Planet Rugby Forum

pontifex wrote:

Rumham wrote:

bimboman wrote:

sorCrer wrote:

pontifex wrote:It's perfectly possible that the Amazon, Google and Facebook

A few hours ago:

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/05/mark-zu ... rency.html

Well that's Bitcoin back to a dollar then.

Read all the stories under the Facebook headline. Every single major investor says it is a scam.

Well they would, wouldn't they. The democratization of speculation must terrify them. And that alone is a reason to support crypto.

Well they would, wouldn't they. The democratization of speculation must terrify them. And that alone is a reason to support cryp

Rumham wrote:

pontifex wrote:

Rumham wrote:
Read all the stories under the Facebook headline. Every single major investor says it is a scam.

Well they would, wouldn't they. The democratization of speculation must terrify them. And that alone is a reason to support crypto.

You have completely lost me here. Good luck with your investment but I'm not sure wtf you are getting at.

I don't have my tokens on any exchange. Do you know how the technology works?

pontifex wrote:

Rumham wrote:

pontifex wrote:

Rumham wrote:
Read all the stories under the Facebook headline. Every single major investor says it is a scam.

Well they would, wouldn't they. The democratization of speculation must terrify them. And that alone is a reason to support crypto.

You have completely lost me here. Good luck with your investment but I'm not sure wtf you are getting at.

Cheers for the wishes. I'm getting at the idea of disrupting the financial system, as an end in itself, or an end in service of a political aim.

bimboman wrote:

Well they would, wouldn't they. The democratization of speculation must terrify them. And that alone is a reason to support cryp

You do know that some of the larger players are hedge funds

bimboman wrote: I'll point out again, speculation is already democratised anyone can trade anything,

pontifex wrote:

bimboman wrote:

Well they would, wouldn't they. The democratization of speculation must terrify them. And that alone is a reason to support cryp

You do know that some of the larger players are hedge funds

Of course I do, and in light of that, I find it galling that they want to inhibit my ability to speculate as an individual.

bimboman wrote: I'll point out again, speculation is already democratised anyone can trade anything,

Yes, I'm not disputing that. I think it's also pretty clear that there is a difference in the crypto market. Perhaps it's pure democratic speculation, only that, nothing else (I don't believe that, by the way, but it would follow from what you're saying).

bimboman wrote:

pontifex wrote:

Rumham wrote:

pontifex wrote:

Rumham wrote:
Read all the stories under the Facebook headline. Every single major investor says it is a scam.

Well they would, wouldn't they. The democratization of speculation must terrify them. And that alone is a reason to support crypto.

You have completely lost me here. Good luck with your investment but I'm not sure wtf you are getting at.

Cheers for the wishes. I'm getting at the idea of disrupting the financial system, as an end in itself, or an end in service of a political aim.

How will the financial system be disrupted. ?

bimboman wrote:

pontifex wrote:

bimboman wrote:

Well they would, wouldn't they. The democratization of speculation must terrify them. And that alone is a reason to support cryp

You do know that some of the larger players are hedge funds

Of course I do, and in light of that, I find it galling that they want to inhibit my ability to speculate as an individual.

bimboman wrote: I'll point out again, speculation is already democratised anyone can trade anything,

Yes, I'm not disputing that. I think it's also pretty clear that there is a difference in the crypto market. Perhaps it's pure democratic speculation, only that, nothing else (I don't believe that, by the way, but it would follow from what you're saying).

I'm not sure what the difference is, other than the asset value is 100% faith in the future use of the currency.

Seneca of the Night wrote:

goeagles wrote:

Bowens wrote:Do you ask your wife the crypo expert before you write these posts?

SorCrer has been pretty on the money in this thread, and other Bitcoin threads before this one, even if I strongly disagree with him on Ripple's long term outlook.

What you mean is that he is reading the market well, but the market is not a closed universe.

exchange freely in decentralized assets which cannot be monetarily devalued (i.e. by arbitrary, non-algorithmic QE). I'm not suggesting for a moment that the value of an individual token cannot me manipulated by actors who hold many, and that the existing institutions will not attempt to do so, but I hope crypto gets too big to control. I admit that there is no guarantee that centralization will not happen de facto, but I hope that democratic uptake of these technologies will offer some resistance to centralization

Santa wrote:
Most people trading in cryptos are doing so based on zero information. Zero. And that's generous.

