[Doly]

Pull up a bitcoin chart and pick ANY two points separated by 4 years and check out the difference in price. I'll wait, BTW BTC started in 2008.

If I had a much better understanding of what keeps bitcoin up, I'd be happy to invest. But just saying "it's gone up so far" isn't enough for me. Many kinds of investments were pretty solid... till they weren't any more. Without a good notion of what makes something a good investment, I don't think it's a good idea to invest.

[careinke]

The "going direct reset" is going mainstream now.

The Fed laid out a list of pros and cons associated with adopting a CBDC, but did not come to any formal conclusion on doing so. The move comes as countries like China press forward...

“The introduction of a CBDC would represent a highly significant innovation in American money,” the Fed wrote in the paper.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/fed-unve ... 32748.html

So what are we talking about? The replacement of cash on the street in favor of digital money. In other words any vestige of control you may have had will be gone. The CB which in America is a privately owned corporation, will have total control over your day to day spending. Eventually it will encompass all bank transactions but when it comes in your every purchase will be tracked, for taxation purposes among other reasons.

This is why CBDCs will fail to be adopted. They are basically surveillance and control disguised as money. You can watch the e-wan fail exactly for this reason.

Peace

[evilgenius]

The problem with any new instrument is how inherently fair it is, or isn't. Bitcoin is more volatile than is good for holding long term, and expecting it to retain value. It appears to be well suited for short term transactions, though.

Long term it is money that can be easily manipulated to change in value as a result of central bank policy. If a class of people being vulnerable to that makes money ineffective for them, then it could be used politically, as well as in other ways.

I guess we should ask if holding it has any sort of economic affect upon any other asset pools? What happens elsewhere, if people are buying, or selling, Bitcoin? Because the Fed has to look at those sorts of things, when they make decisions.

[JuanP]

The "going direct reset" is going mainstream now.

The Fed laid out a list of pros and cons associated with adopting a CBDC, but did not come to any formal conclusion on doing so. The move comes as countries like China press forward...

“The introduction of a CBDC would represent a highly significant innovation in American money,” the Fed wrote in the paper.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/fed-unve ... 32748.html

So what are we talking about? The replacement of cash on the street in favor of digital money. In other words any vestige of control you may have had will be gone. The CB which in America is a privately owned corporation, will have total control over your day to day spending. Eventually it will encompass all bank transactions but when it comes in your every purchase will be tracked, for taxation purposes among other reasons.

This is why CBDCs will fail to be adopted. They are basically surveillance and control disguised as money. You can watch the e-wan fail exactly for this reason.

Peace

First, they will introduce CBDCs and let most people transition voluntarily. Then, they will get rid of cash altogether and force the rest to transition to DCs, whether they want to or not. Most economic transactions are already digital. Paper checks will probably continue to exist because they can be controlled by the government. The end goal is for the governments to be able to monitor and control every single economic transaction.

I find the idea terrifying. We are becoming less and less free with every passing day. Today's world is already worse, in many ways, than the world described by Orwell in 1984.

CBDCs are here to stay until the global financial system collapses. We may be forced to live with them until we die.

[evilgenius]

It isn't just that crypto is another form of money. It is a form of money like gold, more a commodity, than actual money, I think. It's just that because crypto is digital, it can be parsed to ever smaller composing units, if you need a safety valve for large numbers.

Real money doesn't need that because the size of the money supply is dependent upon the level of economic activity within the economy. Money is created when people borrow in a fractional reserve banking system. The dynamics work over many competing sorts of theories, even the doubting ones.

Some people tilt at windmills, when they buy Bitcoin. They aren't too far off. Bitcoin is, as far as we are considering it for this conversation, mutually exclusive with current fractional reserve money. People are arbitraging their own personal Don Quixote and don't know it!

It's like wanting a gold standard. But gold standards are not for democracies. They are for empires, kingdoms or perverse governments. You need something like fiat money, that responds to the activity of the people, in a democracy.

Democracies cannot be based upon what is essentially gambling either. That wouldn't do. It would introduce such inherent instability to the whole concept of democracy that it would be too hard to pass information from one generation to another regarding how to govern. It would be a total disaster.

Yeah, it's probably perfect for some, the Ayn Rand types. They've never cared, if, to get what they want, a great boulder had to be set loose within the economy, destroying, crushing, who knows how many?

Hell, to them, that is just a thinning of the competition. And they do try to beat everybody economically like Alabama does opponents in football games, 65-0, or something like that. And people think income inequality is bad now?

