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Topic: Peter Schiff on Bitcoin - page 12. (Read 38869 times)

legendary
Activity: 1162
Merit: 1004
November 16, 2013, 05:04:27 AM

Actually, this (misconception) points out very clearly why Bitcoin/Gold are on the same side opposite modern day fiat.

Modern day fiat monetary systems are almost all 'debt based'.  The currency is actually created by someone going into debt and extinguished by someone going out of debt through one means or another.  The paradox is that if there were not debt, there would be no money.  This explains, among other things, why pretty much everyone and every corporate and government is in debt.


Money has always been debt based. The state mafia indebted the people from the very beginning with a tax (debt ex nihilo).
To pay this debt you had to produce more than a stateless, selfsufficient community, and that enforces the nationalized people (society) to borrow more and more.
The state mafia itself is also indebted from the very beginning. The henchmen get a promise by the state mafia to be paid with the money they have to collect.
Debt is always the base of the money, wheter it is backed by metal, grain or any other property, which is the case today. Private debt is backed by private property.

And that will never change. But there is a very important distinction.

When the base money (that the debt or fractional receipts are based on) can't be created by a power center, then the debt write-downs (defaults and bank runs) are more frequent and self-liquidating. This is what we had in the 1800s. When the free market is allowed to run, the downturns only last about 2 years, e.g. the 1919 depression that no one remembers. Whereas when government tries to stop the write-down, then it drags on for decades, e.g. 1929 to 1946. And 2007 - 2024.


Yes, but 'free market' is an oxymoron. The market has always been a state bastard; organized, enforced and controlled by the state (mafia).
The state is the player in the game that makes the game (supracommunal collectivism) dysfunctional from the very beginning.
The state doesn't write down its own debt and therefore the state is growing in the long run in relation to the private part of the economy. Collapse of society is always predetermined as soon as a society is established (transformation of the human into a cartoon of itself: the citizen, by organized violence through the eternal complicity of military and church).
Historically and empirically there is only one alternative to the society (collectivism): the self-sufficient community beyond the state and the market. In the rainforest, some communities are living self-sufficient until today: beyond the state and beyond the market. Beyond the state there is no need for a market.

Sorry for my poor english.

Ignore this guy. I read his posts upthread and he is suffering the goldbug delusion. I don't have time to correct all his wrong thinking.

I already had a long discussion with him and others about anarchy vs. patriarchy ...

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.2311170
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.2311504
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.2316060
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.2360803
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.2365513
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.2370741
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.2376880
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.2379142

... and the fairytales of the aristocrats from Vienna. Austrians are not anarchists, they are minarchists (=collectivists).

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.2573373
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.2601822
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.2611507
hero member
Activity: 518
Merit: 521
November 15, 2013, 10:40:57 PM
Sorry but I didn't like how you were making one sentence proclamations upthread as if you were some authority on the subject matter.

Yeah I was pretty harsh by saying "ignore this guy". I am just tired of dealing with all the people who don't understand that money is intimately related with debt and you can't just put a wall between the two and pretend it is not the case.

And all those don't realize that Bitcoin's coin supply is really fucked up.

Having said that I am glad we are moving towards decentralized currencies, if we can get some competition for Bitcoin that corrects the design errors.
legendary
Activity: 1708
Merit: 1010
November 15, 2013, 10:32:17 PM
I saved this one for last because it is so humiliating.

The really funny part is where you argued that users have more than one coin account, then used that to argue that the coin distribution would skew from the chart I showed towards better than worse.

Math is not your strong suite (nor is reading comprehension). You got the ratio direction reversed  Wink

Let's see if you can figure that out.

The lack of comprehension, probably willful, is palatable.  It's also bitter.
hero member
Activity: 518
Merit: 521
November 15, 2013, 10:28:28 PM
I saved this one for last because it is so humiliating.

The really funny part is where you argued that users have more than one coin account, then used that to argue that the coin distribution would skew from the chart I showed towards better than worse.

Math is not your strong suite (nor is reading comprehension). You got the ratio direction reversed  Wink

Let's see if you can figure that out.
hero member
Activity: 518
Merit: 521
November 15, 2013, 10:23:54 PM
You are cluttering this thread with noise.

Why do you assume that bitcoin will, or must, become "the single global currency"?  That would be quite a victory, but is far from necessary or predictable.

