Stop your BTC cheerleading and mass delusion and face the reality

[Alix Istek]

http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2011/04/on-monetary-restandardization.html

And when it comes to USG, and USD - creating a successful distributed digital currency is what I call "coup-complete."  Ie, as a difficult problem, it is fundamentally equivalent to the well-known difficult problem of regime change.  Are coups impossible?  No, of course not.  What's impossible, however, is pulling a coup when you don't know you're even trying to pull a coup.

So yes Bitcoin is mostly a speculation. It doesn't have the features to do a "coup" as Moldbug says.

And the blackswan is could anyone create an altcoin that could do that "coup"?

Moldbug is at least partially correct, currency domination is coup-complete.

So, let us imagine - what would a real coup look like?  Firstly, it would be something created specifically for that goal - designed to destroy the current world order and rebuild it.  Secondly, it needs a decisive strategic advantage: an edge so overwhelming that it can takeover the world, without even requiring largescale adoption from everday folks.

What is the real source of power?  This isn't a trick question.  It is intelligence itself - that is the ultimate source of all power, all technology, and all value.

Bitcoin will not conquer the world because its Proof of Work distribution strategy consumes precious economic investment and outputs waste heat.  It is maximally unintelligent - pure entropy.

Imagine for a moment an alternate world where instead of Bitcoin we had a more optimal cryptocurrency appear at the same time.  Imagine - for sake of argument - that this alternate design was perfectly efficient and scalable, such that trillions of transactions per second are possible and double-spending is solved effortlessly without requiring proof-of-work.  Naturally this presents another potential problem (at least when viewed from within the narrow perspective of Bitcoin fundamentalism) or rather an opportunity - how should the coins be distributed?

The optimal distribution is simply that which maximizes the long term value of the coin.

Intelligence is the generator of all value, so the optimal distribution algorithm would be one that spends every coin in such a way as to maximally increase the intelligence of the network at every step. 

Instead of a huge supercomputer doing pointless hashes, you have a huge supercomputer doing AI research: deep learning, global optimization, etc.  And the end outcome is the generation of a new virtual world, economy, and distributed government of superintelligent agents.  Imagine tech similar to SIRI of today evolving towards something like Samantha from the movie Her  - and then beyond - all enabled by a distributed cryptographic economy, and of course, a new cryptocurrency. 

The coup is simply - the Singularity.

This project actually exists, and is just beginning.

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[jaredboice]

Imagine if you will, a troll who spams bitcoin threads to promote his new alt coin 

[BlindMayorBitcorn]

lastly if anyone is shouting that bitcoin is dead and will only be worth 1cent soon. how about you sell me 1bitcoin for 1c now and put your money where your mouth is. i dare you to sell me 1000 bitcoins for $10. until you are willing to do such a thing, your points are meaningless.

This post made me LOL.  I'm bullish on Bitcoin but why in the world would someone sell you something for 0.01$ if they can sell it for 330$??

That statement makes no sense.

This is the kind of reasoning bitcoin bulls use... what can you do, they see BTC is not even holding 345, but they will buy the "dip" all weekend

I thought you were one of them now

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=900064.msg9902906#msg9902906

[BlindMayorBitcorn]

Those smart enough know that the only real purpose of BTC right now is as a vehicle for transaction of fiat money, without being exposed to the scrutiny of the government checks and the global banking system, they understand that bitcoin is not a commodity, not a store of value, and it never was - to them it doesn't matter if the price of one BTC is $1 or $100,000. It doesn't change anything.

Spot on, Sam!

[fewcoins]

lastly if anyone is shouting that bitcoin is dead and will only be worth 1cent soon. how about you sell me 1bitcoin for 1c now and put your money where your mouth is. i dare you to sell me 1000 bitcoins for $10. until you are willing to do such a thing, your points are meaningless.

This post made me LOL.  I'm bullish on Bitcoin but why in the world would someone sell you something for 0.01$ if they can sell it for 330$??

That statement makes no sense.

