https://twitter.com/NostrumEX/status/1091475374524059648
Bitcoin is Fool’s Gold
Bitcoin has some rare and interesting properties. Like gold, Bitcoin is easily divisible. But what about scarcity?
Proponents claim Bitcoin is scarce. Alleged proof of the claim is that only a certain number of them will be mined.
The claim is on shaky ground. Nothing stops a majority of miners from agreeing to double, triple, or quintuple the number of Bitcoins.
That will “never” happen claim the proponents as it would kill the price.
But it already has happened. Twice.
Bitcoin has taken two hard forks already. At the first fork, holders of Bitcoin received an equal number of Bitcoin Cash. Then Bitcoin Cash forked into Bitcoin SV. As a result of these forks, there are already three times as many Bitcoin lookalikes as promised.
That’s just the beginning of it.
Top Twenty Cryptocurrencies
Note that Ethereum, created to fix a scaling flaw in Bitcoin, has itself hard forked.
There are double the number of Ethereum coins as originally promised.
Cryptos Are Like Fiat
Despite mining claims comparing cryptos to gold, cryptocurrecies are like fiat. They can be conjured out of thin air like nothing.
Proof is irrefutable: There are over 2,500 cryptocurrencies all claiming to be scarce like gold, each claiming to have added value.
Crypto Descriptions
I asked William Entriken, the lead author of the “token standard” for tracking physical assets using blockchain (ERC-721) for a synopsis of the leading competitors to Bitcoin.
The following bullet points are from Entriken.
- XRP (the company) clears cross-border treasury transfers for international banks. This works on the normal underlying fiat currencies. But the XRP token you can buy actually has nothing to do with that.
- ETHEREUM lets you run applications on a blockchain. It is one global computer that everyone can use and, we assume, nobody can hack. Ethereum is a public-access computer but actually it inspired many other similar projects, some of which are not public-facing. One big limit of Ethereum is it costs about $0.02 for each transfer or program run and takes about 20 seconds each time.
- BITCOIN CASH is the same thing as Bitcoin except that the number of allowed transactions is higher. Bitcoin and Bitcoin cash only allow a certain number of transactions every ten minutes. So if you really want your transaction to settle now then you must pay a higher fee. Otherwise your transaction settles later. The Bitcoin Cash fork was motivated because Bitcoin consistently has more people wanting to clear transactions than
- EOS is also a global computer. We usually judge global computers (blockchain that can run applications) against Ethereum because Ethereum is best known. Comparatively, EOS made some very different design decisions that make the system able to run faster but also require it to rely on a small number of central operators.
- STELLAR is one specific payment system application. They are a non-profit that is focused on customers which do not have access to traditional banking services.
- BITCOIN SV is one more fork on BITCOIN CASH. There are a lot of technical details that are changed with no visible end-user impact.
- TETHER is a blockchain application where somebody with a business address of “incorporated in Hong Kong” and no phone number hold $3B in US Dollars on your behalf. You hope that these funds will be available if you want to cash out. But you won’t sign any contract with anybody that actually entitles you to take out your share of the $3B.
- LITECOIN is an early copy of BITCOIN except it works 4 times faster.
- CARDANO is nothing. Maybe it will be something later, like a competitor to Ethereum.
- MONERO is a single blockchain application for payment processing. But it promises to be more resistant to forensic analysis of payments than Bitcoin.
- TRON wants to copy the Ethereum idea but allow more transactions.
- IOTA is nothing. Maybe it will become a competitor to Ethereum.
- DASH is a payment system which promises to run instantaneously, in contrast to longer times for Bitcoin.
- In summary 90% of these applications are focused on somebody printing their own currency, then getting other people to use it for business transactions, and hoping regulators won’t stop them.
- All of these other projects are deriving their value only in comparison to Bitcoin.
Illusion of Scarcity
What real scarcity can there possibly be in a model that allows infinite numbers of lookalikes all with similar properties, each proposing to fix some sort of problem in Bitcoin?
