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I don't understand the comment "especially with the high volatility we are seeing at the moment". Volatility doesn't change your ability to have coinbase buy $

I don't understand the comment "especially with the high volatility we are seeing at the moment". Volatility doesn't change your ability to have coinbase buy $10 in bitcoin every week... in fact because of volatility you can dollar cost average that way. Even you could have them do $10 a day if you want to put in $300 a month. There are millions of people who can afford that... but they don't save, as you have pointed out. The not saving part is a cultural and habitual issue. People were addicted to credit in the past 20 years and this is due to a lot of forces, mostly government driven that benefit a fiat currency system. Bitcoin not being fiat is quite different and it will take decades for habits to change, this is true. That said, my facebook is overrun with non-technical, random people who are buying Bitcoin and Ethereum. I don't see how bitcoins very low inflation rate (which produces price appreciation as adoption increases) disincentives investment.... instead it's an incentive because you can see the change month to month. Taxing bitcoin and making the rich spend their bitcoins makes no sense... there are bitcoin whales with 100 times as many bitcoin as I have... doesn't affect me. IT's not a disincentive in the least.

simias 9y ago
By the high volatility I meant that poor people can't invest money they can't afford to lose because it's too risky at the moment. You can't invest $500 to take them out two months for now because you don't know if they'll be worth $1000 or $50 by then. >Taxing bitcoin and making the rich spend their bitcoins makes no sense... there are bitcoin whales with 100 times as many bitcoin as I have... doesn't affect me. IT's not a disincentive in the least. That's the kind of short sightedness that worries me about the bitcoin ecosystem. It does affect you if you ever need a loan to buy a house or start a business because those "whales" which will be the new 1percenters won't have any incentive to lend you money. The rich gets richer, the poor remains where they are. We end up with all the problems and inequalities we have today, except worse. We killed the banks and replaced them with other banks except these new banks are even more opaque and will be even more stingy about lending you money. And on top of that we waste an ungodly amount of energy securing the blockchain. How is that an improvement again?
- rothbardrand 9y ago
  Your response comes from a.... perspective on economics that makes no sense to me. It's irrelevant if others have more bitcoin... if I am getting a loan, I'm certainly going to get it in the US dollar which has already lost %99.99 of its value.... cause I can pay it back in even more worthless dollars down the road. In fact, my car loan's interest rate is below the rate of real inflation--- glad I bought bitcoin instead of paying cash! You can't provide any evidence that we waste any energy on securing the block chain, in fact, the market value of bitcoin makes mining profitable, proving you wrong.... further, you ignore the cost of fiat currencies which are several orders of magnitude higher, including in energy usage.

simias 9y ago

By the high volatility I meant that poor people can't invest money they can't afford to lose because it's too risky at the moment. You can't invest $500 to take them out two months for now because you don't know if they'll be worth $1000 or $50 by then. >Taxing bitcoin and making the rich spend their bitcoins makes no sense... there are bitcoin whales with 100 times as many bitcoin as I have... doesn't affect me. IT's not a disincentive in the least. That's the kind of short sightedness that worries me about the bitcoin ecosystem. It does affect you if you ever need a loan to buy a house or start a business because those "whales" which will be the new 1percenters won't have any incentive to lend you money. The rich gets richer, the poor remains where they are. We end up with all the problems and inequalities we have today, except worse. We killed the banks and replaced them with other banks except these new banks are even more opaque and will be even more stingy about lending you money. And on top of that we waste an ungodly amount of energy securing the blockchain. How is that an improvement again?

rothbardrand 9y ago
Your response comes from a.... perspective on economics that makes no sense to me. It's irrelevant if others have more bitcoin... if I am getting a loan, I'm certainly going to get it in the US dollar which has already lost %99.99 of its value.... cause I can pay it back in even more worthless dollars down the road. In fact, my car loan's interest rate is below the rate of real inflation--- glad I bought bitcoin instead of paying cash! You can't provide any evidence that we waste any energy on securing the block chain, in fact, the market value of bitcoin makes mining profitable, proving you wrong.... further, you ignore the cost of fiat currencies which are several orders of magnitude higher, including in energy usage.