Topic: The recurring trouble-cycle of bitcoins, and why I'm here. - page 4. (Read 9766 times)
Your speech was encouraging and inspiring. I too am an ardent fan of Austrian economics, Peter Schiff, Ron Paul, and other like-minded individuals. Bitcoin is the greatest invention since the internet, and if we do our part, people will soon realize this and further contribute to this young & growing economy. May Bitcoin and all other tools of liberty succeed. For freedom!
I totally agree with this great post. Let's see what happens next... shall we? 
I wonder why this is posted in 'Speculation'.
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Thanks for such a great (and encouraging) post.
Greetings.
Nice post, and you are correct - elements of greed are hard to root out of any system. My belief is as adoption increases the depth of market should as well, which should dampen any volatility. We're just too 'new' still in terms of the current BTC market to not be affected by large trades.
I'm here for the long haul too, so I suspect we'll see improvement in this area over time.
Nice post, and you are correct - elements of greed are hard to root out of any system. My belief is as adoption increases the depth of market should as well, which should dampen any volatility. We're just too 'new' still in terms of the current BTC market to not be affected by large trades.
I'm here for the long haul too, so I suspect we'll see improvement in this area over time.
Great post, well written. Doesn't really provide much in terms of new information but it's a really nice summary of the current state of events. Jennifer Lawrence gives it a hearty thumbs up...
Lets do it
I know I'm very new here in terms of post count and all that. I'm a long-time lurker (since 2010 when Robert Prechter did a special report on bitcoins in his monthly newsletter), and I am also a long-term holder of bitcoins (mining on a dual-core CPU at that time, generating about 50btc per month, and made some purchases around $.10-$.15/BTC way back then).
Oh, how things have changed.
Bitcoin is very, very viable long-term. It's only weakness is that it hasn't been selected as a commodity and then assigned a monetary premium by an organic and complex market, but instead was simply created with the intent of being used as a unit of exchange and account. The trade-off, however, is total decentralization - no clearinghouse, no depository for gold or silver that may or may not actually have it, etc. I am a long-time precious metals investor (Thanks, in part, to my love of the Austrian school, and my distrust of all artificial monopolies - including those in currency), and I think that precious metals will again become the "gold standard" for money in the world as state-monopolized money lose all credibility and confidence.
That being said, you still have the fight against human nature when you are dealing with PM's in the digital age. Anybody can start a gold depository or silver depository and set up a financial network on top of it. The trouble with it is that all you have to go on is a quarterly or monthly audit, and hope that "your" metal is still sitting exactly where it's supposed to be. There are a ton of such services, and the scams are being exposed out the woodwork over the past few months. Strong, legitimate companies are few and far between - GoldMoney, SmartMetals, and several others seem to be very legitimate allocated holdings. Peter Schiff's new EuroPac Bank has allocated holdings with a linked debit card that converts your metals to whichever currency you happen to be spending.
If you don't know who Peter Schiff is, check out "Peter Schiff was Right" on youtube. If you are interested in signing up for an allocated metals account at his bank in the West Indies (sorry, NO US Citizens thanks to Dodd-Frank), here's a link (yes, I will get a small headhunting fee as I have been an account holder since about 2 days after he opened the bank lol):
http://secure.europacbank.com/register_alt.php?ra=248e844336797ec98478f85e7626de4a
The other disadvantage to gold and silver is that they are physical goods, and they must move through the physical world. A central depository could set up a worldwide network to distribute redeemable certificates (digital or otherwise), but eventually the metal has to follow, which is far slower and prone to serious security risks. This can be a burden in a world of instant transactions. Bitcoin solves this problem - 25 minutes and you've got your asset, free and clear.
My background is in finance and economics, which is sort of funny because I had to "unlearn" a lot of what I learned (in the future, mainstream economics (Keynes, Chicago, etc.), as it is practiced today, will probably be held in the same esteem as blood-letting doctors are regarded by modern medicine, or flat-earth "astronomers" are regarded by their modern counterparts). Thankfully I was still young enough and saw several international financial crises that mainstream economics were absolutely blindsided by, while a certain few people seemed to be saying "yeah, I told you so". I'm sure most here are subscribers to the Austrian school, or at least to the tenants of praxeology and free markets, so I'm not going to go on a huge diatribe about it.
