DeepSouth

Yes, that is the bear case. But without some new thing with some much more attractive properties applicable to being a good store of value, none of the altcoins will have a long term effect on Bitcoin. They may have small short term dillutive effects for a while, but as they become valueless and disappear those small effects will disappear with them. Without substantial new properties/benefits, first mover advantage is everything. Why would you switch from bitcoin if everyone is already using bitcoin and go to a coin almost no one uses that isn't substantially better? It is like facebook, anyone can create a competing social network, but unless there is some feature that is massively better that FB can't copy, why would you switch when everyone you know (and a few billion people you don't know) are already using FB? Any dilution will turn out to be minimal and short lived. I do think there will be an endless number of app coins, which will not dilute BTC because they serve a different purpose altogether. I don't consider Ether, for example, to be a bitcoin competitor, because ETH will never be a store of value. And you value this "cash" why? It doesn't have intrinsic value and is only "valuable" because other people value it and will give you stuff for it. Maybe in the future you will be saying that companies have intrinsic value because they have coinflow. Try paying your federal taxes in bitcoins. You will find out why cash is valuable.

This feature exists in effectively any commodity business.

What you are missing is the role of the PBMs and others that inflate the costs to CVS, Walgreens, etc. so there is savings there. There is also savings of what Americans pay for prescriptions vs the rest of the world. I used to live in a neighborhood where everybody worked for a Pharma company. As described to me they view the US as their sales engine and accept what the other countries pay. That would be a major change. That said, I saw a graph of global spending on healthcare going back to the 50s or 60s (before nationalized medicine was common in Europe) and what was surprising was that the US even back then was paying 2x European countries. Nobody wants to discuss it anymore but tort reform or some change in the legal US system would probably reduce costs by 10-15%. Have several friends who are family practicioners and they all tell me that they over test everybody because you don't want to be sued for the 1-100/1000 chance you are wrong. Add in the issues where the doctors own the labs that they refer patients to and its a screwed up system. If you simply removed the PBMs, the drug companies would still charge extremely inflated charges to Americans. Medicaid and Medicare pay much higher prices for drugs than foreign countries. The American government cares more about drug companies than it does about taxpayers. The big PBMs have tons of perverse incentives and don't do a very good job at their stated purpose, but the US government simply isn't willing to lower drug prices for Americans. Doctors like to say that they overtest due to fear of lawsuits, but that's really just a nice excuse. The key reason is greed (from a mostly fee for service system) and laziness. States are shifting their Medicaid programs to insurers because insurers can run them more efficiently. Seniors are increasingly choosing to move off Medicare to Managed Medicare because insurers can run Medicare more efficiently, leaving extra dollars to increase secondary benefits for seniors. Local/regional integrated healthcare systems with capitated risk is the best shot the US has for its healthcare system.

\ If the government were to institute a universal coverage system it would most likely be outsourced to MCOs. MCOs run most Medicaid plans today and are taking share quickly and close to half share in Medicare. Government run fee for service plans are not the way forward.

CDS settlement is based on the cheapest to deliver bond. So a company can issue a zero coupon long dated bond at a huge discount, default, then the CDS will settle based on the price of that low dollar bond.

Amazon is not paying a blended average American rate for their employees. They are paying for insurance based on the risk of their employee pool.

