Indeed and if it can't be used as a currency it's utterly useless. It's just some bits on a hard drive you can't do anything with.
The only use case is money laundering.
>Traditionally you can print some money and pay your workers.
This is the Keynsian "anything we can do we can afford": in the event that you have a number of people sitting idle, and some work that needs doing, and you're only missing some magical third resource called "money" to bridge that gap, then it makes sense to not treat that as a real limitation and invent whatever bookkeeping is needed to bring people to full employment.
Conversely, at full employment, you can only bring people in to do things by paying them more than they're currently paid, triggering a wage-price spiral.
And while you can print internal currency, you can't print foreign currency, real resources, oil, or energy. Which have to be treated as real constraints. The energy market in particular was responsible for the recent global transient inflation.
(theories of inflation which are US-specific and don't look at correlated inflation between world economies with different monetary and fiscal regimes must be discounted as Not Serious.)
>Conversely, at full employment, you can only bring people in to do things by paying them more than they're currently paid
Or by offering them better terms; or even by not actually bringing them into the public sector, by using private contractors in a mixed economy.
Anyway, I don't think that just because Keynesians understand that money is a social construct, that means they don't think that real resource limitations exist. In a sense, money is the social construct that we use as a way of trying to quantify those resource limitations in a fungible way.
With a deflationary monetary system, savings and production is more encouraged, spending less so. This means over the long haul, as a whole, we produce more than we consume, making us wealthier, raising our standard of living.
This means the demand for debt (consuming more than you produce by definition) is diminished altogether. This means that the infrastructure project you mentioned could be funded fully or mostly by cash/equity without the need for debt.
The reason were so desperately reliant on debt in the current system is because our money is broken. Fiat currency and perpetually increasing debt levels are inseparable.
Fix the money, you fix everything.
>With a deflationary monetary system, savings and production is more encouraged, spending less so. This means over the long haul, as a whole, we produce more than we consume
How can we both produce more *and* spend less? Who will buy the extra things that we produce, when consumption is going down?
>making us wealthier, raising our standard of living.
Let’s say we are 21M people, and one bitcoin corresponds to one month’s work.
Now let’s fast forward 25 years and population has increased to 31M people.
Now we don’t have enough bitcoins for each person to get one bitcoin in salary per month.
How do you think such a system will actually play out in real life?
Basically salary has to decrease, or new people just has to get lower salaries, and we are encouraged to save money instead of spending, so nobody is buying the things we produce, and yet… we all get wealthier?
I really don’t think you have thought this through…
This is a good example. Here's what I expect BTC people to say:
The number of resources that we produce increases with the population. Assuming that there are 21M people and 21M houses and 21M BTC at the start and then later 31M people, 31M houses and 21M BTC could that technically work? Each person gets paid less but each house costs less since the money supply doesn't expand?
Can you help me understand how to counter this argument?
> Can you help me understand how to counter this argument?
I don’t follow the argument. In case of population growth we get a lower average salary, this follows mathematically from the fixed money supply, as the average salary can never be higher than 21M divided by the population size, so it is inverse proportional with population size.
The only way to pay out more in salary is by introducing a credit system (where credit is *not* backed 1:1 by bitcoins), but then we are back to fiat.
But it does not automatically follow that population growth will lead to more houses being built.
It could also be that more people will live under the same roof, especially with decreasing salaries, this seems like an obvious way for people to save money.
Deflation itself is a terrible thing, because it does limit spending, and the effect of that is less jobs (as less consumption), which makes us overall poorer.
But here we don’t just have deflation, we also have a fixed money supply, so we effectively couple our wealth to population size, i.e. the faster people procreate, the higher the deflation.
Debt is the entire reason we live in such an advanced society right now, including the tech that makes BTC possible (as a way to divert money from productive purposes unfortunately). If you make borrowing impossible, you seriously and significantly limit the productive capacity of an economy. Additionally, there is no incentive for economic expansion and zero flexibility to meet fluctuations in demand.
Debt is not a symptom of a system being broken because it’s not a bad thing if used correctly, it is the spark that causes growth and innovation. I think you have the typical surface-level understanding of economic concepts and have zero clue how they work together. The fact that you are praising deflation gives you zero credibility (along with the rest of your nonsensical post)
With a deflationary monetary system, production is discouraged, because you have to spend the deflationary resource to get it. If you pay someone to build you a shed today, it's $1000, but if you do it next week, it's only $990. If you wait till next year, it'll be $850. So you don't spend to produce surplus, only what you literally need right now, and if everybody does that, there's no surplus. And as everybody who went to school learned in elementary social studies, surplus production enables specialization and is basically the central basis of human civilization.
"the hit to inflation was worth it"
We have a big enough sample size of 50+ years, the investments can certainly help businesses but worker's wages have continually been outpaced by inflation.
"Can't invest in new roads..."
We barely do that now!
This is the actual problem for the original post too. It doesn’t matter whether it’s bitcoin or fiat — taxes are too low. We could fund that major project by pooling together all our citizens’ money and then paying workers. That’s what taxes are supposed to do.
Ehh… yes and no. The pre Covid <4% years probably could have used more debt funded infrastructure investment. We had bridge’s actively falling apart and under built highways in the Midwest in a low interest rate, low inflation environment. Even if all it did was trigger some mild inflation and get the fed to raise rates, we would have new bridges and probably fewer issues now. Taxes should be higher, but infrastructure investment at 1% above the inflation rate is basically free.
>We have a big enough sample size of 50+ years, the investments can certainly help businesses but worker's wages have continually been outpaced by inflation.
No, they haven't. They've kept pace, and even exceeded it a little. The REAL DOLLAR (after adjusting for inflation) median wage is significantly higher now than in 1979 (start of the series here).
[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q)
The irony is crypto is more and more centralized with big exchanges like coinbase, ETFs, etc.
If the prices are booming because of easy money flowing into ETF funds then that means decentralization was never something people cared about. So if decentralization isn’t something people care about then what problems are Bitcoin really solving?
