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‘Bitcoin is a scam’ says Bill Harris, former CEO of PayPal and Intuit
- justherefortart 9y agoI love it. It's just like all these MLM (Pyramid schemes) that have been reborn. I guess every generation has to relearn the lessons of the prior generations the hard way. Comparing a nation's fiat to bitcoin is hilarious. Here's what the USD is backed by. The nation's assets. And more importantly the nation's power to enforce their will upon you legally (via courts, police, military, etc.).
- paulsutter 9y agoActually the USD is backed by trading volumes. The courts, police, and military have little leverage over forex markets. The Federal Reserve has been a fair steward of the dollar, with only a 96% devaluation since 1913. The curious can check the official numbers here: https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl
- dustingetz 9y agothe military actually has quite a huge amount of influence over forex markets why do you think we invest in it? https://www.quora.com/Why-is-oil-priced-and-traded-in-U-S-dollars https://www.quora.com/Why-is-oil-priced-and-traded-in-U-S-do...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- marcell 9y agoNot sure if being backed by coercive force is a positive or negative :). For a reference point, gold is another sovereign asset and it has held up pretty well over the years.
- contoraria 9y agoI'm still assuming that gold has intrinsic technical value, only not directly to everyone, obviously. In the same vain, I guess the blockchain must have some inherent value, it's data after all, the gold of this century, and data concerning sha hashes at that. But from a glance I couldn't figure out how to use that as rainbow table or anything else.
- cfadvan 9y agoThe vast majority of the value of gold (more than 70%) is purely for jewelry. There is no shortage of gold for its technical uses, and if gold were no longer desirable for aesthetic purposes, there would be an enormous glut. By contrast platinum’s price is more dependent on its industrial use as a catalyst.
- notoriousjpg 9y agoIsn't it moreso backed by our collective belief in it? Taking a leaf (or ten) from Sapiens here
- asdsa5325 9y agoIt's not really a "belief", it's backed by the real things you can do with it. For example, if your currency is accepted by any real estate agent, your currency has real value far beyond belief, since property has real value in our society. This is what cryptocurrency lacks, and why it's value is overstated.
- cfadvan 9y agoMost people don’t study history (or don’t learn its lessons) and as the saying goes, are doomed to repeat it. I think it’s worth remember ping that plenty, whatever they say publicly, are just trying to get rich and don’t really care how. $30million from exploiting the next fool spends just like any other money, as long as you’re not the last fool.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- koonsolo 9y agoSo I guess you didn't study the history of fiat https://echobtg.com/fiat-currency-graveyard-a-history-of-monetary-folly/ https://echobtg.com/fiat-currency-graveyard-a-history-of-mon... https://steemit.com/money/@fluffy/fiat-currency-a-history-of-fail https://steemit.com/money/@fluffy/fiat-currency-a-history-of...
- cfadvan 9y agoSo I guess you didn't study the history of fiat... ...As written by two Blockchain sites. Ya got me.
- koonsolo 9y agoYou're shooting at the source, not the content.
- cfadvan 9y ago“Consider the source.” Not to mention that the “conent” opening with “printing money is wealth theft” isn’t worth the time it took to read, never mind responding to it.
- koonsolo 9y agoI just wanted to show you a quick glance over the history of fiat money, and what happened after 2008 to the dollar. > Most people don’t study history (or don’t learn its lessons) and as the saying goes, are doomed to repeat it. Have a nice day.
- koonsolo 9y agoGreat comment! Can I send you 0.001 Euro for this? Oh no wait, I can't. Do you accept the Nano cryptocurrency? Welcome to the new world, were fiat will be an old dinosaur living in a digital world (and yes, I said world, not nation)
- justherefortart 9y agoYou seem to be taking this personally. It's quite funny.
- menotyou 9y agoNo, actually a currency is not backed by a nations assets. It is backed by the obligation to pay your taxes in that currency. I.e. every citizen with tax obligation (i.e. basically everybody) needs to collect Dollars to pay his tax bill. So everybody is willing to accept payments in that currency or in a currency which can be reasonably easy converted to Dollars. As a topper sales tax creates a tax obligation on virtually all transactions within the society, so the need to own Dollars is directly bound to economic activity.