Do you see how it would work? A crypto based economy could not contract, without confiscation. It's doomed to get too political, too fast. Because it's digital, you can't hide it from them. There probably is no 'democratic' algorithm enough people can accept. There would be classes, and trouble between them, built in.

You would always have a shifting power base. No one would be incentivized to do good to others. Everything would be short term, and personal. The economy would be constructed of rampant selfishness, much worse than the worst apocalyptic dreams of the debt super cycle people, really.

[Doly]

Bitcoin is, as far as we are considering it for this conversation, mutually exclusive with current fractional reserve money.

Why? I don't follow you.

[theluckycountry]

This is why CBDCs will fail to be adopted. They are basically surveillance and control disguised as money. You can watch the e-wan fail exactly for this reason.

Peace

CBDC's are being instituted by the global bankers who control everything. The Fed for example prints and distributes all your paper currency, if they choose to discontinue that and insist on digital money there is no one to stop them. The government is in their pocket, so are all the banks and all the corporations, it's a done deal. It's like when they got rid of silver from the coinage, they just did it, no one voted on it.

[theluckycountry]

Dogecoin is down to a new low, 14-cents. It was 12c yesterday, hardly anyone who bought this crypto "money" would dream of spending it at these values. That's why crypto, as a currency, is a joke! Everyone is desperately hodling on. Bitcoin similarly is down heaps. It's down nearly 50% on what it was 3 months ago. Who's going to start emptying their wallet of bitcoin to buy a car at these valuations? No one is, and that's why all these cryptos fail as a form of currency, they have no stability over the short or medium term. Any argument that they are a currency is totally delusional. They are bet, a gamble at the modern casino.

[theluckycountry]

CBDCs are here to stay until the global financial system collapses. We may be forced to live with them until we die.

I agree. They are the endgame, but you can still buy gold and silver, and still exchange it later for whatever inflated tokens the government mandates. As long as women demand jewelry and Asian peoples horde it, gold will be in demand.

[careinke]

Dogecoin is down to a new low, 14-cents. It was 12c yesterday, hardly anyone who bought this crypto "money" would dream of spending it at these values. That's why crypto, as a currency, is a joke! Everyone is desperately hodling on. Bitcoin similarly is down heaps. It's down nearly 50% on what it was 3 months ago. Who's going to start emptying their wallet of bitcoin to buy a car at these valuations? No one is, and that's why all these cryptos fail as a form of currency, they have no stability over the short or medium term. Any argument that they are a currency is totally delusional. They are bet, a gamble at the modern casino.

Have you checked the stock market lately?

Peace

[theluckycountry]

Have you checked the stock market lately?

Peace

No, I don't gamble at any casino. I put my money into gold and silver, always have since 2004. If that fails it will be the first time in 5000 years.




This kid thinks he knows what he's talking about. In 5 or 10 years he'll look back on this week and laugh at how naive he was.



Read what he says, it's all drivel.
"Bitcoin's long term objective"? No, HIS long term hope, bitcoin doesn't have an objective, it's a digital token that was a pizza sales gimmick until some people started hoarding it and ramping it.
"to replace something like gold"? Again, a wishful hope, "Something" "Anything, Pleeese"

These kids have no clue and they are the ones touting this stuff. Every generation has it's bright young kids proclaiming a new age of endless profits, anyone who lived through the dotcom bubble knows that but today's kids have no clue about that and aren't interested. They are scope-locked on crypto and see nothing else. Did you know you can buy crypto on CC. What a recipe for disaster.

[Newfie]

And yet even gold and silver have their problems. They have been confiscated in the past and its hard to wack off the right amount to buy a Big Mac. If you just hoard it and you need some money then you need to find a way to trade it for cash, which exposes you as having a hoard.

Crypto coins exist at the pleasure of the governing bodies. They can be wiped out at the stroke of a pen. They are fundamentally vaporware which exists only in our imagination, which unfortunately increasingly describes most “real” currencies.

I don’t see any really fool proof answer. Traditional paper currency has a great deal to recommend it simply because it can be carried in reasonable denominations, does not require an internet connection and is familiar.

I think it is interesting to ask “What problem does crypto resolve?” I can see an argument that crypto is “more real” than fiat money because some work goes into their creation and their is a limit to their availability. On the other hand is there any meaningful limit to the number of algorithms behind crypto? If not then this argument is erased.

Other than that it seems crypto is simply another tulip bubble.

[AdamB]

Have you checked the stock market lately?

Peace

No, I don't gamble at any casino. I put my money into gold and silver, always have since 2004. If that fails it will be the first time in 5000 years.

