Peter Thiel Calls Bitcoin 'a Chinese Financial Weapon' (bloomberg.com) 115
Peter Thiel is "pro-crypto" and "pro-Bitcoin maximalist," but he also thinks the cryptocurrency may be undermining America. From a report: Thiel, the venture capitalist and conservative political donor, urged the U.S. government to consider tighter regulations on cryptocurrencies in an appearance on Tuesday. The statements seemed to represent a change of heart for Thiel, who is a major investor in virtual currency ventures as well as in cryptocurriences themselves. "I do wonder whether at this point, Bitcoin should also be thought [of] in part as a Chinese financial weapon against the U.S.," Thiel said during an appearance at a virtual event held for members of the Richard Nixon Foundation. "It threatens fiat money, but it especially threatens the U.S. dollar." He added: "[If] China's long Bitcoin, perhaps from a geopolitical perspective, the U.S. should be asking some tougher questions about exactly how that works."
In other news (Score:1, Troll)
Re:In other news (Score:5, Interesting)
Gawker outed him as a homosexual while he was in one of the least gay tolerant areas of the world. Saudi Arabia. Later on Gawker defied a court order to remove a stolen video of Hulk Hogan having sex. At the same time they also claimed looking at leaked nude photos of Jennifer Lawrence was equal to sexual assault.
Interesting that Peter Thiel donates to the party who thinks he’s going to hell for being gay. Talk about a conflict of interest.
Re:In other news (Score:5, Interesting)
He's not the only one with a conflict of interest. Rep. Tim Murphy of PA got his mistress pregnant,, at the same time he was posting pro-life messages on FB. [dailycaller.com]
Just the other day I saw note about another Republican official (state level I believe) whose texts to his mistress were revealed asking her to peg him.
I don't think the party you're referring to much cares about people being gay or if they have family values. They just like to say they care.
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There's those types on BOTH sides.
You're not already forgetting about the NY "Wiener-gate" guy are you?
That's just one example that comes to mind immediately.
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You seem to be mixing up believing in sin with being free of it. Christians generally believe being free from sin is impossible which is why Christ had to die... so they could go to heaven despite their sins.
Also, from an argumentation standpoint hypocrisy is a logical fallacy. It is a variation of blaming the messenger. The validity of an argument doesn't change because one the one making it is a hypocrite. A message, or argument, is valid/invalid/true/false independent of any trait of the one delivering i
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Wow. Leading with an Ad Hominem attack. That's unusually inventive.
And predefining 'everyone else', kudos.
Re:In other news (Score:5, Informative)
Oh come now, the fact that Peter Thiel is a Nazi fucktard is completely relevant to this discussion. Allow me to quote this shitstain for you:
"I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women—two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians—have rendered the notion of "capitalist democracy" into an oxymoron In our time, the great task for libertarians is to find an escape from politics in all its forms Because there are no truly free places left in our world, I suspect that the mode for escape must involve some sort of new and hitherto untried process that leads us to some undiscovered country; and for this reason I have focused my efforts on new technologies that may create a new space for freedom. " ---Nazi Fucktard, Peter Thiel, on why rich people like himself should rule over you peons with an iron fist.
Now I know that will make some of you love him even more, but most of us realize exactly what he is and what he wants to do to us.
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Nazi Fucktard, Peter Thiel, on why rich people like himself should rule over you peons with an iron fist.
It seems to me that what he is saying is that he and the other Nazi Fucktards should leave and go live somewhere else.
I don't see any problem with that. Everyone should have the freedom to leave. Perhaps they can go to Galt's Gulch.
Re:In other news (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, except he is actually working to fuck over democracy, world wide. He's one of the most evil men currently alive.
He doesn't just want the freedom to leave, he wants the freedom to oppress. Do you think a billionaire like Thiel would be comfortable without servants? It's pretty obvious that he just wants the right to whip them when they get uppity. Like Peter Thiel would ever farm, or work manual labor. No, he wants a sea-steading kingdom where he can make all the rules and take advantage of the poor and desperate. Like he'd ever give them a chance to leave once he had them in his clutches, lol.
