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Last edited by PQJ; 05-10-2021 at 06:03 PM. |
#122
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https://blog.emsisoft.com/en/33977/i...ce-of-bitcoin/ Quote:
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It don't mean a thing, if it ain't got that certain je ne sais quoi. --Peter Schickele Last edited by fiamme red; 05-11-2021 at 07:30 AM. |
#123
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It's not an adventure until something goes wrong. - Yvon C. |
#124
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I once wrote on the locker door of a high school adversary that "'he' is a looser". As a way of hiding that I penned it, I spent the following weeks making fun of the guy that misspelled it.
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#125
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Here are two videos that might help to explain the technology further. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9jOJk30eQs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBC-nXj3Ng4 At the end of the day, understanding what bitcoin could be (or another cryptocurrency could be) requires you to have an abstract understanding of what money is. Imagine back in the day, people didn't have money. They had goods. So some farmer might trade a bushel of wheat to a fisherman in exchange for 20 pounds of cod fish. In that sense, both the fish and the wheat were "money", in the sense that they were a medium of exchange. The problem was, you might need fish, but if the fisherman didn't need your corn, an exchange might be difficult... or atleast not in your favor because your corn would not be valued, while his fish would. The so called price discovery mechanism was very inefficient. Somewhere along the line someone realized that using cows/fish/wheat as the medium of exchange was not ideal, and that if we had some item that we all agreed on, we could transact our business in that. Different cultures found different materials, but many settled on metals like silver and gold, which were difficult to create (and thus scarce) so people believed there was real value in accepting it for payment. That went along well for a while, and then some enterprising folks thought, "hey, what if we put all the gold in a vault, and then issue paper certificates that would allow you to exchange the certificate for a fixed certain amount of gold." That way, people can more conveniently carry around money and transact business, without having to (for instance) break a gold coin in half because the bill wasn't exactly divisible by the amount of gold you had. So, this system had some advantages -- mainly the value of circulating money was tied to the value of physical gold, and so creating more money meant adding gold to the vault. Notice this bill from 1933. At the time, I think the conversation rate was 1 oz of gold for $34 US Dollars. So, you could bring $34 dollars to the US treasury and get an ounce of gold. The term "as good as gold" seems appropriate here. Then, through a series of decisions and policy actions, they decided you wouldn't be able to exchange your certificates for gold, or that the exchange rate would no longer be $34/oz. And, instead, the certificates were not freely exhchangeable. Notice this bill from 1934.. after the US withdrew the gold standard. Notice especially how the wording changed. Before 1934, you had the top read "This certifies that there have been deposited in the treasury of" then "the United States of America" then "10 Dollars". WIth some language backing up its redeemability. After 1934, it is a "Federal Reserve Note", the so called FRN... And then, finally under Nixon, they basically shut the gold window down completely, and the money isn't backed by anything other than our collective acceptance and belief that others will accept it as payment for goods and services. It is created by the federal reserve and there are not obvious limits why they can't create more and more money, not backed up by anything physical. What you have in your wallet are now called So, enter bitcoin. Instead of having a paper certificate representing a certain amount of dollars, imagine there is a big piece of granite, and on that granite everyone carves their transactions. ie. Matt gives Peter 20. Now, this would be terribly inefficient in a physical world, because you wouldn't be able to check it very easily if you were more than 100 or so feet from the big piece of granite. But, in a digital world, it is easy and fast. All the cryptographic "stuff" is just a way to secure and distribute the authenticity of the granite slab so everyone trusts it. The other piece of bitcoin is that its supply (for lack of a better word, just imagine they are certificates) is limited and the system is decentralized. So, you don't have the risk of a powerful agency or country changing the supply of certificates in the system. So, what good is it compared to dollars? Well, if you have faith in the way that the US monetary and fiscal system is going, it probably has very little value. If you, on the other hand, are suspicious of the US (or any other country for that matter) ability to maintain a policy of sound money, then it has some real value as a potential store of wealth. As others have said, its utility as a medium of exchange is unproven but many are working to enhance it. For more information, look at the lightening network. Ray, where ever you are buddy, I hope you're doing well.
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And we have just one world, But we live in different ones |
#126
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#127
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"If you have to explain that something is money, then it's not money." - Nouriel Roubini -
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Jeder geschlossene Raum ist ein Sarg. |
#128
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I once saw graffiti on a billboard in Portland that read: “F*ck Capitolism”. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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Io non posso vivere senza la mia strada e la mia bici -- DP |
#129
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Total output is determined by labor input, capital input and total factor productivity. Labor supply growth is most certainly a physical element (it is the people. so you have birth rates, death rates, immigration and emigration, etc.), and total factor productivity is primarily driven by physical things (infrastructure, machinery, computers, etc.)
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And we have just one world, But we live in different ones |
#130
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There may be a practical limit to rate of growth, but not overall growth, as there is for the size of the pile of all the earth's gold.
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Jeder geschlossene Raum ist ein Sarg. |
#131
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#132
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Because the future is electric cars.
Yes, the other auto makers are moving towards this. There was a time when I thought that an upstart on-line bookseller would fail as they would never be able to compete with Barns and Noble once they got their on-line presence. Not the last time I was wrong. |
#133
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Great question. To be clear, it is not related to what you quoted, which discussed total output of an economy.
Tesla, as an individual company, has a high valuation because people have high expectations for its future growth (and eventual cash flows). I personally have never bought into Tesla's hype, though I openly admit that Musk and the rest of the people there have created an innovative car company from scratch. So, they deserve a lot of credit for that... even if I have strong disagreements with the ethics of how they've deployed self driving tech and am quite suspicious of the quality control they have. As for valuation, a lot to unpack. You can tell yourself stories about how they'll change the business model, how they'll get tech industry (instead of auto industry) margins, how electric is the future and Tesla is going to sell a lot of cars, and if you are confident about those things, then you can justify high valuations. At this point, a lot of people believe those stories. Only time will tell.
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And we have just one world, But we live in different ones |
#134
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In a discussion about monetary systems, total output is too narrow a boundary, because it excludes appreciating assets, such as real estate, traded securities and, indeed, non-traditional currencies.
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Jeder geschlossene Raum ist ein Sarg. |
#135
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Indeed. I think we're in for a wild ride in the next few years. |
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