Cryptocurrencies

[Parsad]

25 minutes ago, Longnose said:

Friend of mine who is an Attorney recently started working for a new firm that is in the crypto space. The firm only pays in USD-C or BTC you can choose which you want deposited into your wallet. The space for people who will accept your BTC is only growing. I paid for something on overstock.com in BTC once just to say i did it. Overstock will happily accept your BTC. 

If world goes to shitter I want farm land too... you can keep your BRK-A shares and your USD's 

Money is only used for exchange of promises. Personally I think BTC is better money than USD. Ill continue to HODL mine. 

 

So your attorney friend...how does he bill?  Does the invoice change every day with the large fluctuations in BTC?  Does his billable hour change from $250/hr one day to $50/hr another day?  He's really just doing nothing different than an attorney or broker taking equity in a startup, but instead he's accepting BTC which has more liquidity.  Cheers!

[Parsad]

10 minutes ago, rkbabang said:

 

 

The same could be said for the USD.  What is the intrinsic value of a piece of green paper?   You can wipe your butt with it, but Charmin does that better.    It's all just stamps if the world goes to shit.   If the world doesn't all go completely to shit, then the USD is likely to keep losing value over time, while I think BTC is likely to keep gaining value over time.

 

 

This is what I don't understand in your argument...the same cannot be said for the USD!  You have tax revenues, gold reserves, resources, assets of the U.S. government all backing the USD dollar.  It's not simply something priced out of scarcity.  There is nothing backing BTC or other crypto...nada, zilch, zero! 

 

You can take a multiple of the total tax revenue base of the United States, plus the gold reserves, value of resources including land, constructed properties, intellectual property, etc and come to a valuation on a per capita or per outstanding dollar basis.  Essentially you can calculate an intrinsic value for the USD.  You cannot do this for BTC.  You cannot even come up with any liquidation value for BTC. 

 

Cheers!

[Spooky]

I don't see the point of holding a medium of exchange (Bitcoin, dollars, etc.) over the long term. As we've seen throughout history the medium of exchange can change over time. People saying that Bitcoin will replace or be an alternative to USD - the same thing can happen to Bitcoin in the future as well. As we've seen, there are no barriers to entry to create a cryptocurrency. What you want to own are real productive assets (companies, real estate, farmland, etc.) that have value to others regardless of what medium of exchange is used. Better if the assets are scarce and increase their value over time.     

[TwoCitiesCapital]

3 hours ago, Parsad said:

 

If it's seized, then what good would BTC be?  

 

There was once a massive market for trading stamps...at least they could be traded for something.  Current crypto is the new trading stamp...but with no set value that you can trade for.  You may get $60K a coin or you may get nothing!  

 

Cheers!

 

Crypto is safe from such seizure. Governments can black list your address, but if others don't recognize it as a valid government, or valid reason, they can still choose to transact with you. Not so for farmland that isn't portable to a different jurisdiction. 

 

3 hours ago, Spekulatius said:

Who says that crypto is safe from let's say a majority attack? It's just 14 years old construct and has never really been tested against a determined player with huge resources or a few of them working together. Once a player has control of the network , they can double spent coins and wreck the integrity of the blockchain.

 

If you really think that a government seizes all assets, could it be stopped from wrecking crypto that way? I don't know but I don't think it safe to assume that crypto is safe from an attack from a player like China, the US, EU or even few of them working together.

 

It's always a possibility, but prohibitively expensive at this point for BTC. That's the whole point of proof-of-work. BTC basically stands unto itself in security now that Ethereum has moved to proof of stake. 

 

3 hours ago, dealraker said:

I'd be willing to trade my $8,500 dollars for one Bitcoin if I can get access to that BTC today and be able to sell it tomorrow morning...but it would have to be very early in the morning tomorrow.  If I can not get the one BTC today, if I have to wait 5 years for access, then I'll give you $250 for it.  

 

Adoption is not relevant to that decision for me.  

 

 

 

Not sure the point you're making? You can buy a BTC, have immediate access to it, and liquidate it quickly with instantaneous settlement. The only thing you can't do above is buy one for $8,500 without giving up on some of those demands and buying GBTC @ it's 50% discount.  

[Parsad]

21 minutes ago, TwoCitiesCapital said:

 

Crypto is safe from such seizure. Governments can black list your address, but if others don't recognize it as a valid government, or valid reason, they can still choose to transact with you. Not so for farmland that isn't portable to a different jurisdiction. 

 

 

If you think the IRS isn't going to go after crypto wallets at some point, you are gravely mistaken.  Even now you have to report any profits on crypto on your tax return.  It's only a matter of time before they start tracking crypto accounts once regulatory measures are in place and enforced by securities agencies.  Crypto will not be any safer than fiat currency accounts. 

