Topic: Am I misunderstanding this or? - page 2. (Read 7713 times)

You missed the point, which is that even if this was a problem, the alternatives do not fix it.

Well, it can surely be seen as an investment in the case that it will not go down in value, e.g. better to hold it than fiat. Your "rainy day" fund or somesuch. But to buy it in the hopes that it is, of itself, a money making venture is not going to promote a well-functioning bitcoin economy. It just turns it into another game for wall street types to play.

Without people wanting to hold a prospective medium of exchange, it would not become a medium of exchange. Unless you perform some trick (e.g. voluntary peg to another medium of exchange), a medium of exchange that decreases in value has to be forced on people.

Because if it comes as a continuous, slow percentage, bitcoin is getting nowhere. Again, maybe it works as a store of value here, but not as a replacement currency. I gave what I think are reasonable assumptions to why demand will come in waves. Certain markets or certain geographic regions are what is likely to get bitcoin's name on the map. Maybe chipset manufacturers in Taiwan are sick of the local currency's inflation and decide to start hedging in bitcoins. They will accept payments for better prices and merchants will start looking to get some bitcoin business. This type of activity will spawn rampant speculation on top of the increased demand for bitcoin in trade.

The logistics just simply aren't there for any orderly expansion. 50% of the currency is already in existence and it is held by a small number of people. Every time the market expands, either a small group has to sell a large sum or a large group has to sell a small sum in an orderly fashion to get the orderly expansion. How many bitcoins does it take to double the price right now? I gave the example of walmart's revenue raising the price of a bitcoin by 8,000 times--and that's IF all the bitcoins become for sale. $1 billion is enough to multiply it by 20. This is a very tiny amount compared to the world economy.


As impalpable as running a currency of bits over the internet?  I've actually simplified some major ideas since then, but I've also had more ideas to add.


Scarcity isn't the issue, it's the lack of control (from the people's perspective) and the preference for those already in power. It isn't that fiat inflates that is the issue, it is that preference for new money is given to those who are already wealthy. It is that banks do not have to compete for savings because of fractional reserve and central banking lenders of last resort. If fiat inflated just by giving everyone a little bit more money proportionally, it wouldn't unbalance the system.


Bitcoin may imitate gold, but it attempts to do so on an insanely accelerated scale. The rush is already over and a few dozen people won. I don't think you will be able to convince the world at large that this is the best way out of the bankers' and politicians' hands.

Maybe you sound too confident, considering you are backing your arguments with something so impalpable? Elaborate designs are known to be prone to failures and abuse. It may very well be impossible to accomplish creating an instrument that satisfies what you want. I assume you are familiar with the transformation problem? Whether your design is plausible or not borders on that, and it's a very very complicated issue. You yourself can't know if your design is sound as there is no analytical approach to the matter.


In other words, Bitcoin is scarce and fiat currencies aren't? That lack of ability is intentional. That is the merit of Bitcoin.

Actually, if something like you want were successfully implemented, then it would be the perfect complementary to Bitcoin. I would go so far as to say that Bitcoin needs something like that for further adoption. Can it be done? If not, then this debate is pointless. Bitcoin imitates the idea of gold; that idea been around for a long time. It's easy to criticize, but notoriously hard to defeat.

"Early", "earlier" -- both are referring to the same people... those who came before those who haven't yet adopted.  Assuming an ever increasing price -- their gain being proportional to the earliness of their adoption.

That's true to an ever decreasing degree.  You also assume that demand will come in waves.  Why isn't it more likely to come as a continuous (percentage wise) stream?


Again with the cycling; I don't see the source of that.  You also make it sound like each of your imagined cycles is the same size.  By the time half the earth adopts bitcoin, then half of the potential gains to earlier adopters will have happened.  If it was cyclic then each cycle benefits in exact proportion to its foresight.  Therefore that is the amount of credit we are willing to give them.

You make it sound like these early/earlier adopters are stealing their benefit or that there is some external party giving it to them unfairly.  Everything is a choice and everything has risk.  There were identical screams about early adopters last year as the price went from $10 to $30 -- are those who bought in at $15 "early adopters" who should be denigrated in your theory?  Perhaps those who choose to be late adopters prefer lower risk than higher reward?