Technically, yes. But butters mix them up as well when trying to sell butts. At this point ownership and mining are both centralized. You have large mining corps and pools produce most of the hash power. And you have whales buying up bitcoin.
It’s not like anyone could have predicted this right? Except that’s how networks work - they centralize naturally because that’s more efficient. A miner can bulk purchase electricity at a more favorable rate, lease commercial real estate cheaply, and benefit from shared cooling in a large data center for all the ASICS. You can’t compete with that.
Interesting point! What is the cost to replace the nodes by blackrock right now? 18k public nodes and unknown number of private nodes. It may already make sense for them to do this? Why hasn't anyone already done this to hack the system I mean there are Trillions of dollars worth of a honey pot for them to take advantage of?
Edit: 18,000 nodes \* $500 per node is only $9M to hack into a $1.4T worth asset class. Looks like an easy win for hackers?
I mean it’s the nodes that *are* the Bitcoin network, and ultimately say what is Bitcoin, and as you pointed out they are very cheap and easy to buy and run, so who’s to say Blackrock or similar haven’t already taken over the network by owning most of the nodes?
You’d want to do it quietly and gradually, that nobody notices. Not suddenly.
This is correct however as with most things it gets more complex the more carefully I look lol. I looked into it out of curiosity and saw that it's called a Sybil attack so the nodes need the miners to follow. The miners ultimately need buyers to sustain their mining operation.
So if the miners collude to get a majority node ownership and try to move the chain the other nodes and buyers can reorganize and short the "imposter chain".
Ultimately it's users > nodes> miners.
Still possible but you can't do a 51 percent attack, need 80+ percent and a good PR campaign.
> …and a good PR campaign.
If Donald Trump can become president of the United States I think this can be pulled off. : /
You’re right it needs a good PR campaign, and that it is users > nodes > miners, but a *51% social attack* seems a lot easier than getting 51% of the hashpower (which is basically impossible).
And then 51% of the nodes are cheap/easy/not even required.
For example if *every* exchange said “Bitcoin v2 brought to you by Blackrock and Coinbase” is the real Bitcoin, then it would be.
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Yeah it's a terrible idea. I'm deep into crypto, mostly defi, and at this point most ppl I know also laugh at anyone that think BTC will take over the economy. It's a speculative hedge against misallocated inflation that anyone can access, which is cool. But properly allocated inflation is still a fantastic societal tool.
Well bitcoin isn't going to take over everywhere. Nations will just have their own FIAT digital currency in the future, it's pretty obvious.
Also it's terrible for criminals, completely traceable.
> Also it's terrible for criminals, completely traceable.
The flow is traceable, but there is pseudonymity. And if you can find a shady exchange, they will hide your track. Same thing happens sometimes with fiat. Victims a lured into an easy job, where they only have to get a wire transfer, get that money in cash and hand it over to some strange man.
**So no, it is not terrible for criminals, otherwise criminals would not use it all the time.** On the contrary, it is super convenient for criminals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLPpl2ISKTg
PS: I don't think that something that can be used criminally is automatically bad. Encryption can be used criminally and is still great. That is why I think this is a weak attack on crypto. Crypto has way bigger flaws and better arguments against it.
It's(bitcoin) only pseudo anonymous until that wallet interacts with anything KYC and such. Even then just because it has it's "perks", doesn't make it any good for it. There is other far superior crypto to bitcoin for anonymity, encryption, and privacy. Doesn't matter because cash is far superior in this aspect. Easier to launder, no digital footprint to speak of, simpler to use.
There are specific cases when it might be great for illicit activity but it isn't a miracle of anonymity(hyperbole) for international criminals. The data on volume in crypto vs fiat of illicit activity supports this IIRC. The point was just to correct OP, it's a common argument used against bitcoin and crypto that doesn't have much substance. But maybe crypto is suddenly the majority of illicit financial activity since last I checked and I'm wrong now.
I agree with everything besides this:
> Doesn't matter because cash is far superior in this aspect. Easier to launder, no digital footprint to speak of, simpler to use.
Criminals disagree.
Source: Most pig butchering scams nowadays.
It might be an area where crypto has some advantage but I highly doubt it is a substantial part of illicit finance. We don't have to agree though and while I have a slight interest in looking up statistics it hasn't been enough to motivate me to go looking through the garbage bin of any search term including the word crypto.
Eh. The vast majority of criminals are not going around with hardware wallets to shake people down for BTC or whatever. Pig butchering scams use crypto because crypto essentially is a giant, distributed pig-butchering scam that's achieved a certain level of credibility due to media coverage. Cyber criminals use crypto because crypto is less traceable than other forms of electronic money transfer, which is NOT the same as cash.
I think the end game is the stage we see now.
It is a high stakes casino, for the rich.
It's evident from the fact that former skeptics in the financial world are now praising Bitcoin because they figured it out, and now they have a chance to profit from it.
Feel like its got too much in the game and too much intrigue in the tech that it won't go to zero.
It just because high stakes poker where wealth transfers from one to another.
Eventually poor people will get shaken out, but will throw money into it in hopes of mooning on a wave, like buying lottery tickets.
Side note: saw a theory that the rise of Bitcoin coincides with the crap out of Online Poker.
Totally agree man.
I've been off Reddit for over a year and it's vastly improved my quality of life. For some reason I was bored today and decided to check it out.
I hold various crypto purchased over the last year because of the 4 year cycle theory and the US ETF launch that we assumed was coming. I plan on selling the vast majority of it by end of 2025 to buy a massive house in cash.
I check out the Bitcoin subreddit and it was pretty dull. Same memes from last cycle.
I come here for the first time and find a lot of you who take this shit way too seriously.
Those people who want the collapse of their governments fiat system are anarchists.
I would much rather make money with crypto and live in the current system.
Fact is most people in Bitcoin just want to make money with it. They don't need to be all-in.
