Topic: Trump will compete directly with Bitcoin - page 3. (Read 2177 times)

LOL, it doesn't make sense for anybody's "financial security" except for the tiny portion of the US population who currently holds a lot of Bitcoin .

And yes, frankly, I'm expecting Congress to oppose this. A few in Congress will want this--because they personally hold a lot of Bitcoin--but the rest will be holders of all kinds of other things and they will want their investments pumped instead. And then the whole thing will have problems with, um, "optics": Congress members fighting over whose investment gets free money from the US government .


This is just semantics. You can trade any sort of things and use it as currency, including cigarettes, or whatever.

As I have said before, I expect technology is going to decouple the notion of transacting from the notion of saving/investing/speculating. Bitcoin will never be suitable for everyday transacting, only the latter. But it stands along side literally millions of other "things" (call it a "product" or a "asset" or whatever you want) that will sit in people's portfolios.

I get that Bitcoin is your very, very favorite investment, and presumably the only one you have in your own portfolio. But it's rather arrogant to believe that should be the only thing everybody on the planet ever invest in again, to the point that the US government should give that one special favors.

Well... yes? If there's a proposed bill, the people who stand to benefit directly from it will naturally support it, assuming it makes sense for the nation's financial security. What are you expecting? For them to oppose it?

Gold is primarily an asset, a commodity. It wouldn't be wrong to call it a "product", since it can be used for direct consumption, but it's just inaccurate to treat it like this, as a whole. Anyway, we're not going to agree on this one, but Bitcoin is not a product; it is not produced for direct consumption, nor is it used for creating other products. It's money; used only for exchanging it with goods and services.

I never thought that money spent on the election particularly help me. How did the discussion go to the benefits from money spent on election? Weren't we talking about money spent by the government on buying bitcoin?

No, there is a single US congressman with a proposed bill right now, and a lot of people on the Internet saying they want this. You are one of those people, I'll presume.




Yes, gold is a product. It's a thing that some people have and most don't, it's a thing that can be bought and sold, etc.

On that very note, politically speaking, you would have a much easier time convincing Congress that the government should just buy up a bunch more gold so people who invest in gold will make more money. I mean, if you are going to give money away to people, you are better off giving it away to more people rather than fewer...


You'd be naive if you think all of these millions spent this election were spent to make Bitcoin more valuable, and thus to help you.

Indeed, insofar as companies like Coinbase are starting to make most of their money on non-Bitcoin currencies, all of these millions pumped into the election are probably going to make Bitcoin go down, not up: Coinbase et. al. are busy making thousands of competitors of Bitcoin for the average investor.

Put it this way: all of these millions are really really good for Haypenny .

Yes, but you're treating me as if I am the one who lobbied the government, while it is the administration that saw the potential to having reserves in bitcoin.

There we go, again. Bitcoin is a "product". Do you also call gold a "product"?

No, and I'm not begging for handouts either. It's the administration that sees the potential in buying the hardest asset and keeping it for 20 years.

I'm missing the point here. Why am I naive for Coinbase spending millions for campaign contributions?

thats easy if you sell directly to US treasury no cap gains tax.

only available to USA citizens.

and for one year only.

bang US government would get a lot of coins that way.

and price would shift bigly with that move.

right now USA laughs at 2 trillion so yeah they could do huge moves for or against BTC.

He paid in Bitcoin because they didn't take his crypto yet. It's only been around for about two months.


LOL, 20 years later. Oh boy. Are you actually writing that with a straight face? 


We weren't talking about the election here--that's over, and there's no point. We're talking about lobbying the US government, now controlled by Trump, to buy lots of Bitcoin so the price goes up.



Lots of products are doing just fine without government help. Do you see NVDA begging for government handouts? AAPL? The corner store where you buy your groceries?

For that matter, how did the Bitcoin get to over $1T in market cap without help from the US government?

On that note, it's worth pointing out the extreme greed here: Bitcoin advocates are not satisfied that Bitcoin is worth a trillion dollars: they need more--always more. So after millions of people have voluntarily bought into it, they fear demand might be leveling off, so they need to use the government to force people to buy it by making the government buy it.

By the way, just to give you an idea of how naive y'all are being in trying to get the US government to pump your Bitcoin, did you take a look at exactly who spent all of those millions in campaign contributions this election cycle in the "broader crypto world".

It was major holders of Bitcoin, right? People and companies who benefit from Bitcoin going up in price, right?

Wrong. It was brokers like Coinbase who profit from selling things to Bitcoin holders, and... mostly profit from currencies other than Bitcoin e.g. memecoins and other financial products.

It's like Goldman Sachs bought the US election and people think that means their 401K will increase in value. Time to grow up .

I literally said they can either sell it 20 years later (or use it directly as currency), when there's need for money. You got the rest...

