Topic: Who ACTUALLY knows what they're talking about here? (Read 4375 times)

I went to school for marketing, as well as macro and micro economics.

New to these forums, so I haven't posted in those threads, but I can tell you that the field I would most accurately put these cryptocurrencies would be socioeconomics (aka, most "high" level educations have nothing to do with it)

I think the real issue is that a number of technologies are being developed right now that could easily put Western Union out of business, not just Bitcoin itself.  M-pesa in Africa, for example, is one sort of p2p payment technology that's sure to kill Western Union and possibly even Paypal.  Bitcoin has been a great catalyst though to force companies to get back on their innovation game, lest they fall out of favor with consumers.

@OP, on which subject?

Maths
Computer science
Programing
Network computing and distributed systems
Cryptography
Economics
Fund management
Trading
Commodities
Currencies
E-commerce
Law
Politics
Sociology
Psychology
Philosophy

….take your pick.

What, if anything, would you agree that could be agreed upon?

For example, suppose someone said that significant use of bitcoin (say 1/2 of current paypal transaction volume) - 10B and 60M users for an upcoming calendar year - would result in increased use of ebay and amazon internationally.  Hence, those companies would show increased profits, even though paypal contributes 40% of ebay's revenue.

Bitcoin represents an alternative payment method to credit cards.  Paypal did and does provide such a method, but the funds have to be deposited or goods sold to create the positive paypal balance.

Bitcoin represents a huge threat to currency exchanges which certainly for small value amounts do not operate efficiently.  It represents a huge threat to money transfer operations such as Western Union.

These realities should enable some decent guessing at future outcomes at least in very limited cases.

I've got a degree in economics and another in engineering, both bachelors.  Idk if serious doctorates would even reveal their credentials here for fear of being discovered by their peers and laughed out of the academic community.  Bunch of twits, all of them.

I don't claim to know anything specific to Bitcoin or any "special" properties it would have, but I know a decent amount about the basic economic framework behind the scenes, such as how difficulty should be related to interest rates/future mining profits from assets like ASICMINER, etc.  I could also speculate with some fathomable degree as to how volatility in the price could be useful in some circumstances (as in the case of assets backed by commodities) or why assets that operate in specific "sectors" such as mining or BTC-based businesses vs. USD-based Bitcoin businesses (distinction between which currency the business uses for cash flows) might be advantageous if price volatility is high.

Mostly its interesting to me because its different, and rather than say "X because BTC is different" I'll usually try and give my best book-learned explanation of X rather than just talk out of my ass.  If I don't know an answer, I'm not going to pretend I do because although I consider myself reasonable intelligent and educated, chances are there are a lot of people hidden in the woodwork on here who are much, much smarter/more knowledgeable than me.

I don't think bitcoin follows the traditional deflationary model.  Here is why.

Inflation or deflation is considered based on a monetary unit, such as a US$.

But what if the currency was instantly ad hoc divisible?  Then the unit (bitcoin) is not material to a transaction, only the current exchange amount, which would in any case be computed at the moment of a transaction.

There should come to be no resistance to spending based on the appreciation through hoarding BECAUSE....

The ad hoc values for use of this currency will see minute adjustments - discounts - which simply adjust for the disincentive to spend versus holding.

There was a good deal of understanding of deflation in historical economics.  Just not in recent times.  See, for example, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations for a great discussion of the effects of technological progress on an economy. (hint: deflation and long term the only people who gain are landowners... capitalists see a short term jump in profits, laborers see the demand for labor, and thus their wages, drop).

Come to think of it mudflation might actually be the best thing to have studied when it comes to bitcoin.

The problems that the most educated 'economists' seem to have when it comes to bitcoin are many, I'll just point out a couple that frustrate me to no end.

1. DEFLATION IS BAD. This is based on not understanding that all the economic 'laws' and principles they've learned have been only been proven in an inflationary (debt based) currency. They will not always apply inversely with an deflationary currency. It doesn't completely invalidate these effects and in most cases something that somewhat resembles the inverse may probably applies, but there will be important differences.

2. OMG HOARDING. This comes from not really understanding the lack of a causal relationship between deflation of a deflationary currency and economic contraction. Causally this link simply isn't there. It's is however causally linked when we're talking about fiat (or any debt based currency).

3-8. The next 5 points I won't really go into, but they all involve not understanding that a deflationary currency will require much more agility on the part of financial institutions and businesses in general. This is by design. Bitcoin is much much faster than the existing banking system and we see evidence of this in how business is conducted with bitcoin (stocks dividends being paid on a weekly basis). The common mistake is a free market won't be able to compensate for this and business in general will breakdown.

To this silliness I say "pfft", I don't care if a business or even a sector of business goes out of business... the void will swiftly be filled by newer and more agile entities who will want to provide those missing goods and services. Sure it may ruin some people, but on average and over time things will get better for everyone.