Anyway, the big question is going to be - where do we go from here? There is a massive scandal unfolding as we speak which will likely shake bitcoin to its core along the lines of the Mt. Gox hack last year and the fold-up of the online wallets and the recent bitcoinica hack and collapse (along with your money). My suspicion is that we will see bitcoin make a new low relative to the lows it put in after the initial blow-off last year. This will likely be the last single-digit move we see for a very, very long time. This is the last "is survival possible?" time for bitcoin. If we can make it through the coming storm, the future is wide open.
This is the "trouble-cycle" of bitcoin. The community is so optimistic and so ready to push the envelope, which is amazing. But it leaves us prone to getting burned and ripped off, and the anonymity that is so key to bitcoin can also be a deadly enemy. It seems that every few months, someone comes along and offers a "new" idea, consolidating a whole bunch of bitcoins and then taking off with them, either through their own maliciousness or through being careless with what becomes a very, very low-hanging fruit for attackers. These bumps and scrapes will hopefully push the community to come up with its own self-regulating mechanisms and hoops through which legitimate opportunities and offerings will gladly jump to better serve their customers. This is one of the areas I am very excited to bring some ideas to the table for the community.
From where I'm sitting, bitcoin is one of the avenues of the future. I do think that local and regional economies will embrace privately-minted money once nation-states have destroyed faith in their promises-on-paper. The entire planet is over-leveraged on promises to a level I can only call insane. Your bank book is only a promise to hopefully have the money on hand if you decide to come in and withdraw it. Actual cash will be king, and all bitcoins are cash, which is key. Bitcoin will bridge the gap of instantaneous transactions that we have come to expect, which commodity money can only truly do within the same central depository institution. It is the "perfect" unit of exchange and account.
I want to bring what I can to the bitcoin community. The more goods and services that are offered in bitcoins, the stronger and more viable this money will become. I'm keeping everything pretty close to the chest right now, but I will say that in any avenue of finance or services that I offer, my own personal information will be fully available. I will not hide behind an anonymous username, behind "forum rep" or anything silly like that. Every venture that I start, I will personally hold at least a 10% stake in it, up to 100%, and anyone who wants to do business with me can know who they are doing business with. But again, this is all for much later - I just basically wanted to write a bit of an intro, what I think is happening with BTC right now, and say hello to everyone here.
My own goals are very ambitious. I want to be here to help take bitcoin to the next level, along with any competing currency that has the same merits. I want to see 1 in 100 people on this planet actually know what the word Bitcoin means. This is one of the greatest tools of economic freedom that has ever been available, and we need this, all of us. Bitcoin is to money what Gutenberg was to education and free speech.
Oh, how things have changed.
Bitcoin is very, very viable long-term. It's only weakness is that it hasn't been selected as a commodity and then assigned a monetary premium by an organic and complex market, but instead was simply created with the intent of being used as a unit of exchange and account. The trade-off, however, is total decentralization - no clearinghouse, no depository for gold or silver that may or may not actually have it, etc. I am a long-time precious metals investor (Thanks, in part, to my love of the Austrian school, and my distrust of all artificial monopolies - including those in currency), and I think that precious metals will again become the "gold standard" for money in the world as state-monopolized money lose all credibility and confidence.
That being said, you still have the fight against human nature when you are dealing with PM's in the digital age. Anybody can start a gold depository or silver depository and set up a financial network on top of it. The trouble with it is that all you have to go on is a quarterly or monthly audit, and hope that "your" metal is still sitting exactly where it's supposed to be. There are a ton of such services, and the scams are being exposed out the woodwork over the past few months. Strong, legitimate companies are few and far between - GoldMoney, SmartMetals, and several others seem to be very legitimate allocated holdings. Peter Schiff's new EuroPac Bank has allocated holdings with a linked debit card that converts your metals to whichever currency you happen to be spending.