No. You have to decide if you need the 'super security' of Bitcoin. If you do need it, pay up for the product offered - 'super security'. If you don't need it - why are you in Bitcoin? If Bitcoin is a 'investment', this is just the transaction fee. No different to the realtors commission when buying a house. SD Couldn't Xi Jingping destroy bitcoin's security by nationalizing all Chinese mining power? Nation states have huge piles of money and weapons and often do crazy destructive things. So while the answer to that is yes. I think that would only serve to destroy bitcoin rather than control it. People would move on to another cryptocurrency if they did that as no one wants a cryptocurrency controlled by any nation state not just China. So instead of being a trustless protocol, bitcoin's existence relies on placing your complete trust that an authoritarian dictator doesn't won't ever decide to destroy it. I thought the key selling point of this was that crypto holders don't trust government? So we sacrifice speed or cost of transactions in order to gain security, but it's not that secure for the average man on the street who doesn't understand all the steps to ensure their private key isn't hacked and on a protocol basis it's not secure because it could be destroyed by a single memo from the Chinese politburo. I'll readily admit I'm not an expert but the cost/benefit of that asset over gold, TIPS, T-bills, etc seems pretty shoddy. I'm long and I've realized solid gains because most of the zealots seem to have a religious devotion to it therefore the flow of funds should be bullish, but it's hard for me to really understand the appeal. It would cost a fortune (even for a nation state) to do this and because the target would be destroyed in the process, nothing would be accomplished. Of course those exact words could describe the US foreign policy so who knows? I expect to see central banks eventually adding BTC to their reserves along side gold, not trying to destroy it. It wouldn't cost the state anything; the Chinese state could simply expropriate the assets of Chinese miners and would immediately control >50% of mining power. Do you believe that the Chinese government is unwilling to expropriate resources? And yes, the target could be destroyed in the process, that would be the purpose. If cryptocurrencies are a threat to governments' control of their citizens then destruction of them is an accomplishment for said governments. This is one of the things I don't really get about many cryptohodlers. They simultaneously believe that governments are rapacious totalitarians, crypto is a way for them to subvert government, and yet government will treat them lovingly by buying up their crypto at market value. These ideas seem mutually exclusive.

No. You have to decide if you need the 'super security' of Bitcoin. If you do need it, pay up for the product offered - 'super security'. If you don't need it - why are you in Bitcoin? If Bitcoin is a 'investment', this is just the transaction fee. No different to the realtors commission when buying a house. SD Couldn't Xi Jingping destroy bitcoin's security by nationalizing all Chinese mining power? Nation states have huge piles of money and weapons and often do crazy destructive things. So while the answer to that is yes. I think that would only serve to destroy bitcoin rather than control it. People would move on to another cryptocurrency if they did that as no one wants a cryptocurrency controlled by any nation state not just China. So instead of being a trustless protocol, bitcoin's existence relies on placing your complete trust that an authoritarian dictator doesn't won't ever decide to destroy it. I thought the key selling point of this was that crypto holders don't trust government? So we sacrifice speed or cost of transactions in order to gain security, but it's not that secure for the average man on the street who doesn't understand all the steps to ensure their private key isn't hacked and on a protocol basis it's not secure because it could be destroyed by a single memo from the Chinese politburo. I'll readily admit I'm not an expert but the cost/benefit of that asset over gold, TIPS, T-bills, etc seems pretty shoddy. I'm long and I've realized solid gains because most of the zealots seem to have a religious devotion to it therefore the flow of funds should be bullish, but it's hard for me to really understand the appeal.

No. You have to decide if you need the 'super security' of Bitcoin. If you do need it, pay up for the product offered - 'super security'. If you don't need it - why are you in Bitcoin? If Bitcoin is a 'investment', this is just the transaction fee. No different to the realtors commission when buying a house. SD Couldn't Xi Jingping destroy bitcoin's security by nationalizing all Chinese mining power?

Some server? ::) This is what I meant with talking about something you don't comprehend in the slightest. This is rich coming from the poster who spews completely uninformed and error-ridden comments about the stability of the pre-Federal Reserve economy and believes there have been 20+ year recessions in the US in the last hundred years.

LOL @ Estonia. I don't live there. I can't pay taxes in bitcoin.

Bitcoin does not do everything fiat does. Try paying your taxes with bitcoin and you will be posting to COBF from federal prison. I'd argue that satisfying government levies might be the most important function of a currency as it's the function that keeps you out of prison. Why is it that most bitcoin zealots always overlook this? Can you pay taxes in gold today? Of course not. I never said that it couldn't replace gold, I implied that it can't replace the dollar. I own bitcoin because of fund flows on the bet that it becomes seen as a stable store of value.

Bitcoin does not do everything fiat does. Try paying your taxes with bitcoin and you will be posting to COBF from federal prison. I'd argue that satisfying government levies might be the most important function of a currency as it's the function that keeps you out of prison. Why is it that most bitcoin zealots always overlook this?

