Topic: If Bitcoin became the sole reserve currency... (Read 4280 times)

well no you buy assets where people pay you in BTC for them, BTC is not destroyed when you send it its just cycles through the system.

BTC can only be lost from the system due loss of private keys, or maybe dust issues, the latter may be soluble

Well, 20 doublings is a bit of a stretch...

Say one altcoin, say litecoin, will compete well with bitcoin and be just as big as bitcoin. What is the effect on bitcoin? The last doubling of value before the end stabilization will not happen. Yes, we might have 20 doublings from now, the last one will not happen. Conclusion: Hold on to your bitcoins, fear nothing.

there enough alts to go around for everyone, eg doge coin, and 100s of others....and they can be traded to BTC.

so this argument is just invalid

a more interesting question is will the alts cause a death of a thousand cuts to BTC, or make it stronger by competion, or replacement.....if the BTC are good but too slow they could loose market share.

One thing is for sure, alts have prised the private keys out of Bitcoin holders. Alts almost force a BTC holder and Fiat holder to divest.


I thought at one point everything that produces heat will mine, but now its looking like everyone produces heat will mine their own alt.

70 Billion alts here we come.

The 51% attack may not eventuate even with low hash as the moment you don't guard you own chain, you get attacked....and you are forced to run multiple chains so that you can afford to loose some, like chafff....ok I got carried away here.......

I really don't understand the current invasion of socialists and communists on this forum.
Whats the hell is happening ?
I'm sure they only care about their personal wealth when they shout about distribution , but I see more and more posts every day.

No you are not, educating neophites and slow thinkers is an important part of acceptance.

Thanks man. I am fighting windmills.

dude, this is bang on. I bolded your stuff cuz this needs to be better understood.

Yo dawg' looks like you confusin' sense of entitlement with acceptin' of dealt hand.

Why don't you toss around a few more insults, show us exactly how perfect *your* morality is...

The thousands of nodes all over the world, the massive computing power that being used for mining and all those people working with one way or the other around bitcoin is a nonexistent infrastructure? 

You deserve to have the value that you saved, in full, when you decide to consume. With bitcoin you will have more, for your knowledge and foresight. Or may be, in your case, you were just lucky. It happens.


The money's value is the sum of the value that all participants wants in reserve for the immediate future and for the long run. It is not a resource that you can consume, it's value for direct use is zero. The value comes from what you can exchange it for. There is no finite amount of value in money.

The value is in Bitcoin the payment network.  Every time a new merchant adopts bitcoin or another service is created to be layered over the protocol or the current network attracts another hour of development time or dollar of venture capital the payment network of Bitcoin increases in value (both "real" and speculative since increased "real" value ought to beget more of the same due to the network effect and as such has an attached speculative value as well).

The bitcoin "coins" have a value because they are the only allowed units of account for this valuable payment network and they are predictably mathematically scarce.

It doesn't matter whether or not you see value in this network.  There are countless things in this world that I don't personally value at all, that if given I could sell and therefore have value regardless of my feelings or anything else.

This is why copying the source of Bitcoin as BitcoinClone won't immediately give a valuation of the BitcoinClone units of account the same value as those of Bitcoin even though the technology is identical.

Hopefully this gives you some insight as to why bitcoins have a value on the marketplace and why altcoins don't make Bitcoin completely "redundant".

Much of my verbiage has been stolen from Erik Voorhees.  I think his method of explanation for Bitcoin's value proposition is concise, effective and easily understood for those who don't see it for themselves at first.  For me the value of a widely established p2p decentralized digital payment network was obvious.

Here's an example of his explanation with more detail if interested:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1rxmk3/my_open_letter_to_peter_schiff_followup_from_the/

Does not make sence, Bitcoin market cap is too small and the Bitcoin infrastructure almost nonexistent to even think using Bitcoin as reserve currency.

You made a good investment. This isn't any different from people who happen to buy the right stock at the right time. Reality doesn't give a shit about what you "deserve", where did you get that idea from?


