The Intergalactic Case for BTC...
Posted by CaptainKirk 2 weeks, 5 days ago to Economics
Again, I know that most of the Gulch don't believe in BTC as a form of Money.
And, personally, the fees are too high to use it as Currency (daily, and small transactions).
But, let's imagine we are invited into an intergalactic environment, with many different planets involved.
Also assume that Gold is super common on many of these planets, as are diamonds, but on some others there is none.
Since they are more advanced... They handled this by creating a form of Money on the BlockChain.
With something they call "Credits". And it turns out, you basically find an on-ramp by selling some of your "assets"
for some of these "Credits". And they are digitally held, just like BTC. But there is a KNOWN Limited supply, so
there is no counterfeiting. Used for a Century in these advanced cultures.
Everyone generally accepts Credits, and Everyone is also willing to barter.
The point is that BTC is the closest thing to a FAIR form of Money that could span a galaxy.
In fact, because of the differences in resources among Planets... It MIGHT start to make more sense.
Everyone thinks Gold, Silver. We know FIAT CASH is trash. The government counterfeits it, and calls it inflation.
It will have ZERO value in the future.
While Gold and Silver will always have some value. Imagine the nightmare of operating with a Species where Gold is as prevalent as LEAD for us. Gold would lose its lustre.
But you will NEVER run into a Species that basically "Prints Credits" for free (like our Federal Reserve does, and those
Magic Computers in the government have been doing).
JUST a thought exercise. Again, BTC is, to me, a very fair way to transaction.
Especially because it cannot be controlled.
And while it requires Electricity and the Internet... Any dealing with space aliens that does not involve electricity is simply a take over move anyways...
Curious if this puts a different perspective on it for anyone.
The Video is 5m long, and it started my thought process...
And, personally, the fees are too high to use it as Currency (daily, and small transactions).
But, let's imagine we are invited into an intergalactic environment, with many different planets involved.
Also assume that Gold is super common on many of these planets, as are diamonds, but on some others there is none.
Since they are more advanced... They handled this by creating a form of Money on the BlockChain.
With something they call "Credits". And it turns out, you basically find an on-ramp by selling some of your "assets"
for some of these "Credits". And they are digitally held, just like BTC. But there is a KNOWN Limited supply, so
there is no counterfeiting. Used for a Century in these advanced cultures.
Everyone generally accepts Credits, and Everyone is also willing to barter.
The point is that BTC is the closest thing to a FAIR form of Money that could span a galaxy.
In fact, because of the differences in resources among Planets... It MIGHT start to make more sense.
Everyone thinks Gold, Silver. We know FIAT CASH is trash. The government counterfeits it, and calls it inflation.
It will have ZERO value in the future.
While Gold and Silver will always have some value. Imagine the nightmare of operating with a Species where Gold is as prevalent as LEAD for us. Gold would lose its lustre.
But you will NEVER run into a Species that basically "Prints Credits" for free (like our Federal Reserve does, and those
Magic Computers in the government have been doing).
JUST a thought exercise. Again, BTC is, to me, a very fair way to transaction.
Especially because it cannot be controlled.
And while it requires Electricity and the Internet... Any dealing with space aliens that does not involve electricity is simply a take over move anyways...
Curious if this puts a different perspective on it for anyone.
The Video is 5m long, and it started my thought process...
That's the farthest thing from the truth that I have ever heard.
How is it fair when some idiot wastes his money on ownership of a dubious Internet token, forgets about it, then after a few years finds out he is a billionaire, 1000xing his money? He produced NOTHING. It is highly unfair to someone else who invested the same amount of money into something actually productive yet only doubled his money.
Also, it can't span a galaxy because, at those distances, double spend will become a major problem. I believe even at Mars-distance double spend is a problem. There is 1 block every 10 minutes on average. Communication delay to Mars is 13 minutes on average. You can't have miners on Mars because they will constantly fork the blockchain.
Finally, QUIT attacking the early investors in the technology. Wow, seems emotional.
Meanwhile, you are okay with Banksters (BIS,FED) being "above the law, and unaudited", so that they can PRINT as much as they want.
You do know that the company that provides the INK and printing technology to print MANY Countries PAPER... Only accepts GOLD as payment. I wonder why?
It's okay that FORD got rich making cars.
But people getting rich for solving a HUGE problem (trust-free digital transactions). NOT GOOD.
It's okay that Google got rich making DIGITAL SEARCH and DIGITAL Ads. But OMG...
It's okay that Amazon got rich DIGITIZING a storefront and perfecting delivery, driving costs down.
But someone creating a Libertarian form of money, that nobody is forced to use... If those investors got rich, it's unfair.
