An insight on Bitcoin

[Draco-Onis]

I mean, that's only true as long as there are exchanges around and uh... There's less of them by the week it seems.

There's just way too much money involved for them to entirely die out, the thing the government should be doing is regulating the space. It's not going away we've come too far for that, the lure of easy money is too strong.

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Well, the grifters do need someone to hold the bag. Who better than a bunch of True Believers who are all also out to get rich quick, but just aren't very smart?

I think the problem is that everyone of them think they are smarter than everyone else and won't be the one holding the bag basically musical chairs with billions of dollars at stake.

[Shadowferal]

Are we talking about the one he nationalized after large reservoirs of oil were found in Libya, and that he used to fund various islamic militant groups?

I think the reference goes back during Gwb hitting Iraq and getting rid of Saddam.

[NED funded]

I mean, that's only true as long as there are exchanges around and uh... There's less of them by the week it seems.

Meh, even if the SEC succeeds in shutting down crypto exchanges and it dies out in the US there are still other countries where you can use crypto for basically the same illegal purposes. Less popular but still usable. Lots of financial products are illegal in the US and are legal in less regulated finance hubs in Europe and Asia

[Flarelaine]

When Gaddafi wanted to create a gold backed northern Africa coalition to counter the petrodollar dominance

Gaddafi himself and his regime was sustained by the petrodollar.

[Draco-Onis]

Gaddafi himself and his regime was sustained by the petrodollar.

The Saudis are currently doing the same thing backing the new BRICS currency being floated about, a lot of countries are very uncomfortable with the US having so much leverage with its currency. When the US unilaterally seized Russia's money from banks they pretty much showed that if the US is unhappy with you they will take your money away.

Gaddafi was on good terms with the West until he floated that idea because he had given up his nukes and was being lauded across the world for doing so. What happened to him is probably why countries like North Korea will never give up nukes.

[Sunseeker]

Unfortunately they are right as long as there are people willing to trade coins for dollars, if it weren't true there wouldn't be so many scam coins and thievery going on.

The fact that you can trade dollars for coins, and someone else will buy the coins from you doesn't mean they're the same, in the remotest way. People will buy my Pokemon cards, that doesn't make them a "dollar".

The important distinction I'm drawing here is that coins, like Pokemon cards, have only speculative value. The paper they're printed on isn't worth anything, and they represent nothing other than a bunch of people thinking that they have value beyond that paper. While people are quick to draw comparisons to the dollar because it's a fiat currency, the distinction is the source from which the currency draws value.

A coin doesn't represent the power, labor, or materials that go into it's production. It's value is purely speculative. Stripped of speculation, coins have no value. They are not made of valuable materials and they don't represent finite time, labor or materials expended. "Dollars", stripped of speculative value, still retain representational value, the people, the time, the labor, the materials, hell the value of the raw land of the nation they come from. Coins die when people get bored with them. "Dollars" die when countries collapse.

There is a fundamental difference between dollars and coins. The fact that someone will trade "real goods" for my Pokemon cards doesn't mean my Pokemon cards have real value.

[Cæli]

The fact that you can trade dollars for coins, and someone else will buy the coins from you doesn't mean they're the same, in the remotest way. People will buy my Pokemon cards, that doesn't make them a "dollar".

The important distinction I'm drawing here is that coins, like Pokemon cards, have only speculative value. The paper they're printed on isn't worth anything, and they represent nothing other than a bunch of people thinking that they have value beyond that paper. While people are quick to draw comparisons to the dollar because it's a fiat currency, the distinction is the source from which the currency draws value.

A coin doesn't represent the power, labor, or materials that go into it's production. It's value is purely speculative. Stripped of speculation, coins have no value. They are not made of valuable materials and they don't represent finite time, labor or materials expended. "Dollars", stripped of speculative value, still retain representational value, the people, the time, the labor, the materials, hell the value of the raw land of the nation they come from. Coins die when people get bored with them. "Dollars" die when countries collapse.

There is a fundamental difference between dollars and coins. The fact that someone will trade "real goods" for my Pokemon cards doesn't mean my Pokemon cards have real value.

If that were true, countries that had their currencies crash to something like zero would have collapsed too, they didn't (venezuela for instance still has many billions of dollars worth of value produced)

Still plenty of people producing value. The country still has plenty of land. Why then did their currency's value become almost zero? Because what you're saying is wrong.