How am I begging? I'm practically confronted with two options. Either choose to vote for Trump, or Kamala. Trump's program contains this strategic reserve plan, just as a thousand other plans. Would voting for Trump imply that I'm begging for "bitcoin handouts"?

No doubt it's no different. Government invests money since its inception.

It's not a matter of preference. For Bitcoin to survive, it must navigate the whims of politics; otherwise, there's no real purpose in having Bitcoin, if it can die by a government. Besides, sooner or later, governments will realize that it's a good vehicle to store value. It's not something you or I can do to stop this. It's just... economic reality.

True, that’s evidently true should you happen to promote a close competitors product or project other than yours.

So check this;
A month ago, that’ll be October, 2024, Trump became the first  president to complete a transaction using Bitcoin. You could find videos of it on social media, where Trump went to Manhattan bar and restaurant that accepts Bitcoin and paid for the beer and burgers he bought.

Now that goes into history on Trump but the question is,
Why use Bitcoin? Why not use his own coin because, this only serves promotional purposes and if we are calling Bitcoin a strong competitor for Trump’s coin, then we might as well be seeing Trump for a dumb President which it’s very difficult for me to agree on.

By the way, there isn’t any coin out there that could outshine Bitcoin, none.

He can make far more money promoting and giving advantages to his own coin than to Bitcoin. You would have to be a pretty stupid business man to promote your competitor's product instead of your own product.


So you want the US to spend slightly less on health care for old people, people's retirement plans, and the military, and instead you the government to buy up more of an asset you happen to hold--and never sell it--in order to make you more money.

In other words, you are begging the US government for handouts, like every other special interest that wants free money from US taxpayers.

And you are fine with this since there are other special interests doing this, so you might as well be one of them.

This is all fine so far, but a few things:

1. What you are doing here is no different that people have been doing with the US government for the last 242 years.

2. As such, you're going to need to "get in line" so to speak since lots and lots and LOTS of people are in line with you, trying to get those handouts.

3. When you base your investment on what the government will do, be prepared to live and die at the whim of politics. Maybe you think Trump will give you money (even though he and his own family will profit much more if they make the US buy their own coin instead), but politics could shift faster than you can say "Ferdinand Marcos" in the USA, and everybody who Trump sent money to will be on a hit list for the new regime to claw back the money they will now see as stolen.

I know it's a corny old saying but... live by the sword, die by the sword....

First things first, Bitcoin is not accurately described as a "movement", nor does it have a community. Perhaps this is the romantic way to see it, but the bottom line is that it's an asset, and cultural wars it has experienced in the past set this clear. It began with the cypherpunk spirit, which I very respect, and the early adopters were connected with some cypherpunk ideals, but the genius of bitcoin lies in the freedom to treat it however you like; it is an asset, just like gold. You don't refer to gold as a "movement", nor does gold has a "community". So anyone is "welcomed" to use bitcoin.

Now back to government.

I don't want the government to have any "strategic reserve plan", ideally, but we don't live in an ideal world, and decisions need to be taken. If the government would have to use my already confiscated property, then I'd rather it sitting in the hardest asset, than in one that gradually loses value. And for once more, that money sit idle. Read the act. It refers to surplus; extra funds that are held by the Federal Reserve, not taxpayer dollars allocated for social programs. In other words, that money is an extra revenue, that can be used as an investment. It could be used, for example, to fund public infrastructure. It can also be used as investment in bitcoin for 20 years, and then released for funding public infrastructure.

To clarify with an analogy: just as in a democracy, I may not prefer any of the political parties but am ultimately compelled to choose one to govern, the same principle applies to the strategic reserve plan. I would rather see the funds taken from myself and the public held in the hardest asset, to be gradually released over many years, with value appreciated, than just leave it in an instrument that won't appreciate the same, or even hold the value of our money.

Last but not least, if there was such an option, I'd rather that surplus be returned to the people, in cash, in a fair manner, the moment Trump enters office. But, unfortunately there isn't.

Trim might be the number one citizen of the world now but, I don’t think his got what it takes to crash Bitcoin. No single individual have got what it takes to crash what depends on the consensus of the people. American politics might be for the Americans but, we should understand that Bitcoin is for the entire world and that’s worth more than the government of any particular world.
While there might be propagandas and people would have what to speculate on in Trump’s government or cabinet, we could as well let the man don some wrongs before calling him out on what we all know him to have promoted so well in his campaigns. Trump is a business man and you could expect him to think that way on how to harness what he may, from Bitcoin.

I think we did. Why did you just pop the thread to the top again by posting this rather meaningless comment?

I'm so over the political sentiment with blinders on.  The OP is right, and everyone who opposes is wrong (at lease from his/her perspective).  There's no arguing or negotiating this with someone like this.  7 pages of emptiness so far in this thread.