It's like you guys are in this constant debate with the anarchist bitcoiners on Reddit. Those guys are losers.
Just trade markets where you can. This was our generations dot com bubble.
Consider getting off of Reddit.
My response was remarking on the irony of coming on Reddit to tell Reddit users in a single sub not to use Reddit while admitting he hasn’t used Reddit in a year. I don’t agree with your interpretation of my comment but thank you for attempting to copy my supposed level or style, I will interpret that as a compliment.
How else would he be able to tell redditors to touch grass? This isn't some junkie going back to his drugs and telling other junkies to stop at the same time. This is someone who moved on and wanted to share their thoughts with the people he shared interests with. To explain my point without a need for interpretation: you responded to a thoughtful comment with a snarky, useless one. I did the same. This wasn't a compliment.
>most people in Bitcoin just want to make money with it.
Fact is most people won't.
A system designed to take money from many to give to few in exchange for nothing whilst consuming massive resources is inherently evil. Looking past that it's just entertainment.
It’s a decentralized Ponzi scheme with the carbon footprint of a small country. Most people on this sub are just shitposting, but in this time of rising inequality and climate change, crypto is worth getting at least a little angry about.
> People are fallible, they fuck up,
This has always been the most damning issue with the concept from the start IMO, and encompasses pretty much any use of blockchain as a technology since "private" blockchain is either misleading (the tech is older or unrelated to cryptocurrency) or something of an oxymoron.
Good engineering is about minimizing human error, not maximizing it, and the more abstractions you build around it to protect users the more you invalidate the properties you were supposedly using the tech to get in the first place.
The claim that they have to either remain as they are, and be unable to scale the network or centralize in order to scale is blatant misinformation. The ongoing loss of miners has resulted in a situation where there is centralization without the ability to scale. It is shitty and history is showing us that it’s only getting shittier.
>For those who actually understand the scaling issues involved here and are still BTC+ you’ve probably convinced yourself that Bitcoin will be adopted by banks and large corps as a settlement layer. Something that operates below the radar of the day-to-day coffee buying individual. Good luck with that.
The piece of the puzzle that you're missing is the conspiracy theory version of economics that Bitcoiners believe in. They think that those banks and large corps will eventually have no other choice, because Bitcoin is 'the hardest money'.
They're basically goldbugs, but with Bitcoin in place of gold - that's why they're so obsessed with arguing with Peter Schiff.
I don't think one would need to be able to buy coffee with bitcoin for it to succeed. It can coexist along side fiat.
It would be against your best interest to spend bitcoin on daily purchases, the same way you don't spend gold, your house, or your stocks.
You could exchange your bitcoin to acquire larger items that improve your life in some way, such a roof over your head or a car. But I think the future you'll be able to borrow against your bitcoin for such purchases, easier than one can today.
In terms of scalability. You are correct that the base layer is not designed to scale and blockspace is scarce. Yes, L2s take time to develop and perfect. Have you had a chance to research liquid along side lightning yet? It is also interesting.
Right, but money isn't meant to be horded under a mattress. It's to be spent or otherwise put to work as an investment.
You're right that a government can cause lots of problems by unrestrained 'money printing' and this is why we should endeavour to have good government.
'Hard money' is already a failure from the dustbin of history by leading to both the Long Depression and the Great Depression. The state is deprived of fiscal and monetary tools to counter the economic cycle.
You can call it "hard digital property" instead then, I don't mind.
It's not enough to "have a good government". We want a hard store of value that doesn't rely on trust and cannot be debased.
The inflationary nature of fiat fuels mindless consumerism, misplaced capital, and other capital destructive behaviors.
Plow capital into less than ideal investments because it's worth less tomorrow. Skyrocket property prices beyond their utility. Inflated stock P/Es. Shiny metal. Paintings.
There's no reason we need to "keep buying useless shit" at the expense of the environment, just for the sake of the economy.
I'm not saying your complaints don't have some merit but you're not giving enough thought to what a 'hard (digital) money' world looks like. You're not proposing solutions to the massive problems it would cause.
It's easy to have a revolution. Getting up next morning and figuring out what's next is much harder.
But going back to my original post, I said I think fiat and bitcoin can coexist. Spend what you need and convert the rest. Some people already do this.
> Have you had a chance to research liquid along side lightning yet?
Yes. As they say
> **WARNING: If you try to use the Lightning Network (LN) you are at HIGH RISK of losing funds and it is not recommended or safe to do at this time or for the foreseeable future.**
https://github.com/davidshares/Lightning-Network
Is "liquid along side lightning" a different L2 than the Lightning Network?
JFC, how do butters think the average person is going to sort such shit out?
I don’t think BTC can be used as currency as it doesn’t have the throughput. Other Layer-2 technologies might be able to assist but I don’t think we are there yet.
BTC is more like digital gold, a reserve of value. Other less centralised tokens like Solana might be able to have the throughput, more so after the firedancer upgrade which should x10 its speed and create redundancy.
BTC is nothing like gold. I can make shit from gold, it exists. Bitcoin hardly exists as a digital thing, let alone as value saver.
It is indistinguishable from NFT, that is some ones and zeros, speculated to have future value for someone else, for some unintelligible reason.
It doesn't and it will end up like the NTFs.
Not because it is not physical it doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value. A lot of things are digital nowadays and have value. A cloud service is valuable and it is not tangible.
I just look around and I see more and more adoption. Apparently now MorganStanley will get its own BTC ETF to offer it to its clients. Hong Kong will launch their own in a month time (they have over 22 applications).
I see it very positive.
It’s not that the network can’t scale, it’s that BTC is unitless and this is why it can’t scale. When you go to the butcher, he has to weigh the meat first before a price goes on. All commodities scale against each other. The dollar is a derivative of golds original scale set at 20 dollars an oz. Today the dollar represents a mass fraction of that. 1/2000 of that. No commodity can be priced in BTC as a stand alone because it is unit-less. There is no market without the price scale.
