No commodity that constantly rises in value can be used as a currency. Mark those words.
In the medieval pre-technology world, gold made a perfectly good currency because its value was easily recognizable and only a small amount of new gold was physically mined per year, making the 'money supply' in gold close to constant. Because gold traded for the same amount of Stuff year after year, gold coins circulated universally in the same way that Euros and dollars do today.
But when technology started to create new wealth at a faster rate than the gold supply grew, the limited supply of gold coins was bid up in price and because of that became hoarded and disappeared from circulation. In the US, an argument over whether to add silver to gold as a basis for the dollar to increase the money supply occupied the entire nineteenth century as the country industrialized. Eventually the precious metal backing for the dollar was replaced by fiat as more money was needed, to allow it to continually circulate in the economy.
The pressure to add new cryptocurrencies to Bitcoin to allow enough money supply for coin to circulate is the bimetallism debate all over again. When fiat money replaced metals, at least metals endured as a hoarded investment. Crypto, on the other hand, is nothing but a magic spell cast in bits. It has value only to the extent that you trust whatever magician is promoting it.
What social phenomenon preceded Uber that enabled it? Unemployment? If that's the answer, then this pattern predicts everything and thereby predicts nothing.
People leaving restaurants and having to stand in the rain yelling at cars to flag down medallion cabs, and pondering, "There has to be a better way of doing this..."
Bitcoin is constantly disappointing its fans as a currency because the wildly fluctuating daily price dissuades merchants from using it. A currency is supposed to buy about the same today as it did yesterday. Long-term changes in value are acceptable to currency users so long as the day-to-day fluctuations are reasonable.
Other cryptos attract some merchant interest in their early stages, when new coins are easy to mint. But as soon as the mining effort required starts ramping up, users begin hoarding the coin because it's "going up." As soon as his happens, merchants stop taking it as currency.
Now for the big picture: after this happens to Bitcoin and then the next two or so popular replacements, merchants initially interested in crypto find themselves right back where they started: an endless proliferation of new currencies whose value is God knows what. Why bother with crypto for transactions when there is no single standard that works well and has a constant value?
Graphics card have not been able to mine bitcoin for many years. GPUs are only able to mine some alternative cryptocurrencies. And as these "alts" get popular they sometimes follow the bitcoin path and end up being mined by ASIC (application specific integrated circuit) hardware. GPU mining is relatively insignificant compared to bitcoin mining.
It's true that because the amount of work required to mine new coins in BTC has already passed the capabilities of graphics cards, the largest mining operations have bypassed them and gone to ASICs. This has caused graphics cards to start coming back onto the market even though the crypto crash in only in its early stages.
But the very fact that the number of different cryptocurrencies is proliferating tells us that the basic idea does not work. As each currency smashes into its supply limit, people who want to use crypto as money have to invent a new coin, and then teh next new coin, and then the next. Meanwhile, the holders of each coin think they can use their digital hoard as an "investment."
What they don't realize is that although each cryptocurrency is in limited supply, the set of all coins minted in all cryptos is expanding like a mad puff of smoke. The cryptocurrency world is about to go Zimbabwe.
Bitcoin is as fake as the economy it is based ion.
Bitcoin is fake BECAUSE it is not based on any economy!
For any currency that is based on an economy ("fiat currency") , its value as a currency is as good as its central bank is good at figuring out the total value, month after month, of the goods and services that currency trades for and adjusting the money supply to match. Bitcoin is not working as a currency because now that all coins that are mineable with realistically available amounts of energy have already been mined, its supply has become fixed. This has caused it to disappear from circulation as people use it as a virtual investment rather than a currency.
After the upcoming cryptocurrency crash, small energy sources all over the place will be freed up for local use. Graphics cards are already becoming available again.
A more effective way for China to get rid of cryptocurrency is to leave it alone and let it bubble and then crash. Not only will the crypto "threat" be eliminated, but there would be a lot of small new dams in rural areas that would now be useful to local communities.
The people who have been used to running news monopolies are, like medallion cabdrivers, unaccustomed to competition. Now that raw news about what the unvetted flood of refugees is doing in Europe is getting through around the mellowspeak filtration system of the traditional media, they are blaming...the new sources of information for allowing a diversity of news and opinion through.
Watch for the EU to respond by fining everyone who reports unofficial news or channels unofficial opinions.
Because the supply of gold increases at a percent or two a year with physical mining, the gold stock tracks the value of fungible goods more closely than any of the cryptocurrencies, causing its price to stay more in line with long-term reality. All cultures have accorded it value since the beginning of history, and because of its high density it is relatively easy to assay.
