Posts mit dem Label Bitcoin werden angezeigt. Alle Posts anzeigen
Posts mit dem Label Bitcoin werden angezeigt. Alle Posts anzeigen
7/15/2019
"Today I’m announcing a new cryptocurrency, the ProfG Coin"
That's courtesy Scott Galloway.
(as usual, the DISCLAIMER: We have no position in any crypto currency. We are deliriously long Château d'Yquem Sauternes.)
It will be available to users on the most powerful, secure, closed network known to the modern economy … AOL. (2.1 million people still use AOL for dial-up.) While other cryptos claim to serve the unbanked, ProfG will serve the unloved. I will surround users with white light and assure them that early adoption will make them feel less anxious and depressed.
If you’re not on AOL, no worries. We’ll be issuing a tangible fiat currency — Cialis pills. There will be 10mg and 20mg bills/tablets pegged to the Euro, a stable currency that looks cooler than the dollar. My launch partners are Chipotle, anyone who sells vitaminwater, Hulu (couldn’t reach a deal with Netflix — bitches), Discover Card, MedMen, and Crocs.Interested? Sure you are. Read all on Scott's new modicum on Medium.
(as usual, the DISCLAIMER: We have no position in any crypto currency. We are deliriously long Château d'Yquem Sauternes.)
8/18/2018
Best explanation of Bitcoin, ever
This is the best explanation of Bitcoin I've ever seen. https://t.co/yzxqTdqRaD— Peter Backus (@Awesomnomics) August 17, 2018
Here is Mark Blyth explaining Bitcoin.
8/10/2018
"Specifically, we determine that there is a strong time-series momentum effect and that proxies for investor attention strongly forecast cryptocurrency returns."
A paper about that thing that solves no problem.
Risks and Returns of Cryptocurrency
Yukun Liu, Aleh Tsyvinski
Risks and Returns of Cryptocurrency
Yukun Liu, Aleh Tsyvinski
"We establish that the risk-return tradeoff of cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Ripple, and Ethereum) is distinct from those of stocks, currencies, and precious metals."Precisely distinct in the sense that you might incur a total loss, or be hacked.
"Cryptocurrencies have no exposure to most common stock market and macroeconomic factors."No, they exist in an environment of insiders.
"They also have no exposure to the returns of currencies and commodities."Because they are neither.
"In contrast, we show that the cryptocurrency returns can be predicted by factors which are specific to cryptocurrency markets. Specifically, we determine that there is a strong time-series momentum effect and that proxies for investor attention strongly forecast cryptocurrency returns."Simply find someone who buys at a higher price.
"Finally, we create an index of exposures to cryptocurrencies of 354 industries in the US and 137 industries in China."Interesting.
8/05/2018
Reading Lounge
1. Man is pleading people to stop ‘having sex’ with his hedge
2. Moncler's New Identity
3. What if U.S. retail prices were not denominated in U.S. dollars, but instead were denominated in gold or Bitcoin?
4. Life as a North Korean living in the South.
5. “All credit card PIN numbers in the World leaked”
2. Moncler's New Identity
3. What if U.S. retail prices were not denominated in U.S. dollars, but instead were denominated in gold or Bitcoin?
4. Life as a North Korean living in the South.
5. “All credit card PIN numbers in the World leaked”
8/02/2018
Crypto - Krugman nails it
Excerpt
In normal life, people don’t worry about where the value of green pieces of paper bearing portraits of dead presidents comes from: we accept dollar notes because other people will accept dollar notes. Yet the value of a dollar doesn’t come entirely from self-fulfilling expectations: ultimately, it’s backstopped by the fact that the U.S. government will accept dollars as payment of tax liabilities — liabilities it’s able to enforce because it’s a government. If you like, fiat currencies have underlying value because men with guns say they do. And this means that their value isn’t a bubble that can collapse if people lose faith.
...
Cryptocurrencies, by contrast, have no backstop, no tether to reality. Their value depends entirely on self-fulfilling expectations — which means that total collapse is a real possibility. If speculators were to have a collective moment of doubt, suddenly fearing that Bitcoins were worthless, well, Bitcoins would become worthless.
Will that happen? I think it’s more likely than not, partly because of the gap between the messianic rhetoric of crypto and the much more mundane real possibilities. That is, there might be a potential equilibrium in which Bitcoin (although probably not other cryptocurrencies) remain in use mainly for black market transactions and tax evasion, but that equilibrium, if it exists, would be hard to get to from here: once the dream of a blockchained future dies, the disappointment will probably collapse the whole thing.
In normal life, people don’t worry about where the value of green pieces of paper bearing portraits of dead presidents comes from: we accept dollar notes because other people will accept dollar notes. Yet the value of a dollar doesn’t come entirely from self-fulfilling expectations: ultimately, it’s backstopped by the fact that the U.S. government will accept dollars as payment of tax liabilities — liabilities it’s able to enforce because it’s a government. If you like, fiat currencies have underlying value because men with guns say they do. And this means that their value isn’t a bubble that can collapse if people lose faith.