Finally (in this paragraph) you incorrectly conflate increased demand with "disruption" and "instability".  These are words that our current political masters throw around without regard to their meaning.  Who is to say that they are desirable?  Bitcoin is certainly disruptive, and it is good that it is so.  As for "instability"... well, stability is only beneficial if you like where you are when you are stable.


The worth of an action is the value that action results in.  Without those early adopters risking those "few dollars" there would be no millions.  I didn't quote your "clarifications" because they weren't very clear or were observably wrong (it's fashionable to hate bankers, but to suggest they don't add anything to the world is simply false -- if it were true, then why has the collapse of banks been so traumatic?).

The question, fundamentally, is: who are you to tell people what they should or shouldn't pay or ask for a bitcoin at any moment?  That, in the end, is all we have -- offers and acceptances of offers.  You would prefer, perhaps, that you be put in charge of price, is that it?  You would presumably pick the correct price right now?  You would also favour a law that told the population of the world that bitcoin is inevitable and they should immediately convert their capital at your chosen optimum price in order that nobody benefits from future price changes?

This is a heavily loaded question. And most of my ideas will be considered implausible by most until they see it for themselves. A very old version of my ideas can be found here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/encoin-proposal-v40-scads-of-technical-details-now-with-a-wiki-49683. And I get flack for the fact that these ideas have not materialized, but unlike SolidCoin for example, the point is to change everything which is no small task.


But to realistically function as a replacement currency, bitcoin cannot be seen as an investment. This is all well and good for some people, but then these people turn around and make jabs at fiat and government-controlled currency when bitcoin does not have the ability to perform the same function.


It's a good question and one that is hard to answer. I think the ideals that a P2P digital currency has can ring strongly with libertarian and populist types. The adoption period might be a lot slower, but if it can properly expand when necessary, then you won't have to worry about bubbles and crashes causing many to lose confidence and, ultimately, a lack of real adoption.

So, what do you propose exactly? Lay down the alternative proposal so we can discuss the comparative merits. If something isn't plausible (though in this case we don't even know that something), then we can safely assume its lack of existence as a natural condition until it becomes realizable. Nothing is clear cut, economy is about trade-offs.


If you have any experience in investing, you would see the current realities are constructed this way. Again, please lay down your alternative view, but as it stands, you are not complaining because it was easy and obvious to make the investment upon discovery of Bitcoin (I for one didn't, even if I knew about it very early on), but because it is transparently so. You see it as a problem because you see it. If it was another instrument you just wouldn't see it. Also, do you think Bitcoin would be adopted if it were designed differently (regardless of that design being inherently good in your model)? If no, then what are we talking about exactly? If yes?

Apparently, I tend to agree that Bitcoin isn't a game changer in this aspect. I also think that there are none, without extreme disadvantages. Regardless, this has nothing to do with the OP.

I try to be careful about my words in the hopes that the meaning is actually conveyed. I said "earlier adopters" for a very specific reason, and I expounded on this reason:


How much credit are we willing to give to the first half of the Earth that adopts bitcoin over the second half of the Earth? Because they are going to have the same advantage. The only ones who don't get this benefit is whoever comes last. It's stupid and it will be incredibly disruptive in the short term each time. That makes for a long term serious instability. Cycling, if you will.


Yeah whatever the tired argument that a few dollars of electricity and participating in a hobby is a gigantic risk worth millions. I really don't care about this, which is why I am specific with my words. But it is so easy and tempting to quote part of a paragraph and bite in as if there weren't anything else clarifying it.

Throwing in the current bogeymen of the world, the bankers, does nothing to make your case.

Early adopters do deserve credit.  Without the early adopter, there is no late adopter.  If you want to buy Bitcoin's now, you want to because they are desirable.  Why are they desirable though?  The answer is: the early adopters made them so.

The early adopters risked money when it was, perhaps, foolish to do so.  Either they saw potential that others did not, or they were better informed than others, or they were lunatics who acted entirely randomly.  Whatever their reasons for buying a collection of zeroes and ones, or buying the electricity to run a bitcoin node, that was a risk that could easily have come to nought.  As it's turned out, there is a distinct possibility that their willingness to invest time or money early on has resulted in enough momentum to create a potentially world changing financial instrument.