By the way the dollar already lost most of its value over the years. And considering their central banks have an inflationary policy, the dollar can't be used as a store of value long term because otherwise the dollar you earned would have lost its value.

Countries cannot guarantee the value of their currencies, otherwise no currency would lose all its value which happens.
A currency that keeps losing value is a bad currency and it will be replaced naturally.
And I'd like to remind that value is subjective.

For a "coin" to have value it needs to be secured to begin with, and people have to trust it to stay secure, and it has to have various properties to be money.
The less used it is, the more speculative it is and vice versa.

If you want to separate a "coin" from dollars you have to refer to the amount of people that use it, which currently has a very huge difference in favor of the dollar.

It is normal to seek an alternative considering the above. The best money prevails in the end.

[Sunseeker]

If that were true, countries that had their currencies crash to something like zero would have collapsed too, they didn't (venezuela for instance still has many billions of dollars worth of value produced)

Still plenty of people producing value. The country still has plenty of land. Why then did their currency's value become almost zero? Because what you're saying is wrong.

By the way the dollar already lost most of its value over the years. And considering their central banks have an inflationary policy, the dollar can't be used as a store of value long term because otherwise the dollar you earned would have lost its value.

Countries cannot guarantee the value of their currencies, otherwise no currency would lose all its value which happens.
A currency that keeps losing value is a bad currency and it will be replaced naturally.
And I'd like to remind that value is subjective.

For a "coin" to have value it needs to be secured to begin with, and people have to trust it to stay secure, and it has to have various properties to be money.
The less used it is, the more speculative it is and vice versa.

If you want to separate a "coin" from dollars you have to refer to the amount of people that use it, which currently has a very huge difference in favor of the dollar.

It is normal to seek an alternative considering the above. The best money prevails in the end.

Good lord what gibberish.

[Edge-]

https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurre...ading_in_this/

So the Binance lawsuit is reaching the "Acceptance" stage of grief within the crypto community.

Apparently yes, the CFTC does have a lot of evidence to support their claim that Binance was engaged in huge insider/wash trading.

Top comment is pretty perfect -

this is so sad.. will there ever be good intentions in the crypto world?

It's a good question!

[Cæli]

Good lord what gibberish.

Nothing I've said is wrong.

[crewskater]

"Dollars" die when countries collapse..

You pretty much defeated your entire point with this sentence. If a society collapses, the currency becomes worthless. You can't say the same about crypto because it doesn't belong to anyone. Also, coins are finite and the US dollar isn't, that alone gives it more value.

[Edge-]

You pretty much defeated your entire point with this sentence. If a society collapses, the currency becomes worthless.

That's literally what he's saying. That's the poin.

You can't say the same about crypto because it doesn't belong to anyone. Also, coins are finite and the US dollar isn't, that alone gives it more value.

No, crypto does a fantastic job of making itself worthless without needing something like the complete collapse of a nation. It happens on the regular.

Finite coins doesn't mean anything other than you've set up a longterm problem where in order to keep up with a growing population that needs money to buy things, you need to divide the coin into smaller and smaller fractionals. Which is the exact same thing as making the money printer go brrrrrrrrrrr.

Something being finite in nature doesn't mean it inherently has value/more value. There are a finite number of Pogs in the world. That doesn't mean that they're suddenly very valuable or that anyone will accept them in exchange for goods or services.

[Endus]

If that were true, countries that had their currencies crash to something like zero would have collapsed too, they didn't (venezuela for instance still has many billions of dollars worth of value produced)

Still plenty of people producing value. The country still has plenty of land. Why then did their currency's value become almost zero? Because what you're saying is wrong.

Currency is a medium of exchange, not a repository of value.

By the way the dollar already lost most of its value over the years. And considering their central banks have an inflationary policy, the dollar can't be used as a store of value long term because otherwise the dollar you earned would have lost its value.

