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Unless your fiat money is not actually real and is just a made up number by the Fed. Bitcoin may not be useful in the local store, but if it can make fiscal, fa

Unless your fiat money is not actually real and is just a made up number by the Fed. Bitcoin may not be useful in the local store, but if it can make fiscal, fair rules that the globe works within - I’ll take that. The other mad comparison is that Bitcoin is globally distributed. If Argentina was globally distributed it would eat far more energy than Bitcoin. What this really means is that Bitcoin is out of reach of a nation state attack. For the local store, there’s always Nano currency.

arcticbull 6y ago
Fiat only needs to hold its value for as long as it takes you to purchase assets and investments with. At 2% inflation it does. End of story. Anywhere you drag your thesis out beyond that needs to take into account that you are fighting a straw-man. That's not what currency is for. Currency is a temporary, intentionally lossy (to encourage investment and velocity of money), store of value and medium of exchange. It is not an investment. It is not a long-term store of value. > What this really means is that Bitcoin is out of reach of a nation state attack. Right except 70% of the hash power is concentrated in a few mining pools in the PRC. A strongly worded memo from Xi that unless you permit their compromise of the network you'll find a new hobby mining minerals in Xinjiang, and party's over.
- shawnz 6y ago
  > Right except 70% of the hash power is concentrated in a few mining pools in the PRC. A strongly worded memo from Xi that unless you permit their compromise of the network you'll find a new hobby mining minerals in Xinjiang, and party's over. What attack are you imagining? Chinese miners cooperate to do a double-spend... on who? And how does it help them to destroy international trust in the coin and make their own assets worthless?
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    They can nuke the currency by executing a 51% attack on anyone. There’s no fundamental value to Bitcoin except faith/trust. Kill the trust kill the chain.
    - shawnz 6y ago
      The "fair players" could simply coordinate to make a hard fork from before the attack.
      - arcticbull 6y ago
        They sure could, with the remaining 30% of the hash power. Thing is, continuously forking isn't a recipe for a store of value or currency or anything else.
        shawnz 6y ago
        You are right that wouldn't make for a good store of value. But Bitcoin actually does not get attacked "continuously" so that is not an applicable criticism. It is conceivable that such a thing could happen but we can expect it to happen approximately never given the incentives in place.
        arcticbull 6y ago
        Economic incentives sure, but if it becomes America's currency and it's mined by the Chinese, economic incentives no longer have primacy.
        shawnz 6y ago
        Don't they? Then what does? I just don't see what the benefit of conducting such an attack would be. Coinholders would practically not be impacted: they could just take their existing keys and bring them into the hard-forked software and continue like normal. Mining might be disrupted for a short time, but is that so harmful to the enemy to be worth spending millions in electricity?
    - stale2002 6y ago
      I have been hearing this argument for over a decade now. In another decade, when this mythical attack on this scale l (as it applies to BTC. Some smaller coins have been attacked, but they are nowhere on the same scale) continues to fail to materialize, are you going to say the same thing? I just want to know how many decades from now of your position being falsified, that you need to wait for you to change your mind. Or will you never change you mind? Is you position truly unfalsifiable, no many how many decades go by?

arcticbull 6y ago

Fiat only needs to hold its value for as long as it takes you to purchase assets and investments with. At 2% inflation it does. End of story. Anywhere you drag your thesis out beyond that needs to take into account that you are fighting a straw-man. That's not what currency is for. Currency is a temporary, intentionally lossy (to encourage investment and velocity of money), store of value and medium of exchange. It is not an investment. It is not a long-term store of value. > What this really means is that Bitcoin is out of reach of a nation state attack. Right except 70% of the hash power is concentrated in a few mining pools in the PRC. A strongly worded memo from Xi that unless you permit their compromise of the network you'll find a new hobby mining minerals in Xinjiang, and party's over.

shawnz 6y ago
> Right except 70% of the hash power is concentrated in a few mining pools in the PRC. A strongly worded memo from Xi that unless you permit their compromise of the network you'll find a new hobby mining minerals in Xinjiang, and party's over. What attack are you imagining? Chinese miners cooperate to do a double-spend... on who? And how does it help them to destroy international trust in the coin and make their own assets worthless?
- arcticbull 6y ago
  They can nuke the currency by executing a 51% attack on anyone. There’s no fundamental value to Bitcoin except faith/trust. Kill the trust kill the chain.
  - shawnz 6y ago
    The "fair players" could simply coordinate to make a hard fork from before the attack.
    - arcticbull 6y ago
      They sure could, with the remaining 30% of the hash power. Thing is, continuously forking isn't a recipe for a store of value or currency or anything else.
      - shawnz 6y ago
        You are right that wouldn't make for a good store of value. But Bitcoin actually does not get attacked "continuously" so that is not an applicable criticism. It is conceivable that such a thing could happen but we can expect it to happen approximately never given the incentives in place.
        arcticbull 6y ago
        Economic incentives sure, but if it becomes America's currency and it's mined by the Chinese, economic incentives no longer have primacy.
        shawnz 6y ago
        Don't they? Then what does? I just don't see what the benefit of conducting such an attack would be. Coinholders would practically not be impacted: they could just take their existing keys and bring them into the hard-forked software and continue like normal. Mining might be disrupted for a short time, but is that so harmful to the enemy to be worth spending millions in electricity?
  - stale2002 6y ago
    I have been hearing this argument for over a decade now. In another decade, when this mythical attack on this scale l (as it applies to BTC. Some smaller coins have been attacked, but they are nowhere on the same scale) continues to fail to materialize, are you going to say the same thing? I just want to know how many decades from now of your position being falsified, that you need to wait for you to change your mind. Or will you never change you mind? Is you position truly unfalsifiable, no many how many decades go by?