If you don't know who Peter Schiff is, check out "Peter Schiff was Right" on youtube. If you are interested in signing up for an allocated metals account at his bank in the West Indies (sorry, NO US Citizens thanks to Dodd-Frank), here's a link (yes, I will get a small headhunting fee as I have been an account holder since about 2 days after he opened the bank lol):
http://secure.europacbank.com/register_alt.php?ra=248e844336797ec98478f85e7626de4a
The other disadvantage to gold and silver is that they are physical goods, and they must move through the physical world. A central depository could set up a worldwide network to distribute redeemable certificates (digital or otherwise), but eventually the metal has to follow, which is far slower and prone to serious security risks. This can be a burden in a world of instant transactions. Bitcoin solves this problem - 25 minutes and you've got your asset, free and clear.
My background is in finance and economics, which is sort of funny because I had to "unlearn" a lot of what I learned (in the future, mainstream economics (Keynes, Chicago, etc.), as it is practiced today, will probably be held in the same esteem as blood-letting doctors are regarded by modern medicine, or flat-earth "astronomers" are regarded by their modern counterparts). Thankfully I was still young enough and saw several international financial crises that mainstream economics were absolutely blindsided by, while a certain few people seemed to be saying "yeah, I told you so". I'm sure most here are subscribers to the Austrian school, or at least to the tenants of praxeology and free markets, so I'm not going to go on a huge diatribe about it.
Anyway, the big question is going to be - where do we go from here? There is a massive scandal unfolding as we speak which will likely shake bitcoin to its core along the lines of the Mt. Gox hack last year and the fold-up of the online wallets and the recent bitcoinica hack and collapse (along with your money). My suspicion is that we will see bitcoin make a new low relative to the lows it put in after the initial blow-off last year. This will likely be the last single-digit move we see for a very, very long time. This is the last "is survival possible?" time for bitcoin. If we can make it through the coming storm, the future is wide open.
This is the "trouble-cycle" of bitcoin. The community is so optimistic and so ready to push the envelope, which is amazing. But it leaves us prone to getting burned and ripped off, and the anonymity that is so key to bitcoin can also be a deadly enemy. It seems that every few months, someone comes along and offers a "new" idea, consolidating a whole bunch of bitcoins and then taking off with them, either through their own maliciousness or through being careless with what becomes a very, very low-hanging fruit for attackers. These bumps and scrapes will hopefully push the community to come up with its own self-regulating mechanisms and hoops through which legitimate opportunities and offerings will gladly jump to better serve their customers. This is one of the areas I am very excited to bring some ideas to the table for the community.
From where I'm sitting, bitcoin is one of the avenues of the future. I do think that local and regional economies will embrace privately-minted money once nation-states have destroyed faith in their promises-on-paper. The entire planet is over-leveraged on promises to a level I can only call insane. Your bank book is only a promise to hopefully have the money on hand if you decide to come in and withdraw it. Actual cash will be king, and all bitcoins are cash, which is key. Bitcoin will bridge the gap of instantaneous transactions that we have come to expect, which commodity money can only truly do within the same central depository institution. It is the "perfect" unit of exchange and account.
I want to bring what I can to the bitcoin community. The more goods and services that are offered in bitcoins, the stronger and more viable this money will become. I'm keeping everything pretty close to the chest right now, but I will say that in any avenue of finance or services that I offer, my own personal information will be fully available. I will not hide behind an anonymous username, behind "forum rep" or anything silly like that. Every venture that I start, I will personally hold at least a 10% stake in it, up to 100%, and anyone who wants to do business with me can know who they are doing business with. But again, this is all for much later - I just basically wanted to write a bit of an intro, what I think is happening with BTC right now, and say hello to everyone here.
My own goals are very ambitious. I want to be here to help take bitcoin to the next level, along with any competing currency that has the same merits. I want to see 1 in 100 people on this planet actually know what the word Bitcoin means. This is one of the greatest tools of economic freedom that has ever been available, and we need this, all of us. Bitcoin is to money what Gutenberg was to education and free speech.
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