The question is always. Has it changed things? Will it change the world? Will BILLIONS of people use it? Will MILLIONS develop some level of freedom from the BANKS because of this?
Yeah... But let's not reward the original thinkers. Keep in mind, that guy who BOUGHT BTC years ago (like me), gave up REAL MONEY for something MANY said was FAKE and USELESS.
So, yes, some of this is a RISK/REWARD play.
Back when it was at 20K, I told people to buy SOME. Because the odds it goes to ZERO is far less than the odds it goes to 100K and that's a huge return... I know some listened. Nobody has to buy a whole one.
I also bought gold a long time ago. It doesn't do anything. But it hedged the inflation for me. But it PRODUCES NOTHING. Why should I be rewarded?
Secondary Note: Side-Ledgers are already a thing. So, the double spend won't happen, the transaction will go through "AmEx" so the vendor pays a small fee, the seller pays a small fee, the transaction is complete. And AmEx honors the transaction at the Galactic Level. Maybe "GalEx"
Don't leave your home planet without it.
Buying BTC at early stages is basically the same thing as getting into a ponzi scheme early, you get to cash out for lots of profit before the whole thing crashes. This isn't investment. Investment would be buying or paying for development of a tool to increase worker productivity.
I wouldn't say BTC is fully a ponzi scheme, only partially a ponzi scheme.
So, if I was to invest into BTC, I would NOT buy BTC. I would purchase stock of a company in the BTC ecosystem or provide private equity.
You guys BTC proponents have a warped understanding of reality.
I invest my money in various assets.
Either to hedge (against currencies, or inflation),
or to make gains, or to otherwise support things I think should be supported (a friend has a "real" charity that does good locally).
I invest in people by mentoring or educating them in areas I comprehend and feel qualified.
invest is an interesting word.
The time, energy, etc.
My point being. Once Communications move digitally (usually always faster than physical movement). The nature of the problem is basically solved. And we will create side-chains and other processes to handle this.
Or Guido from Galaxian Prime pays you a visit. LOL
But YOU can just create a TOKEN, for intergalatic use? (Is this tied to the blockchain? LOL).
Can it be counterfeited? And who am I to give YOUR catalytic converter for his goo-gaw, and he presents the token to you.
But what token. That's the actual point of the argument. Thank you for getting here.
Gold value is based on it's scarcity. It has a secondary use in jewelry and electronics.
But if someone shows up and can turn lead into gold. This value evaporates as they start dumping TONS of gold.
Explain what you would tie it to that MANY Cultures and Planets would think "Oh, that makes sense"...
And how does direct deposit work? You know for those foreigners who send money back home?
Scarcity is not value. Utility+scarcity may be. But, that's not the only property that money needs to have. Store of value requires no-to-very-low-depreciation.
Gold doesn't rust (no depreciation). Gold is useful for many application (utility). Finally, gold is scarce.
Scarcity only helps with practicality. You can much more easily hold and transport the same amount of capital in gold than in silver, for example. So, gold is more useful for large transactions.
If someone invents a way to turn lead into gold for cheaper than mining it, then gold price will fall, however, it will still be useful as money. The price might fall to the price level of silver. You will need bigger facilities to house it. Still, people use silver as money, so, this will not stop gold being used as money too. The only problem would be that the existing holders of gold will lose a huge percentage of their capital, but I am sure they will manage. The important thing is not money but production.
We need to tie each BTC coin to the equivalent amount of value in the real world. We need to get rid of BTC miners being able to mint new coins and have new coins not be limited to some arbitrary number. New coins can be minted only when the same amount of value is created in the real world. If this real value is lost, the coin must be removed from circulation. This can be done by insurance companies that insure against loss of value. Each tie must be publically verifiable. Etc.
If I had my way, you could still have your BTC, it would just be radically different from what it is now.
Exactly what money should do - nothing. Money should have the same value as time ticks. Unit of account changing all the time creates inefficiencies. For example, people have to keep chaing their prices. This is very inconvenient.
There is no free lunch. You can't expect money to sit there and make you more money. That's a dumb shit idea right there. Your fellow men must work to produce stuff to give you (for money), but you just sit there (on a constantly growing pile of money) and consume and give nothing in return. Fuck that noise.
Now, you can invest money and get it to return more than what you put in (by increasing system productivity), but that is a very difficult and risky activity. You might actually lose your money if you fail, or maybe get the same amount back as you put in.
Remember Xerox? Photo-Mat?
What they do was replaced by technology.
Now, I did consider part of my BTC price a TEST of the system. It's ROUGH and UGLY. Too easy lose your keys. It's not for the faint of heart. But it's getting there.