...
Cryptocurrencies, by contrast, have no backstop, no tether to reality. Their value depends entirely on self-fulfilling expectations — which means that total collapse is a real possibility. If speculators were to have a collective moment of doubt, suddenly fearing that Bitcoins were worthless, well, Bitcoins would become worthless.
Will that happen? I think it’s more likely than not, partly because of the gap between the messianic rhetoric of crypto and the much more mundane real possibilities. That is, there might be a potential equilibrium in which Bitcoin (although probably not other cryptocurrencies) remain in use mainly for black market transactions and tax evasion, but that equilibrium, if it exists, would be hard to get to from here: once the dream of a blockchained future dies, the disappointment will probably collapse the whole thing.
6/29/2018
Reading Lounge
1. Getting a Grip on Slavoj Zizek (with Slavoj Zizek)
2. John McAfee's ICO promotion
3. Meet Japan's lowriders
4. Watch as this Porsche made from Lego drives through the streets of Warsaw
5. Feeding the gods: Hundreds of skulls reveal massive scale of human sacrifice in Aztec capital
6. The Biggest Digital Heist in History Isn’t Over Yet
2. John McAfee's ICO promotion
3. Meet Japan's lowriders
4. Watch as this Porsche made from Lego drives through the streets of Warsaw
5. Feeding the gods: Hundreds of skulls reveal massive scale of human sacrifice in Aztec capital
6. The Biggest Digital Heist in History Isn’t Over Yet
6/07/2018
6/06/2018
Reading Lounge
1. Sequential: A Fleet of Seductive Automotive Art by Antoine Dufilho
2. Everest crypto stunt linked to Sherpa’s death - it gets weirder
3. Facebook’s biggest concern: teens are leaving
4. Italy again
5. How low can a German go? Very low
6. Fall asleep in seconds by listening to a soothing voice read the EU’s new GDPR legislation
7. Underwater Tunnels Revolutionize the Faroes
8. Parting shot - A former investment banker: "I've pooped, like, five to eight times a day because of my hyperactive thyroid," Agrawal says. "It's a lot."
2. Everest crypto stunt linked to Sherpa’s death - it gets weirder
3. Facebook’s biggest concern: teens are leaving
4. Italy again
5. How low can a German go? Very low
6. Fall asleep in seconds by listening to a soothing voice read the EU’s new GDPR legislation
7. Underwater Tunnels Revolutionize the Faroes
8. Parting shot - A former investment banker: "I've pooped, like, five to eight times a day because of my hyperactive thyroid," Agrawal says. "It's a lot."
5/31/2018
Reading Lounge
1. some Vienna-hating
2. Anna Delvey
3. China's Complicated LGBT Movement
4. The "Laffer Curve" Was Discovered by a Medieval Islamic Philosopher
5. Robert Shiller Thinks Bitcoin Will Probably Go Extinct, But If You Want To Trade It During His Final Exam, Then Go Ahead And Be A Moron
6. Instant Rice Production at All-Time High in Japan
2. Anna Delvey
3. China's Complicated LGBT Movement
4. The "Laffer Curve" Was Discovered by a Medieval Islamic Philosopher
5. Robert Shiller Thinks Bitcoin Will Probably Go Extinct, But If You Want To Trade It During His Final Exam, Then Go Ahead And Be A Moron
6. Instant Rice Production at All-Time High in Japan
5/25/2018
Reading Lounge
1. Trade, Institutions and Ethnic Tolerance: Evidence from South Asia
2. Based on the above study: How Trade Leads to Tolerance
3. A surplus of trade discussions - This is also a response to Steve Keen
4. Against metrics: how measuring performance by numbers backfires
5. 50% of people cheat at Monopoly, so Hasbro redesigned it for them
6. The very best at last.
"It said it had sponsored four Ukrainian “crypto enthusiasts” to climb Mount Everest and bury a hard drive holding cryptocurrency at the summit"
2. Based on the above study: How Trade Leads to Tolerance
3. A surplus of trade discussions - This is also a response to Steve Keen
4. Against metrics: how measuring performance by numbers backfires
5. 50% of people cheat at Monopoly, so Hasbro redesigned it for them
6. The very best at last.
"It said it had sponsored four Ukrainian “crypto enthusiasts” to climb Mount Everest and bury a hard drive holding cryptocurrency at the summit"
5/03/2018
Reading Lounge
1. The Rule of 72
2. Human capital and the jobs guarantee
More broadly, such questions of worker fitness belie a fundamental misunderstanding of the way human ability is developed. Numerous studies show that on-the-job training and learning is far more effective than education or classroom-based jobs training. What's more, non-cognitive skills play an important factor in a person's quality of life, and those can only be practiced or learned through mentorship, which makes a (minor) appearance in a jobs guarantee proposal from Bard College's Pavlina Tcherneva.