I never assumed that. How many times have you failed to read during this debate.

I am not going to continue wasting my time on an idiot.

Why do you assume that any wealth distribution is abnormal?

Well that proves you aren't worth speaking to.

The US $ denominated wealth distribution in the US is far worsh than what you presume to state for bitcoin.

Relative size of the float my idiot. And the fact that Bitcoin wants to become the global online currency.

But I am not going to spell it out for you. Because you will never stop with your nonsense.

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Additionally I hope you know how to divide 10.5 million by 350,000. So that means an average Bitcoin wealth of very roughly $100,000.

Why?  Where do you get such numbers from?

Do some research.

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And we assume Bitcoin will rise at least another 10X in price, so make that $1 million each.
And why do we assume this?  I don't.  Even if I were to take such a presumption as a given, that does not imply that the curernt distribution, whatever it may be, will remain constant.  There is no reaons that it would.

 Huh  Cry

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So where does that place them on the distribution of world wealth?

Who cares?  The answer to your bullshit ssumptive questions are still bullshit assumptions.  Garbage in, garbage out.

 Lips sealed

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And that is if Bitcoin was uniformly distributed, which we both know it isn't even close to being uniformly distributed.

Again, so what?  There is no example of any currency, in the history of mankind, that has ever been evenly distributed.  Why must bitcoin be different in this regard?

And you really thought I was making an argument that Bitcoin should be uniformly distributed.  Roll Eyes  Cry

You still don't understand what's happening here, do you?

I don't know whether to  Cheesy or  Cry

I am no longer interested. I've made my points already.
legendary
Activity: 1708
Merit: 1010
November 15, 2013, 09:59:56 PM
Can't think of a witty response, Mr. President?  Or have you finally decided you have better things to do than attend class?
legendary
Activity: 1708
Merit: 1010
November 15, 2013, 09:52:29 PM
I guess you can't do blockchain math either.

1/2 of coins were minted in the first 4 years. 350,000 users. 7 billion people in the world.

Go figure.

I don't see an argument here.  You do realise that those people who don't own any bitcoins at all cannot rationally be considered in the wealth distribution, right?  Or do you consider all your British compatriots to be tragicly poor due to the fact that incrediblely few of them own any US $ denominated account balances?

You do realize that Bitcoin can never become the single global currency without having a very skewed ratio of have and have nots. The math is unarguable.


Why do you assume that bitcoin will, or must, become "the single global currency"?  That would be quite a victory, but is far from necessary or predictable.

Why do you assume that any wealth distribution is abnormal?  The US $ denominated wealth distribution in the US is far worsh than what you presume to state for bitcoin.

Why do you assume that you have structured your math problem correctly?  The math may be inarguable, but the application of same is not.

You presume a lot, I notice.

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Additionally I hope you know how to divide 10.5 million by 350,000. So that means an average Bitcoin wealth of very roughly $100,000.

Why?  Where do you get such numbers from?  I've already shown that neither the absolute number of bitcoiners, nor the precise wealth of any particular bitcoiner, is knowable.  So your application of simple division is bullshit.

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And we assume Bitcoin will rise at least another 10X in price, so make that $1 million each.
And why do we assume this?  I don't.  Even if I were to take such a presumption as a given, that does not imply that the curernt distribution, whatever it may be, will remain constant.  There is no reaons that it would.

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So where does that place them on the distribution of world wealth?

Who cares?  The answer to your bullshit ssumptive questions are still bullshit assumptions.  Garbage in, garbage out.

Quote
And that is if Bitcoin was uniformly distributed, which we both know it isn't even close to being uniformly distributed.

Again, so what?  There is no example of any currency, in the history of mankind, that has ever been evenly distributed.  Why must bitcoin be different in this regard?

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Now I shouldn't have had to teach a professor that. That is a very basic level of research.

I'll concede that your level of research is very basic.

You still don't understand what's happening here, do you?
legendary
Activity: 1708
Merit: 1010
November 15, 2013, 09:38:20 PM
Lets see if you can do basic division. Apparently not.

Believe it or not, I'm doing more than just sitting here waiting for your responses.  I will have to concede one thing however, as it's become apparent that there is no way you're actually old enough to have attended Cambridge.
hero member
Activity: 518
Merit: 521
November 15, 2013, 09:37:17 PM
I guess you can't do blockchain math either.

