Bitcoin

[hmg]

cash is taking its last breath and im terrified. the scope for control goes through the roof in a cashless society.

This is a strong argument for Bitcoin, money independent of central authority, money they cannot stop you spending or receiving or moving around, and recent developments make it money that isn't dependent on the Internet.

https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2018/05/15/app-trade-bitcoin-without-internet/

The apocalyptic energy consumption of Bitcoin is a red herring. It's not electricity going to waste or being used to create something without lasting value. Besides

Annual energy consumption for various tasks:
Bitcoin Mining — 9 Terrawatt-Hours
Global Production of Fiat Currencies — 11 Terrawatt-Hours
Operating Data Centers in the US — 16 Terrawatt-Hours
Gold Mining — 130 Terrawatt-Hours

 

[Mr. Tea]

My brother made a fair amount of money from mining bitcoin - I don't know how much, but he said it'll be enough to help him set up a home (he and his girlfriend are moving to Tasmania and he wants to buy land and build a house there). This was back when it was worthwhile doing it using a dongle that drew power off a USB port, unlike the industrial-scale mining that goes on now. If I'd thought about it at the time I'm sure he'd have been happy to show me how it was done and help me get started, if I'd asked him. But then I appear to have been born without much of an instinct for these things.

 

[john eden]

This is a strong argument for Bitcoin, money independent of central authority, money they cannot stop you spending or receiving or moving around, and recent developments make it money that isn't dependent on the Internet.

https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2018/05/15/app-trade-bitcoin-without-internet/

The apocalyptic energy consumption of Bitcoin is a red herring. It's not electricity going to waste or being used to create something without lasting value. Besides

Annual energy consumption for various tasks:
Bitcoin Mining — 9 Terrawatt-Hours
Global Production of Fiat Currencies — 11 Terrawatt-Hours
Operating Data Centers in the US — 16 Terrawatt-Hours
Gold Mining — 130 Terrawatt-Hours

That's interesting - isn't the point about electricity use that it impacts on things like global warming, so you are creating personal wealth at the expense of the planet?

Whereas traditional uses of electricity (heat and light especially) might be a "waste" in that they use up resources but they do immediately fulfill a basic human need?

Also the figures you quote are based on current usage? Which is apparently 30 million users globally. That's a pretty tiny number compared to the global users of data centres and Fiat currencies.

(I'm fine with keeping the gold in the ground and getting energy use down generally)

 

[Woebot]

My brother made a fair amount of money from mining bitcoin - I don't know how much, but he said it'll be enough to help him set up a home (he and his girlfriend are moving to Tasmania and he wants to buy land and build a house there). This was back when it was worthwhile doing it using a dongle that drew power off a USB port, unlike the industrial-scale mining that goes on now. If I'd thought about it at the time I'm sure he'd have been happy to show me how it was done and help me get started, if I'd asked him. But then I appear to have been born without much of an instinct for these things.

i think the ship has probably sailed now. i wonder if idlerich (who started this thread) made a lot of money? rich?

 

[Mr. Tea]

i think the ship has probably sailed now. i wonder if idlerich (who started this thread) made a lot of money? rich?

Oh, as far as bitcoin itself is concerned, sure. Wasn't contesting that. There's a ton of other cryptocurrencies out there, though I dunno if any of them can be mined in quite the same way as bitcoin can (or could, a few years ago, using fairly ordinary computing hardware) or if you just have to buy them for cash like any other commodity.

This one seems to be symbolic of, oh I dunno, something about the age we live in:

 

[IdleRich]

i think the ship has probably sailed now. i wonder if idlerich (who started this thread) made a lot of money? rich?

I didn't make any money sadly. Two problems which were 1) lack of capital and 2) innate caution. At first my financial situation was such that I was simply unable to buy any but a few years later I sold my flat and then I did have some cash to invest but I was.... basically I was too much of a coward to just do it. I contacted two of my friends who were pretty much the only people I know who were likely to have money to invest and I suggested that we should invest together but basically they both laughed and didn't want to get involved and I was too much of a wimp to do it on my own. Then there was an enormous price rise and my friends both stopped laughing. We decided to invest but my friend who actually made the purchase for us decided to do it via some kind of bitcoin tracker thing. That wouldn't have been my choice of ways to do it cos it basically means we are betting on the price of Bitcoin but we don't actually own any of the things and so I can't use them to buy any of the fun stuff Bitcoin was invented for. So, long story short - I lacked the courage of my convictions and so we got in too late.... I've not lost a load of money but not made any either, plus I can't use them to buy things. A sad story that reveals a lot about me.

 

[Woebot]

I didn't make any money sadly. Two problems which were 1) lack of capital and 2) innate caution. At first my financial situation was such that I was simply unable to buy any but a few years later I sold my flat and then I did have some cash to invest but I was.... basically I was too much of a coward to just do it. I contacted two of my friends who were pretty much the only people I know who were likely to have money to invest and I suggested that we should invest together but basically they both laughed and didn't want to get involved and I was too much of a wimp to do it on my own. Then there was an enormous price rise and my friends both stopped laughing. We decided to invest but my friend who actually made the purchase for us decided to do it via some kind of bitcoin tracker thing. That wouldn't have been my choice of ways to do it cos it basically means we are betting on the price of Bitcoin but we don't actually own any of the things and so I can't use them to buy any of the fun stuff Bitcoin was invented for. So, long story short - I lacked the courage of my convictions and so we got in too late.... I've not lost a load of money but not made any either, plus I can't use them to buy things. A sad story that reveals a lot about me.

hi rich,

thanks for sharing that. it is a pity i suppose but i wouldn't take it so harshly on yourself. you had different, and knowing you the little i do, probably more spiritual priorities. thems the best ones.

there were a few moments over the years i considered it - but each time something about it i didn't like. and i have no regrets at all. scary business.

i have a friend who is obsessed with it. absolutely obsessed. spends the entire time watching the stats. i think it must be driving him crazy.

matt

 

[hmg]

This is as good an introduction to Bitcoin's significance and potential as sound money as any available



His book is great but you won't like it at all if you're a Marxist or a Keynesian (“There is only one good thing about Marx, at least he was not a Keynesian” - Rothbard quoted in The Bitcoin Standard) or a Post-Modernist or a No-coiner or an Alt-coiner, or even a Vegan.

