Cryptocurrency thread

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,105]

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,105]

On 2/28/2023 at 1:28 AM, OptOut said:

What part of gUaRAnTeEd GAINZ!!!1!11! don't you understand? 

Even Brent Rambo approves!

[RH | 4,903]

1 hour ago, Bearcat-Doug said:

If you fall through the earth to it's center, but just keep on going and going, eventually you WILL get...

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,105]

*Checks bitcoin price today*

[avatar! | 1,811]

[MiamiSlice | 3,095]

5 hours ago, avatar! said:

SEC announced they are suing Binance ‍

[guillavoie | 1,210]

On 5/11/2022 at 11:22 PM, OptOut said:

Ultimately, the logic of cryptocurrency, or at least the logic of the sorts of people buying it and how it exists in its current state, are that it will inevitably crash in value over a long enough period of time.

The VAST majority of the people who bought these coins did so as a lottery ticket, with the hope and expectation that they would be able to cash out after making extraordinary gains. VERY few people actually have any interest whatsoever in the use value of the "coins", and they only buy and hold them for the purpose of making money. I mean REAL money here, hard US fiat.

The obvious problem is that the "value" of the coins on paper is VASTLY in excess, and I mean MANY orders of magnitude higher than the amount of ACTUAL money in the system. So it is absolutely and completely and utterly impossible for all the supposed "gains" of the currencies to be realised. The SOLE reason most people are invested in the first place, to be able to sell and make a fortune is actually fully impossible, and any attempt to realise it leads to an exponential devaluing of the currency as people attempt to "realise" their "gains".

 

Bitcoin never WAS worth 60,000 dollars. If you had one, and sold one at the top for that much, well yeah you could have probably have converted it into USDT and then into actual cash. But if too many people followed suit, the liquidity would dry up SUPER fast, like a TINY fraction of the total Bitcoin in the market could ever realistically have ever converted into 60K USD. After that, it's it's panic selling at ever larger discounts straight to the bottom... There was never the money there that people thought they had in the first place, it was ALWAYS an illusion.

Cryptocurrencies, in their current form, gain value from money pumped into the system from outside. The gullible schmucks who put in their covid checks in 2020 and 2021, and then continued to put in their paychecks each month, as well as their life savings. THAT is where all that magical money came from, that's where all those "gains" came from. People paying in to the system, there is no actual value there, it's robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Now, Paul has been paid, Peter has been robbed, and the numbers on the screen have been revealed as just that, numbers. It was NEVER possible for "ALL OF US TO MAKE IT", because there was very little ACTUAL money to make, at least not for the VAST majority of people "invested".

Hold, diamond hands, the moon. All lies to make the dumbest people leave their cash on the table for as long as possible, so Paul could slip it into his own pocket. Now the money is gone, and the bigger fool has been revealed. 

Could it come back? I'm thinking a whole generation of easy money and goodwill has been burned, it's not going to be anywhere NEAR this easy to rope in the marks next time. All the most desperate, dumb and greedy have already been exploited and chewed up and spat out. I think it's going to be a LONG time before we see a significant recovery in the price of Bitcoin specifically (that is if Tether doesn't FUBAR) and in general I think most of crypto in its present form is basically done.

 

They are going to have to find something to actually do with it that isn't just gambling before any true value is possible to generate AND sustain, IMO. And hey, if they DO, maybe I will use a coin or two myself one day, you know, when there's actually a legit REASON to and I'm not going to get hacked and lose my entire lifesavings! 

 

Bitcoin chart since this post :

 

I told you that you should have stated that this was not financial advice !

[OptOut | 8,884]

19 minutes ago, guillavoie said:

Bitcoin chart since this post :

 

I told you that you should have stated that this was not financial advice !

It will be fun to watch it crash again, lol!

[RH | 4,903]

I know I've shared my bit about crypto several times, but when we were creating the ecosystem (and I do consider myself very much a part of that since I was a developer for some coins, and had several influential conversations), the intent and hope was for cryptocurrency to have value based off of the need for currency.