9. BITCOIN WILL FAIL BECAUSE... I can't even really explain this one, but latching onto one issue and claiming it will kill bitcoin is just stupid in the extreme... in anything we should evaluate the good and the bad and weigh them against each other. My response is, "hey your agenda is showing'. I chalk this one up to fear mostly... and a clinging to old ideas rather than evaluating bitcoin for what it is... rather than 'what it could do' (which is kill financial institutions as we know them - end monetary oppression on a global scale - etc).

OP are you trying to collect data on who has studied economics at a university so you can add them to your ignore list? If so, good plan, I applaud you 

What's not taken into account in this is a very, very important factor called the "velocity of money".   If a bitcoin is held back ("Hoarded") it doesn't create any velocity, some number of transactions occur and depending on the requisite demand, the price of a bitcoin goes up or down.  Suppose 3/4 of all bitcoins were hoarded - the demand could still be satisfied, price would simply go up or the velocity would go up.  Obviously, if all transactions take 20 minutes to clear, this places an upward limit on velocity.

Very true, The dynamic nature is created by its structure: the 21,000,000 . 000,000,00    bitcoins are divided into two equal halfs: the amount 2.1 quadrillion means that 90% of the system can be destroyed, lost(Backup your wallet, write down your password) and it can still effectively function to cover all the transactions in the world.

The division is what interests me I've been trying to understand it: why not just make a massive number like 2.1 quadrillion? I believe it is part of the system a feature of it not just an arbitrary design.

1.6 billion dollars would go in like this:    1,600,000,0 . 00 \,000,000 /  4.2 trillion would go in like this  4,200,000,0 . 00,000   \000 at no given moment do you have the full 2.1 quadrillion in circulation, it changes.

the number moves back denoting which denomination of bitcoin to use, at the same time it has this self organizing effect because of the limit. It forces the people using it to act as if it is a closed system, if they hoard it when times are good, just like you said, the system begins to devalue. because what gives it it's value is the movement of economical transactions in the system, over spend and the rate of movement falls. If people do not have money to spend the system begins to stagnate pushing back progress forcing people to save. but if they push too far they end up back in square one... the limit and division of it create this really amazing dynamic... you have to be within a sustainable level, not too little not too much.  

it forces people to spend at the same time it forces people to save it, it creates a self regulating system.  !!!! Amazing! It is so crazy that it causes equal wealth distribution because of it's design, different areas of the world will be at different levels of equilibrium, spain is down now, so they save, reduced prices there increase investment,... over stimulation in China and the system forces people to spend their money on areas that have fallen into spain's position to get lower priced goods, etc.

@OP
not me

The system is dynamic you can't plan many steps ahead, if you get a big enough piece of the pie the pie starts to shrink (you release some of your holdings and the pie grows again. If win the whole BTC pie the value shrinks to 0

Me i don't care about anonymity, I know my position and am free to be logically corrected if wrong. in fact i demand it.

I Studied a special course in Sciences: I have training in the equivalent of first year University, Sociology, Psychology, Chemistry, Physics, biology
I've been an enthusiast in economics since this catastrophe happened back in 2007. Since then I've just studied it as a hobby.

Studied programming when i went to high-school. Java/Visual Basic/Web programming/Turbo Pascal

I studied all these subjects well enough that I know that they can be proven wrong at any given moment, new research comes out
refuting past results and explaining them in a different light.

so Bitcoin is so incredibly fascinating to  me, a Currency system with variable Price-Inflationary and Price-deflationary characteristics, quite impressive.
This is a truly monumental experiment, What happens to a currency that is based completely on demand and supply? and does this characteristic apply
to it? what factors control it's movement? human psychology? are people thinking 2-3 steps ahead of others to anticipate market movements? What are
the metrics that should be factored?

very interesting stuff.

Indeed George Bush Sr. despite his own self-proclaimed ignorance of the subject is about the only person to have accurately described it in the last hundred years or so when he correctly identified Reagan's Tory Trotskyite Freidmanist-Menshevism as "Voodoo"

I think you had better find a different metric.

Post count just means someone has a lot to say and a lot of time to say it.  I'm sure you've met that type in person...

Post count ... well.

I got interested in bitcoin actually from the real financial world. Though I don't have a finance degree (choosing instead to pursue medicine), I frequent Zerohedge and Seekingalpha, do some quantitative financial modeling, do transaction processing for academic institutions, and have traded for a decade and half so far (long-term, swing, or intraday on stocks, options, futures, commodities, forex). I imagine some other members with low post counts around here have similar experience.

Who actually knows what they're talking about?  This guy:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/2013-04-23-the-schlichter-files-could-bitcoin-be-the-money-of-the-future-184603

I think you'd be better off trusting people on their post count, rather than their credentials. Good luck finding credentials, because more people try to keep anonymous on forum sites. You could read what people that own bit coin related businesses have to say, if you look around. But, in all honesty, I think that credentials are meaningless, and just about everyone's opinion is constructive and meaningful.

Indeed it is good.  But I must be skeptical.  Those guys - Plato - Aristole - and Socrates?

They didn't have CREDENTIALS.

They didn't graduate from an ACCREDITED UNIVERSITY WITH A DOCTORATE.

hehehehehee....