Posted on 11/30/2022 7:43:46 PM PST by catnipman
Bitcoin's conceptual design and technological shortcomings make it questionable as a means of payment: real Bitcoin transactions are cumbersome, slow and expensive. Bitcoin has never been used to any significant extent for legal real-world transactions.
Bitcoin is also not suitable as an investment. It does not generate cash flow (like real estate) or dividends (like equities), cannot be used productively (like commodities) or provide social benefits (like gold). The market valuation of Bitcoin is therefore based purely on speculation.
Speculative bubbles rely on new money flowing in. Bitcoin has also repeatedly benefited from waves of new investors. The manipulations by individual exchanges or stablecoin providers etc. during the first waves are well documented
It’s also worth noting that the Bitcoin system is an unprecedented polluter. First, it consumes energy on the scale of entire economies. Bitcoin mining is estimated to consume electricity per year comparable to Austria. Second, it produces mountains of hardware waste. One Bitcoin transaction consumes hardware comparable to the hardware of two smartphones. The entire Bitcoin system generates as much e-waste as the entire Netherlands.
(Excerpt) Read more at ecb.europa.eu ...
Sounds to me like the EU Central Bank is reacting to European Citizens Buying Up BTC on the DIP. Citizens of the EU lead all other nations or areas of the world in BTC purchases. I spent 5 years in Europe and was there for the 1999-2000 Euro rollout. I remember Dutch employees I worked with taking the train to Switzerland every month to put their “dollors” and other assets. If citizens in the EU are buying record amounts of BTC, it is not dead.
On another note, the EU Central Bank states no legal transactions take place with BTC. Tesla and other’s will take BTC. I have a BTC credit card but won’t use it because it literally costs me 3-4% to use it but its there.
Smells like fear by the Central Bank.
Bitcoin is just a Ponzi scheme… said the man with Federal Reserve Notes in his wallet. Funny
They don’t get it, BTC is the gold in this system and LiteCoin is the everyday version of it .... and then you have all the other alt coins. Some are complete scams....I think by governments trying to destroy the core.
With bitcoin, you are buying air (actually, not even that), with the hopes that someone will want that air enough to pay more for it than did you.
Foolish, of course, however when many folks are buying air and have the ability (but not the common sense) to sell the air for a profit; and when they brag about how much they can sell their air for; you want to buy some too.
Then, when the folks who sold the air in the first place don't know what happened to the money collected to buy all the fancy air, and they head for the South Seas on a spontaneous vacation, some folks are left holding (virtual) bags of extremely expensive air.
Bitcoin only real value is for criminals, money launderers, mafias’ and corrupt politicos.
It is a lot easier to hide, move across the borders and conceive than the money, or checks.
For honest people, it is worthless!
Crypto has nothing on nothing. It's the equivalent of people agreeing a volume of water can be subdivided and incrementally added to, by mutual agreement of other volume holders. The whole thing can collapse at any time and has no ability to bring in value from taxes or land/resources, or threat of jail.
The XRP Ledger can handle 1,500 transactions per second, costs $0.0002 per transaction on average, and uses consensus mechanisms instead of proof of work so there’s little energy use. Banks are already starting to test and onboard it as a bridge currency.
So the statement “sovereign banking systems will eventually replace their existing check clearing and electronic transfer process with blockchain technology” is factually correct.
If the thing your “currency” is best known for is to pay off cyber criminals to get your encrypted files back, I just don’t see that as a sustainable model.
There is no scarcity of crypto. Anyone can start up another.
Just because there’s an agreed limit in Bitcoin generation, that does not mean that fake scarcity of nothing of value has any value.
Invest in what you know. I am not wealthy by any means but aluminum, steel, and carbide have treated me well.
