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rkbabang

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Bitcoin has been in the public eye for 3? 4? years now and has relatively no breakthrough public product to justify all the time and energy spent.

 

Where is the value?

 

Gold has been in the public eye for 3? 4? thousand years now and has relatively no breakthrough public product to justify all the time and energy spent.

 

Where is the value?

 

Bitcoin (and gold) itself is the product.

 

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"This bloat, especially by tokens, obscures the real picture of what is going on in the realm of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.

The upshot is that there will soon be a fork in the road for crypto. Tokens need to be looked at differently and evaluated and listed differently. We do this with stocks and bonds. You don’t want to see bonds listed in the same search and column as a stock. Likewise, the same goes for commodities. You don’t want gold to be listed under ‘g’ in your financial newspapers’ back pages. You want gold in a different section and the same goes for Forex.

Tokens are securities, currencies are not"

 

https://medium.com/forbes/who-killed-satoshi-nakamoto-3b05d07103fc

 

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Crypto, % Below all-time high...

BitConnect: -100%

Qtum: -99%

ICON: -98%

Cardano: -98%

Bitcoin Gold: -98%

Bitcoin Cash: -98%

NEO: -97%

Lisk: -97%

NEM: -96%

IOTA: -96%

Dash: -96%

TRON: -95%

zCash: -94%

Ethereum: -93%

Litecoin: -93%

XRP: -92%

EOS: -92%

Monero: -90%

Bitcoin: -83%

 

Award for smartest crypto guy goes to:

 

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2017/12/20/litecoin-founder-charlie-lee-sells-his-holdings-in-the-cryptocurrency.html

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The infinite elasticity of fiat money that is often so bemoaned by crypto proponents is, in my amateurish opinion, not a bug but a feature.

 

Oh it is a feature, to those in power of influencing the monetary supply. It's detrimental to everyone else. Due to that asymmetry it undermines the free market (and is therefore by definition bad in my opinion as I consider the free market to be the optimal system).

 

For those mentioning power waste, perhaps this recent study is an interesting read. It's on the price and sources of Bitcoin mining (both geographically and how the power is produced). The main conclusions are that at least 77.6% of the power consumption is from renewables and that a large part of this comes from stranded assets: power that is otherwise wasted.

https://coinshares.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Mining-Whitepaper-Final.pdf

 

(Note the source of the study is unlikely to be impartial based on the name alone)

 

Lol...is this a joke? Crypto "mining" is an extremely wasteful, carbon positive (coal in China) activity. Love how anyone in the crypto world can write a seemingly technical, extremely long "white paper" pdf and be considered legit. What a joke.

 

Crypto is worthless.

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Bitcoin has been in the public eye for 3? 4? years now and has relatively no breakthrough public product to justify all the time and energy spent.

 

Where is the value?

 

Gold has been in the public eye for 3? 4? thousand years now and has relatively no breakthrough public product to justify all the time and energy spent.

 

Where is the value?

 

Bitcoin (and gold) itself is the product.

 

Why bitcoin? Why not Dogecoin? Why not many of the other shitcoins?

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Bitcoin is the ONLY shitcoin that is fully hedgeable (Chicago exchanges).

Trade in the 'light', and along with the angels - you can quite safely short this sucker into the ground.

Trade on the 'dark' side and you wake up next to a horse's head ;)

 

A little research into the DL hash process will also take you a long way. The hash is little different to coke, the miner is essentially a dealer, and the P2P business model is addiction. Addict your business to high-speed miners executing rapid hashes, and at any time they can take their CPU power away - unless you pay the 'new' fee  ;D

 

Of course it's a toss up as to who makes the most the first time it happens  ....

the criminal extorting, the shorters on Chicago, or perhaps they're both one and the same! 

 

Welcome to Bitcoin

 

SD

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Wow, Bitcoin Cash went from a peak of $3500 less than a year ago to $79 now. It would need to be a 44-bagger to get back to its peak.

 

What about the Venezuelan bolivar?

 

I think if you try to find hurdles lower than that, you'd have to start digging.

 

Same argument applies to Bitcoin Cash.

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Wow, Bitcoin Cash went from a peak of $3500 less than a year ago to $79 now. It would need to be a 44-bagger to get back to its peak.

 

What about the Venezuelan bolivar?

 

I think if you try to find hurdles lower than that, you'd have to start digging.

 

Same argument applies to Bitcoin Cash.

 

I agree with that 100%. If I were to use Bitcoin Cash as a bar for my own investment performance over the last year, I think it is safe to say that it would make it look somewhat rosier than it actually is.

