Topic: Why is Bitcoin the Dumbest Thing Ever Invented - page 6. (Read 2676 times)

I believe the troll understands perfectly well.  It's just a point he doesn't wish to acknowledge, because he would then have to concede that Bitcoin exists precisely because of those shortcomings in fiat;  It was designed to alleviate those flaws.  There's a reason why we have a fixed supply and that reason is that fiat depreciates massively over time.

None of these points are in his favour, so he desperately tries to railroad the discussion back to his decidedly abstract (and deeply flawed) notions of value supposedly only existing in debt-based systems.  But he can't control the narrative, so just comes across as a raving kook.

Not dollars specifically, but rather their market value.  You contend that $1 holds the same value as a McDonald's burger.  However, I'm asserting that this equivalence holds only under the condition that the US government and central bank exercise responsible monetary policy.  If, for instance, they opt to print $10 trillion out of thin air, the value of the dollar diminishes.  This principle is grounded in basic economics—supply and demand—and applies not only to assets and products but also to currency itself. 

I'm intrigued as to why you find this concept challenging to understand. 

Dollars have nothing to do with faith, but with needs. People need dollars to get rid of debt that they owe to the US banking system. Just like they need food to get rid of hunger. Or like they need pictures to satisfy their aesthetic senses. Faith has nothing to do with assets. An asset is something that can satisfy people's needs. The idea that dollars are based on faith is just a popular myth.


Please cut the crap. If I trade a Monopoly bill with the number "1" for a car, that doesn't mean that 1 Monopoly unit was filled with 'value'. It just means that the car owner demonstrated how stupid he is.

Regarding rarity. The concept of rarity or scarcity applies to assets, to items that can satisfy people's needs. Only assets can be scarce. Given that Bitcoin units hold no asset there's nothing in the Bitcoin system that can be scarce. A guy just put the limit on the number of empty units. That number is 21 million. But it could have been a thousand or a trillion. It doesn't matter. It's just an arbitrary decision.

Firstly, we are never forced to believe in Bitcoin nor trust it but it is our will and desires, an individual choice either.
It was your insights and opinion OP, There is nothing personal about it but please don't destruct people who already made their way in and knowing more about Bitcoin.

Let people decide and not spread wrong information to divert the mindset of investors.
Because for me and a huge number of BTC, investors keep on trusting this and the belief that all the efforts and risks paid off. You may not see the potential of Bitcoin but we are.

No, I don't trade the box itself. I put value inside the box, and only once the box is filled, then it can be traded (the value inside the box is traded, not the envelope). Read again the part about "Stage 2" and private contracts.

That's what describes your comment best. I think you didn't even read my post.

OK, but then explain me something: Why is a stamp or coin where a failure in the printing machine made look one character slightly different, much more valuable than a stamp/coin with the correct character? (This is actually why I brought this example up, but your understanding seems to be too limited to grasp that ...)

The reason has actually to do with "rarity", not with the "senses" you "explore" the item with. The difference can explain 99% or more of the value. This is also the case for Bitcoin. If Bitcoin was not rare it would not have a value.

If you now do another Freudian rationalization and say that "collectibles are also stupid", or "this kind of collectible is stupid" then ok. Then we simply have an opposite view about what "stupidity" is If you try to explain the price of the failed coin/stamp with something which has still to do with the "senses" the collector "explores", for example because he likes the way the failed character looks, then I believe that you still believe in the Santa Claus story that people buy these things _not_ to invest or even launder money but "because they are beautiful".

If that's the case, why don't you invent yours, let's see whether your family members would support or talk good of what you have invented for the world to use.

I hate it with passion when someone shows how mentally derailed they can be in public by saying what doesn't make sense to people hearing that, "bitcoin'' the whole world knows and believes in, to be the best digital currency invented, turns out to be the dumbest thing ever invented to them. Is that not stupidity cos it only an insane person will have such reasoning, not someone stable in reasoning

As opposed to fiat that will steal somewhere between 3% and 300% of the value of your assets every year (depending on your jurisdiction) and deposit them into someone else's account?  Fiat and other systems that are subject to the whims of someone else (not censorship resistant)?  When the former US President with billions of $ is shut out by Stripe and PayPal and certain manufacturers are shut down by credit card companies, censorship resistance is critical.  That's why the CCP and other totalitarian and authoritarian (fascist, communist, socialist etc) rulers around the world don't like it (see e.g. the current US President, Joe Biden, and much of his party) - they want power and control.