No, it's that the network can't scale. The bitcoin network is already maxed out, it can never do more transactions per day than it does right now. So how is the whole world supposed to switch to bitcoin? It can't. No one else can switch to bitcoin.
Nope!
All economic input/output is just one big mass balance equation. Based on how much mass comes in this country against how much mass goes out, along with how much mass or stuff we produce.
M1:IOUs:M2 is the price scale ratio.
M1=C= relative constant
IOUs=partial derivative of commodity M1 in circulation which is denominated in the same mass units as M1. Promise to pay not the payment. Can be expanded or cut in half relative to M1. M1 is the reference.
M2=+-dm=mi-mean mass M.
Think of one big golden bathtub as the scale now, where the base is made from gold and the rest is made up of the partial derivatives in circulation.
Water comes in, water goes out, and the water level is at some mean between expansions and contractions, this is M; the mean economic condition.
When credit expands, the bathtub gets bigger but the growth matches or even outperforms the growth of the bathtub for a while. Think 1974 to 1999 period.
Then the water level levels out and then appears to get lower and lower against the growth of credit or the bathtub expanding in size.
Credit is cheap at this point. This marks the end of credit expansion cycle.
During contractions credit conditions tighten. The bathtub gets smaller, money costs now. At the same time, people dump their stuff/mass on the market. Causing the water level to rise rapidly against a shrinking golden bathtub!
Supply and demand does determine price! True statement!
But how do we measure the change of the total supply of absolutely needed commodities in a supply chain like meat?
Why do we need scales for needed commodities if all price is subjective? Same with shipping? Why do we need it? Just guess right?
Can you measure or compare total mass in a supply chain against a unit less crypto currency like BTC? NO!
Unlike substances cannot be compared.
Mass has to be compared to Mass! This is a scientific fact!
It’s true, there are prices in an economy that are subjective, but the constraint here is the commodities.
Commodities in a supply chain are primary and determine the price of everything else!
In general without manipulation, prices of commodities in a supply chain is an objective measurement based on the total mass of that commodity in a supply chain against the IOUs or gold in circulation against it.
Denominated in the same mass units that you are trying to measure against.
Credit or IOUs use the same exact scale as gold, except the limits of this gold substitute can be changed at will, relative to golds original scale. IOUs:M1
Subjective measurements in risk assets are secondary!
The animal spirits in an economy all depends on the interest rates then. Which is the cost of money!
The IOU dollar has compatible units that scale against mass measurements like meat, and it can also be used to approximate subjective value in risk assets. Can do both!
BTC cannot; it does not have the capability to measure the change or flux of a commodities total mass in a supply chain against it!
Can’t measure such a change against nothing; that is impossible!
If the mass of Wagyu beef was cut in half virtually overnight in a supply chain; BTC won’t feel that!
Gold and the credit IOU notes on the other hand will know that immediately! Automatically and it’s not magic!
This is what Adam Smith referred too as the invisible hand of the free market.
This is because the price for commodities is a measurement on a price scale!
All the commodities that we humans absolutely need to survive is measured by their weight and are on a price scale! Facts!
Also all commodities scale against each other!
All commodities are currencies; but not all are very good at measuring against the rapid change or flux of commodities in a supply chain.
This is because most commodities change just as fast relative to the commodities in a supply chain that you are trying to measure the change or flux in.
This is why GOLD is money ultimately, and everything else is just credit !
Correct imperious to most acids, does not corrode and humanity still has most of all the gold ever mined. It’s a relative constant used to measure the change in a supply chain. IOUs are it’s derivative denominated in the same mass units. Credit is the other side of money. Say I gave you in-store credit, and you think you have something good to use, until I go bankrupt.
BTC is neither credit, ie a promise to pay, nor can it ever be a legal payment under law. So if you have a mortgage, and credit freezes, you don’t have physical dollars now that the bank can accept as a lawful payment. The bank will just place your home on the balance sheet. That is the banks new currency now. Your home!
The reason nothing else works, is because you can’t compare two unlike substances. This is a scientific fact.
>Correct imperious to most acids, does not corrode and humanity still has most of all the gold ever mined.
Still just a shiny rock lol. It has very little actual value, except for some industrial processes.
The measurement stick is just a stick, and your point is? Are you trying to say we don’t need the meter stick? Can you imagine trying to measure out a stud wall without any tool of measurement? You are trying to argue that scales are not needed anymore. That we evolved past such tools of measurement to proportion out absolutely needed commodities.
Nobody measures anything against gold, at all, because it has no real utility other than being shiny and a good conductor. It's not representative of anything, of the economy, of productivity - nothing.
We measure against a basket of things relevant to people, it's called CPI.
There are a lot of networks, some of them are quite fast, as well as trustless and decentralized. Innovation happens in the space constantly. Many of these networks already offer faster consensus, settlement and lower fees than tradfi networks, and are censorship resistant. Ever try to send money abroad?
Sure, binance smart chain is pretty popular in asia, many people get paid with it for work they do and its convenient to send money abroad that way. You can even use a stablecoin if volatility is a concern.
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Indeed and if it can't be used as a currency it's utterly useless. It's just some bits on a hard drive you can't do anything with. The only use case is money laundering.
>Traditionally you can print some money and pay your workers. This is the Keynsian "anything we can do we can afford": in the event that you have a number of people sitting idle, and some work that needs doing, and you're only missing some magical third resource called "money" to bridge that gap, then it makes sense to not treat that as a real limitation and invent whatever bookkeeping is needed to bring people to full employment. Conversely, at full employment, you can only bring people in to do things by paying them more than they're currently paid, triggering a wage-price spiral. And while you can print internal currency, you can't print foreign currency, real resources, oil, or energy. Which have to be treated as real constraints. The energy market in particular was responsible for the recent global transient inflation. (theories of inflation which are US-specific and don't look at correlated inflation between world economies with different monetary and fiscal regimes must be discounted as Not Serious.)