Santa wrote:The ones that aren't are the ones that are manipulating the market.

bimboman wrote:

exchange freely in decentralized assets which cannot be monetarily devalued (i.e. by arbitrary, non-algorithmic QE). I'm not suggesting for a moment that the value of an individual token cannot me manipulated by actors who hold many, and that the existing institutions will not attempt to do so, but I hope crypto gets too big to control. I admit that there is no guarantee that centralization will not happen de facto, but I hope that democratic uptake of these technologies will offer some resistance to centralization

De centralised means nothing if people can't actually spend the results, the US could arbitrarily deflate the USD and right now and lower bitcoins actual value.

YOYO wrote:The whole crypto discussion is getting boring for me. Good for the people who make money during this bubble, but overall it’s boring.

TranceNRG wrote:

sorCrer wrote:

pontifex wrote:Can you tell me a bit more about Etoro, please?

Online retail broker / social investment platform allowing you to take positions on practically any stock (Google, Apple), commodity (Oil, Palladium), cryptos etc. You can follow other successful traders and interact with traders around the world.
,

Only a few (I think 4 or 5) Cryptocurrencies are available on eToro though.

Well, that's not true. Most 3rd generation blockchains are not currencies. That's why I wrote that I don't believe it is pure speculation. But given your model of what cryptos are, it makes sense that you would think that.

bimboman wrote:

Well, that's not true. Most 3rd generation blockchains are not currencies. That's why I wrote that I don't believe it is pure speculation. But given your model of what cryptos are, it makes sense that you would think that.

I'm getting more of a grip of block chain technology and I believe it will make huge advances in some industries, in particular logistics which is where I now work, I am not conflating that with value of the current crop of "currencies"

pontifex wrote:

bimboman wrote:

Well, that's not true. Most 3rd generation blockchains are not currencies. That's why I wrote that I don't believe it is pure speculation. But given your model of what cryptos are, it makes sense that you would think that.

I'm getting more of a grip of block chain technology and I believe it will make huge advances in some industries, in particular logistics which is where I now work, I am not conflating that with value of the current crop of "currencies"

Ok. Well there are plenty that will be used in logistics and other areas. VeChain aims to fight industrial counterfeiting. Iota aims to facilitate M2M funds transfers, especially in automated and electric vehicles. EOS aims to create a distributed application platform that cannot be censored. Etc. I see value in these financially, technologically, and also politically.

bimboman wrote:

exchange freely in decentralized assets which cannot be monetarily devalued (i.e. by arbitrary, non-algorithmic QE). I'm not suggesting for a moment that the value of an individual token cannot me manipulated by actors who hold many, and that the existing institutions will not attempt to do so, but I hope crypto gets too big to control. I admit that there is no guarantee that centralization will not happen de facto, but I hope that democratic uptake of these technologies will offer some resistance to centralization

De centralised means nothing if people can't actually spend the results, the US could arbitrarily deflate the USD and right now and lower bitcoins actual value.

goeagles wrote:

bimboman wrote:

exchange freely in decentralized assets which cannot be monetarily devalued (i.e. by arbitrary, non-algorithmic QE). I'm not suggesting for a moment that the value of an individual token cannot me manipulated by actors who hold many, and that the existing institutions will not attempt to do so, but I hope crypto gets too big to control. I admit that there is no guarantee that centralization will not happen de facto, but I hope that democratic uptake of these technologies will offer some resistance to centralization

De centralised means nothing if people can't actually spend the results, the US could arbitrarily deflate the USD and right now and lower bitcoins actual value.