I left because of all of this speculative nonsense.  Granted, it's hard to invent a currency without their being an expectation that the value of the currency would grow--if it didn't, it'd have no point.  However, some time probably about 10 years ago, the perspective flipped to 98% pure, speculative ponzi-schemes being the expectation.  There have been several novel innovations but by and large, people are only interest in crypto for one reason--speculation.  Digital gold.

If the value of an asset is 100% that it's worth something today and based off of the whims of people, it's value may go up, then I'm not interested. None of these coins have built or made anything that's gotten close to luring every-day merchants to use these tools in mass.

True, I do think some projects have honestly tried but they die because pure-speculators take over every coin market now, and those innovative coins do well when there's strong buying synergy and then they fizzle when the "next great thing" pops up, even if no one uses that new coin for it's intended purpose.

Wake me up when someone makes a secure, fast, global cryptocurrency that a high percentage of the population in the world is ready to use as a day-to-day currency.

That's NOT Bitcoin, and that's nothing else that exists either.

[Code Monkey | 2,010]

  

4 hours ago, RH said:

I know I've shared my bit about crypto several times, but when we were creating the ecosystem (and I do consider myself very much a part of that since I was a developer for some coins, and had several influential conversations), the intent and hope was for cryptocurrency to have value based off of the need for currency.

I left because of all of this speculative nonsense.  Granted, it's hard to invent a currency without their being an expectation that the value of the currency would grow--if it didn't, it'd have no point.  However, some time probably about 10 years ago, the perspective flipped to 98% pure, speculative ponzi-schemes being the expectation.  There have been several novel innovations but by and large, people are only interest in crypto for one reason--speculation.  Digital gold.

If the value of an asset is 100% that it's worth something today and based off of the whims of people, it's value may go up, then I'm not interested. None of these coins have built or made anything that's gotten close to luring every-day merchants to use these tools in mass.

True, I do think some projects have honestly tried but they die because pure-speculators take over every coin market now, and those innovative coins do well when there's strong buying synergy and then they fizzle when the "next great thing" pops up, even if no one uses that new coin for it's intended purpose.

Wake me up when someone makes a secure, fast, global cryptocurrency that a high percentage of the population in the world is ready to use as a day-to-day currency.

That's NOT Bitcoin, and that's nothing else that exists either.

 

a) Sam Altman and Worldcoin?

b) What's the difference between Bitcoin and the money in your bank account? Besides one being backed by insurance, there's no difference.

Edited March 8 by Code Monkey

[Code Monkey | 2,010]

I was about to come here today and resurrect this thread.

2 years ago I took all of my various coins (besides Bitcoin) and compiled them into Solana which I believed was going to go big. The total value of that wallet was $200 and I was able to recently see 10x gains on that to $2000. I converted half of that to Filecoin (FIL) and the other half to EOS which have since seen gains of 2x, totaling $4000. Even if these 2 coins only reach their previous highs, they will still 20x again from today and everything is expected to beat the previous highs if you look at the correct coins.

I'm aiming for at least $50,000 USD within 1 year and I'm hoping for $100,000 total from this $200 wallet. If it works, next halving I'll gamble with the Bitcoin.

[RH | 4,903]

7 minutes ago, Code Monkey said:

I was about to come here today and resurrect this thread.

2 years ago I took all of my various coins (besides Bitcoin) and compiled them into Solana which I believed was going to go big. The total value of that wallet was $200 and I was able to recently see 10x gains on that to $2000. I converted half of that to Filecoin (FIL) and the other half to EOS which have since seen gains of 2x, totaling $4000. Even if these 2 coins only reach their previous highs, they will still 20x again from today and everything is expected to beat the previous highs if you look at the correct coins.

I'm aiming for at least $50,000 USD within 1 year and I'm hoping for $100,000 total from this $200 wallet. If it works, next halving I'll gamble with the Bitcoin.

Dude, you literally proved my point.

And Sam Altman's Worldcoin is, at best, one of those "novel" innovations that is being speculated and won't work.  For those who love to be part of anything technologically cutting edge, it sounds amazing.  But to the masses, who've given it any notice, it's creepy AF.  Regardless, it's not a global currency.

