Topic: The Bitcoin decimal issue - page 3. (Read 5567 times)

No I’m not the only person who was able to discern what he was referring to. We could keep playing the game of analogy vs literal, but we don’t need to as his first post was clarified by his second which stated:
I don’t see the confusion. Perhaps you don’t like what it says. I can rewrite if it helps:

You have two choices.

The first choice is to maintain the myths of Bitcoin for as long as possible, make what you will of good fortune to date, continue wasting good intellectual and capital investment in zero-sum endeavours where one group of techies screws over another, and therfore also waste an incredible opportunity for crytocurrencies to revolutionise finance and personal empowerment that would far surpass short-term personal gains (or at minimum waste a heck of a lot of time in getting to that point).

The second choice is to recognise that something has to change with Bitcoin because either:

1) Bitcoins are scarce in which case at some point those who do not already have any will rationally find something else to use instead of Bitcoin (see the rise of altcoins and alternatives as evidence of this). This phenomenon was predicted on these boards from at least 2010 when I started reading it, probably earlier, and will not end because it’s an inevitability, or

2) Bitcoins are not scarce because they may be replicated (for all intents and purposes with just a name change), in which case what is the value of a replicable and replicated digital asset offering no advantage over others?

Falling on either side of 1 or 2 without the existence of advantages or damn good reasons to prefer Bitcoin over alternatives (beyond marketing) therefore necessitates changes or precludes its demise beyond a blinkered niche. As to what changes are required, I will leave that to application of rationality and economics.
Everybody “gets” it. Whether they are able and willing to admit it is another matter. Perhaps unlike the bulk of people on this forum I’d actually like cryptos to (be able to) replace state fiat not remain a token playthings between small groups. That’s not possible with Bitcoin unless it is changed. Rather than the continual trumpeting of any innate libertarian, free-market ethos to Bitcoin why isn’t there more appreciation that the natural evolution of private free money and autonomy is that the next person or group will come along, compete with and improve it, likely resigning the previous form to the dustbin.

Either Bitcoin adherents accept there are flaws and moves with the times, or any objective observer has to conclude it’s just a pyramid because it doesn’t work economically for the majority of economic participants who will rationally not adopt it when they work it out. And to be clear my perspective there is as simple as not discerning any great difference between one group of powerful cronies controlling the fortunes of everybody else and another - be that a government, us Bitcoiners or whoever. There is no special ‘Bitcoin State’ that rewrites the rules of monetary theory or libertarian ideology and to think otherwise is naive or corrupt.

You obviously know nothing of economics. The bread analogy is worthless, because the amount of food a person needs to survive is fairly constant, and bread derives it's value from necessity, not rarity. Imagine for a second there are 1,000,000,000,000,000 bitcoins, all in curculation. 1BTC becomes worth much less, so people start giving them out because they are readily available, trading multiple BTC for small items and services, faucets might give out 1 or 2 BTC, and you're not a "hoarder" until you have 1,000,000,000. Now, imagine there is one BTC. People know they will never have 1BTC, hell, they'll never have 0.00001, so 0.0000001 because worth dollars, maybe dozens of dollars, because so many people are trying to get BTC.

You are really reaching here.  Go back and read the first post.  Most of it is about division, not distribution.  And his summary at the end even makes it clear that he is talking about the "limited supply".

Perhaps you are reading what you want to read, rather than what was actually written?


I can make no sense of this, which is strange because all of the words are familiar to me.  If you'd like to try to restate it more clearly, feel free.  Oh, and your dilemma in the second part is false: scarceness is necessary for money.


I never assume that anyone is an idiot until they've given me a reason.  In fact, if you read my posting history, you can see for yourself that I have a tendency to chastise people for underestimating the public (this comes up often in the many many threads about naming the fractions).

P.S.  Confusion does not imply idiocy.  Money is hard to understand, very few people really "get" it, but I suspect that most people can if they put in the effort.

To OP:

you made a serious mistake by using such an allusive and condescending writing style. This is not the place to tell stories to the children.

Thus, if you want a honest discussion, then please come out of your cranny, and instead of talking in metaphors, put some clear arguments on the table!

• what exactly are you criticising?
• what are your presuppositions?
• what are your conclusions?

your turn...

Folks, we shouldn't be so dismissive...

For thousands of years people where deeply believing that value is substantial.
Let's be honest: even today, a grand majority of all humans still share this belief. The modern age has barely scratched the surface. People might surrender "pro forma", they might just talk as they where tought in school, but if you look carefully, there is a very far spread deep belief regarding a substance of value, assuming a fixed coordinate system of good and bad (and especially evil is perceived as being substantial!) and that "somehow" (be it remote, mystical) there is a fixed benevolent master plan.

Only a small elite of educated people has really grasped relativity and attained a scientific thinking style.
We shouldn't forget that, since to all the others, analogies as brought forth by the OP sound "somehow plausible" and "seem to ring true". And all the arguments of the world won't help a shit against deep believes.

