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They could also replace it with money, which one can readily and easily, through systems with well-understood protocols that are agreed upon by participants in
by eropple 9y ago
They could also replace it with money, which one can readily and easily, through systems with well-understood protocols that are agreed upon by participants in those systems, exchange for goods and services.
(Even the Lightning Network people don't think you should use it with money. Not that that's likely to be a problem, what with it being for Bitcoin and all. Stripe also doesn't support any other commodities as method of payment, and frankly if they did I'd hope they'd choose cattle before Bitcoin because we know that cattle is actually worth something.)
- nvk 9y agoYou seem very confused about what money is.
- luckydata 9y agoI don't see the confusion. Care to explain?
- ujal 9y agoCountries and their economies collapsing now and then are not that rare.
- asdasdas23123 9y agoCrypto's value collapsing now and then isn't rare either
- ujal 9y agoAt the minimum you can't fake its value.
- tptacek 9y agoNo, obviously you can. You're confusing the bits covered by a signature with the real-world interpretation of those bits.
- ujal 9y agoWell, good luck getting even the real inflation rate from a corrupt government.
- tptacek 9y agoGood luck buying a slice of pizza with bitcoin.
- ujal 9y agoIn Zimbabwe you can.
- tedunangst 9y agoSometimes I wonder what percentage of the people talking about all the things one can do with bitcoin in Zimbabwe have been to Zimbabwe and done those things.
- ujal 9y agoIn this case I was the child of my parent. But given that people over there are selling their cattle with bitcoins it seems not too far off.
- tptacek 9y agoAre they transacting in bitcoin, or simply using bitcoin as a device to evade capital controls? There are lots of ways to get around capital controls, and bitcoin may very well be an effective way to do that, but that's not evidence of bitcoin's utility as a mainstream currency.
- deleted 9y ago
- notyourday 9y agoSeems rather rare to me. If a Dotcom type of an event affected bitcoin ecosystem, it would not have recovered - it had millions of participants actively winding up and unwinding positions in real time, which is not something that bitcoin is capable of supporting at this time. If a Housing Bubble type of an event affected bitcoin ecosystem, it would not have recovered. Lots of special purpose leveraged positions needed to be de-leveraged. Something that bitcoin is not capable of supporting. If LTCM type event affected bitcoin ecosystem it would not have recovered. I dont even want to think about the effect of LTCM type event on a bitcoin. All three were absolutely survived by the modern economies.
- ujal 9y agoSure, but not everyone has the privilege of living in a first world country. See for example the Republic of Georgia utilising blockchain tech to secure real estate transactions [0]. Now I am actually less afraid of investing my money as I don't trust their government. [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2017/02/07/the-first-government-to-secure-land-titles-on-the-bitcoin-blockchain-expands-project https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2017/02/07/the-first-...
- notyourday 9y agoIt uses a distributed public ledger, not bitcoin.
- ujal 9y agoIt does use bitcoin to verify the transactions. Point is, bitcoin - currently being the biggest blockchain deployed - is more trustworthy than most governments and therefore most currencies. I am not an economist though and regulations seem to be necessary in the real world. Any ideas as to what technology, giving widespread adoption, would make them obsolete?
- notyourday 9y agoIf the claim is that the private data unrelated to bitcoin transactions is being published and verified on a bitcoin blockchain then this is a scam. It is absolutely amazing that the person who wrote this article still has a title of a Senior Editor that claims to write on this topic.
- marshray 9y agoIn fact, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange live cattle futures contract is deliverable, whereas the Bitcoin contract is settled in US dollars. I.e., the biggest US commodities exchange literally considers live cattle to be more practical to deliver than Bitcoin. To me this suggests Bitcoin is not actually a good medium of exchange. http://www.cmegroup.com/rulebook/CME/II/100/101/101.pdf http://www.cmegroup.com/rulebook/CME/II/100/101/101.pdf https://www.cmegroup.com/confluence/display/EPICSANDBOX/Bitcoin https://www.cmegroup.com/confluence/display/EPICSANDBOX/Bitc...
- makomk 9y agoIt might actually be the other way around. If you want Bitcoins in (say) six month's time, you can just go out and buy Bitcoins now, so it doesn't make much sense to have Bitcoin futures contracts except as a means of speculation on the price and that doesn't benefit from actual delivery. This isn't nearly so easy or practical if you want a certain number of live beef cattle of a certain quality in six months or a year. (Matt Levine talked about this in his Bloomberg column, as I recall.)
- marshray 9y agoThe Euro and GBP contracts are delivered 'physically', not cash-settled in USD: http://www.cmegroup.com/rulebook/CME/III/250/261/261.pdf http://www.cmegroup.com/rulebook/CME/III/250/261/261.pdf
- travisjungroth 9y agoI think this is not overvaluing the utility of Bitcoin, but undervaluing the utility of cattle. I, for one, am very bullish on bovine-based exchange.