3. Some interesting critical points made here about 'Job Guarantee versus Work Time Regulation'
4. Studio Ghibli Releases Tantalizing Concept Art for Its New Theme Park, Opening in Japan in 2022
5. MEET THE PRIEST WHO WAS OSCAR WILDE’S LOVER AND PARTLY THE BASIS FOR ‘DORIAN GRAY
"The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history."
6. Blockchain insiders tell us why we don't need blockchain
2. Human capital and the jobs guarantee
More broadly, such questions of worker fitness belie a fundamental misunderstanding of the way human ability is developed. Numerous studies show that on-the-job training and learning is far more effective than education or classroom-based jobs training. What's more, non-cognitive skills play an important factor in a person's quality of life, and those can only be practiced or learned through mentorship, which makes a (minor) appearance in a jobs guarantee proposal from Bard College's Pavlina Tcherneva.
3. Some interesting critical points made here about 'Job Guarantee versus Work Time Regulation'
4. Studio Ghibli Releases Tantalizing Concept Art for Its New Theme Park, Opening in Japan in 2022
5. MEET THE PRIEST WHO WAS OSCAR WILDE’S LOVER AND PARTLY THE BASIS FOR ‘DORIAN GRAY
"The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history."
6. Blockchain insiders tell us why we don't need blockchain
4/18/2018
Reading Lounge
1. More Open, More Anxious: China’s Changing Sex Lives
2. And more on sex from China - The Shanghai Sex Shop Selling More Than Just Toys
3. OLPC’S $100 LAPTOP WAS GOING TO CHANGE THE WORLD — THEN IT ALL WENT WRONG
Dear Leader knew the answer and here.
4. The definitive explanation of why Bitcoin is stupid.
5. Shocking revelation that Straussian professor Cowen does not know how to use digital maps.
2. And more on sex from China - The Shanghai Sex Shop Selling More Than Just Toys
3. OLPC’S $100 LAPTOP WAS GOING TO CHANGE THE WORLD — THEN IT ALL WENT WRONG
Dear Leader knew the answer and here.
4. The definitive explanation of why Bitcoin is stupid.
5. Shocking revelation that Straussian professor Cowen does not know how to use digital maps.
4/08/2018
Reading Lounge
1. South Korean millennials are reeling from the Bitcoin bust
2. Facebook sent a doctor on a secret mission to ask hospitals to share patient data
3. Cases against two ex-presidents of South Korea fits an alarming pattern
4. The Death of Paradise
5. What do you experience while reading? Do you experience inner speech, as though you or the author are saying the words aloud? Do you experience visual imagery?
6. The Bloody Family History of the Guillotine
7. THOUGHTS ON THE GENDER PAY GAP
8. A planned space hotel hopes to welcome guests by 2022 — for a cost of almost $800,000 a night
2. Facebook sent a doctor on a secret mission to ask hospitals to share patient data
3. Cases against two ex-presidents of South Korea fits an alarming pattern
4. The Death of Paradise
5. What do you experience while reading? Do you experience inner speech, as though you or the author are saying the words aloud? Do you experience visual imagery?
6. The Bloody Family History of the Guillotine
7. THOUGHTS ON THE GENDER PAY GAP
8. A planned space hotel hopes to welcome guests by 2022 — for a cost of almost $800,000 a night
2/06/2018
Sex, drugs, and bitcoin: How much illegal activity is financed through cryptocurrencies?
Pretty sizable activity according to this study by
Sean Foley a, Jonathan R. Karlsen b, Tālis J. Putniņš
Abstract
Cryptocurrencies are among the largest unregulated markets in the world. We find that approximately one-quarter of bitcoin users and one-half of bitcoin transactions are associated with illegal activity. Around $72 billion of illegal activity per year involves bitcoin, which is close to the scale of the US and European markets for illegal drugs. The illegal share of bitcoin activity declines with mainstream interest in bitcoin and with the emergence of more opaque cryptocurrencies. The techniques developed in this paper have applications in cryptocurrency surveillance. Our findings suggest that cryptocurrencies are transforming the way black markets operate by enabling “black e-commerce”.
We find that illegal activity accounts for a substantial proportion of the users and trading activity in bitcoin. For example, approximately one-quarter of all users (25%) and close to one-half of bitcoin transactions (44%) are associated with illegal activity. Furthermore, approximately one-fifth (20%) of the total dollar value of transactions and approximately one-half of bitcoin holdings (51%) through time are associated with illegal activity. Our estimates suggest that in the most recent part of our sample (April 2017), there are an estimated 24 million bitcoin market participants that use bitcoin primarily for illegal purposes. These users annually conduct around 36 million transactions, with a value of around $72 billion, and collectively hold around $8 billion worth of bitcoin.
