Topic: The Five Paradoxes of Bitcoin - page 2. (Read 6917 times)

I already agreed to call Bitcoin quasi currency, since you didn't like the negative connotations of "counterfeit."   I'll offer another alternative: Faux currency.  Strong, dignified, smart sounding.

I'll repeat my point though, i never claimed that Bitcoin was a case of counterfeiting, but rather was functionally equivalent to counterfeit money in devaluing real currencies.  I've repeated that more times than i care to remember, and i'm starting to feel trolled.
A decent counterfeit bill could be spent at a gas station or a grocery store, a quality clearly not shared by Bitcoin.  So i agree with you, and we could move on, but...

If i *did* wish to make a point for the sheer pedantic fun of it, i *would* point out that Bitcoin is a counterfeit currency -- not because it may be mistaken for a Dollar or Yen, *but because it can be mistaken for a currency*.  I'll grant you a guy has to be pretty simple to mistake it for monyz.  Fingerpointing, GTFO! and guileless laughter are much more common when confronted by Bitcoin, but there's obvious intent to defraud.  Being a lousy counterfeit is no defense.  

About being stuck with worthless currencies:  
I C wat U did their!  But i'll let you slide on saying "currency" in the same breath as Bitcoin.  The folks at Webster's were on a week-long meth binge with their buddies at Britannica, banging ungodly amounts, so when it came to defining currency, they got a bit... sloppy.  No biggie, all in good fun.  

So, keep in mind that a real currency becomes worthless after significant historical events like wars, revolutions & military coups.  Bitcoin can become worthless if Misha accidently int into long while coding on his spring break, and peer-reviewer Pasha accidently too wasted to catch the error.  Or 1337 xaxor finds a weakness in the protocol.  Or one or two governments get bored enough to notice & drop the banhammer.  Or "BRB, Lightcoin  or Ripple is currency de jure!1!".  Or, most likely, Bitcoin gets big enough to get noticed by real players, who use it 'till it's too beat for lulz & send it home with bus fare & a ten dollar rock, but no kissies.

Thanks for the informative post.

They are definitely not paradoxes--someone mentioned that earlier. My bad.
I'll reference my last post: changes can be made to the protocol that would not drive users away from Bitcoin but could be motivated by self interest. It may not be a paradox, but it certainly is a reality.


Hmm, I'm not sure that example fits. In the case of the scientific method, modus operandi is fairly straightforward. There is consensus on the rules. Opinions on legal and economic theories are neither standard nor universally applicable, thus they open the gateway for bias in their respective worldviews.

So for a core dev to be the most effective, they must not be bias in their understanding of them and how they may apply to the Bitcoin protocol.


See, you've taken the quote and changed and didn't even mention the substance. Let's look at the important part: "Bitcoin 'strives' for official and normal prominence... [but] It may turn out...[it is] in no need of any official confirmation."

Might not be a paradox... but it certainly isn't redundant or ridiculous if you ask me. We are all entitled to our opinions, of course.


Very good point.

crumbs - counterfeit money is money that is designed to fool people into believing it is the currency it is not. It is deception. It does not devalue fiat unless the fiat is easy to counterfeit. What it does is steal fiat from the last person to possess it when it is discovered to be fraudulent,

Bitcoin is not even close to counterfeit. It is not pretending to be something else, its purpose is not fraud, and the last person stuck with it is only sh*t out of luck if the currency crashes (true with any currency, confederate dollars weren't worth anything after the U.S. civil war for example)

By your incorrect assumptions of what counterfeit is, anything people invest in to hedge against the dollar serves the same purpose as counterfeit. That just is not true.

Please look it up.

If this happened, people would figure out what was going on and distrust the compromised devs. Even if they were threatened not to tell anyone, people would figure it out by their silence and finally by actually looking at the code. If the manipulators were persistent enough, it would just result in all the devs (new devs) being completely pseudonymous, but with reputation, similar to Dread Pirate Roberts. It would slow down development for a while, but not stop it.