You are, of course, entitled to value that creation at whatever you wish; but then so is everyone else involved -- and they might value it differently from you.  How then shall we set a price?  What about that most excellent method for price discovery: a market.  Ta da.

Without one there is no two, without two there is no three, without three there is no four.  You might value the early adopters at very little; and you are free to do so.  Your valuation is no better than anyone else's though and you may express that valuation in the form of purchasing or not purchasing at your option.  What, exactly, is wrong with that (other than you, personally, don't like early adopters profiting)?

lonelyminer, I like your attitude (also your argument, of course)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endogenous_money, interesting

The merit you seem to think earlier adopters deserve is about as substantive as the merit that bankers are the only ones trust/credit-worthy enough to create money. They do nothing and add nothing productive to society, but reap rewards of other people. It isn't just the situation right now, this has to happen every time a market or a geographic area started moving over to bitcoin. It is up to the holders and speculators alone to control how many bitcoins a new sector of the economy will have access to. Mining can't fill this need now and mining is about to halve. Every new large source of demand relative to the bitcoin economy is a new large source of volatility unless the bitcoin existing holders at large agree to sell at certain prices or to keep the price of money down in general.

People are going to wise up after the 2nd or 3rd time this happens and start ignoring bitcoin as an alternative, imo.



  "I will take my own, completely made up context to make what you say sound bad."


"I will build the most egregious strawman possible and follow it up by saving the children."

Anyone can buy or mine bitcoins. Nobody has a legal privilege to prevent anyone else from creating or buying bitcoins. Calling this "parasitic" is symptomatic of ideologies that prefer violence and are driven by envy of other people's wealth.

Even if I take a neutral view on the economic validity of Gesell's theory, it still requires a monopoly production. Without force, it cannot work. This can be clearly seen on Gesell's work in the Bavarian Soviet Republic (freigeld was supposed to be legislated), or the Miracle of Wörgl (scrip and stamps were not produced competitively).

It is absurd and hypocritical to label voluntary production and trade as "parasitic" while simultaneously advocating the use of violence as an alternative.

This is why the Austrian approach is still the only one that make sense. Here's one of my favourite quotes:

A common misconception is that electronic currencies / bitcoin is limited and thus bound to increase.  In fact electronic currencies could experience a very high amount of inflation.   

Bitcoin is currently unique in being the only major electronic currency, however at some point one or more of the alternative currencies will succeed.  Just because many of the previous attempts at creating alternative currencies have been done by people seeking to get rich quick, doesn't mean that this will be true in the future.  The BTC alternatives of the future could come from the same open source software or be sponsored by a bank, corporation, or government.

One of the many possibilities is that the US government (or EU) cracks down on BTC (by cutting off the exchanges) and creates its own electronic currency.

The most important thing to understand is that Bitcoin is a free market currency. It's never going to exist in a vacuum. There will be other currencies. In fact, there will be no Bitcoin if it's proven that its monetary model is a failure. It's an experiment, a voluntary experiment. A great experiment. We will find out what happens. All we need is time, just like hazek said. Someone will get their last laugh.

For me personally it's important that a cryptocurrency is doing something very different than what mainstream economics is about. That's crucial. I wouldn't be very interested in the whole thing otherwise. I believe mainstream economics suck and that is one of the main reasons we have so many economical problems going on right now.

We need to at least experiment with a totally different alternative. Bitcoin provides this alternative. Time will tell how well it works. So far it has been doing very well in my opinion. It has no government behind it, no company behind it, no marketing machine behind it. Yet it has managed to come this far in just 3 years. I'm impressed.

And you can huh?

Are you implying that you don't know anything about what happened during the great depression or on lesser scales in all kinds of other depressions? Have you not paid a whit of attention to the worldwide housing crisis and what has happened to the price of houses? All of a sudden your dollar buys a lot more house, but this doesn't come for free, it comes at the expense of the debtor.


No you can't.

No, not wrong in my opinion. Wrong according empirical historical evidence which shown to you causes your mind to experience too much cognitive dissonance in order to be able to accept it hence why I wont even bother listing it. I have ZERO doubt Bitcoin will prove me(us) right.

Fallacy redefined as meaning "wrong in my opinion, but eventually will be proven one way or the other"

You still don't get it do you? I DON'T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING. The Bitcoin experiment will disprove your fallacies for me. 

All we need is time.