JPM called it a Ponzi scheme. BTC is EARNED from doing work. MINING Digital Blocks using cryptography. DropBox makes money charging you to store your files, and move/share them.
I see no difference.
BTC is an ASSET CLASS. Saylor calls it digital real-estate.
Most of your complaints will go away when everyone has some. The price will stabilize. People will use Satoshis to buy things.
We are just in the early stages.
Sat there, and made me money?
It's the SAME process that makes STOCKS go up.
And Real-Estate, and house values.
I paid $x and now it's worth > $2x
That's profit. Trust me, I MUST PAY TAXES on those gains.
is that not the definition of making money?
So, you are taxed on something that is not profit. It sucks but what are you going to do? Sue the people who are inflating the currency. Persuade the state to tax you on real profits, not fake ones. Disband the state and you no longer have to pay taxes.
This cannot be that. This is a limited resource, backed by a NETWORK of miners who have something to protect (Their own investments in that network).
Yes you could create your own coin, as a CLONE of this software tomorrow. Good luck building the same type of network... The network was built by people who THREW ASSETS at the networks problems, in order to MINE BTC as rewards for their efforts.
THAT is why it's not a ponzi scheme.
Fractional Reserve Banking. With no real limits on levers (Citi was at 42:1 in 2007/8). THAT'S a ponzi scheme.
And designed around it was FDIC to cleanup the failures at TAXPAYERS Expense.
"typically collapses when it becomes difficult to recruit new participants"
A ponzi scheme has nothing to do with printing currency out of thin air.
With BTC, you have some people (not miners) 'investing' in it with the idea that somebody else will buy it from them for a higher price. Eventually, you run out of willing buyers. Now, BTC is different from a ponzi somewhat, because it has some usefulness other than just going up in price with increasing demand. For example, you can use it to avoid bank restrictions and government controls. So, technically speaking, once everyone on earth is using BTC, it doesn't necessarily have to collapse, provided that it continues to be useful to its holders. However, nothing lasts forever. Eventually, something better will emerge, BTC will no longer be as useful and will go to near zero. All who hold BTC at that time will lose their capital. So, BTC is a money time machine in a way. It transfers wealth from the future to the past.
I guess you could argue that a lot of other assets work like this, such as stocks, and I would agree, except for stocks that pay dividends. If a stock doesn't pay dividends, it is trash. Other assets like real estate have earning potential as well. Gold doesn't, unfortunately, however, it will be long before gold becomes cheap to synthesize from lead or something. I don't even recommend holding too much gold. Only use it as cash, once a big enough pile accumulates, buy income producing assets.
Michael Saylor is HOLDING thousands of BTC.
In a Ponzi schema. Someone like MADOFF is selling you a POSITION in his scheme (Giving you PAPER or a STATEMENT that ONLY HE can let you cash out of). When someone exits, HE (centralized), must pay that from the monies collected from new people.
When I exit a stock, I have to find a willing buyer.
When I exit BTC, I just have to find a willing buyer.
Versus a Bank, that TURNS a LOAN (Debt) into an ASSET, and borrows from it (Making money out of THIN AIR).
I don't see this. BTC is as much a Ponzi Scheme as buying AMZN stock.
Now, MSTR, borrowing money, to buy BTC. (if they use leverage and borrow against the loans value, or the inflated stock value, to buy BTC, then I would agree it looks like a Ponzi. But they have CONTROL).
BTC, by legal definition is considered real-estate.
And yes, MANY people have bought real-estate and sold it for less, or given it away.
So, explain how a form of Real-Estate is a ponzi scheme.
And how the total amount of this real-estate is limited... That makes it possible to sell it to everyone (but only by paying for it with the previous purchases into the system, which doesn't happen, because those are held by individuals).
I appreciate your sharpening my arguments.
But I think you are slowly losing the ponzi scheme argument.
(Doge Coin, Shiba Coin ... Yeah, unlimited numbers can be printed at any time).
Not really. I said it is partially a ponzi. You haven't said anything yet to convince me otherwise. I also said a lot of other things in the world are a ponzi, so, you can't use the argument like "but look, it works like that other thing", pointing to something also has a ponzi element.
How are you going to use BTC when it goes to near zero? There are no alternative uses. The only thing that would be holding BTC price up when that happens is non-hodler transactions (merchants, government control avoiders). If those disappear then BTC is toast.
You will have to clarify this for me:
"That makes it possible to sell it to everyone (but only by paying for it with the previous purchases into the system, which doesn't happen, because those are held by individuals)."
I don't understand what you are saying there.
A company value, in simple terms, is a multiple of its yearly profit. So, if I buy all the Amazon stock, how much profit would I be keeping? Answer: zero. A multiple of zero is zero.