- bmh_ca 9y ago> It is backed by the obligation to pay your taxes in that currency. If it's a reserve currency, as the U.S. is, it is also backed by the demand of other states to hold U.S. dollars to stabilize their non-reserve currency. Indeed, some argue that a reserve currency is not subject to ordinary balance of payments criteria. This is sometimes called exorbitant privilege.[1] All to say, the U.S. currency is not just backed by assets of the nation, but by demand that other states have for local-currency stability. Somewhat aside, some argue that this creates a perverted incentive to destabilize the world because unstable states and regions have a higher demand for a reserve currency. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorbitant_privilege https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorbitant_privilege
- nathanaldensr 9y agoDupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16914632 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16914632
- marmot777 9y agoJohn Oliver has a well done bit on cryptocurrency markets as pyramid schemes: https://youtu.be/g6iDZspbRMg https://youtu.be/g6iDZspbRMg
- aresant 9y agoHere is the actual article that Bill Harris wrote vs the linkspam: https://www.recode.net/2018/4/24/17275202/bitcoin-scam-cryptocurrency-mining-pump-dump-fraud-ico-value https://www.recode.net/2018/4/24/17275202/bitcoin-scam-crypt...
- eof 9y agoIs bitcoin a scam? Or is the notion of decentralized money a scam? Sad if we must bow to the various central banks that will rise, fall, and inflate their currencies to nothing until the heat death of the universe.
- asdsa5325 9y agoYou have a narrow view of economics if you think inflation is a problem. Inflation is great for our economy, since debt holders can use less purchasing power to pay off their fixed-rate debts.
- eof 9y agoI don't think inflation is (necessarily) a problem. I do think that some people benefit immensely from being "close to the source" of money creation; and especially when times get tough, those with access to this fountain benefit at the peril of the masses who are using the currency. There are cryptos with inflation built in, probably in whatever most ideal form you or anyone thinks is correct. Or, I might say: You have a narrow view of bitcoin if you think stopping inflation is the problem that it's solving.
- willio58 9y agoCryptocurrency is best-suited for one use: Criminal activity This is not a new idea. And it ignores the fact that most criminals still use cash for transactions anyway.
- isaiahg 9y agoOkay lets just say bitcoin is a scam. What do we do about it? What can we do about it? Do we shut down the open source project? Do we make the algorithms illegal and have a repeat of the fight of whether or not mathematics and programming is free speech? Without saying anything to support or not support bitcoin, the cat's out of the bag. There will now always be bitcoin as long as there are anonymous miners willing to keep the network running and it will always have value even if it's not optimized perfectly. Even if that value can only be found on the black market. What I'm saying is bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are here to stay because the knowledge of how to make them and run them is becoming saturated and anyone can just fork the code. So even if it doesn't play by the rules we've come to know, we better get used to it...
- bb88 9y ago> Do we shut down the open source project? Do we make the algorithms illegal and have a repeat of the fight of whether or not mathematics and programming is free speech? Actually, it's quite simple. The SEC and IRS could go after the exchanges. If BTC can't be converted to US Dollars BTC is worthless on its face. BTC only has value if it can be exchanged to another currency.
- koonsolo 9y agoHi, maybe you noticed already, but the world is bigger than US alone.
- bb88 9y agoSo your snark aside, China and India have already banned BTC [1] [2]. That's over a third of the world [3] right there. [1] http://www.scmp.com/news/china/economy/article/2132119/beijing-bans-bitcoin-when-did-it-all-go-wrong-cryptocurrencies http://www.scmp.com/news/china/economy/article/2132119/beiji... [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2018/04/05/good-luck-buying-bitcoin-in-india-as-central-banker-bans/#3021d8ec2996 https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2018/04/05/good-luck-... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#/media/File:World_population_percentage.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#/media/File:W...
- andirk 9y agoPayPal and their underling Venmo have frozen my assets a couple times now in the past couple of months. PayPal is a scam. Venmo is a scam, says I, former user of those.