5 ms·

This is a creative metaphor, but like most metaphors, not all of the novel properties of the original system were preserved in the metaphor. If you want to imp

This is a creative metaphor, but like most metaphors, not all of the novel properties of the original system were preserved in the metaphor. If you want to improve the metaphor find a way to make it so that as a holder of matches I can have very high confidence that there is an upper limit of N matches that can exist at any given time extending far into the future. Also add some way for me to transfer my matches to another match holder in ten minutes (or an hour, or whatever reasonable interval) regardless of the physical distance between us.

stillbourne 8y ago
Yes, lets create a scarcity of all of our burned matches! If my calculations are correct, at 21m bitcoin would be the equivalent of 15,405,810,000,000 used matches. That's a great idea. Sadly, you'll just have to wait 24h for my antique wire transfer.
- sparkie 8y ago
  The key distinction between a burned match and a some bitcoin is that you can't forge the latter. Anyone can forge a match, and it would be extremely difficult to create an "authentic" match, which the receiver of in a transaction could verify to be such. Anything could technically be used as currency. Historically people have always used something that is difficult to forge, because forgery results in inflation, meaning the currency which they hold loses its purchasing power over short times. It ends up not worth the labor they put in to earn it. If that were known at the time they done the labor, they would've asked for payment in something else. Bitcoin is the best currency that has existed, because it is the first which is absolutely infeasible to forge, and it is simultaneously easy to verify its authenticity.
  - stillbourne 8y ago
    >Anything could technically be used as currency. Historically people have always used something that is difficult to forge. It's estimated that $70 million dollars in counterfeit money is in circulation in the US. At an estimate of $0.12 per kWh of electrical use Bitcoin uses approximately 70 tWh of power a year. Lets see that comes out to about $120m. At what point is the cure worse than the disease? Again this is just for Bitcoin in its current state as a semi-novelty currency/commodity. How much would it cost to operate the grid for bitcoin if it was the worlds primary reserve currency?
    - sparkie 8y ago
      You're missing the "extra dollars" that the central bank prints to fund the government's overspending. They call it "inflation" and tell you it is necessary and good for the economy. Before your government can create its next spending budget, it needs to pay off its debts with interest. A big chunk of every dollar of tax you pay is taken before the government can even think about what it is going to spend the rest on. This is a viscous cycle because the government can't meet public demand with the remaining money it has and needs to borrow more again! Each time they print, it devalues the dollar in your pocket by a few cents. This means when the government needs to pay back its debt with the interest, the money it is using to pay back is not worth as much as when they borrowed it. Ooops. The cost to operate the Bitcoin grid is unimportant, because it is voluntary, and not taken from the public purse. You can chose not to participate directly if you don't want to put in resources, and rely on some other industry much in the same way you seem keen to rely on a government to do things for you.
      - stillbourne 8y ago
        Adding liquidity by printing money prevents things like the great depression. If we were still on a gold note system when the 2008 crash happened we would have been completely and utterly fucked. No liquidity, no debt, no commerce. You see, that's the thing about you libertarians and bitcoin quacks, you can't see beyond your own wallet. Debt is not just about your car loan, your credit card and your mortgage. Its mostly about financial instruments like bonds, and equity, and foreign exchange options. You seem to equate in your brain that because common folks have car loans, and credit cards and mortgages that debt, when refereed to in fiat currencies, is some sort of theft or wage slavery. But the truth is that you are just ignorant of how a fucking global economy works. You can't print more gold, so when the market crashed there was a liquidity crisis during the great depression. Likewise commodities such as bitcoin are susceptible to large sell offs because they fundamentally lack liquidity. Thus the current dilemma of the cointards and the bitcoin market crash. Even at $4k its still overvalued.
      - rubyn00bie 8y ago
        What you're saying here goes against any reasonable macroeconomic theory. Deflation causes spending to stop because people hoard money, as spending stops, economies dry up, and voila... economic stagnation at best. But no one without a formal education is Economics is likely to even be remotely aware of that. Inflation, and Keynesian economics, have empirically served the world quite well. The government's and social policies that go with them not so consistent BUT and this is the important part-- Economics doesn't give a fuck. Inflation is a tool to allow an economy to grow, deflation is a tool to shrink an economy. Economics is the science of resource management, it's not an opinion. Your opinion is as depressing to me as it is empirically wrong.