[Khromak | 768]

39 minutes ago, Code Monkey said:

b) What's the difference between Bitcoin and the money in your bank account? Besides one being backed by insurance, there's no difference.

I haven't been following this conversation so maybe I'm missing some context here but...

1. The value of a dollar is EXTREMELY stable. If I go to get a haircut for $20, it costs the same every week, every month, and every year. Bitcoin has over doubled in value in the last year.
2. Dollars are a commonly accepted currency in this country, and in most of the world.
3. Bank accounts are regulated and insured. If someone charges my account incorrectly, I can get the money back. If the bank crashes and burns, the government will give me my money back. Banks can't lie about their assets and they're routinely audited by the government to make sure they have the capital to cover their deposits (within margins)
4. Dollars (especially digital ones) don't have a limited supply, so their value is determined mostly by the strength of the US government, not based on supply/demand. A commodity makes a terrible currency because daily (hourly, secondly) fluctuations can mean your paycheck on Friday will be vastly different from the cost of bread the next day. Imagine writing a rent contract for bitcoin...

I could go on, but bitcoins are absolutely nothing like dollars. If you send someone 1k bitcoin because you lost your password or someone hacked your account, scammed you, or whatever, you're absolutely fucked. You will absolutely never get a penny of that back.

Every cryptocurrency I've ever heard of is a speculative tool, not a currency. Things with supply/demand aren't stable enough to be currencies, period. Never will be. They're fun speculative nonsense that can be extremely lucrative, but they're still just stocks without the actual productive entities (businesses) behind them. They're all just greater fool theories, buying a $0.01 coin, hoping some guy will pay you $0.05 for it in a little while because he's hoping someone will pay him $0.10 for it in the future. Nobody does that with dollars. You know what people do with dollars? Buy and sell things, give loans, provide work in exchange for them, etc. It's a currency.

[Gloves | 11,779]

27 minutes ago, Khromak said:

The value of a dollar is EXTREMELY stable. If I go to get a haircut for $20, it costs the same every week, every month, and every year. Bitcoin has over doubled in value in the last year.

This point can't be brought up enough. This ONLY benefits investors. 

Anyone NOT in the system already is further and further from being able to viably use it as a currency every day that it goes up in value. And those who "buy in" today are severely at risk of their "money" being extremely devalued tomorrow, sometimes at the whim of a billionaire troll tweet. 

Bitcoin is not and never will be valuable as currency, period. 

[Khromak | 768]

Also worth noting that with blockchain technologies there's absolutely no privacy. If you give someone your wallet information so they can send you $5 for lunch, they can then look at all other transactions you've ever made with anyone. Oh, what's that? You donated to XYZ charity? Why were you sending money to this drug dealer? Oh, I see you sent $20 to Putin, what gives with that?

I know you can like...launder your money through 100 wallets or whatever, but that's still public and traceable, and that's also 100x more work than Joe Schmoe wants to do with their bank account. If I send money to my friend, or write a check to my landlord, absolutely nobody knows that except myself and my bank, and the bank has loads of business, legal, and reputational reasons to ensure that nobody else gets a full sheet of my transaction history, or my balance.

[Scrobins | 1,726]

People need to stop acting like buying cryptocurrency is some kind of next century investment. You’re online gambling, and being snotty about it.

[Code Monkey | 2,010]

26 minutes ago, Khromak said:

I haven't been following this conversation so maybe I'm missing some context here but...

1. The value of a dollar is EXTREMELY stable. If I go to get a haircut for $20, it costs the same every week, every month, and every year. Bitcoin has over doubled in value in the last year.
2. Dollars are a commonly accepted currency in this country, and in most of the world.
3. Bank accounts are regulated and insured. If someone charges my account incorrectly, I can get the money back. If the bank crashes and burns, the government will give me my money back. Banks can't lie about their assets and they're routinely audited by the government to make sure they have the capital to cover their deposits (within margins)
4. Dollars (especially digital ones) don't have a limited supply, so their value is determined mostly by the strength of the US government, not based on supply/demand. A commodity makes a terrible currency because daily (hourly, secondly) fluctuations can mean your paycheck on Friday will be vastly different from the cost of bread the next day. Imagine writing a rent contract for bitcoin...

