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Cryptocurrencies Don’t Make Sense
Naked Capitalism ^ | 02/14/2018 | Jon Danielsson

Posted on 02/14/2018 7:44:46 AM PST by SeekAndFind

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To: bkopto

Well, putting your faith in fedzilla be good enough for you, but for many others, not so much.


That’s my point. As little as it deserves my faith, bitcoin deserves it less. Nobody’s going to war to protect their currency if bitcoin collapses.


61 posted on 02/14/2018 10:24:56 AM PST by robroys woman (So you're not confused, I'm male.)
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To: palmer

I bought a lotto ticket once. I didn’t win...


62 posted on 02/14/2018 10:25:46 AM PST by robroys woman (So you're not confused, I'm male.)
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To: SeekAndFind

LOL! Keep bashing Bitcoin, as it heads back up to $10,000 this week


63 posted on 02/14/2018 10:45:22 AM PST by montag813
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To: bkopto
Show me an example of something you can buy that is priced in bitcoins.

These sites let you buy anything with bitcoin.

Give me a direct link to something that is actually PRICED in bitcoins. It looks like the links you gave me show me items priced in dollars.

64 posted on 02/14/2018 10:54:19 AM PST by Wissa ("Accidents don't happen to people who take accidents as a personal insult." - Michael Corleone)
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To: Wissa

https://www.luxurybranded.com/bitpremier-bitcoin-marketplace/


65 posted on 02/14/2018 11:14:17 AM PST by bkopto
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To: Vermont Lt
Most of the people I see shitting all over bitcoin have no idea—and want to learn nothing—about how any of this works.

Most (probably all) of the people that I see singing the praises of bitcoin are people with a vested interest in keeping the demand for bitcoins high, so they don't lose money on the bitcoins they already own. The people that have recently bought bitcoins at their high price point, based on the glowing reports of profits made by people like you, are now just hoping the price goes up, up, up by the bigger fool pricing model. Convince me that people are buying bitcoins because they are easier to exchange for goods and services than US dollars. Otherwise I'll continue to argue that the price has just been driven up by speculators.

What percentage of the current price of bitcoins is just a bubble produced by people speculating on future gains? What makes bitcoin a better place for people to put their money right now than silver was when it sold for over $50 an ounce?

66 posted on 02/14/2018 11:17:33 AM PST by Wissa ("Accidents don't happen to people who take accidents as a personal insult." - Michael Corleone)
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To: Wissa

https://astonplazacrypto.com/online-sales-centre/studios-listing/


67 posted on 02/14/2018 11:22:56 AM PST by bkopto
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To: palmer
It is backed solely by faith. Nothing else.

Not correct. CCs are backed by the algorithms.

People have faith in the value of dollars (accepting a relatively small gradual deterioration over time due to inflation) because the supply of dollars can be controlled to prevent drastic swings in it's value. If the dollar starts dropping too fast, the supply can be reduced. If it goes up too fast, they can increase the supply of dollars. They can increase or decrease the speed the money flows through the economy by changing interest rates. So people have faith that the dollars they earn today will buy them a fairly certain amount of goods and service next month and next year. They have that faith because the US government/federal reserve system is in place to give them that security in the future value of the dollars they earn today.

In what way does "backed by algorithms" provide the same type of security that their bitcoins might not drop in half in purchasing power in two weeks?

68 posted on 02/14/2018 11:40:05 AM PST by Wissa ("Accidents don't happen to people who take accidents as a personal insult." - Michael Corleone)
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To: SeekAndFind

I stopped where the author revealed he was an easy money, let the printers roll, student of Keynes.

Limits on money printing are good. Look at Venezuela or the Weimar Republic.


69 posted on 02/14/2018 11:55:40 AM PST by Sam Gamgee
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To: Regulator

And slaves of the big banks and investment banks that, oh surprise, clamor for federal reserve control of the money supply.


70 posted on 02/14/2018 11:58:05 AM PST by Sam Gamgee
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To: bkopto

You hit it 100%. I am for honest money. The scam concocted by those who met on Jeckyl island and conspired with the federal government, is the basis of our currencies now.


71 posted on 02/14/2018 11:59:29 AM PST by Sam Gamgee
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To: bkopto

Thanks to the Keysnian dishonesty money supply the author so loves. Since the 1970s I track that bread, fruit and vehicles have increased in price on the relative basis of wages to price after inflation.


72 posted on 02/14/2018 12:02:22 PM PST by Sam Gamgee
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To: Sam Gamgee

It’s not an accident that the Federal Reserve Act and the Income Tax amendment both were passed the same year.

The latter enables the former.


73 posted on 02/14/2018 12:16:34 PM PST by Regulator
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To: palmer

>No, that’s nonsensical. Exchanges are compeltely antithetical to mining. Miners are CC purists.

Thanks for the clarification; I was combining the use of exchanges with that of pools.

Again, I don’t know the other ones, but last I check BTC pays out to whomever gets the right hash at ... 12.5 btc? Pools spread that out across all ‘miners’ which sounds very nice and equitable (less their couple % cut, which seems a better biz to be in than mining).

The thing is: if everyone’s pooling into a few huge collectives because no one individual can win alone, how is that decentralized? And secondly, everyone’s implicitly trusting that the distribution of BTC (or eth, or whatever) is correctly done according to the actual work contributed. Again, the big players are overseas, with no recourse; why assume they’re playing fair (or conversely, if you were running one of these pools and could get massively rich just by tilting the scales very slightly with no consequence, not even a broken law, and the wronged persons are ignorant of your very identity and half a world away...

I’m not an expert so do ring out if I’ve missed something, but the whole thing seems very concentrated in a few hubs.