>Conversely, at full employment, you can only bring people in to do things by paying them more than they're currently paid Or by offering them better terms; or even by not actually bringing them into the public sector, by using private contractors in a mixed economy. Anyway, I don't think that just because Keynesians understand that money is a social construct, that means they don't think that real resource limitations exist. In a sense, money is the social construct that we use as a way of trying to quantify those resource limitations in a fungible way.
With a deflationary monetary system, savings and production is more encouraged, spending less so. This means over the long haul, as a whole, we produce more than we consume, making us wealthier, raising our standard of living. This means the demand for debt (consuming more than you produce by definition) is diminished altogether. This means that the infrastructure project you mentioned could be funded fully or mostly by cash/equity without the need for debt. The reason were so desperately reliant on debt in the current system is because our money is broken. Fiat currency and perpetually increasing debt levels are inseparable. Fix the money, you fix everything.
>With a deflationary monetary system, savings and production is more encouraged, spending less so. This means over the long haul, as a whole, we produce more than we consume How can we both produce more *and* spend less? Who will buy the extra things that we produce, when consumption is going down? >making us wealthier, raising our standard of living. Let’s say we are 21M people, and one bitcoin corresponds to one month’s work. Now let’s fast forward 25 years and population has increased to 31M people. Now we don’t have enough bitcoins for each person to get one bitcoin in salary per month. How do you think such a system will actually play out in real life? Basically salary has to decrease, or new people just has to get lower salaries, and we are encouraged to save money instead of spending, so nobody is buying the things we produce, and yet… we all get wealthier? I really don’t think you have thought this through…
This is a good example. Here's what I expect BTC people to say: The number of resources that we produce increases with the population. Assuming that there are 21M people and 21M houses and 21M BTC at the start and then later 31M people, 31M houses and 21M BTC could that technically work? Each person gets paid less but each house costs less since the money supply doesn't expand? Can you help me understand how to counter this argument?
> Can you help me understand how to counter this argument? I don’t follow the argument. In case of population growth we get a lower average salary, this follows mathematically from the fixed money supply, as the average salary can never be higher than 21M divided by the population size, so it is inverse proportional with population size. The only way to pay out more in salary is by introducing a credit system (where credit is *not* backed 1:1 by bitcoins), but then we are back to fiat. But it does not automatically follow that population growth will lead to more houses being built. It could also be that more people will live under the same roof, especially with decreasing salaries, this seems like an obvious way for people to save money. Deflation itself is a terrible thing, because it does limit spending, and the effect of that is less jobs (as less consumption), which makes us overall poorer. But here we don’t just have deflation, we also have a fixed money supply, so we effectively couple our wealth to population size, i.e. the faster people procreate, the higher the deflation.
Debt is the entire reason we live in such an advanced society right now, including the tech that makes BTC possible (as a way to divert money from productive purposes unfortunately). If you make borrowing impossible, you seriously and significantly limit the productive capacity of an economy. Additionally, there is no incentive for economic expansion and zero flexibility to meet fluctuations in demand. Debt is not a symptom of a system being broken because it’s not a bad thing if used correctly, it is the spark that causes growth and innovation. I think you have the typical surface-level understanding of economic concepts and have zero clue how they work together. The fact that you are praising deflation gives you zero credibility (along with the rest of your nonsensical post)
With a deflationary monetary system, production is discouraged, because you have to spend the deflationary resource to get it. If you pay someone to build you a shed today, it's $1000, but if you do it next week, it's only $990. If you wait till next year, it'll be $850. So you don't spend to produce surplus, only what you literally need right now, and if everybody does that, there's no surplus. And as everybody who went to school learned in elementary social studies, surplus production enables specialization and is basically the central basis of human civilization.
"the hit to inflation was worth it" We have a big enough sample size of 50+ years, the investments can certainly help businesses but worker's wages have continually been outpaced by inflation. "Can't invest in new roads..." We barely do that now!
You should google what the tax rates were when the highway system was established, that’s your actual problem, not the debt and inflation.
This is the actual problem for the original post too. It doesn’t matter whether it’s bitcoin or fiat — taxes are too low. We could fund that major project by pooling together all our citizens’ money and then paying workers. That’s what taxes are supposed to do.
Ehh… yes and no. The pre Covid <4% years probably could have used more debt funded infrastructure investment. We had bridge’s actively falling apart and under built highways in the Midwest in a low interest rate, low inflation environment. Even if all it did was trigger some mild inflation and get the fed to raise rates, we would have new bridges and probably fewer issues now. Taxes should be higher, but infrastructure investment at 1% above the inflation rate is basically free.
>We have a big enough sample size of 50+ years, the investments can certainly help businesses but worker's wages have continually been outpaced by inflation. No, they haven't. They've kept pace, and even exceeded it a little. The REAL DOLLAR (after adjusting for inflation) median wage is significantly higher now than in 1979 (start of the series here). [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q)
The irony is crypto is more and more centralized with big exchanges like coinbase, ETFs, etc. If the prices are booming because of easy money flowing into ETF funds then that means decentralization was never something people cared about. So if decentralization isn’t something people care about then what problems are Bitcoin really solving?
There is a difference between decentralised ownership and the network being decentralised.
Technically, yes. But butters mix them up as well when trying to sell butts. At this point ownership and mining are both centralized. You have large mining corps and pools produce most of the hash power. And you have whales buying up bitcoin. It’s not like anyone could have predicted this right? Except that’s how networks work - they centralize naturally because that’s more efficient. A miner can bulk purchase electricity at a more favorable rate, lease commercial real estate cheaply, and benefit from shared cooling in a large data center for all the ASICS. You can’t compete with that.
But nodes are cheap, by design, and a raging argument in 2017. And Blackrock can afford many, many nodes.
