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Virtually every problem listed in this article is solved if bitcoin continues its historic rise - and yet you mention bitcoin on hacker news and you're down-vot
by sodafountan 7y ago
Virtually every problem listed in this article is solved if bitcoin continues its historic rise - and yet you mention bitcoin on hacker news and you're down-voted to oblivion, it really is unbelievable.
The "Elites" are getting richer because capital is being used to accumulate more capital through dividends on stocks and revenue producing assets. The only reason money is being funneled into these assets is because they have the best return on investment, period. Money goes where it can get the best return.
The script gets flipped if that asset is a hard, un-inflatable asset like bitcoin with a built in scarcity mechanism.
Bitcoin doesn't have a dividend, if you're part of the 0.1 percent you can buy a ton of it, but in order to realize any gains you have to sell it and if you can't replenish it you'll have to go back to work to earn more.
Of course all of that is in theory, a lot of the truly rich people in this world have income producing businesses and other assets aside from stocks but you could argue that that's a lot better than money simply producing more money.
The world desperately needs bitcoin to succeed.
- jacobush 7y agoDo you really think the elite would accept any threat to the status quo without a fight? Besides, even if you were to somehow succeed, the scarcity of bitcoin would just be the new elite. Bitcoin ownership is already incredibly concentrated. Meet your new boss, same as old boss.
- sodafountan 7y agoYou're always going to have people in life who have more than other people, life is inherently unfair, there's always going to be a 1%. You can put measures in place to ensure that the gap doesn't widen too greatly, but that's a different discussion. It's true that bitcoin creates a disparity in ownership, but you can't actually realize any gain unless you sell what you have. If I'm accumulating and holding bitcoin, that's good for me and everyone else who's accumulating and holding bitcoin because it keeps the price up. If I sell bitcoin at a profit, that's good for me but bad for most other people, but I also lose my position and the price goes down to allow others to enter into the market. There's no incentive to sell with dividend producing stocks and real-estate because they produce money, if you're strictly speaking about money begetting more money then that's the problem. The middle class can gain a strong foothold in bitcoin in its nascencey, the elites aren't willing to give up their income producing assets but if bitcoin continues to multiply by 5-10X every four years like many expect it to then that gives the middle class incredible leverage to move up the economic hierarchy like we've never seen before. I actually think this is how the next decade will play out, bitcoin will continue its historic rise and we'll see economic changes like we've never seen before. Bitcoin is going to restructure the way the economy works over the next decade or two. Millennials will be able to pay off their loans, they'll be able to buy houses and many will become the new "Elite" until something else comes along.
- buboard 7y ago> any threat to the status quo without a fight If they are too old and weak to fight, yes. And given the already decades-old, protracted stagnation of wages this will inevitably happen.
- throwaheyy 7y agoThe world doesn’t need fucking Bitcoin. This is merely switching one “elite” for a different, equally arbitrary, but likely less qualified “elite”.
- sodafountan 7y agoThe world desperately needs bitcoin
- triceratops 7y agoI can't tell if this is a parody post or not. But I will try to understand it. > Bitcoin doesn't have a dividend...in order to realize any gains you have to sell it So...like gold and silver? We've already had those for millennia. We've also had inequality for millennia - and at times it was way worse than it is now. > The script gets flipped if that asset is a hard, un-inflatable asset like bitcoin with a built in scarcity mechanism. I'm trying to understand this. If everyone puts their money into Bitcoin, inflation won't eat the value of their money so they won't try to increase it by investing into dividend-producing businesses? Otherwise how is this "script" "flipped? I don't understand this line of reasoning. Also if lots of people pull money out of dividend-producing businesses and put it into Bitcoin, the prices of those assets will go down which will make their returns even better. So it seems like it would cause more of the thing ("elites" putting capital into revenue producing assets) that you're saying is the problem here. > a lot of the truly rich people in this world have income producing businesses and other assets aside from stocks but you could argue that that's a lot better than money simply producing more money. Money simply producing more money is bad, but selling appreciated Bitcoin to make money is good? I don't see the difference between the two. And flipping Bitcoin is better than using fiat money to start businesses that produce value? Like maybe you have a good point but I have no idea what you're trying to say or how it relates to TFA. > yet you mention bitcoin on hacker news and you're down-voted to oblivion, Maybe only mention it on articles related to Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies? > The world desperately needs bitcoin to succeed. Given the already-well-known environmental cost of mining Bitcoin, one could argue that that's the last thing the world needs.
- sodafountan 7y ago> So...like gold and silver? Yes, except gold and silver don't scale. Bitcoin scales, it's almost infinitely divisible and can be traded without a third party on the internet. It's Gold 2.0. > I'm trying to understand this. If everyone puts their money into Bitcoin, inflation won't eat the value of their money so they won't try to increase it by investing into dividend-producing businesses? Otherwise how is this "script" "flipped? I don't understand this line of reasoning. No, but if bitcoin proves to be the better investment (which it has over the last decade of its existence) people will put their money where they can get the best return. Bitcoin is still largely unproven and considered risky but the more times it increases exponentially in value the more stable and secure it will seem. To put it another way - If I had 1 million dollars ten years ago conventional wisdom would have said the absolute best place I could have put it was either the stock market or into real-estate. Looking back obviously there would have been no better place to put it than into bitcoin but nobody knew that back then. The more people who move their investments away from "Conventional" investments like real-estate and into more inclusive assets like bitcoin the better it is for society as a whole. It's well documented that one of the big reasons silicon valley is so expensive to live in is because Chinese investors are moving in and purchasing real-estate just to sit on, good for them, bad for people in the area who get no piece of that economic action. I could go on and on. I'm not going to pick apart every point you made but I certainly can, I think you'll see the light in a few years when bitcoin does what it does and skyrockets again. Can I ask you this though: Do you think bitcoin will gain in value from this point on or do you think bitcoin will fizzle out, and why do you think that?
- Aunche 7y ago> Bitcoin doesn't have a dividend, if you're part of the 0.1 percent you can buy a ton of it, but in order to realize any gains you have to sell it and if you can't replenish it you'll have to go back to work to earn more. You're describing all forms of currency. You can still buy stocks with Bitcoin and receive dividends in Bitcoin. Bitcoin is worse in this regard because you don't even need to invest it for it to grow in value. You can literally get rich from hoarding it.
- sodafountan 7y agoOh god, I'm hardly describing all forms of currency, quite the opposite actually. All currency is fiat and artificially inflated which is actually the root of the problem entirely. And yes by buying and hoarding bitcoin you can make yourself very rich - that's the point.
- buboard 7y agoThere is a pervasive idea in the article that the entire financial-political loop system is rotten, rusty, zombified, unproductive, stagnant, indifferent, overall totally useless. Yes, that makes a good case for a total reboot of the global financial system.