In deflation the price of things get cheaper and cheaper as currency price rises... there is incentive there for wrong behaviour that will cause many bad things to happen. Although its not much better than what we are doing to our people now, it is not much better. You want a semi-inflationary deflation scheme which will allow you to control supply to a finite extent which will not burden the economy and create too much inflationary stress. You can easily see where just dividing the bitcoins will go wrong in many ways.

Nice thread OP, judging from the responses it seems you've struck a nerve.

His point referred to distribution not division. The only value that Bitcoin has, beyond niches, is that ascribed to it in supplanting something else of value and this remaining so.

You have two choices, as do I. The first is to maintain the myths for as long as possible, make what you will of good fortune (and perhaps work, I don’t know you and don't dispute efforts expended), continue facilitating zero-sum intellectual and capital investment and waste an incredible opportunity for crytocurrencies to revolutionise finance and personal empowerment that would far surpass short-term personal gains. The second is to recognise that if bitcoins are not scarce because they may be replicated (for all intents and purposes, with just a name change) then what is their value, or if they are scarce then people will find something else to use instead; and thus something needs to change.

That’s up to you, but please don’t assume everybody is an idiot.

That makes no sense. Bitcoins are already divided down to 8 decimal places. Anybody starving because they are hoping their bitcoins will go up in value is an idiot. Food today is worth more than the possibility of food tomorrow.

You divide bitcoins down to 8 decimal points and you will see people starving, holding off for a cheaper loaf of bread

Nope the obvious solution to this story was to split the bitcoins using the blockchain to buy more bread XD
Refer to my troll post XD

+1

Is the OP saying the problem lies in the fact that one man has 10 bread while the rest of the village lives on 1 bread, so the inequality is killing them? Or is he saying that there are 10 breads, which clearly is not enough to feed the 1000's of people, so no matter how they cut it they are going to starve?

Are we complaining about how the early adopters have too many coins, or that the money supply of bitocins is only like a billion dollars, which is clearly too small for a global economy?

The obvious solution to the OP's story is to printbake more bread.

We don't have to print more bitcoins because they can just expand to fill the needs of the economy. That might mean the USD value of a single Bitcoin will go up a few orders of magnitude, but that is okay because we can divide bitcoins down eight decimal places. See, the divisibility is the solution after all, you just have to look at it the right direction.

Fine replies to this story with same line of reasoning bear with me sigh

The crowds followed Satoshi on foot from the towns. When Satoshi landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their finances. As evening approached, the bitcoiners came to him and said, "This is a remote place, and it's already getting late. Send the crowds away, so they can go to the mines and earn themselves some food."
Satoshi replied, "They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat."
"We have here only one loaf of bread and fifty bitcoins," they answered.
"Bring them here to me," he said.
Satoshi directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the one loaf of bread and the fifty bitcoins and looking up to the blockchain, he gave thanks and broke the chain. Then he gave them to the bitcoiners, and the bitcoiners gave them to the people. They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. The number of those who ate was about five thousand men, besides women and children.

OP's story made me go there

This goes back to the whole deflation/inflation issue and what is good/bad should there an equilibrium between the two in order for our society to operate in harmony? The OP made a valid point but maybe came from a different point of view which wasn't valid but had the right idea.

It's more complicated than to say hey 1 BTC can run the world, you have to provide info that doesn't exist yet in order to prove that, and its relatively easy to disprove that idea.

I created a thread here talking about this issue:https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=236684.0;

There was no point to address.  Bitcoin is not bread.  The sustaining power of a loaf of bread is fixed, and dividing it up doesn't change the sum.  One loaf cannot feed a herd of angry villagers.  The money power of bitcoin is not fixed.  1 BTC can serve the exchange uses of the entire world.

Value is not a thing that exists outside of our minds.  We aren't embedding some of it into our money.  We are measuring it, like we measure temperature or distance, just not with a coherent or standardized scale*.  No one is worried that there won't be enough temperature to go around, or enough kilometers.  Worrying that there won't be enough money for everyone demonstrates a serious confusion.

Once again, it is not defensive to point out that someone's thinking will not lead to useful questions, much less useful answers.

*  Although bitcoin is the world's best attempt at a coherent measure for value, by far.  The far end of the scale is subject to the whims of politicians or bankers.  If only that were the only problem...

ah yes of course, what logic and rationale. But you are correct in that one of us is either mentally challenged, or bullshitting.

Actually, no. His post is pure nonsense. And I say that not being a hardcore Bitcoin-believer. Anyone not completely mentally challenged would understand this is not how it works.

I can see it now
Its the NOOB HAMMER a wonderfully kinder or eviler version of the ban hammer
Its ability
Send people Back to the Fjords with Noobs!

It should though right lmao

Lol I don't think such a function exists yet