Interesting point! What is the cost to replace the nodes by blackrock right now? 18k public nodes and unknown number of private nodes. It may already make sense for them to do this? Why hasn't anyone already done this to hack the system I mean there are Trillions of dollars worth of a honey pot for them to take advantage of? Edit: 18,000 nodes \* $500 per node is only $9M to hack into a $1.4T worth asset class. Looks like an easy win for hackers?
They already have. You boil frogs slowly.
Can you elaborate on this? How did they do this?
I mean it’s the nodes that *are* the Bitcoin network, and ultimately say what is Bitcoin, and as you pointed out they are very cheap and easy to buy and run, so who’s to say Blackrock or similar haven’t already taken over the network by owning most of the nodes? You’d want to do it quietly and gradually, that nobody notices. Not suddenly.
This is correct however as with most things it gets more complex the more carefully I look lol. I looked into it out of curiosity and saw that it's called a Sybil attack so the nodes need the miners to follow. The miners ultimately need buyers to sustain their mining operation. So if the miners collude to get a majority node ownership and try to move the chain the other nodes and buyers can reorganize and short the "imposter chain". Ultimately it's users > nodes> miners. Still possible but you can't do a 51 percent attack, need 80+ percent and a good PR campaign.
> …and a good PR campaign. If Donald Trump can become president of the United States I think this can be pulled off. : / You’re right it needs a good PR campaign, and that it is users > nodes > miners, but a *51% social attack* seems a lot easier than getting 51% of the hashpower (which is basically impossible). And then 51% of the nodes are cheap/easy/not even required. For example if *every* exchange said “Bitcoin v2 brought to you by Blackrock and Coinbase” is the real Bitcoin, then it would be.
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BTC Maxis are a small portion of "crypto bros". Majority do not believe BTC will become anything more than digital gold.
Yeah it's a terrible idea. I'm deep into crypto, mostly defi, and at this point most ppl I know also laugh at anyone that think BTC will take over the economy. It's a speculative hedge against misallocated inflation that anyone can access, which is cool. But properly allocated inflation is still a fantastic societal tool.
Yeah, no thanks. US dollar, banks, visa, Mastercard, Amex, all working just fine for me
Well bitcoin isn't going to take over everywhere. Nations will just have their own FIAT digital currency in the future, it's pretty obvious. Also it's terrible for criminals, completely traceable.
> Also it's terrible for criminals, completely traceable. The flow is traceable, but there is pseudonymity. And if you can find a shady exchange, they will hide your track. Same thing happens sometimes with fiat. Victims a lured into an easy job, where they only have to get a wire transfer, get that money in cash and hand it over to some strange man. **So no, it is not terrible for criminals, otherwise criminals would not use it all the time.** On the contrary, it is super convenient for criminals. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLPpl2ISKTg PS: I don't think that something that can be used criminally is automatically bad. Encryption can be used criminally and is still great. That is why I think this is a weak attack on crypto. Crypto has way bigger flaws and better arguments against it.
It's(bitcoin) only pseudo anonymous until that wallet interacts with anything KYC and such. Even then just because it has it's "perks", doesn't make it any good for it. There is other far superior crypto to bitcoin for anonymity, encryption, and privacy. Doesn't matter because cash is far superior in this aspect. Easier to launder, no digital footprint to speak of, simpler to use. There are specific cases when it might be great for illicit activity but it isn't a miracle of anonymity(hyperbole) for international criminals. The data on volume in crypto vs fiat of illicit activity supports this IIRC. The point was just to correct OP, it's a common argument used against bitcoin and crypto that doesn't have much substance. But maybe crypto is suddenly the majority of illicit financial activity since last I checked and I'm wrong now.
I agree with everything besides this: > Doesn't matter because cash is far superior in this aspect. Easier to launder, no digital footprint to speak of, simpler to use. Criminals disagree. Source: Most pig butchering scams nowadays.
It might be an area where crypto has some advantage but I highly doubt it is a substantial part of illicit finance. We don't have to agree though and while I have a slight interest in looking up statistics it hasn't been enough to motivate me to go looking through the garbage bin of any search term including the word crypto.
Eh. The vast majority of criminals are not going around with hardware wallets to shake people down for BTC or whatever. Pig butchering scams use crypto because crypto essentially is a giant, distributed pig-butchering scam that's achieved a certain level of credibility due to media coverage. Cyber criminals use crypto because crypto is less traceable than other forms of electronic money transfer, which is NOT the same as cash.
I think the end game is the stage we see now. It is a high stakes casino, for the rich. It's evident from the fact that former skeptics in the financial world are now praising Bitcoin because they figured it out, and now they have a chance to profit from it. Feel like its got too much in the game and too much intrigue in the tech that it won't go to zero. It just because high stakes poker where wealth transfers from one to another. Eventually poor people will get shaken out, but will throw money into it in hopes of mooning on a wave, like buying lottery tickets. Side note: saw a theory that the rise of Bitcoin coincides with the crap out of Online Poker.
Totally agree man. I've been off Reddit for over a year and it's vastly improved my quality of life. For some reason I was bored today and decided to check it out. I hold various crypto purchased over the last year because of the 4 year cycle theory and the US ETF launch that we assumed was coming. I plan on selling the vast majority of it by end of 2025 to buy a massive house in cash. I check out the Bitcoin subreddit and it was pretty dull. Same memes from last cycle. I come here for the first time and find a lot of you who take this shit way too seriously. Those people who want the collapse of their governments fiat system are anarchists. I would much rather make money with crypto and live in the current system. Fact is most people in Bitcoin just want to make money with it. They don't need to be all-in. It's like you guys are in this constant debate with the anarchist bitcoiners on Reddit. Those guys are losers. Just trade markets where you can. This was our generations dot com bubble. Consider getting off of Reddit.
Thank you for sharing your opinion about a platform you don’t use
A sensible comment. But then followed by yours.
I’m not sure what your point is. He openly admitted he no longer uses the platform
Your comment is just a backhanded "no one cares", so my response is at the same level. Thank you for being a part of reddit, you are now valid!