 

Remember the Swiss bank account with only a number and no name associated.  Well, we know what happened with those accounts.  It may take some time, but the IRS and other tax authorities will be able to track and trace crypto accounts and transactions. 

 

Cheers!

[TwoCitiesCapital]

36 minutes ago, Parsad said:

 

If you think the IRS isn't going to go after crypto wallets at some point, you are gravely mistaken.  Even now you have to report any profits on crypto on your tax return.  It's only a matter of time before they start tracking crypto accounts once regulatory measures are in place and enforced by securities agencies.  Crypto will not be any safer than fiat currency accounts. 

 

Remember the Swiss bank account with only a number and no name associated.  Well, we know what happened with those accounts.  It may take some time, but the IRS and other tax authorities will be able to track and trace crypto accounts and transactions. 

 

Cheers!

 

Track and trace are entirely different from confiscation which is what we're discussing. 

 

I've regularly made the arguments FOR tracking and tracing when we've had similar debates on the merits (or lack there of) for criminal use. 

 

If the US turns authoritarian, they can blacklist an address. Other places that don't recognize authoritarianism might still choose to transact with you. Probably quite a bit harder for terrorists to find parties to transact with under the same terms. 

Edited December 15, 2022 by TwoCitiesCapital

[TwoCitiesCapital]

2 hours ago, TwoCitiesCapital said:

 

Track and trace are entirely different from confiscation which is what we're discussing. 

 

I've regularly made the arguments FOR tracking and tracing when we've had similar debates on the merits (or lack there of) for criminal use. 

 

If the US turns authoritarian, they can blacklist an address. Other places that don't recognize authoritarianism might still choose to transact with you. Probably quite a bit harder for terrorists to find parties to transact with under the same terms. 

 

Just to illustrate with an example - 

 

You're in Nazi Germany. The government has decided to make Bitcoin illegal and blacklists your address. All of the allied countries have decided they don't care about Nazi Germany's blacklisting of your address and will honor transactions coming from those addresses. Assuming you can get out of Germany, your money and wealth is intact

 

Tell me how you'd do that with a farm? 

[gary17]

To  get BTC to any local currency you need an exchange and a bank account   
there’s still lots of ways government can control this. 

[Parsad]

3 hours ago, TwoCitiesCapital said:

 

Just to illustrate with an example - 

 

You're in Nazi Germany. The government has decided to make Bitcoin illegal and blacklists your address. All of the allied countries have decided they don't care about Nazi Germany's blacklisting of your address and will honor transactions coming from those addresses. Assuming you can get out of Germany, your money and wealth is intact

 

Tell me how you'd do that with a farm? 

 

Only if you have 100% of your wealth in crypto.  Even those that are extremely confident in crypto's future don't have 100% of their assets in crypto.

 

Even if you only put 20% of your net worth in crypto...the likelihood of the U.S. becoming authoritarian is still probably far lower than the long-term survival of current crypto coins. 

 

You are better off holding gold and diamonds offshore...at least they have some utility value. 

 

Cheers!

[Dave86ch]

Every asset is empowered by a narrative, in other words myths.

 

BTC narrative, because of the instrinsic property of the tool, it looks stronger and it is growing faster than many other, like the US Dollar.

 

It's a trend not a point in time, I will never convert all my money in BTC because I see a trend not the future, this trend is a network which looks anti fragile and growing.

 

The narrative of the swiss franc is neutrality, bank system, social stability.

I'm swiss and what I see is side with team america, loss of bank secrecy and competitiveness, money laundering.

 

BTC is my opinion is a promising network growing network backed by a strong myth, maybe the stronger.

 

 

 

 

Edited December 15, 2022 by Dave86ch

[rkbabang]

7 hours ago, gary17 said:

To  get BTC to any local currency you need an exchange and a bank account   
there’s still lots of ways government can control this. 

 

 

Eventually that will be unnecessary more and more often.  You send BTC from your wallet to mine and I give you the goods or services you are purchasing from me.  Right now this type of exchange doesn't happen often, but it does happen and is growing.  If enough people stop trusting the local currency or simply prefer BTC to the local currency the government loses all control whatsoever.

 

[rkbabang]

16 hours ago, Parsad said:

 

This is what I don't understand in your argument...the same cannot be said for the USD!  You have tax revenues, gold reserves, resources, assets of the U.S. government all backing the USD dollar.  It's not simply something priced out of scarcity.  There is nothing backing BTC or other crypto...nada, zilch, zero! 

 

You can take a multiple of the total tax revenue base of the United States, plus the gold reserves, value of resources including land, constructed properties, intellectual property, etc and come to a valuation on a per capita or per outstanding dollar basis.  Essentially you can calculate an intrinsic value for the USD.  You cannot do this for BTC.  You cannot even come up with any liquidation value for BTC. 