The logical, as well as correct answer, is none.
No Gold Lookalikes
In contrast to cryptocurrency madness, there are no gold lookalikes. There are no silver lookalikes.
There is gold and there is silver.
Gold and silver have unique properties that cannot be conjured out of thin air by a computer algorithm.
Is Gold Money? Bitcoin?
The SEC ruled Bitcoin is a “commodity”.
But what is money?
In What Has Government Done to Our Money, a free download on Mises.Org, Murray Rothbard writes …
“Money is a commodity. Learning this simple lesson is one of the world’s most important tasks. So often have people talked about money as something much more or less than this. Money is not an abstract unit of account, divorceable from a concrete good; it is not a useless token only good for exchanging; it is not a “claim on society”; it is not a guarantee of a fixed price level. It is simply a commodity. It differs from other commodities in being demanded mainly as a medium of exchange. But aside from this, it is a commodity—and, like all commodities, it has an existing stock, it faces demands by people to buy and hold it, etc. Like all commodities, its “price”—in terms of other goods—is determined by the interaction of its total supply, or stock, and the total demand by people to buy and hold it. (People “buy” money by selling their goods and services for it, just as they “sell” money when they buy goods and services.)”
Bitcoin vs Gold vs Tulips
Historically speaking, gold has always been valued as money. When gold and silver have not been available other commodities have functioned as money. Beaver pelts, salt, copper, cigarettes have all served as money.
That aside, Bitcoin has one major role speculation. It is logically the equivalent of tulip bulbs, another commodity.
That said, I am willing to accept both Bitcoin and Gold as money. Both can be used as money to buy things.
Some places will accept Bitcoin as money. For the sake of argument, let’s accept that as sufficient.
What about gold? Via a Bitgold debit card, gold is accepted as payment at millions more places than Bitcoin.
Bitgold is not a cryptocurrency, it is a genuine 100% gold-backed deposit. Via a Bitgold debit card, any place that accepts a debit card accepts gold as payment.
Bitcoin proponents may object because gold is converted to a local currency at transaction time.
However, all but a relative handful of companies do not hold Bitcoin. Rather, they immediately convert Bitcoin into local currency after the transaction.
It makes no difference whether currency conversion happens just prior to the transaction or immediately after.
Hype vs Reality
- Gold has thousands of years of history as money. Bitcoin has hype.
- Central banks hold gold. They do not hold Bitcoin.
- Via Bitgold, many millions of places accept gold as payment than Bitcoin.
- Gold is scarce. Cryptos offer fake scarcity.
Like it or not, those are the facts. Granted, Bitcoin has first mover advantage, but that is it.
Where to From Here?
I don’t know the coming price of Bitcoin or gold, nor does anyone else.
People pretend they know. Gold proponents speculate at $20,000 an ounce.
Bitcoin proponents are truly crazy, speculating on $1,000,000 per bitcoin.
John McAfee just announced that he’s starting a cannabis company. He predicted a Bitcoin Price Target of $1,000,000 and said he would “eat his own dick” if he’s wrong.@officialmcafee I can’t wait to hear your Price Target for the cannabis sector!! 🤣 #potstocks pic.twitter.com/m6890egrpy
— WeedStreet420 (@WeedStreet420) April 16, 2019
That is how absurd the hype is.
Fool’s Gold Substitute
Bitcoin is a fool’s gold substitute with unlimited supply in actual practice.
The above statement does not imply no use for blockchain.
I expect blockchain will eventually be a major success at low volume, high value transactions such as recording of deeds and titles.
I also expect a wave of digital currencies sponsored, then required by central banks.
If Bitcoin stands up to that, I expect it to be outlawed, timing uncertain.
Bitcoin Is Not Gold
Bitcoin is not peer-to-peer gold because it is not gold at all.
There is no limit to the number of coins running the exact same algorithm as Bitcoin. Scarcity is a mirage.
Let’s not get caught up with arguments about mining or what is or isn’t money.
