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Yeah yeah, "basic economics". I'm getting really tired of all these unproven theories. Economics at this point has turned into a pseudoscience just like Psychol

by jafaku 13y ago

Yeah yeah, "basic economics". I'm getting really tired of all these unproven theories. Economics at this point has turned into a pseudoscience just like Psychology. Academics publishing untestable bullshit and people like you citing them ad nauseam, instead of showing some actual evidence. You are absolutely wrong in your comparison with cigarettes, because in prison you don't have enough liquidity of cigarettes. On the other hand, you can buy all the Bitcoin you want and use it to buy whatever you were going to buy anyway, and even get a discount.

logicallee 13y ago
No, you can't "buy all the bitcoin you want" - it's simply not true. Look, Facebook's acquisition of Whatsapp included $4B in cash. If Whatsapp had said, "but you need to pay us in bitcoin, we'll set the price at the current trading price", then too bad, Facebook couldn't have said yes, because it would be impossible to source that many bitcoins. The total value of all bitcoins in existence is $5B today, and I doubt it could buy up 3/4 of them, including ones that were lost or refused to sell, for any amount of money. Just as there is no amount of money (in any currency) I could give you that you could spend to get 95% of all the dollars in existence into one room to give to someone - because some people will hold out. You just can't get them all. Stores, banks, the rest of the economy, everyone uses dollars. You can't just get 95% of the ones in existence. More precisely, it is "impossible" to get 95% of all dollars into one room. A hundred trillion dollars' worth of other currency and values of various kinds wouldn't come close to letting you buy up 95% of all dollars in existence - at any price. And there are a LOT of dollars in existence. There are comparatively VERY few bitcoins in existence. So this simple example shows that it is absolutely false that you can buy all the bitcoins you want. If Facebook announced that it needed $4B in bitcoins at today's price, then most people would instantly start hoarding it, the price would jump to $10,000 per bitcoin, and ordinary people would be unable to buy it at any price.
- jafaku 13y ago
  Well obviously if you fix the price of Bitcoin at a certain point in time, later on it's gonna be a lot more expensive, especially if someone throws 5B at it. Besides you are trying to find an edge case to argue about common cases, which is stupid and lame.
  - logicallee 13y ago
    No, I'm showing you how the laws of economics work by appealing to your intuition. The part you quoted before ("This is discouraging transactions because (if you believe in the currency and its future) you should hoard your BTC. The amount of new BTC going into circulation is low, barring any disaster (e.g. Germany banning BTC, Kraken hacked), it just makes sense to hold because what you have today will be worth more tomorrow.") is totally completely uncontroversial - and this is super easy to show, not only just in historical terms or by looking at how people actually behave, but if you simply think it through yourself. It's just obvious and uncontroversial.

by jafaku 13y ago

logicallee 13y ago

No, you can't "buy all the bitcoin you want" - it's simply not true. Look, Facebook's acquisition of Whatsapp included $4B in cash. If Whatsapp had said, "but you need to pay us in bitcoin, we'll set the price at the current trading price", then too bad, Facebook couldn't have said yes, because it would be impossible to source that many bitcoins. The total value of all bitcoins in existence is $5B today, and I doubt it could buy up 3/4 of them, including ones that were lost or refused to sell, for any amount of money. Just as there is no amount of money (in any currency) I could give you that you could spend to get 95% of all the dollars in existence into one room to give to someone - because some people will hold out. You just can't get them all. Stores, banks, the rest of the economy, everyone uses dollars. You can't just get 95% of the ones in existence. More precisely, it is "impossible" to get 95% of all dollars into one room. A hundred trillion dollars' worth of other currency and values of various kinds wouldn't come close to letting you buy up 95% of all dollars in existence - at any price. And there are a LOT of dollars in existence. There are comparatively VERY few bitcoins in existence. So this simple example shows that it is absolutely false that you can buy all the bitcoins you want. If Facebook announced that it needed $4B in bitcoins at today's price, then most people would instantly start hoarding it, the price would jump to $10,000 per bitcoin, and ordinary people would be unable to buy it at any price.

jafaku 13y ago
Well obviously if you fix the price of Bitcoin at a certain point in time, later on it's gonna be a lot more expensive, especially if someone throws 5B at it. Besides you are trying to find an edge case to argue about common cases, which is stupid and lame.
- logicallee 13y ago
  No, I'm showing you how the laws of economics work by appealing to your intuition. The part you quoted before ("This is discouraging transactions because (if you believe in the currency and its future) you should hoard your BTC. The amount of new BTC going into circulation is low, barring any disaster (e.g. Germany banning BTC, Kraken hacked), it just makes sense to hold because what you have today will be worth more tomorrow.") is totally completely uncontroversial - and this is super easy to show, not only just in historical terms or by looking at how people actually behave, but if you simply think it through yourself. It's just obvious and uncontroversial.