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Thiel just pushes libertarianism because then he ends up the effective ruler of such a society as he has all the wealth. Everyone will be 'free' to do what they want, but if they want any food, they will have to service the whims of the guy with all the wealth - and he will be able to ask them to do whatever he wants because *libertarianism*.
It's the sort of thing a spoilt teenager would dream up.
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"It's the sort of thing a spoilt teenager would dream up." Yep, that's libertarianism for ya.
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Why, you're right. Thanks for pointing it out, Nazi's were far too liberal for Thiel. He wants absolute autocracy, with himself as supreme leader.
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Yeah, I don't trust anyone who wants autocracy, whatever their self-proclaimed motive is. Sure, real reform is seemingly impossible without autocratic power or extreme violence, but even the most pure hearted reformers are inevitably corrupted by the use of those methods.
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---Nazi Fucktard, Peter Thiel, on why rich people like himself should rule over you peons with an iron fist.
Now I know that will make some of you love him even more, but most of us realize exactly what he is and what he wants to do to us.
Why do Lefties continually have to demonstrate their inability to use their brains?
None of what you concluded logically follows from the quote. But I'm sure you don't care. Strawmen R US!
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What I conclude is that anyone who hates democracy is a traitor to our country and all it stands for. Do you hate democracy? Yeah, I think you do.
You are not better than the rest of humanity, and you do not deserve a position above the rest of us.
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What I conclude is that anyone who hates democracy is a traitor to our country and all it stands for. Do you hate democracy? Yeah, I think you do.
As I said, lefties have no brains. You don't have to keep proving the point.
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Those sort of school-yard comebacks don't really work online, chum.
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How was it a misquote? It was the Cato Institute itself that quoted him! And this is hardly a retraction, he's just saying "Yeah, women should never have been allowed to vote, but what can you do? Democracy sucks, lol!"
He hates democracy and thinks he should rule like an emperor.
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Nah, that's a fucking cop out and we both know it. If you say "Gosh, giving women the vote was terrible" and then try to walk it back by saying "No one suggested we should take away their right to vote" well, you are full of shit. By saying it was a mistake to give them the right to vote, you are absolutely implying they should not have the right to vote. That walk-back was just a wink-wink, nudge nudge, you know the libs hate it when we talk like this but hey fellas, we all know the truth, that women shoul
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So what's your proposed solution? How do we have freedom for all if most are allowed no voice, and no say in their own governance? Or is "freedom for all" not really your goal? If not, who gets the freedom, and who doesn't?
Re:In other news (Score:4, Interesting)
Well you need to focus on the messenger, sometimes over the actual content.
It is like RMS saying Commercial Software is Bad, and here are all of his reasons. Then when people who are pro-commercial give their rebut RMS will just call them Greedy Capitalist Pigs. So the messenger of the message, leads credence on the weight we should give to the message.
However for this article, it seems to be a change in opinion of a supporter in their ideals. So I would give perhaps some more weight to what he is saying on this topic... But if he is also known to be openly racist (I don't know, I never bother reading up on the guy), the assertion that it is a Chinese weapon may be a dubious claim to his modified argument. As he might like bitcoin, but he hates Chinese more. But (I am still going off my ignorance of the actual guy) if he never really shown any sign before of being anti-Chinese and the argument of China (who has a history of pushing soft power) is using bitcoins to under-cut America, it is at least worth some further investigation to see if hypothesis has any real merit, or the effect of bit coin on American Dollar is just an unexpected side effect.
Self-porody of the FP branch (Score:1)
What reputation does 2201864 have such that he gets to attack the reputation of anyone else?
But from this starting point, there isn't any way to continue the discussion or even bring it back to relevance. Everyone is nuts, and it's pointless to argue who has the biggest.
In MEPR (Multidimensional Earned Public Reputation) terms, maybe FP should be linked to the public reputation that an identity has earned? Weird new wrinkle comes to mind... If an FP candidate refers to another identity, then the MEPRs shoul
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MEPR (Multidimensional Earned Public Reputation) = Chinese Social Credit System
A quote that you should mind well:
Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without deserving.
"Reputation" is fascist gossip [independent.co.uk]
Public masturbation of 1673220 (Score:1)
Z^-1
Re:Self-parody of the FP branch (Score:1)
What reputation does 2201864 have such that he gets to attack the reputation of anyone else?