Instead, pay attention to irrefutable facts.
JP Morgan famously stated “Money is Gold, and Nothing Else”.
I propose this simple refinement:
Bitcoin is not now nor ever will be peer-to-peer gold because Gold is Gold, and Nothing Else
Addendum
Pater Tenebrarum at the Acting Man blog passed on this note:
“There are many more BTC forks already, not just three. There is BTC Gold, BTC Diamond, Z-Cash and its forks (Horizen and ZCoin), BTC Dark, Decred and more. I have actually stopped counting them. “
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Thanks once again Digital Currency. You helped me out yet again. I had sent some BTC to myself from CoinbasePro to my Nano S. I went to Ledger Live to confirm that it had gotten there and it had NOT. I was wondering what could had happened, did I use the right address? Long story short, I found out that my bitcoin wallet had been hacked and the address was changed. I began to sweat wondering how I could get my 5 bitcoin back then I contact this bitcoin expert digitalcurrency14 @ gmail. com who taught me how to make profit on bitcoin few month ago I explained everything to him and he assured me he will help me out. He helped me recovered my 5 bitcoin back from the hacker, I couldn’t believe my eye until I confirmed it on my wallet and it finally got to my Nano. Almost 2 weeks now and I’m still grateful. Thanks Digital Currency! I still make profit everyday on bitcoin with his help
Me – Gold isn’t scarce. There are many metals, and a lot of them are more useful!
Mish – But those metals have different properties.
I agree, “Money is Gold, and Nothing Else”.
I like to say there are two types of people interested in Bitcoin. The first type is only interested in the “gold-like” aspect of there being a limited supply of coins. The second type is in it because the protocol allows for the trustless transfer of value through the internet in a way that never existed before.
The first type is useless to me, there is no reason to have a strictly limited supply of Bitcoins. For the last 10 years there has been inflation in the supply and the technology works just fine. The more interesting part of cryptocurrency is that underlying technology making something possible that was impossible previously. That is the part that we should be building on, that is the part that should be giving these coins value.
People who own Bitcoin, will not dispute the worth of Gold, and most probably own both. Gold is and always will be money, but that is not Max’s argument.
He calls Bitcoin peer to peer gold (Bitcoin only, not crypto’s in general or forked Bitcoin), due to its fixed scarcity, the supply cannot be inflated. Yes, it’s worth now is speculation, yes, it is infinitely more fragile than Gold as it is a technology. But for the millions or billions of people in the world who have not had the luxury of a relative stable economic system, it is infinitely more accessible.
When the conquistadores arrived on the shores of the Americas, they did not come as ambassadors for peace, trade or goodwill. They came with technology and weapons. They were an invading force whose goal was to steal gold and silver from the new world and bring it back home to Spain.
If you search the web you will find “The primary purpose of the Encomienda system was to indoctrinate the Indians in the Catholic faith. The Indians were expected to pay a tribute to the Spanish Conquistadors in return for protection and religious instruction.” So, under color of forced religious “education”, these thugs made their way to a foreign land in order to steal as much as possible.
Note that they did not come with mining tools. They did not come to work. They came to steal. And they did not want pelts and shells, they wanted gold and silver. Not gold in the dirt or in the stream bed. Not silver ore. They wanted mined and refined gold and silver objects of value even though they had never been there before.
Amazingly, that is exactly what they found. Everyone on the planet agreed that gold and silver were money long before they even knew others existed in lands far away and separated by oceans. That is why gold and silver are money, everything else is just noise and stupid talk by people who will believe pretty much anything as long as it’s new.
It is clear that both Gold and Bitcoin have their inherent advantages and disadvantages, whatever side you are on, I think everyone can agree that most importantly, both are a hedge against FIAT.