 

Cheers!

 

Tax revenues are paid in USD. So USD is backing the USD?   If the value of the dollar is dropping then it is smarter to hold your wealth in something else and convert it to USD to pay your taxes.  The fact that you owe taxes does create a market for dollars, but it isn't enough to completely save them from being massively devalued.

 

Ever since the gold window was slammed shut by Nixon they don't even claim that there is any amount of gold backing the USD.    All the government buildings and aircraft carriers in the world won't save the USD if people stop trusting it, and won't save its value if too many of them are printed.  The government owns buildings and assets, but that doesn't mean that changes the market value of the USD, because those things aren't backing the USD.  It isn't like you can say, hey look I have $X so I own Y% of the Whitehouse.  You can not calculate an intrinsic value for the USD at all.  All fiat money is faith based, when people lose faith, the money becomes worthless.  If the USD became worthless then the government could still sell its buildings, but not for dollars. 

 

[gary17]

35 minutes ago, rkbabang said:

 

 

Eventually that will be unnecessary more and more often.  You send BTC from your wallet to mine and I give you the goods or services you are purchasing from me.  Right now this type of exchange doesn't happen often, but it does happen and is growing.  If enough people stop trusting the local currency or simply prefer BTC to the local currency the government loses all control whatsoever.

 

i agree with you there

but from what i've experienced, there's a network fee & also the time delay in the transaction , which is network fee dependent.   if and when we get to a point where there's minimum fee & transaction is almost instantaneous  , i'd say then we are there.  

[SharperDingaan]

20 hours ago, Xerxes said:

 

What does that mean exactly ?

devalue by 50% ?

 

I think what you mean is the purchasing power of USD goes down by 50%. I doubt you will see major devaluation against other currencies (all safe perhaps Swiss Francs). That would in turn mean the purchasing power of most currencies going down as well

 

PPP argument. If everybody on the carousel debases their currency by about the same amount, over the same length of time, the FX exchange rates between each of them will not change by much. The carousel keeps turning, but now there's just a rain of pretty colored paper (QE, helicopter money) to add to the festivity as we all slosh through seas of liquidity.

 

But if I'm not on that carousel (BTC) ...... I'm not debasing my currency, and every time I step on/off that carousel I'm buying/selling BTC for more and more colored paper. I buy at USD 16,000/BTC, sell BTC at 30,000/BTC, and all that extra colored paper (USD 14,000/BTC) pays for my fun and games while on the carousel. If I'm skilled, I step off the carousel with the same number of BTC (zero), and maybe a Porsche. Already rich, and getting richer in colored paper terms; but same as I was in BTC terms (zero).

 

Hell of a game!

 

SD 

Edited December 15, 2022 by SharperDingaan

[SharperDingaan]

19 hours ago, Parsad said:

 

If the rest of the world goes in the shitter...why would BTC have any value at all?  Ask yourself that.  Frankly farmland would have far more value!  Cheers!

 

I have great confidence in the well practiced abilities of CB's and the criminal element to get it fixed, and fixed fast! Across the world, corruption works great, it's pervasive, it's reliable, and a healthy part of BTC activity is state actors using the channel to settle up covert operations; a proven currency designed for zero-trust environments is a very useful thing! Mess with the program ... and there are people inside/outside of every state, with a strong interest in your rapid demise 

 

Whether the angels wear white wings or black ones, they will all be working together, and they are all very good! THAT's the REAL security behind BTC; the 51% thing is just being polite!. And that angel with white wings .. is often just one that managed to shake all the soot off !!

 

Much better than farmland!

 

SD

[rkbabang]

54 minutes ago, gary17 said:

i agree with you there

but from what i've experienced, there's a network fee & also the time delay in the transaction , which is network fee dependent.   if and when we get to a point where there's minimum fee & transaction is almost instantaneous  , i'd say then we are there.  

 

The fee and time delay are minimal for large transactions, actually they are a huge improvement on any other method of transferring large sums, and for small everyday transactions there are solutions such as the lightning network.  This type of thing will become easier and more common.

[SharperDingaan]

48 minutes ago, rkbabang said:

 

The fee and time delay are minimal for large transactions, actually they are a huge improvement on any other method of transferring large sums, and for small everyday transactions there are solutions such as the lightning network.  This type of thing will become easier and more common.

 

It's useful to think of payments in steps. 1) Today, using existing rails, that are slow/near capacity. 2) Tomorrow, using CBDC, that is very fast and cheap to transact with. 3) Next day, with CBDC efficiency, but without the CB wallet and CB rails.

 

BTC is going directly to 3), but the cost of anonymity is a transactional mining fee, and less efficiency than CBDC. BTC does not need to be 'best'; it just needs to be a functionally better fit for purpose, and cheaper than existing alternatives (Hawala, Chitti, Baba internet, etc.). Different metrics.