1/2 of coins were minted in the first 4 years. 350,000 users. 7 billion people in the world.

Go figure.

I don't see an argument here.  You do realise that those people who don't own any bitcoins at all cannot rationally be considered in the wealth distribution, right?  Or do you consider all your British compatriots to be tragicly poor due to the fact that incrediblely few of them own any US $ denominated account balances?

You do realize that Bitcoin can never become the single global currency without having a very skewed ratio of have and have nots. The math is unarguable.



Separately I hope you know how to divide 10.5 million by 350,000. So that means an average Bitcoin wealth of very roughly $10,000.

And we assume Bitcoin will rise at least another 10X in price, so make that $100,000 each.

And that is if Bitcoin was uniformly distributed, which we both know it isn't even close to being uniformly distributed.

We could safely assume the top 20% owns 80% of the Bitcoin wealth.

And very likely Bitcoin will rise 100X in price from here, since it already has risen multiples of that.

So where does that place them on the distribution of world wealth? Hint: in the 98% realm.

Now I shouldn't have had to teach a professor that. That is a very basic level of research.

It means it is failing as a currency. It is becoming a mania asset speculation.

And with no debasement in the future, there is no way to reverse that effect.
legendary
Activity: 1708
Merit: 1010
November 15, 2013, 09:30:34 PM
I guess you can't do blockchain math either.

1/2 of coins were minted in the first 4 years. 350,000 users. 7 billion people in the world.

Go figure.

I don't see an argument here.  You do realise that those people who don't own any bitcoins at all cannot rationally be considered in the wealth distribution, right?  Or do you consider all your British compatriots to be tragicly poor due to the fact that incrediblely few of them own any US $ denominated account balances?
hero member
Activity: 518
Merit: 521
November 15, 2013, 09:28:16 PM
Lets see if you can do basic division. Apparently not.
legendary
Activity: 1708
Merit: 1010
November 15, 2013, 09:27:35 PM
What happened professor? Did the cat get your tongue? hahaha. Idiot.

Wait, I thought you didn't have time to educate me?  I'm starting to have fun with this.
hero member
Activity: 518
Merit: 521
November 15, 2013, 09:25:32 PM
I guess you can't do blockchain math either.

1/2 of coins were minted in the first 4 years. 350,000 users. 7 billion people in the world.

Go figure.
legendary
Activity: 1708
Merit: 1010
November 15, 2013, 09:23:10 PM
Professor MoonShadow, read this and weep.

98% of humanity won't have any bitcoins when it enters a bubble and this is a problem, since these are already the laggards, and by buying at the bubble, they make their situation worse, not better. Any thoughts?

Have you seen dukong's bitcoin ranking search? http://btc.ondn.net/search

The current blockchain holdings by address yield this distribution ....

Code:
Balance        Rank
1 BTC       195,629
10 BTC       91,885
100 BTC      10,128
1,000 BTC     1,127
10,000 BTC       95
100,000 BTC       3

Total     2,062,380



Bitcoin fucked up both aspects of the design.

1. It puts 98% of the coins in 2% of the hands.


Again, proving that you don't understand how bitcoin works.  While this does show (roughly) 98% of coins are kept in 2% of addresses, I never contested that.  I contested the claim that 98% of coins were "in 2% of the hands".  There is no provable corrolary from the number of addresses with balances to the number of actual people who own bitcoins.  To demonstrate, I have a client that has 1000+ addresses, and maintains a distribution of funds.  Nor am I unusual in this regard.  Furthermore, MtGox uses four distinct wallets for it's internal user wallets.  Some addresses could have tens of thousands of bitcoins pooled from several users, others can have next to nothing at any given time.  It's actually unusuall for an online wallet service to use individiual addresses linked to individual users; because it's cheaper and easier to account for member to member transfers internally without using the blockchain.  While it's still possible that every address with a balance is realtive to the number of users who own those coins, that is almost certainly not the case.  Even the mainline client makes no effort to consolidate funds into single addresses, so the most obvious 'guess' regarding the distribution your data represents is that that is the distribution of the size of individual transactions, not the distributions of individual users' wealth.  The later is deliberately unkowable, by design.