No I do not agree. Cryptos are fiat. They are a faith based currency. Gold and silver are not. They are physical. Only a fool looks at something that is only a few years old and then ascribes it the status of something that has been money since before anyone can remember. A sucker is born every day, and two on Sunday.
you’re mistake is to confuse Bitcoin with other crypto’s. Yes an infinite number can be created, yes Bitcoin can be forked an infinite number of times, but what Bitcoin has shown this last 10 years, is regardless of how many times people have tried to change it, they have failed.
To me, the biggest point missed is the incredibly complex and expensive cost of mining. Unlike gold mining to find it, Bitcoin only lives on with constant mining. As soon as the cost of becomes negative, a negative loop it’s created, the cost of transactions goes up reducing value even further. Gold has none of this. It doesn’t take massive inputs the keep it alive. To me that is the real please of Bitcoin.
If coins were not expensive to mine, how could they possibly be valuable? It’s the same with Gold: If it grew on trees, it would be about as valuable as leaves.
The most apparent problem with bitcoin mining costs, is that the the mining computations exercises a very narrow subset of typical processor hardware. Leaving mining needlessly prone to centralization on dedicated, purpose built hardware. So you end up with a small number of highly concentrated miners, instead of the fully distributed mining infrastructure originally envisioned. But that is a technical issue which can be fixed by newer cryptos, not something fundamental.
The mining aspect of Bitcoin is a temporary grab. Eventually the subsidy of mining rewards goes away, what then runs the network? It becomes regularly less profitable. It’s a fatal flaw.
Somebody is going to be eating their own dick!
Something tells me he is used to eating dick and so this is not a big threat to him. Who else would say something like that?
“Mish is right, although a bit late to the realization that bitcoin is Tulip Mania 2.0. I cannot believe Max Keiser is buying into this mania.”
I compared Bitcoin to Beanie Babies years ago. Way too early, in fact.
mish acá le dejo mi dirección 1ECbLJLYYiDyy7bzETerUk8m7mPc5y4xoL
tengo oro y quiero hacer una trasferencia de valor por miles de dolares a estados unidos a mish me hace el favor y trae una barco
o me da su dirección de bitcoin y se la hago en dos minutos
oro es oro por definicion
y bitcoin es bitcoin por definicion vamos dele una oportunidad
Addendum
Pater Tenebrarum at the Acting Man blog passed on this note:
“There are many more BTC forks already, not just three. There is BTC Gold, BTC Diamond, Z-Cash and its forks (Horizen and ZCoin), BTC Dark, Decred and more. I have actually stopped counting them. “
Everything Mish said plus: bitcoin transactions require bitcoin mining to settle transactions. The payment for the effort of mining is new bitcoins. When the last bitcoin is mined, no more mining will happen, no transactions can be settled in bitcoin and all bitcoins immediately become worthless. In gold, this is analogous to the end of gold mining causing the value of gold to become $0. It makes no sense. Bitcoin is a fraud. It is not what people hype it to be. That doesn’t mean it won’t go to a million dollars next year. People are people.
And gold is not money. An IOU from a trusted source of payment is money. Gold can be a reserve stock from which IOUs gain their value. Bank checks are essentially IOUs. I’m old enough to remember when local businesses would endorse checks they had received from customers over to suppliers as payment.
Credit cards are IOUs as are Federal Reserve Notes. Essentially, money is any token of an individuals credit within a community.
Miners are paid both by new coins, and by transactions fees added to transactions by transacting parties.
I think you might have confused money with currency. Any IOU or currency doesn’t settle a transaction, while gold/money can. Gold is money, everything else is credit.
As far as I know, the only peer-to-peer gold system is kinesis where ‘coins’ are limited in number, backed by allocated gold and pysically redeemable –
There is also DIGIX
These are not like Bitcoin at all. One of the most important advantages of BTC is that I don’t have to trust a centralized 3rd party with my funds. The gold held by Kinesis, or DIGIX can be seized, stolen, fractionally reserved, or destroyed through no fault of my own.
The physical gold is insured – this is true of Kinesis and I suspect is also true of DIGIX. I am not an advocate of any currency backed by nothing, fiat or block chain and I do not hold or intend to hold any gold backed block chain currency either.