2013: +37.9% 2014: +4.8% 2015: -12.5% 2016: +35.2% 2017: +51.0% blend of taxable and tax exempt/deferred accounts: post-dividends, pretax (realized very little taxable gains) Core GOOG, AMZN, JD, BRKB positions performed. Banks did well and were mostly realized. Coal reorgs generated strong returns very quickly and were mostly realized. Housing related book SHW, CLWY, SITE (realized) did very well. Perfect hit rate on special sits. Short vol (long vmin, long xiv, short uvxy) ripped pretty much all year. Microcap book and Cable names generated positive returns but less than market. Realized losses on two healthcare positions. Stars pretty much aligned with high beta to a great market return plus nice alpha component. Much less confident in outlook/positioning going forward and have sizable cash component after pounding the table heading into 2016/17.

Change is always chaotic. Do you think the nation state is going down without a fight? These are monsters with armies and $trillions worth of weaponry. The death throes of these beasts will be messy. We may be about to live in interesting times I fear. Would the US/Chinese military drone striking/executing bitcoin holders and miners be bullish or bearish for bitcoin? Would the Chinese government nationalizing 50%+ of global bitcoin mining capacity be bullish or bearish for bitcoin? How do holders of bitcoin overthrow all of the world's nation states? If your government decreed that bitcoin ownership is treason punishable by death and they would post massive rewards for anyone who turned in bitcoin holders, would you buy more bitcoin? I'm bullish on bitcoin due to financial flows but I can't for the life of me understand the ideological proponents in the west.

I don’t know exactly where the anger is coming from, but if you are reading the same discussion I am, you will see the rudeness, name calling, personal attacks, and other school yard immaturity are not coming from the bitcoin bulls here. Also I am starting to see the same thing else where as well. Just a pattern I’ve been noticing and I’m pointing it out. I attacked that guy because he actively seeks to destroy the country because of some ridiculous and baseless desire for a "natural" economy. Why should I be friendly to someone like that? I also disclosed that I am bitcoin bull.

You're welcome. @DeepSouth can you understand you're a masochist from my point of view? Anyway, let's just all vote with our wallets and things will work out at some point :) I honestly don't understand your point of view. I'd say the empirical end result of your policy desires leads to decade long depressions and wild and violent swings in inflation and deflation. It's not masochism to desire an entity with the power to smooth out economic cycles and encourage growth. The federal reserve is one of the few things the US government gets mostly right. If you're terrified of your savings being withered away by low single digit inflation but don't want principal risk for your savings buy TIPS. I own bitcoin because I think the risk/reward is fair from here even though I think most bullish arguments for bitcoin are very stupid. The policy of the last ~120 years led to huge bubbles and (long! 20+ years at times) subsequent recesions while an organic market won't have recesions lasting longer than a few years. I concider loving that ewuivalent with loving pain. On top of that an organic market rewards its participants more fairly in the sense that good decisions lead to financial reward while the current system rewards having the right contacts at the policy maker for the most part. There have been no recessions that lasted 20 years this century, and I just pointed out an example of a decade long depression that occurred in the final decades leading up to the creation of the federal reserve. Per capita real GDP fell 10% over a decade in the US in the latter part of the 1800s. There were massive bubbles before the Federal Reserve (see canals, railroads). These are the facts, you are empirically incorrect, it's not up for debate. Is your persona/feelings so tied up in libertarianism ideology that you are unwilling to use reason and view the world through a historic and empirical prism? Lastly, the idea that most successful people achieved success through inside contacts at the Federal Reserve is a wildly bizarre conspiracy theory that makes no sense. Sept. 3, 1929 until Nov. 23, 1954 is not more than 20 years. Okay, I guess I must suck at math...... https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDPCA Real US GDP more than doubled between 1929 and 1954. What kind of insane garbage are you stuffing your head with? That's how long it took the market to recover. That's not healthy. The economy grew on a real basis by 142% over that period. That's not a recovery, that's incredibly impressive growth. As a comparison, the US economy grew on a real per capita basis by 135% over the entire period between 1776 and 1860 (page 29 below). Hard facts and sound logic are laid out right in front of you and you refuse to absorb them. Your theories are insane and have no underlying evidence. https://eml.berkeley.edu/~webfac/cromer/e211_f12/LindertWilliamson.pdf I'm guessing you have a fantasy where there's no central bank and a weak government and in that darwinist society you get to sit in your rightful place as one of society's winners, but your clear lack of coherence and inability to think rationally illustrate that you'd be one of the losers down on your luck living on the street. You should be worshiping the central bank/government for keeping you out of that scenario.