You haven't solved the problem of money supply, management of which is what central banks specifically do. The cryptocurrency experience proves that just holding the money supply constant is not a solution, because since the stock of goods that money exchanges for increases with time, a fixed money supply just turns your currency into a hoarded investment, no longer useful as money.
The value of every fiat currency depends on how well its central bank keeps the money supply in track with the stock of fungible assets in the national economy. Producing slightly too much currency every year, as our Federal Reserve does, is a better approach than any of the cryptocurrencies out there.
If we did reinstate net neutrality, would Facebook have to let Republicans post on it again? If so, this would mean a sea change in the support lineup for that policy.
Identify a species of open-ocean alga known to form floating mats, Sargassum for example, that flourishes in the presence of a nutrient like iron. Seed the Pacific gyre with large amounts of the plant and the nutrient. Because this part of the ocean is a gyre, currents sweeping floating material into one area. the nutrient should stay in one place long enough for the alga to form large mats that after they run out of nutrient will die, decay and sink to abyssal depths, taking atmospheric carbon and floating plastic down with it.
These are two energy-intensive isotopes that we have large stockpiles of as a byproduct of exploiting other, more immediately useful materials. Breeder reactors can convert these into new fission fuels. It all depends on how serious we want to get about this carbon problem.
In every case where we think we are seeing an exponential rise in some statistic about humanity, such as population growth, it turns out to be an S-curve as the rising value approaches some natural constraint. As we approach that constraint the economic cost of our activity rises, leading us back into balance again.
But in this application we don't need a bomb designed to crush tunnels deep underground. We need small, cheap concussion bombs that can be dropped close in to the worst parts of a fire, making it easier to contain. As a bonus, this would be a training exercise for military pilots.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, we have strict gun regulations by the way...
You also have strict truck regulations and strict knife regulations, which haven't helped either.
The problem is that Europe has terrorist insurgents and the US has lots of untreated crazy people.
We of the dark side are exaggerating the problem in Europe. The caliphate currently includes only a few cities: Malmö, Paris, London...
Did you not see Waterworld with Kevin Costner? It ALL winds up underwater.
If every bit of land-based ice melted, the oceans would rise about 160 ft.
No commodity that constantly rises in value can be used as a currency. Mark those words.
In the medieval pre-technology world, gold made a perfectly good currency because its value was easily recognizable and only a small amount of new gold was physically mined per year, making the 'money supply' in gold close to constant. Because gold traded for the same amount of Stuff year after year, gold coins circulated universally in the same way that Euros and dollars do today.
But when technology started to create new wealth at a faster rate than the gold supply grew, the limited supply of gold coins was bid up in price and because of that became hoarded and disappeared from circulation. In the US, an argument over whether to add silver to gold as a basis for the dollar to increase the money supply occupied the entire nineteenth century as the country industrialized. Eventually the precious metal backing for the dollar was replaced by fiat as more money was needed, to allow it to continually circulate in the economy.
The pressure to add new cryptocurrencies to Bitcoin to allow enough money supply for coin to circulate is the bimetallism debate all over again. When fiat money replaced metals, at least metals endured as a hoarded investment. Crypto, on the other hand, is nothing but a magic spell cast in bits. It has value only to the extent that you trust whatever magician is promoting it.
What social phenomenon preceded Uber that enabled it? Unemployment? If that's the answer, then this pattern predicts everything and thereby predicts nothing.
People leaving restaurants and having to stand in the rain yelling at cars to flag down medallion cabs, and pondering, "There has to be a better way of doing this..."
Bitcoin is constantly disappointing its fans as a currency because the wildly fluctuating daily price dissuades merchants from using it. A currency is supposed to buy about the same today as it did yesterday. Long-term changes in value are acceptable to currency users so long as the day-to-day fluctuations are reasonable.
Other cryptos attract some merchant interest in their early stages, when new coins are easy to mint. But as soon as the mining effort required starts ramping up, users begin hoarding the coin because it's "going up." As soon as his happens, merchants stop taking it as currency.
Now for the big picture: after this happens to Bitcoin and then the next two or so popular replacements, merchants initially interested in crypto find themselves right back where they started: an endless proliferation of new currencies whose value is God knows what. Why bother with crypto for transactions when there is no single standard that works well and has a constant value?
Graphics card have not been able to mine bitcoin for many years. GPUs are only able to mine some alternative cryptocurrencies. And as these "alts" get popular they sometimes follow the bitcoin path and end up being mined by ASIC (application specific integrated circuit) hardware. GPU mining is relatively insignificant compared to bitcoin mining.