How would that decrease Bitcoin's actual value? If anything, arbitrary monetary policy would increase the value of a cryptoasset with a fixed supply curve like Bitcoin.

bimboman wrote:

goeagles wrote:

bimboman wrote:

exchange freely in decentralized assets which cannot be monetarily devalued (i.e. by arbitrary, non-algorithmic QE). I'm not suggesting for a moment that the value of an individual token cannot me manipulated by actors who hold many, and that the existing institutions will not attempt to do so, but I hope crypto gets too big to control. I admit that there is no guarantee that centralization will not happen de facto, but I hope that democratic uptake of these technologies will offer some resistance to centralization

De centralised means nothing if people can't actually spend the results, the US could arbitrarily deflate the USD and right now and lower bitcoins actual value.

How would that decrease Bitcoin's actual value? If anything, arbitrary monetary policy would increase the value of a cryptoasset with a fixed supply curve like Bitcoin.

Because they trade in USD.

pontifex wrote:

bimboman wrote:

goeagles wrote:

bimboman wrote:

exchange freely in decentralized assets which cannot be monetarily devalued (i.e. by arbitrary, non-algorithmic QE). I'm not suggesting for a moment that the value of an individual token cannot me manipulated by actors who hold many, and that the existing institutions will not attempt to do so, but I hope crypto gets too big to control. I admit that there is no guarantee that centralization will not happen de facto, but I hope that democratic uptake of these technologies will offer some resistance to centralization

De centralised means nothing if people can't actually spend the results, the US could arbitrarily deflate the USD and right now and lower bitcoins actual value.

How would that decrease Bitcoin's actual value? If anything, arbitrary monetary policy would increase the value of a cryptoasset with a fixed supply curve like Bitcoin.

Because they trade in USD.

For now.

bimboman wrote:

pontifex wrote: For now.

For now my point stands.

It's interesting as well that as there is a chance a global conglomerate crypto could just could threaten the greenback.

pontifex wrote:Can we all agree that Bitcoin, while an amazing innovation, is now in a speculative bubble, since it provides no intrinsic value that is not better served by other, newer technologies? And can we then stop conflating Bitcoin with those newer, better, more focused technologies?

bimboman wrote:

goeagles wrote:

bimboman wrote:

exchange freely in decentralized assets which cannot be monetarily devalued (i.e. by arbitrary, non-algorithmic QE). I'm not suggesting for a moment that the value of an individual token cannot me manipulated by actors who hold many, and that the existing institutions will not attempt to do so, but I hope crypto gets too big to control. I admit that there is no guarantee that centralization will not happen de facto, but I hope that democratic uptake of these technologies will offer some resistance to centralization

De centralised means nothing if people can't actually spend the results, the US could arbitrarily deflate the USD and right now and lower bitcoins actual value.

How would that decrease Bitcoin's actual value? If anything, arbitrary monetary policy would increase the value of a cryptoasset with a fixed supply curve like Bitcoin.

Because they trade in USD.

pontifex wrote:

bimboman wrote:

pontifex wrote: For now.

For now my point stands.

It's interesting as well that as there is a chance a global conglomerate crypto could just could threaten the greenback.

Absolutely. That's called disruption. Interesting also that the Americans seem to have been willing to defend their reserve currency status with military action. But I don't know who they'd attack... That's one of the best things about crypto. Perhaps I'm a democratic globalist, rather than a corporatist globalist.

goeagles wrote:

pontifex wrote:Can we all agree that Bitcoin, while an amazing innovation, is now in a speculative bubble, since it provides no intrinsic value that is not better served by other, newer technologies? And can we then stop conflating Bitcoin with those newer, better, more focused technologies?

I'm not so sure about the former. It is more proven and proven to be secure at this point than pretty much any of the others. I guess you could counter that Litecoin offers many of the same features, but it barely has any developers working on it these days. Just take a look at its Github compared to BTC. It also has an entire ecosystem built around it that LTC does not. It's likely that it eventually is made redundant, but until them I'm holding a few BTC as a hedge on the rest of my crypto portfolio.