But from this starting point, there isn't any way to continue the discussion or even bring it back to relevance. Everyone is nuts, and it's pointless to argue who has the biggest.
In MEPR (Multidimensional Earned Public Reputation) terms, maybe FP should be linked to the public reputation that an identity has earned? Weird new wrinkle comes to mind... If an FP candidate refers to another identity, then the MEPRs should be compared before FP is awarded? But what dimensions would be relevant for such comparisons? (However the research approach is IOttMCO.)
Anything that triggers the trolls so much must be on the right path.
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How is being anti-Chinese racist?
We are
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Outside of TV made to reflect old times with references to 'chinaman' and 'chinee' from the distant past and maybe some soldiers who were in the thick of Korea/Vietnam; I don't think I've ever heard any negative sentiment about "Chinese" which referred to actual people. It is always a reference to either CCP government or industry policy.
Anti-Chinese racism just isn't a thing. At least not in the US. Maybe some racist distrust and profiling will come as a consequence of the mass dump revealing thousands of
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Anti-Chinese racism just isn't a thing. At least not in the US
Dude, but *it is* a thing, in the US. Surely not a mainstream thing, but anti-Chinese sentiment has existed for quite a while (replacing the anti-Japanese sentiment from the late 80's and early 90's.)
I used to be a right-winger, listening to Limbaugh, tele-evangelicals and all that kool-aid crap. I remember hearing, reading (and sometimes falling for) apocalyptic prophesies of Chinese soldiers invading the entire West Coast, a harbinger for the end of times.
It was not openly anti-Chinese, but it surely
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"falling for) apocalyptic prophesies of Chinese soldiers invading the entire West Coast, a harbinger for the end of times"
Government, not racist.
"And I can assure you (though purely from anecdotes of what I've heard in real life), there are far more people harboring anti-Chinese sentiment than people that believe in QAnon."
Yeah, QAnon, White supremacy, flat earthers, those also don't exist in significant numbers. You need to stop swallowing partisan nonsense.
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"falling for) apocalyptic prophesies of Chinese soldiers invading the entire West Coast, a harbinger for the end of times"
Government, not racist.
No, no, no. You are not hearing what I'm saying. For me, it was obviously a reference to the Chinese Goverment or the CCP. For many others (and I saw it and heard it with my own senses), there was no difference: "They all chinamen, yellow peril bringing commie buddhism to replace baby Jesus, they are not like us!" My God, that's the racism that opened my eyes and gave me the impetus to move away from them.
Even now, there's no differentiation among these bigots between the CCP and Chinese people ... or Asi
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Right, because discounting ones own experience in favor of a less trusted source (literally any other source) is the sane and rational thing to do.
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No, they should be skeptical of their experience due to confirmation bias. This is especially true given how prevelant racism is in China with racially motivated concentration camps and neighbors the government wants to annex being described as 'of chinese decent' in preparation for the slow shift to the message of always having been part of China. Also since we repeatedly see criticism of the China's actions, interests and motivations mislabeled as racist they should actively work toward the application of
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"Focus on the messenger" would be attacking Bloomberg News, Thiel is the origin of the message, not the messenger.
Environmental China. (Score:2)
Ruining America? So who has the biggest collection of miners?
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Ruining America? So who has the biggest collection of miners?
The beneficiaries of mining are not often co-located with the mining operation.
There are huge Bitcoin mining operations in Iceland because of the low electricity prices. But nearly all of the profits go to nonresident foreigners.
Re:Lol, that's why China banned Bitcoin... (Score:5, Informative)
... and by "banned" you mean China has restrictions on trading [wikipedia.org] but not an outright ban, while hosting roughly 80% [theguardian.com] of cryptocurrency mining.
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... and therefore China has power to facilitate a crash on Bitcoin, while at the same time its own cryptocurrency does not suffer the same fate. By removing Bitcoin out of their circulation, they could ensure that a crash does not negatively affect them.
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Do they have that power? How would they facilitate such a crash? Are you thinking the Chinese government order all their miners to coordinate in a 51% attack, or is there some other mechanism?
