BITCOIN [R]EVOLUTION - [Vid Feat Ron Paul]

reply to post by ChaoticOrder

The main use of gold is as a store of value and much of the value of gold comes from the work related to producing it.

No, it most comes from irrational hording of that particular metal.

Originally posted by ChaoticOrder
reply to post by LilDudeissocool

 

Bingo! I wouldn't accept them because my local gas-station, grocery store etc wont and neither will my bank. It's why I also don't own any precious metals.

Yeah but what you seem to forget is that GogoVicMorrow would tell you it's better to store your wealth in precious metals rather than Government fiat money. In fact your beliefs are completely at odds with both of our beliefs. We still agree on the fact that fiat money which can be printed out of thin air at virtually no cost are completely useless. What I'm trying to explain to GVM is why bitcoin fixes many of the problems we see in inflationary government currencies.

Neither of us agree with the type of monopolistic fiat system you are promoting. But your reasoning is above is still flawed, I have already provided a link to a map of real world shops around the world which accept bitcoin. Sure there aren't more than a few dozen at the moment, but PayPal was only accepted on a few dozen websites when it fist popped onto the scene. Furthermore, bitcoin is first and foremost an internet currency designed for online transactions. There are already hundreds, if not a few thousand websites which accept bitcoin.

A. The USD is not a government currency. The Federal Reserve System is comprised of private banks with a 1/5 honorary membership in it held by the USG, but not it's Treasury. That means it's a private currency. Now one could argue that every .20 cent in every dollar is fiat en.wikipedia.org... However the USG needs fuels derived from oil to operate its military so the argument is moot.

B. It's not a fiat currency as it's oil producers on the world's open market that has agreed to accept payments for their product in USDs.

Until you educate yourself in this arena there is not point in any further discussion when you invoke popular disinformation myths propagated by parties who rely on ignorance of how money functions in order to maintain their edge within its markets. That's how they are able to turn everyone else upside down emptying our pockets. If you want to run away down a blind alley, go ahead. Bitcoin, gold it's all leads to dead ends. Their thugs will just turn your ilk upside down at the end of those corridors to nowhere as they do on the street with my ilk who at least understand completely how these monopolistic gangsters are able to do so with such ease.

The thing that makes bitcoins so valuable for retailers is that there is no take back. You can't do a charge-back, you can't do a stop payment, you can't do anything to get your bitcoins back once the transaction has been confirmed. The only thing you can do is beg the company to refund you your money.

There's also no such thing as an overdraft since everyone in the network knows your balance. Everyone has a copy of the entire ledger of the bitcoin network since it's inception. You can trace every single coin from it's creation to where it resides at now. Which is how it prevents double spending etc.

And because your account consists of both a public key (how you receive coins) and a private key (how you send coins) it's almost impossible to freeze your account. The only way would be for the government to stop every miner in every country from picking up the transaction and putting it into a block.

The only way to tie someone to an account is when they issue a payment from their account. And even then it's sketchy at best since they could be using the WiFi at McDonalds to issue the transaction.

Originally posted by LilDudeissocool
reply to post by ChaoticOrder

 

The main use of gold is as a store of value and much of the value of gold comes from the work related to producing it.

No, it most comes from irrational hording of that particular metal.

What is that sentence even supposed to mean? If you are saying the price of gold is mostly determined by those who use it as a store for their wealth then it seems you missed the part where I said this:

If tomorrow a few million extra people suddenly tried to buy gold that extra demand would push the price up. When dealing with a finite resource it's really demand which dictates the value... and that's the same for bitcoin.

