4 ms·

> just leave and live somewhere else, taking their wealth with Wealth can't really use to purchase anything with is not real wealth. If you can't convert bitco

by qwytw 3y ago

> just leave and live somewhere else, taking their wealth with Wealth can't really use to purchase anything with is not real wealth. If you can't convert bitcoin to $/€ it becomes effectively worthless > History shows that societies with the hardest money win. Objectively not true. Look at what happened with Britain after 1918 when tried doing everything they could to stick with "hard" money and avoid devaluation/dropping the gold standard.

fidelramos 3y ago
> Wealth can't really use to purchase anything with is not real wealth. If you can't convert bitcoin to $/€ it becomes effectively worthless I agree, that is why Bitcoin was supposed to be electronic cash, you were supposed to be able to pay for everything with it. Bitcoin (BTC) doesn't scale today to this purpose, but you can still use it to pay directly for some products and services as long as the other party will accept it. For those wanting Fiat money you could exchange BTC to stablecoins, even in a decentralized way like with ThorChain [0]. What's missing is some seamless bridge between stablecoins and Fiat payment methods and bank accounts. Then you could pay for anything. However I would argue that Bitcoin was meant to become the payment method, as Satoshi Nakamoto described in the whitepaper [1]. [0] https://thorchain.com/ https://thorchain.com/ [1] https://www.bitcoin.com/satoshi-archive/whitepaper/ https://www.bitcoin.com/satoshi-archive/whitepaper/
- qwytw 3y ago
  > pay directly for some products and services as long as the other party will accept it. You can but generally you don't want to. Besides the technical issues it's a very volatile asset which means that you don't want to hold it for any extended period of time (IF you're only using it to pay for stuff).
  - JustinGoldberg9 3y ago
    I pay for things with dollars. I keep some cash available at all times. I had to buy a car last year, so I sold some Bitcoin, paid tax on its capital gain, and so I effectively paid less for it, as I held Bitcoin from roughly 20k to 30k. There will always be more volatility to the upside
    - qwytw 3y ago
      Which is great from an individual perspective not so much for the economy and the society as a whole. > There will always be more volatility to the upside That's a very strong statement.
  - audleman 3y ago
    To the contrary, as long as you can hold through the volatility window of about 4 years, you are better off holding Bitcoin. The price of a house used to be 100 bitcoin, then 10, now it's 5. Wait 10 years and it'll be 0.5. Meanwhile, hold dollars and the price keeps going up. You are defacto forced to put your saving in an investment vehicle to keep up with inflation, taking on risk.
    - qwytw 3y ago
      > You are defacto forced to put your saving in an investment vehicle to keep up with inflation, taking on risk. Yes. You got it. That's how you get economic growth. Instead of stagnation and deflation when you hoard gold or bitcoin. It's not exactly fair from the individual people perspective but for the society as whole it's objective the superior option. > To the contrary I know that reading comprehension is hard (even if the "IF" was in very big letters..). If your income is in $ and you buy stuff priced in $ AND you don't want to use crypto as an investment instrument but only for buying/selling good holding it for extended periods of time is not smart (same applies to foreign currencies in general they are just not as volatile).
- liaukovv 3y ago
  And how would seller pay taxes? They didnt get any fiat, they can't off-ramp it presumably(otherwise buyer would have done it), and now guy with a gun comes and demands his share, what happens?
  - fidelramos 3y ago
    That is why Bitcoin was first announced in a cypherpunk mailing list [0]. [0] https://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg09959.html https://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg09...
  - JustinGoldberg9 3y ago
    Why pay taxes when your don't have to?
- JustinGoldberg9 3y ago
  Lightning and in the future, lightning stablecoins.
npoc 3y ago
You can always convert bitcoin to fiat and vice versa. Other countries/currencies exist and regardless, we have decentralised exchanges like Bisq. > Look at what happened with Britain after 1918 when tried doing everything they could to stick with "hard" money and avoid devaluation/dropping the gold standard. Soft money wins in the short term. Hard money wins in the long term.
- qwytw 3y ago
  > Soft money wins in the short term. Hard money wins in the long term. What do you mean by that? Repeatedly saying the same thing multiple times doesn't make it any more accurate. The type of "hard" money you're talking about only work in mostly static economies with untrustworthy and ineffective governments, under other conditions it inhibits growth and causes all sort of economic instability and much deeper boom and bust cycles (mainly for the "bust" part, Fiat money is the opposite). It "wins in the long term" because it's sort of a fallback option when there are no other alternatives (i.e. most of human history) but far from the optimal one.
  - npoc 3y ago
    Soft money is like a credit card that takes money from the population without them realising. You can use this money to produce a short term effort but you (or should I say, _they_) pay the consequences later. Just look at what has happened to most of the west over the last 50 years. Hard money is fair money. Populations thrive when built on a fair foundations. Does the stealth taking of my wealth and giving it to the bankers benefit or harm society?
    - qwytw 3y ago
      Does a system which discourages any investment and makes borrowing extremely expensive benefit or harm society?
JustinGoldberg9 3y ago
Bitcoin is the ultimate answer to the coincidence of wants (of which money arose from). "You have some pigs and I have some chickens, but I don't want pigs right now" On top of that, it is the first global currency, that is internet native. It's an upgrade like going from papyrus/parchment to the printing press. The first printing presses were smuggled throughout Europe. But hey, stick with your evil fiat holy roman empire that steals from you. Don't ever question why inflation exists. Don't want to give out your credit card to an untrustworthy or unknown website, but you still want to buy their ebook? Use Bitcoin. With credit cards, the private keys are used in every transaction.
- Wytwwww 3y ago
  > Don't want to give out your credit card to an untrustworthy or unknown website Or you know... switch to a bank that allows you to get an unique card number for any transaction with a click of a button. Or use SEPA, or many other similar alternatives which (and I'm not overstating this) are 100-1000 times more efficient that Bitcoin.
JustinGoldberg9 3y ago
They didn't try to stick with the Gold standard. They secretly left it altogether, while robbing its value to anyome buying bonds. Post WWI, they tried to stop gold from leaving Britain, which had the effect of hastening it leaving :-) You could say that they would have lost WWI without leaving the gold standard (other world governments followed suit by leaving the gold standard after Britain did) but imho the war would have ended sooner. Lyn Alden talks and writes about this quite a bit in her books and blog.
- qwytw 3y ago
  > they would have lost WWI without leaving the gold standard (other I mainly meant their attempts to get back on the gold standard in the 1920s. Unlike e.g. France and the other European countries which didn't really have a choice and had to devalute. It put Britain industry and economy at a disadvantage during the 20s (on the brightside Britain didn't suffer from the Great Depression as much..). e.g. between 1910 and 1930 inflation in Britain only averaged 3.0%. And between 1920 and 1930 it was negative (with 3.7% deflation, which is huge..) while the Franc lost ~50% of its value during those years. As a consequence in Britain unemployment stayed high and there was hardly any growth in the 1920s. While France recovered much faster despite suffering much more during WW1: https://cdn.theatlantic.com/media/mt/business/112712krugman2-blog480.jpeg https://cdn.theatlantic.com/media/mt/business/112712krugman2...
  - JustinGoldberg9 3y ago
    Getting off the gold standard with the banking holiday was the original sin. Bitcoin has and will continue to undo this, with or without the permission of luddites.
    - qwytw 3y ago
      > permission of luddites Right. Like sticking to the nonsense that was the gold standard. Inherently deflationary virtual token make an objective horrible currency. Believing otherwise puts you on part with the flat earth people.