Would you agree... you cannot sell something if there are no buyers?
So, explain how something STOPS being bought... WHILE being sold. I missed that part in my stock trading days. I was under the impression that sales only happen when prices match up.
What I've seen happen is GAPS Widen. The bid is 150K, and the ASK is now 200K
The reality is. There are bears and bulls (buyers and sellers) for various reasons at many prices.
BTC being sold means there is a seller that is willing to sell x amount at some particular price. At any given time, there may be many sellers with various amounts of BTC they are selling at various price levels.
Same thing exists for buyers. There are many buyers willing to buy various amounts of BTC for various price levels.
Price level can be anything. Any of the fiat currencies or another cryptocurrency.
So, normally there are a lot of sellers and buyers in the market, but they just sit there waiting for their counterparty to appear and accept their terms (price level, amount). There are also market makers that sometimes buy and sell.
When a transaction happens, that generates a price tick, which sets the new exchange rate for the currency pair.
There are market orders that come through that accept whatever price the counterparties propose. So, let's say there are very small number of buyers that submit market orders but a lot of sellers waiting to sell at various prices. Some of them will get impatient and start bidding down the rate. As they do this, ticks mark lower and lower exchange rate. Some of these sellers get nervous as the rate keeps going down, so they become more eager to get rid of their holdings and continue to bid down the rate. Some of this price action may trigger margin calls of holders that were not interested in selling but have to because they are trading on margin, etc. So, the price 'crashes'.
So, the price level will stay the same only when there is the same amount of people willing to buy/sell at that price level / exchange rate with their market orders. If there is a disbalance the price will creep up/down.
I believe Ford's thing was the assembly line (which increased worker productivity and lowered worker skill requirements).
Google decreased time required of people to find things on the Internet (again, productivity increase). The ads was just a way to monetize it.
What's cheaper than letting the FEDERAL RESERVE Manage our currency?
Everything, when you consider the inflation.
The corruption/stealing.
remember, if governments were forced to use BTC. We could trace EVERY SATOSHI.
There would be no "$3T Missing, sorry, not sure what happened to it".
This is why it was really created. For accountability. But the libertarians realized...
Oh, if this works, it can actually FREE us from using "Sponsored Terror Networks (banks)" to move money and control interest rates.
Actually, Eli Whitney, I believe created the concept of interchangeable parts (the cotton gin guy). Which is the precursor to assembly lines.
I disagree, if you build a better way to do something, and MILLIONS and MILLIONS of people use it. That's usually how people get rich.
Russia learned this as well. Or they are learning it. But Russia is adopting CBDC which are evil.
The challenge is "after bailing out the banks", "attacking the people trying to provide alternatives" isn't a good look. If the govt tried confiscating my gold, unlike my ancestors, I would fight to the end. IT would be the single most expensive move they ever made.
In case of Russia, they have been locked out of the western financial system, so, they released some of the limitations on BTC somewhat to circumvent West's restrictions. For now it suits them, but this will probably not last for too lond and they will ban it again like they did before.
It is risky to transact in something that can get you in trouble with the state. BTC adoption will not happen in those territories due to this.
So, the first order of business is to get rid of the state as a concept and educate all humans that statism is bad, kind of like Nazism.
You can't get rich if the cost of production for an item is the same as what you are able to sell it for. You need some profit margin. In an environment where you have a lot of alterntives and direct and indirect competitors, that is exactly what you are going to get - almost no profit margin. You must make something cheaper to produce in order to have a profit margin.
Because the BTC people have INVEST $$$ in trying to do this. It will eventually get there.
I did pitch my cryptocurrency ideas to a few people, but they were too busy participating in crypto pump and dumps and didn't have any money to invest into my clearly superior system. So, fuck you guys. You can lose all your money trying to scam each other.
If you guys change your mind, you know where to find me. We can get together and assemble a team to design and build a system based on sound money principles. We will also make it so there is no get rich quick component to it. It will be designed such that the value of its tokens would not change over time. It will be the most fair system in existence.
BTC is sound money. Here's the problem. It has to have enough people in it to stabilize it.
We are still early.
Thanks for trying. And with that, you don't see the value of the network... Interesting.
Have a lot of people accept BTC as a form of payment is important, however, that doesn't make it 'sound'. That just makes it easier to transact in.
BTIC IS NOT money
it may be a type of exchange
but as the Earth's Magnetic Field is weakening due to the coming Pole Shift, you damn well better protect your BTC from the Sun's Fury
me, i plan to build a Miner for some type of thing, just not a priority
i leant that a major impact could generate an EMP from the force it transfers to the surrounding environment, that was news to me.
Thats just my opinion on how it could happen.