But agreed that we should absolutely stop conflating the two. Frankly, maybe a new thread should be started with a less-Bitcoin focused title.

goeagles wrote:

bimboman wrote:

goeagles wrote:

bimboman wrote:

exchange freely in decentralized assets which cannot be monetarily devalued (i.e. by arbitrary, non-algorithmic QE). I'm not suggesting for a moment that the value of an individual token cannot me manipulated by actors who hold many, and that the existing institutions will not attempt to do so, but I hope crypto gets too big to control. I admit that there is no guarantee that centralization will not happen de facto, but I hope that democratic uptake of these technologies will offer some resistance to centralization

De centralised means nothing if people can't actually spend the results, the US could arbitrarily deflate the USD and right now and lower bitcoins actual value.

How would that decrease Bitcoin's actual value? If anything, arbitrary monetary policy would increase the value of a cryptoasset with a fixed supply curve like Bitcoin.

Because they trade in USD.

That doesn't decrease the value of a Bitcoin; it only decreases the USD value of a Bitcoin. The two are not the same thing. If you deflate fiat by 25%, the cost of goods, houses, etc. should go down by around the same amount right? If I could buy a house for 25 BTC before the deflation of USD, I can still buy that same house for 25 BTC after the deflation of USD.

bimboman wrote: Own bit coin , dollar falls 25% , unless Bitcoin rises 25% you are losing against the currency devaluation.

goeagles wrote:

bimboman wrote: Own bit coin , dollar falls 25% , unless Bitcoin rises 25% you are losing against the currency devaluation.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure if the value of the USD falls 25% that Bitcoin-USD trades are not going to stay static. Call me crazy.

bimboman wrote:

goeagles wrote:

bimboman wrote: Own bit coin , dollar falls 25% , unless Bitcoin rises 25% you are losing against the currency devaluation.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure if the value of the USD falls 25% that Bitcoin-USD trades are not going to stay static. Call me crazy.

I'm sure, the point stands if you own an asset prices in a currency then that currency performance directly correlates to your value.

Why cryptocurrency is the answer
The impulse behind them is revolutionary: to take the control of money away from government

Lionel Shriver

The craze for cryptocurrency can be explained by a host of factors: the allure of getting rich quick; the attraction of off-the-grid accountancy for malefactors like tax evaders and drug dealers (though Bitcoin is traceable); the glamour of the new. Despite blockchain currencies’ wild volatility thus far, I’d still posit that the more underlying attraction is to a reliable store of value. Bitcoin investors may not recognise their motivation as such, but the impulse behind computer-generated currency is revolutionary: to take the production and control of money away from government.

Now that we live in a world of 100 per cent fiat currencies — backed by nothing — governments can print their hearts out, and they do. The rounds of quantitative easing since 2008 — money-printing on Red Bull — may not seem to have produced the inflation many a conservative economist predicted. But they have. Asset bubbles like London and New York property markets, fine art, collectibles, equities — hitting historic highs — and Bitcoin itself are all evidences of inflation. There’s too much money in the world right now, sloshing from investment to investment and bloating every bolt hole one can think of to stash with capital (an unholy proportion of which is founded on debt). Because it costs central banks nothing to turn on the pumps.

What makes the likes of Bitcoin extraordinary is that the currency is limited in quantity, thus functioning more like precious metals. Producing a single Bitcoin requires so much computing power that environmentalists have criticised the process as cataclysmically wasteful of energy. Further, every Bitcoin mined requires more computing power than the one before, meaning that the total coinage in circulation rapidly approaches an absolute mathematical limit.

Contrast that with fiat currencies. The smallest little child knows that keeping your capital in cash is a mug’s game. For years central banks have cheerfully informed us that they aim for an inflation rate of 2 per cent. (Mind, at only 3 per cent — which the UK’s CPI currently exceeds — inflation will halve the value of your money in a mere 23 years.) The public has grown inured to the notion that a functional economy mysteriously requires their currency to rot like meat. This is a lie. One British pound in 1797 was worth about exactly the same amount in 1914 — bouncing up and down a bit, but averaging no inflation whatsoever for 117 years. The Industrial Revolution would qualify as economically functional. Enlarge the picture, and the pound took 164 years between 1750 and 1914 to roughly halve in value. Yet in the century since the first world war? The pound has plunged to the penny.

