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What most people do not realise is that it does not matter if Russia, China, the US or any country bans or criminalises bitcoin. All it takes is for 1 small cou

What most people do not realise is that it does not matter if Russia, China, the US or any country bans or criminalises bitcoin. All it takes is for 1 small country (like Singapore) to embrace bitcoin for it to be worth $1,000,000 a coin. The first country that wises up to bitcoin, starts investing in mining and other bitcoin infrastructure in a big way, and legitimises its mainstream usage as a currency, is going to reap tremendous benefits. And it's only a matter of time before this happens.

AnIrishDuck 13y ago
> The first country that wises up to bitcoin, starts investing in mining and other bitcoin infrastructure in a big way, and legitimises its mainstream usage as a currency, is going to reap tremendous benefits. Like what? Being tied to a deflationary currency? Being unable to influence their own monetary supply? Tying the buying power of its citizens to the computational ability to hash numbers really quickly? Seriously, what benefits possibly favor this approach over creation of an e-currency that the central bank has control over?
- EarthLaunch 13y ago
  The protection of the rights of its citizens, which is the right thing to do, and which results in economic prosperity. What's needed is someone who is long-term greedy, because this is the best way to enable wealth in a country. Who wants to be a Founding Father of the next United States? Who has more power, the leader of a free and prosperous nation, or the ruler of a starving dictatorship? I'm not saying that Bitcoin is the answer, but that there are awesome reasons why an ambitious country should give its citizens their economic rights.
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    What rights in particular?
    - EarthLaunch 13y ago
      Property rights; the right to gain, keep, and use material values, like money, based on the right to life. That's taken away when a country controls currency.
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
      - iamjustin 13y ago
        Why would a state choose to give up this control though? It's not often that governments concede previously held abilities.
        EarthLaunch 13y ago
        They would have to understand the principle of rights, and that it benefits them (by any good standard) in the long term. In other words, they'd have to know that giving up control would be good for them long-term, and they'd have to want good things for themselves.
        jasonlingx 13y ago
        Lots of states have already given up this control, for a variety of reasons.
      - sliverstorm 13y ago
        How does fiat currency remove the right to have things?
        EarthLaunch 13y ago
        It removes the right to have certain things, such as, money that is in your control.
        sliverstorm 13y ago
        How is non-fiat currency more in your control.
- tlrobinson 13y ago
  Tying the buying power of its citizens to the computational ability to hash numbers really quickly? I'm not sure how those two things are related. Mining is an entirely optional activity for users of Bitcoin, and indeed, the vast majority of users never have nor ever will mine.
  - AnIrishDuck 13y ago
    They do not have to do it to be influenced by it. The exchange rate of BTC is always going to be tied to mining activity, and hence hashing speeds.
    - tlrobinson 13y ago
      You've got it reversed. Mining activity will be tied to the exchange rate. Total mining rewards (denominated in BTC) are constant no matter how many miners there are, so the higher the exchange rate, the more people mine as it becomes profitable for them to do so. Mining is a zero sum game.
    - Jaecen 13y ago
      In addition to what tlrobinson said, you only need a small threshold of hash power for a cryptocurrency to function. More hash power reduces susceptibility to 51% attacks for those coins that are at risk for it (including Bitcoin), but it does not impact the functionality of the coin in any practical way.
