I agree that inflation and investment are not the panacea that they are made out to be, especially where retirement funds are concerned. I disagree that it logically follows that an inherently limited currency, that allows folks to accumulate value and prosper from others labour simply by holding, is a good thing.
A stable currency does sound rather nice. BTC is not it.
It doesn't mean that all the coins will though, does it, it means that trades for that many coins are taking place each day. If you mean that trades equivalent to the entire supply will take place, sure.
"And if they only use a little bit at a time, their relative economic power is relatively minimal."
Not if those little bits keep growing, as they must if the bitcoin economy is going to grow. No, anyone who can acquire a few BTC now can grab them and then become a burden on productive society for the rest of their lives, if it's going to take off.
We're already nearly at the halfway point of BTC generation. Everyone likes to laugh at the greek economy at the moment, but lets look at what happens if the BTC economy rises to the size of that one - all of a sudden the value of 1BTC has to increase by a factor of around 4000 (based on greek GDP of around 200 billion, current BTC market cap of around 50 million). Major incentive to hoard and then leech, if you think BTC has any chance at all of getting there.
The effect? A whole bunch of people get rich off the labour of others because of the way BTC is structured. This is not a feature of a currency I'm interested in participating in.
They could hoard everything they can grasp and keep it until some rainy day when they just want to Ruin Everything, and then let large amounts of it go all at once. But they won't earn any money ("power") doing this as the currency crashes, so why bother worrying about it any more than we worry about terrorists or earthquakes or tornados any other unpredictable thing that we cannot control?
Who's worrying? I'm not participating in a currency that has this as a real possibility, especially when one guy ('Satoshi') may hold around 8% of the currency supply.
It is pretty much irrelevant. The majority of those 40k coins are most likely just being passed round and round between the same few traders. I'd be more interested in the volume of BTC and dollars transferred to/from MtGox. Either way, it's pretty sad if the only major activity anyone can really point to is an exchange, or the Silk Road.
If you're trying to say that BTC is much like gold, I don't disagree, I just think that anything with an inherently limited supply is a poor choice to run an economy on.
Gold based economies fail for a variety of reasons, one of which is that there is a limited amount of gold. Such a system always favours those who already have gold. As economic activity grows these folks can then sit back and watch their stash grow in value, effectively gaining purchasing power from the work of other people.
With dollars, you can increase the supply as economic activity grows. If you do it in an inflation-neutral way you can even keep the purchasing power of dollars stable over time in such a manner that doesn't enrich those that hoard dollars off the back of those that are actually generating wealth.
From the sublime to the ridiculous. First there's the largest example of bitcoin commerce that anyone can point to (MtGox) that's apparently dealing with 40k coins on a daily basis (big whoop!), and then there's the 'total bitcoins moved' figure you give. this figure is also meaningless as it could/can be people just moving stuff around, and is is amplified by things like the 'change' mechanism.
"This is a big advantage to bitcoin; no ridiculous transaction fees."
Define ridiculous. There absolutely are transaction fees on bitcoin transactions. These will likely have to rise in future if you want a decent transaction confirmation speed, in order to finance the continuation of mining in the face of decreasing returns. Remeber - without 'miners' there is no network security.
And this ignores the fact that in order to get funds in and out of the system there are multiple levels of fees and delays all over the place.
So now you can see that MTGox is nowhere even close being "the main financial activity in bitcoin." In fact, the exchanges make only a small percentage of the total number of transactions, and has been growing non-stop.
Show me, show me what sizeable activity there is other than Gox (and of course the Silk road).
"The number of bitcoins increases by 30-50 thousand every day, so guess what that means? If your peanut-sized brain was able to deduce that adding bitcoins every day means inflation, you guessed right! Bitcoin is an inflationary currency (until 2021)."
Raw increase in supply does not make an inflationary currency. You may also have missed the fact that inflation controlled by external factors (such as economic and population growth) is the desirable state, not just arbitrary inflation regardless.
Also you btc'ers can't have it both ways - crow about the evils of inflation and then, when called on it, say 'hey look! inflation!'
The way people like you pop on here and start spewing bullshit about bitcoin makes me wonder if you aren't anything more than a fucking sock-puppet for the banksters.
Ah yes, of course, anyone who disagrees with you must be in the pay of $(Big Evil).
Never mind that I understand the whole thing better than you, no, I *must* be a paid shill because you, your obsession with BTC and your radical, rebellious, obviously brilliant take on economics are the only possible right in the world.
