Bitcoin

[Kingrex]

We just need honest money.
We have been told all of our lives that 2% inflation is normal and good.
2% of everything every year adds up to a lot.
In personal terms in 10 years you’ve lost 20% of your purchasing power.
Official historic rates are avg 3% over the last hundred years.
In recent years it’s been 7-8% officially. The CPI is a cherry picked basket. Everyone knows grocery prices have soared. Stuff isn’t worth more. Money is worth less.
Why? Because of money printing. Inflation is actually debasement.

That's a different conversation. The manipulation of currency. And sadly it's done by an all powerful unelected body of people.

When I was in college, it bugged the heck out of me that every economic model was based on growth. Growth is inflation. I wanted to see a model that was based on stagnation. 0 growth.

I left seattle because of growth. I had to go back yesterday to take care of something at the house before its hands to the buyers. I was disgusted by all the pollution that comes with growth and density.

 

[MRubey]

Clarification:
Looking over this thread I come off like a pump and dump shill.
I honestly don’t care if any of you ever pursues this or not. Bitcoin doesn’t need you or me. Look at its life time chart. Up and to the right for 15 years since inception. Not without drawdowns of course, but within an upward sloping channel.
I am obviously swimming in the Orange koolaide.
I don’t intend to evangelize, I’m just enthusiastic.
I guess if I have an agenda it is to share a little of my journey and hopefully inspire a little curiosity. No one can teach this because it involves a shift of perspective.
But as far as I have seen. Everyone who actually engages this learning curve is converted, unless they benefit from the fiat ponzi.

It’s too good to be true.
But it is true.

 

[MRubey]

That's a different conversation. The manipulation of currency. And sadly it's done by an all powerful unelected body of people.

When I was in college, it bugged the heck out of me that every economic model was based on growth. Growth is inflation. I wanted to see a model that was based on stagnation. 0 growth.

I left seattle because of growth. I had to go back yesterday to take care of something at the house before its hands to the buyers. I was disgusted by all the pollution that comes with growth and density.

No sir!
That is the precise conversation and why Bitcoin exists.

 

[MRubey]

Fully agree .
Thats why banks / governments are against the use of it .
It ll never be legal tender imo
They can now print endless money bills and spend / lend out all they want without restrictions .
(OK untill the populus is kinda fed up with inflation , lol)

It doesn’t need to be legal tender. Though in some places it is. It just needs to be a store of value. Becoming pristine collateral.
It is exactly what it needs to be.

 

[MRubey]

The deep view

 

[Ron Resnick]

MRubey,

Respectfully, do you really believe that making an assertion, and then attempting to support the assertion with some random podcast person* who asserts the same view, achieves a powerful, persuasive, convincing argument?

*This kind of argument is sometimes called "an appeal to authority." But if the other person doesn't acknowledge and agree that the person you are proffering as an authority truly is an authority, then nothing has been accomplished, and your argument has not been buttressed.

 

[MRubey]

MRubey,

Respectfully, do you really believe that making an assertion, and then attempting to support the assertion with some random podcast person* who asserts the same view, achieves a powerful, persuasive, convincing argument?

*This kind of argument is sometimes called "an appeal to authority." But if the other person doesn't acknowledge and agree that the person you are proffering as an authority truly is an authority, then nothing has been accomplished, and your argument has not been buttressed.

I defer to people I perceive as being smarter or with greater experience than me, so to answer your question. Yes. However, these people are not random to me. Jeff Booth is maybe the most intelligent person I know of.
I’m not trying to be convincing. I’m just sharing.

 

[Tim Link]

This just came out. It’s a good place to start.

Bitcoin cannot be understood from the current system.
I feel like I didn’t really get it until about 18 months after I began to study it intensively. My previous posts in this thread were within that process.
It requires dismantling what we think we know about money and economics.
It’s a whole different paradigm.
Lynn Alden recently wrote that the barrier to understanding Bitcoin isn’t intellect, it’s ego. You have to be able to humble yourself.
As far as criminals go. Bitcoin is an open ledger. Anyone can see every interaction.
Anyone who uses that for crime is asking to be caught.

I'll watch that tonight. Indeed, the open ledger has proven a problem for criminals. Trying to launder money has always been a difficulty. Western Union used to be a favorite for overseas ransom payments. Today it seems cryptocurrency remains a favorite, so there must be some advantage to it. I've heard that US authorities can sometimes track the payments, but they need to act fast, catching them when they try to run the payments through exchanges designed to help hide their tracks. I definitely don't have a deep understanding of how that works.