 

SD

Edited December 15, 2022 by SharperDingaan

[TwoCitiesCapital]

1 hour ago, gary17 said:

i agree with you there

but from what i've experienced, there's a network fee & also the time delay in the transaction , which is network fee dependent.   if and when we get to a point where there's minimum fee & transaction is almost instantaneous  , i'd say then we are there.  

 

Look into the lightning network. 

 

For microtransactions, this is likely to be the solution for spending in the future. BTC itself will only move for very large settlements IMO as most people will be using it as a store of value and spending ANY other currency first. 

[Castanza]

19 hours ago, Longnose said:

If world goes to shitter I want farm land too... you can keep your BRK-A shares and your USD's 

Money is only used for exchange of promises. Personally I think BTC is better money than USD. Ill continue to HODL mine. 

 

If the world goes to Hell and USD is no longer valuable, I'd say it's safe to assume your farm-land is also no longer yours since property rights only exist as long as they are enforced by your residing government. The land will belong to whoever takes it and defends it. Currency isn't going to make a lick of difference if that's a reality. 

 

Prepping is silly

[Xerxes]

I found this interview with Rubenstein very wierd. The way he responds to the comment by the hosts.

 

I think somehow he regrets that while he was not invested into FTX, he was invested optically, by doing that interview with SamB-Fried. Doing interview is not a crime, but he also gave credibility to that FTX franchise.

 

I have not read his new book, but I think there is a bit there about crypto. 

 

 

 

[Spekulatius]

@Xerxes Sometimes, I think rich people (at least some of them) are the most gullible of all. They probably delegate pretty much everything to other people including basic due diligence to people they trust.

So it becomes a network of trust where everyone hopes that the person they trust has done some research, but turns out often enough nobody does.

 

That's how people like Madoff, Holmes, Epstein and SBF get as far as they came committing very brazen cons.

 

Of course some rich are probably pretty good at sniffing out BS but I think a lot of them lose their instinct or never had it.

[Parsad]

7 hours ago, rkbabang said:

 

 

Eventually that will be unnecessary more and more often.  You send BTC from your wallet to mine and I give you the goods or services you are purchasing from me.  Right now this type of exchange doesn't happen often, but it does happen and is growing.  If enough people stop trusting the local currency or simply prefer BTC to the local currency the government loses all control whatsoever.

 

 

Direct one to one transactions on a large-scale basis will only happen if governments can track sales.  The cost will come down on a transactional basis compared to banks and credit card companies, but governments will have to be able to track a transaction and determine who is generating revenue from that transaction.  The tax authorities will not be stymied forever...they will demand their pound of flesh one way or another.  Cheers!

[Xerxes]

3 hours ago, Spekulatius said:

@Xerxes Sometimes, I think rich people (at least some of them) are the most gullible of all. They probably delegate pretty much everything to other people including basic due diligence to people they trust.

So it becomes a network of trust where everyone hopes that the person they trust has done some research, but turns out often enough nobody does.

 

That's how people like Madoff, Holmes, Epstein and SBF get as far as they came committing very brazen cons.

 

Of course some rich are probably pretty good at sniffing out BS but I think a lot of them lose their instinct or never had it.

 

"The problem with leadership is that leaders are human beings. And when they make mistakes, their mistakes are amplified by the numbers who follow without question.” -- Frank Herbert

 

"To remind you that all humans make mistakes, and that all leaders are but human." -- Duke Leto II

 

 

 

[james22]

9 hours ago, Castanza said:

If the world goes to Hell and USD is no longer valuable, I'd say it's safe to assume your farm-land is also no longer yours since property rights only exist as long as they are enforced by your residing government. The land will belong to whoever takes it and defends it. Currency isn't going to make a lick of difference if that's a reality. 

 

Prepping is silly

 

So prepare to defend it.

[rkbabang]

11 hours ago, james22 said:

21 hours ago, Castanza said:

If the world goes to Hell and USD is no longer valuable, I'd say it's safe to assume your farm-land is also no longer yours since property rights only exist as long as they are enforced by your residing government. The land will belong to whoever takes it and defends it. Currency isn't going to make a lick of difference if that's a reality. 

 

Prepping is silly

 

So prepare to defend it.

 

I'm with Castanza. The amount of time, money, and resources you would need to adequately prepare for the end of the world would be huge.  And a huge waste if the world never ends.   I'd rather live with the assumption that society isn't going to collapse completely.  Sure I have some spare food and ammo, but nothing like what would be required to survive the apocalypse.  It's wise to prepare for a week or three with no electricity, or a few days of rioting, but other than that, I'd be as screwed as everyone else.