I could go on, but bitcoins are absolutely nothing like dollars. If you send someone 1k bitcoin because you lost your password or someone hacked your account, scammed you, or whatever, you're absolutely fucked. You will absolutely never get a penny of that back.

Every cryptocurrency I've ever heard of is a speculative tool, not a currency. Things with supply/demand aren't stable enough to be currencies, period. Never will be. They're fun speculative nonsense that can be extremely lucrative, but they're still just stocks without the actual productive entities (businesses) behind them. They're all just greater fool theories, buying a $0.01 coin, hoping some guy will pay you $0.05 for it in a little while because he's hoping someone will pay him $0.10 for it in the future. Nobody does that with dollars. You know what people do with dollars? Buy and sell things, give loans, provide work in exchange for them, etc. It's a currency.

There are many inaccuracies here and I love a good debate.

1. In your scenario, you're comparing a dollar's stability against itself but when you refer to Bitcoin, you're comparing its stability against a dollar, you can't do that. A dollar is stable against a dollar, yes, but is it stable against the Yen? USD? The Euro? No, it bounces all over the place, it's incredibly unstable, Yes, a haircut that costs $20 last week will still cost $20 next week but a haircut that cost 1 Bitcoin last week will also cost 1 Bitcoin next week. It's the coin's stability against other currencies that fluctuates, just like the dollar.
2. The Canadian dollar is accepted in most of the world? No it isn't, not at all. And if you're referring to the collective dollars of all individual countries, that's not a legitimate argument. This is single currency against single currency, not the whole world's economy. If you want to go to Australia, they will not accept CAD, you need to convert it. Same with Bitcoin, you need to convert it.
3. I asked for differences besides this one. When the money supply first started, it was just a paper representation promising you had that much gold in the bank somewhere. If robbers stole your gold from the bank, that note was worthless. The idea of insuring the money came after the gold backing was removed and as cryptocurrency evolves, I'm sure that will be addressed. It's a currency in its infancy, it will evolve.
4. I would accept a rental contract in Bitcoin, it keeps going up anyway. I would allow my employer to pay me in Bitcoin as well, one static price for the year, regardless of its value against the dollar. My paycheque doesn't currently fluctuate against the Euro, it's one single amount of dollars. It could also be one single amount of Bitcoin, I'd be fine with that.

 

All of my support for cryptocurrency is under the understanding that it will evolve to become what other currencies are today. It will somehow be insured by something, some how and it will also eventually fluctuate less day to day. When people made the switch from gold to paper currency, it was highly volatile and it fluctuated even more across each state since each state had their own currency. Eventually it became more mature and I think Bitcoin or its replacement can do the same.

Right now, we're using an antiquated system that is not sustainable long term. Each dollar the government gets, it borrows at interest. So they borrow $1000 and have to pay back more than they borrowed, but how do they do that? There is no other source of income, if they want more dollars, they need to borrow more. So they need to borrow more to cover the interest but this new loan also has its own interest. This is exactly the definition of inflation, in order to make this work, the value of the existing dollars has to decrease in order to try and cover the interest of borrowing. The government doesn't just create money for free and if we switched to some other form of updated digital currency, it would solve all of these problems.

[Khromak | 768]

I'm sure you'd be happy to pay rent in BTC because it's doubled in the last year. I wonder how your landlord would feel about the fact that the BTC they're getting in rent is worth half as much today as it was when they signed your rental agreement.

These are comparisons against all other currencies. BTC costs twice as much yen, canadian, australian, or USD. Anything you use to buy BTC today is worth half as much BTC as it was last year. If someone were selling you bananas using BTC, you would get twice as many bananas today as you got last year, for the same BTC.

Imagine you're a mortgage company giving someone a 30 year loan in BTC now. Maybe you'll make a profit, or maybe you'll lose absolutely everything. Depends whether or not Jake Paul has tweeted about buying BTC recently.