stillbourne 8y ago

Yes, lets create a scarcity of all of our burned matches! If my calculations are correct, at 21m bitcoin would be the equivalent of 15,405,810,000,000 used matches. That's a great idea. Sadly, you'll just have to wait 24h for my antique wire transfer.

sparkie 8y ago
The key distinction between a burned match and a some bitcoin is that you can't forge the latter. Anyone can forge a match, and it would be extremely difficult to create an "authentic" match, which the receiver of in a transaction could verify to be such. Anything could technically be used as currency. Historically people have always used something that is difficult to forge, because forgery results in inflation, meaning the currency which they hold loses its purchasing power over short times. It ends up not worth the labor they put in to earn it. If that were known at the time they done the labor, they would've asked for payment in something else. Bitcoin is the best currency that has existed, because it is the first which is absolutely infeasible to forge, and it is simultaneously easy to verify its authenticity.
- stillbourne 8y ago
  >Anything could technically be used as currency. Historically people have always used something that is difficult to forge. It's estimated that $70 million dollars in counterfeit money is in circulation in the US. At an estimate of $0.12 per kWh of electrical use Bitcoin uses approximately 70 tWh of power a year. Lets see that comes out to about $120m. At what point is the cure worse than the disease? Again this is just for Bitcoin in its current state as a semi-novelty currency/commodity. How much would it cost to operate the grid for bitcoin if it was the worlds primary reserve currency?
  - sparkie 8y ago
    You're missing the "extra dollars" that the central bank prints to fund the government's overspending. They call it "inflation" and tell you it is necessary and good for the economy. Before your government can create its next spending budget, it needs to pay off its debts with interest. A big chunk of every dollar of tax you pay is taken before the government can even think about what it is going to spend the rest on. This is a viscous cycle because the government can't meet public demand with the remaining money it has and needs to borrow more again! Each time they print, it devalues the dollar in your pocket by a few cents. This means when the government needs to pay back its debt with the interest, the money it is using to pay back is not worth as much as when they borrowed it. Ooops. The cost to operate the Bitcoin grid is unimportant, because it is voluntary, and not taken from the public purse. You can chose not to participate directly if you don't want to put in resources, and rely on some other industry much in the same way you seem keen to rely on a government to do things for you.
    - stillbourne 8y ago
      Adding liquidity by printing money prevents things like the great depression. If we were still on a gold note system when the 2008 crash happened we would have been completely and utterly fucked. No liquidity, no debt, no commerce. You see, that's the thing about you libertarians and bitcoin quacks, you can't see beyond your own wallet. Debt is not just about your car loan, your credit card and your mortgage. Its mostly about financial instruments like bonds, and equity, and foreign exchange options. You seem to equate in your brain that because common folks have car loans, and credit cards and mortgages that debt, when refereed to in fiat currencies, is some sort of theft or wage slavery. But the truth is that you are just ignorant of how a fucking global economy works. You can't print more gold, so when the market crashed there was a liquidity crisis during the great depression. Likewise commodities such as bitcoin are susceptible to large sell offs because they fundamentally lack liquidity. Thus the current dilemma of the cointards and the bitcoin market crash. Even at $4k its still overvalued.
    - rubyn00bie 8y ago
      What you're saying here goes against any reasonable macroeconomic theory. Deflation causes spending to stop because people hoard money, as spending stops, economies dry up, and voila... economic stagnation at best. But no one without a formal education is Economics is likely to even be remotely aware of that. Inflation, and Keynesian economics, have empirically served the world quite well. The government's and social policies that go with them not so consistent BUT and this is the important part-- Economics doesn't give a fuck. Inflation is a tool to allow an economy to grow, deflation is a tool to shrink an economy. Economics is the science of resource management, it's not an opinion. Your opinion is as depressing to me as it is empirically wrong.