 

[IdleRich]

thanks for sharing that. it is a pity i suppose but i wouldn't take it so harshly on yourself. you had different, and knowing you the little i do, probably more spiritual priorities. thems the best ones.

Well, I have to say I don't really care about the money as such - there is something a little frustrating about being right and being laughed at etc but the sums of money involved were not exactly life-changing either way. I've come to realise that although I enjoy gambling and the like I only do it in small amounts - basically I'm not a risk taker. I'm more interested in Bitcoin cos of my background trading options and because of the utopian non-centrally controlled world it promises. That's why I was a bit disappointed when my friend decided to get a tracker rather than the actual thing....
As for spiritual priorities, dunno if you know but after selling my flat my girlfriend and I have moved out of London, in fact out of the UK and we are living in a small town just outside Lisbon. Plan is to do some writing, also make some stuff with my hands (like shelves and lamps and things) and also do some music, plus put on some events in Lisbon etc Some of those things are progressing better than others but overall it's a massive change to our life and, while I'd hesitate to use the word spiritual, it is a kind of "quality of life" or "pace of life" kinda thing - and actually, now I come to think of it, in some ways it's a kind of a big risk so maybe I'm not right in my self-assessment...

 

[Mr. Tea]

you had different, and knowing you the little i do, probably more spiritual priorities.

Rich is pretty much the most spiritual person I know, so you're dead right here.

 

[Woebot]

Rich is pretty much the most spiritual person I know, so you're dead right here.

anyone as tuned into music as much as he is would be 🔥

 

[Woebot]

This is as good an introduction to Bitcoin's significance and potential as sound money as any available



His book is great but you won't like it at all if you're a Marxist or a Keynesian (“There is only one good thing about Marx, at least he was not a Keynesian” - Rothbard quoted in The Bitcoin Standard) or a Post-Modernist or a No-coiner or an Alt-coiner, or even a Vegan.

the problem with all the bitcoin evangelists is that they're instrumental in the scheme - essentially to convince other people to pay more for cryptocurrency than they did. on a smaller scale one gets it in offices too.

there's no question some people will make silly amounts of money out of it - and that blockchain will prove to be very valuable - but as an investment vehicle it's too divorced from reality.

eos is the current hot tip isnt it - that has these concerns built into it - you get a share of the eos web platform when you buy it - but it's still vapourware.

 

[droid]

Its a disaster environmentally. Predicted to consume all solar capacity within the next 2 years.

 

[vimothy]

bitcoin, the blockchain and crypto in general is very confused - thats my hottake. its overwhelmingly driven by bubble dynamics. the idea that dentistry needs its own unique payment and settlement system, for example, is clearly quite mad, and yet ...

 

[version]

As far as I can tell it's more or less a pyramid scheme and Buffett is right.

 

[hmg]

As far as I can tell it's more or less a pyramid scheme and Buffett is right.

Once you grasp that Bitcoin is scarce, fungible and infinitely divisible, and that if you own one of 21 million bitcoins today, in 50 years, when global trade uses it for every transaction (which is not impossible, bitcoin really lends itself to that), that same bitcoin will be worth 1/21 millionth of activity worth maybe $50 trillion, or about $2.4m per BTC. You could buy a lot of good quality CD players with that.

It's the Internet of money, nothing less and much more.

 

[hmg]

bitcoin, the blockchain and crypto in general is very confused - thats my hottake. its overwhelmingly driven by bubble dynamics. the idea that dentistry needs its own unique payment and settlement system, for example, is clearly quite mad, and yet ...

It's not at all confused if you focus.
Look past the roiling altcoin clouds, ICO marketing drizzle, blockchain use-case squalls.
Behold instead the Bitcoin monolith, towering indomitable in the gloom, glittered by a network of Lightning, waiting.
Or you will miss all that heavenly glory.

 

[vimothy]

the problem with debt contracts is they're fixed in nominal terms. if all transactions take place in bitcoin then the global supply of liquidity also is fixed. those two things together equate to an extremely fragile financial system, periodic depressions with no way out as far as bitcoin itself is concerned. infinitely dividing bitcoins doesnt help, bc that just gives you smaller and smaller bits of the same nominal quantity.

 

[vimothy]

bitcoin is like the venn diagram of all my interests: finance, banking, institutional economics, maths, crypto, computer science, machine learning. hype aside, I do kind of want to like it but unfortunately it's badly designed as a financial instrument and wholly inadequate as a global reserve asset, or any kind of money really, bc the ppl who designed it understand computer science but not money or banking.

 

[hmg]

bc that just gives you smaller and smaller bits of the same nominal quantity.

But that's fine, not a problem. The value of 1 BTC increases as the value of each Satoshi (100,000,000 Satoshis for every 1 BTC) increases, which was my point.
2,100,000,000,000,000 units of trade there. Plenty. if every one of them was worth merely $0.01 each, that's $3000 for everyone on Earth. Try dividing the Earth's gold by 7 billion people - about 0.2 grams each, or approximately $8.

Edit: i fucked up, it'd be about £1200 gold per person, I based $8 on yearly production not total gold quantity. But little of the extant gold could be used for currency anyway, so the value available would be a fraction of that.