., in which case: I told you you would be.

[Odalv]

go NotLambchop, go, sell all your coins.

[NotLambchop]

^
Patience.  There's plenty of play left here.

[Odalv]

^
Patience.  There's plenty of play left here.

be moral and clever.

[gragas]

so are we fucked or what? 

[Odalv]

so are we fucked or what? 

I do not know if you are shorting, but It is time to buy and hold.

[Robert Paulson]

...
the dollar lost 90% of its purchasing power since 1913 and in the last 5 years it has been printed to oblivion, it is clear it will fail the same way as all the other paper currencies have failed in human history,
but hey, don't worry, im sure its different this time...

Another chunk of terrible logic.
Yes, the dollar buys less than it did in 1913.
To compensate for that, the average income has risen from $740 per year.
Things I have to explain...

what about people's savings? they lost 90% of their purchasing power.
the average income did not rise as fast as inflation, not nominally and sure as hell not after taxes.

Money is not mattress stuffing.  You want savings, by bonds or invest.  Or simply buy stuff that has real value.

Anyhow, this is all purely academic.  If you have "invested" in BTC this year, you have fared substantially worse than the rubes who kept their savings in USD.
Way worse.

bonds are a loan and like any loan carries a counter party risk, investing also carries a risk.
buying real stuff that can't just be diluted out of thin air is good for saving.
how about we just make that money instead of some papers? that way whenever i don't want to invest and just want to save my purchasing power for later use i can just hold my money without having my purchasing power arbitrarily robbed by a bank...

Modern money is an awful long-term store of value, that's how and why it works.
I know the anal retentive in you is jonesing to hoard stuff, but hoarding money is not only amoral, it's [fortunately] also stupid.
As stupid as hoarding steaks or delicious caek--why not complain about that?

*You're not being "robbed by a bank," unless you mean Bitcoin banks like Neo Bee etc., etc., in which case: I told you you would be.

if money was not created out of thin air like it is today,
why would hoarding (saving) it be stupid, suppose i want to buy something expensive, whats wrong with saving my money for a few years until i can buy it.
what if i want to save for retirement but i want to take as little risk as possible and so would prefer not to invest or loan my money but just hoard (save) it until i retire, why is that stupid and who are you or anyone else to dictate to people what risks they should take with their money.

every time a bank grants a loan it creates money out of thin air and loans it with interest to someone, that new money dilutes the purchasing power of everyone else.
by doing that the bank essentially robbed the rest of the population of its purchasing power, the result is no different than robbing everyone at the point of a gun out of a fraction of their money.

[NotLambchop]

^
Patience.  There's plenty of play left here.

be moral and clever.

I explain exactly what to expect when "investing" in Bitcoin.  I don't [intentionally] hold anything back.
After that, it would be hypocritical of me to hold back and not to deliver on my promise, no?

[brg444]

@Melbustus:
You're talking about an improvement on gold, not fiat.  Controlling the money supply is a useful property of fiat, a tool not available with Bitcoin.
TL;DR:  Deflation is not "a good thing."  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflation

At this point, Bitcoin's inflation rate is way higher than USD--that's what mined coin is.  Bitcoin supply will continue to inflate throughout our lifetime.
As was pointed out by Satoshi, the price of Bitcoin tends to the cost of mining it (and vice versa).  In other words, the price of producing one bitcoin tends to the cost of producing it.  This means that if Bitcoin ever becomes substantially more valuable, the value dumped into mining it will proportionally increase.  Do you think that ~10% of the world's wealth is going into maintaining today's fiat "ledger" every year?

this myth again 

[brg444]

Fiat money is an awful long-term store of value, that's how and why it works.

FTFY

Modern money = BTC

Fiat is so 2001