(On the purely practical side, even assuming all this is clean as snow, when I polled some US people about their energy costs and mining income, they were doing about $0.16 an hour. This is only appealing if you’re mining the next massively cheap coin that then rockets in value 100x or 1000x).


74 posted on 02/14/2018 12:34:05 PM PST by No.6
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To: bkopto
https://astonplazacrypto.com/online-sales-centre/studios-listing/

From the link: "*Please be aware that the bitcoin price is pegged to the US$ and will fluctuate until final checkout."

You won't know until the transaction is complete exactly what the price is in bitcoins. In reality, the sales are priced in dollars, they allow you to pay with bitcoins, and they calculate the exchange rate at the instant the transaction is completed. What you finally pay in bitcoins may be higher or lower than the listed price. Not sure when I'd be in the market for an apartment in Dubai anyway

I'd expect the same is true for the other place you linked to. I couldn't find the info on their site. It actually looks more like they don't have anything you can actually buy there. I looked at the listed price of one of the items. The Hennessey Venom GT sells for $1,200,000 or 1,445.783 BTC. I guess if you want to spend 1,445.783 bitcoins on it you could, but based on today's closing bitcoin price, that would be the equivalent of something over $13 million. More than ten times what it would have cost by just paying in dollars. Let me know where I messed up if I have that wrong.

I guess using bitcoins would make shopping a bit more of an adventure if you want that. From today's chart, it looks like the price of bitcoins in dollars fluctuated by close to 10% today between its high and low prices. I went grocery shopping today. I would have found it aggravating to get to the checkout counter and found out the prices went up by 10% between the time I took the items off the shelf and when I paid. I'll admit it would have been pretty neat to find out everything went down by 10% though.

75 posted on 02/14/2018 12:40:12 PM PST by Wissa ("Accidents don't happen to people who take accidents as a personal insult." - Michael Corleone)
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To: Wissa
In reality, the sales are priced in dollars, they allow you to pay with bitcoins, and they calculate the exchange rate at the instant the transaction is completed. What you finally pay in bitcoins may be higher or lower than the listed price. Not sure when I'd be in the market for an apartment in Dubai anyway

I gave you what you asked for and so now you move the goalposts.

Of course, at this time, BTC price is very volatile, as it is in the adoption phase. The USD is much less volatile, so from the sellers point of view, the linkage is necessary in order to reduce risk. One day, years from now, it will be fully adopted and the BTC price won't need to be linked to the USD for prices.

76 posted on 02/14/2018 12:56:31 PM PST by bkopto
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To: Wissa

Probably down where it hit bottom this time. The “bubble” that we just went through was an aberration. It had been moving along at a decent pace, but then it went parabolic. It’s pretty much back on the growth track going back a year or so.

I am all for a slow pace of growth. I’ve already made back all of my initial investments 100x over. I could not care less if someone bought or sold for the rest of time.

I am more interested in the tech, not so much the speculative nature.


77 posted on 02/14/2018 1:19:09 PM PST by Vermont Lt (Burn. It. Down.)
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To: robroys woman

Except the tulip craze had nothing to do with individual bulbs. But, that doesn’t matter.

I don’t think I am going to get a convert. It’s not a religion. It’s an algorithm. I simply wish the people coming on and disparaging it would try disparaging the usefulness. You think this holds no value. But you don’t even know how it works or what it is for.

I’m not selling anything. I don’t care if anyone buys it. It’s not Amway. It’s more akin to selling someone on the promise of the personal computer or the internet in 1990. Some people grasped it. Others could not see the value in the whole “web” thing. It might be Pets.com. Who knows.


78 posted on 02/14/2018 1:26:41 PM PST by Vermont Lt (Burn. It. Down.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Unlike central banks, Anyone who cares to can see exactly how many bitcoins are in existence at any time. There isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between one form of tender or another - it’s a container of value, and it is BASED SOLELY (in fiat currencies) on the TOTAL NUMBER of tokens of that tender in existence.

Cryptocurrencies are a threat because it prevents govenments from papering their way out of debt. This is precisely the world crime the US committed on the world after Bretton Woods.

There was a treasury secretary who once said, “It’s our Dollar, and your problem.”

When a Bitcoin changes in dollar denominated ‘value’, it isn’t because of fluctuations in Bitcoin, it’s because of the perceived exchange value of Bitcoin in dollars.

If you built a chart of the value of gold vs the value of bitcoin, you wouldn’t have near the fluctuations.

Well, I say that, but there amount of ‘paper gold’ vs the amount of actual gold is somewhere near 5X or more.

Bitcoin ISN’T the issue. The issue is dollar fluctuation as a result of debt.


79 posted on 02/14/2018 1:39:06 PM PST by RinaseaofDs
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To: bkopto
I gave you what you asked for and so now you move the goalposts.

Okay. The apartments in Dubai are items you can purchase and are actually priced in bitcoins on their site. I'll accept that you found one that shows prices in bitcoin. I'd still bet that they are actually pricing their apartments in dollars, but will accept bitcoins at the current exchange rate, but I'll admit that you did actually find a place somewhere in the world posting the price in bitcoins for something they are selling.

The other site doesn't seem to be selling anything other than trying to sell listings on their website. Or maybe act as a go-between between sellers of luxury items and buyers wanting to pay in bitcoins. Or maybe they're looking for feedback on whether that is a business model that anyone would use. I'm confused by their site, but I'm pretty sure that one would NOT count as somebody offering anything for sale priced in bitcoins.

One day, years from now, it will be fully adopted and the BTC price won't need to be linked to the USD for prices.

There will never come a day when people are barred from buying something without converting their dollars into bitcoins first.

80 posted on 02/14/2018 1:41:29 PM PST by Wissa ("Accidents don't happen to people who take accidents as a personal insult." - Michael Corleone)
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