- kordless 13y ago
  > central bank has control over One benefit, out of a multitude, is the removal of the centralized control of the banks. Done correctly, decentralized control is predictable, transparent, and trustworthy.
- natrius 13y ago
  Governments choose and maintain currencies with low, stable inflation because it's good for the economy and the people at large. Individuals choose currencies with stable supplies to maintain the value of their wealth. In nations where cryptocurrencies aren't outlawed, they will prosper, and those governments will have to figure out how to manage an economy with a popular deflationary currency.
  - AnIrishDuck 13y ago
    > Governments choose and maintain currencies with low, stable inflation because it's good for the economy and the people at large. Yes. > Individuals choose currencies with stable supplies to maintain the value of their wealth. Individuals are far wiser to invest the majority of their wealth instead of keeping it bundled up in any commodity that has no inherent value. This includes bitcoins, dollars, yen, tulips, pog caps, and gold. Arguably gold has more inherent value than anything else on that list, but again tying capital up in nonproductive activities (commodities) is not only a poor investment, it makes no larger economic sense. > In nations where cryptocurrencies aren't outlawed, they will prosper, and those governments will have to figure out how to manage an economy with a popular deflationary currency. This is an argument advanced without any support. Not all cryptocurrencies are deflationary. And no proof is offered that deflationary currency has any advantages whatsoever. Only hand-wavy "citizens prefer stable supply" is advanced, and I'd argue that the majority of citizens that know what they're doing prefer to invest in productive activities anyway.
    - natrius 13y ago
      Sure, investing makes tons of sense, but does that mean checking and savings accounts shouldn't exist? Individuals are better off with the bank accounts denominated in a currency with a fixed supply. That's so clearly true to me that I don't understand why you disagree. A widely adopted currency with a fixed supply will slowly increase in value as the demand to perform transactions in that currency increases. The whole point of central bank currencies is to make sure the value slowly decreases over time. Sure, it's good for the economy, but individuals don't make choices based on what's good for the economy. They look out for number one. "Not all cryptocurrencies are deflationary." Inflationary cryptocurrencies will not succeed. Imagine there was no dominant currency in your country today. You gave goods or services to someone, and in return, they give you a choice of payment in two currencies: one with an increasing supply and one with a fixed supply. Which would you choose?
dogecoinbase 13y ago
Why would a country invest in expensive & power-hungry infrastructure in order to produce a currency that it can't create or destroy at-will? In the unlikely event that any sovereign nation did adopt a cryptocurrency, it would be far more likely to produce its own that it could manage more directly and which would provide all the benefits of BTC that a nation-state would be interested in (infinite traceability, impossible to use anonymously, remote destruction, etc).
nlh 13y ago
As an "outsider" to Bitcoin-mania, I have to point out how absurd a post like this reads. Or maybe absurd isn't the right word, but it reads like so many manic "to-the-moon" bubbles we've seen before -- tulips, dot-com stocks, housing prices, etc. I know, I know, this time it's different.
- jasonlingx 13y ago
  Absurdity is a prerequisite for any disruptive technology.
- kordless 13y ago
  This time? You're using something invented the LAST time around: The Internet. BTW, "To the moon" comments are designed to inspire and raise interest. It's called marketing.
  - aninhumer 13y ago
    >This time? You're using something invented the LAST time around: The Internet. And how well did that turn out for the people who invested in it? The dot com bubble is perhaps the perfect example to demonstrate that even something with real potential can still suffer a speculative bubble.