I watched a little, and I'm a bit skeptical immediately of their description of how standard money works. Yes inflation is a sort of tax. I've always joked, if you don't like fiat currency, demand compensation in gold! Nobody seems to want to do that. I understand why. Money is really handy stuff. If there's too little of it available it really puts a damper on the economy. As I understand it, early experiments with fiat currency saw economies taking off in unexpected ways. It wasn't obvious how badly a lack of readily available exchange medium was holding business back. Now that we've been in growth mode for so long, we're used to inflation basically meaning the money supply overheats the economy, which means it starts trying to run so fast that supply chains haven't had time to get built up fast enough so they start falling apart.

The big question in my mind is, can we ever level this thing off and attain steady state, such that the population and environmental load remains constant for long periods of time in such a way that people can maintain excellent health and longevity, and overall high quality of life?

@Kingrex, I just read your post about zero growth. I'm with you. I don't know what the absolute carrying capacity of our world is and I suppose it can change depending on technologies and people's expectations, but all my life it has disturbed me to see the farmland around where I grew up being turned into suburbs. The farmland was yielding food. It doesn't now, and there's more people that need to eat who now live in houses like my own. Also, now that I am responsible for maintaining a home I can see that each house requires a steady supply of resources over time, including concrete, which crumbles and decays over time. How long can we do this, and when we reach the limit, how do we enter a steady cruising altitude without precipitating a disaster? It might take a disaster. We keep our eye on the dream of a good life for everyone, and maybe from time to time things will work out and we'll get to see that. But then due any number of natural and man made factors it will get upended and "interesting times" will return.

 

[Folsom]

What happens when some company or government or rogue group achieves quantum superiority and breaks Bitcoin's 256 bit encryption?

Firstly it runs on SHA-256, which is not the same as all other 256 bit encryptions. Many are easier and maybe some harder to break. If someone can do that then they can go through every government system out there that is not air gapped so bitcoin may be the least of a concern.

But let us say they do, the only way it could possibly go unnoticed is by hacking more than just a majority of nodes/miners out there so everything would appear exactly the same totally unknown of any changes. That is more unlikely that quantum cracking or cold fusion being achieved themselves by far. But in any case realistically anyone trying to change anything will just end up with a worthless fork because it will not be recognized by the global network. There simply will be no consensus that their wallet balances are valid and no exchange will take their "bitcoin".

I know all the nutters are a bit annoying about this stuff but fact is we have many ETFs and one state retirement in BTC. Anyone that does not think it is a good idea may as well be waiting for total civil collapse and be stock piled in dry good, bullets, and fuel; because short of that scenario it is not going away.

 

[Ron Resnick]

But in any case realistically anyone trying to change anything will just end up with a worthless fork because it will not be recognized by the global network. There simply will be no consensus that their wallet balances are valid and no exchange will take their "bitcoin".

So there is no possibility that (without instigating a fork) cracking the encryption could allow the actor somehow to re-register (or whatever the right term is) other peoples' Bitcoin to his/her wallet?

 

[Folsom]

So there is no possibility that (without instigating a fork) cracking the encryption could allow the actor somehow to re-register (or whatever the right term is) other peoples' Bitcoin to his/her wallet?

Essentially for any near term "cracks" in anything, yes. At some point will it be possible to hack all the record keepers of the blockchain all at once? Possibly. But the odds that goes unnoticed simply has implications that makes Bitcoin look like nothing at all. The amount of power you would wield is bigger than money. And when world domination is on the table the hardened asset turned soft does not have near the proposed value.

Think about it like this... if everyone starts talking about changes that no one can explain in the most secure global network, there will not be enough liquidity provided to spend what you could take on any off ramp or DEX. You capturing value somewhere else that does not disrupt the ability to spend it is more promising.

 

[MRubey]

A fork is rewriting the protocol. Changing the underlying rules of the entire network which requires agreement of over 51% of the nodes. All within ten minutes before it resets.
Stealing Bitcoin from someone’s wallet requires knowing their private key.
Usually a twelve or twentyfour random word code, in order.
It may not seem that difficult but the odds are astronomically against it. Sort of like a card deck never shuffling to the same order.

 

[MRubey]

Essentially for any near term "cracks" in anything, yes. At some point will it be possible to hack all the record keepers of the blockchain all at once? Possibly. But the odds that goes unnoticed simply has implications that makes Bitcoin look like nothing at all. The amount of power you would wield is bigger than money. And when world domination is on the table the hardened asset turned soft does not have near the proposed value.

Think about it like this... if everyone starts talking about changes that no one can explain in the most secure global network, there will not be enough liquidity provided to spend what you could take on any off ramp or DEX. You capturing value somewhere else that does not disrupt the ability to spend it is more promising.

Precisely!
Risk/reward…..all risk, no reward.
Better just to join.