Hah, such people don't need to understand the concept and potential of Bitcoin they just know one thing in their entire lives that they are the biggest trollers but in fact such people are clowns hehe seems like my words are super targeting anyway I can't o anything with it to present an example we need such words.

Anyway in reply to you why he's here haha to have some attention or something like that maybe we got some decent engagement even if its negative still he succeeded, TBH I haven't read even a single word from his post except the subject, so my reply is based on your comment. 

There is no point in having this long argument. Bitcoin is an asset because it was given value to it. Although it is not a physical asset because it cannot be measured. Yet, it doesn't mean that is not a good asset since it is not physical. I do understand that many people only refer something to be an asset and worth invested in if its value can be measured physically. But let me clear the air here. The gold, land and other precious stone, where considered because we feel they are unique from the regular stone on earth, we gave them high value and that is why they worth much that is the same thing that goes with digital currencies like Bitcoin. Bitcoin gained value because it is a different form of monetary system that provide the same value as the physical money and even more. Just like Gold the supply its limited which is why having a fraction of it would give you a hope of big profits in the future.

Continuing this discussion seems futile.  You're incorrect in dismissing the faith individuals and institutions have in the currency, as well as in the stability guaranteed by the government and the central bank.  Your belief that $1 always corresponds to an underlying asset is fundamentally flawed.  I cannot stress this point enough.  If you fail to grasp this concept, you're unlikely to appreciate the beauty of Bitcoin. 

The value is by definition involved in debt. If you have dollars - which are units that the banking system issued as debt, you have something that debtors need in order to satisfy the debt. Just like when you have food you have something that people need to satisfy the hunger. When you have an item that people need, it is said that such an item is valuable, that it is an asset or a resource. So the fact that fiat currency units are created as debt means they are boxes that hold an asset, something valuable. But I explained all that already. It's just that you ignore it and repeat that nonsense about a box that magically gets filled with 'value' by the act of trade.

Hahaha. I see that you as well repeat the same nonsense that the box is not empty if you trade it for something. This is so stupid that even kindergarten children would understand why. So, that Satoshi guy created a system that generates empty boxes. You all naively feel for it, spent tones of money and electricity and now you comfort yourself with stories that the boxes are actually full. Although you yourself know and see that they are still empty. This is called Freudian rationalization. Or playing dumb.

And please stop with that nonsense about collectibles. Collectibles are something that people can touch and see, explore with their senses. You people have neither coins - a pieces of metal with a stamp, nor paper bills. You just have numbers in your wallet apps telling you how many empty and invisible boxes you have. There's nothing collectable in that.

Ok, so let's debunk this once and for all time

Using the (a bit questionable, but serviceable) postal service analogy, we accrue value in this system in three stages.

Stage 1: Bitcoin's creation and its USPs

The "postal service" isn't just "a simple postal service". It's a postal service that has qualities no other postal service ever had. The boxes will reach the destination in about 10 minutes, no matter where in the world (=block interval). "Boxes" can never get lost because once they are accepted by the system (=confirmations) everybody knows all the time where they are (=public blockchain record), nobody can steal a box (=double spend protection) and the postal service can also not decide to reject a box just because they don't like the sender, the receiver or the value that is inside (=censorship protection). The boxes will also always (as soon as they're accepted) reach the receiver, even if the system doesn't know who the sender and the receiver is. And while once a sender blew up the post office with a "bomb" inside a box (=2010 value overflow), the post office was able to repair it instantly and in 14 years it never happened again, so we can almost safely say it won't repeat.

Stage 2: First boxes are filled

The postal service, due to the USPs named in stage 1, start to get usage when someone puts value in a box. It's important to clarify when value is put inside a box: not when someone uses Bitcoin to make a transaction, and also not when coins are mined. Mining and transacting are still "empty boxes". The system only accrues value when someone accepts the Bitcoins in exchange for something. These Bitcoins are then pegged to this "something". First, such pegs will be private contracts. The peg will only exist for the sender and the receiver. Basically, it means that once in a while the boxes will contain something. But the value is still not clear. They work like NFTs today. Let's say this was the "Pizza era" (Happy Pizza Day ) The pizza transaction was basically a number of pizzas divided into 10.000 boxes.

Stage 3: Boxes get a value (Bitcoin price)

A community begins to form around the postal service. More and more boxes are filled with value when people are accepting Bitcoin either for goods and services or for different currencies or other "assets". The community begins to publish the Stage 2 contracts on the web (=exchange sites, Coinmarketcap ...). This means that people already know what to expect when they use the postal service and how much value is approximately inside of each box. We have now an almost unified box price. And we have an ecosystem of people, companies and other groups willing to put value in the boxes (=pay fiat/sell a good or service for Bitcoin).