I do not follow cryptocurrency that much, so I do not pretend to understand what drives the prices. I don't know how the difficulty adjustments would affect prices if Chinese miners suddenly stopped mining, or even how much miner participation drives coin costs. On the other hand, I do understand that if the Chines
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Bitcoin adjusts the mining difficulty [blockchain.com] periodically blocks to maintain a roughly steady mining rate. If 80% of the miners disappeared, the next up-to-2015 blocks would take longer -- but within a month or two, it would return to the normal rate.
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And that's when you turn your 80% of miners back on. You get to alternate between DDOSing and making massive profits.
Since miners also get to choose what transactions they process, you can also elect to fuck with people at a pretty fine granularity.
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Switching 80% of the mining capacity on and off like that only works if you think the rest of the network will not respond to that kind of abuse.
Beyond that, do you think China's government is really able to control bitcoin miners in China so precisely? I think their difficulties in enforcing regulations on bitcoin use and mining suggests otherwise. To apply that to your second hypothetical, wallets are pseudonymous -- even if 80% of miners decide to block transactions involving my wallet XYZ, I can creat
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How do you think the rest of the network is going to respond?
The scenario was China controls 80% of the miners. Can they do it? Probably, if they wanted to. Miners leave an indelible trace just like anyone else using bitcoin, and if you're going to actually use it you're going to leave a link to your real identity at some point. Then it's just a matter of dispatching some men with guns. Or, maybe even easier, just go after the ASIC manufacturers. Isn't Huawei supposedly spying on the entire world that way?
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I follow cryptocurrency very little, so you know more than me. I'm saying that based on the assumption that, given that bitcoin is crazy volatile as is, when a state entity has the power to shift 80% of current bitcoin mining to a different coin (their own), then that sounds like volatile turned up to 11. I'm perma-pissed about bitcoin's energy waste though, so maybe my bias skews things a bit.
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The thing with crypto is that everyone and their grandmother who has good money in China (and I mean that one literally) is trying to get their money out of China. We saw it when CCP tried to float yuan a few years ago, and the amount of money that flowed abroad was utterly phenomenal. They clamped down in a matter of days when they realised what was going on.
This is because monetary policy in China for last half a century has been "take a funnel, shove it in the mouth of economy and then pour money down it
Re:Lol, that's why China banned Bitcoin... (Score:5, Informative)
China is banning bitcoin because the Party wields direct control over their currency for political reasons. Anything that has the potential to undermine the Party's political control is banned in China.
Bitcoin is more accepted in the United States. It could undermine a national currency, and given that the USD's dominance globally is a major geopolitical tool of the US, Bitcoin could undermine that tool. The US government by default controls the USD, but to a much lesser degree than China controls their currency. Therefore encouraging Bitcoin usage in the US can weaken the political power of the USD and thus China would be incentivized to use it in this fashion. So he's right to think this way.
Where Thiel is wrong is that Bitcoin is utter nonsense as a currency. It fluctuates too much for it to be a worthwhile medium of exchange. Imagine that the next time you went to the store to buy toilet paper it cost the same number of Bitcoins, but the value of Bitcoins just doubled. So the price of TP just doubled? It's too unstable to ever really replace a fiat currency, so it's unlikely to have the actual effect of replacing fiat currencies globally; it's just not useful.
Re:Lol, that's why China banned Bitcoin... (Score:4, Interesting)
Interesting. While I'm more focused on 50+% attacks, I'm also mindful that metals are not really trustworthy either, vis the LIBOR conspiracies that have been disclosed. None are to be trusted, so the real question is, what can we tolerate? I'm not interested in Bitcoin being a dominant exchange due to the frailties of that implantation of cryptocurrency. Something else may come along, but it's not visible to me yet.
And yes, while it's difficult to buy goods and services with Bitcoin and trust you know the real cost, given exchange rate fluctuations, we can look at derivatives as both a hedge against instability, and a means to exploit instabilities.
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> It fluctuates too much for it to be a worthwhile medium of exchange.
I have to disagree - you don't need stability to be a useful medium of exchange, just to be a useful medium of denomination. And nobody says you have to write the prices in the same currency they're paid for in.
For example - you walk into the store and all prices are written in both Dollars and Yen, but you pay in bitcoin, with the exchange rate decided at the moment of sale.
