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Cryptocurrency is still a misunderstood concept for many ppl in the financial world. As use and integration increases, btc will likely stabilise. Meanwhile, we

Cryptocurrency is still a misunderstood concept for many ppl in the financial world. As use and integration increases, btc will likely stabilise. Meanwhile, we get interesting volatility.

arcticbull 6y ago
Volatility is its principal feature in the financial world.
- crispyambulance 6y ago
  Yeah, but does that necessarily HAVE TO apply to "currency"?
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    Not in my opinion haha but it’s not really a currency.
hahaxdxd123 6y ago
Like what? What economic value do cryptocurrencies provide over our traditional banking system? - being deflationary is not a feature, it's a bug. An inflationary currency incentivises you to invest it, otherwise you lose real purchasing power. With a deflationary currency, you can just stuff it anywhere and see gains. You steal from tomorrow. As the material wealth of the world increases, our money supply should increase to match. AFAIK there isn't any popular crypto that can easily adjust how many tokens are mined each year. - almost every crypto's transaction throughput is ~4 orders of magnitude below what Amex/Mastercard/Visa can process. - most of the ease of using crypto is only because it bypasses AML/KYC laws. Venmo and Zelle would be far more convenient otherwise. I can't see it as anything other than speculation.
- mrlala 6y ago
  >An inflationary currency incentivises you to invest it Still not convinced that is a good thing. It perpetuates a cycle that rewards people who already have excess income to "invest" and keep making more money. Meanwhile those without any significant income to invest are left even further in the dust. I'm not arguing for crypto at all here- just commenting specifically on that inflationary point.
  - hahaxdxd123 6y ago
    How would anyone get capital to do anything if you could see 5% gains just sitting on the money? How many fewer tech giants and unicorns would we see? We already know what happens when people aren't incentivised to invest - it's called a recession.
    - mrlala 6y ago
      >if you could see 5% gains just sitting on the money Who said 5% sitting on money? I'm talking about a situation where there is basically no real inflation or deflation. $100 is $100. You can still choose to take your money and invest it if you want, but you aren't forced to GAMBLE your money (you can use the word invest all you want, but 99% of the time it's simply gambling). >How many fewer tech giants and unicorns would we see? So first of all, you are completely butchering what I said per above.. but in any case, maybe that's a good thing not to see all the tech giants and unicorns? People are so obsessed with doing things so they can "make it big" it's really just sad. HN in particular, I see it all the time here. All most people seem to care about is trying to make the most money possible and less about things that are actual helpful. Greed is a hell of a drug. >We already know what happens when people aren't incentivized to invest - it's called a recession. That is quite a stretch. You will always have people that want to gamble their money. My point is you should not be FORCED to gamble your money to play the game the rich people who set the rules want you to.
- cloudinshape 6y ago
  > An inflationary currency incentivises you to invest it, otherwise you lose real purchasing power. With a deflationary currency, you can just stuff it anywhere and see gains. You steal from tomorrow. As the material wealth of the world increases, our money supply should increase to match. You don't understand the WHY of those gains. A deflationary environment is the only real environment, that is why central banks are set up to fight deflation, because deflation is the natural order of things. And in that real environment, gains in productivity are only possible because of savings, people invest not because of fear, the investments takes place because people truly believe the business proposals will produce VALUE, and hence REAL GAINS, which necessitates that people be not drowning in debt. That is why an inflationary system is a bubble system, it cannot be sustained on its own. It is a perpetual motion machine, or tries to be anyways. Society has made a lot of progress, but the price has been an unprecedented amount of debt. In essence, we've mortgage the future, and at some point those bills will be paid either by will of by force.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    Deflation reduces the velocity of money (why spend something now when you can spend less for the same thing later). This creates a negative feedback cycle which reduces economic activity and worse it increases inequality. This happens because the poor continue to transact hand to mouth and are unable to save while the wealthy accreted value on their idle cash. Invested cash creates economic activity. The cash in your mattress does not. The opposite is true in a deflationary environment. Debt in an inflationary environment benefits the debtor, as the loans are denominated in the dollars at the time of loan issuance. To the extent that the economy grows faster than your debt load you do not in fact ever have to pay it off.