How would your employer feel about the fact that all of their labor costs doubled in the last year, compared to the price they pay for materials?

USD compared to Euro, in the last 5 years, has fluctuated between a low of .82 to a high of 1.02. USD to Yuan has fluctuated between 6.3-7.3. I'd call that pretty stable compared to 2.5x fluctuation in 6 months.

Edited March 8 by Khromak

[Khromak | 768]

Also on point 3: I didn't just say insured, I also said regulated. There are tons of cryptocurrencies where the people running the currency said they were "burning" coins and instead kept them for themselves. They manage the "liquidity pools" and control all kinds of rules about how the currencies work. There are hundreds of stories of people doing "rug pulls" and screwing people over. There are tons of instances of crypto exchanges stealing/mishandling customer funds. No government institution in the world is checking their books to make sure they can cover the "returns" they offer people. Nobody is checking these liquidity pools to make sure they can afford to hand out the "more stable" crypto their BS crypto is based on.

It's rife with problems, incestuous relationships, and a lack of regulation. In fact, lack of regulation and control has always been a perk for these things...but I don't think those are good things for a currency. People, and especially companies, need stability in order to use something as a currency, they don't need freedom.

I think crypto is a solution in search of a problem. What are the problems with government-backed currencies that crypto is seeking to solve? I have never had a problem with using the existing financial systems, but maybe I'm missing something?

It introduces a hundred new problems into the mix, but solves none(ish)

[Hammerfestus | 3,846]

1 hour ago, Scrobins said:

People need to stop acting like buying cryptocurrency is some kind of next century investment. You’re online gambling, and being snotty about it.

I’ve got a little bit of crypto and you’d better believe I consider that the same pool of money as my sports gambling funds.  At this point, I’m mostly just riding whatever happens to Ethereum.  I’ve got just enough to make the whole thing interesting to me.  As a non-computer nerd average dumb ass American there might as well be zero function to them beyond as a gambling vehicle to me. 

[Code Monkey | 2,010]

1 hour ago, Khromak said:

I'm sure you'd be happy to pay rent in BTC because it's doubled in the last year. I wonder how your landlord would feel about the fact that the BTC they're getting in rent is worth half as much today as it was when they signed your rental agreement.

These are comparisons against all other currencies. BTC costs twice as much yen, canadian, australian, or USD. Anything you use to buy BTC today is worth half as much BTC as it was last year. If someone were selling you bananas using BTC, you would get twice as many bananas today as you got last year, for the same BTC.

Imagine you're a mortgage company giving someone a 30 year loan in BTC now. Maybe you'll make a profit, or maybe you'll lose absolutely everything. Depends whether or not Jake Paul has tweeted about buying BTC recently.

How would your employer feel about the fact that all of their labor costs doubled in the last year, compared to the price they pay for materials?

USD compared to Euro, in the last 5 years, has fluctuated between a low of .82 to a high of 1.02. USD to Yuan has fluctuated between 6.3-7.3. I'd call that pretty stable compared to 2.5x fluctuation in 6 months.

Your landlord example doesn't make sense. If Bitcoin doubled (it actually tripled), then the monthly payment of Bitcoin would be worth more for the landlord, not less. When they convert it back to dollars, they get more. My 1 Bitcoin per month lease agreement would be worth more to them.

For the rest, you're still thinking about it incorrectly. Think of it this way, when you start learning a new language, you first start converting everything to the language with which you're familiar and then you process it in your native language. You form a reply, then translate it to the new language and speak it. This is not a sustainable model, if you eventually want to do this efficiently, you need to stop translating from one language to the other and just start processing things in the other language natively.

The reason I write this is because you need to stop thinking of a world where Bitcoin is worth X amount of dollars. The only way cryptocurrency would work to support an economy is to use it natively............price your bananas at X Bitcoin, pay your employees Y Bitcoin and offer loans at Z Bitcoin.......natively. Not as a function of the value of USD. Can you do this right now? No, it's too volatile. Is Bitcoin something that can mature like USD has? Yes, it can and I'm trying to help it.

My point is, stop thinking of it as a value compared to USD. Think of it as its own value by itself.