As you say, despite Gold being a “better” money than cigarettes, cigarettes can serve as money as well, in situations where Gold isn’t practical. Even when Gold is available, day to day transactions have often been conducted in other currencies. From Silver to Copper to hope-and-a-prayer promises written on pieces of paper.
There are an enormous number of use cases, where Gold is less suitable than a crypto currency. Moving money from China to Vancouver being one of them. Buying acid another. Guns and ammo in totalitarian hellholes a third. Paying someone to do productive work remotely, without having the leech army steal half of what you pay him, a fourth. Bribing politicians a fifth. And so forth and so forth.
It’s not Gold vs Bitcoin vs Silver vs Monero vs whatevercoin or whatevercommodity. But rather a palette of choices, depending on exactly what you are trying to accomplish.
Mish is right, although a bit late to the realization that bitcoin is Tulip Mania 2.0. I cannot believe Max Keiser is buying into this mania. Mish hits it perfectly on the head here, “Despite mining claims comparing cryptos to gold, cryptocurrecies are like fiat. They can be conjured out of thin air like nothing.
Proof is irrefutable: There are over 2,500 cryptocurrencies all claiming to be scarce like gold, each claiming to have added value.”
This is all we need to know. Cryptocurrencies can be created again and again, gold cannot. Call them what you will, most of these cryptos are the same idea. Therefore the real value of all of them is $0.
Max should know better, he’s seen this rollout of trial balloons before by those who control it, and this time it’s part of the SG script of global regime change, ‘out with their OWO, in with their NWO’… global crytpo CDR… NSA did the early studies on this, isn’t that enough of a clue?
Remember the PTB/SG are calling this the 6th extintction…. they have been talking about population reduction down to 1/2 billion for quite some time as the OWO is outed for their NWO… not the psycho puppet politicians, but those pulling their strings…. BC is just a trial balloon to prep the waters… but once MOther Nature arrives in force within a decade, it won’t matter… PMs neither… which are just a transitional tool as well. But Max pushing their NWO dope is a little obscene and he should know better that do the piped piper routine… but this is how we all learn here in ‘Purgatory’… a school consciousness… no pain, no gain….Plato’s Cave analogy… you don’t find the exit by trying to find a better tool to ‘fix’ the OWO… that’s typical con game BS… to distract the herd.. keep them busy, apathetic etc… herd management… money won’t matter in the NWO… markets won’t be needed etc.. which is why ‘this time is different’… anything goes, because there won’t be any reset in the NWO… CHina doesn’t seem to understand this either…. very few do… which is why very few survive.
I like Max and I see why he got into Bitcoin back in 2011, hoping it was a viable alternative to the banker ZIRP universe. I believe he also made considerable money getting in so early. However, even he has said that the opportunity to bypass bankers was lost, that adoption did not reach the level needed to create a serious threat. Now the bankers themselves are dabbling in crypto.
It’s an interesting concept and completely understandable that people sought something other than fiat in these blatantly corrupt times, but realistically we’re going to have to figure this out the old fashioned way with PMs and paper. We also need to repair trust in society, not only in the monetary system but in general social terms. That won’t be easy no matter what form of money we use.
I agree with Mish’s points against Bitcoin and Cryptos in general. However, gold scares me as well as it might come out of the air literally…..asteroid mining could in theory in the next decade or two dilute the precious metals here on earth.
I’ve been trying to tell people that and no one will listen. It’s game over as soon as we start mining in space.
Mining in space will be possible, but the cost will be very high. How many dollars per ounce did the US spend on moon rocks, back in the Apollo program? And, those rocks weren’t even gold, just random rocks.
They were also small quantity of rocks. IMHO there is no chance mining in space will be economic unless someone develops a revolutionary propulsion system that does not rely on jettisoning microscopic rocks out the back end to get somewhere (we need something better than today’s rocket engines).