The ‘almighty dollar’ is no different. One dollar today is worth one cent of a century ago. Although classically one primary purpose of a currency is to act as a store of value, modern currencies are no longer intended to do so. The dollar retains its coveted status only because other currencies are corrupting even faster. The only real check on inflation, every other country is also playing the printing-press game, competing over whose money is the more worthless.

The purposeful inflation of fiat currencies, the very measure of which is rigged to underestimate the degradation of a people’s savings (imagine, in Britain, that the statistic excludes the cost of housing), amounts to a steady, deliberate usurpation of a nation’s wealth, and constitutes the ultimate stealth tax. Deficit-dependent governments love inflation, because they can repay loans of more valuable money with crap money.

I had a ferocious argument with a left-leaning journalist not long ago, who jeered that ‘sound money’ was a fetish of the rich, to the detriment of the poor. I differed. Although monetary decay favours debtors over savers, these days the wealthy are as apt to rely on debt as the impoverished, and on a much grander scale. Who takes out multi–million-pound mortgages in Kensington? Not the exiled residents of Grenfell Tower.

Especially with today’s near-zero interest rates, it is those who have accrued only modest capital who are especially screwed by a currency that evaporates. The rich can afford to play games with their wealth. For the frugal working and middle classes with small savings on which they depend for retirement, not only is it difficult to make gains hand over fist; without putting precious nest eggs at risk of getting smashed — in equities, for example — it is impossible even to keep what they already have.

Government is too self-interested to be trusted to maintain a currency that sustains its value. The blockchain experiment may not be the answer. (Check out Hashgraph — faster, requiring minimal energy, and more capable of scaling up.) But I hope the renegade entrepreneurs keep trying. For on the face of it, any currency that costs nothing to multiply, when its manufacturer actively benefits from running the presses, will inexorably fritter to confetti. Citizens in any income stratum should have a right to expect that a pound in their pocket today will buy a pound’s worth of goods or services tomorrow. But apparently that’s pie-in-the-sky. What was do-able in 1797 we can’t, or won’t, do now.

Hilariously, even the Bank of England is now considering generating its own digital currency — which Mark Carney would prefer to use only for transfers between central banks, but which many of the governor’s colleagues would like to market directly to consumers. I say ‘hilariously’, because a Bank of England Bitcoin would be linked to the value of the pound. Great. Can’t wait.

Imagine a secure international cryptocurrency whose steady value was not subjected to deliberate, systematic decay, whose supply was strictly limited, whose coin was universally accepted, and whose production was beyond the control of the state. Even if the investment couldn’t be expected to appreciate in the slightest, I’d put my every last farthing in such a currency in a heartbeat.

bimboman wrote:

pontifex wrote:

bimboman wrote:

Well, that's not true. Most 3rd generation blockchains are not currencies. That's why I wrote that I don't believe it is pure speculation. But given your model of what cryptos are, it makes sense that you would think that.

I'm getting more of a grip of block chain technology and I believe it will make huge advances in some industries, in particular logistics which is where I now work, I am not conflating that with value of the current crop of "currencies"

Ok. Well there are plenty that will be used in logistics and other areas. VeChain aims to fight industrial counterfeiting. Iota aims to facilitate M2M funds transfers, especially in automated and electric vehicles. EOS aims to create a distributed application platform that cannot be censored. Etc. I see value in these financially, technologically, and also politically.

Yep me too, I'm going to invest in the companies equity.

pontifex wrote:For what it's worth, I'm not actually a libertarian or anarcho-capitalist. It's just the only movement at this point that I feel may influence the world in the way I would like to see - call it a hedge against authoritarianism...

goeagles wrote:

bimboman wrote:

goeagles wrote:

bimboman wrote: Own bit coin , dollar falls 25% , unless Bitcoin rises 25% you are losing against the currency devaluation.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure if the value of the USD falls 25% that Bitcoin-USD trades are not going to stay static. Call me crazy.

I'm sure, the point stands if you own an asset prices in a currency then that currency performance directly correlates to your value.

No. It only correlates to your trade price. That is not the same thing as value, or what you can buy with it.