Topic: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion - page 20207. (Read 26610480 times)

All you fools waiting for sub-300 should probably buy back in NOW.

That binary view holds only if payout is predetermined, not managed/variable (as is the case with fiat currencies/economies). A 'ponzi' like that stays in a state of constant flux, so it's not even clear what's meant by 'collapse.' People get poorer? Die? World implodes?

There is a limit based on gestation time.

Which is why I argue so passionately that we don't need a blocksize limit.  We already have the propagation factor. The risk of orphaned blocks puts a natural limit to blockspace scarcity.

It will also be necessary to have more xactions/block when the block reward is near zero. More xactions=more xaction fees.  Miners need to be compensated or the network becomes less secure.

Ponzi schemes collapse when FEWER join than is needed to pay existing participants.
There's an end because there's a finite pool of potential suckers.  The ponzi has to grow FASTER than the pool.
There's an end just like there's an end to cancer cell reproduction-either when the cancer is removed or when the patient dies.

You need to understand: it's not just a dollar ponzi. it's a fiat ponzi. The dollar will be among the last to fail.

^
Scarcity also doesn't have to be artificial: Pork bellies are a commodity, and, AFAIK, there's no limit to how many piglets a pig family can birth.

No, but scarcity is required for something to be a commodity. For example air is valuable but it is not scarce so it's not a tradable asset.

scarcity: a neccesary but not sufficient property

So, not sure what you are implying... dollars are simply the best of the worst place to preserve your net worth?

If the dollar stays as it is, it seems there is no end to this ponzi. A ponzi never dies, ever, as long as you have a never ending line of people to join and you can print money for free. Ponzi schemes collapse when nobody joins.

That's more like it, many of those are good reasons for bitcoin to have value - and all better then "Bitcoin is scarce" which is easy and fundamentally lazy. Yes if Bitcoin can be used to do things that add value then it has value, and the finite number of bitcoins increases its value if more than that many are in demand, but first it must be used to do things - and the more those things are developed the better.
Owning 1 bitcoin equates to owning access to 100,000,000 entries on the blockchain (or lockers) - the more each entry can be used for (the more types of stuff I can put in a locker) and the more people want to access the lockers the more each bitcoin is worth.

Can you point me to a country where that's actually happening, on non-trivial scale?
Or are you talking about China, wher that's simply not the case?

No because they can't go to an exchange, sell BTC, get USD to their bank account and then go to their bank and withdraw USD. They can't do that. They will get national currency instead - in most cases.

So they use BTC as a hard currency / USD-equivalent currency. The BTC payment processors do the rest: If a payment processor can accept BTC as currency and send you a shipment of tangible assets like gold, silver, technology stuff (iphones, laptops, etc etc), it's like you have actually paid with USD and paypal. But it's not necessary to spend your BTC - you can also hold them as a safer alternative (compared to local currency that is devaluating), as some do with their hard currency holdings.

So you're telling me people in those countries use Bitcoin to convert their shit currencies into US dollars?

http://s9.postimg.org/mfb0rbzjz/Capture.png

I just hope that he has top class 100% security. The way he talks I fear that a lone gunman may be lurking out there. He´d probably screw the war scams way down and put big dollars into the infrastructure, crumbling roads bridges etc. Plenty of jobs. Also he´d probably clean up the crime situation. It´s a war out there, homeowners are shooting robbers every day and vice versa. It´s intolerable.

Agreed. There will need to be a change from a consumer-based economy with depreciating currency to a savings-based economy and that will not occur without major disruptions.

Scarcity on something that is useless in every sense, probably not. But bitcoin is not in that category.

Gold's annual production is around 2500 tons. There are a few metals which have a production that is counted in just a few tons per year, typically in the PGE (Platinum Group of Elements). These metals fluctuate wildly in their prices as their scarcity alone allows their marketcap and price to be squeezed high through a single buy, or dumped quite lower with a few not-so-dramatic moves in terms of $$$. But noone says "ohh Iridium is a pump and dump because it was $400 in 2010, $1100 in 2012 and fell to $400 in 2013". You know it's a small market and that fluctuations are to be expected.

Bitcoin is similar in a sense. Yet, beside being scarce, it also has something to offer. It can do online payments, it can preserve wealth in the long run - especially for multiple countries that run double digit inflation, it can be a diversification asset, it can bypass capital controls, it can offer banking services even to kids who are gaming and want to sell or buy a fictional item or a game account in an MMORPG - which would otherwise be impossible without using their parents bank/CC/paypal etc, it can even be considered a collectible as the first decentralized digital currency (which is a historic event analogous to the first coins or first paper notes). People are paying hundreds or thousands of dollars for a good condition uncirculated coin of 100 years ago, just because this type of coin is harder harder to find than a coin in average circulated or worn condition. In any case, as far as BTC is concerned, the scarcity factor means that not many people can hold 1 BTC - but we all know that. Which, by necessity, will make the prices go much higher.

Many people that are trading bitcoin do so from the U.S. or Europe and they have a fundametal problem in appreciating it. We do not really understand or appreciate the benefits of what bitcoin can do for countries that do not have numismatic stability or easy international transactions through banks/paypal/credit cards etc due to quotas, controls, government approvals to buy even 10 dollars worth of stuff, etc.

For an American or a European, bitcoin is a very misunderstood asset because most of its benefits are not readily visible. The same is true for gold btw - most people will prefer money in the bank rather than gold. Having numismatic stability for a few decades makes you forget that your currency is just faith-backed money that can fall over the cliff overnight just because there was an international shock, a war, some political mess, etc etc. But countries that are immersed in that kind of shit do not value their fiat - they only value land, gold, tangible assets, hard currency (if they can get their hands on it) and Bitcoin (because through bitcoin they can actually have the equivalent of hard currency - despite their government blocking access to hard currency). So, in a sense, hard currencies like the dollar are not directly competitive with Bitcoin, but weaker ones are, because Bitcoin is the medium to have access to dollars despite a government's effort to prevent the population from stacking foreign exchange or using it to store wealth, or using it to conducting international trade.

Traders are in awe when they see a nice 10-15% spread to a Chinese exchange, but they have no idea that some people are arbing 50 or 100% for selling BTCs (in local currency equivalent of $$$) in countries that have numismatic instability.

Yeah and imagine the gigantic interests in this obsolete industry, there´s 8-9 trillion dollars in stock value and then there´s real estate and other assets and armies upon armies of vastly overpaid personnel. Not to mention that they fund politicians, appoint the president´s administration and much more. Gonna take decades and maybe a world war to cut that mess down to the desperately needed size.

Trump apparently doesn't really understand macroeconomics, but if he gets elected and bans remittances to Mexico, Bitcoin will do well. 

actual quote:  "I'm 100% a free trader, but we need better deals."

Coin

Explanation

Yeah, the U.S. is the least ugly gal at the dance. I can buy that.

BTW, I noticed that The Donald´s book is on the torrents. Audiobook. What the hell is it called again , Lame America?
No, it´s that other word

Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again, by Donald J. Trump.

That's almost all a deadweight loss in efficiency. We now or soon will have the technology to replace every stockbroker and investment bankster with software.  BUT, we have this little scaling problem....