25% of crypto users engaging in illegal activity sounds a little high to me. Perhaps Deutsche Bank can shed a light on this from the fiat money perspective? Over to John Cryan, or the great Vampire Squid.
12/25/2017
Nocoiner (Urban Dic.)
A Nocoiner is a person who has no Bitcoin. Nocoiners (usually Socialists, Lawyers or MBA Economists ) are people who missed their opportunity to buy Bitcoin at a low price because they thought it was a scam, and who is now bitter at having missed out. The nocoiner takes out his or her bitterness on Bitcoin Hodlers, by constantly claiming that Bitcoin will crash, is a scam, is a bubble, or other types of easily refuted FUD. Nocoiners have little to no computer skills or imagination; even when they see the price of Bitcoin go up and its adoption spread they consider all Bitcoin users to be in a collective delusion, with only themselves as the ones who can see what is happening. This attitude comes from being steeped in the elitistpriest cultures found at Harvard, Yale and Columbia, where anyone who is not part of their clique is treated with suspicion by default. The worst nocoiners are tenured academics and goldbugs. Nocoiners believe that the world owes them everything they want because they are part of an elite; they are hysterical liars, brats, prostitutes and losers.
12/13/2017
Bitcoin, a fantastic way to get rich (?), but certainly nuts
So you can buy Bitcoin futures now to enjoy an even more emotional thrill ride. They are in contango. Even better. Several possible reasons for this. I liked the following and just reading it gave me sweaty palms.
Here is Bloomers Matt Levine on the fun side of where to put your private key to your immaterial treasure.
Here is Bloomers Matt Levine on the fun side of where to put your private key to your immaterial treasure.
I half-joked yesterday that "perhaps the cost of bitcoin storage -- keeping your private key in a vault, worrying about hackers, etc. -- is so high that arbitrageurs need to charge $1,000 for a month of it," but maybe it's the right explanation? Everything I read about bitcoin storage is utterly exhausting. "A private key printed out on a sheet of paper, cut into pieces, and distributed among family members who don’t know how to put it back together; an encrypted file loaded on a USB stick and buried in the backyard; a password committed only to memory;" a private key engraved on a metal plate and stored in a safe; a safe deposit box at a bank; an account at an exchange that gets hacked and loses its customers' bitcoins. Buying bitcoin futures is a way to get exposure to bitcoin and avoid the bitcoin-storage problem: You never have to store bitcoins because you never own bitcoins; you just get paid dollars for the amount that bitcoin goes up. But the storage problem doesn't go away; you just offload it to the arbitrageur who provides you the bitcoin exposure. Maybe the arbitrageur needs to charge you $1,000 to cover her storage costs. If you think these markets are efficient, then the gap between the futures and the spot is telling you how much -- in out-of-pocket expenses, in theft risk, in psychic pain -- it costs to store bitcoin.Join Sean Everett and watch yourself being robbed live.
Sean Everett wasn’t sure how his bullish bet on cryptocurrency would turn out. But he definitely didn’t expect it to be over so soon.
In March, he sold all his stocks, including Apple and Amazon, and used a chunk of the proceeds to buy Bitcoin and Ethereum on a site called Coinbase. The decision made Everett, the CEO of artificial intelligence startup Prome, almost instantly richer, as the blockchain-based currencies’ value rocketed up exponentially over the next several weeks. But then, while he was out walking the dog after 10 p.m. on Wednesday, May 17, Everett got the call. It was T-Mobile, ringing him to confirm that it was switching his phone number to a different device.
It was a suspicious move that Everett had most certainly not requested. But even as he pleaded with the agent to block the switch, it was too late. Less than five minutes later, Everett’s cell service abruptly shut off, and as he rushed to his computer, he saw himself being robbed in real time. A raft of email notifications confirmed that someone had taken control of his main Gmail account, then broken into his Coinbase “wallet.” They’d gotten in with the help of his switched-over phone number: Everett’s account required him to log in with a two-factor authentication code sent by text message, as a second safeguard—and now the text had gone straight to the thief.
Full story here
12/03/2017
Bitcoin, that white-powder-under-the-nose-and--empty-bottles-of-vodka-on-the-floor ...
From True Economics:
Bitcoin Craze Heads for the Moon
Just about 10 days ago, I wrote about the Bitcoin being a bubble. And since then, few things happened:
The bubble has now gone into public euphoria stage, witnessed by an ever-growing number of discounted brokerage platforms actively selling access to Bitcoin markets with leverage in excess of 100:1.
The bubble has gone from hyperbolic to hyperbolic+ trajectory, adding a massive degree of volatility to the trend. Earlier this week, Bitcoin managed to drop some 21 percent within a day and then go back above pre-drop levels within less than 24 hours. The confirmation phase is now complete with buy-on-the-dip 'investors' triggering waves of herding.