No. The only reason currencies are "successful" is because they are "backed by the full faith and credit of an issuing government."  That means that i have (oh, let's be trite ) the word of some real important guy that the paper's worth what he claims it is.

With Bitcoin   ... i have no word from a non-entity that the virtual money is worth the paper it is not printed on.  In other words, today your love, tomorrow ... wait, do i know you you?


If you hate the negative connotations, i understand.  Shall we settle on quasi currency?  Better?


Quasi currency it is, then.  I'm glad we got that out of the way

Edit: Sorry for the catty tone.

No, and i'm beginning to see this is going to take some time.
It is functionally equivalent because it dilutes the real currencies just like counterfeit currency.  
Introducing one billion dollars of counterfeit notes into an economy is functionally equivalent to introducing a number of bitcoins "worth" in total one billion dollars.


Now you're just being silly.  Bitcoin is a brilliant troll on money, electronic transfer of value was figured out a long time ago, it's called "wiring money."  Good morning


ORLY?  Where did that value come from?  And where does it go when the price plummets?  What makes 1BTC worth ~30% less than it was worth a month ago?  And around ~15% more than it was a day ago?  Intrinsic value?


You mean Bitcoin is representative money, it's backed by tangibles?  Love curious factoids & trivia, do go on


You're all tangled up in your own thoughtlets, let me help you:

"Cash," as the entire world knows it today, is fiat.
"Fiat" is a type of currency that is valuated by decree, typically of a nation state.
"Bitcoin," according to wiki, is an artificial currency, and since you love quotes so much, here's one for you, enjoy :

"The Wikimedia Foundation, as a donor-driven organization, has a fiduciary duty to be responsible and prudent with its money. This has been interpreted to mean that we do not accept "artificial" currencies – that is, those not backed by the full faith and credit of an issuing government. We do, however, strive to provide as many methods of donating as possible and continue to monitor Bitcoin with interest and may revisit this position should circumstances change."
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/FAQ/en#Why_does_the_Wikimedia_Foundation_not_currently_accept_Bitcoin.3F


Thank you

There are only paradoxes among those who do not understand economics.

Every single example the OP posted is comprised of two assertions that both cannot be true at the same time... and they are not true.   

Hoarding is not a paradox, study Austrian Economics.  Hoarding is just a derogatory name for high demand.
There is no loyalty paradox, any developer who does not work to evolve bitcoin into the best currency possible will find that Bitcoin is outcompeted in the market by alt coins.   So there is no paradox, only short-term vs long-term payoff and potential miscalculations by developers.

There is no idealogical paradox, you presume they must remain unbiased.   At first glance it would appear as though some (if not all) of the scientific community has arrived at the conclusion that the world is round. There is nothing inherently wrong with that conclusion, in fact it's a reasonable one if you ask me; however, to maintain the integrity of the Scientific method, scientiests must remain unbiased against the theoretical and practical aspects of science.

The last 'paradox' is even more ridiculous, "Bitcoin strives to become the world reserve currency, but only shows its strength if it outcompetes all of the powers aligned against it".   This is two ways of saying the SAME THING because every other competitor on the market is persecuting bitcoin in an attempt to displace bitcoin. 

This part - "Do we agree that Bitcoin, if it has value, drains that value directly from the currencies which already exist?"  If this is true, it is showing the functionality of any successful currency.  So the contention about your "functionally equivalent" statement is with the word "counterfeit".  Your argument that use of bitcoin will cause other currencies to devalue has no basis in the concept of fraud, deceit, or other terms associated with the word "counterfeit."  Your statement that bitcoin is "functionally equivalent to counterfeit money" is way off base and can easily be made to be accurate by removing the word counterfeit.

What happens to the dollar you bought the bitcoin with?  Does it get destroyed?  Or does the guy who sold you the bitcoin still have it to spend? 


Thanks for at least acknowledging the obvious.  Do we agree that Bitcoin, if it has value, drains that value directly from the currencies which already exist?   