And the reason many people prefer to store their wealth in the form of precious metals is because they know a bunch of idiots can't suddenly decide to print out a truck load of new precious metals. They know the amount of gold or silver is completely limited, there is a finite amount that exists on Earth. That is why gold holds it's value so well over long periods of time (unlike the US dollar, which I have already demonstrated). And this is exactly the same reason I prefer to store my wealth in the form of bitcoins. I think it's "irrational" and delusional that you would rather store your wealth in depreciating Federal Reserve Notes.

reply to post by LilDudeissocool

A. The USD is not a government currency. The Federal Reserve System is comprised of private banks with a 1/5 honorary membership in it held by the USG, but not it's Treasury. That means it's a private currency.

I can't argue with that... yes it is more like a private currency rather than a Government currency. I am just using the term "Government currency" as if it were interchangeable with "Central Bank Currency" because that's how many of the sheep actually think it works, and it is actually partially true... the Federal Reserve is a semi-private institution, it's not completely private. But I was mainly just phrasing it that way because Federal Reserve Notes are declared by the US Government to be the legal tender used for all debts, private and public, etc. Such that we refer to the Federal Reserve money as "US Dollars".

B. It's not a fiat currency as it's oil producers on the world's open market that has agreed to accept payments for their product in USDs.

Just because you can easily buy or sell oil in US dollars (or should I say Federal Reserve money) does not mean the US dollar is guaranteed to be backed by any amount of oil. When a currency is truly pegged to a commodity such as gold or oil it means that each unit of that currency is backed by a determined amount of gold or oil... but when ever they print more Federal Reserve Notes they don't have to make sure there is anything backing that new money, and there certainly isn't any gold or oil backing that new money. In some cases there is Government debt backing that new money, however that isn't always the case. They can choose to print and hand out freshly printed notes without any type of backing what so ever.

You are failing to accept the real technical definition of what a fiat currency is and you are twisting the facts to suit your own interpretations of what the US dollar us... but that wont change the simple facts of the matter, which is that each Fed Note is not backed by a set amount of anything of intrinsic value (debt has no intrinsic value) and when they create more Fed Notes they make the rest worth less. That is how a fiat currency typically behaves, where as a currency which has true backing wouldn't continuously lose value because each new unit would need to have a guaranteed backing, thus making it difficult to create new money.

Bitcoin, gold it's all leads to dead ends. Their thugs will just turn your ilk upside down at the end of those corridors to nowhere as they do on the street with my ilk who at least understand completely how these monopolistic gangsters are able to do so with such ease.

It's funny how you can take everything I say and twist it into some convoluted nonsensical garbage. I accuse you of promoting a monopolistic stance on money and you twist the facts into some stupid irrational nonsense and accuse the people in my line of thought to be "monopolistic gangsters". You are completely laughable sir. The Federal Reserve is the biggest bunch of "monopolistic gangsters" on the face of this planet and they are robbing wealth from every single American citizen in a very devious and invidious fashion. It's about time you crawl back into what ever rancid hole you popped out of pal.

reply to post by ChaoticOrder


Bitcoins wouldn't exist without gold which is used in (as far as I know) every computer and cell phone. Gold has a multitude of uses as does silver. Far more uses than bitcoin.

reply to post by LilDudeissocool


I am afraid that is where you lose me. I invest in silver and gold whenever I can. They are rare and have many uses (including and maybe most importantly the one in my above post - electronics). Gold has remained valuable for thousands of years! That's not going to chainge.

reply to post by LilDudeissocool


No no no. Nothing irrational about holding/hording gold. It is very valuable and is used so much and as tech advances we will only find more and more uses for it. You saying that people holding it is irrational is downright foolish. If I were you I would start buying a little bit of silver or gold whenever you can to fall back on lest you end up very sorely surprised one day.

reply to post by GogoVicMorrow

Gold has a multitude of uses as does silver. Far more uses than bitcoin.

