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22nd December 2017, 08:07 PM | #1201 |
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22nd December 2017, 09:54 PM | #1202 |
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Just putting this out there:
Wouldn't it be much better to base the mining of a cryptocurrency not on computational complexity which translates to high energy consumption but instead something random but also decentralized? Or if not random, then something unpredictable. I know random number generators (vs. pseudo random) are a bit of a holy grail in computer science and an application like cryptocurrency is perfect example of why such a thing is so important. Think about some of the things that could replace bitcoin mining: radioactive decay of something measurements from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory Electricity consumption of San Francisco seeded off most insignificant digits I don't know, point being, something that doesn't consume resources unnecessarily and that nobody has an advantage. |
22nd December 2017, 11:19 PM | #1203 |
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It seems technically feasible. Each miner includes a random number in their block and they generate a hash of all the random numbers together and whoever's number is closest to the hash wins.
Problems: Whoever has the most mining computers running simultaneously has the most chance of winning the prize. And being a decentralized network, every miner would have to have a copy of every other miners' block in their computer so that they could compute the winner. This would still be CPU intensive (though not tending towards infinity as with the current setup). There may be other holes that I haven't thought of yet. Current alternatives to "proof of work" include "proof of stake" (whoever has the most coins wins) and "consensus" (if a majority of miners agree on what should be included in a block then the block gets added to the chain). Consensus seems to be the best of the lot but is not designed to allocate block rewards (maybe incorporate a lottery as above). |
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23rd December 2017, 06:33 AM | #1204 |
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I went to the store today to get something and when I went to pay for it with my dollar bill the guy at the register told me it had been devalued down to $0.75 overnight and I didn't have enough money to make my purchase, what a bummer
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23rd December 2017, 09:26 AM | #1205 |
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24th December 2017, 04:12 AM | #1206 |
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The crash eased off for about a day at $13,500 or so. But is now at about $12,600.
The slackening of the rate of fall coincided with press stories about how enthusiasts who think the crash is being predicted by jackasses have been buying in using credit cards. That gives them a very leveraged position, and I say again I hope you've not been doing that. Only heehawing jackasses would contemplate such foolishness. ETA Now jumping around $12100-$12150 at 11:24 UK time. |
24th December 2017, 05:49 AM | #1207 |
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One last gasp yesterday. Maybe fools taken in by "Buy now while the price is down". Dropping again today, and I think the trend will continue.
https://www.bitcoinzar.co.za/bitcoin-price-chart/ What we need to talk about now is how low it will go. |
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24th December 2017, 06:04 AM | #1208 |
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Perhaps Bitcoin will go the way of the Zimbabwe dollar.
In 1980 when Mugabe came into power the Zim dollar was on a par with the US dollar. When they finally demonetised the currency, the value had sunk to 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (25 zeros) to one US dollar. They were issuing banknotes denoted as 100 trillion redenominated Zim dollars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimbabwean_dollar |
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24th December 2017, 06:42 AM | #1209 |
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The Hungarian pengöWP still holds the record then
The Hungarian economy could only be stabilized by the introduction of a new currency, and therefore, on 1 August 1946, the forint was reintroduced at a rate of 400 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 (400 octillion) = 4×10^29 pengő, dropping 29 zeros from the old currency. In effect, the total amount of circulating pengő notes had a value of less than 0.1 fillér (10^−3 forint) |
24th December 2017, 08:55 AM | #1210 |
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1000 cryptos and 95% due to return to zero is what one bitcoiner enthuses. I would not enthuse if I were a bitcoin billionare. I see nothing backing bitcoin, but I have not read the threads to see where I am wrong.
This feels like the dotcom bubble from a technical view, but of course there was real technology and activity that did things in the dotcoms, and they took off again. If bitcoin is like gold, there will be a limit to what can be mined. But there is no limit to bitcoin clones. There is no gold clone. The whole escapade is a nonsense of the first order, and it will seem all so obvious when it lurches along just above zero. https://secure.stansberrychurchouse....D_BwE#AST74247 |
24th December 2017, 10:26 AM | #1211 |
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24th December 2017, 10:28 AM | #1212 |
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"The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled. Where something so important is involved, a deeper mystery seems only decent." - Galbraith, 1975 |
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24th December 2017, 11:46 AM | #1213 |
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Hung around 13500, now been in the 12000s for a while. The decline is staged. In previous bubbles, they crashed once people had spent all their money, like Joe Kennedy's shoe shine boy, I've already referred to.
