Topic: Please Read!! Help Stop This Madness. - page 5. (Read 7666 times)

Will be*. Yes.

Yeah, for the ones becoming rich, obviously. Not arguing about that.

So, in other words, you are saying the bitcoin network is worth than Apple, MS, IBM and Oracle combined?
Or worth a lot more than E-Bay (which own Paypal), Visa and Mastercard combined?

None, aside from making some people rich and others poor. But we already had that point above.

It's making a lot of us rich. That's useful. The currency part will come, in time, maybe around the 100k mark.

How much of mainstream speculating actually has practical value?

Granted, i would also say that most of the worth of gold is more or less symbolic, but gold is actually usefull.
Bitcoin can be usefull as well, sure, assuming it is actually used as a transaction medium. But so far its only potentially usefull.

The Powerful Force in this case is We The People. And that terrifies them.

Replace those "bitcoin" words with "gold" and turn it back to them

To be honest, all the professors I knew in my economy department are just not able to understand it.

The real problem behind the scene is: When they hear the word "money", they become panic and lost most of their ability to think, they start to seek some powerful forces that back it, without that force, they feel extremely insecure about its value

The problem is you are trying to convince people whose lives depend on fiat theories that their entire worldview is wrong. That just is not going to happen until bitcoin impacts their personal finances or some similar event.

What I would do, if you truly believe in bitcoin, is to buy up enough to live on the rising price. Then quit, and establish yourself as an independent bitcoin expert. Ten years down the road, meet up with your profs and laugh in their face.

Well, theoreticly, yes. But if the first 150 would all cash out at the same time the remaining 850 would no longer be millionares.

There are already about 1000 people with bitcoin holdings of over $1 million. We are the biggest piece of evidence. Month ago the number was barely 150.

Well, there is blockchain.info, currently about 80k transactions per day or close to 1tps. Probably Satoshi-Dice is responsible for a large amount of the transactions. For comparison, according to bitcoin.it Paypal has 46 tps, Visa about 4000 tps.
So, even including satoshi dice, the bitcoin network doesnt do a lot of transactions compared to PayPal, and even less compared to credit card companies.
Another amusing thing is to look at the amount of "real" money in the exchanges. ~50k BTC (less than 0.5% of current available coins) could crash all exchanges into single digit dollar ranges.

If this really is a final year project, then the project must already have a hypothesis or at least a research direction, right? I cannot see that anywhere in your post. The only message I am getting is that you want to convince your economics department that bitcoin will succeed.

If that is what you believe, then argue your way out with economic theories, market observations or historical data. You don't seem to be doing that... However, I don't think you have a strong argument (in economic theories). Besides, professors will wiggle their way out with even more obscure theories.

I believe your effort will be better served if you take another direction:
To assess what kind of equity is Bitcoin by comparing it to others such as currency, gold, stocks, real estate...
Only after that can you evaluate it's future success or failure (with strong supporting arguments)


Why don't you point the "biggest piece of evidence" to a charity address or well known bitcoin organisation donation address, instead of your own?

Maybe you can quote one of the papers on how much Bitcoin is currently in circulation as a medium of exchange and compare that with how much Bitcoin is currently being used for store of value.

If you do, also post it here; I am interested to know.

Emotional argument, garbage.  1) All investments are speculation. 2) I'll bet you think this "internet mania" will die soon, too.

You can tell them as part of your research I bought a game with Bitcoin and I plan to buy gold/silver then link them several hundred stores so they can shut up that said, I've given up arguing with people who refuse to see evidence right in front of them.

let the establishment drown in their own ignorance. theres a reason these people teach at these institutions: because theyve already been brainwashed by the system they need to keep selling to younger generations or suffer the consequences of being out a job and on the streets where true sellouts deserve to be.

Hi - Perhaps you would have better luck and have less grounds for attack if you take a more long term view and focus your research on the idea of cryptocurrencies in general, as a superior financial technology - rather than bitcoin specifically.

The arguments about it being deflationary are therefore voided as that's specific to bitcoin. You can argue along the lines of "when" bitcoin fails, it will be replaced by something superior that improves upon its problems, as in its current form its kind of a beta version...and subsequent versions will entail further evolution of the technology until we have a system that is ready for mass uptake.

I'm not saying I think bitcoin is doomed to fail...but your tutors obviously do! So for the purposes of your project, if you want a higher mark you won't get anywhere by complaining to your professors that they are simply wrong about bitcoin. It will just annoy them and further cement the view they already have. Instead, you'd need to find arguments that are not direct contradictions of their own opinions, make them think a bit more long term about the technological and economic impact of this type of technology - etc.

The less you mention the word bitcoin, the better. There is definitely a game to be placed in academia.

good luck with your project

Inform them that your Senior Project is about the experimental aspect of Bitcoin: nobody is 100% sure how this is gonna work out, it's beta (0.9xx), yet its being tested right now all over the world.

Then start the presentation. You'll be forgiven of all your future sins, like being a fanatic.

Bitcoin is fundamentally threatening to neo-Keynesian economists and those who favor left political stances.  Paul Krugman for example leads the NYT in a nearly single voice of dissent with his ridicule of bitcoin.  He, for example is constantly calling BTC 'deflationary' while calling the USD either stable or occasionally 'slightly deflationary' (lol).  I imagine your profs are of a similar mindset.

We DO know bitcoin is most likely in a speculative bubble at the moment.  If it is not it is changing history.

What we do NOT know yet is your professors are wrong in the weight of their bias.  I think they are.  But only time will tell.They are most certainly right about some of their stances on btc.

This is very true. I know that anecdotes don't mean much, but for quite a long time, that is exactly what I did... until I started getting a monthly paycheck in bitcoins. Until you've received a paycheck in bitcoin, it is hard to think of Bitcoin as a currency. Getting a bitcoin paycheck changes all of that, as if some switch gets flipped. So, what you need to do is come up with a way flip that switch for people.

Tell them that alt-coins add an inflationary aspect to cryptos, so the deflationary problem is solved.

That's why people in the future would prefer to spend less good crypto moneys according to Gresham's law and not spend/keep as a store of value their better crypto moneys (which will become less good and which will be better - this is still not quite clear, so far Bitcoin is in the lead of being better money as it's a pioneer crypto).

And that's when there'll be enocomy and real exchange of money for goods and services.

So, basically, all their arguments are based on bitcoin being 'deflationary', alt-coins are here to combat that, and successfully, as there are dozens of them now. And if there is not enough alt-coins, more alt-coins can always be invented, just like central banks can print more money, also at a few clicks on the keyboard.