Mises on BitCoin - page 2. | Bitcointalksearch.org

marcus_of_augustus

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Eadem mutata resurgo

Quote

That won't make everyone else accept the change. No one who already has BTC will want it to go down in value.

It makes no difference what people want, it will be coded into the system at that point. It's the same as the Fed. Res. printing money.

theymos

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Quote from: marcus_of_augustus on February 17, 2011, 03:53:02 PM

In 5 years time when the globe is screaming out for more BTC, it is conceivable that a mob of evil people will round up the programmers of BTC. Then with guns to their heads, and their families heads they could imaginably sign-off on a change in the source code to 42 million BTC.

That won't make everyone else accept the change. No one who already has BTC will want it to go down in value.

marcus_of_augustus

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Eadem mutata resurgo

Yes, BTC are limited to 21 million but that is a mortal construct. I mean how hard is the 21 million limit really?
In 5 years time when the globe is screaming out for more BTC, it is conceivable that a mob of evil people will round up the programmers of BTC. Then with guns to their heads, and their families heads they could imaginably sign-off on a change in the source code to 42 million BTC.

Gold scarcity is a natural thing and out of the hands of human weaknesses, for now.

no to the gold cult

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Quote from: eMansipater on February 17, 2011, 06:47:23 AM

Quote from: wobber on February 15, 2011, 03:16:48 AM

Nobody can argue that Bitcoin is a success now, today. If most of the people will have the same trust in bitcoin one year from now, bitcoin will still be a success. My response to that article is: i back bitcoin up. and kiba, and creighto and everybody else.

Amen to that. Establishing a new currency is a lot of work, but we're going out there and doing it. That's what's going to make it succeed.

It's not a currency yet, it's a commodity. In time, it will become currency.

caveden

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Quote from: myrkul on February 17, 2011, 11:54:46 AM

IMO: BTC > Gold

That's quite obvious to me too.

I think the people who don't believe in this either aren't geek enough to understand bitcoins (so they lack trust), or they just worship gold without really understanding why this noble metal was such a good money for so long. If you understand what are the features that make gold useful as money, you'll easily that bitcoins upgrade each one of these features, by orders of magnitude in some cases.

Nefario

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Quote from: kiba on February 17, 2011, 11:41:56 AM

Quote from: Local on February 17, 2011, 11:40:45 AM

We'll actually get wrecked if it doesn't grow some. The number of coins is going to double over the next 2 years.

I think it will grow, but holding coins is a bet on growth, not just on our staying interested.

Then it's our job to produce looooooooooooooooooot of goods and services so that bitcoin stays valuable.

This is already happening with bitcoin companies forming to make use of capital, this process will speed up a lot when we get a stockmarket to efficiently allocate resouces and capital.When that happens things will kick into overdrive.

myrkul

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FIAT LIBERTAS RVAT CAELVM

IMO: BTC > Gold

BTC: Scarce, and over time, deflationary. some will inevitably be lost due to idiocy on the part of bitcoin holders. No new bitcoins will be minted over 21 million.
Gold: Scarce, but effectively, over time, infinite. new deposits, asteroid mining, potential future scientific breakthroughs in atomic science, all these could make new gold. Even gold inflates, albeit at a very slow (if punctuated) rate.

kiba

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Quote from: Local on February 17, 2011, 11:40:45 AM

We'll actually get wrecked if it doesn't grow some. The number of coins is going to double over the next 2 years.

I think it will grow, but holding coins is a bet on growth, not just on our staying interested.

Then it's our job to produce looooooooooooooooooot of goods and services so that bitcoin stays valuable.

Local

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Quote from: wobber on February 15, 2011, 03:16:48 AM

Nobody can argue that Bitcoin is a success now, today. If most of the people will have the same trust in bitcoin one year from now, bitcoin will still be a success. My response to that article is: i back bitcoin up. and kiba, and creighto and everybody else.

We'll actually get wrecked if it doesn't grow some. The number of coins is going to double over the next 2 years.

I think it will grow, but holding coins is a bet on growth, not just on our staying interested.

eMansipater

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Quote from: wobber on February 15, 2011, 03:16:48 AM

Nobody can argue that Bitcoin is a success now, today. If most of the people will have the same trust in bitcoin one year from now, bitcoin will still be a success. My response to that article is: i back bitcoin up. and kiba, and creighto and everybody else.

Amen to that. Establishing a new currency is a lot of work, but we're going out there and doing it. That's what's going to make it succeed.

wobber

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Nobody can argue that Bitcoin is a success now, today. If most of the people will have the same trust in bitcoin one year from now, bitcoin will still be a success. My response to that article is: i back bitcoin up. and kiba, and creighto and everybody else.

hugolp

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Radix-The Decentralized Finance Protocol

Some at the Mises Institute are too atached to gold, but there are a lot of misesians in the bitcoin community.

