Topic: Why bitcoin isn't currency. - page 16. (Read 21382 times)

Fair enough, It is beyond my abilities. If you see a coin that fits that profile let me know. I want to support it.

Don't tell us, show us.  Do it, if it can be done.  If you can, I'll sing your praises and so will the rest of humanity.  We'll name the currency unit after you.

But please, don't try to convince us that it should be done, when we really don't know how it could (safely|effectively) be done; particularly if you don't know either.

I want someone to create a coin that is defined or to get the ripple developers to define ripple. I want a digital currency that can actually work and is capable of replacing the dollar 

If you say that you are not trolling, then please explain what are you doing?

Or rather what are you trying to do?

What's the point of this thread? Trying to educate us?

The ability to be used as a unit of account is what separates currency from collectibles.

Baseball cards are a store of value and a medium of exchange. So are all collectibles

Bitcoin is a collectible. Not a currency. 

It is in practice 8 bits or 8 charged particles ( which is objectively real and a constant) 

One bitcoin is the monetary unit of the bitcoin system. The value of it is dependent of opinions of all the users, and hence is fluctuating.

You are confusing it with the unit of account. This is one of the functions of money. Why count your money? A merchant needs that to compare prices and to know whether his last actions where profitable. If he does not have a unit of account, he can not decide what is the best action in the future, buy a new batch of wares to sell? If it was profitable last time yes, or maybe buy twice as much.

The unit of account should be as stable as possible. He should use a type of money that is stable. If the question is day to day trading, fiat is good for that. If you want to calculate your options, for instance sell a house after 20 years of ownership, dollar is not good enough. If you calculate in BTC, a profit of 1 BTC for a year says nothing, it depends heavily on what time of the year that BTC was earned. Was it january this year, or september this year? Huge difference. The best unit of account currently is probably a inflation adjusted dollar, and for the future, a dollar adjusted for inflation expection. Just know what inflation indicator you use.

The point with the unit of account function, is that the merchant and customers decide for themselves what unit to use. It is not necessary to use the unit of the currency he uses for payments. In fact, for international trade, you have to choose one of several used for payments. No need to use BTC as a unit of account, maybe after bitcoin is fully implemented in the world economy.

A byte can't be equal to a charged particle. A byte is eight bits. Sure, a byte can be represented by charged particles, but it is, in practice, just a number no more or less real than any representation of any number. Therefore, a bitcoin, being simply an arbitrary representation of a lot of numbers, should be just fine with you. QED.

So, we've determined that your ideal currencies are this:


and this:


I guess there's nothing left to do, then, but to buy a handful of each and begin your quest to educate the uninformed masses on the benefits of objectively-defined, constant, energy and byte-based currencies.  Good luck.

My recommendations for a UNIT of value would be

A byte
A joule
A kilowatt

   

I am not a gold bug, Gold is a poor unit. Defining a UNIT of value in terms of gold is like defining an inch in terms of an inch worm. There are not enough inch worms to measure all the length just like there is not enough gold to measure all the value.

It is hard to answer true of false to the above statement. You would have to define wealth. 

The economy isn't constant.  It can grow or shrink.

Frankly, it's clear that you are a gold bug.  So I'm interested to know your opinion on this statement, true or false:  "Wealth is never destroyed." ?

The same is true of data. It is not objectively real. We measure opinions against facts. Data is equal to a byte a byte is equal to charged particle.

If bitcoin were equal to a byte it could work. But the limit would have to be removed to keep the definition true. 

No I am not trolling.

It isnt my definition it is the definition.

No "currency" that is currently used is actually currency. The US dollar is a unit in the same way that the human foot was a unit when we measured length with body parts. That is to say that it is a puesdo- unit. That is the problem at the heart of the global monetary system in it's current state. It is a system of measurement without a unit of measurement.


for the last 40 years it has been. The world has been living a lie.

. The UNIT is always the same it is human perception that changes. Price is the representation of the subjective nature of value. Currency is supposed to be the constant that it is measured against.

also conflating units of physical measurement with currency, units as placeholders for valuation as a medium of exchange, is completely irrational. The comparison just doesn't work.
you can say a gram is a certain number of atoms. That is objectively true. There is no such thing as objective value, so you can't measure a constantly defined unit of value. You're just confused.

So under your definition pretty much every major economy is operating on something that is not a currency. The US dollar doesn't fit your definition. It is a completely silly argument.
'Unit' defined for currencies IS an abstract. You're conflating the constant of the abstract unit with a constant of physical unit. 1 Dollar is 100 cents. Dollar is the unit, cents are fractions of that unit. 1 Bitcoin, it is a unit that can fractionally be used down to .00000001. It is defined.
The value of the unit is not constant under ANY currency system.
In fact, I would argue that bitcoin fits the definition of currency better than the US dollar because it has greater definition. The monetary base in the US is indeterminate in the future, yet the path of bitcoins being introduced to the economy is definite.

I'm pretty sure you're just trolling, but I thought I'd say something just in case someone was taking you seriously.

No it isn't. The reason it is so unmoored is because it is not a unit. Units are a constant that are definable. It is unstable in the same way that measurement of length was before an inch was defined.

Price is the representation of the change in subjective value, the currency is supposed to be the constant that it measured against.
   

All units are arbitrarily defined. They are all just a matter of shared opinion.  It is not a problem that bitcoin is arbitrarily defined the problem is that the definition isn't held constant. The definition is in flux like when an foot was measured with human feet. 

Have you ever, by chance, studied the way the actual (SI) units of measurement are defined?  The second and the kilogram, which are both arbitrarily defined*, are used to derive 6 out of the 7 standard units.  Only one other unit (the Kelvin) is not defined in terms of these two.  That's a good thing.  It means that, even though the base units are arbitrary, all of the measures are consistent with each other.

We have this system of measurement, now, only because of hundreds of years of study during which scientists catalogued and refined the fundamental laws of nature that govern the interrelationships between different physical phenomena.  The only reason we haven't unified the second and kilogram, for instance, is because no one has yet to unify gravity and relativity.  Many physical units are named after those who discovered these fundamental laws, such as the Newton (which defines force in terms of mass, distance and time) or the Ampere (which defines current in terms of mass, distance, and time).  Yet, still, the base units from which the others are derived, are arbitrary.

So, since you are fundamentally opposed to a similar kind of arbitrary definition of economic "units", have you done the same for, say, gold?  Do you know the physical law that determines the economic conversion between gold and steel, for instance?  (This would have been nice for Greenspan to have known.)  You haven't found it?  Better get to work, then.  Once you discover this fundamental objective ratio of value, I'm sure it will be named after you, and then you can feel free to lecture us on the fundamental superiority of objective units of measure.  Until then, take a look at this arbitrarily-defined kilogram, and perhaps try to gain a little perspective.



*And here's the definition of the second.  Does it sound anything like the definition of a Bitcoin to you?  (It should.)


If that seems a little too precise, go back and look at a previous definition:

Bitcoin IS the unit of measurement.  It seems so unmoored only beause it's trying to measure something that is subjective, the value of products and services.  The measurement system still requires the pricing mechanisim that a live trade market provides, and even that is only valid momentarily.