But these days people have credit cards, and it's possible that the hucksters are now encouraging the marks to max them out. That leverages the marks' position, so I hope it's not happening that they're maxing out their credit. That really would spread the effect of the crash, when it comes, to other sectors of the economy. |
24th December 2017, 12:48 PM | #1214 |
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"The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled. Where something so important is involved, a deeper mystery seems only decent." - Galbraith, 1975 |
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24th December 2017, 01:39 PM | #1215 |
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Samson gave us a link to one here https://secure.stansberrychurchouse....D_BwE#AST74247
You don't know that people borrow to speculate? You've never heard of leverage? Margin? Here's investopedia. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/leverage.asp That was a big thing in the 1929 bubble. People borrowed money at high interest rates to play the market, because they expected to make huge capital gains that would wipe out their debts. Or they bought on margin. You could put down 10% of the cost of the shares, and borrow the other 90%, using the shares themselves as collateral. So you can multiply your purchasing power in a rising market tenfold. But if the price falls, your creditor sells your holdings to recover the capital. You don't need to sell. You get "sold out". Are people buying Bitcoin using credit cards? Can a fish swim? Here's a "huckster" promoting it Here's the deal:Here's coinmama's sales pitch. Step 1: Choose your method of payment. Use a credit/debit card to pay online in minutes! If you want to pay with cash, choose one of the other methods of payment. Step 2: Follow the instructions. To pay with credit/debit card, fill the payment form and follow the instructions. To pay with cash choose Western Union as the method of payment and follow the instructions to complete the payment.Stuff like this always happens in crazy bubbles, 1637, 1720, 1845, 1929. Always the same. And when the punters' money runs out, the bubble goes pop. Coinmama and her kind will disappear completely at that very moment, never to be seen again. My point of course is, joking aside, that easy credit and purchases on credit, are much more widespread and accessible than at any of the previous dates I have cited. That may change the pattern of the crash, but crash there will be. And this may well be it. |
24th December 2017, 02:16 PM | #1216 |
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I am thinking that even in the tulip bubble you had tulip bulbs at the end with an above zero value.
This is obviously not so with a bitcoin. It will have the same value as a computer graphic of the Mona Lisa, infinitely reproduceable.. |
25th December 2017, 01:43 AM | #1217 |
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Well yes, and in extremis you can even eat them, but that's little consolation to the boomtime possessor of
A tulip, known as "the Viceroy" (viseroij) ... bulb was offered for sale between 3,000 and 4,200 guilders (florins) depending on size (aase). A skilled craftsworker at the time earned about 300 guilders a year.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania |
25th December 2017, 11:22 AM | #1218 |
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Goldman Sachs is starting a crypto currency trading desk which will trade bitcoin and a couple others
ETA: Link - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...y-trading-desk |
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25th December 2017, 01:50 PM | #1219 |
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One of the chapters in JK Galbraith's indispensable book The Great Crash 1929 is entitled In Goldman Sachs We Trust. In it, he observes, IIRC, in relation to the leverage operations of that company,
If there must be madness there is something to be said for having it on a heroic scale. |
25th December 2017, 02:50 PM | #1220 |
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25th December 2017, 10:25 PM | #1221 |
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I met a man who firmly believes in bitcoin. He invested a few months ago. He says he has cashed out his initial investment and is now using only his profits, but I am not so sure.
He has been searching for get-rich-quick schemes for a while and has been taken in by the hype. He is in it for the long term despite the "intermediate bubbles" which he accepts is speculation. He says that now is the time to buy some more. I hope not. I see the currency might now be rising again. With big companies jumping in trying to make a profit (killing!) it may be adding to the hype. There are so many schemes out there trying make the elite 1% (o.1%?) even richer. They have the smarts and no scruples, so I am afraid they are succeeding. |
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25th December 2017, 11:51 PM | #1222 |
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But while this is nice for (some) speculators who are making a killing, I still don't see how this makes Bitcoin a useful currency.
I personally would not like to use a currency where the value can be different by 20% based upon the time of day. |
26th December 2017, 06:43 AM | #1223 |
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Huh? How does an example of spam advertising prove anything? Didn't they have spam before bitcoin?
What? They always encouraged people to purchase their shares with credit cards? Well duh! But you have failed to show that credit card useage has changed significantly during the life of bitcoin. You have failed to demonstrate that there will be anything different about the current bitcoin bubble. Like all those before you who said, "bitcoin's price will never be this high again" .... |
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26th December 2017, 06:45 AM | #1224 |
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"The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled. Where something so important is involved, a deeper mystery seems only decent." - Galbraith, 1975 |
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26th December 2017, 06:59 AM | #1225 |
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26th December 2017, 08:28 AM | #1226 |
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Isn't the whole reason bitcoin was invented to supplant fiat currency?