Inflationary policy is the only sensible option. A low-but-positive inflation rate is practically a necessity for a healthy economy. Literally the only people who benefit from deflationary policy over the long term are the wealthy, who can stick their cash in a vault and let the value of that hoard accrue for free with zero risk. Inflationary policy encourages investment over hoarding, which boosts the economy through increased economic activity. Protesting against inflationary policy demonstrates you're either worth north of tens of millions and are acting out of personal self-interest rather than sensible economy theory, or you have literally no idea what you're talking about.0

Countries cannot guarantee the value of their currencies, otherwise no currency would lose all its value which happens.
A currency that keeps losing value is a bad currency and it will be replaced naturally.
And I'd like to remind that value is subjective.

The value of a currency is objective. It's a medium of exchange, and its value is 100% determinable.

And no; the idea that currencies that experience inflation are "bad currencies" is absolute hogwash based on nothing. You're seriously arguing that every single highly-reliable national currency in the modern world is a "bad currency" and you know more than literally every single country's financial experts?

For a "coin" to have value it needs to be secured to begin with, and people have to trust it to stay secure, and it has to have various properties to be money.
The less used it is, the more speculative it is and vice versa.

A currency can't be speculative in the short term. If it is, it's too inconsistent in value to even function as a medium of exchange, since nobody knows what the value is reliably week-by-week. Speculative tools aren't currencies. Cryptocurrency is not and cannot be a real currency. It's digital beanie babies. That's it.

Nothing you're saying makes the least bit of sense.

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You pretty much defeated your entire point with this sentence. If a society collapses, the currency becomes worthless. You can't say the same about crypto because it doesn't belong to anyone. Also, coins are finite and the US dollar isn't, that alone gives it more value.

This just isn't true. Currency retains value as long as people consider it to have that value. It may lose the backing of a country, but that's not the same thing. It may have as little backing as cryptocurrency (meaning none whatsoever) and still have some value. Y'know, like crypto. It's just no longer being managed and this may lead its value to be wildly variable and inconsistent, like crypto.

Weird that you try and argue those are weaknesses for currency, but positives for crypto.

And no; the US dollar is not "infinite". Stop pushing nonsense. Nor does the limited number of cryptocurrency "coins" give them any inherent value whatsoever; plenty of coins have lost literally all value despite still being limited in number.

[Sunseeker]

Nothing I've said is wrong.

If by "nothing", you actually meant to write "everything", then yes you are correct. If not, see Endus' response for details.

You pretty much defeated your entire point with this sentence. If a society collapses, the currency becomes worthless. You can't say the same about crypto because it doesn't belong to anyone. Also, coins are finite and the US dollar isn't, that alone gives it more value.

My point was that they're different and can't be treated as the same by cryptobros trying to pretend that their Pokemon cards are equivalent to national currencies. Coins don't exist. Their finite-ness or infinite-ness doesn't matter since coins don't exist. Copper exists. The fact that it is useful as a good, desirable and finite gives it value. Gold exists, the fact that it is useful, desirable and even more limited gives it greater value. Coins don't exist, and are not inherently useful as goods. They are only desirable and finite. Like my Pokemon cards.

So again, stripped of speculative value (desire value), their only kind of value; coins, like Pokemon cards, are worthless.

Dollars, stripped of speculative value are still valuable for the goods, labor and production they represent. That's why we have hundreds of different world currencies that are all in regular use by, if nothing else, their home nation. Because when stripped back as far as possible, every Dollar, every Yuan, every Yen, every Peso, and every Pound is representative of the goods, labor, and production of their respective nation.

[Edge-]

https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurre...ee_market_and/

We wanted crypto to be a free market and decentralized without the control and oversight of any external party. That has long been the ethos of crypto. This is why over the past years, any user who argued in favor of regulation was downvoted to oblivion.

A free market is exactly what we got over the past 13 years.

Crypto has tons of shitcoins. Doggy coins. Frog coins. Cat coins. Queen Elizabeth coins.

Most cryptocurrencies are scams and solely aim to milk "investors" for money. Many have terrible tokenomics and some even cannot be sold. Many get rugged.

There's loads of wash trading. Binance, for instance...

A ton of exchanges have died. For instance, FTX was valued at more than $30 billion and the fraud was so bad that its most common comparison is Enron.

We have a ton of assholes doing paid shills all over social media who dont get punished. Even celebs do this and only start getting punshed now.

There's loads of insider training, including exchanges that literally trade against their own users with cheatcodes enabled (hi SBF).