Sjalq

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Same thing would happen that happened to Social Networking. One dominant leader would emerge and once dominance is established the leader would need to really mess up to lose poll position.

This is imho the biggest threat facing BitCoin, not government interference.

Steve

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Quote from: Sjalq on February 13, 2011, 03:53:59 PM

Geez, this is some bad economics from the Mises forum of all places. I agree with you Steve, the above statement is incorrect. BitCoin is not valuable because it is backed by a real asset, it is valuable because it serves the role of money. Gold also is not valuable because it is a "real asset" it is valuable because it to serves in the role of money.

The title is a bit misleading...I should stress it's just a forum posting, not anything official from the Mises Institute. One thing I've thought about is what if another cryto-money just that functioned just like BitCoin appeared. What would that do to the value of BitCoin? The value of BitCoin is directly related to the community of people that use and exchange BitCoin. In a very real sense, when you own and hold BitCoin, you are investing in that community. You are increasing the value of the btc in circulation and thus enabling others to use their btc holding to further build out the btc infrastructure (should they choose to use their btc in such endeavors). It is in a sense like buying shares of a company, except in this case, it's a community rather than a company. The more people build out the infrastructure around btc, and the broader btc it is adopted, the more valuable the btc itself becomes. I know what I'm stating is probably obvious to most, but I like saying it. Wink

So, to the extent that another crypto-currency is able to gain broad adoption and builds out its infrastructure, it would compete with btc. However, I think there is quite a bit of room for a number of crypto-currencies to grow.

Sjalq

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Unfortunately, there are no real assets backing he currency of BitCoin (and no coercive government backing it either). Thus ends BitCoin.

Geez, this is some bad economics from the Mises forum of all places. I agree with you Steve, the above statement is incorrect. BitCoin is not valuable because it is backed by a real asset, it is valuable because it serves the role of money. Gold also is not valuable because it is a "real asset" it is valuable because it to serves in the role of money.

ShadowOfHarbringer

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Quote from: MoonShadow on February 13, 2011, 01:19:08 AM

Quote from: Zerbie on February 12, 2011, 11:30:43 PM

The value of BitCoins will be limited to:

1. The future infrastructure to deal with the massive number of potential transactions.
2. The security of personal computers.

If these two things can be overcome, BitCoins could theoretically replace the current currencies. If not, BitCoin will be relegated to the fringe.

Another newbie with the sole insight into the great bitcoin flaw. Seriously guys, this gets old. Don't you guys ever think that we've already considered all this before you arrived? Search the forum history before opening mouth/insert foot. We get tired of explaining this stuff repeatedly.

Yep, I remember discussing it several times...
Move along, nothing to see here.

grondilu

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Quote from: Gavin Andresen on February 13, 2011, 12:31:15 AM

You don't think if bitcoin gets really successful and there are hundreds of millions of dollars poured into engineering efforts for it (and if it is wildly successful, big companies WILL invest huge amounts of money on it), that any scaling problems won't get solved?

Well, if you present it like this, I guess it could Wink

After all, we only have one implementation. There is a lot of room for improvement.

MoonShadow

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Quote from: Zerbie on February 12, 2011, 11:30:43 PM

The value of BitCoins will be limited to:

1. The future infrastructure to deal with the massive number of potential transactions.
2. The security of personal computers.

If these two things can be overcome, BitCoins could theoretically replace the current currencies. If not, BitCoin will be relegated to the fringe.

Another newbie with the sole insight into the great bitcoin flaw. Seriously guys, this gets old. Don't you guys ever think that we've already considered all this before you arrived? Search the forum history before opening mouth/insert foot. We get tired of explaining this stuff repeatedly.

Gavin Andresen

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Chief Scientist

Quote from: grondilu on February 12, 2011, 11:55:29 PM

I agree with 1. Indeed I'm not sure bitcoin could be used simultenaously by billions of users.

Really?

You don't think if bitcoin gets really successful and there are hundreds of millions of dollars poured into engineering efforts for it (and if it is wildly successful, big companies WILL invest huge amounts of money on it), that any scaling problems won't get solved?

I bet I could find people predicting a few years ago that Facebook would never be able to scale to billions of users (it was written in PHP for pete's sake!).

grondilu

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Quote from: Zerbie on February 12, 2011, 11:30:43 PM

The value of BitCoins will be limited to:

1. The future infrastructure to deal with the massive number of potential transactions.
2. The security of personal computers.

If these two things can be overcome, BitCoins could theoretically replace the current currencies. If not, BitCoin will be relegated to the fringe.

I agree with 1. Indeed I'm not sure bitcoin could be used simultenaously by billions of users.

However, point 2. is not limited to bitcoin. If security of personnal computers is compromised, then any electronic transaction is. Not just bitcoins.

Topic: Mises on BitCoin - page 2. (Read 5906 times)