Satoshi had to go through this with those that didn't believe in bitcoin.  "If you don't believe me or don't get it, I don't have time to try to convince you, sorry".  7 pages of debating OP, I think we've drilled this into the ground now, can we move on?

DEXs are getting banned and if I want to convert my Bitcoins, I have to use a centralized exchange. CEXs don't generate a new Bitcoin address every time you try to deposit, so what are my options? To receive coins on one address always. Blockchain explorer websites let you to see how much coin I received and what was the value of the coin in that particular time.

I think that at the moment its not a good idea. Bitcoin is very volatile. If the USA announces that they are going to buy Bitcoins, then the price will instantly reach very high levels and it will be stupid to buy at that price.
Maybe in a few years it can be a good idea. Overall, it really makes sense. Crypto is the future of money and there is no other better investment than future.

Again, that is only because it was left over from 100 years ago and we haven't gotten around to getting rid of it yet since it's an insignificant amount of money.


You are asking US taxpayers to buy Bitcoin instead of paying for people's health care, retirement and the military--because you want your particular choice of investment to go up in value so you can get rich.

Again, I'm rather dumfounded that people in the Bitcoin community would want this entanglement with the US government. It goes against everything that the "Bitcoin movement" ever stood for, and replaces the idea with a government special interest giveaway to some rich investors. And there's absolutely no way that a tiny number of American get rich using US government outlays without them wanting something in return, and/or being subjected to some other backlash, e.g. forcing all Bitcoin mining to be in the US, and be with "registered" miners who are controlled by government regulators.

Gold is certainly sitting idle.

What's "illiquid"? Lol. You mean non-saleable? Bitcoin is the easiest asset to sell at the market price.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with letting the free market determine the price for bitcoin, but I'm thinking that a plan to secure the nation's finances with bitcoin-- similar to how other hard assets have been used throughout history-- might actually make sense.

I'm all in to returning those hard assets back to the people. If that's not realistic, use that money to finance public sectors, like healthcare or education, that the people have voted for. However, since the US government has historically held reserves in gold and other hard assets, with no desire to spend them in the present, it seems reasonable to consider converting those reserves into a stronger asset. That's all; no additional debt, just a practical acknowledgment of reality and a constructive alternative proposal.

No, they are not just sitting idle, the Fed needs that money (and it needs to be liquid money) to do it's job on a daily basis, in the same way a company needs a checking account.

The don't invest in stocks or other volatile illiquid assets for this reason.

The US buying Bitcoin would be a pure expense until it is sold.



If you did that, millions of Americans would scream that the money should be spent on their favorite project instead.

This is the problem when you start playing with other people's money.

What is wrong with just letting the free market decide the price of Bitcoin? Why do you need the government to compel taxes from citizens in order to prop up the price?

***

As a total side-note--and to cross our threads here--my own theory of Satoshi implies that the US actually does currently hold ~1M btc that they don't know what to do with since spending it would reveal state secrets and they don't know how to account for this money in any case.

Here's the Federal Reserve balance sheet: https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h41/20241003/. To me, that reads "we have $7 trillion worth of assets and liabilities in reserves".

I agree with you that this "institution" ideally shouldn't exist at all (if that's what you're arguing), but in reality, dismantling it is currently impossible. The people who control the vast majority of the world's assets also control this board, and they aren't going anywhere. Right now, there are billions of dollars' worth of assets just sitting idle, contributing neither to healthcare, the military, nor retirement funds.

I don't support taking on additional debt. I'm simply suggesting that instead of allowing (e.g.) $11 billion in gold to sit untouched, gathering dust and losing value, we should convert it into bitcoin, leave it untouched for 20 years, and then use it to fund retirement, healthcare, or similar needs. Of course, I'd also be open to giving people the gold now and letting them decide what to do with it-- that might even be the better approach, but it wasn't proposed by the people who will be the next government.

why not using a new wallet adress -> you have your privacy..

The US doesn't hold "reserves", it takes in taxes and spends them on things. In fact, it takes in about $.80 for every dollar it spends iirc.

Indeed, you are actually asking US taxpayers to take on more debt in order for them to prop up your favorite investment.


Again, the US gold reserves are there as a legacy thing--it's almost a curiosity at this point--and it's an insignificant portion of our national revenue.

(And yes, many over the years have suggested we sell off the reserves and return the money to taxpayers, but it's such a small amount that nobody really feels like bothering with this).




No, I want them to spend it on the stuff we voted for, like heath care for old people, retirements, and the military. Neither the US nor any other government "stores" money--if they did, they should simply give it back to us since they clearly don't need it.

Tell you what: maybe the US can pass a law allowing individuals to decide what the government should do with its surplus (currently running at $-1.9T in the US). You could decide to a) have them send you a check proportional to the amount of taxes you gave them; or b) tell them to buy Bitcoin with your surplus taxes instead.

Sound fair?