Rich people are manipulating the shit out of their market, with Elon Musk being a prime example.

And let's face it, all of this is no surprise. A lot of people are extremely greedy and selfish and will be the villain when given the opportunity. That is what we signed up for. Its inherent to a free market.

We cannot complain about all the scams, insider training, manipulation, fraud, wash trading, and social media shillers now.

Probably the most self-aware crypto user I've seen in ages. Someone gets the point!

[Draco-Onis]

The fact that you can trade dollars for coins, and someone else will buy the coins from you doesn't mean they're the same, in the remotest way. People will buy my Pokemon cards, that doesn't make them a "dollar".

The important distinction I'm drawing here is that coins, like Pokemon cards, have only speculative value. The paper they're printed on isn't worth anything, and they represent nothing other than a bunch of people thinking that they have value beyond that paper. While people are quick to draw comparisons to the dollar because it's a fiat currency, the distinction is the source from which the currency draws value.

A coin doesn't represent the power, labor, or materials that go into it's production. It's value is purely speculative. Stripped of speculation, coins have no value. They are not made of valuable materials and they don't represent finite time, labor or materials expended. "Dollars", stripped of speculative value, still retain representational value, the people, the time, the labor, the materials, hell the value of the raw land of the nation they come from. Coins die when people get bored with them. "Dollars" die when countries collapse.

There is a fundamental difference between dollars and coins. The fact that someone will trade "real goods" for my Pokemon cards doesn't mean my Pokemon cards have real value.

Well to be honest your pokemon card has more value than a dollar because someone can play a game with it and have fun whereas the dollar is entirely based on your faith in the US government. Money is speculative by its nature and is anchored by the stability of a country or rather the faith people have in its use. There are currencies still being used even when the government has pretty much collapsed because it still has practical uses.

Sadly rather I like it or not its only a matter of time before governments adopt digital currencies, there's way too much power you can have over the populace for them to ignore it.

[Sunseeker]

Well to be honest your pokemon card has more value than a dollar because someone can play a game with it and have fun whereas the dollar is entirely based on your faith in the US government. Money is speculative by its nature and is anchored by the stability of a country or rather the faith people have in its use. There are currencies still being used even when the government has pretty much collapsed because it still has practical uses.

Sadly rather I like it or not its only a matter of time before governments adopt digital currencies, there's way too much power you can have over the populace for them to ignore it.

See, this is a divine example of why I don't actually attempt to engage in thoughtful comments on this board. I've already had to write effectively the same post twice. In order to actually write a response to this post, I'd have to write the same post a third time.

The dollar is not based on faith in the government. Faith in the government plays a role, but it is not exclusive. Faith is the only thing you have for coins. "Dollars" have value based on yes, faith, speculation, stability (all qualities they share with coins) but also on real representation of something that exists and is quantifiable. The time, labor and production and if nothing else, the raw mineral value of a nation.
There are no currencies currently in use that represent defunct nations. You cryptobros need to understand that a government is not the same as a nation, if you're going to counter me by saying the government of XYZ highly potent nation has fallen and was replaced, but still using the same currency is just demonstrative of little you actually understand about currency.
"Digital currencies" and "crypto currencies" are not the same thing. And crypto, nor physical paper money, will protect you from the government, as numerous posts citing news articles on the subject show.

You keep asking the same questions, making the same statement and ignoring what I actually wrote because y'all just don't get it.

Anyway there are now three posts on the subject by me alone. If you experience further confusion, you're welcome to reread them. I didn't spend years learning how economies work so that some kid with a digital picture of a dog can tell me I'm wrong.

[Endus]

Well to be honest your pokemon card has more value than a dollar because someone can play a game with it and have fun whereas the dollar is entirely based on your faith in the US government.

The backing of the US government involves more than just "faith".

And no; the Pokemon card doesn't have "more value". It has only a tenuous cultural value. If nobody gave a shit about Pokemon cards, its value would be equivalent to the amount of cardboard it represents. The same is not true of the dollar, or any fiat currency.

Sadly rather I like it or not its only a matter of time before governments adopt digital currencies, there's way too much power you can have over the populace for them to ignore it.