 

56 minutes ago, Khromak said:

Also on point 3: I didn't just say insured, I also said regulated. There are tons of cryptocurrencies where the people running the currency said they were "burning" coins and instead kept them for themselves. They manage the "liquidity pools" and control all kinds of rules about how the currencies work. There are hundreds of stories of people doing "rug pulls" and screwing people over. There are tons of instances of crypto exchanges stealing/mishandling customer funds. No government institution in the world is checking their books to make sure they can cover the "returns" they offer people. Nobody is checking these liquidity pools to make sure they can afford to hand out the "more stable" crypto their BS crypto is based on.

It's rife with problems, incestuous relationships, and a lack of regulation. In fact, lack of regulation and control has always been a perk for these things...but I don't think those are good things for a currency. People, and especially companies, need stability in order to use something as a currency, they don't need freedom.

I think crypto is a solution in search of a problem. What are the problems with government-backed currencies that crypto is seeking to solve? I have never had a problem with using the existing financial systems, but maybe I'm missing something?

It introduces a hundred new problems into the mix, but solves none(ish)

Of course there are nefarious coin makers, just like there are nefarious commodity makers. Anyone that sees they can make a quick dollar by making something and selling it, they will try to do so. The solution to this is simply not buying their commodity because it's an inferior product and instead focusing on the higher quality commodities. These trash coins that are pumped and dumped are simply just forks of tokens on the Ethereum network or another layer-1 blockchain and they have little to nothing to offer as a solution. The source code is on Github and Ethereum will host your coin so I could literally make one in just a few minutes and release it. Should you buy it? No, just like you shouldn't buy bread that I throw together in 5 minutes with no idea what I'm doing. But I'm allowed to make and sell the bread (assuming FDA approval, I probably shouldn't have used a food analogy).

The point is, some people write their own layer-1 blockchains that support coins with unique underlying platforms, specifically coded to solve a problem. It takes (sometimes) a team of people to create and intimate knowledge of web3 technologies in order to create. Then you have people that fork other repositories and host their tokens on top of existing blockchains, these are layer-2 and layer-3 technologies, you can ignore those. Stick with the quality product and know what you're buying, it's simple.

Just one solution that cryptocurrency provides is global currency transfer. Do you know how long it takes to send USD to someone in Vietnam? Probably a week and it will cost quite a lot. You can do the exact same thing with Bitcoin instantly for a fraction of the price.

The last point is a funny one, you really think people don't buy and sell foreign currencies? My girlfriend buys USD when the Canadian dollar is strong and sells it when we're low, lots of people do that. I'm sure there are people in this thread that do that all the time, it's incredibly common, people base their careers on foreign currency trading.

[Khromak | 768]

24 minutes ago, Code Monkey said:

our landlord example doesn't make sense. If Bitcoin doubled (it actually tripled), then the monthly payment of Bitcoin would be worth more for the landlord, not less. When they convert it back to dollars, they get more. My 1 Bitcoin per month lease agreement would be worth more to them.

I got my metaphors mixed sometimes, but then I guess the question comes back to you: why would you be excited to pay for your rent in a currency that has gone up by 3x in the last 6 months? You're paying (relative to all other currencies on the planet) 3x the rent you were paying last year. If you think BTC is going to go up, you should never sign any long-term agreement to pay for anything.

24 minutes ago, Code Monkey said:

The only way cryptocurrency would work to support an economy is to use it natively............price your bananas at X Bitcoin, pay your employees Y Bitcoin and offer loans at Z Bitcoin.......natively. Not as a function of the value of USD.

The problem is that it's a commodity that people primarily trade to try to make more money. And due to the nature of the coin themselves, this is all it can ever be. There are a limited number of them, and the price varies based on what someone is willing to pay for them. The price for everything on the whole planet will need to fluctuate in real time based on what everyone is willing to pay for everything else. Also governments would lose the ability to control their economies (prevent recessions, depressions, control inflation or deflation, etc.) because they can't set monetary policy on a currency that nobody has control over.