It's true that because the amount of work required to mine new coins in BTC has already passed the capabilities of graphics cards, the largest mining operations have bypassed them and gone to ASICs. This has caused graphics cards to start coming back onto the market even though the crypto crash in only in its early stages.
But the very fact that the number of different cryptocurrencies is proliferating tells us that the basic idea does not work. As each currency smashes into its supply limit, people who want to use crypto as money have to invent a new coin, and then teh next new coin, and then the next. Meanwhile, the holders of each coin think they can use their digital hoard as an "investment."
What they don't realize is that although each cryptocurrency is in limited supply, the set of all coins minted in all cryptos is expanding like a mad puff of smoke. The cryptocurrency world is about to go Zimbabwe.
Bitcoin is as fake as the economy it is based ion.
Bitcoin is fake BECAUSE it is not based on any economy!
For any currency that is based on an economy ("fiat currency") , its value as a currency is as good as its central bank is good at figuring out the total value, month after month, of the goods and services that currency trades for and adjusting the money supply to match. Bitcoin is not working as a currency because now that all coins that are mineable with realistically available amounts of energy have already been mined, its supply has become fixed. This has caused it to disappear from circulation as people use it as a virtual investment rather than a currency.
After the upcoming cryptocurrency crash, small energy sources all over the place will be freed up for local use. Graphics cards are already becoming available again.
Don't blame me. I sold all of my bump stocks the Monday after Mandalay Bay. But because of my age I insisted on keeping my bump bonds.
A more effective way for China to get rid of cryptocurrency is to leave it alone and let it bubble and then crash. Not only will the crypto "threat" be eliminated, but there would be a lot of small new dams in rural areas that would now be useful to local communities.
...until either the next major study or the next 5 minor studies contradicts it.
The people who have been used to running news monopolies are, like medallion cabdrivers, unaccustomed to competition. Now that raw news about what the unvetted flood of refugees is doing in Europe is getting through around the mellowspeak filtration system of the traditional media, they are blaming...the new sources of information for allowing a diversity of news and opinion through.
Watch for the EU to respond by fining everyone who reports unofficial news or channels unofficial opinions.
Because the supply of gold increases at a percent or two a year with physical mining, the gold stock tracks the value of fungible goods more closely than any of the cryptocurrencies, causing its price to stay more in line with long-term reality. All cultures have accorded it value since the beginning of history, and because of its high density it is relatively easy to assay.
You haven't solved the problem of money supply, management of which is what central banks specifically do. The cryptocurrency experience proves that just holding the money supply constant is not a solution, because since the stock of goods that money exchanges for increases with time, a fixed money supply just turns your currency into a hoarded investment, no longer useful as money.
The value of every fiat currency depends on how well its central bank keeps the money supply in track with the stock of fungible assets in the national economy. Producing slightly too much currency every year, as our Federal Reserve does, is a better approach than any of the cryptocurrencies out there.
If we did reinstate net neutrality, would Facebook have to let Republicans post on it again? If so, this would mean a sea change in the support lineup for that policy.
So was this judge a bought-off Trump appointee or a technologically clueless Obama appointee?
"Unchosen:" Don't knock what could be the world's greatest title for a spaghetti Western.
Identify a species of open-ocean alga known to form floating mats, Sargassum for example, that flourishes in the presence of a nutrient like iron. Seed the Pacific gyre with large amounts of the plant and the nutrient. Because this part of the ocean is a gyre, currents sweeping floating material into one area. the nutrient should stay in one place long enough for the alga to form large mats that after they run out of nutrient will die, decay and sink to abyssal depths, taking atmospheric carbon and floating plastic down with it.
These are two energy-intensive isotopes that we have large stockpiles of as a byproduct of exploiting other, more immediately useful materials. Breeder reactors can convert these into new fission fuels. It all depends on how serious we want to get about this carbon problem.
In every case where we think we are seeing an exponential rise in some statistic about humanity, such as population growth, it turns out to be an S-curve as the rising value approaches some natural constraint. As we approach that constraint the economic cost of our activity rises, leading us back into balance again.
Apocalypse has a long history of never occurring.
The upside of taking Zircam is that no matter how much you overdose on iron supplements, you're not going to rust when it rains.
Oops - there goes the money they were hoping to pyramid by shorting Tesla.
Censorship of double-plus ungood political viewpoints and now sales restrictions imposed by MAFIAA. Facebook, you're headed for obscurity now.
But in this application we don't need a bomb designed to crush tunnels deep underground. We need small, cheap concussion bombs that can be dropped close in to the worst parts of a fire, making it easier to contain. As a bonus, this would be a training exercise for military pilots.