by qwytw 3y ago

fidelramos 3y ago

> Wealth can't really use to purchase anything with is not real wealth. If you can't convert bitcoin to $/€ it becomes effectively worthless I agree, that is why Bitcoin was supposed to be electronic cash, you were supposed to be able to pay for everything with it. Bitcoin (BTC) doesn't scale today to this purpose, but you can still use it to pay directly for some products and services as long as the other party will accept it. For those wanting Fiat money you could exchange BTC to stablecoins, even in a decentralized way like with ThorChain [0]. What's missing is some seamless bridge between stablecoins and Fiat payment methods and bank accounts. Then you could pay for anything. However I would argue that Bitcoin was meant to become the payment method, as Satoshi Nakamoto described in the whitepaper [1]. [0] https://thorchain.com/ https://thorchain.com/ [1] https://www.bitcoin.com/satoshi-archive/whitepaper/ https://www.bitcoin.com/satoshi-archive/whitepaper/

qwytw 3y ago
> pay directly for some products and services as long as the other party will accept it. You can but generally you don't want to. Besides the technical issues it's a very volatile asset which means that you don't want to hold it for any extended period of time (IF you're only using it to pay for stuff).
- JustinGoldberg9 3y ago
  I pay for things with dollars. I keep some cash available at all times. I had to buy a car last year, so I sold some Bitcoin, paid tax on its capital gain, and so I effectively paid less for it, as I held Bitcoin from roughly 20k to 30k. There will always be more volatility to the upside
  - qwytw 3y ago
    Which is great from an individual perspective not so much for the economy and the society as a whole. > There will always be more volatility to the upside That's a very strong statement.
- audleman 3y ago
  To the contrary, as long as you can hold through the volatility window of about 4 years, you are better off holding Bitcoin. The price of a house used to be 100 bitcoin, then 10, now it's 5. Wait 10 years and it'll be 0.5. Meanwhile, hold dollars and the price keeps going up. You are defacto forced to put your saving in an investment vehicle to keep up with inflation, taking on risk.
  - qwytw 3y ago
    > You are defacto forced to put your saving in an investment vehicle to keep up with inflation, taking on risk. Yes. You got it. That's how you get economic growth. Instead of stagnation and deflation when you hoard gold or bitcoin. It's not exactly fair from the individual people perspective but for the society as whole it's objective the superior option. > To the contrary I know that reading comprehension is hard (even if the "IF" was in very big letters..). If your income is in $ and you buy stuff priced in $ AND you don't want to use crypto as an investment instrument but only for buying/selling good holding it for extended periods of time is not smart (same applies to foreign currencies in general they are just not as volatile).
liaukovv 3y ago
And how would seller pay taxes? They didnt get any fiat, they can't off-ramp it presumably(otherwise buyer would have done it), and now guy with a gun comes and demands his share, what happens?
- fidelramos 3y ago
  That is why Bitcoin was first announced in a cypherpunk mailing list [0]. [0] https://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg09959.html https://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg09...
- JustinGoldberg9 3y ago
  Why pay taxes when your don't have to?
JustinGoldberg9 3y ago
Lightning and in the future, lightning stablecoins.