This is the kind of reasoning bitcoin bulls use... what can you do, they see BTC is not even holding 345, but they will buy the "dip" all weekend

I thought you were one of them now

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=900064.msg9902906#msg9902906

wow way to quote this thread way before I called the bottom on this fall & a new bounce coming just like I called the last one to $485~
I am talking about not holding 345 in the post, we didn't, that's why I have been buying on leverage averaging $317~ & of course I wish I could have grabbed plenty more coins at 300 but I didn't! Nobody calls anything PERFECTLY and I am all in already. You can't quote one post I made that was wrong, that's guaranteed. So keep up the pointless quotes... ANYWAY, Waiting for the bounce that is already well calculated & will happen. Good luck to all, you have been warned

[BlindMayorBitcorn]

It's because this: you're starting to sound desperate 

[fewcoins]

Desperate how? You are following me around like I'm your mommy! Do you really need attention that bad? I am acknowledging you and your endless contradictory posts 

[ronimacarroni]

Well the idea idea of cryptocurrency is here to stay.
Cryptocurrency is very convinient and secure.
The question is will it bitcoin?
I think the answer is yes because businesses like overstock.com and microsoft have already started accepting it and they probably don't feel like the minor changes other crypto currencies offer are worth the hassle of switching.

[Alix Istek]

Well the idea idea of cryptocurrency is here to stay.
Cryptocurrency is very convinient and secure.
The question is will it bitcoin?
I think the answer is yes because businesses like overstock.com and microsoft have already started accepting it and they probably don't feel like the minor changes other crypto currencies offer are worth the hassle of switching.

Accepting it is one thing, actually holding it in their cash reserves is another.

In most cases 'Accepting' just seems to mean autoconverting to dollars with bitpay - except for overstock which is actually claiming to hold some - are there any others?

[BlindMayorBitcorn]

Desperate how? You are following me around like I'm your mommy! Do you really need attention that bad? I am acknowledging you and your endless contradictory posts 

You spam this forum like it's going out of style, brah

[dinofelis]

People, you need a reality check. Most of you here are holding to a few BTC expecting to become millionaires some day. You are in a collective mass delusion - about 95% of you here.

Satoshi Nakamoto stated himself that with BTC there will be no middle way - it will absord the whole world's economy which is estimated to be around $100 trillion including the black markets. If this does not happen BTC will be literally worthless - not even half a cent that it started at.

The question of whether a new "universal" money will necessarily absorb everything, or will share its market with competitors, is an open one.  There are arguments that go in the direction of a monopoly, but there are also arguments in the sense of a competitive market of different kinds of money (gold, fiat, altcoins, ...).

Nevertheless, I think you have the time scales wrong.  It will probably take decades, if not centuries, to achieve the full conversion from the current fiat system to something else like bitcoin.  It took more than a century to switch fully from gold to fiat (started out in the 19th century, where fiat was fully covered by gold and silver, and ended with the official release of any reference to gold with Nixon). 

Even the bitcoin protocol wouldn't allow one to switch fully to bitcoin without an ecological disaster in the first 20 years or so, because the mining incentive would use up too much ressources (mainly energy and hardware).

Bitcoin is not just a technology such as the internet or the mobile phone.  Money is much deeper rooted in society, and its adoption will be VERY LONG.   So you cannot say anything about bitcoin's success before at least several decades.

I don't know how Satoshi saw that, but the fact that the inflation of bitcoin is programmed over 130 years, gives you an idea of the sort of time scale he had in mind.    I wouldn't expect any monetary adoption to the mainstream before several decades.

[Sumerian]

Stop your bitching because you're doing the same except for having the opposite opinion.

[Alix Istek]

Imagine if you will, a troll who spams bitcoin threads to promote his new alt coin 

Imagine, if you will, a forum with actual intelligent discussion - instead of endless spam variations of "you're a troll!".

[Alix Istek]

Nevertheless, I think you have the time scales wrong.  It will probably take decades, if not centuries, to achieve the full conversion from the current fiat system to something else like bitcoin.  It took more than a century to switch fully from gold to fiat (started out in the 19th century, where fiat was fully covered by gold and silver, and ended with the official release of any reference to gold with Nixon).

Agree with much of your other points, but using linear historical comparisons for timeframes can be misleading, due to various vaguely exponential technological acceleration effects.

Even the bitcoin protocol wouldn't allow one to switch fully to bitcoin without an ecological disaster in the first 20 years or so, because the mining incentive would use up too much ressources (mainly energy and hardware).

Yes, but ecological disaster is perhaps not the best way to look at it, for even if the ecological disaster were averted, its still a giant economic malinvestment.  It creates a bunch of hardware and computation that doesn't actually lead to technological/economic growth.

The other problem with the whole "bitcoin as reserve currency" idea is the incompatibility between the bitcoiner ideal of a currency and world free of taxation, and the practical necessity for governments to fund themselves.