And the hype has gone institutional. In my post, I said "This is not just a shoe-shine-boy moment, folks. It is white-powder-under-the-nose-and--empty-bottles-of-vodka-on-the-floor hour for high school dropouts with cash to burn." Yeah, read this from as always excellent Matt Levine of (not always excellent) Bloomberg View: "One of the presenters at the conference... “Decentralization will change more in our lives over the coming years than possibly any other technological shift we’ve seen,” he says, likening the crypto rush to the Reformation. He describes building anarcho-capitalist city-states on the back of the blockchain.
more here
One has already seen it all and is reporting to you from the year 2025.
I am a time-traveler from the future, here to beg you to stop what you are doing.
u/Luka_Magnotta
I am sending this message from the year 2025. Things are looking bleak here, and some of you will carry blood on your hands.
If you don't believe me, please move on, as I have no way of proving to you I'm really who I claim to be.
I don't want to waste any of your time, so I'm merely going to explain what happened.
On average, every year so far, the value of Bitcoin has increased by about a factor ten. From 0.1 dollar in 2010, to 1 dollar in 2011, to 10 dollar in 2012, to 100 dollar in 2013. From now on, there's a slight slowdown, as the value increased by a factor ten every two years, to 1,000 dollar in 2015, to 10,000 in 2017, 100,000 in 2019, and 1,000,000 in 2021. From here onwards, there's no good way of expressing its value in dollars, as the dollar is no longer used, nor is any central bank issued currency for that matter. There are two main forms of wealth in today's world. Land and cryptocurrency.
There are just over 19 million Bitcoin known to be used in the world today, as well as a few hundred thousand that were permanently lost, and we're still dealing with a population of just over 7 billion people today. On average, this means the average person owns just under 0.003 bitcoin. However, due to the unequal distribution of wealth in my world, the mean person owns just 0.001 bitcoin. That's right, most of you reading this today are rich. I personally live next to an annoying young man who logged into his old Reddit account two years ago and discovered that he received a tip of 0.01 Bitcoin back in 2013 for calling someone a "faggot" when he was a 16 year old boy. Upon making this discovery he bought an airline ticket, left his house without telling anyone anything and went to a Citadel.
"What is a Citadel?" you might wonder. Well, by the time Bitcoin became worth 1,000 dollar, services began to emerge for the "Bitcoin rich" to protect themselves as well as their wealth. It started with expensive safes, then began to include bodyguards, and today, "earlies" (our term for early adapters), as well as those rich whose wealth survived the "transition" live in isolated gated cities called Citadels, where most work is automated. Most such Citadels are born out of the fortification used to protect places where Bitcoin mining machines are located. The company known as ASICminer to you is known to me as a city where Mr. Friedman rules as a king.
In my world, soon to be your world, most governments no longer exist, as Bitcoin transactions are done anonymously and thus most governments can enforce no taxation on their citizens. Most of the success of Bitcoin is due to the fact that Bitcoin turned out to be an effective method to hide your wealth from the government. Whereas people entering "rogue states" like Luxemberg, Monaco and Liechtenstein were followed by unmanned drones to ensure that governments know who is hiding wealth, no such option was available to stop people from hiding their money in Bitcoin.
Governments tried to stay relevant in my society by buying Bitcoin, which just made the problem worse, by increasing the value of Bitcoin. Governments did so in secret of course, but my generation's "Snowdens" are in fact greedy government employees who transferred Bitcoin to their own private account, and escaped to anarchic places where no questions are asked as long as you can cough up some money.
The four institutions with the largest still accessible Bitcoin balance are believed to be as following:
-ASICminer - 50,000 Bitcoin
-The IMF's "currency stabilization fund" - 70,000 Bitcoin
-Government of Saudi Arabia - 110,000 Bitcoin
-The North Korean government - 180,000 Bitcoin
Economic growth today is about -2% per year. Why is this? If you own more than 0.01 Bitcoin, chances are you don't do anything with your money. There is no inflation, and thus no incentive to invest your money. Just like the medieval ages had no significant economic growth, as wealth was measured in gold, our society has no economic growth either, as people know their 0.01 Bitcoin will be enough to last them a lifetime. The fact that there are still new Bitcoin released is what prevents our world from collapse so far it seems, but people fear that the decline in inflation that will occur during the next block halving may further wreck our economy.
What happened to the Winklevoss twins? The Winklevoss twins were among the first to die. After seeing the enormous damage done to the fabric of society, terrorist movements emerged that sought to hunt down and murder anyone known to have a large balance of Bitcoin, or believed to be responsible in any way for the development of cryptocurrency. Ironically, these terrorist movements use Bitcoin to anonymously fund their operations.
