Posted on 05/24/2021 7:50:53 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
“The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in ‘Metcalfe’s law’ becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine,”
- Paul Krugman, slamming the internet in 1998"Bitcoin Is Evil"
- Paul Krugman, NYT Op-Ed Dec 2013
“Bitcoin isn’t a new innovation; it’s been around since 2009, and in all that time nobody seems to have found any good legal use for it. It’s not a convenient medium of exchange; it’s not a stable store of value; it’s definitely not a unit of account”
- Paul Krugman tweeting to his 4.6 million internet followers (via Twitter), with bitcoin up 6,000% since 2013
“Technology based on the use of highly polluting fossil fuels needs to be replaced without delay. There is reason to hope that humanity at the dawn of the 21st century will be remembered for having generously shouldered its grave responsibilities,” tweeted Pope Francis, condemning Bitcoin and its heretical offspring, sparking another burst of panic selling.
Technology based on the use of highly polluting fossil fuels needs to be replaced without delay. There is reason to hope that humanity at the dawn of the 21st century will be remembered for having generously shouldered its grave responsibilities. #LaudatoSiWeek — Pope Francis (@Pontifex) May 19, 2021
Now, the Church has not exactly draped itself in glory when it comes to embracing the world’s most important scientific advances. Just ask Galileo who died in jail, then waited 300yrs for an apology from the Vatican.
But it wasn’t just the Pope. You see, Elon’s tweet that criticized bitcoin mining’s use of fossil fuel spurred every ageing Luddite who has been consistently wrong about bitcoin’s ascent to pen yet another scathing op-ed.
That’s natural, of course. Critics are always loudest in the hole. But this time they were crowded together with Fed officials, the IRS, US Treasury and the Chinese Communist Party. Beijing seemed to announce a new law to outlaw bitcoin mining every time the price staged an intra-day bounce.
In human history, no single asset has come under such coordinated assault by the very global institutions that perpetually inflate asset prices in the name of securing prosperity. And yet, through it all, digital asset trading carried on, obliterating the leveraged longs, wiping out the weak.
For the first time in decades, we saw the ferocious beauty of truly free markets operating at scale. Efficiently. Ruthlessly. These assets inhabit a world without a buyer of last resort to bail out its bankers. It was a remarkable display of antifragility.
To appreciate it fully, simply imagine how today’s equity, bond and credit markets would withstand a withdrawal of government support, let alone a full-frontal assault.
It is this independence and resiliency that underpins the longer-term attractiveness of digital assets. But like all powerful new technologies, their promise is poorly understood by most pundits.
And amongst the many benefits that such technologies will produce, one of the more ironic is that despite today’s outcry, they have already begun to spur and finance an accelerating global transition to renewable energy.
Silly masses seem to think their money belongs to themselves! How dare they come up with a way to transfer it away from our greedy hands! /s
When I did my taxes I noticed a question at the top of the 1040: “At any time during 2020, did you receive, sell, send, exchange, or otherwise acquire any financial interest in any virtual currency?”
Krugman is an a**, but could someone point out what is incorrect in his quote about bitcoin:
“It’s not a convenient medium of exchange; it’s not a stable store of value; it’s definitely not a unit of account”
I understand that cryptocurrency is a money launderer’s dream.
E-tulips
Bitcoin *is* a convenient medium of exchange—blockchain transactions are quick and lack transaction costs.
Currency itself is a fiction. We only accept it because everybody else does. It takes hyperinflation to destroy the scam.
Instead of smuggling out wealth in some clever fashion it's gone with a click! No wonder crypto currencies took off but it's definitely reached Tulip territory
Does the author really think a Tweet from Francis could "spur a burst of panic selling"?
I'm aware of the use of large banks of computers and thus use of a lot of electricity in Bitcoin mining. Is that where we have "Technology based on the use of highly polluting fossil fuels" that Francis and Musk complain about? Sadly, we won't know because the author of this article is a lousy writer.
Estimated money laundering via Bitcoin $2.8B. Estimated yearly money laundering total $800B to $2T.
“Bitcoin *is* a convenient medium of exchange—blockchain transactions are quick and lack transaction costs.”
Aren’t Bitcoin transaction times north of 10 minutes?
If the pope condemns it, it must be good. If it can hide transactions from the fascists in Washington it’s a good thing.
Fiat Currency. Tax increase by inflation.
Bitcoin is not the most convenient medium of exchange in the crypto-sphere. However it beats traditional financial institutions hands down.
As to not being a stable store of value, with exception to those who panic buy the top Bitcoins fixed supply only grows more “valuable” with respect to fiat. As long as the panic buyers don’t turn into panic sellers their purchase will also appreciate.
On the other hand fiat has been tried some 700 times in recorded history and to date has always been devalued until it’s worthless. If strait up comparing BTC fundamentals to fiat fundamentals BTC is a better “store of value” however that’s not to say that it is the “best” store of value.
globally there are:
- 0.385toz silver per person with low production
- 0.0027 BTC per person with near zero production, and production cap of 21,000,000 total coins.
- 2628 USD per person, but who really knows with that one and quite a bit of production recently
- $6000 USD per person in total fiats conservatively, with corona printing I am unable to locate any real source as to much how much there really is. extrapolation for USA, CAD, and EU would be closer to $8000usd equivalent.
They can be longer than that, but when you compare it to a wire transfer, with fees coming and going, the blockchain is not only an order of magnitude faster, it’s cheaper too.
Sure, but wire transfers aren’t the competition. Credit/debit cards are what people use to pay for things now and they process in a fraction of a second.
No, you’re mistaken. I am not aware of anyone advocating for use of bitcoin for retail transactions; rather, the preferred use case is as a store of value with zero-cost international transfers. Wire transfers of fiat currency are precisely what Bitcoin is competing with.
Correct. BTC would be used to hold a lump sum and protect from inflation and other forms of gov’t control. It could then be transferred for large purchases or transactions from the source wallet. For smaller transactions it would only be used to fill a more traditional payment processor with X weeks or months of money for your $10 McDonalds order.
So it needs to displace wire transfers, 90%+ of which are done by banks and large corporations that have no interest in replacing the current financial model? Doesn’t seem like something that has much of a future.
You’ll never get an answer to “What is the MAXIMUM transaction rate for bitcoin?”. I’ve asked at least a dozen times and all you get from crypto fanboys is crickets chirping.
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