Here's the skinny, bub - bitcoin isn't big enough, useful enough, or promising enough to be a threat to anything.
Well, taht's not really an indicator of anything right now, we're in Web Bubble 2.0. And the businesses? I see exchanges, many of which fold after either hacks or just failing to become profitable.
BTC is an amusing experiment, but it has so many flaws built right into the design that it's nothing more than that - an interesting experiment in crypto-currency with few real world applications.
Though of course because it's a currency based on mutually agreed value, instead of a commodity in itself, you would have to do this without destroying confidence in the whole thing. A tricky balance to strike methinks...
40k? So what? 40k coins traded daily is irrelevant noise, especially if it's often the same coins going round and round and round.
AFAICT Gox is the not only the largest BTC exchange, but the main financial activity in bitcoin, dwarfing any/all other use. I'd be fascinated if you had data to the contrary.
Also note that the deflationary argument becomes more relevant as the size of the bitcoin economy grows. I see no convincing data that there is a bitcoin economy outside of the exchanges, let alone that it's a growing one.
This is also one of the main flaws in bitcoin. There are a set amount, therefore there must be deflation if it ever takes off. Deflation encourages hoarding because money is likely worth more tomorrow than today. Hoarding encourages further deflation, and we go round.
A small inflationary pressure encourages use, rather than hoarding, of money, and helps grow economic activity. Furthermore, having a central control on currency allows the adjustment of the amount of money to ensure there is enough of it to keep the economy rolling.
A bitcoin-based county-sized economy would be as much a failure as the old gold-based ones were. You, as a hoarder, may feel that inflation is theft. I, as a realist, see moderate inflation as essential.
Just sit back, drop another Xanax and keep blindly handing money to the people that are actively trying to screw us because, hey, it's unavaoidable, right?
You can take it that I disagree with your view of things.
It's supposedly a show that supposedly showcases the cops in situations where it should be easy to come across as the both the bigger man and the good guy.
You know what I see about 50% of the time when I flick past it on the tv? Some cop acting like a complete dick to someone for no reason at all.
If this is positive propaganda for the police in the US then I dread to think what it's like when you come across a US cop having a bad day.
Bittorrent is a protocol. You could conceivably shut down the 'bad' trackers, clients, whatever and leave the rest in place. Bittorrent also does not protect its users from detection, particularly where legit content is being trafficked.
Freenet and Tor are specific networks/services, not just protocols, that do protect their users from detection. These things are different.
BTW, who (other than the FBI) is clamouring to shut them down? People here are just saying they're not going to take part.
Really? How did you determine that? Do you think the dissidents using it make their Freenet URLs public?
Well, given it's an anonymous publishing medium, and the idea is to provide information accessible to all but in a way that can't be traced... yeah, pretty much. Maybe they don't always though, sure.
What are you talking about?
This, from your previous post -
Every sufficiently useful and/or popular tool will be used for crime at some point.
I didn't mention illegality or criminality, I have no objections to (for instance) the Silk Road, or the free circulation of dissident material, even those these activities may be criminal under various laws in various jurisdictions. I am not concerned with the law here, I don't give much of a crap about the law.
I feel that providing infrastructure for tor or freenet, right now, is providing a substantial aid to those that wish to anonymously transfer CP. But for all that, I feel more strongly that I don't wish to provide the conduits for sickos to peddle CP, particularly in such an untraceable way. If your moral scale weighs the balance of these things differently, good for you, I haven't said "it should be banned!" or "nobody should be allowed to do this!", I'm just saying I'm not going to help.
Your other examples don't hold because these things are not systems designed to specifically to hide the users/publishers. If I ran a telephone network and became aware of its use for moving CP around the place I would certainly make moves to shut down those doing it, similarly for an ISP or a shipping network. The camera company one is not the same sort of thing, IMHO, as it's not a comms conduit making ongoing use of infrastructure, just a tool. Perhaps if a camera retailer became aware that an individual was purchasing kit to perpetrate CP they would also refuse to sell to them and report them to the cops...
Freenet and Tor specifically disallow you seeing what's flowing through or being stored on your node. This is a useful feature for those that support the unadulterated free-flow of information. For those of us that don't wish to have our resources used for things we find abhorrent it is the feature which stops us from participating.
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I agree that inflation and investment are not the panacea that they are made out to be, especially where retirement funds are concerned. I disagree that it logically follows that an inherently limited currency, that allows folks to accumulate value and prosper from others labour simply by holding, is a good thing.
A stable currency does sound rather nice. BTC is not it.