“the great paradox of nearly-interest-free USD is that cheap money drives down the future yield of all other legitimate yield-bearing assets”
This is something important that a lot of otherwise economically literate people seem to fail to grasp. Yes, there needs to be a cycle in the interest rates so sometimes they need to be low, but artificially keeping interest rates low for over a decade is economically suicidal on the grand scale. The fact that supposedly the more learned economic minds of our country have done this can only mean two things:
a) they don’t realize the damage they will cause by keeping the rates too low for too long, meaning they are too incompetent to be trusted with such important jobs
or
b) they do realize the damage they will cause, but either are doing it for their own benefit, or have some inside knowledge that tells them only by pursuing this strategy can they delay (but not avoid) a larger looming economic catastrophe. Which means they are too dishonest to be trusted with such important jobs.
Either way, it’s a big glaring neon signpost that we are probably facing very very bad times in the years ahead if these same times of people keep setting our monetary policy.
“The value of bitcoin is based on guaranteed scarcity.”
There’s no such thing as guaranteed scarcity, since scarcity is a derivative of supply and demand; the condition is created when demand exceeds supply. Now, you may be correct that Bitcoin has guaranteed limits on supply, but there is no guaranteed level of demand, and therefore there can logically never be a guaranteed condition of scarcity.
YonY loss for BTC is 70%. Great investment!
“Bitcoin price in 2010- .09 cents
Bitcoin price today- $17,000”
Just replace “Bitcoin” with “Tulip bulb” and you’d probably sound exactly like someone from almost 400 years ago...
This is something important that a lot of otherwise economically literate people seem to fail to grasp. Yes, there needs to be a cycle in the interest rates so sometimes they need to be low, but artificially keeping interest rates low for over a decade is economically suicidal on the grand scale.
*********
I’m glad you said this and wish more people would listen, but I won’t hold my breath.
Good post BTW.
I've seen virtually nothing on this thread except ignorance. Bitcoin was revealed in 2009, and it was quickly apparent to the cypherpunk community that Bitcoin "works".
Subsequent to Bitcoin came "crypto", which is mostly a series of rug-pull scams which made the coin issuers rich at the expense of suckers.
The difference between Bitcoin and "crypto" is the difference between Elvis and the hundreds of Elvis impersonators. Bitcoin cannot be a pyramid scheme because there is no pyramid, there is no top layer which gets a piece of the action from the lower layers. It is simply an Internet protocol for a distributed ledger and for rewarding providers of computing power with Bitcoin while it is still being mined (until 2140) and/or transaction fees.
There is no Bitcoin company or any other entity taking a skim off the top. All the daily operation of the global network is simply the out-working of the algorithm which has not missed mining a new block every 10 minutes since 2009. Bitcoin is as survivable as the Internet itself.
FTX the company was based on a shit coin, and it went down the same hole as all the shit coins will go. Any coin which is not Bitcoin, solid gold or solid silver, is a shit coin. And dollars are shit-paper.
The ECB is circling the bowl. It's not whistling past the graveyard, it's whistling on it's way in.
Two points:
Crypto’s demise and Bitcoin’s demise specifically has been predicted many times. It has proven patently FALSE each and every last time.
The second point is that of course the EU central bank and probably the Fed and others are going to badmouth crypto. Look for the WEF to do the same. They want to usher in CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currency).
CBDC’s would be under THEIR POWER AND CONTROL. They could see every thing you buy. They could cut off your money down to an individual level with a few keystrokes. They could make your money worthless to buy....you name it. Fireworks? Cigarettes? A cheeseburger if they felt you were too fat. An airline ticket if they thought your personal “carbon footprint” was too high. Yes, they would really have that level of direct control over each individual’s money. That’s what they want. So long as crypto exists, they don’t have that.
That’s it in a nutshell.
Crypto is an alternative to CBDCs....which would give them total power over everybody’s money. Therefore they want to destroy crypto.
Precious metals still have industrial applications, unlike Bitcoin. I originally thought Bitcoin would be a hedge against inflation because of scarcity/finite number but that has proven not to be the case.
I am really watching Cathie Wood closely, she is either the smartest person in the room or the dumbest, after doubling down on Grayscale last week
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.