    - cloudinshape 6y ago
      > why spend something now when you can spend less for the same thing later That is nonsense. Sadly by repeating it enough people have started to actually believe it, and repeat it without looking at the evidence of the real world. A cheap pair of jeans, adjusted for inflation was ~$150 in 1980. Now you can get one for $10. Did no one wore jeans for 40 years? Meat, it has never been so cheap IN HISTORY to buy meat, and if the trend continues, next year you could buy even more meat with the same money! (adjusting for inflation of course) Are you not gonna eat for a year? That is not even talking about tech, were a cheap laptop 20 years ago adjusted for inflation was over $1000 and now is $300. People prefer things now not later, that is why if you offer them $50 today instead of $100 in 10 $10 monthly payments most people pick the $50. The same thing happens when buying stuff. Sadly evidence is not as marketable as propaganda. So as I said, nonsense.
- anthony_barker 6y ago
  I have seen a 1 million tx per second on bitcoin lightning demos. USD dollar hasn't seen intense inflation recently. Or a kleptocratic government like most of the world. That said there are large issues using it as a payment mechanism due to volatility in USD.
crispyambulance 6y ago
> Meanwhile, we get interesting volatility. Rather than an attempt at designing a currency with really desirable properties, it seems like intent behind bitcoin was to take the WORST aspects of currency: scarcity, extreme volatility, unground it from reality, and computerize all that to make it even faster and more reckless. Economic crashes devaste the working class when inflation skyrockets or goes into manic up-down bulimic cycles that seem to benefit only financiers. ... Yet this is what people have made as a _CENTRAL_ feature of cryptocurrency? Bitcoin/crypto-currency makes me question even the most fundamental notions of what money "is". Whatever it becomes, I wish that crypto-currency was just a way to exchange goods and services with some useful features rather than a thrill-toy for wealthy speculators. I guess that would be too boring for people?
noxer 6y ago
It can not stabilize the block reward pays for the mining the fees are almost irrelevant. block reward halves every 4 year so the price has to double at least every 4 year. if it does not it will become lucrative to do double spends at some point. Its designed to crash some day because there is no endless doubling at constant time.
- tromp 6y ago
  "Almost relevant" is more like it [1]. We can expect fees to dominate the block reward in about 3-4 halvings. Which will unfortunately lead to some instability [2]. [1] https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-fee_to_reward.html https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-fee_to_reward.h... [2] https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~arvindn/publications/mining_CCS.pdf https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~arvindn/publications/mining_CC...
  - noxer 6y ago
    Thats simply nonsense the only way fees could ever pay for it would be if transaction become extremely expensive. You can calculate yourself how much a Tx would have to cost if it should replace the current block reward. 6.25 BTC every 10 min that's currently about 120k USD. If we assume 4200 Tx in that time which is very unlikely it would result in roughly 30 bucks per Tx if and only if the network is on max load 24/7 which basically means a way higher fee to get Tx trough in a meaningful time. ofc its possible but who would want that anyway. Tx are already moved off chain because the current fees are already too much for most transactions. Combined that with the fact that almost all people who hold, mine or otherwise use BTC do so because it gains in value. If it stops doing that there is even less reason to move BTCs around and justify high transaction costs. The sole reasons it doesn't matter now is because the average gains is so high it covers all that cost. If the gains are gone it over in the long run. A collective of user literally must spend 120k USD every 10 min to keep that thing running. That money indirectly comes from price gains there is absolutely nothing else there. The people who just want to move value "fast" and "cheap" dont need BTC they switch to whatever is the best at a time. There is no way they will do 30 bucks transactions if the alternatives can do it for fractions of a cent. Even if some hypothetical risk is higher for other coins. Some kind of insurance will cover that and wont cost 30 bucks per transaction.