You're welcome. @DeepSouth can you understand you're a masochist from my point of view? Anyway, let's just all vote with our wallets and things will work out at some point :) I honestly don't understand your point of view. I'd say the empirical end result of your policy desires leads to decade long depressions and wild and violent swings in inflation and deflation. It's not masochism to desire an entity with the power to smooth out economic cycles and encourage growth. The federal reserve is one of the few things the US government gets mostly right. If you're terrified of your savings being withered away by low single digit inflation but don't want principal risk for your savings buy TIPS. I own bitcoin because I think the risk/reward is fair from here even though I think most bullish arguments for bitcoin are very stupid. The policy of the last ~120 years led to huge bubbles and (long! 20+ years at times) subsequent recesions while an organic market won't have recesions lasting longer than a few years. I concider loving that ewuivalent with loving pain. On top of that an organic market rewards its participants more fairly in the sense that good decisions lead to financial reward while the current system rewards having the right contacts at the policy maker for the most part. There have been no recessions that lasted 20 years this century, and I just pointed out an example of a decade long depression that occurred in the final decades leading up to the creation of the federal reserve. Per capita real GDP fell 10% over a decade in the US in the latter part of the 1800s. There were massive bubbles before the Federal Reserve (see canals, railroads). These are the facts, you are empirically incorrect, it's not up for debate. Is your persona/feelings so tied up in libertarianism ideology that you are unwilling to use reason and view the world through a historic and empirical prism? Lastly, the idea that most successful people achieved success through inside contacts at the Federal Reserve is a wildly bizarre conspiracy theory that makes no sense. Sept. 3, 1929 until Nov. 23, 1954 is not more than 20 years. Okay, I guess I must suck at math...... https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDPCA Real US GDP more than doubled between 1929 and 1954. What kind of insane garbage are you stuffing your head with?

You're welcome. @DeepSouth can you understand you're a masochist from my point of view? Anyway, let's just all vote with our wallets and things will work out at some point :) I honestly don't understand your point of view. I'd say the empirical end result of your policy desires leads to decade long depressions and wild and violent swings in inflation and deflation. It's not masochism to desire an entity with the power to smooth out economic cycles and encourage growth. The federal reserve is one of the few things the US government gets mostly right. If you're terrified of your savings being withered away by low single digit inflation but don't want principal risk for your savings buy TIPS. I own bitcoin because I think the risk/reward is fair from here even though I think most bullish arguments for bitcoin are very stupid. The policy of the last ~120 years led to huge bubbles and (long! 20+ years at times) subsequent recesions while an organic market won't have recesions lasting longer than a few years. I concider loving that ewuivalent with loving pain. On top of that an organic market rewards its participants more fairly in the sense that good decisions lead to financial reward while the current system rewards having the right contacts at the policy maker for the most part. There have been no recessions that lasted 20 years this century, and I just pointed out an example of a decade long depression that occurred in the final decades leading up to the creation of the federal reserve. Per capita real GDP fell 10% over a decade in the US in the latter part of the 1800s. There were massive bubbles before the Federal Reserve (see canals, railroads). These are the facts, you are empirically incorrect, it's not up for debate. Is your persona/feelings so tied up in libertarianism ideology that you are unwilling to use reason and view the world through a historic and empirical prism? Lastly, the idea that most successful people achieved success through inside contacts at the Federal Reserve is a wildly bizarre conspiracy theory that makes no sense.

You're welcome. @DeepSouth can you understand you're a masochist from my point of view? Anyway, let's just all vote with our wallets and things will work out at some point :) I honestly don't understand your point of view. I'd say the empirical end result of your policy desires leads to decade long depressions and wild and violent swings in inflation and deflation. It's not masochism to desire an entity with the power to smooth out economic cycles and encourage growth. The federal reserve is one of the few things the US government gets mostly right. If you're terrified of your savings being withered away by low single digit inflation but don't want principal risk for your savings buy TIPS. I own bitcoin because I think the risk/reward is fair from here even though I think most bullish arguments for bitcoin are very stupid.