BTW, for a long time the top address was the coin mixer pool for The Silk Road.  The Silk Road had tens of thousands of registered users, many thousands of which were regularly active.  That little factiod alone shatteres your presumptive wealth distribution.

Epic Fail.
hero member
Activity: 518
Merit: 521
November 15, 2013, 09:11:30 PM
What happened professor? Did the cat get your tongue? hahaha. Idiot.
hero member
Activity: 518
Merit: 521
November 15, 2013, 09:09:05 PM
Oh, this is going to be fun...

Read it upthread and weep. You just ate your words.

I've made no such claim.

So you don't claim that money is orthogonal to debt now?
legendary
Activity: 1708
Merit: 1010
November 15, 2013, 09:04:19 PM
It's actually impossible for the money supply to always accumulate to any group.  Eventually the distribution must drop below a functional level for a medium of exchange, at which point a free market chooses something else less scarce to be the new medium of exchange.

Indeed that is my point. If you don't design Bitcoin to be distributive in supply and thus a medium-of-exchange, it will fail.


I take it that you really don't know how bitcoin actually works, do you?

Haha. You don't know who I am. Very funny. That is like telling the President he has never run the country. Wait I will get an embarrassing link for you.


Oh, this is going to be fun...

Quote

I will grant you this. Money is not always a debt, but that is just semantic weasel words, because it is always compatible with debt. Hard money that presumes that money and debt are orthogonal (as you claim) has never been a reality.


I've made no such claim.

Quote

 I've presented the logic upthread. You have not refuted it.

I don't have to, really.  You're here trying to argue (prove) a negative.  It can never happen.  I don't have to disprove your premise, your premise is false on it's face.
hero member
Activity: 518
Merit: 521
November 15, 2013, 09:04:03 PM
Professor MoonShadow, read this and weep.

98% of humanity won't have any bitcoins when it enters a bubble and this is a problem, since these are already the laggards, and by buying at the bubble, they make their situation worse, not better. Any thoughts?

Have you seen dukong's bitcoin ranking search? http://btc.ondn.net/search

The current blockchain holdings by address yield this distribution ....

Code:
Balance        Rank
1 BTC       195,629
10 BTC       91,885
100 BTC      10,128
1,000 BTC     1,127
10,000 BTC       95
100,000 BTC       3

Total     2,062,380



Bitcoin fucked up both aspects of the design.

1. It puts 98% of the coins in 2% of the hands.


Citations?  Fail.


It's actually impossible for the money supply to always accumulate to any group.  Eventually the distribution must drop below a functional level for a medium of exchange, at which point a free market chooses something else less scarce to be the new medium of exchange.

Indeed that is my point. If you don't design Bitcoin to be distributive in supply and thus a medium-of-exchange, it will fail.


I take it that you really don't know how bitcoin actually works, do you?

Haha. You don't know who I am. Very funny. That is like telling the President he has never run the country. Wait I will get an embarrassing link for you.
hero member
Activity: 518
Merit: 521
November 15, 2013, 08:56:48 PM
It's actually impossible for the money supply to always accumulate to any group.  Eventually the distribution must drop below a functional level for a medium of exchange, at which point a free market chooses something else less scarce to be the new medium of exchange.

Indeed that is my point. If you don't design Bitcoin to be distributive in supply and thus a medium-of-exchange, it will fail.


I take it that you really don't know how bitcoin actually works, do you?

Haha. You don't know who I am. Very funny. That is like telling the President he has never run the country. Wait I will get an embarrassing link for you.

I will grant you this. Money is not always a debt, but that is just semantic weasel words, because it is always compatible with debt. Hard money that presumes that money and debt are orthogonal (as you claim) has never been a reality. I've presented the logic upthread. You have not refuted it.
legendary
Activity: 1708
Merit: 1010
November 15, 2013, 08:49:18 PM
It's actually impossible for the money supply to always accumulate to any group.  Eventually the distribution must drop below a functional level for a medium of exchange, at which point a free market chooses something else less scarce to be the new medium of exchange.

Indeed that is my point. If you don't design Bitcoin to be distributive in supply and thus a medium-of-exchange, it will fail.


I take it that you really don't know how bitcoin actually works, do you?

Quote
This ends here.

I'm surprised this lasted this long.
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