Cryptocurrency is still a misunderstood concept for many ppl in the financial world. As use and integration increases, btc will likely stabilise. Meanwhile, we get interesting volatility.

arcticbull 6y ago

Volatility is its principal feature in the financial world.

crispyambulance 6y ago
Yeah, but does that necessarily HAVE TO apply to "currency"?
- arcticbull 6y ago
  Not in my opinion haha but it’s not really a currency.

hahaxdxd123 6y ago

Like what? What economic value do cryptocurrencies provide over our traditional banking system? - being deflationary is not a feature, it's a bug. An inflationary currency incentivises you to invest it, otherwise you lose real purchasing power. With a deflationary currency, you can just stuff it anywhere and see gains. You steal from tomorrow. As the material wealth of the world increases, our money supply should increase to match. AFAIK there isn't any popular crypto that can easily adjust how many tokens are mined each year. - almost every crypto's transaction throughput is ~4 orders of magnitude below what Amex/Mastercard/Visa can process. - most of the ease of using crypto is only because it bypasses AML/KYC laws. Venmo and Zelle would be far more convenient otherwise. I can't see it as anything other than speculation.

mrlala 6y ago
>An inflationary currency incentivises you to invest it Still not convinced that is a good thing. It perpetuates a cycle that rewards people who already have excess income to "invest" and keep making more money. Meanwhile those without any significant income to invest are left even further in the dust. I'm not arguing for crypto at all here- just commenting specifically on that inflationary point.
- hahaxdxd123 6y ago
  How would anyone get capital to do anything if you could see 5% gains just sitting on the money? How many fewer tech giants and unicorns would we see? We already know what happens when people aren't incentivised to invest - it's called a recession.
  - mrlala 6y ago
    >if you could see 5% gains just sitting on the money Who said 5% sitting on money? I'm talking about a situation where there is basically no real inflation or deflation. $100 is $100. You can still choose to take your money and invest it if you want, but you aren't forced to GAMBLE your money (you can use the word invest all you want, but 99% of the time it's simply gambling). >How many fewer tech giants and unicorns would we see? So first of all, you are completely butchering what I said per above.. but in any case, maybe that's a good thing not to see all the tech giants and unicorns? People are so obsessed with doing things so they can "make it big" it's really just sad. HN in particular, I see it all the time here. All most people seem to care about is trying to make the most money possible and less about things that are actual helpful. Greed is a hell of a drug. >We already know what happens when people aren't incentivized to invest - it's called a recession. That is quite a stretch. You will always have people that want to gamble their money. My point is you should not be FORCED to gamble your money to play the game the rich people who set the rules want you to.
cloudinshape 6y ago
> An inflationary currency incentivises you to invest it, otherwise you lose real purchasing power. With a deflationary currency, you can just stuff it anywhere and see gains. You steal from tomorrow. As the material wealth of the world increases, our money supply should increase to match. You don't understand the WHY of those gains. A deflationary environment is the only real environment, that is why central banks are set up to fight deflation, because deflation is the natural order of things. And in that real environment, gains in productivity are only possible because of savings, people invest not because of fear, the investments takes place because people truly believe the business proposals will produce VALUE, and hence REAL GAINS, which necessitates that people be not drowning in debt. That is why an inflationary system is a bubble system, it cannot be sustained on its own. It is a perpetual motion machine, or tries to be anyways. Society has made a lot of progress, but the price has been an unprecedented amount of debt. In essence, we've mortgage the future, and at some point those bills will be paid either by will of by force.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  Deflation reduces the velocity of money (why spend something now when you can spend less for the same thing later). This creates a negative feedback cycle which reduces economic activity and worse it increases inequality. This happens because the poor continue to transact hand to mouth and are unable to save while the wealthy accreted value on their idle cash. Invested cash creates economic activity. The cash in your mattress does not. The opposite is true in a deflationary environment. Debt in an inflationary environment benefits the debtor, as the loans are denominated in the dollars at the time of loan issuance. To the extent that the economy grows faster than your debt load you do not in fact ever have to pay it off.
  - cloudinshape 6y ago
    > why spend something now when you can spend less for the same thing later That is nonsense. Sadly by repeating it enough people have started to actually believe it, and repeat it without looking at the evidence of the real world. A cheap pair of jeans, adjusted for inflation was ~$150 in 1980. Now you can get one for $10. Did no one wore jeans for 40 years? Meat, it has never been so cheap IN HISTORY to buy meat, and if the trend continues, next year you could buy even more meat with the same money! (adjusting for inflation of course) Are you not gonna eat for a year? That is not even talking about tech, were a cheap laptop 20 years ago adjusted for inflation was over $1000 and now is $300. People prefer things now not later, that is why if you offer them $50 today instead of $100 in 10 $10 monthly payments most people pick the $50. The same thing happens when buying stuff. Sadly evidence is not as marketable as propaganda. So as I said, nonsense.
anthony_barker 6y ago
I have seen a 1 million tx per second on bitcoin lightning demos. USD dollar hasn't seen intense inflation recently. Or a kleptocratic government like most of the world. That said there are large issues using it as a payment mechanism due to volatility in USD.