Yes but bitcoin is designed to act as a currency first and foremost, of course it wont have many uses outside of being a currency. But it is designed to be a very effective, or dare I say, an ideal currency. It is easy to transfer and verify each bitcoin, it is easy to granulate the money supply and it's easy to know the amount of units in the money supply. Most of those things are much harder to do with gold and other precious metals, especially knowing how much gold really exists. Furthermore, there are several potential problems with precious metals, the first being we may find large amount of gold on another planet in our solar system or we may not find anymore gold but we use up a lot of the gold on their other uses. Clearly either of those two things are extremely unlikely to happen any time soon, but they are possibilities. Bitcoin will never have either of those problems because it's purely designed to be an ideal currency and the supply will never be increased beyond what the network has decided.

Of course it's fine to save gold and precious metals, and clearly it's much better than saving depreciating fiat money, but you need to understand there is nothing wrong with storing ones wealth in the form of bitcoins. Yes it probably is riskier because it relies on a great deal of different technology, and gold wont simply self-destruct like bitcoin could in a worste case scenario. But I think you can agree after hearing everything I have explained about bitcoin that it's highly secure and robust and many people trust it because they trust the way it is designed. People have been using a fiat currency created by the Federal Reserve for almost 100 years now, and if it weren't for their excessive money printing the US dollar would be much stronger. Federal Reserve Notes have little use beyond acting as a form of money, just like bitcoin... but the difference with bitcoin is that the money supply is protected from destructive inflation and is designed so that each bitcoin will hold value very well. This is essentially what I've been trying to explain this whole time. Bitcoin is like a fiat currency which has all the loose ends tied up and fixed. We need to overcome this "fiat stigma" and realize that with the right rules in place a fiat system of money is perfectly plausible.

reply to post by ChaoticOrder


Currency with no use outside of being currency and value derived solely from regulation (aka fiat currency) is never a good thing. It's not a good thing when it's a government body regulating, but private regulation (the fed) is terrible. So I would consider it beyond foolish to consider bitcoin beyond a novelty.

Yes it probably is riskier because it relies on a great deal of different technology, and gold wont simply self-destruct like bitcoin could in a worste case scenario.

That little bit is enough to make it completely clear that storing your wealth in and relying on bitcoin is a terrible idea. There is no probably about it. You used that word to ease the drama of the statement, but in reality you know it is definitely riskier rather than "probably."

reply to post by GogoVicMorrow

Currency with no use outside of being currency and value derived solely from regulation (aka fiat currency) is never a good thing. It's not a good thing when it's a government body regulating, but private regulation (the fed) is terrible.

Yes but bitcoin is neither regulated by the government or by a private entity, it is regulated by mathematical rules which are enforced by every person participating in the network. It's a currency for the people, regulated by the people. As I was saying... the problems with typical fiat currency have been removed from bitcoin. As I also mentioned, creating new bitcoins it is not an easy or cheap process like printing some pretty notes. It's hard to increase the money supply of gold backed currency because each new unit of currency must have real world backing. Thus, as long as it's hard to increase the money supply it doesn't matter if each new unit doesn't have a guaranteed backing. Also keep in mind that new bitcoins wont continue to be created forever, they will only be created until the money supply has reached the determined amount of 21 million and they will always be created at a completely predictable rate until that time.

That little bit is enough to make it completely clear that storing your wealth in and relying on bitcoin is a terrible idea.

If you don't want to trust it then fine, there's nothing wrong with that. I need to clearly stress the fact I am not telling you how to store your wealth or use your wealth. No one is trying to force you to do anything. I am simply trying to give a factual explanation of bitcoin so that people can decide for themselves. The network is extremely robust and secure, but like any technology it is prone to failure, no technology is absolutely perfect. I'm not claiming the bitcoin network is 100% safe... but it is certainly safer than any bank you know of. The only reason it has lasted so long is because it was designed so securely, the actual chance of it being compromised is slim to none as far as I can determine. If you want near 100% safety then by all means use gold, I have some gold too, but bitcoin is secure enough for me use as well. It's not one or the other for me. Gold may have some advantages over bitcoin, but bitcoin also has many advantages over gold, which is why people like to use it.