It does mean that everybody involved needs to be comfortable
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But would you pay with something you expect the value to increase, or would you rather just hold on to i? Similarly, would you accept payment if you expect the value will fall? In this case you must get rid of it as fast as possible.
And conversions to between bitcoin and other coins involve a costâ"in addition to the delay inherent in all pure Bitcoin transactions.
I'm not saying it cannot be done, but I do claim it's going to be difficult.
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Like I said, there's always an element of gambling in doing anything with with bitcoin - buying, selling, holding it at all. But, it's probably safe to say that most people own roughly as much bitcoin as they want to - so unless any given sale involves a considerable fraction of that amount it's a minor fluctuation, they can buy or sell some more easily enough.
I don't know why you mention conversion - there's no conversion involved when looking at exchange rates determine the bitcoin price of something pri
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> It can't provide stability, so it by definition is not a currency; it's an investment.
One word: Hyperinflation. Pretty much the definition of an unstable currency that you can't store value in - and yet it's been done many times to many official currencies
Heck, even cash isn't a particularly effective store of value in the long term - the US and many other nations intentionally devalue it through controlled inflation specifically designed to encourage investment (and no doubt to benefit many intereste
Silly and self-serving. (Score:5, Interesting)
Theil's likely taken a short position on it now.
But bitcoin is a danger to all current fiat and banking stystems based thereon. But the cat is out of the bag, and it's a nationality-nuetral cat. The biggest danger to the dollar comes from the U.S. government itself with endless stimulus and vast amounts of unfunded liabilities.
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if you read the article, what he's doing is he's spreading FUD into leadership basically saying "china is into bitcoin, and if they are alone, then it's a financial attack on the USD. What are you going to do, united states? are you on the sidelines? cause the solution here is to get into bitcoin pronto as a future store of value"
'Cryptocurrency' is a massive TROLL-MEME (Score:1)
Seriously when are people going to learn?
N+1 fiat currencies. Dangerous? (Score:5, Interesting)
In macroeconomic theory, what it the likely impact on a global economy of N fiat currencies when you go to N+1 fiat currencies? Bitcoin guys can quibble, but that's essentially what it is. This is not a rhetorical question. I'm not certain of the answer but it seems like the rise of BTC is absorbing some of the money we've pumped in to the economy which is good from an inflation-control perspective.
I'm inclined to think that the addition of these things is mostly neutral in the long run, although a crash in crypto could have the same kind of impact that a crash in real estate does (or anything) if it becomes a widely held asset.
Chinese financial terror weapon though? Not likely.
A long time ago I speculated about something I called "the theoretical non-product". It was an idealized version of something useless the economy created in order to get around the fact that all of our essential and desirable needs have been met, but the economy has not re-organized in to a post-scarcity system that effectively satisfies all our needs.
Bitcoin is about as close to the theoretical non-product as I've ever seen anything come. NFTs too, perhaps even moreso.
Fiat currencies (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect you misunderstand what a fiat currency is. Many people think it means "currency that only has value because we agree that it does" - but that's true of *every* currency, not just fiat ones. Even if we used gold coins or diamonds based on their actual value - there's so much of the stuff in storage and circulation that if we instead only used them for the industrial and decorative applications where they have "real" value, they would be worth only a tiny fraction of their current value. Their market value is determined entirely by perceived value, not practical value.
Fiat currencies have two big defining traits:
- They're officially recognized by the government as legal tender (e.g. if someone owes you money, they can insist on paying you in dollars, even if you would rather have gold)
- They are not backed by any commodity, so more can be produced at will to suit fiscal policy (though there will probably be unavoidable inflation as a result)
Neither of which is true of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is more akin to a useless commodity. It has zero value except as a currency, but new Bitcoin is produced at a predictable rate that will not change without widespread agreement among a lot of different stakeholders with conflicting interests. No one in the world can decide "okay, I'm going to start printing 1,000,000BC per day to pay my debts - none of the other stakeholders would agree to allow that as it would devalue their holdings. Whereas any government in the world could do so with their own fiat currency, and most do to some degree.
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I think you also fail to understand the most important element of fiat currencies, that they're backed by debt. It is not true -- in healthy currencies, at least -- that the government can simply "print" more currency, and it's certainly not what happens with dollars.