The value of bitcoin lies in the its technology, the existing network and userbase, the infrastructure, and the brand. The first is no longer unique, but the rest are, and they will be difficult to challenge at this point.

Yes but the question is how big? And for how many people to become big 
Saying it that way makes it sound like a ponzi 

I think they can try.  You seem to assume that someone has a magic wand.  If they do, then the topic isn't interesting.  If they don't, then the topic is pointless.


Because someone else is willing to give you that much for one, or they are willing to sell you one at that price.


The good news is that the market doesn't give a fuck what you think.  The market thinks you did something good, and is rewarding you for it.


"Social justice" is one of those phrases that always means the opposite of what it means.  In general, people that are interested in actual justice don't use the phrase, and the people that do use the phrase really mean "theft".


Ever hear of the network effect?  If you created an altcoin that was exactly like bitcoin in every way, why would anyone switch to it?

Now if you create an altcoin with some differences, people will use it depending on the utility they see in those differences.  So far, it would appear that people want bitcoin more than they want the alternatives.  In the long run, we'll see who wins.

I don't think we are actually communicating here.  I'll see if I can try to find a better way to explain it to you.

You don't think the the banks or government can manipulate the markets? Outlawing, extreme taxing, using the media as a tool for propaganda, etc. are just a few ways.


If Bitcoin is supposed to be money, why is one worth $700? Or anything at all?


If I bought BTC1000 for $1000 a couple of years ago I didn't do much to justify having $700,000, or the ability to suddenly buy a house and fancy car. Excuse me if I don't see much 'value' in what I did. The problem is our notion of what is valuable. Hard work or even smart work isn't valuable-- getting as much as possible for as little as possible is what passes as valuable nowadays and is precisely what gives value to Bitcoin.


There was a goal of social justice, just not for everyone-- you know, not having banks or governments controlling and taking our money-- remember that? By saying there wasn't means you are admitting that Bitcoin is nothing more than speculative greed driven 'value' quite literally based on nothing. What other usefulness does it have over classic 'money'?

And because you mentioned all the other altcoins-- wouldn't they make Bitcoin 'tech' seem redundant (if that were another aspect of its 'value')?

In barter, you trade what you have for what you want.  Money is a way to abstract that transaction out.  You still trade what you have for what you want, but it doesn't need to be with the same person, or at the same time.  You complete your half, giving what you have, for an IOU.  Later, you redeem that IOU with someone else to get what you want.

By holding that IOU, you let society use your wealth, your capital.  You hope that you'll get back a value similar to what you traded first, plus the growth of the capital you let society use.

But money doesn't have a fixed or objective value.  It is subjective, just like everything else.  By holding that IOU, you are also taking the risk that you might not be able to trade it for what you initially gave up.  You might not be able to trade it at all.  Particularly with bitcoin.  By holding your IOU in the form of bitcoin, you are taking a huge risk.  There is also a huge potential upside, but that isn't at all a sure thing.

I have read your post and was thinking that you might be right and I might loose all sticking with Bitcoin... And went to eMunie http://emunie.com/how-it-works

LOL.

It's just another for-get-rich coin. Bring something better to the bitcoin protocol and I'll switch. Meanwhile, if people don't like, please don't use it.

You are so confused that I'm not even sure where to start.

All value is "out of thin air", or really "in our minds".  If the banks want to buy bitcoins, they will do so at a price agreed to by the seller.  That's how markets work, the buyer and seller agree on a price.

I'm not sure how exactly "they would run it to the ground", or how they "can destroy Bitcoin at any time".

You also don't seem to understand the distinction between money and wealth.  To be clear, money is not wealth, it is what you use to purchase wealth.

The people using bitcoin today are not getting rich for "pretty much next to nothing".  Just because you can't see the value in what someone does, does not mean there isn't any.

And finally, bitcoin is an experiment in libertarian/Austrian money.  The goal was not social justice or wealth redistribution or any other left-wing nonsense.  If that was what you wanted, go check out the altcoin section of the forums.  I'm sure there are plenty of scamcoins there that aim to do what you want.