What's now exactly inside the box (A box is 1 BTC)?

It's actually not that simple. I would describe it as "the 21 millionth part of the ecosystem" described in Stage 3. If this ecosystem is large enough, then the single box can be valued at $70000. But if the ecosystem shrinks or grows, then the value can also shrink or grow.

You'll say that this value can never be calculated? And why is it so volatile?

First, in the fiat system the value is also not fixed. Let's say a bank creates a loan of $100 and the Central Bank's issues a 100 dollar bill. But one week later speculation makes the currency's value go down. What's now inside the 100 dollar bill? A smaller part of the loan of the bank? Just like fiat, the "box value" can also change with speculation. It can even go to near-zero like in countries like Argentina.

Second, the volatility is just the consequence of the difficult calculation. As we don't know how much value is in the whole ecosystem, we use hints. For example, when the ETFs were approved, people were expecting the ecosystem to grow because new investor classes (US institutional investors) was able to put value in the boxes. This was a hint causing people to value of the boxes no longer $30-40k but instead $50-70k.

So even if the question "what's Bitcoin's value?" is not very simple to answer, there is actually also nothing very mysterious.

@OP: How would you describe collectibles in your system (e.g. coins and bills which are worth lots of $ due to a failure of the printing/minting machine in the numismatic community, stamps, art ...)? Their nature can actually be described in a similar way. But only Bitcoin has "Stage 1", i.e. a real set of advantages over other asset classes.

Bitcoin creation requires enormous amount of electricity but guess what, we’re less than a few millions away from the 21M total supply. I don’t understand what you mean by empty unit. It appears you don’t understand how Bitcoin works because what you call empty unit has value because it isn’t empty. It may not be visible but very valuable. But guess what’s with the fiat you’re speaking so confidently about; there’s no limit to how much can be created. If I asked you how many dollars exist, you can’t tell and that’s why you’ll someday buy coffee for $20

Did you take the time to go through my message?  What occurs if the central bank opts to generate money out of thin air?  There's no value generation involved— just the introduction of new debt devoid of any intrinsic value.

There's no evidence supporting the notion that fiat currencies are backed one-to-one by value; in fact, evidence suggests the contrary.  There is disconnection between the creation of money and tangible assets. 

It reminds me of the idea that overthinking can sometimes prevent us from experiencing things fully. How do you find a balance between thoughtful analysis and just going with the flow?

I respect your opinion. Yes. Only people with stupid thoughts can do it. If we think too much about the empty box, we will never feel the contents of the box and it will always be empty. Can you see visually what the air actually looks like? We can only feel it when we inhale and exhale.

Are you for real or are you playing dumb? If I pay you $70K for an empty box and you send it to me what I received is that empty box. I didn't receive $70K. I gave up that money. So, you must be playing dumb because no one can be that stupid to claim that they received $70K when they actually gave up that money.

This is where you are actually getting it wrong and it will continue like this unless you change your overall thinking about Bitcoin. Bitcoin was created as an empty box (if your narration is to be followed) which I never disputed, but it was later filled with value (liquidity), which now makes it an asset. So, in what you cited, the sender never sent an empty box again in case you do not know and as long as it is Bitcoin we are talking about. How can I send Bitcoin to you and you are saying it's empty, how?

Take for instance, a box was created empty (initial stance), and the box was later filled with Apple products (value) and was sent to a receiver. Are you still telling me that the receiver will receive an empty box despite filling it with value which is the Apple products? It is you who will need to accept "digital assets" as it is and stop believing that all assets must have physical things that back them up. The world is revolving, so should we revolve with it as well?

Lastly, today, if I send you 1 BTC, am I not sending you more than $70,000? It is as simple as that. But I found it so troubling that a simple fact like that is difficult for you to understand. Does an empty box or anything that is valueless be able to deliver over $70,000 into your hand upon receiving it? And you still call it empty? C'mon!!!

Wait, what? There's no evidence? It is a common knowledge that units of fiat currencies are created by commercial banks issuing loans and by central banks purchasing government bonds. Did you live under a rock all the time?

There's no evidence to confirm the existence of this debt.  Consider the scenario where a government arbitrarily prints a trillion dollars without any underlying assets or value creation.  This action merely steals purchasing power from the general populace.  It does not create value. 


Indeed, it does have.  The authority over currency issuance lies with the government.  Therefore, regarding fiat currency as a reliable asset is essentially based on faith, as the government retains the power to render it valueless at its discretion, with or without existing debt.