Topic: Bitcoin vs. the Banks (Read 7523 times)

Jewelry itself can be considered a speculation though, since people only wear gold jewelry because gold has a status of "valuable".

The world consumption of new gold produced is about 50% in jewelry, 40% in investments, and 10% in industry

from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold

Gold is valuable for its use in electronics, jewelry and industrial applications.

People who ascribe magical properties to gold would be better served by a more standard religion.

Saving energy is not the same as producing energy. Gold is not a fuel source to my knowledge.

My hope is that something like Mike Hearn's 'Distributed bond markets and pay-to-policy outputs' https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/distributed-bond-markets-and-pay-to-policy-outputs-92421 will turn the bank-as-middleman-in-lending into dead weight/an unnecessary liability, and thus prevent widespread FRB from arising in the first place.

The good news is that with Bitcoin exchanges, if they run off with people's money, they get crucified, and not bailed out. (Bitcoinica)

Yes, this is the crucial difference: FRB + elastic money is a deadly combination.

FRB with gold backed money was common practice so there is no way bitcoin can be immune to excessive FRB.
However, with gold, bankers were using the difficulty of moving around gold inventory as a lame excuse for opacity and fraud.
Conversely, a bitcoin bank could not pretend it cannot deliver bitcoins: that's one of the two reasons a bitcoin banking system will be safer and less prone to excess than the current "debt based" banking system.
The other reason is that a bitcoin banking system rides on top of a p2p system: one can always fall back to being one's own bank.

The only thing you can really do to harm banks is withdrawing all your money.
I already did this.
Changed it all to bitcoins.
Of course somebody else has the euros now, but I am glad not to have them anymore as they are worth less and less. As ALL fiat money in the world.
And I have all my bitcoins on an account that is not an exchange. otherwise the exchanges could do the same as the banks do right now.

Exchanged to what end? For who's benefit? Are you saying you've never traded anything? A trade benefits both parties involved, that's why its a trade - derp derp.

Sure, you are right. Arguably we are seeing one right now (with pirate bonds which may - or may not - be backed by bitcoin).
But the key here is that when banks have monetized an IOU you *must* accept it: "Legal tender for all debts, public and private", whereas I am free to refuse your bitcoin IOU and demand real bitcoin instead.

Efficient markets save energy, obviously.  But gold can also be used to produce energy.

Explain.

The purpose of monetary exchange is to calculate the real rate of interest, which is the average growth rate of the economy, across disparate resources.

Think of it as a giant supercomputer.


Yes.

Exchanged to what end, and for who's benefit? Can you eat gold? Do you drink it? Can you breathe it in? Does it sustain human life or the environment? Does it provide energy or promote a safe and sane society?

Technically, what you're referring to as money isn't. They're called "Federal Reserve Notes", because they are IOUs, not money.

"Money" is any commodity that has enough demand to be used as a medium of exchange ie. gold and silver.

I didn't mean to imply you did.  Just pointing out that even if fractional reserve IOU system (with partial backing on BTC reserves) did arise some day you (and me) have the freedom to opt-in or opt-out of that system.  A choice not currently possible with the monopoly on USD the banking cartel enjoys.  More freedom is always better.  My guess is given a choice people won't choose to opt into a system where inflation can be used to steal their wealth when there is an equally effective system which doesn't.   Then again most people are dumb.

PLEASE, stop pretending knowing something that you don't! and PLEASE taste your own medicine and go read this book: "Modern Money Mechanics" written by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago itself to understand the process behind the money creation and how money is representing ONLY a DEPT.  

BTW I never saw that movie...

False.  Under fractional reserve system it is not possible to produce money without debt.

debt = money
debt = profit


lolz.  while true the feds operating budget is immaterial. The fed is merely the start of the fractional reserve pyramid.  The token amount paid to the treasury is negligible compared to the amount of wealth stolen via inflation both by the banking cartel and the government.

Say you own a $1,000 bond and it pays 2%.  You earn $20 at the end of the year.  However inflation was 3%.  In reality you would need $1,030 just to break even and $1,031 to have profited in real terms.  So you are falling behind.  The notational amount may keep rising but the wealth is represents is declining.  Now monetary systems are a closed loop.  If the real wealth you bond represents has declined then who has benefited?  However it gets worse.  The government (totally beholden to banking cartel and their monopoly on the issuance of money through debt) has the audacity to pretend the $20 is a profit and then TAXES you for getting ahead.  Except you aren't getting ahead you are falling behind.

You aren't being taxed on the more .... you are being taxed on the less.  You are less wealthy and at the same time owe taxes.  The federal reserve and all their subsidiaries use inflation (inflation they both control and cause) to transfer your wealth from you to them.  The state is completely complicit in this ongoing theft.  They could index your basis by the rate of inflation (i.e. re-evaluate the bonds value from $1,000 to $1,030 and thus accurately let you report your $10 loss) but they don't.  They pretend you are getting too rich and everyone needs to pay their "fair" share.  So both the government and the banking cartel benefit from this theft yet it is these two entities entrusted to ensure inflation is kept under control.   You think it is a coincidence that the US dollar has lost 99% of it's purchasing power (i.e. store of wealth) in the last century when the two "gatekeepers" both benefit from this deception?

Have fun paying taxes even when the real value of your assets decline as you delude yourself thinking there is a single cent in the US economy which wasn't produced by debt.

Money = Debt
Profits = Debt

The government and private cartel of banks conspire to ensure the supply of debt and thus money and thus profits is continually expanding.  The transfer of wealth from the working class to the parasite class simply couldn't happen without it.

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All the money in circulation is not a debt.  Say again, NOT a debt to society.  Enough of your crap.  Read a book, not the zeitgeist video, thats all u saw, and u think u know something.  U dont!

All the interest paid to the federal reserve on the bonds held in their system open market portfolio remit their coupons to treasury.  Minus of course The Fed's actual operating budget. 

Thus all the printed money is just that, spent by a democratic process.  Just like you want.  So really,  your idea is to reform the system, but leaving it alone.