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  • 2 weeks later...

To all the experts here - question for you.

 

So for anyone who has mistakenly clicked into the Politics section and read a few incoherent threads there, one topic that comes up is voter fraud and voting turnout.

 

I would think the that in a perfect world, everyone could vote online, everyone would have some identity token, etc. Obviously In reality this is open to all kinds of fraud and hacking vulnerability.

 

My question is, could some distribute ledger technology be employed to solve this problem?

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To all the experts here - question for you.

 

So for anyone who has mistakenly clicked into the Politics section and read a few incoherent threads there, one topic that comes up is voter fraud and voting turnout.

 

I would think the that in a perfect world, everyone could vote online, everyone would have some identity token, etc. Obviously In reality this is open to all kinds of fraud and hacking vulnerability.

 

My question is, could some distribute ledger technology be employed to solve this problem?

 

Look at Estonia, where this has been in place since at least 2007.

The key 'technology' is Keyless Signature Infrastructure (KSI), which runs on blockchain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting_in_Estonia

 

SD

 

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Thanks SD. I also did some further reading and it seems promising. There is some work being done at Carnegie-Mellon on this specifically. There are some items which are still drawbacks, one being you still need an "in-person" location to hand out and verify keys. Second, it is not "unhackable" but it is very difficult. Also I think one of the Carolinas used some form of blockchain voting in a primary election this year.

 

I think it's the way forward...hopefully could provide some lift to voter turnout, increased accountability and traceability.

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The real power is that this allows governments to link various departmental data bases via a common data field. Tax, property, family, health, bank account, etc. All at the Oracles (the state) touch, and in live time, and no hiding behind maiden names, changed spellings, or recent deaths in the extended family. Works great on voter fraud, but makes it harder to fix an election.

Therefore very limited use for the US!

 

SD

 

 

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It's useful to keep in mind that 'Crypto' grew up in the 'techie' silo - isolated from everyone else.

A great many people take the view 'I'm good at technology, and I do it very well' - but this 'society' stuff I'm not good at, and it's not my problem to solve. We often hear the same argument on this board - I'm good at 'investment' - but not this 'macro' stuff that generates it.  It is just another version of Oppenheimer's (the bomber) approach when he brought the atomic bomb into the world; it's not the technology, it's the users!

 

Of course, we know from law that even if you drive the getaway car - you still abetted the crime, and therefore share responsibility.

But in 'crypto' ..... actions and responsibilities are particularly poorly correlated.

 

It is begining to penetrate that the implications of blockchain/smart-contract technology goes well beyond the immediate application solution, but it is still well below the 'tipping-point' (Gladwell) of the general NA population. Different 'sectors' will hit the 'tipping point' at different times, and the early evidence is that 'tech' is fairly far down the list. By-and-large, the more 'EQ' involved the sooner the 'tipping point'.

 

The long-term bet is against industry (screws-up its CSR), and with company specific applications.

If only because you don't put a blockchain solution in a company unless you have a business plan, and know exactly how much, why, and when this application is going to make money for you ;)

 

SD

 

 

 

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Take a page from the investment world. The 'long straddle' was a great invention ......  ;)

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/longstraddle.asp

 

The volatility is the mass disruption/displacement of blockchain, smart-contracts, and artificial intelligence.

Short-side gains from work displacement (education, employment agencies, consulting). Long-side gains from royalty/special purpose implementations, proof-of-concept start-ups, and buy-outs. All nice and private, very limited/zero reporting, and little real risk.

 

The typical long-side JV is 2 coders in an incubator, and 1 day a week of your time, for a year, to supervise and prove concept.

Repeat for a year to prove scalability, and negotiate/sell into the buy-out. Partner puts up the funding, you put up the results.

 

SD

 

 

 

 

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Ideal yes but difficult to establish that position. In my position probably education/consulting is the lowest barrier-to-entry option. Difficult to gain access to royalties without developing the specific implementation - and difficult to do that without structuring an incubator as you say. Well, Cheers and happy hunting  ;D

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What it's really doing is replacing the DL mining process with a version of algorithmic data-base validation. Most would expect 3 selected validators, and a comparisom test as part of the 'proof of stake'. It doesn't just reduce the power requirement, it also gives them a way to circumvent extortion through the sudden witholding of CPU power, and speeds up the validation process.

 

One of those validators will be themselves, and it will affect anyone using the ERC 20 token standard.

Enough cummulative critical mass to also make it happen. Clever.

 

SD

 

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