    - jasonlingx 13y ago
      > And how well did that turn out for the people who invested in it? Pretty damn well... no?
- natrius 13y ago
  Bitcoin is unique in that it's a currency bubble. Any currency that isn't imposed by a government will have to have a growth rate that looks like a bubble on its path to becoming widely adopted. The way that currencies collapse is by people losing faith in them en masse. Either something will happen to make people lose faith in Bitcoin, or it will continue to be adopted and it's value will increase. It sounds absurd because the upside potential for Bitcoin is absurd. It could also be worth zero one day. Time will tell.
tsycho 13y ago
And the moment they do that, the US and the other anti Bitcoin governments will impose economic and trading sanctions against that country to they change their stance
- avmich 13y ago
  And Iran will stop its nuclear program.
hackinthebochs 13y ago
Can you explain to me exactly why BTC would need to increase in value at all for it to be the basis for an economy? BTC is for all practically infinitely divisible, so you could theoretically run the world's economy on a fraction of the bitcoins we have today. So where is the upward price pressure coming from aside from speculation/greater-fools?
- aninhumer 13y ago
  I'm confused by your question. It's true that Bitcoin can be infinitely divided, but that doesn't help unless the original unit is valuable enough to make those divisions useful. The current market capital of Bitcoin is pretty big, but no where near enough to run a real economy.
- Avalaxy 13y ago
  Market capitalization. Basically the amount of outstanding shares (bitcoins) multiplied by the value of each share. The current bitcoin market cap is around 10 billion USD. The reason why this is not enough is pretty simple; first of all it won't allow you to make BIG payments (if you need to transfer more than 10 billion dollars you can't do that), second of all: no company is going to like having half the total amount of 'money' of the entire economy, it's only useful when everyone has some. If one or a few players control the majority of the bitcoins, nobody else is going to want it. We're not talking about gold which has intrinsic value, we're talking about bits and bytes that only have value because some people agreed that it has value. But it will only have value as long as it's somewhat distributed, if only Satoshi would have had bitcoins, nobody would have been interested.
  - hackinthebochs 13y ago
    Thanks. My question was ill-conceived in my head. Market cap was the concept I was missing. For a fixed amount of bitcoin, the value of each goes up as the total share of the economy of BTC increases.
- tlrobinson 13y ago
  To use some real numbers, let's assume Bitcoin replaces US dollars. Once they've all been mined there will be 21 million Bitcoins (and assume none have been lost) There are approximately $10.5 trillion US dollars in the world (http://money.howstuffworks.com/how-much-money-is-in-the-world.htm http://money.howstuffworks.com/how-much-money-is-in-the-worl...) 10,500,000,000,000 USD / 21,000,000 BTC = $500,000 per Bitcoin
DennisP 13y ago
Maybe not quite that much. With about ten million coins in existence, that would make Bitcoin as big as the U.S. dollar, just because Singapore adopted it.
zhte415 13y ago
> The first country that wises up to bitcoin, starts investing in mining and other bitcoin infrastructure in a big way, and legitimises its mainstream usage as a currency, is going to reap tremendous benefits. I think it would be far more likely for a country to invest in their own digital currency: DollarCoin, SterlingCoin, EuroCoin, YuanCoin, etc. Whether this would be through mining, or simply transaction verification, could be interesting (and desirable simply to close one loophole cash has - it is extremely hard to trace, therefore some transactions remain untaxed). When monetary policy changes, a change in the specification is deployed. CountryCoins would likely be fungible with physical cash (of that country).

