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Bitcoin / Litecoin / Ethereum / alts discussion

What are you in?

  • Bitcoin

    Votes: 5 12.2%

  • Litecoin

    Votes: 5 12.2%

  • Ethereum

    Votes: 6 14.6%

  • Alts

    Votes: 2 4.9%

  • Nothing

    Votes: 19 46.3%

  • Carrots

    Votes: 15 36.6%
  • Total voters
    41
#221
-Asdfgh- said:
One of the problems with bitcoin is the limited rate of transactions, which also depends on the number of people involved in bitcoin. If it crashed and interest dried up, then it might not be viable as a technology itself. Block chain in general I can see applications for, and is an area I intend to research as there are potential uses in my day job.
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A couple of amusing counterpoints...

Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain
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It could turn out that the best use for bitcoin is as a speculative toy for people with too much money, but not as a technology. Of course as with all blog articles, these could be complete bunk. On the other hand, it might be possible to build on the math of the blockchain to create an analogous technology that isn't expected to be used as a currency, and is more efficient. Get programming. ;)
 
#222
Speaking of bubbles...

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#225
Fleebag said:
Speaking of bubbles...

View attachment 2855606
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That's nominal and not in relation to GDP, though. If you owed $1 as a kid and your allowance was $120 that would be significant, but not something most of us would worry about today.

The national debt of most western nations was fairly flat from the mid 70s to mid 2000s in terms of the proportion of GDP, with notable exceptions being Norway and Canada (reduced), and Japan (increased). With an explosion of private debt in the decade up to 2007, there wasn't much option but to allow that debt transfer over to national debt else rerun the 1930s.
 
#226
-Asdfgh- said:
That's nominal and not in relation to GDP, though. If you owed $1 as a kid and your allowance was $120 that would be significant, but not something most of us would worry about today.

The national debt of most western nations was fairly flat from the mid 70s to mid 2000s in terms of the proportion of GDP, with notable exceptions being Norway and Canada (reduced), and Japan (increased). With an explosion of private debt in the decade up to 2007, there wasn't much option but to allow that debt transfer over to national debt else rerun the 1930s.
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#227
Fleebag said:
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The article may have some valid points but seems to be a little odd as at one point it conflates unfunded liabilities with debt and fails to note the holders of the debt. There are other potential metrics such as debt servicing costs.

The post 2008 run up of debt was a response to avoid a potential serious deflation, which would have done more harm, and government debt to tax ratios would be at Japanese levels across the western world.
 
#228
-Asdfgh- said:
The article may have some valid points but seems to be a little odd as at one point it conflates unfunded liabilities with debt and fails to note the holders of the debt. There are other potential metrics such as debt servicing costs.

The post 2008 run up of debt was a response to avoid a potential serious deflation, which would have done more harm, and government debt to tax ratios would be at Japanese levels across the western world.
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does the holder of debt really matter? We've had this discussion in Japan and no one in politics seems to want to answer that. Also the people that say that the Japanese people own the 85 percent of the debt and Japan itself can't default that easily since the country can stiff the people and not foreign creditors. Then there's the separation of primary balance and special accounting. Good god.... it's convoluted.

Now what the hell ''stiff'' the people means, I am still a little confused..... People own the debt, and country stiffs the people...... really what do they mean? Going to sell our homes, cars, playstations? Or will we have massive hyper inflation? Or will they just shut down electricity, hospitals, schools, etc etc?

Now here comes bitcoin and banks issuing their own altcoins. This frees people from the low interest rates as banks will start to give better interest with their altcoins in order to stay competitive. This poses a serious threat to the government which is trying desperately to fight deflation (personally I believe we've already entered inflation in Japan) since the Japanese that got burned in the 80's and 90"s bubble will save even more and spend even less.

Japan has some serious problems and although the western world was laughing at their economic policy, it seems like they have no real choice but to join Japan.

Well at the end of the day, a country can't go bankrupt. They can just print more money. Might default on their loans but bankrupt? Probably not. Besides we can look at it really positively. Debt is no more than debit and credit. Left and right side of the margin in accounting.

When you printed money, it already got planted into economy. It's not like the money just vanished. So in essence one person's debt is another person's credit. Debt/debit and credit cancel each other out. So it's not like we're really creating something out of nothing. LOL
 
#229
Debt and credit still cancel each other out, which is why you don't want to get into debt destruction at too great a rate as unless the velocity of money also increases then GDP has to decrease, which can be reinforcing. As people and banks deleveraged in 2008-10 (outside Japan), then governments didn't have much option but to increase debt.