For example, consider a world where bitcoin became the reserve currency, and then - hypothetically - a giant asteroid was found on a collision course that would destroy the world in the next 5 years, unless we could spend 10 $trillion on some massive spaceship intercept missile program.

Now, in a world where governments can arbitrarily commandeer 50%, or 80% of the GDP, the disaster can be avoided.  But in the ideal bitcoiner world, you have a problem.  In reality governments aren't going to just give up and die.

So given all that, the more realistic scenarios would involve massive tax increases in other areas to compensate - such as much higher property taxes, or whatever.  The end result is you still have something similar to the present wealth tax - just in a different form.

[Nagle]

I don't know how Satoshi saw that, but the fact that the inflation of bitcoin is programmed over 130 years, gives you an idea of the sort of time scale he had in mind.

Over half the potential Bitcoins have already been mined. 64%, actually.  That gives a sense of the real time scale involved.

[botany]

I don't know how Satoshi saw that, but the fact that the inflation of bitcoin is programmed over 130 years, gives you an idea of the sort of time scale he had in mind.

Over half the potential Bitcoins have already been mined. 64%, actually.  That gives a sense of the real time scale involved.

Although 64% of bitcoins have been mined, the increase in money supply (percentage terms) far exceeds the increase in money supply of fiat in most countries.

[MataKhobRazi]

Why does bitcoin need to: "absorb the total global economy"  ? Credit cards don't account for the global economy and still are successful.

If you had done you research about bitcoin, you would know that is an almost exact quote of Satoshi Nakamoto, and one of the most famous ones.

That is not me making this stuff up. Just paraphrasing the man who created bitcoin.

[...]

So again, the creator of Bitcoin has stated on record - written statement that BTC will either gobble up the whole of global economy or fail and cease to exist. The middle ground does not exist according to Satoshi Nakamoto. You may argue with me, but this is not me just making up things it is the quote / paraphrase of Satoshi's statement. This is one of the most important statements about bitcoin and yet everybody wants to avoid any talk about it.

[...]

I'm sorry but Satoshi never said "absorb the total global economy". He rather said "I'm sure that in 20 years there will either be very large transaction volume or no volume".

Source : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=48.msg329#msg329

This is COMPLETELY different...

[Sumerian]

I don't know how Satoshi saw that, but the fact that the inflation of bitcoin is programmed over 130 years, gives you an idea of the sort of time scale he had in mind.

Over half the potential Bitcoins have already been mined. 64%, actually.  That gives a sense of the real time scale involved.

Although 64% of bitcoins have been mined, the increase in money supply (percentage terms) far exceeds the increase in money supply of fiat in most countries.

Plus the inflation of bitcoin is nothing compared to fiats' inflation

[bigtimespaghetti]

I don't know how Satoshi saw that, but the fact that the inflation of bitcoin is programmed over 130 years, gives you an idea of the sort of time scale he had in mind.

Over half the potential Bitcoins have already been mined. 64%, actually.  That gives a sense of the real time scale involved.

Although 64% of bitcoins have been mined, the increase in money supply (percentage terms) far exceeds the increase in money supply of fiat in most countries.

Plus the inflation of bitcoin is nothing compared to fiats' inflation

Depends what metric you are using. The increase in money supply has not made it into the real economy yet..

[dinofelis]

Those smart enough know that the only real purpose of BTC right now is as a vehicle for transaction of fiat money, without being exposed to the scrutiny of the government checks and the global banking system, they understand that bitcoin is not a commodity, not a store of value, and it never was - to them it doesn't matter if the price of one BTC is $1 or $100,000. It doesn't change anything.

The point is that this is exactly a fundamental of bitcoin and of its value.  Although you may think that using bitcoin as a currency (in this case for a very limited market) has an arbitrary value, that is not true.  There will be a demand for bitcoin for exactly that purpose and as bitcoins will be held a certain time in between transactions, that corresponds, with the monetary formula M x V = Q x P, to a certain price.  It is true that with short holding times (high velocity V) and a relatively small market Q, this will imply a rather small price of bitcoin (1/P).  But that price will not be arbitrarily low.  It will be determined by the demand for coins to do exactly those transactions you are talking about, as they need finite time to complete (so you cannot use a single coin going back and forth to transmit a few billion $ worth, there is a real demand).

My guess is that the current fundamental of bitcoin at this moment for that purpose is in the single or double digit ballpark.  As long as bitcoin has that use, it will have at least that price.