Topic: Bitcoin adoption slowing; Coinbase + Bitpay is enough to make Bitcoin a fiat - page 24. (Read 67187 times)

Interesting idea, must digest

thanks for links! It's difficult to locate this type of content

Without anonymity we are toast.

Is Bitcoin anonymous?

Will the Bitcoin block chain even have a liquid anonymous market any more by 2016 when it matters to us? Or will everything be registered in Coinbase, Bitpay, Paypal, etc...

Because the governments have no choice but to increase revenues as we collapse into a global debt default. And the more they tax + confiscate wealth, the more the GDP will collapse. Thus the more they will need to take from wealth. It is a downward spiral. Very scary.

According to Martin Armstrong's very high placed sources, the Fed has already told the banks not to expect a bailout next big crash (which should be 2016). They are going to let this sucker downward spiral but with capital controls so that government can pay the debt and obligations while private pensions and banks implode taking all the wealth down with them. The USA is temporarily bouncing up and stock market might even double before Sept 2015. But this is just capital fleeing the emerging markets and rushing back to the reserve currency for one last hooray before the whole mess collapses.

Gold hoarding causes a collapse in the velocity of money V in the equation M x V = GDP, thus GDP collapses. It is Mad Max directed outcome because the world is $223 trillion in debt + $1000 trillion in derivative swaps to hold up pension plans & finance + $1000 trillion in unfunded promises to society (welfare, pensions, etc).

P.S. $4 trillion of it has been unaccounted for in the USA Federal budget and is called the "black budget". Imagine what the "Fourth Branch" of government can do with $4 trillion.

Catherine Austin Fitts' point that government intentionally designs in
failure when it is in its best interest but can act very swiftly when that
is in its best interest (i.e. the best interests of the elite "Fourth
Branch of Government" who capture the government). She talks about the $4
trillion black budget. I highly recommend listening to the audio interview. She
is very articulate and gets directly to the point. She was former Assistant
Security of HUD in the USA government. She was also a major player on
Wallstreet. So she has insider connections. Janet Napolitano once told her
to prepare for mass voilence and upheavel in the USA after 2016.

http://www.dailypaul.com/314402/complete-breakdown-of-financial-controls-in-us-government-says-austin-fitts

Janet Napolitano was the former head of the Homelust (hands down your child's pants) ScrewUrity department.

The well known mainstream Bill Moyers did a documentary on the Fourth Branch of the USA government:

http://billmoyers.com/episode/the-deep-state-hiding-in-plain-sight/

If you listen to both Bill Moyer's video and Fitt's audio interview, you will drastically increase your understanding.

More here:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.5704180

mgburks77 and I entirely agree, except for the last part about human liberation not being possible. It always comes back to making technology more individualized. See this please:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.6065144

I am so excited!

I think it's pretty clear that the answer to the question asked by the OP is yes. BTC is a fiat system in all respects except overt endorsement by a state but as soon as the protocol meets specific criteria, and that is being worked on as we speak, it will be incorporated by the fiat system and receive that endorsement. It seems like that is the end game as viewed from the perspective of entities such as the Bitcoin Foundation, and other big players.

I also agree that  true anonymity and ubiquitous individualized mining are essential elements of any cryptocurrency that will escape government regulation, something which is synonymous with being coopted by the fiat system, and become a tool of individualized use. If any technical advance can be liberating, this is the path it will necessarily take. Anything less is submission.

I cannot be convinced that this wasn't the goal of the creators of btc all along. The tale of Satoshi Nakamoto is rubbish. There's real money behind the development of bitcoin, it never would have gotten this far without it. The reason for the covert nature of it's development is that despite it's shortcomings the protocol and the idea that spawned it is truly revolutionary, so it has to be managed carefully or it could blow up in the face of whoever presents it to the world. Once the technology is proven the truth about who created will emerge.

I'm still not sure that collectivized production ie civilization is the best outcome for humanity or that any technology can be individualized. Even something as seemingly innocuous as a washing machine does lock the individual into collective production.

Also I am pretty sure that human genius is the product of forces utterly beyond our control. Life is a biochemical system, the individualized components have no degree of freedom beyond what is allowed by the movement of the other components of the system.

The idea of human "liberation" may not be possible. Not sure where that leaves us yet.

I forgot to put in the OP that if the log-logistic adoption curve fit I did is correct, it predicts BTC price to rise 10X every 16 to 20 months, just not the 12X per year appreciation "to the moon". And predicts that rate to slow again after another 2 years. Thus I don't expect BTC > $10,000 before 2016. And I never see BTC ≥ $100,000 (low probability of occurrence) because growth rate will be roughly 1/16 of current after $10,000, certainly $1 million is fantastical delusion.

AnonyMint, what is your opinion of the value of Bitcoin as a hedge against the dollar?

You say that one of the major problems with bitcoin is that, to the average consumer, it doesn't fill a real need.  With the way Bitpay and Coinbase operate, bitcoin has essentially become a "digital fiat system".  And I certainly see your point.  Bitcoin is 100% pegged to the dollar, and to most people, it doesn't really offer any practical advantage over the current system.  As is, it is unnecessary, and as such, it can not grow at a similar adoption rate as new technology that fills an immediate need, like the washing machine.