More gold is dissolved in the oceans than all the gold mined so far and probably all the gold that could be. It might be a good deal cheaper to extract than asteroid mining. So far, it has done nothing to the market for gold.
Max Keiser is an entertainer first and foremost. By no means should you take any financial advice from him. Before Bitcoin, silver was his schtick. While I value PM’s very much, anyone hyping them up to ridiculous heights loses credibility. In todays centralbanking clownworld, cryptocurrencies seem highly attractive, but I agree with Mish’s assessment; Only Gold is Gold..and nothing else.
“The more it is attacked, the more people will want to hold it, the people will eventually decide what is money, the old guard will shout it down all the way up, but those voices will simply become irrelevant.”
Then why did it fall from 20,000 to 4,000?
Bitcoin itself will be irrelevant. It has absolutely nothing other than first mover advantage.
If you disagree then please state what it has.
The move up to 20k was a spike, but it wasn’t a spike on a stock that has pushed out a golden egg RNS, then a few people with access to that stock see the rise and all pile in for fear of losing out. The rise to 20K was this same process, but with a global audience with access to the commodity 24/7, it was a spike on steroids.
I agree Bitcoin has first mover advantage, but it is wrong to compare Bitcoin to some sort of hot new product, because it is not a product, it is the biggest computer network in the world, with no central controlling node to fuck around with it. You want to shut it down, that’s fine, go and shut down the internet.
Mish,
Declaring an interest, I have a small amount of bitcoin purchased well before the price had 3 noughts after it.
“If you disagree then please state what it has.” – The biggest thing it has going for it is that in certain countries, where no one trusts the currency, it is advantageous for many there to hold bitcoin rather than the local currency because people will perceive it to hold value. If time goes by, and the price of bitcoin holds up for whatever reason, then belief in it to hold will grow and its price could become self-sustaining.
That said, I dont like bitcoin very much. Even though I have some, I just bought bitcoin to find out more about it and I feel I didnt learn much. It seems so hard to use them properly. I think I am with you, bitcoin I feel will fall because its drawbacks are greater than its advantages and in the end this will bring it down as people become disenchanted with it.
I could be wrong though. Forgive me for holding onto a little bit of bitcoin for insurance purposes.
Bitcoin is third party accounting. We have never had this type of technology before. That in it of itself is huge. 99% of these shitcoins WILL DIE. But there will be a few winners. Let the market decide.
To clarify above, LiteCoin uses a different mining algorithm that makes it harder to create miner farms (instead of CPU cycles, it requires lots of RAM memory). Monero can blind transactions so the transactions are actually private.
There is now gold and silver “backed” cryptocurrency like quintric.
The problem with BitCoin’s “Promise” to never have more than 21 Million coins (some are lost forever so the number is lower) is what you noted with the hard forks. Included are the promises to keep the mining hard, for a single fixed sized block of transactions to take about 10 minutes, and to reward miners with bitcoin (the number is going to diminish so as to create transaction fees). And the infinitely explanding “ledger” that starts with the original bitcoins and continues to expand. These have already created problems and are solved by the hard fork that broke one of the promises.
You cannot have “instant” (like a credit card) clearing with any P2P network, even 5G isn’t going to solve it because you need for over 50% of the nodes to accept the new block on the ledger. Bitcoin’s 10 minutes works.
It is no different from a bank “promising” they will not emit bills of credit in excess of their assets or a fixed amount in the case of a central bank. How is that promise enforced?
The second problem is BitCoin has no intrinsic value. There are also a finite number of a series of Beanie Babies. Just because there will only be N bitcoins, doesn’t mean any number will be exhangable for a good or service.
Gold (and silver) have some intrinsic value due to their properties. Gold can be turned into gold leaf and is corrosion proof. Silver is antiseptic and the best conductor of heat and electricity. Even a ton of rusty iron can be melted down and something made with it.