24 minutes ago, Code Monkey said:

My point is, stop thinking of it as a value compared to USD. Think of it as its own value by itself.

I already talked about this in the previous post. It's not about USD, it's about the price relative to every other valuable item on the planet. Sure, if every country in the entire world suddenly decided tomorrow that they were all going to use exclusively BTC for their economies, you could consider it *solely* on the value of BTC itself, but unless you have a genie or magic powers, that's not going to happen. There will always be other currencies, and we will always be able to exchange them for each other. People today always consider the value of their currency by comparing it to other currencies. Even in a crypto-only world, people will compare the price of BTC to other crypto, so the value will always be fluctuating.

24 minutes ago, Code Monkey said:

Just one solution that cryptocurrency provides is global currency transfer. Do you know how long it takes to send USD to someone in Vietnam? Probably a week and it will cost quite a lot. You can do the exact same thing with Bitcoin instantly for a fraction of the price.

Sure, but that "fraction of the price" is the same price you pay to send your friend $1.50 for the bus fare, or to buy a bottle of water at your corner store and it's currently about...7-10 dollars if I understand correctly? I think the number of people buying toilet paper and twinkies at their grocery store is greater than the number of people sending money from USA to Vietnam.

Also, the transaction fee changes every minute, hour, and day. Here's a hilarious snippet from the top Google result, which shows how absurd this system is:

Bitcoin Average Transaction Fee is at a current level of 7.979, down from 11.65 yesterday and up from 1.981 one year ago. This is a change of -31.50% from yesterday and 302.8% from one year ago.

24 minutes ago, Code Monkey said:

The last point is a funny one, you really think people don't buy and sell foreign currencies?

I'm aware of currency markets, but that's not the primary use of modern currencies, and people who are doing this are making TINY gains, because the fluctuations are absolutely miniscule. More importantly, that's not the primary purpose of those currencies, so it doesn't cause the price to fluctuate because someone got interested in it and bought in.

Edited March 8 by Khromak

[Code Monkey | 2,010]

1 hour ago, Khromak said:

I got my metaphors mixed sometimes, but then I guess the question comes back to you: why would you be excited to pay for your rent in a currency that has gone up by 3x in the last 6 months? You're paying (relative to all other currencies on the planet) 3x the rent you were paying last year. If you think BTC is going to go up, you should never sign any long-term agreement to pay for anything.

I'm aware of currency markets, but that's not the primary use of modern currencies, and people who are doing this are making TINY gains, because the fluctuations are absolutely miniscule. More importantly, that's not the primary purpose of those currencies, so it doesn't cause the price to fluctuate because someone got interested in it and bought in.

I would like to pay in cryptocurrency because I would stock up on it while it's low. I could have bought Bitcoin for $20,000 last year and then paid my employees this year with that Bitcoin. If they wanted $100,000 per year, I could pay them $33,000 worth because I got it for 1/3 what it's worth now. I'd be getting things super cheaply.

Are you thinking the primary purpose of cryptocurrencies are to hold them and make money? That's not the purpose of any of them, they all actually have decentralized software purposes unique to each blockchain. Have you read any of the white papers? They each explain their purposes and the problems each one is solving, some are quite interesting.

[G-type | 2,482]

The President of El Salvador wants to make bitcoin the national currency.

[avatar! | 1,811]

On 3/8/2024 at 9:32 PM, G-type said:

The President of El Salvador wants to make bitcoin the national currency.

Fair point, but El Salvador is extremely poor --

The poverty rate in El Salvador remains one of the highest in Latin America (28.4% according to 2021 official data). More shocking is that 1.8 million Salvadorans are living in extreme poverty, without access to basic food requirements.

Perhaps cryptocurrency will work in El Salvador. But it's certainly not a "first-world" country. Also, I think most of us view cryptocurrency in this light --

https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2023/11/16/cryptocurrencies-have-failed-the-test-of-digital-money-mas-managing-director-says/

But in Menon's opinion, cryptocurrencies have failed the test of digital money because "they have performed poorly as a medium of exchange or store of value, their prices are subject to sharp speculative swings, and many investors in cryptocurrencies have suffered significant losses."