Now if governments try to reduced debt too quickly then private individuals will need to take in more debt (already happening in the UK) despite a high level of indebtedness. Prior to 2008 the run up was in private indebtedness, so governments were in a bind in 2008. Constraining indebtedness before then wasn't a popular choice.

At least with debt held domestically you aren't reliant on external markets to finance it. I am in the UK. If Brexit goes badly then if might become difficult to finance new government debt, which would make life very difficult, as it could risk deflation.

That's a big issue with Bitcoin - deflation. Which is great if you were in early (and I nearly bought 1000 coins in 2010 for fun, but I'd have sold them long ago), but not useful for a currency. And there are lost bitcoin wallets too, and I know two people with about 200k stranded
 
#231
I wire money from Japan. The sum is greater than 10,000 USD. Not much at all. Anything above 10,000 bucks needs to get reported to the IRS of Japan.

The banks are sleeping with the IRS. These guys are friends. They aren't friends to anyone. Banks are the sharpest point in the government's weapons depot. They will literally report all financial activities in order to stay on the good side of the government. After all they get the rights to borrow directly at low interest rates and lend it at higher to us.

Yet what the banks are planning to do with altcoins goes directly against the government's stance on deflation. Like you said, crypto can cause deflation. I really don't think the government agencies and head honchos of various sectors actually understand anything about crypto currencies. If they did, they would ban the banks from even remotely thinking about launching their own altcoins.

It is crazy. I don't think government workers have a real grasp of what's going on. They do a bunch of stuff and most of them don't work. Well, at least QE is semi-working in Japan. But then again, more than 25% of the entire population of Japan is getting a paycheck from the government, (more if you add social security and whatnot), how would anyone dare to speak against them. Bite the hand that feeds them?

Thanks to Japan, every nation is doing QE. It's becoming a race to the bottom of the barrel.
 
#233
We need to add “KODAKCoin” to the poll.

Eastman Kodak unveils cryptocurrency, stock doubles

“Several other companies in recent weeks have been rewarded with sharp rises in share price after announcing their transformation into cryptocurrency businesses.

"This is getting ridiculous," said Dennis Dick, a proprietary trader at Bright Trading LLC in Las Vegas. "From a fundamental point of view, none of this makes sense."

Riot Blockchain shares have tripled since October when the former biotechnology firm changed its name and said it was revising its business focus to bitcoins.”
 
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#235
Just think the mega banks around the world will be releasing their coins.
Apple, google, Walmart, Amazon, etc, etc. It is just the beginning. Think of it as some sort of in game currency.

JFYI, the concept of crypto was first invented by Just System of Japan in the 80s. Tomabechi Hideto was the brain behind it. It all started out as some in game currency. The people who created this later moved onto Sony Felica system which has been in Japan for god knows how long. Japan was/is the beta testing ground for open usage of this stuff. That is the reason why the Japanese government has announced its acceptance of this stuff.

That Satoshi stuff you hear, that is utter hog wash. The concept itself is really old. The algo for this stuff was already created long before Satoshi whoever dude appeared.
 
#236
MJ5150 said:
Eastman Kodak is in on this? Seriously?
I support their medical imaging software.

-Mike
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It actually kind of makes sense for what they're doing. They're not trying to do a currency replacement, but a DRM for photographers based on blockchain. Since you can't post-hoc change a block chain without everyone knowing, the DRM should be immutable. I think this is actually a great application of it. However, I think the investors jumped too much on it, as EK isn't doing anything unique or ground breaking, and other companies can easily follow suit. I expect a sell-off in their stock once those facts sink in.
 
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#237
I kind of feel bad for all the folks who jumped on ETH and XRP and are eating losses now. I think a lot of people see the price going up, and assume that everything will do the same thing BTC did and just mostly keep going up. I bet a lot of money was lost in the past 24 hours.
 
#238
Selta said:
I kind of feel bad for all the folks who jumped on ETH and XRP and are eating losses now. I think a lot of people see the price going up, and assume that everything will do the same thing BTC did and just mostly keep going up. I bet a lot of money was lost in the past 24 hours.
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You should also feel good for the people who made a lot of money at other times.
 
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