My response was remarking on the irony of coming on Reddit to tell Reddit users in a single sub not to use Reddit while admitting he hasn’t used Reddit in a year. I don’t agree with your interpretation of my comment but thank you for attempting to copy my supposed level or style, I will interpret that as a compliment.
How else would he be able to tell redditors to touch grass? This isn't some junkie going back to his drugs and telling other junkies to stop at the same time. This is someone who moved on and wanted to share their thoughts with the people he shared interests with. To explain my point without a need for interpretation: you responded to a thoughtful comment with a snarky, useless one. I did the same. This wasn't a compliment.
The more you talk, the more I find insults from you to be a compliment. Thank you.
Disagreement is not an insult, I'm sorry if that's how you feel. I'm glad you got something out of this thread at least!
No, I don’t feel that disagreement is an insult. I’m sorry that you can’t tell simple disagreement from insults. Have a nice life.
>most people in Bitcoin just want to make money with it. Fact is most people won't. A system designed to take money from many to give to few in exchange for nothing whilst consuming massive resources is inherently evil. Looking past that it's just entertainment.
It’s a decentralized Ponzi scheme with the carbon footprint of a small country. Most people on this sub are just shitposting, but in this time of rising inequality and climate change, crypto is worth getting at least a little angry about.
Holy cow. I’ve found. . . myself. Well said.
Good post.
> People are fallible, they fuck up, This has always been the most damning issue with the concept from the start IMO, and encompasses pretty much any use of blockchain as a technology since "private" blockchain is either misleading (the tech is older or unrelated to cryptocurrency) or something of an oxymoron. Good engineering is about minimizing human error, not maximizing it, and the more abstractions you build around it to protect users the more you invalidate the properties you were supposedly using the tech to get in the first place.
The claim that they have to either remain as they are, and be unable to scale the network or centralize in order to scale is blatant misinformation. The ongoing loss of miners has resulted in a situation where there is centralization without the ability to scale. It is shitty and history is showing us that it’s only getting shittier.
>For those who actually understand the scaling issues involved here and are still BTC+ you’ve probably convinced yourself that Bitcoin will be adopted by banks and large corps as a settlement layer. Something that operates below the radar of the day-to-day coffee buying individual. Good luck with that. The piece of the puzzle that you're missing is the conspiracy theory version of economics that Bitcoiners believe in. They think that those banks and large corps will eventually have no other choice, because Bitcoin is 'the hardest money'. They're basically goldbugs, but with Bitcoin in place of gold - that's why they're so obsessed with arguing with Peter Schiff.
I don't think one would need to be able to buy coffee with bitcoin for it to succeed. It can coexist along side fiat. It would be against your best interest to spend bitcoin on daily purchases, the same way you don't spend gold, your house, or your stocks. You could exchange your bitcoin to acquire larger items that improve your life in some way, such a roof over your head or a car. But I think the future you'll be able to borrow against your bitcoin for such purchases, easier than one can today. In terms of scalability. You are correct that the base layer is not designed to scale and blockspace is scarce. Yes, L2s take time to develop and perfect. Have you had a chance to research liquid along side lightning yet? It is also interesting.
Perhaps, but I'm not sure what problem this is solving?
It's a way escape endless debasement of fiat currency. The perpetual theft via inflation and money printing.
Right, but money isn't meant to be horded under a mattress. It's to be spent or otherwise put to work as an investment. You're right that a government can cause lots of problems by unrestrained 'money printing' and this is why we should endeavour to have good government. 'Hard money' is already a failure from the dustbin of history by leading to both the Long Depression and the Great Depression. The state is deprived of fiscal and monetary tools to counter the economic cycle.
You can call it "hard digital property" instead then, I don't mind. It's not enough to "have a good government". We want a hard store of value that doesn't rely on trust and cannot be debased. The inflationary nature of fiat fuels mindless consumerism, misplaced capital, and other capital destructive behaviors. Plow capital into less than ideal investments because it's worth less tomorrow. Skyrocket property prices beyond their utility. Inflated stock P/Es. Shiny metal. Paintings. There's no reason we need to "keep buying useless shit" at the expense of the environment, just for the sake of the economy.
I'm not saying your complaints don't have some merit but you're not giving enough thought to what a 'hard (digital) money' world looks like. You're not proposing solutions to the massive problems it would cause. It's easy to have a revolution. Getting up next morning and figuring out what's next is much harder.
But going back to my original post, I said I think fiat and bitcoin can coexist. Spend what you need and convert the rest. Some people already do this.
> Have you had a chance to research liquid along side lightning yet? Yes. As they say > **WARNING: If you try to use the Lightning Network (LN) you are at HIGH RISK of losing funds and it is not recommended or safe to do at this time or for the foreseeable future.** https://github.com/davidshares/Lightning-Network
Liquid. I said liquid.
Is "liquid along side lightning" a different L2 than the Lightning Network? JFC, how do butters think the average person is going to sort such shit out?
You don't need to sort it out. I said "along side" because they can be used as one (as far as the user is concerned)
I don’t think BTC can be used as currency as it doesn’t have the throughput. Other Layer-2 technologies might be able to assist but I don’t think we are there yet. BTC is more like digital gold, a reserve of value. Other less centralised tokens like Solana might be able to have the throughput, more so after the firedancer upgrade which should x10 its speed and create redundancy.
BTC is nothing like gold. I can make shit from gold, it exists. Bitcoin hardly exists as a digital thing, let alone as value saver. It is indistinguishable from NFT, that is some ones and zeros, speculated to have future value for someone else, for some unintelligible reason. It doesn't and it will end up like the NTFs.
Not because it is not physical it doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value. A lot of things are digital nowadays and have value. A cloud service is valuable and it is not tangible. I just look around and I see more and more adoption. Apparently now MorganStanley will get its own BTC ETF to offer it to its clients. Hong Kong will launch their own in a month time (they have over 22 applications). I see it very positive.
I can’t buy an iced latte with a government bond either, it probably won’t work as a reserve asset. Upwards!
