Bitcoin discussion and news

[mwgdrwg]

Poll is up:

Cryptocurrency. Bitcoin, Litecoin etc. - do you have any?

 

[bimble]

interestingly if you type 'tulip mania' into google the second suggestion is tulip mania bitcoin.



it's not a massive buy-in, just the opposite, it's still moving at trivially low levels, only 300,000 transactions per day worldwide.

what makes that remarkable is the insanely high power consumption

But how many of those transactions are new people buying in? I'd guess (based on not much admittedly) most of them are.

 

[camouflage]

It looks to me like we're in the tulip mania phase, there are adverts on the underground and in the DM now telling everyone to buy bitcoin, I think it'll burst spectacularly within a couple of years and be worth peanuts.

Tulip industry is worth billions, i say buy the dip.

(I dont really, this is not financial advice, buy a tulip if you like tulips, or grow one.... whatever).

 

[bimble]

Tulip industry is worth billions, i say buy the dip.

At its peak one tulip bulb was 'worth' more than 5 average houses. You can't even eat tulips but at least they are pretty.

 

[Idaho]

I think you can eat tulip bulbs.

 

[rutabowa]

You can't eat bitcoins.
You can eat coins, but they have no real nutrition

 

[camouflage]

I'd never watched any of Andreas Andropolous(?)'s talks before, so I gave it a try and found this one interesting. This is what cryptopolitics is really about in my opinion, not all that Mises/Libertard/Sound-Money mumbo-jumbo. Not saying I agree with everything (it could be argued he contradicts himself a couple of times) but- a good talk nonetheless. Would be interested to see what you guys make of it- not much I bet:



I just watched Andreas's bit (about an hour an a half iirc), not the whole hours-an-hours worth. eta: starts at about 01:44:00, also the guy in the image above isn't him.

 

[bimble]

Antonopoulos is the one I was advised to listen to to get an understanding of what its all about (by the evangelist I met who made it all sound so revolutionary and exciting, and who has also invested his parents pensions in btc for them as a true believer). Been meaning to get round to it but he sent me this 3 hour podcast:

 

[camouflage]

Antonopoulos is the one I was advised to listen to to get an understanding of what its all about (by the evangelist I met who made it all sound so revolutionary and exciting). Been meaning to get round to it but he sent me this 3 hour podcast:

Yup, me too on the "been meaning to get round to it" front. Glad I did on the one I posted last night so will probably give some of his other stuff a look too. Probably a podcast next time though, it's easier when commuting or doing the dishes etc, and I got hungry ears in podcast/audiobook terms.

 

[bimble]

I just know it’s not money.

Can you say in simple terms why you think its not money? Its both a medium of exchange & a store of value (however volatile) so what's the missing bit that makes it not qualify as money?

 

[kabbes]

I'd never watched any of Andreas Andropolous(?)'s talks before, so I gave it a try and found this one interesting. This is what cryptopolitics is really about in my opinion, not all that Mises/Libertard/Sound-Money mumbo-jumbo. Not saying I agree with everything (it could be argued he contradicts himself a couple of times) but- a good talk nonetheless. Would be interested to see what you guys make of it- not much I bet:



I just watched Andreas's bit (about an hour an a half iirc), not the whole hours-an-hours worth. eta: starts at about 01:44:00, also the guy in the image above isn't him.

This is exactly the same libertarian nonsense that Golumbia deals with in his book. It's truly appalling. I've no doubt he enjoys preaching to the converted but he wouldn't last two minutes with somebody that knows what they are talking about.

This guy is an IT security expert and yet people somehow seem to think that he is a combination of macroeconomist and financial governance expert. But he's talking absolute bollocks. He starts off talking about "science" with relation to money laundering, which is nonsense by itself, and then justifies himself with a series of anecdotes, merely assuring us that what he is saying is true on a grand scale. He then says that the rules that are in place are "worse than useless" apparently simply because they aren't perfect. He claims that governments are engaging in money laundering, which makes me wonder what the fuck he even means by money laundering. He keeps using that word but I don't think it means what he thinks it means.