There's nothing to gain. Currency in general's been digital for decades. I can't remember the last time I used actual, physical cash, and whenever I did, it was for one of two things; outdated vending machines (new ones take cards), or flea markets (and increasingly there they take credit/debit).

What possible benefit could cryptocurrency bring for my daily life? No one's ever answered that question with anything meaningful.

[Cæli]

Currency is a medium of exchange, not a repository of value.



Inflationary policy is the only sensible option. A low-but-positive inflation rate is practically a necessity for a healthy economy. Literally the only people who benefit from deflationary policy over the long term are the wealthy, who can stick their cash in a vault and let the value of that hoard accrue for free with zero risk. Inflationary policy encourages investment over hoarding, which boosts the economy through increased economic activity. Protesting against inflationary policy demonstrates you're either worth north of tens of millions and are acting out of personal self-interest rather than sensible economy theory, or you have literally no idea what you're talking about.0



The value of a currency is objective. It's a medium of exchange, and its value is 100% determinable.

And no; the idea that currencies that experience inflation are "bad currencies" is absolute hogwash based on nothing. You're seriously arguing that every single highly-reliable national currency in the modern world is a "bad currency" and you know more than literally every single country's financial experts?



A currency can't be speculative in the short term. If it is, it's too inconsistent in value to even function as a medium of exchange, since nobody knows what the value is reliably week-by-week. Speculative tools aren't currencies. Cryptocurrency is not and cannot be a real currency. It's digital beanie babies. That's it.

Nothing you're saying makes the least bit of sense.

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This just isn't true. Currency retains value as long as people consider it to have that value. It may lose the backing of a country, but that's not the same thing. It may have as little backing as cryptocurrency (meaning none whatsoever) and still have some value. Y'know, like crypto. It's just no longer being managed and this may lead its value to be wildly variable and inconsistent, like crypto.

Weird that you try and argue those are weaknesses for currency, but positives for crypto.

And no; the US dollar is not "infinite". Stop pushing nonsense. Nor does the limited number of cryptocurrency "coins" give them any inherent value whatsoever; plenty of coins have lost literally all value despite still being limited in number.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/currency.asp : "The terms money and currency are often thought to mean the same thing." You could replace what I've said with the word money if you like to play on words. A currency is a type of money, and one important function of money is store of value. Whatever monetary system venezuela uses, its value crashed yet the country continued producing value, so that value isn't based off that, that was my first point.

Forcing people to spend their money, consume, and gamble with it on markets, while keeping wealthy people wealthy by having them benefiting from assets price climbing up due to the continuous devaluation of money isn't what I consider to be healthy. I'm just observing this inflationary system and I dislike what I see.

At the very least there should be a message somewhere, stating "Careful, we are devaluing the value of your savings, so you can't keep it for too long". Like on those cigarettes pack. Why doesn't that happen? Many people aren't even aware of that devaluation.

I can decide for myself what I consider to be a good or a bad currency, same for everyone.
For me there's just too many examples showing that the value of things is subjective. If something is deemed worthless by someone, or if they think that thing will lose its value, they will probably want to sell it for something that has value to them. Regardless my point was that countries cannot guarantee the value of their money/currencies, because if that was true you would never see them going to zero.

A cryptocurrency can be real money assuming it's more widely used and volatility lowers as a result (which would be the consequence of many things, such as trust into that system). I wouldn't say it's money right now, but it can be if what I've said happens.

You can keep defending your system if you like, that won't change reality, which is that inflation dilutes the value of money, until it approaches zero. Building a money ultimately worth zero doesn't sound like a good plan.

[Edge-]

You can keep defending your system if you like, that won't change reality, which is that inflation dilutes the value of money, until it approaches zero. Building a money ultimately worth zero doesn't sound like a good plan.

This is simply untrue, and it ignores that with a finite amount of coins the end-result over the longterm will be fractionalization of those coins into smaller and smaller increments keep pace with more people entering the economy, requiring constant repricing as the value of a single coin continues to go up to handle it being fractionalized into even smaller increments. We're seeing this with BTC, where purchases that used to be dozens of coins are now .0032 coins.

The only time that fiat currency like that has even approached that kind of crash in value is during periods of hyperinflation, like post-WWI Germany. The crypto community continues to seem to not really understand how the economy and economics work while proclaiming how great their new system would be because it's not the current system.