If not, what actual good (except as a bubble investment) is it then? Granted, as a currency it was primarily used by a few die-hard libertans and otherwise a criminal element whitewashing other currencies. And I suspect at least the latter element has now stopped using it. After all, selling a kilo of coke and discovering the money you sold it with/for chances in worth by several percent during a day is not worth the effort. And I think you misinterpreted me. I of course have seen certain (virtual goods) like stocks chance by 20% in a day a lot of times. But apart from a few economic wonder countries like Mozambique or Venezuela I have not seen actual currencies change by value as much as the bitcoin. Which again, to me, suggests that as a currency it is currently worthless. As for the pushbike comment, I guess it was some jab at primitivism or something. Unfortunately I am Dutch and *not* riding a pushbike is considered a fact of incompetence and/or chronic laziness in my culture. So yes, I DO ride a pushbike to work and back. Every work day for 35 minutes one way. |
26th December 2017, 10:27 AM | #1227 |
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Nobody knows what "Satoshi Nakamoto" intended when they put bitcoin out there. A computer geek doesn't need a reason. From some of the early postings by this person, it appears that they put bitcoin out as an experiment and its take up was more rapid than expected (thus denying them the opportunity to modify bitcoin).
If some of the early adopters had "visions" of bitcoin supplanting other currencies then they were sorely mistaken. Computer geeks are not economists and the primitive coin generation algorithm ensured that bitcoin could not become a universal currency because of its inherent deflation. Had the coin generation mechanism been more appropriate then maybe things might be different but it was not to be. As it stands, bitcoin is little more than a vehicle for speculation or transferring large sums of money at a rapid pace around the globe. Other currencies may develop that overcome bitcoin's limitation but non-deflationary currencies are not popular. See freicoin for example. I apologize for that remark. I wasn't having a dig at your preferred method of transport. I was just being too subtle. Where I live, petrol prices can change by more than 20% in a day and has a weekly price cycle (artificially generated by the oil companies). |
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"The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled. Where something so important is involved, a deeper mystery seems only decent." - Galbraith, 1975 |
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26th December 2017, 03:52 PM | #1228 |
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26th December 2017, 04:06 PM | #1229 |
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26th December 2017, 06:20 PM | #1230 |
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Absolutely, but it may be weird enough to screw people all ways, judging by the robust recovery to 16,000.
Can the brand beat off competitors, like Amazon in the selling space, and so on, despite there being no barriers to entry? I do note it responds to my TA algorithm superbly, check my thread that was rubbished by my friend Psion. |
26th December 2017, 07:08 PM | #1231 |
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26th December 2017, 07:58 PM | #1232 |
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26th December 2017, 08:05 PM | #1233 |
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26th December 2017, 08:22 PM | #1234 |
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27th December 2017, 01:26 PM | #1235 |
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Do you have any evidence of this at all? While gold and silver aren't technically deflationary, their supply is more or less limited, and they served as money for thousands of years. What is "appropriate" seems to be your own opinion and conjecture.
Quote:
Fiat currencies enable perpetual and unlimited theft by the currency issuers, and it is the avoidance of this theft and graft that the bitcoin developers sought to enable. I won't hold my breath, but can you explain why we need to allow an elite few (or anyone, for that matter) to counterfeit our money and destroy our savings in order to have an "appropriate" currency? You've avoided this question for how many years now? |
27th December 2017, 01:28 PM | #1236 |
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27th December 2017, 01:41 PM | #1237 |
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Here's is a prediction. When the mess created by the Bitcoin bubble is in the course of being cleared up, it will be found, as it has been found in all the previous similar bubble periods cited in this thread, that seeking to avoid theft and graft has not been the main motive of the Bitcoin bubblers. That's what I bet we will find.
The Federal Reserve is counterfeiting the US currency? Just as presumably the Bank of England is counterfeiting Sterling. But never fear, the real stuff is being produced by nerds in the form of Bitcoin. Well, we'll see. |
27th December 2017, 02:10 PM | #1238 |
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Your predictions are worthless, and you haven't added anything original to this thread. You also fail to distinguish between the motives of the creator(s) of bitcoin, and the speculators who wish to front run it in the anticipation that it will have some future value. Nor are these motives necessarily exclusive or contradictory.
Quote:
We all know that bitcoin isn't "real", but it has made some people really wealthy, and maybe one day it or something like it will supplant the centralized looting which is the inevitable result of fiat currencies. |
27th December 2017, 03:14 PM | #1239 |
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27th December 2017, 06:14 PM | #1240 |
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'Robust' recovery? Or dead cat bounce.
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