I have no problem with this.
I don't see them as a viable large-scale currency. If you want to use them as an artificially scarce resource/commodity to trade, go for it.
It doesn't mean that all the coins will though, does it, it means that trades for that many coins are taking place each day. If you mean that trades equivalent to the entire supply will take place, sure.
"And if they only use a little bit at a time, their relative economic power is relatively minimal."
Not if those little bits keep growing, as they must if the bitcoin economy is going to grow. No, anyone who can acquire a few BTC now can grab them and then become a burden on productive society for the rest of their lives, if it's going to take off.
We're already nearly at the halfway point of BTC generation. Everyone likes to laugh at the greek economy at the moment, but lets look at what happens if the BTC economy rises to the size of that one - all of a sudden the value of 1BTC has to increase by a factor of around 4000 (based on greek GDP of around 200 billion, current BTC market cap of around 50 million). Major incentive to hoard and then leech, if you think BTC has any chance at all of getting there.
The effect? A whole bunch of people get rich off the labour of others because of the way BTC is structured. This is not a feature of a currency I'm interested in participating in.
Who's worrying? I'm not participating in a currency that has this as a real possibility, especially when one guy ('Satoshi') may hold around 8% of the currency supply.
It is pretty much irrelevant. The majority of those 40k coins are most likely just being passed round and round between the same few traders. I'd be more interested in the volume of BTC and dollars transferred to/from MtGox. Either way, it's pretty sad if the only major activity anyone can really point to is an exchange, or the Silk Road.
Err, I'm not sure where you're going with this.
If you're trying to say that BTC is much like gold, I don't disagree, I just think that anything with an inherently limited supply is a poor choice to run an economy on.
By hoard I mean get in early, snap up as large a percentage of the currency as possible, and sit on it.
Savings in banks can be, and are, invested in other ventures. A bitcoin wallet is the equivalent of stuffing cash into a mattress.
FYI - both dollars and bitcoin are just printed up out of thin air.
Gold based economies fail for a variety of reasons, one of which is that there is a limited amount of gold. Such a system always favours those who already have gold. As economic activity grows these folks can then sit back and watch their stash grow in value, effectively gaining purchasing power from the work of other people.
With dollars, you can increase the supply as economic activity grows. If you do it in an inflation-neutral way you can even keep the purchasing power of dollars stable over time in such a manner that doesn't enrich those that hoard dollars off the back of those that are actually generating wealth.
From the sublime to the ridiculous. First there's the largest example of bitcoin commerce that anyone can point to (MtGox) that's apparently dealing with 40k coins on a daily basis (big whoop!), and then there's the 'total bitcoins moved' figure you give. this figure is also meaningless as it could/can be people just moving stuff around, and is is amplified by things like the 'change' mechanism.
Define ridiculous.
There absolutely are transaction fees on bitcoin transactions. These will likely have to rise in future if you want a decent transaction confirmation speed, in order to finance the continuation of mining in the face of decreasing returns. Remeber - without 'miners' there is no network security.
And this ignores the fact that in order to get funds in and out of the system there are multiple levels of fees and delays all over the place.
Show me, show me what sizeable activity there is other than Gox (and of course the Silk road).
Raw increase in supply does not make an inflationary currency. You may also have missed the fact that inflation controlled by external factors (such as economic and population growth) is the desirable state, not just arbitrary inflation regardless.
Also you btc'ers can't have it both ways - crow about the evils of inflation and then, when called on it, say 'hey look! inflation!'
Ah yes, of course, anyone who disagrees with you must be in the pay of $(Big Evil).
Never mind that I understand the whole thing better than you, no, I *must* be a paid shill because you, your obsession with BTC and your radical, rebellious, obviously brilliant take on economics are the only possible right in the world.
Here's the skinny, bub - bitcoin isn't big enough, useful enough, or promising enough to be a threat to anything.
Millions of VC Capital?
Well, taht's not really an indicator of anything right now, we're in Web Bubble 2.0. And the businesses? I see exchanges, many of which fold after either hacks or just failing to become profitable.
BTC is an amusing experiment, but it has so many flaws built right into the design that it's nothing more than that - an interesting experiment in crypto-currency with few real world applications.
Ah, the 'goldfinger' gambit! I like it.
Though of course because it's a currency based on mutually agreed value, instead of a commodity in itself, you would have to do this without destroying confidence in the whole thing. A tricky balance to strike methinks...
If the money supply is hoarded then more and more economic power goes to the hoarders, who are doing nothing but sitting on it.