If he really wants to talk about money laundering, he needs to define it, focus on the governance structures that are in place to prevent and identify how and why these are flawed. His solution is just to get rid of all the governance, as if that's somehow going to fix the problem.

Then he just goes on to give the same "oh everybody is watching us" stuff that is the basis of all libertarian paranoia.

He's also very fond of strawmen. Not just the strawmen of financial governance, but in his whole "this is why people object to bitcoin" spiel. He focuses on objections based around surveillance and how much he hates surveillance, like all good libertarians. He totally ignores explorations of the fundamental structure of bitcoin not being money, let alone the its power problems, and he doesn't touch issues like taxation, no doubt because he hates taxation!

So he starts off talking about how objections to bitcoin all come down to the moral, but 20 minutes in, ALL his arguments in favour of it come down to a moral preference for untraceability. And despite his claims that current anti money laundering governance has no science behind it, he offers literally nothing in evidence for how bitcoin would be better. It's all ideological.

20 minutes in, I gave up. It's physically painful to listen to and I couldn't stand it any more.

 

[kabbes]

Can you say in simple terms why you think its not money? Its both a medium of exchange & a store of value (however volatile) so what's the missing bit that makes it not qualify as money?

It's all in what I quoted earlier.

It's not a unit of account. What prices are pegged to bitcoin?
It's not a store of value. Things that are wildly volatile are not stores of value.
Fundamentally, it just isn't pegged to any kind of economic activity.

That's the simple terms. If you want further explanation, just read the paragraphs I quoted earlier. If there is something that isn't self-explanatory in those paragraphs, ask about it. Even better, go back to the source book, which describes it more fully. The book in full is linked to on this thread. I'm not going to attempt to just rephrase an already perfectly good explanation, though.

 

[camouflage]

This is exactly the same libertarian nonsense that Golumbia deals with in his book. It's truly appalling. I've no doubt he enjoys preaching to the converted but he wouldn't last two minutes with somebody that knows what they are talking about.

This guy is an IT security expert and yet people somehow seem to think that he is a combination of macroeconomist and financial governance expert. But he's talking absolute bollocks. He starts off talking about "science" with relation to money laundering, which is nonsense by itself, and then justifies himself with a series of anecdotes, merely assuring us that what he is saying is true on a grand scale. He then says that the rules that are in place are "worse than useless" apparently simply because they aren't perfect. He claims that governments are engaging in money laundering, which makes me wonder what the fuck he even means by money laundering. He keeps using that word but I don't think it means what he thinks it means.

If he really wants to talk about money laundering, he needs to define it, focus on the governance structures that are in place to prevent and identify how and why these are flawed. His solution is just to get rid of all the governance, as if that's somehow going to fix the problem.

Then he just goes on to give the same "oh everybody is watching us" stuff that is the basis of all libertarian paranoia.

He's also very fond of strawmen. Not just the strawmen of financial governance, but in his whole "this is why people object to bitcoin" spiel. He focuses on objections based around surveillance and how much he hates surveillance, like all good libertarians. He totally ignores explorations of the fundamental structure of bitcoin not being money, let alone the its power problems, and he doesn't touch issues like taxation, no doubt because he hates taxation!

So he starts off talking about how objections to bitcoin all come do the moral, but 20 minutes in, ALL his arguments in favour of it come down to a moral preference for untraceability. And despite his claims that current anti money laundering governance has no science behind it, he offers literally nothing in evidence for how bitcoin would be better. It's all ideological.

20 minutes in, I gave up. It's physically painful to listen to and I couldn't stand it any more.

I think the whole untraceability thing is way overblown myself.

 

[mauvais]

It's all in what I quoted earlier.

It's not a unit of account. What prices are pegged to bitcoin?
It's not a store of value. Things that are wildly volatile are not stores of value.
Fundamentally, it just isn't pegged to any kind of economic activity.

We'll see this in action soon I think, now that hedge funds are into fun instruments like bitcoin futures.

Hot market tip: never invest in anything that doesn't have a tangible, boiled-down value and where bigger boys can run rings around you should they desire. All of that numpty individual speculator money is going to flow, with laughable ease, to the seasoned professionals.