Ah, thanks!  I get it now.


It's functionally equivalent to a counterfeit currency because... you don't like it and you don't like the way it works.  The fact that it isn't counterfeit anything should not be considered.  Yes, that really clears it up for me.

The Dutch boy finger analogy is cute.  The problem with it is that, well, the point of sticking the finger in the dike was for it to act like a cork.  While the point of bitcoin is to facilitate the secure, electronic transfer of value.  As AliceWonder pointed out, bitcoins have value.  Kind of the exact opposite of a counterfeit money.  So we now all see that it is much more accurate to say that bitcoin is the functional equivalent of cash.

[EDIT]fixed link to counterfeit definition[/EDIT]

Lolz.  It's irrelevant if there are other things that devalue currencies -- my point is that Bitcoin is amongst those things.  
Would you ask "hey, Y U no liek mah counterfeit monyz? It ain't *the chief thing* that devalues currencies!"


Nobody said it was.  I said that it was functionally similar.  A Dutch boy's finger in the dike is functionally equivalent to a cork, at least as far as disinterested dyke is concerned.  Get it now?


I'm a patient man.  I'll try again.  See the boldface text above?  Read it slowly.  Read it again.  then read all the way down to these words.  If you still don't get it, rinse & repeat.

Honestly, this argument is not going to go anywhere. Crumbs look up counterfeit--it's not simply about devaluing other currencies. It's about imitating them and passing them off as equals.

Bitcoin is not legally a currency so it couldn't be counterfeiting other currencies, simply by that definition. Period, end of story.

The value of any currency not backed by something tangible is only what people give it.

bitcoin does not devalue the dollar.
If you buy bitcoins to save instead of the dollar, it is because you have more confidence in bitcoin than the dollar. If lots of people do that, the value of the dollar I suppose could go down but that is the open market deciding the dollar isn't worth as much, and if it wasn't bitcoin it would be gold or real estate or even the peso.

Bitcoin though is a medium of exchange. I buy bitcoin with real dollar and use bitcoin to purchase item and seller then sells bitcoin for dollar.
How does that devalue the dollar?

It doesn't.

There are many things that cause devaluation in currencies.  Chief among them is governments printing more of the currency.  But I digress... Because something causes currency devaluation it does not follow that it is a counterfeit currency.  A poor national economy relative to other countries will cause a currency to devalue.  Is a poor national economy counterfeit money?  If one countries economy is taking off (China for instance) while many other countrys' economies are going down, the currency of the prosperous country will increase in value in relation to the others.  Does that make the prosperous country's currency counterfeit?  Yea, I guess you better explain.

Bitcoin is functionally equivalent to counterfeit money in the sense that it devalues real currencies, the ones with underlying economies, government backing, the ones accepted by gas stations & grocery stores.  If you're not very bright, i don't hold it against you, just ask me to explain, K?
 

How can you have over 500 posts in less than a month on a forum dedicated to something that you understand so poorly?


Counterfeit objects are produced by counterfeiters to deceive the targeted recipient into believing they have received a genuine object.  Someone selling "Gucci" knockoffs as the real deal is a counterfeiter.  Someone passing fake $20 notes as genuine is a counterfeiter.  The people that they give these things to are expecting specific objects and are given fakes.  Bitcoin does not look like any fiat currency.  People don't pretend that a bitcoin is identical to some other currency.  When you get a bitcoin, you are getting what you expect.

So bitcoin is NOT functionally equivalent to counterfeit money.

You may believe that bitcoin is worthless, or that it will collapse, or fade away, or any other unsavory fate.  That doesn't mean it is counterfeit.  Holy Crap.

I can not buy something with bitcoins because the other person believes them to be dollars.
That is the function of countefeit money. The other person has to believe they are fiat.

You clearly don't understand what "functionally equivalent" is

No.
You clearly do not understand what counterfeit is.

this whole thread is swiftly degrading into a moron parade.