The first thing you need to recognize is that the government does not create money, the banking system does. The Federal Reserve Bank is an obvious candidate for the source of money, and it does create some, but not very much. The vast majori
Bitcoin is not what threatens the U.S. dollar (Score:5, Interesting)
He says of Bitcoin: "It threatens fiat money, but it especially threatens the U.S. dollar"
Bitcoin is not strangling USD, the US government is wholly responsible - and we are talking actions for decades now, across both Republican and Democratic control.
Bitcoin is a response to actions of governments around the world, that have weakened fiat currency everywhere. Governments are busy printing unlimited cash, Bitcoin has a fixed amount possible to exist. Governments everywhere constantly are ratcheting up the tracking of money, limitations on what you can use cash for and how much... BitCoin has no restrictions at all, and needs no intermediaries to send to someone else. Here in 202 it might be 2-3 days before a wireless transfer goes through, it will be minutes with BTC or BCH.
They are all around. (Score:1)
So, who is that 1%er "acquaintance" anyways?
Come on, if you are in tech you personally know at least 4-5 people of who that is true. One guy just lives in a camper now, and acts as an angel VC. Another one bought a farm deep in Wyoming, I assume has gone full prepper. Then there are ones that you don't even notice, they just have a lot more money they are sitting on.
Sadly, it's not me if that is what you are getting at. I would be enjoying my private island and not reading Slashdot if I had struck it ri
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Not a fan of MMT, are you? Not that I disagree.
But Bitcoin, ultimately being finite, is more like a metal than a currency. It will be fun when mining is 'completed'.
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Not a fan of MMT, are you? Not that I disagree.
It seems like even if someone were a fan of MMT (which you guessed right, I am not), how could they argue the money printing does not weaken USD? They just don't care if it gets weaker, since they can print more.
But Bitcoin, ultimately being finite, is more like a metal than a currency.
I see what you are saying there and currently it's treated more as a metal than currency I suppose, but if enough people use it as currency, it is also currency... the way silve
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Modern monetary theory posits that adding money to the supply does not cause inflation (thus "weaken" the currency) provided there is still significant unemployment. It has nothing to do with not caring because you can print more. Perhaps you're confusing MMT with Desperate Dictator Monetary Theory (DDMT)?
Re:Bitcoin is not what threatens the U.S. dollar (Score:4, Insightful)
Bitcoin has a fixed amount possible to exist.
Many economists will argue that's actually a detriment for a currency not a benefit. Others may disagree.
Governments everywhere constantly are ratcheting up the tracking of money, limitations on what you can use cash for and how much... BitCoin has no restrictions at all
The BitCoin ledger provides more comprehensive tracking of who's spending what than any Government program I'm aware of. And Government restrictions on what you're allowed to spend money on will still (likely) apply to BitCoin transactions. Using BitCoin rather than a bank transfer might make it harder for the government to catch you breaking those rules (although using BitCoin rather than cash might actually make it easier for them) but it doesn't mean the rules cease to exist.
and needs no intermediaries to send to someone else.
BitCoin requires lots of intermediaries to send to someone else, namely all the people running nodes in the network. Just because there's no single, centralized authority doesn't mean no one else is involved.
Here in 202[1] it might be 2-3 days before a wireless transfer goes through, it will be minutes with BTC or BCH.
Yes but if I walk up to the cash register with a ten dollar bill the transaction can be completed in seconds.
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Yes but if I walk up to the cash register with a ten dollar bill the transaction can be completed in seconds.
I am not sure what the GP post meant by "2-3 days before a wireless transfer" goes through - what's a "wireless transfer"?
But I would note in Australia we have tap payments that take a matter of seconds to process. I can also send money from bank to bank and it will clear in a matter of seconds. I would say that's faster for me now to use "wireless" card payment than cash, and cash is a billion times faster than Bitcoin!
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>Governments everywhere constantly are ratcheting up the tracking of money,
And yet they can only *dream* of the level of tracking inherent in Bitcoin, where every transaction ever made is a matter of public record, with only the nominal pseudonymity of wallet IDs to protect people's privacy - pseudonymity that's usually easy to strip from an active account by anyone with government-class resources.