 

[yield]

Bitcoin Bubble Makes Dot-Com Look Rational
Nov 27, 2017

Even compared with some extreme bubbles, bitcoins, which continued its climb toward $10,000 Monday afternoon, look bloated.

Take dot-com stocks, which were the biggest bubble of the past few decades, and likely the largest in stock market history. At the height of the dot-com stock bubble, the technology-heavy Nasdaq stock index had a price-to-earnings ratio of 175. In the past year, bitcoins have generated transaction fees of nearly $219 million. And at $9,600 a piece, the total value of all bitcoins -- their market cap -- now tops $155 billion. That gives bitcoins the equivalent of a trailing P/E ratio of 708. That means based on valuation, bitcoins are four times more expensive than dot-com stocks were at the height of their bubble.

Effectively negative interest rates with quantitative easing were designed to create bubbles. Crazy levels of exuberance.

 

[yield]

We'll see this in action soon I think, now that hedge funds are into fun instruments like bitcoin futures.

Hot market tip: never invest in anything that doesn't have a tangible, boiled-down value and where bigger boys can run rings around you should they desire. All of that numpty individual speculator money is going to flow, with laughable ease, to the seasoned professionals.

UBS won't touch it.
The World’s Biggest Wealth Manager Won’t Touch Bitcoin

 

[phillm]

Chatting with some financial tech geeks at a party last weekend - consensus was it's tulips for our age and time to bail out if you have ridden the wave before it all turns to zeros. I remember the landlord of the Hobgoblin in New Cross convinced his mum to put her life savings into some dot.com fancy at the turn of the century. She lost it all. There will be similar mugs this time no doubt.

Why the bitcoin boom will end in tears

 

[cybershot]

I'm seeing facebook ads and all sorts recently that 'NOW' is the time to invest in bitcoin.

Which surely means the opposite as people with no clue to the background will just jump in and fuck it all up.

 

[newbie]

I'm seeing facebook ads and all sorts recently that 'NOW' is the time to invest in bitcoin.

Which surely means the opposite as people with no clue to the background will just jump in and fuck it all up.

hopefully so comprehesively it never rises again.

 

[mwgdrwg]

hopefully so comprehesively it never rises again.

Why do you want Bitcoin to fail?

 

[bimble]

The boyfriend told me yesterday that he's done a 'short' on btc, betting that it'll crash within 6 months. He thinks its basically a pyramid scheme and ripe to collapse. I'm sticking with the do nothing method.

 

[ffsear]

This is where is gets worrying...

'Buy bitcoin with credit card' is on the rise on Google, sparking bubble fears

 

[DotCommunist]

cash out now you fool! its like the man at the end of the monty python sketch who eats just one waffer thin mint after a bloating meal and explodes.

 

[rekil]

A 10 hour long video?

Nein danke loon.

 

[phillm]

"It's different this time" - it is never is. A fool and his (crypto) money are soon parted.

 

[DotCommunist]

he may be worth 200mill but his last names wee

 

[mauvais]

The boyfriend told me yesterday that he's done a 'short' on btc, betting that it'll crash within 6 months. He thinks its basically a pyramid scheme and ripe to collapse. I'm sticking with the do nothing method.

The trouble with irrationality is you never know how long it might run for. If you could afford to prop up an infinite short while you humour further madness, great, but most people can't and so get burnt trying. Better to stay out indeed.

 

[bimble]

The state of it. These are just a couple of the ads that i saw recently, there are a lot of people going to get ripped off, not even by btc itself but by whoever is placing these adverts / selling these schemes.

 

[mauvais]

That's a variant of longstanding get-rich-quick enticements to begin copycat day trading, dabbling in CFDs, etc.

 

[bimble]

I don't understand what any of that means mauvais (making me a perfect bubble-inflating customer for bitcoin, probably). Whatever happens the people who got in at the very beginning (small group of tech-boys) will win at the expense of people signing up to things like the above though, making it at least partly a pyramid scheme.