• Marxism-Fennekinism@lemmy.ml
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      3 years ago

      Also wastes energy and hardware (which includes rare earth metals mined by slaves) to endlessly compute hashes. Great solution for a post climate change world let me tell ya!

    • explodicle@local106.com
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      3 years ago

      Since nobody else responded to the stock market argument: it’s how cash is envisioned to work by Austrian school economists, not the economists currently in charge. The average person needing to trust strangers with their money is not good.

      It’s an entirely different perspective on how money should work (that was de facto illegal for decades), and only now can we put our money where our mouths are.

    • nile@sopuli.xyz
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      3 years ago

      I’m not pro crypto per-se, but your argument is only valid for bitcoin, not crypto. Most of it is even worse to be fair, but there is a future for sane crypto IMO.

    • I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.ml
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      3 years ago

      I love posts like this, it lets me know most people still don’t have the first clue what they’re talking about. It’s honestly a bit impressive how nearly every point you tried to make is either misleading or straight up wrong.

        • I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.ml
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          3 years ago

          Lol, you want me to spell it out for you dumb-dumb? Ok

          4.7% believed to be in the hands of a single person,

          You’re talking about Satoshi Nakamoro here. Other than a few test cases, no Bitcoin has ever been moved out of these wallets and Satoshi disappeared in 2010. People have continued to donate to these wallets over the years as a kind of tribute and to burn coins. While it’s technically possible he’s still alive, the fact that there has been zero movement from those accounts and that any movement, no matter how small, would immediately be seen and reported on makes it unlikely that these will ever be touched.

          3.1% in the hands of four addresses.

          Those are exchange addresses. It’s like trying to say that 4 entities control a percentage of all US currency and then it turns out you’re just talking about banks.

          Deflatory so no incentive to use it to make transactions

          Except of course the security, the fact it can be used across borders by anyone with an Internet connection, in poorer countries it can be more stable than their own currency, and just general preference.

          Value depends on the network effect (i.e. a pyramid scheme)

          This is absolute nonsense with “pyramid scheme” attached to the end. As more people use it, the value goes up because it’s accepted more and more places and has a higher liquidity? That’s literally part of every currency ever.

          Small transactions now too expensive to be realistic

          You show your hand that you haven’t bothered to update your views on Bitcoin since 2019. Not only are fees back to being low on the main network, with the introduction and adoption of the Lightning Network, fees are down to pennies or less.

          24% of the supply was created in the first year, 35% over two years.

          Yes, that’s how halving works. You present that with an insinuation that any point they could just mint more btc. This is ignorance at best, but more likely intentionally misleading.

          Movement of funds takes too long to be useful.

          Again, guess you haven’t been paying attention for a few years. This issue has been solved with the Lightning Network with transactions usually going through faster than tap-to-pay transactions with a regular debit/credit card.

          Those who got in early are guaranteed to be richer than those who got in late without having made any effort.

          Welcome to every investment opportunity. Those who get in early take a higher risk for more reward.

          So yea, every point either misleading, or straight up wrong.

            • thoughtorgan@lemmy.world
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              3 years ago

              I’m not a crypto guy by any means. But your point 5 doesn’t make sense. Almost all of our digital infrastructure is systems being supported by other systems.

              If you want to look at debit/credit card processing that is legitimately “bad enough that it requires a separate tech to work properly”. The banking systems that existed before cards needed new systems to process those payment methods. From the outside looking in, your critique could literally be applied anywhere for anything.

              Again I don’t even use Bitcoin. That’s just a bad argument.

            • bartolomeo@suppo.fi
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              3 years ago

              The biggest difference imo between bitcoin and USD is that participation in bitcoin is completely voluntary whereas participation in USD is mostly not, especially when you look at the things done to maintain global USD hegemony and the consequences of leaders who try to, for example, trade oil in currency other than USD or create a hard currency for their country when the de facto currency is USD. Were someone to print (which i can’t believe ppl in this thread don’t realize is a turn of phrase) a bunch of new BTC then it would only affect people who voluntarily chose to participate in that system, whereas if someone printed a whole bunch of USD and injected it directly into the stock market, those affected worst by this are not in the system by choice, and many times they participate only by coercion.

          • explodicle@local106.com
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            3 years ago

            Even the 4.7% figure was debunked a long time ago, it just gets repeated by people who don’t care what’s true in the first place.

          • electriccars@startrek.website
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            3 years ago

            You’re right. But they don’t want to hear it. Just like how most of the world believes in sky people and don’t want to face reality.

            The world has been living on FIAT currency since WW1 when virtually every country left the Gold Standard. It’s been ingrained into everyone that deflation = bad, inflation = good. Yet at the same time every single financial advisor recommends dumping your savings into deflationary assets (houses, stocks, etc)… Okay. Makes sense to me.

            • ZodiacSF1969@sh.itjust.works
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              3 years ago

              It’s almost as if one of the ideas behind having an inflationary currency is that people don’t hoard it and invest in other things!

              • electriccars@startrek.website
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                3 years ago

                39% of Americans do not invest in the stock market. Fuck them I guess.

                Having 2% deflation instead of 2% inflation would be good for the economy. It would be a baseline to compete against for companies and mean less people would invest in bad investments that just beat inflation.

                We also need to stop this ludicrous idea of infinite growth of the economy forever in order to be able to afford to retire. It’s detremental to the environment and to the quality of products the economy produces to expect such.

                Inflationary policies and fiat currencies are the fuel behind both world wars lasting as long as they did.

                Ancient Rome prospered with a strong currency, when they started debasing their currency it started the fall of Rome. The same will happen to us.

                • ZodiacSF1969@sh.itjust.works
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                  3 years ago

                  I agree that there is an unhealthy attitude to capital growth. That definitely needs to change.

                  As for the 39% of Americans not investing, how many have pension funds or other retirement schemes that do the investing for them? Regardless, they are free to choose what they do with their money. If they want to hold it, so be it.

                  A period of deflation might make for a good break, but not as a permanent solution. Investment inspires innovation, and innovation in new technologies will be vital in combating climate change.

                  I can’t comment on the wars or Rome but I think there are multiple factors there, fiat maybe being one but of what significance?

        • PatFusty@lemm.ee
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          3 years ago

          What is the difference between speculating in bitcoin vs speculating on forex or gold? Is gold investing a pyramid scheme?