Topic: I have seen the light - page 4. (Read 8503 times)

Were just catching up for all that lost time xd

check that

Check this:


The information is now double every 2-3 years to expand human's whole knowledge base, so does the speed of generating a history. It took bitcoin 4 years to reach today's status, that is almost equal to gold's thousand years, information wise

There are also culture reasons behind bitcoin's rise, mostly due to a sentiment change after financial crisis and bank bail out. People now have more knowledge about banking and money, and they start to seek for other alternatives after they understanded what banking really means. They need a trustworthy saving medium that can not be inflated by central banks. Although gold suits the purpose, but this is a networked society, an electronic form of value storage is better

And, new IT generations with totally different mindset and computer skills, they generally welcome a special type of payment method that is fashion and cool. I found out that it's much easier to teach my little sister to use bitcoin instead of my father

So, the consensus is: The supply is fixed and demand is rising forever, means value will rise forever

This consensus is not unbreakable, the only variable is the demand. If one day, everyone could get as much loan as they want without worrying about returning those loans in the future, then the demand for bitcoin as a medium of saving will be very limited. You really won't care weather VISA will charge you 3% fee, as long as you could get a 10% bigger loan from their credit card every year and never need to payback interest

But I don't think that is likely to happen. In fact, many people has already borrowed quite much for their house and they will stuck in the pay back process for nearly a decade, combined with more automation and less job, their future outlook is getting worse

Another thing, with less and less investment return and longer and longer life expectancy, those almost-broke-pension funds are desperately searching for investment opportunities, bitcoin will become one of their target

That wouldn't be so ironic if it wasn't for the Dunning Kruger Effect.

Erik Voorhees has made himself an icon in the Bitcoin community and he is a fantastic wordsmith -- I'll read those papers today for sure.  May have already 

Listen, these aren't merely links, these are two high quality easy to understand essays on the matter. Re-discussing this would require a very long topic and likely not get the point across judging by your posts.

If you are too lazy to read those articles, I'm too lazy to explain this further to you as I don't think you deserve to have the opportunity to benefit from this knowledge.

See you in a few years.

Bitcoin is backed by:
Distributed trust
Ease of transactions
Hardcoded rarity

The past decade has shown how centralising any of the above leads to misallocation of resources and disincentivises real investment and saving.
The people will see this before the banksters and government.

SatoshiSatoshiSatoshiOmmmmm

I don't think you understand what you're even asking; you're just parroting what you've heard other objectionists say. The importance of being "backed" by something is so that it is anchored to something that we *know* has value, based on its inherent utility and finite supply, thus ensuring that the currency always holds a consistent value and can be relied upon as an agreed value exchange mechanism.

Bitcoin doesn't quite follow the traditional currency story though, because its utility and finite supply is built in, thus obviating the need for it to be backed by some other commodity of value. It is in this way that we can say that it is backed by mathematics, cryptography and the internet, which are the foundation of its usefulness and limited supply.

You just said that bitcoins will rise because *everybody* is going to be using them, and now you are saying they will keep going up if it is just the smart and rich who use them?

Neither one of us is arguing that gold was chosen because of its qualities.  Consensus, remember?  Same goes for Bitcoin & CopyCoin.  Except neither Bitcoin nor CopyCoin have "culture & history" to fall back on, but ... irrelevant.  

I see. So why did gold replaced sheep as a currency and is this Platinum thing transferable over the internet?

There are also culture and history factors in the acceptance of one medium as a currency. Platinum never replaced gold as a medium of exchange, although it has more superier properties than gold

^ about to become rarer

Behold the brother that will revive the church of Satoshi!

Funny.  I agree with everything you say except your conclusion.  Yes, the current value of all currency has been reached by consensus.  Education can only upset that consensus, undermine people's faith in money & send world's economies into a tailspin.  Bitcoin is no exception to the rule -- more than any other currency, its value is determined by consensus.  I don't have to reach further than MtGox charts to prove the point.  Faith in Bitcoin waxes & wanes -- click on http://bitcoin.clarkmoody.com/ to see how often & how much. 

"In principle [Bitcoin's] exchange price will rise forever" is simply false.  If your "usability & limited supply" argument proves anything, it proves way too much:  it proves that *any alt coin's exchange price will rise forever*.

Well the ultimate mission for usability
Is to ensure even grandma can use it

Exactly. The money supply and price level do not have direct relationship due to the existance of credit money and the change in money velocity, a sentiment change in economy environment will have a huge impact on people's spending/saving pattern, thus create lots of volatilities in money supply. Since the value of the currency is mostly accepted as a constant by consensus (unit of counting), the money supply becomes a variable, but this is not how a market should work, it is price manipulation at groud level, and distributed the wealth to those close to the money printer

Base money is just part of the system. There is also all the debt money floating around. Because of fractional reserve lending, there can be orders of magnitude more money than there is base currency. This means two things: first that doubling the base money supply will have a much smaller effect on the whole system than you might think (M0 1-->2 is 100%, but M2 10-->11 is just 10%), and changes in the level of debt money can be the driving factor of the inflation/deflation rate (M0 1-->2 is inflating 100%, but if debts are massively defaulted you could be going from M2 10-->5 for a total of 50% deflation).

No one teach the knowledge about money in school, no books tell either, most of the people have zero knowledge about money and how it works

Some common misconceptions:
1. Saving now is for spending in future
The truth: One could save a billion but still do not spend them even when he die, it never hurt to have more savings, as long as his living standard is enough high

2. More money supply will cause inflation
Truth: FED printed 400% more money but there are no inflation, since the value of USD is a consensus, not affected by supply and demand (at least in +-1 magnitude of supply)

3. Money is not wealth
Truth: Money is wealth, if you can exchange money for any wealth, then it is the ultimate form of wealth

Because the demand for saving is endless and bitcoin is the most credible form of wealth with limited supply, in principle its exchange price will rise forever to hold forever increasing saving


This is just one of many possibilities