What can I do with the mathematical bits saying wallet X owns Bitcoin Y? Oh, and there is one more problem. You can embed things like images. There is child pornography on the bitcoin blockchain (I pointed the potential problem of illegal data – copyright, private info, kiddie porn – being embedded).
So any miner could be raided today and shut down. If there is something problematic with a piece of gold, it can be melted down, assayed, and reissued. How do you do that with the blockchain?
Note the blockchain technologies for tracking are innovative, but still require validation, trust, or a notary of some kind, e.g. to say it is tracking cattle to prove its “grass fed beef”, how do you know the initial or subsequent tracking entries are true?
Or for tracking property titles on a block chain – how do you insure the true owner of a property is listed in the original entry on the block chain?
Block Chains can only make things tamper resistant (maybe even tamper proof), but they cannot in themselves vouch for the truth or accuracy of what they are protecting.
As an older bitcoin advocate, who bought in a 6.5 cents each. I will say that you are both right. Bitcoin is not, and never could be, “money”; but it was designed to mimic gold in practice. Bitcoin was designed to be the “backing” for other, more local, institutional currencies without the need for any kind of “central bank”, as the central bank is the established algorithm. The fact that spinoffs occur is irrelevant, unless they in turn integrate into Bitcoin as a side-currency, none of which have yet done so. The idea was that a “gold like” currency would form the basis for these major (and private) institutions to settle amongst themselves, and that the common man couldn’t be excluded from using the Bitcoin network directly. This is what the guys behind Bitcoin Cash got wrong, the relatively low transaction processing limitation of the main Bitcoin blockchain was a feature, not a bug.
You need to read the Bitcoin Standard Mish. I don’t dispute the merits of gold, but in the digital age, holding physical gold is not practical and holding gold any other way means you need to trust a third party. Millennials and Z’s do not trust third parties. Yes, Bitcoin can be forked, but original Bitcoin will remain, and there is no incentive for miners to act in way that goes against the protocol, it’s just not profitable. The beauty of Bitcoin is that it is trustless and free from central bank lunacy, and you don’t need deep pockets and a strong belt to walk around and buy anything, you just need your smart phone. The more it is attacked, the more people will want to hold it, the people will eventually decide what is money, the old guard will shout it down all the way up, but those voices will simply become irrelevant.
Sound arguments. But can you physically hold a BTC in your hand?
Yes you can. Satori coins, Tital and casacius coins have been made before. Or you can get a ledger nano hard wallet.
No you can’t physically hold it, but the majority of money spent is not physically held in your hands, but intellectually you know that it is yours, intellectually you know it cannot be debased by a third party and if the majority of users have control of their own keys, the price cannot be manipulated with paper contracts without great risk, unlike gold.
Well, you cannot deny that BTC’s volatility is a form of manipulation. Manipulation or speculation and it has attracted a lot of attention from ‘criminal activity’. I love the fact that it’s out of the realm of the central banks or governments, but the question is, for how much longer. BTC isn’t backed by anything, it isn’t backed by gold or a state power or military power. So essentially, that beautiful blockchain in all its glory is rather fragile.
I think people are beginning to see through the veil of state and military power, and see it for what it really is, purely an organisation only interested in keeping its grip on power. The biggest enabler of this being control of the money supply. In the west we see the fragility of other state currencies, Argentina, Cyprus, Zimbabwe to name a few, and think that this will never happen to us.
But what happens when the veil drops? When the masses wake up to the blatant robbery money printing is, when the banks again come back for handouts, when the banks try to initiate negative interest rates to further prop up the system, are the people simply going to bend over and take another pinstriped strap on up the arse hole. I think not.
As for criminal activity, have a google of HSBC laundering drug money, ignoring the fact that this could be mitigated by allowing people the freedom to alter their own consciousness as they wish, but that is an argument for another day.
Granted, Bitcoin is not user friendly for the masses yet, but it will be. Granted, adoption is slow and if the systems we have can be made fair and promote justice, then Bitcoin could become irrelevant. But that is putting a lot of hope in systems controlled by people drunk on greed and power.