npoc 3y ago

You can always convert bitcoin to fiat and vice versa. Other countries/currencies exist and regardless, we have decentralised exchanges like Bisq. > Look at what happened with Britain after 1918 when tried doing everything they could to stick with "hard" money and avoid devaluation/dropping the gold standard. Soft money wins in the short term. Hard money wins in the long term.

qwytw 3y ago
> Soft money wins in the short term. Hard money wins in the long term. What do you mean by that? Repeatedly saying the same thing multiple times doesn't make it any more accurate. The type of "hard" money you're talking about only work in mostly static economies with untrustworthy and ineffective governments, under other conditions it inhibits growth and causes all sort of economic instability and much deeper boom and bust cycles (mainly for the "bust" part, Fiat money is the opposite). It "wins in the long term" because it's sort of a fallback option when there are no other alternatives (i.e. most of human history) but far from the optimal one.
- npoc 3y ago
  Soft money is like a credit card that takes money from the population without them realising. You can use this money to produce a short term effort but you (or should I say, _they_) pay the consequences later. Just look at what has happened to most of the west over the last 50 years. Hard money is fair money. Populations thrive when built on a fair foundations. Does the stealth taking of my wealth and giving it to the bankers benefit or harm society?
  - qwytw 3y ago
    Does a system which discourages any investment and makes borrowing extremely expensive benefit or harm society?

JustinGoldberg9 3y ago

Bitcoin is the ultimate answer to the coincidence of wants (of which money arose from). "You have some pigs and I have some chickens, but I don't want pigs right now" On top of that, it is the first global currency, that is internet native. It's an upgrade like going from papyrus/parchment to the printing press. The first printing presses were smuggled throughout Europe. But hey, stick with your evil fiat holy roman empire that steals from you. Don't ever question why inflation exists. Don't want to give out your credit card to an untrustworthy or unknown website, but you still want to buy their ebook? Use Bitcoin. With credit cards, the private keys are used in every transaction.

Wytwwww 3y ago
> Don't want to give out your credit card to an untrustworthy or unknown website Or you know... switch to a bank that allows you to get an unique card number for any transaction with a click of a button. Or use SEPA, or many other similar alternatives which (and I'm not overstating this) are 100-1000 times more efficient that Bitcoin.

JustinGoldberg9 3y ago

They didn't try to stick with the Gold standard. They secretly left it altogether, while robbing its value to anyome buying bonds. Post WWI, they tried to stop gold from leaving Britain, which had the effect of hastening it leaving :-) You could say that they would have lost WWI without leaving the gold standard (other world governments followed suit by leaving the gold standard after Britain did) but imho the war would have ended sooner. Lyn Alden talks and writes about this quite a bit in her books and blog.

qwytw 3y ago
> they would have lost WWI without leaving the gold standard (other I mainly meant their attempts to get back on the gold standard in the 1920s. Unlike e.g. France and the other European countries which didn't really have a choice and had to devalute. It put Britain industry and economy at a disadvantage during the 20s (on the brightside Britain didn't suffer from the Great Depression as much..). e.g. between 1910 and 1930 inflation in Britain only averaged 3.0%. And between 1920 and 1930 it was negative (with 3.7% deflation, which is huge..) while the Franc lost ~50% of its value during those years. As a consequence in Britain unemployment stayed high and there was hardly any growth in the 1920s. While France recovered much faster despite suffering much more during WW1: https://cdn.theatlantic.com/media/mt/business/112712krugman2-blog480.jpeg https://cdn.theatlantic.com/media/mt/business/112712krugman2...
- JustinGoldberg9 3y ago
  Getting off the gold standard with the banking holiday was the original sin. Bitcoin has and will continue to undo this, with or without the permission of luddites.
  - qwytw 3y ago
    > permission of luddites Right. Like sticking to the nonsense that was the gold standard. Inherently deflationary virtual token make an objective horrible currency. Believing otherwise puts you on part with the flat earth people.