So if we buy into your log-logistic adoption rate and admit that growth is slowing, how would any impending economic instability play into the equation?  Because if I remember correctly, you have written in the past about economic cycles and how we are due for a serious downturn towards the second half of 2015 (forgive me if I am wrong, it was a while back than I recall reading it).  If this is true, how would this effect the bitcoin economy (and the crypto scene as a whole)?  Wouldn't such a downturn create a void, a need, that bitcoin would then fill, thereby increasing the rate of adoption vs before the economy went south and that need was there?  The entire ecosystem as it exists now, this "digital fiat system" as you put it, with merchants only "accepting" bitcoin through companies like bitpay and then immediately turning it into fiat, would change, would it not?

I'm interested to hear your thoughts on bitcoins role in such a scenario.

People don't adopt when they learn about bitcoin because
people are not confident on securing digital assets.
people have experience with

• crashed hdds
• broken/burned/lost flash disks
• scratched CD/DVDs
• files erased by viruses
• passwords/keys forgotten or lost

Why do you think people keep buying printers?

Humor timeout...

Notice the deer are allowed passage (see sign in distance)

With anonymity, let's be the freerange, agile deer. TPTB can spend forever regulating (pointing at) shadows.

> Yep = TECHNOCRACY
> Good one, AnonyMint!  LOL
>
>
>> Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2014 01:01:33 -0400
>> Subject: humorous photo showing government banning everything/freedom
>> From: AnonyMint
>> To: xxxxxxx
>>
>> Do not proceed:
>>
>> Attachment: noway.jpg
>>

Interesting article.

On one hand you have merchants using Bitpay.  These merchants don't want to hold BTC.  They convert it to fiat before it touches their account.  They are BTC sellers

On the other side you have hoarders who don't wanna to spend BTC because they are buying it for speculation.

As more merchants accept BTC thru Bitpay; this creates an asymmetry of sellers over buyers.   This puts a lot of selling pressure on BTC driving the price down.

So at some point the future the price will be driven low enough where there is an equilibrium of sellers vs buyers in order for BTC stabilize.  But if a better tech comes along like Ripple, BTC might just go extinct.

Btw, I don't expect the "yes" vote to be higher than the "BTC" vote.

One goal I have is to put it on record how dumb (myopic/mass mania/groupthink/vested interest/incapable) the "BTC" majority is. So later when my warnings come true, I can say "I told ya so".

My other goal is to tell the "yes" voters, they will soon have better alternative(s). Keep the faith.

You will also find that many "BTC" votes will be just irrational hate towards me personally. It is good to feed their hate and let them vent it. You will note they can't make one rational argument in this thread. Even I have promised not to delete any arguments I disagree with. You see they are really feeble and helpless (and shameless).

My message to Peter Thiel is, "you think you can win with the feeble on your side?".

P.S. I feel justified calling out Thiel and (my friend) Risto, because they both put themselves in the position of being leaders of the "BTC". W.r.t. to Risto, I am merely trying to encourage him to use his resources wisely.

Bitpay is taking over (3X adoption increase month-on-month compounded!). And you pay the exchange rate (plus some fudge factor to hide Bitpay's fees in the exchange rate).

Thus now you are paying through the nose twice. And Peter Thiel's wallet is getting fatter.

Cross posting an excerpt from an ongoing discussion in another thread...


Risto it appears you excel on "counting" games, but when it comes to logic it appears you over generalize (or choose the simplest understanding for efficiency) and this causes you to make mistakes. I suck at board games but I appear to excel at seeing all the conceptual issues in full range of depth and extracting the generative essence. Our brains appear to be wired differently. That appears to make you better at finding arbitrage opportunities than me (but gives you no advantage in timing market moves), but my skill appears to make me a superior visionary than you. I don't excel mentally with anything that requires me to interact with my external sensors. I excel with short I/O tape and then let my mind run on it, although normally my reading comprehension is very high but don't expect me to interact in parallelized real-time with my I/O i.e. that game you mentioned upthread (I tried while getting sleepy and only managed 16000 after several tries perhaps I would do better if I put some thought into how I should be calculating the move probabilities on that grid, but it appears to come naturally to you?).

I had the following insight before, but no one prompted me to share it. It is difficult for me to keep track of all my ideas.

Contemplate that the technologies which benefit the masses are those which have individual scope; whereas, those which subject the masses to greater extortion via the collective have collective scope. For example, washing machines have only individual scope and were rapidly (logistically) adopted across the breadth of the developed world. Whereas, nuclear power and nuclear weapons can't be individualized and have further enslaved us in the collective.

The internet (networking in general) is a mix of individual empowerment and collective enslavement.

What does anonymity do in theory? In theory it makes it possible to have all the individual empower without any (most) of the collective enslavement.