AnIrishDuck 13y ago

> The first country that wises up to bitcoin, starts investing in mining and other bitcoin infrastructure in a big way, and legitimises its mainstream usage as a currency, is going to reap tremendous benefits. Like what? Being tied to a deflationary currency? Being unable to influence their own monetary supply? Tying the buying power of its citizens to the computational ability to hash numbers really quickly? Seriously, what benefits possibly favor this approach over creation of an e-currency that the central bank has control over?

EarthLaunch 13y ago
The protection of the rights of its citizens, which is the right thing to do, and which results in economic prosperity. What's needed is someone who is long-term greedy, because this is the best way to enable wealth in a country. Who wants to be a Founding Father of the next United States? Who has more power, the leader of a free and prosperous nation, or the ruler of a starving dictatorship? I'm not saying that Bitcoin is the answer, but that there are awesome reasons why an ambitious country should give its citizens their economic rights.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  What rights in particular?
  - EarthLaunch 13y ago
    Property rights; the right to gain, keep, and use material values, like money, based on the right to life. That's taken away when a country controls currency.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - iamjustin 13y ago
      Why would a state choose to give up this control though? It's not often that governments concede previously held abilities.
      - EarthLaunch 13y ago
        They would have to understand the principle of rights, and that it benefits them (by any good standard) in the long term. In other words, they'd have to know that giving up control would be good for them long-term, and they'd have to want good things for themselves.
      - jasonlingx 13y ago
        Lots of states have already given up this control, for a variety of reasons.
    - sliverstorm 13y ago
      How does fiat currency remove the right to have things?
      - EarthLaunch 13y ago
        It removes the right to have certain things, such as, money that is in your control.
        sliverstorm 13y ago
        How is non-fiat currency more in your control.
tlrobinson 13y ago
Tying the buying power of its citizens to the computational ability to hash numbers really quickly? I'm not sure how those two things are related. Mining is an entirely optional activity for users of Bitcoin, and indeed, the vast majority of users never have nor ever will mine.
- AnIrishDuck 13y ago
  They do not have to do it to be influenced by it. The exchange rate of BTC is always going to be tied to mining activity, and hence hashing speeds.
  - tlrobinson 13y ago
    You've got it reversed. Mining activity will be tied to the exchange rate. Total mining rewards (denominated in BTC) are constant no matter how many miners there are, so the higher the exchange rate, the more people mine as it becomes profitable for them to do so. Mining is a zero sum game.
  - Jaecen 13y ago
    In addition to what tlrobinson said, you only need a small threshold of hash power for a cryptocurrency to function. More hash power reduces susceptibility to 51% attacks for those coins that are at risk for it (including Bitcoin), but it does not impact the functionality of the coin in any practical way.
kordless 13y ago
> central bank has control over One benefit, out of a multitude, is the removal of the centralized control of the banks. Done correctly, decentralized control is predictable, transparent, and trustworthy.
natrius 13y ago
Governments choose and maintain currencies with low, stable inflation because it's good for the economy and the people at large. Individuals choose currencies with stable supplies to maintain the value of their wealth. In nations where cryptocurrencies aren't outlawed, they will prosper, and those governments will have to figure out how to manage an economy with a popular deflationary currency.
- AnIrishDuck 13y ago
  > Governments choose and maintain currencies with low, stable inflation because it's good for the economy and the people at large. Yes. > Individuals choose currencies with stable supplies to maintain the value of their wealth. Individuals are far wiser to invest the majority of their wealth instead of keeping it bundled up in any commodity that has no inherent value. This includes bitcoins, dollars, yen, tulips, pog caps, and gold. Arguably gold has more inherent value than anything else on that list, but again tying capital up in nonproductive activities (commodities) is not only a poor investment, it makes no larger economic sense. > In nations where cryptocurrencies aren't outlawed, they will prosper, and those governments will have to figure out how to manage an economy with a popular deflationary currency. This is an argument advanced without any support. Not all cryptocurrencies are deflationary. And no proof is offered that deflationary currency has any advantages whatsoever. Only hand-wavy "citizens prefer stable supply" is advanced, and I'd argue that the majority of citizens that know what they're doing prefer to invest in productive activities anyway.
  - natrius 13y ago
    Sure, investing makes tons of sense, but does that mean checking and savings accounts shouldn't exist? Individuals are better off with the bank accounts denominated in a currency with a fixed supply. That's so clearly true to me that I don't understand why you disagree. A widely adopted currency with a fixed supply will slowly increase in value as the demand to perform transactions in that currency increases. The whole point of central bank currencies is to make sure the value slowly decreases over time. Sure, it's good for the economy, but individuals don't make choices based on what's good for the economy. They look out for number one. "Not all cryptocurrencies are deflationary." Inflationary cryptocurrencies will not succeed. Imagine there was no dominant currency in your country today. You gave goods or services to someone, and in return, they give you a choice of payment in two currencies: one with an increasing supply and one with a fixed supply. Which would you choose?

dogecoinbase 13y ago

Why would a country invest in expensive & power-hungry infrastructure in order to produce a currency that it can't create or destroy at-will? In the unlikely event that any sovereign nation did adopt a cryptocurrency, it would be far more likely to produce its own that it could manage more directly and which would provide all the benefits of BTC that a nation-state would be interested in (infinite traceability, impossible to use anonymously, remote destruction, etc).

nlh 13y ago

As an "outsider" to Bitcoin-mania, I have to point out how absurd a post like this reads. Or maybe absurd isn't the right word, but it reads like so many manic "to-the-moon" bubbles we've seen before -- tulips, dot-com stocks, housing prices, etc. I know, I know, this time it's different.