If you wish to reward inactivity then be my guest. This is not a system I feel I can endorse.
40k? So what? 40k coins traded daily is irrelevant noise, especially if it's often the same coins going round and round and round.
AFAICT Gox is the not only the largest BTC exchange, but the main financial activity in bitcoin, dwarfing any/all other use. I'd be fascinated if you had data to the contrary.
Also note that the deflationary argument becomes more relevant as the size of the bitcoin economy grows. I see no convincing data that there is a bitcoin economy outside of the exchanges, let alone that it's a growing one.
Oh for god's sake....
This is also one of the main flaws in bitcoin. There are a set amount, therefore there must be deflation if it ever takes off. Deflation encourages hoarding because money is likely worth more tomorrow than today. Hoarding encourages further deflation, and we go round.
A small inflationary pressure encourages use, rather than hoarding, of money, and helps grow economic activity. Furthermore, having a central control on currency allows the adjustment of the amount of money to ensure there is enough of it to keep the economy rolling.
A bitcoin-based county-sized economy would be as much a failure as the old gold-based ones were. You, as a hoarder, may feel that inflation is theft. I, as a realist, see moderate inflation as essential.
So we shouldn't even try, right?
Just sit back, drop another Xanax and keep blindly handing money to the people that are actively trying to screw us because, hey, it's unavaoidable, right?
You can take it that I disagree with your view of things.
It's supposedly a show that supposedly showcases the cops in situations where it should be easy to come across as the both the bigger man and the good guy.
You know what I see about 50% of the time when I flick past it on the tv? Some cop acting like a complete dick to someone for no reason at all.
If this is positive propaganda for the police in the US then I dread to think what it's like when you come across a US cop having a bad day.
Always trying to get us to sleep more, they only want you to sleep more so they can keep making their fat profits at your expense.
Wake up sheeple!
Completely failed at reading comprehension.
Did you read the part where I don't click links to child porn?
The lines are already arbitrary.
You do not have absolute freedom of expression now, even if (*gasp*) you live in the US. How 'bout them defamation laws?
For looking at freenet portal pages and noticing most of the links were for child porn pages?
You don't think I actually visited the pages or viewed any images do you? Christ no, I've no interest in that.
Bittorrent is a protocol. You could conceivably shut down the 'bad' trackers, clients, whatever and leave the rest in place. Bittorrent also does not protect its users from detection, particularly where legit content is being trafficked.
Freenet and Tor are specific networks/services, not just protocols, that do protect their users from detection. These things are different.
BTW, who (other than the FBI) is clamouring to shut them down? People here are just saying they're not going to take part.
Well, given it's an anonymous publishing medium, and the idea is to provide information accessible to all but in a way that can't be traced... yeah, pretty much. Maybe they don't always though, sure.
This, from your previous post -
I didn't mention illegality or criminality, I have no objections to (for instance) the Silk Road, or the free circulation of dissident material, even those these activities may be criminal under various laws in various jurisdictions. I am not concerned with the law here, I don't give much of a crap about the law.
I feel that providing infrastructure for tor or freenet, right now, is providing a substantial aid to those that wish to anonymously transfer CP. But for all that, I feel more strongly that I don't wish to provide the conduits for sickos to peddle CP, particularly in such an untraceable way. If your moral scale weighs the balance of these things differently, good for you, I haven't said "it should be banned!" or "nobody should be allowed to do this!", I'm just saying I'm not going to help.
Your other examples don't hold because these things are not systems designed to specifically to hide the users/publishers. If I ran a telephone network and became aware of its use for moving CP around the place I would certainly make moves to shut down those doing it, similarly for an ISP or a shipping network. The camera company one is not the same sort of thing, IMHO, as it's not a comms conduit making ongoing use of infrastructure, just a tool. Perhaps if a camera retailer became aware that an individual was purchasing kit to perpetrate CP they would also refuse to sell to them and report them to the cops...
Freenet and Tor specifically disallow you seeing what's flowing through or being stored on your node. This is a useful feature for those that support the unadulterated free-flow of information. For those of us that don't wish to have our resources used for things we find abhorrent it is the feature which stops us from participating.
Who said it was evil? Who said it should be banned?
I said that I cannot, in good conscience, run a node.
Shush now.
The predominant use of freenet was untraceable child porn last time I looked.
And crime is not the issue. Unlike you, I don't confuse morality and legality.
"Are there boundaries to that statement?"
Of course there are. just like all generalisations are wrong, including that one I just made.