Most people who own any significant amount of Bitcoin no longer speak to their families and lost their friends, because they had to change their identities. There have been also been a few suicides of people who could not handle the guilt after seeing what happened to the bag-holders, the type of skeptical people who continued to believe it would eventually collapse, even after hearing the rumors of governments buying Bitcoin. Many people were taken hostage, and thus, it is suspected that 25% percent of "Bitcoin rich" actually physically tortured someone to get him to spill his password.
full post
Bitcoin Craze Heads for the Moon
Just about 10 days ago, I wrote about the Bitcoin being a bubble. And since then, few things happened:
The bubble has now gone into public euphoria stage, witnessed by an ever-growing number of discounted brokerage platforms actively selling access to Bitcoin markets with leverage in excess of 100:1.
The bubble has gone from hyperbolic to hyperbolic+ trajectory, adding a massive degree of volatility to the trend. Earlier this week, Bitcoin managed to drop some 21 percent within a day and then go back above pre-drop levels within less than 24 hours. The confirmation phase is now complete with buy-on-the-dip 'investors' triggering waves of herding.
And the hype has gone institutional. In my post, I said "This is not just a shoe-shine-boy moment, folks. It is white-powder-under-the-nose-and--empty-bottles-of-vodka-on-the-floor hour for high school dropouts with cash to burn." Yeah, read this from as always excellent Matt Levine of (not always excellent) Bloomberg View: "One of the presenters at the conference... “Decentralization will change more in our lives over the coming years than possibly any other technological shift we’ve seen,” he says, likening the crypto rush to the Reformation. He describes building anarcho-capitalist city-states on the back of the blockchain.
more here
One has already seen it all and is reporting to you from the year 2025.
I am a time-traveler from the future, here to beg you to stop what you are doing.
u/Luka_Magnotta
I am sending this message from the year 2025. Things are looking bleak here, and some of you will carry blood on your hands.
If you don't believe me, please move on, as I have no way of proving to you I'm really who I claim to be.
I don't want to waste any of your time, so I'm merely going to explain what happened.
On average, every year so far, the value of Bitcoin has increased by about a factor ten. From 0.1 dollar in 2010, to 1 dollar in 2011, to 10 dollar in 2012, to 100 dollar in 2013. From now on, there's a slight slowdown, as the value increased by a factor ten every two years, to 1,000 dollar in 2015, to 10,000 in 2017, 100,000 in 2019, and 1,000,000 in 2021. From here onwards, there's no good way of expressing its value in dollars, as the dollar is no longer used, nor is any central bank issued currency for that matter. There are two main forms of wealth in today's world. Land and cryptocurrency.
There are just over 19 million Bitcoin known to be used in the world today, as well as a few hundred thousand that were permanently lost, and we're still dealing with a population of just over 7 billion people today. On average, this means the average person owns just under 0.003 bitcoin. However, due to the unequal distribution of wealth in my world, the mean person owns just 0.001 bitcoin. That's right, most of you reading this today are rich. I personally live next to an annoying young man who logged into his old Reddit account two years ago and discovered that he received a tip of 0.01 Bitcoin back in 2013 for calling someone a "faggot" when he was a 16 year old boy. Upon making this discovery he bought an airline ticket, left his house without telling anyone anything and went to a Citadel.
"What is a Citadel?" you might wonder. Well, by the time Bitcoin became worth 1,000 dollar, services began to emerge for the "Bitcoin rich" to protect themselves as well as their wealth. It started with expensive safes, then began to include bodyguards, and today, "earlies" (our term for early adapters), as well as those rich whose wealth survived the "transition" live in isolated gated cities called Citadels, where most work is automated. Most such Citadels are born out of the fortification used to protect places where Bitcoin mining machines are located. The company known as ASICminer to you is known to me as a city where Mr. Friedman rules as a king.
In my world, soon to be your world, most governments no longer exist, as Bitcoin transactions are done anonymously and thus most governments can enforce no taxation on their citizens. Most of the success of Bitcoin is due to the fact that Bitcoin turned out to be an effective method to hide your wealth from the government. Whereas people entering "rogue states" like Luxemberg, Monaco and Liechtenstein were followed by unmanned drones to ensure that governments know who is hiding wealth, no such option was available to stop people from hiding their money in Bitcoin.
Governments tried to stay relevant in my society by buying Bitcoin, which just made the problem worse, by increasing the value of Bitcoin. Governments did so in secret of course, but my generation's "Snowdens" are in fact greedy government employees who transferred Bitcoin to their own private account, and escaped to anarchic places where no questions are asked as long as you can cough up some money.
The four institutions with the largest still accessible Bitcoin balance are believed to be as following:
-ASICminer - 50,000 Bitcoin
-The IMF's "currency stabilization fund" - 70,000 Bitcoin
-Government of Saudi Arabia - 110,000 Bitcoin
-The North Korean government - 180,000 Bitcoin
Economic growth today is about -2% per year. Why is this? If you own more than 0.01 Bitcoin, chances are you don't do anything with your money. There is no inflation, and thus no incentive to invest your money. Just like the medieval ages had no significant economic growth, as wealth was measured in gold, our society has no economic growth either, as people know their 0.01 Bitcoin will be enough to last them a lifetime. The fact that there are still new Bitcoin released is what prevents our world from collapse so far it seems, but people fear that the decline in inflation that will occur during the next block halving may further wreck our economy.