crispyambulance 6y ago

> Meanwhile, we get interesting volatility. Rather than an attempt at designing a currency with really desirable properties, it seems like intent behind bitcoin was to take the WORST aspects of currency: scarcity, extreme volatility, unground it from reality, and computerize all that to make it even faster and more reckless. Economic crashes devaste the working class when inflation skyrockets or goes into manic up-down bulimic cycles that seem to benefit only financiers. ... Yet this is what people have made as a _CENTRAL_ feature of cryptocurrency? Bitcoin/crypto-currency makes me question even the most fundamental notions of what money "is". Whatever it becomes, I wish that crypto-currency was just a way to exchange goods and services with some useful features rather than a thrill-toy for wealthy speculators. I guess that would be too boring for people?

noxer 6y ago

It can not stabilize the block reward pays for the mining the fees are almost irrelevant. block reward halves every 4 year so the price has to double at least every 4 year. if it does not it will become lucrative to do double spends at some point. Its designed to crash some day because there is no endless doubling at constant time.

tromp 6y ago
"Almost relevant" is more like it [1]. We can expect fees to dominate the block reward in about 3-4 halvings. Which will unfortunately lead to some instability [2]. [1] https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-fee_to_reward.html https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-fee_to_reward.h... [2] https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~arvindn/publications/mining_CCS.pdf https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~arvindn/publications/mining_CC...
- noxer 6y ago
  Thats simply nonsense the only way fees could ever pay for it would be if transaction become extremely expensive. You can calculate yourself how much a Tx would have to cost if it should replace the current block reward. 6.25 BTC every 10 min that's currently about 120k USD. If we assume 4200 Tx in that time which is very unlikely it would result in roughly 30 bucks per Tx if and only if the network is on max load 24/7 which basically means a way higher fee to get Tx trough in a meaningful time. ofc its possible but who would want that anyway. Tx are already moved off chain because the current fees are already too much for most transactions. Combined that with the fact that almost all people who hold, mine or otherwise use BTC do so because it gains in value. If it stops doing that there is even less reason to move BTCs around and justify high transaction costs. The sole reasons it doesn't matter now is because the average gains is so high it covers all that cost. If the gains are gone it over in the long run. A collective of user literally must spend 120k USD every 10 min to keep that thing running. That money indirectly comes from price gains there is absolutely nothing else there. The people who just want to move value "fast" and "cheap" dont need BTC they switch to whatever is the best at a time. There is no way they will do 30 bucks transactions if the alternatives can do it for fractions of a cent. Even if some hypothetical risk is higher for other coins. Some kind of insurance will cover that and wont cost 30 bucks per transaction.