Before central banking we had short natural healthy cycles. After central banking we have huge bubbles like 1929 because the market isn't allowed to correct. The US market before 1900 was great. That's when the Brityish injected the central banking poison pill from Europe. You're right that cycles were mostly shorter. They were short and violent, transitioning from double digit inflationary booms to deflationary depressions entailing banking system panics most decades. The economy shrank in real terms by 10% per capita over the entire decade between 1869 and 1879 as nominal wages shrank by a quarter. This is not the signs of a great US market. I thank God that sadists like you have no power over the economy.

People seizing power and covertly stealing from the general population? The economy is best left untouched by 'policy makers'. They'll only fuck things up like they have shown throughout history. Policy makers are messed up in their own ways but there is a very sound economic rationale behind why fiat is better than bitcoin. No there's not. There is Keynesian dogma and brainwashing which a child understands is bullshit. People never spend their money if it increases in purchasing power? How naive must you be to buy that ... But believe what you wish. This falls under freedom of religion for me. To the people not understanding why it's an improvement over gold I simply refer to this blogpost from 2012 http://moneyandstate.com/bitcoin-libertarian-introduction-used-care/ Before strong central bank control, the economy whip-lashed between inflationary booms and deflationary depressions on a decade by decade basis. You'd have to be insane to want to go back to that system. http://www.in2013dollars.com/1800-dollars-in-2016 http://inflation.stephenmorley.org/

Splitting hairs but... One could argue that people are forced to value the dollar now because people in the past *wanted* to set up the financial system in a particular way. (I guess my point is that nothing is forced upon on people except the nature... Although we have to put up with our self-imposed force from the past) No. If you don't use dollars you will be sent to prison today, not in the past. The IRS still demands dollars. I guess you could choose to accept prison, but you will very much be forced to go there if you demand to pay your taxes in bitcoins.

Just curious, at what age and price point would this move from being tulips to being an actual store of value ala gold? Ignore volatility, bc it seems obvious to me that at a certain market cap volatility will be similar to that offild today. This was written in April/2013: ( https://fee.org/articles/bitcoin-for-beginners/ ) "As of this writing, a Bitcoin is trading for $88.249. Just three years ago, it hovered at $0.14. Many people look at the current market and think, surely this is a speculative bubble. That could be true, but it might not be. People are exchanging an unstable, fiat paper for something with a real title that cannot be duplicated. Everyone knows precisely how many Bitcoins exist at any time. Anyone can observe the transactions taking place in real time. A Bitcoin’s price can go up and down, and that’s fine, but there is no real speculation going on here that is endogenous to the Bitcoin market itself. Is it a pyramid scheme? The defining mark of a pyramid scheme is that more than one person has an equal claim on the same money or good. This is physically impossible with Bitcoin. The way the program is set up, it is a strict property rights regime with no exceptions." Do you believe that this parabolic spike up is driven by the world suddenly realizing the fundamental value of bitcoin? What is that fundamental value? Every other knucklehead on the planet is picking up a little bc right now to play the rush. They have no clue how the technology works or what its intrinsic value is. I'm not saying bc is valueless, its actually has some neat uses. So do tulip bulbs, they can grow lovely flowers. Please show me an example of an asset that has spiked in value like this that wasn't a bubble. People all over the world (rich and poor, dumb and smart, educated and ignorant) use the USD every day. Do you think 1 in 10 has a deep understanding of the Federal Reserve system and how it works? Even if Bitcoin replaces all money on Earth the average person won’t understand the technology behind it anymore than they have a deep understanding of how the cellphone in their pocket works. As an American resident or citizen, if you don't use USD you go to federal prison. That's a good reason to use USD that smart/dumb people should both be able to understand.

LOL. I'm sure the IRS will be blown away by these arguments. This sounds like the morons who claim to be sovereign citizens in court before they are summarily taken to prison.