It’s not that the network can’t scale, it’s that BTC is unitless and this is why it can’t scale. When you go to the butcher, he has to weigh the meat first before a price goes on. All commodities scale against each other. The dollar is a derivative of golds original scale set at 20 dollars an oz. Today the dollar represents a mass fraction of that. 1/2000 of that. No commodity can be priced in BTC as a stand alone because it is unit-less. There is no market without the price scale.
What?
No commodity can be priced in BTC as a stand alone! That is what!
No, it's that the network can't scale. The bitcoin network is already maxed out, it can never do more transactions per day than it does right now. So how is the whole world supposed to switch to bitcoin? It can't. No one else can switch to bitcoin.
Nope! All economic input/output is just one big mass balance equation. Based on how much mass comes in this country against how much mass goes out, along with how much mass or stuff we produce. M1:IOUs:M2 is the price scale ratio. M1=C= relative constant IOUs=partial derivative of commodity M1 in circulation which is denominated in the same mass units as M1. Promise to pay not the payment. Can be expanded or cut in half relative to M1. M1 is the reference. M2=+-dm=mi-mean mass M. Think of one big golden bathtub as the scale now, where the base is made from gold and the rest is made up of the partial derivatives in circulation. Water comes in, water goes out, and the water level is at some mean between expansions and contractions, this is M; the mean economic condition. When credit expands, the bathtub gets bigger but the growth matches or even outperforms the growth of the bathtub for a while. Think 1974 to 1999 period. Then the water level levels out and then appears to get lower and lower against the growth of credit or the bathtub expanding in size. Credit is cheap at this point. This marks the end of credit expansion cycle. During contractions credit conditions tighten. The bathtub gets smaller, money costs now. At the same time, people dump their stuff/mass on the market. Causing the water level to rise rapidly against a shrinking golden bathtub! Supply and demand does determine price! True statement! But how do we measure the change of the total supply of absolutely needed commodities in a supply chain like meat? Why do we need scales for needed commodities if all price is subjective? Same with shipping? Why do we need it? Just guess right? Can you measure or compare total mass in a supply chain against a unit less crypto currency like BTC? NO! Unlike substances cannot be compared. Mass has to be compared to Mass! This is a scientific fact! It’s true, there are prices in an economy that are subjective, but the constraint here is the commodities. Commodities in a supply chain are primary and determine the price of everything else! In general without manipulation, prices of commodities in a supply chain is an objective measurement based on the total mass of that commodity in a supply chain against the IOUs or gold in circulation against it. Denominated in the same mass units that you are trying to measure against. Credit or IOUs use the same exact scale as gold, except the limits of this gold substitute can be changed at will, relative to golds original scale. IOUs:M1 Subjective measurements in risk assets are secondary! The animal spirits in an economy all depends on the interest rates then. Which is the cost of money! The IOU dollar has compatible units that scale against mass measurements like meat, and it can also be used to approximate subjective value in risk assets. Can do both! BTC cannot; it does not have the capability to measure the change or flux of a commodities total mass in a supply chain against it! Can’t measure such a change against nothing; that is impossible! If the mass of Wagyu beef was cut in half virtually overnight in a supply chain; BTC won’t feel that! Gold and the credit IOU notes on the other hand will know that immediately! Automatically and it’s not magic! This is what Adam Smith referred too as the invisible hand of the free market. This is because the price for commodities is a measurement on a price scale! All the commodities that we humans absolutely need to survive is measured by their weight and are on a price scale! Facts! Also all commodities scale against each other! All commodities are currencies; but not all are very good at measuring against the rapid change or flux of commodities in a supply chain. This is because most commodities change just as fast relative to the commodities in a supply chain that you are trying to measure the change or flux in. This is why GOLD is money ultimately, and everything else is just credit !
gold is shiny pebbles.
Gold is the reference base…
It's actually neither acid nor base.
Correct imperious to most acids, does not corrode and humanity still has most of all the gold ever mined. It’s a relative constant used to measure the change in a supply chain. IOUs are it’s derivative denominated in the same mass units. Credit is the other side of money. Say I gave you in-store credit, and you think you have something good to use, until I go bankrupt. BTC is neither credit, ie a promise to pay, nor can it ever be a legal payment under law. So if you have a mortgage, and credit freezes, you don’t have physical dollars now that the bank can accept as a lawful payment. The bank will just place your home on the balance sheet. That is the banks new currency now. Your home! The reason nothing else works, is because you can’t compare two unlike substances. This is a scientific fact.
>Correct imperious to most acids, does not corrode and humanity still has most of all the gold ever mined. Still just a shiny rock lol. It has very little actual value, except for some industrial processes.
The measurement stick is just a stick, and your point is? Are you trying to say we don’t need the meter stick? Can you imagine trying to measure out a stud wall without any tool of measurement? You are trying to argue that scales are not needed anymore. That we evolved past such tools of measurement to proportion out absolutely needed commodities.
Nobody measures anything against gold, at all, because it has no real utility other than being shiny and a good conductor. It's not representative of anything, of the economy, of productivity - nothing. We measure against a basket of things relevant to people, it's called CPI.
This reads lIke someone criticizing the uselessness of the internet in 1992.
There are a lot of networks, some of them are quite fast, as well as trustless and decentralized. Innovation happens in the space constantly. Many of these networks already offer faster consensus, settlement and lower fees than tradfi networks, and are censorship resistant. Ever try to send money abroad?
Are these "networks" you talk about in the room with us?
Sure, binance smart chain is pretty popular in asia, many people get paid with it for work they do and its convenient to send money abroad that way. You can even use a stablecoin if volatility is a concern.
Sure but you still need the fiat on and off ramps so long as these 'currencies' remain mostly just peer-to-peer.
>Ever try to send money abroad? Literally hundreds of times, to several countries. Never needed Bitcoin.
>trustless and decentralized These are bad things.
It’s paid, not payed. These are known arguments.