jasonlingx 13y ago
Absurdity is a prerequisite for any disruptive technology.
kordless 13y ago
This time? You're using something invented the LAST time around: The Internet. BTW, "To the moon" comments are designed to inspire and raise interest. It's called marketing.
- aninhumer 13y ago
  >This time? You're using something invented the LAST time around: The Internet. And how well did that turn out for the people who invested in it? The dot com bubble is perhaps the perfect example to demonstrate that even something with real potential can still suffer a speculative bubble.
  - jasonlingx 13y ago
    > And how well did that turn out for the people who invested in it? Pretty damn well... no?
natrius 13y ago
Bitcoin is unique in that it's a currency bubble. Any currency that isn't imposed by a government will have to have a growth rate that looks like a bubble on its path to becoming widely adopted. The way that currencies collapse is by people losing faith in them en masse. Either something will happen to make people lose faith in Bitcoin, or it will continue to be adopted and it's value will increase. It sounds absurd because the upside potential for Bitcoin is absurd. It could also be worth zero one day. Time will tell.

tsycho 13y ago

And the moment they do that, the US and the other anti Bitcoin governments will impose economic and trading sanctions against that country to they change their stance

avmich 13y ago
And Iran will stop its nuclear program.

hackinthebochs 13y ago

Can you explain to me exactly why BTC would need to increase in value at all for it to be the basis for an economy? BTC is for all practically infinitely divisible, so you could theoretically run the world's economy on a fraction of the bitcoins we have today. So where is the upward price pressure coming from aside from speculation/greater-fools?

aninhumer 13y ago
I'm confused by your question. It's true that Bitcoin can be infinitely divided, but that doesn't help unless the original unit is valuable enough to make those divisions useful. The current market capital of Bitcoin is pretty big, but no where near enough to run a real economy.
Avalaxy 13y ago
Market capitalization. Basically the amount of outstanding shares (bitcoins) multiplied by the value of each share. The current bitcoin market cap is around 10 billion USD. The reason why this is not enough is pretty simple; first of all it won't allow you to make BIG payments (if you need to transfer more than 10 billion dollars you can't do that), second of all: no company is going to like having half the total amount of 'money' of the entire economy, it's only useful when everyone has some. If one or a few players control the majority of the bitcoins, nobody else is going to want it. We're not talking about gold which has intrinsic value, we're talking about bits and bytes that only have value because some people agreed that it has value. But it will only have value as long as it's somewhat distributed, if only Satoshi would have had bitcoins, nobody would have been interested.
- hackinthebochs 13y ago
  Thanks. My question was ill-conceived in my head. Market cap was the concept I was missing. For a fixed amount of bitcoin, the value of each goes up as the total share of the economy of BTC increases.
tlrobinson 13y ago
To use some real numbers, let's assume Bitcoin replaces US dollars. Once they've all been mined there will be 21 million Bitcoins (and assume none have been lost) There are approximately $10.5 trillion US dollars in the world (http://money.howstuffworks.com/how-much-money-is-in-the-world.htm http://money.howstuffworks.com/how-much-money-is-in-the-worl...) 10,500,000,000,000 USD / 21,000,000 BTC = $500,000 per Bitcoin

DennisP 13y ago

Maybe not quite that much. With about ten million coins in existence, that would make Bitcoin as big as the U.S. dollar, just because Singapore adopted it.

zhte415 13y ago

> The first country that wises up to bitcoin, starts investing in mining and other bitcoin infrastructure in a big way, and legitimises its mainstream usage as a currency, is going to reap tremendous benefits. I think it would be far more likely for a country to invest in their own digital currency: DollarCoin, SterlingCoin, EuroCoin, YuanCoin, etc. Whether this would be through mining, or simply transaction verification, could be interesting (and desirable simply to close one loophole cash has - it is extremely hard to trace, therefore some transactions remain untaxed). When monetary policy changes, a change in the specification is deployed. CountryCoins would likely be fungible with physical cash (of that country).