What happened to the Winklevoss twins? The Winklevoss twins were among the first to die. After seeing the enormous damage done to the fabric of society, terrorist movements emerged that sought to hunt down and murder anyone known to have a large balance of Bitcoin, or believed to be responsible in any way for the development of cryptocurrency. Ironically, these terrorist movements use Bitcoin to anonymously fund their operations.
Most people who own any significant amount of Bitcoin no longer speak to their families and lost their friends, because they had to change their identities. There have been also been a few suicides of people who could not handle the guilt after seeing what happened to the bag-holders, the type of skeptical people who continued to believe it would eventually collapse, even after hearing the rumors of governments buying Bitcoin. Many people were taken hostage, and thus, it is suspected that 25% percent of "Bitcoin rich" actually physically tortured someone to get him to spill his password.
full post
7/16/2017
Bitcoin - Pick a number, any number. And choose your tulips wisely.
Reposted from Polemic's Pain
I do have a very simple view on any form of alternative currency, the question of can you pay your taxes with it? If not, it's not a currency because taxes drive money.
Polemic's Pain dissects Bitcoin much deeper.
I’m going to write about Bitcoin. Not because I like it, or hate it, just because I rank it as one of the maddest delusions of a market that I have ever known.
A market which is a case study of -
Correlation vs causality
Wealth redistribution.
Randomised social mobility acceleration
Disconnected arguments
The technical analysis of noise.
Cyber crime indices
Bitcoin is the blockchain equivalent of Trevithick's 1802 Coalbrookdale steam locomotive
It is the harbinger of a technology of coding that will change the way many data management functions are performed. It is also an anonymised payment system.
As a payment system, its value can be calculated in the same way you calculate that of a credit card company - the value of the sum of charges made for the transactions by the company, less the costs to run it. I don’t believe Bitcoin charge transaction fees so on that basis it is zero and I don’t believe they have any IP ownership of the blockchain idea, so zero value there too. As a stock price is effectively a discounted function of future cash flow and Bitcoin has no cash flow, the value of Bitcoin Inc is zero.
Some say that Bitcoin is a currency. Is it? What drives currency price differentials?
Trade balances - Does Bitcoin represent a trade bloc and so move on trade flows? No
Interest Rate Differentials - Does Bitcoin have an interest rate benefit? At zero interest rate, it has a negative carry against any +ve yielding currency - Mostly no (unless you are Swiss).
Foreign Direct Investment - Does Bitcoin see demand due to FDI into a domestic economy? No.
Reserve Asset - Is Bitcoin a global reserve currency displaying all the criteria needed to be seen as such? No.
Inflation - Does Bitcoin move due to relative supply against competitive monetary systems. - Yes, but with the contraction of global QE this is not moving in Bitcoin's favour. An additional consideration is the uncertainty of the evolution of other competing pseudo currencies or the competitive function of gold or any other non-monetary commodity. Why buy Bitcoin when you can hedge your future demand for an underlying essential directly rather than using an intermediary?
Even if we assume Bitcoin is a currency, on the basis that it can be used for transactions, using the parallel to FX markets the transactional function of Bitcoin is identical to a very very short duration FX swap, where both parties agree on a fixing spot rate on which to base other charges, such as interest differentials. As it is on a micro time scale with no transactional charges, those costs are pretty near zero and the fixing rate is immaterial. It doesn’t matter whether the GBP amount you need to buy something priced in USD is 1 Bitcoin or 0.0001. You also expect the recipient to really be pricing in USD with a BTC conversion occurring at their end - just doing the reverse action as soon as possible. If anyone is mad enough to price their goods at fixed Bitcoin prices then they deserve to see no business or go bust as folk arbitrage the FX rates.
If a retailer does decide to hold its BTC receivables as BTC then they are taking a massive FX risk. Which is why I read this from an Overstock ($OSTK) exec saying they keep 50% of their BTC received as BTC somewhat of a concern if they see themselves as a retailer rather than an FX punter. So should I be short or VERY short of their stock?
Having decided that Bitcoin technology has no unique value to Bitcoin itself, as it can be replicated by others (indeed the proliferation of crypto-currencies is a testament to this) and decided that for transactions one only needs to rent it for a fraction of a second, then why would one want to hold and store it?
It is said that Bitcoin is a store of value that will only go up as there is a limited supply and the rules of issue are immutable.
