Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[cliff]

This is pretty awesome, IMHO. Seems like a good way to liberate some repressed people or get to the unbanked with BTC:

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/07/facebook-tests-full-scale-solar-powered-internet-drone/


Warning of possible bias - I own a handful of FB shares.

EDIT - @cypherdoc - I believe we covered this line of thought a few weeks back, thought you might enjoy:

http://bravenewcoin.com/news/banks-abandon-the-caribbean-local-bitcoin-exchange-experiences-33-increase-in-users-every-month-since-february/

 

[lunar]

@solex

Brian seems to have hit a hurdle. Cock blocked by Core

 

[solex]

Gmax squeezing it to the max.
For new users the bottom chart drives their first impressions:

http://organofcorti.blogspot.co.uk

 

[cliff]

@solex - know whether anyone has every tried to study the stability of a fee to BTC price ratio? that'd be kinda interesting if so. An eye-test suggests some correlation.

Question for whomever - if there was strong correlation so that fees relative to price are fairly stable (imagine fees are always about .005% of every tx, for example), does that change any of the objections to the possibility of upward fee movement? I'm just now really beginning to consider this issue and am interested in all POVs

 

[Norway]

@solex

Brian seems to have hit a hurdle. Cock blocked by Core

I suggested to Brian that he could try to talk to the ASIC manufacturers under that post. They probably have much power.

 

[theZerg]

Does not change my objections -- I want btc to cover as small payments as technically feasible.

However growth in btc transferred might indicate that btc is transitioning to a settlement currency rather than being abandoned.

 

[cypherdoc]

EDIT - @cypherdoc - I believe we covered this line of thought a few weeks back, thought you might enjoy:

http://bravenewcoin.com/news/banks-...increase-in-users-every-month-since-february/

yeah, that's quite significant confirmation of those other article i posted. if only Bitcoin could take up the slack. that's the real path forward; disruption starting outside the rich developed world.

 

[cliff]

@cypherdoc - that we posted. https://bitco.in/forum/threads/gold-collapsing-bitcoin-up.16/page-704#post-24729

http://www.ohio.com/polopoly_fs/1.658703.1454299804!/image/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_500/cavs01-02.jpg

 

[Inca]

Gmax squeezing it to the max.
For new users the bottom chart drives their first impressions:

http://organofcorti.blogspot.co.uk

Post that to reddit.

@theZerg: settlement to what ?

 

[solex]

@theZerg
Personally, I can't see the settlement currency concept as viable anytime soon. The reason is that BTC is still in its Early Adopter phase (edit Innovators?). During the Late Majority phase - yes maybe. Gold became a settlement currency only after long universal use as an every-day currency (with silver and copper as small-change to facilitate transactions).

The reason the settlement currency concept looks vaguely promising right now is that many BTC investors are feeling well-off from riding the multi-year capital appreciation, so they have high-tolerance for fees, also some of the major use-cases like dark markets, gambling, international transfers etc are high-fee tolerant. These are limited markets compared to fiat cash payments plus giving the un-banked in the developing world DIY be-your-own-bank capability. Even in the developed world ordinary users will be turned off in droves from spending 15 cents and rising for purchases and payments.

@cliff
IMHO. A healthy fee market should see a relatively level trend in fees, in OECD fiat terms.

 

[Norway]

Doing some research and educating myself before a TV debate on the national channel against the norwegian banking industry about bitcoin.

I found this wikipedia article very enlightening. I have heard many parts of it before, but this article really ties the last seventy years of global money history together nicely. (And it's not very long.)

Favourite quote:
"It costs only a few cents for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to produce a $100 bill, but other countries had to pony up $100 of actual goods in order to obtain one".

Economist Barry Eichengreen
​

Nixon shock: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock

Spoiler: The Federal Reserve fucked all the countries in the ass after WW2 with the Bretton Woods agreement by printing more USD than they could back with gold.

 

[cliff]

@Norway - You're debating?

Also, your quote reminded me of this from a few years back (imagine the savings w/ no printing at all):

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/04/can-a-teens-idea-to-switch-fonts-save-the-government-400-million/359920/

https://gsablogs.gsa.gov/gsablog/2014/03/31/whats-in-a-font-millions-in-savings-according-to-gsas-printwise-program/

Not sure how accurate the calcs are - but the concept seems pretty straightforward.

 

[remile]

"Settlement currency" is an illusion which governments can create only via exerting compulsion on their subjects.

There will never be a free market "settlement currency".

What will happen is that Bitcoin will just be abandoned for a less self-destructive currency.

 

[Norway]

@cliff
Yes, I'm debating (as the organizer of Oslo Bitcoin Meetup). I have had a fight with the banking industry PR guy in the largest norwegian newspaper this week. And it's summer. So the NRK (national broadcaster) contacted me for a debate. The PM of Norway was on the show today, and maybe tomorrow, I'm on that same debate show, lol! (The date is not set in stone yet.)

My goal for the debate is not to knock the banks down, or "win". My goal is to turn the banks into on-ramps by cooperating more with bitcoin (not blockchain).

But I want to have my knives sharp and ready. They drew first blood. (By calling bitcoin a currency for criminals).

 

[Norway]

My narrative is this:
- Bitcoin is not a threat to the current monetary system.
- The threat comes from the system itself.
- Bitcoin will continue to exist side by side with our national currency for many years, like it has the last seven years.
- And the smartest banks are investing in and cooperating with bitcoin today. (Goldman Sachs investing in Circle and all the banks giving the bitcoin exchanges business accounts.)


My card up the sleave is this report by the UK Treasury from october:

[doublepost=1469136843][/doublepost]Please provide input

 

[theZerg]

Yes I find the settlement argument pretty unconvincing as well. When I think about it, a settlement currency fundamentally needs a broad base of local users so that can be used as payment if settlement utilization stops.

A settlement currency whose only value is to settle with others is like Wile E Coyote right after running off the cliff -- he's still running in midair looking down for the drop.

Another way to think of it is that Bitcoin's "intrinsic value" is that it is a cheap, worldwide, nearly instant, unstoppable payment. If that is gone then it has no intrinsic value and so Mises regression theorem would suggest imminent failure as a currency.

 

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

- And the smartest banks are investing in and cooperating with bitcoin today. (Goldman Sachs investing in Circle and all the banks giving the bitcoin exchanges business accounts.)

That's a good spin imho.
The longer they don't understand, what might really happen, the better. Anf if they think Bitcoin is a new nice thing they might profit from, that's good.
If the fight is over before they know what's going on, perfect

 

[Norway]

@satoshis_sockpuppet
Thank you. Let's make them our tools!

 

[cypherdoc]

i'm eating it with both DXD and DZZ right now. but this divergence has got me holding:

 

[albin]

I think we will be shocked to learn how fast the cryptocurrency ecosystem can pivot to a new major coin. e.g. Coinbase is now supporting ETH.

To matters worse, the Ethereum organization has more than enough money from the crowdsale to devote support resources for free to get big ecosystem players on the Ethereum infrastructure. I'm not necessarily aware of any evidence of this specifically happening, but it would be a pretty insane assumption that it isn't.

We can't afford to squander our network effect, because all the criticisms I'm sympathetic to about smart contracting are pretty irrelevant here, with sufficient energy spent on PoW (and assuming the PoS fork isn't snake oil), ether as just straight money works fine for the transactional use-cases. (Arguably worse store of value characteristics, but I personally believe you have to bootstrap store of value and unit of account properties from medium of exchange).

I we keep tanking the utility of the network to deadweight loss, this whole situation is just ours to lose.