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For a given value of "strangling". The exchange rates against other currencies has a lot of week to week noise, but over time the dollar is very stable against the yen, euro, canadian dollar etc. That's likely due to the central banks for all of those currencies taking action to avoid dramatic long term swings against the dollar.
If you look for *evidence* of the US government "strangling" the US dollar, it's hard to find. Inflation has remained moderate for the last forty years, with a brief bout of def
Inflation is all around, just look (Score:1)
over time the dollar is very stable against the yen, euro, canadian dollar etc.
As I said, all fiat currencies have decided printing endless money is fine. So yes the USD remain stable against other currencies... just not against anything real (like food or lumber).
t's hard to find. Inflation has remained moderate for the last forty years
Haven't priced out [fao.org] much of anything recently have ya.
26% rise in a year for cost of basic food is not "moderate".
You are probably thinking of the CPI, a wholly artificial
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I don't lay supply chain problems during the pandemic at the feet of the government.
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I don't lay supply chain problems during the pandemic at the feet of the government.
"Supply Constraints" [bloomberg.com]
Riiiight....
Good luck man, you're gonna need it!
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BitCoin has no restrictions at all, and needs no intermediaries to send to someone else.
Of course it does, it requires an unregulated mining network, 80% of which is run out of China. Good luck with that long term, especially as the processing power requires the electricity of a medium sized country to operate.
Here in 202 it might be 2-3 days before a wireless transfer goes through, it will be minutes with BTC or BCH.
Only because the US banking system is stuck in the 1980's. Here in Australia we are already 90%+ cashless, with NFC accepted payments through your phone (Apple pay/Gpay etc) which happens in real time and updates your account in real-time. Inter-bank transfers are done in seconds, and it
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Yeah BTC is fast, but let's stop pretending everyone else still uses the Pony Express.
Haven't done an ACH transfer recently I take it.
Bitcoin is a weapon against the environment. (Score:1)
Weapons of Ass Destruction. (Score:4, Funny)
"...weapon against the U.S.," Thiel said during an appearance at a virtual event held for members of the Richard Nixon Foundation."
Uh, speaking of weapons against the U.S....the Richard Nixon Foundation?
He actually made this complaint with a straight face while speaking to the members of the Tricky Dick fan club?
That's rich.
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Weapons of Ass Destruction
Isn't that also the title of some porno?
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Thiel, yawn (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess I'm not sure why anyone gives a rat's ass what Peter Thiel thinks. Just because he threw some money around doesn't mean that he's capable of logical and rational thought. And given the insane amount of electricity that bitcoin mining requires, it's hard to see much of a real threat.
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He's a billionaire. But that's in US dollars, which are dropping like a rock on a Bitcoin basis.
Crypto Lifespan (Score:2)
Bitcoin, and all crypto for that matter, seem to be doing rather well for the moment.
Enjoy it while it lasts though because once your government ( your because not everyone lives in the US ) decides to apply full financial regulations to it, ( assuming they don't outright ban it ) that lofty price it's commanding at the moment will drop like a rock tossed off a cliff.
The only way it won't happen is if your elected leaders are deeply invested within it themselves.
Not Bitcoin, but maybe China's CBDC... (Score:1)
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Anything that threatens to US Dollar... (Score:1)
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Duh, of course it's a weapon (Score:2)
Enough with the neocon cyber BS (Score:3, Informative)
"Chinese" weapon? (Score:2)
Huh? Do people not remember how China already banned banks dealing in Bitcoin [wikipedia.org], ICOS, etc, and plans to not allow new mining projects going forward ?
China's fallen short of a complete and total ban, but they seem pretty anti-Crypto.
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they seem pretty anti-Crypto
Right up to the point where they created their own [yahoo.com].
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The digital Yuan is more like an appropriation of the technology - they use some of the features of Blockchain but remove the decentralized aspect which is so critical to Bitcoin, etc. So it's basically a Chinese government IT system with some artificial blockchain sprinkled on - making it fragile and subject to easy tampering by the central authority or whoever has access to the central authority's systems.
The digital Yuan/e-RMB is not related to Bitcoin or other decentralized cryptocurrencies.
Sure th
Thiel replaced Musk as CEO at Paypal (Score:1)