 

[KeithR]

We just need honest money.
We have been told all of our lives that 2% inflation is normal and good.
2% of everything every year adds up to a lot.
In personal terms in 10 years you’ve lost 20% of your purchasing power.
Official historic rates are avg 3% over the last hundred years.
In recent years it’s been 7-8% officially. The CPI is a cherry picked basket. Everyone knows grocery prices have soared. Real world inflation is more like 7%/ yr over the last 50 years and 10-11% in recent years. Stuff isn’t worth more. Money is worth less.
Why? Because of money printing. Inflation is actually debasement.

This is candidly a bunch of BS. You totally ignore income growth for one.

And the $ is near historic highs vs the Euro, Pound, and Yen. Go take a vacation and see your purchasing power.

 

[KeithR]

I saw that interview. He also likened buying Bitcoin to the "Louisiana purchase." Prior to that interview I had assumed that Michael Saylor was a smart, savvy guy. Maybe he is, but these real estate analogies are inapposite, if not outright stupid and misleading.

In the same interview I saw Saylor make another dumb comment, something about not having access to Bitcoin trading is "cruel and unusual punishment."

He also said recently the bearish case for BTC is 3 million lol.

 

[facten]

I don't have a dog in this but regarding crypto security seems like there are holes including Bitcoin

An excerpt from the article link below:

"The hackers drained victims’ wallets on the Ethereum, Tron, Bitcoin, XRP, DOGE, Stellar, and Litecoin blockchains, and sent funds to freshly created addresses under their control. ERC-20 and TRC-20 tokens were swapped to native assets (Ether and Tron) through decentralized exchanges, and then laundered through a range of complex techniques including the use of automated software programs, mixers and cross-chain swaps."

Inside North Korea's Crypto Heists: $200M in Crypto Stolen in 2023; Over $2B in the Last Five Years | TRM Insights

www.trmlabs.com

 

[Folsom]

He also said recently the bearish case for BTC is 3 million lol.

I do not see any issue getting there (but not this cycle). There just is not enough BTC to go around. I hate calling it "gold" but the idea is true even if gold paradigms are false - it does appreciate as a store of wealth over time very effectively due to scarcity from many aspects.

P.S. Gold is the most annoying thing ever. No one talking about it has ever looked at charts of it or researched how much of it just sits around with no one bothering to mine it.

 

[Folsom]

I don't have a dog in this but regarding crypto security seems like there are holes including Bitcoin

An excerpt from the article link below:

"The hackers drained victims’ wallets on the Ethereum, Tron, Bitcoin, XRP, DOGE, Stellar, and Litecoin blockchains, and sent funds to freshly created addresses under their control. ERC-20 and TRC-20 tokens were swapped to native assets (Ether and Tron) through decentralized exchanges, and then laundered through a range of complex techniques including the use of automated software programs, mixers and cross-chain swaps."

Inside North Korea's Crypto Heists: $200M in Crypto Stolen in 2023; Over $2B in the Last Five Years | TRM Insights

www.trmlabs.com

Nothing about that indicates any problems with holes in security for Bitcoin. This is like leaving a safe with the key on your lawn and when someone takes it with your money inside you complain the safe is ineffective. You can argue about the lawn all day and how it was temporary or you found out your fence was not tall enough etc, but none of it has anything to do with the safe itself in any way what so ever.

The cryptoverse is still the wild west in many ways but if you put anything into a cold wallet no one on planet earth can touch it. It will take time for more hardened security around the blockchains to be up to snuff but the beauty is that these things are being independently developed in many ways, collaboratively around the globe.

 

[Ron Resnick]

Gold is the most annoying thing ever.

I don't know what this means.

No one talking about it has ever looked at charts of it or researched how much of it just sits around with no one bothering to mine it.

Gold looks to me like it has done pretty well for itself. Someone must like it for something.

 

[Folsom]

I don't know what this means.


Gold looks to me like it has done pretty well for itself. Someone must like it for something.

View attachment 134803

Really, because I see basically a decade gap of being trapped in lack of profit. Maybe it is just a perspective based on how many decades you have been alive.

The issue is there are gold puffers left and right telling you it will be the answer to all your investing woes and is completely resistant to changes in market yada yada yada. The liquidity of something that can take a decade slump when markets are basically only going up is not something I would be interested in. Real estate is more liquid than that.

Now if you bought gold when you got your first job I am sure you did very well, but that is, I believe, longer than my entire life. So you can be very appreciative of it but realistically no one wants to be faced with putting off retirement for a decade to not take a loss, yet every weirdo attached to some weird political non-following is raging on about their gold affiliate code. And worse yet common people preach the virtues of it all day long, which is merely secondary information from affiliate peddlers or maybe a coin collector.