This is why I am so obsessed with making sure we have anonymity, not just in our money but in every aspect of the internet. The technology I am working on is not only applicable to crypto-currency. I want to change the entire internet to make it asymmetrically more of an individual empowerment.

Throughout history we had anonymity in our money because it was physical. Now Bitcoin comes along with a fully traceable public ledger and we give up asymmetric power to the collective. This alarmed the shit out of me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I said to myself a year ago, "hell no! not if I can do anything about it".

In geek speak, "you just don't get it".

The other asymmetric problem specific to Bitcoin is it uses ASICs thus mining is in the hands of the few, and also there is nothing in the design which economically discourages large pools thus one pooltwo or three pools now controls more than 50% of the hash rate. Bitcoin has already fallen and can NEVER be a benefit to the individual. Sorry! Just wishing it to be not so is foolish. I don't have a vendetta against crypto-currency, rather I am logically analyzing the situation. And attempting to fix it. I was frankly initially shocked that you were so dismissive and uninterested (and others even attacked me for wanting to improve the situation), but then I realized it is because you guys don't think on a deep level as I do or you are blinded by your speculative fever and vested interests as owners of Bitcoins. And thus you walk right into the honey pot so designed to trap you. (And there are both technical and political reasons improvements to these issues can NEVER be back ported into Bitcoin. Sorry!)

P.S. the other fundamental driver of asymmetric power of the collective on the internet is the client-server model instead of P2P.

It is a fact that a physical multifurcating network is more efficient than a fully connected mesh topology, i.e. running a smaller pipe from the water district to each house increases the cost and back pressure than running a main line and then multifurcating branches off it (cross-sectional area reduces by the square of the proportional diameter decreases). However, the transfer of data on the internet does not obey that physical law because we don't charge for data according to the path it takes. However the challenge is the efficient, redundant DHT storage and serve of data for a purely P2P internet. That is a more difficult technical hurdle.

P.S.S. I predicted a couple of weeks ago the IRS ruling would be what it is and that it would cause the price to dive. The post is some where in my public archives on bitcointalk.

Regarding change:

Ultimately the question is more along the lines of "Is technology liberating or a means to oppress?".

Any type of organization necessarily requires a limitation of degrees of freedom so why does organization ever occur in the first place? Is technology the result of organization or is it cause of greater organization?

From questions like this we can establish some baseline principles upon which to guide ourselves.

It may be that technology is not a means of human liberation.

 Well, I may not be as eloquent but as for making a single starting point, of why or what need, can or does, Bitcoin propose to implement. In my view one may be as an international conductor of value. As you have stated the customer pays the transaction fee. So far this fee has historically been low when compared to the fee assessed by international monetary exchanges. As well as the equivalent exchange handling fee assessed by credit card companies with regards to international purchases made as point of transaction in a country other than the originating account billing address.
 Coinbase is the interface to which I have some degree of experience with. I would point out that their fees for purchasing Bitcoin are similar to what a merchant pays for credit and debit card use. Where as, if I wanted to purchase an item in Austria and I am American, I would need to exchange my USD currency at a fee per transaction that has historically been well above 5% of the value of the exchange. With the adoption of Bitcoin that conversion fee is no longer collected by an exchange desk. I believe that was part of the same argument made for the adoption of the Euro, except the Euro is not accepted at the check out counter of retailers world wide anymore than Bitcoin is at this point in time. Bitcoin is a potential monetary equalizer in the electronic retail environment with the ability to also be adopted world wide by walk in merchants as well.

Before you disagree that Bitcoin adoption rate is slowing, make sure you understand the difference between nominal size and exponential growth rate.

Greatest failing of human race is inability to distinguish nominal change from
exponential growth:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.6037179

That is the entire point. I don't like what is developing.

Bitpay (a BTC facade on fiat payment) is growing faster than Bitcoin adoption:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.6015809

Also:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.6017743
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.6032623

Btw, that is Peter Thiel who also seeded Facebook and Paypal.

Notwithstanding whether I am correct or not, the key distinction in my mind is that nearly everyone who learns about a washing machine or smart phone, wants one. There are those who said, "I don't need that, I will stick with the hand washing or the feature phone", but this is just denial. Eventually they realize they were wrong as their neighbors are more productive. Whereas, the resistance to Bitcoin is justified, i.e. "why would I want that, I already have Paypal and I don't want the negatives of Bitcoin".

I am thinking about what advantage does Coinbase + Bitpay have over Paypal?  The key is that the consumer pays the fees instead of the merchant. Thus more merchants will prefer it. Why will customers prefer that?

Then I got to thinking. The problem with Paypal is there are too many competitors. The elite want to control this new digital money system. What if you combined Paypal + Bitpay! Then you can see the founder of Paypal is the main angel investor in Bitpay.

This is all about getting more merchants and customers into the digital fiat system.

I don't get it.

How do I store value in a brainwallet with just Bitpay & Coinbase if there is no blockchain?

How do you prevent a inflation & a dilution of value without the blockchain?

How do you prevent a government shutdown of a centralized location without the blockchain?