Even before the current issue of a bifurcation of the Bitcoin platform is considered, the primary condition for storing value is that the value of your store does not change relative to what you value. Most of us value the security of food, shelter and warmth, all of which have to be purchased in local currency. The value of Bitcoin relative to these things is currently oscillating at +/-30% a month. That is one heck of a risk that leaves even investing in CDOs a preferable store of value.
Yet despite all of my cynicism towards the price of Bitcoin, the price has indeed gone up. When the price of something moves in the direction that the narrator predicted it is used as a form of substantiation of their initial arguments. The ‘see I was right’ view is dangerous for the old reason that correlation does not imply causation. Bitcoin prices can effectively soar on the ‘greater fool’ theory rather than any of the tulip like arguments of long term value holding water.
Full post here
I do have a very simple view on any form of alternative currency, the question of can you pay your taxes with it? If not, it's not a currency because taxes drive money.
Polemic's Pain dissects Bitcoin much deeper.
. . . . . .
I’m going to write about Bitcoin. Not because I like it, or hate it, just because I rank it as one of the maddest delusions of a market that I have ever known.
A market which is a case study of -
Correlation vs causality
Wealth redistribution.
Randomised social mobility acceleration
Disconnected arguments
The technical analysis of noise.
Cyber crime indices
Bitcoin is the blockchain equivalent of Trevithick's 1802 Coalbrookdale steam locomotive
It is the harbinger of a technology of coding that will change the way many data management functions are performed. It is also an anonymised payment system.
As a payment system, its value can be calculated in the same way you calculate that of a credit card company - the value of the sum of charges made for the transactions by the company, less the costs to run it. I don’t believe Bitcoin charge transaction fees so on that basis it is zero and I don’t believe they have any IP ownership of the blockchain idea, so zero value there too. As a stock price is effectively a discounted function of future cash flow and Bitcoin has no cash flow, the value of Bitcoin Inc is zero.
Some say that Bitcoin is a currency. Is it? What drives currency price differentials?
Trade balances - Does Bitcoin represent a trade bloc and so move on trade flows? No
Interest Rate Differentials - Does Bitcoin have an interest rate benefit? At zero interest rate, it has a negative carry against any +ve yielding currency - Mostly no (unless you are Swiss).
Foreign Direct Investment - Does Bitcoin see demand due to FDI into a domestic economy? No.
Reserve Asset - Is Bitcoin a global reserve currency displaying all the criteria needed to be seen as such? No.
Inflation - Does Bitcoin move due to relative supply against competitive monetary systems. - Yes, but with the contraction of global QE this is not moving in Bitcoin's favour. An additional consideration is the uncertainty of the evolution of other competing pseudo currencies or the competitive function of gold or any other non-monetary commodity. Why buy Bitcoin when you can hedge your future demand for an underlying essential directly rather than using an intermediary?
Even if we assume Bitcoin is a currency, on the basis that it can be used for transactions, using the parallel to FX markets the transactional function of Bitcoin is identical to a very very short duration FX swap, where both parties agree on a fixing spot rate on which to base other charges, such as interest differentials. As it is on a micro time scale with no transactional charges, those costs are pretty near zero and the fixing rate is immaterial. It doesn’t matter whether the GBP amount you need to buy something priced in USD is 1 Bitcoin or 0.0001. You also expect the recipient to really be pricing in USD with a BTC conversion occurring at their end - just doing the reverse action as soon as possible. If anyone is mad enough to price their goods at fixed Bitcoin prices then they deserve to see no business or go bust as folk arbitrage the FX rates.
If a retailer does decide to hold its BTC receivables as BTC then they are taking a massive FX risk. Which is why I read this from an Overstock ($OSTK) exec saying they keep 50% of their BTC received as BTC somewhat of a concern if they see themselves as a retailer rather than an FX punter. So should I be short or VERY short of their stock?
Having decided that Bitcoin technology has no unique value to Bitcoin itself, as it can be replicated by others (indeed the proliferation of crypto-currencies is a testament to this) and decided that for transactions one only needs to rent it for a fraction of a second, then why would one want to hold and store it?
It is said that Bitcoin is a store of value that will only go up as there is a limited supply and the rules of issue are immutable.
Even before the current issue of a bifurcation of the Bitcoin platform is considered, the primary condition for storing value is that the value of your store does not change relative to what you value. Most of us value the security of food, shelter and warmth, all of which have to be purchased in local currency. The value of Bitcoin relative to these things is currently oscillating at +/-30% a month. That is one heck of a risk that leaves even investing in CDOs a preferable store of value.
Yet despite all of my cynicism towards the price of Bitcoin, the price has indeed gone up. When the price of something moves in the direction that the narrator predicted it is used as a form of substantiation of their initial arguments. The ‘see I was right’ view is dangerous for the old reason that correlation does not imply causation. Bitcoin prices can effectively soar on the ‘greater fool’ theory rather than any of the tulip like arguments of long term value holding water.
Full post here
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