Good thing there is no worry about currency failing then I guess. Aside from the usual irrational old fart doomer porn advocates hoping and praying anyway, how is your supply of MREs, ammo and guns? I presume you'll use your cushy retirement position and fast motorcycle to roam your property ala mad Max, fending off the starving hordes fleeing the cities?

So...2005 there Lucky.

[AdamB]

I think it is interesting to ask “What problem does crypto resolve?” I can see an argument that crypto is “more real” than fiat money because some work goes into their creation and their is a limit to their availability. On the other hand is there any meaningful limit to the number of algorithms behind crypto? If not then this argument is erased.

Other than that it seems crypto is simply another tulip bubble.

The cool thing about crypto is that anyone can make it up, and proclaim it worth something. "You get one coin of my new crypto currency for every Beanie Baby you own....send pix as proof and I'll ship you your certificate for the newest surefire hit in crypto!"

As far as I can tell, crypto is great, it's value determined, and moving as much as, any day traders individual stock. The only thing that makes it useful to the non-criminal elements is you can convert back into the thing everybody can and does use, and operates by rules that aren't set by the folks who created this particular pump and dump type "currency".

[JuanP]

Why would there be a default when we can continue to create new money indefinitely?

Many said the same about the great depression, they blamed it on a 'mistake' by the Federal Reserve. What everyone assumes is that these top bankers and their agents in government are thinking about us, our needs. But since when have the Uber rich ever cared about anything but their own wealth and power?

When the economy gets to a state where the average person simply can't borrow any longer, that is the trigger point for a collapse, a recession /depression. At that point the banks write of the loans they created and go out and claim the assets that have been defaulted on. The farms, the factories, the houses. Every civilization has dabbled in currency devaluation and endless debt expansion, the end result is always the same.

If they were alive my grandparents would laugh at what is happening today, they saw it all happen before.

I definitely don't assume that!

[JuanP]

Why would there be a default when we can continue to create new money indefinitely?

Many said the same about the great depression, they blamed it on a 'mistake' by the Federal Reserve. What everyone assumes is that these top bankers and their agents in government are thinking about us, our needs. But since when have the Uber rich ever cared about anything but their own wealth and power?

When the economy gets to a state where the average person simply can't borrow any longer, that is the trigger point for a collapse, a recession /depression. At that point the banks write of the loans they created and go out and claim the assets that have been defaulted on. The farms, the factories, the houses. Every civilization has dabbled in currency devaluation and endless debt expansion, the end result is always the same.

If they were alive my grandparents would laugh at what is happening today, they saw it all happen before.

I am not ruling out a collapse. I consider it the inevitable end.

[JuanP]

CBDCs are here to stay until the global financial system collapses. We may be forced to live with them until we die.

I agree. They are the endgame, but you can still buy gold and silver, and still exchange it later for whatever inflated tokens the government mandates. As long as women demand jewelry and Asian peoples horde it, gold will be in demand.

And that is why I have most of my long term savings in physical gold and silver, and don't have a penny in cryptos. I don't expect to ever sell this silver and gold, though. We will leave it to our nephews and nieces. But I do congratulate Careinke for his investment in cryptos. I hope he sells them on time and makes a killing. I just don't play those games because I am very old fashioned, but he's had a great ROI so far.

[theluckycountry]

And that is why I have most of my long term savings in physical gold and silver, and don't have a penny in cryptos. I don't expect to ever sell this silver and gold, though. We will leave it to our nephews and nieces.

Yes I doubt I'll convert much of mine, I have everything I want and scads of money in the bank, no liabilities. It's there as an insurance policy basically. careinke mentioned the stock market, it's down too, but not 50% in 3 months. Personally I don't care if crypto goes up or down, I just don't have the mental space for such an anxious asset. I mean could you imagine having a hundred grand or more in something that went down so far so fast? The stress levels in the crypto community must be at max levels right now. Give me the peaceful quiet assets, there is enough stress in daily life now as it is without stressing over you future economic security.

[JuanP]

And that is why I have most of my long term savings in physical gold and silver, and don't have a penny in cryptos. I don't expect to ever sell this silver and gold, though. We will leave it to our nephews and nieces.

Yes I doubt I'll convert much of mine, I have everything I want and scads of money in the bank, no liabilities. It's there as an insurance policy basically. careinke mentioned the stock market, it's down too, but not 50% in 3 months. Personally I don't care if crypto goes up or down, I just don't have the mental space for such an anxious asset. I mean could you imagine having a hundred grand or more in something that went down so far so fast? The stress levels in the crypto community must be at max levels right now. Give me the peaceful quiet assets, there is enough stress in daily life now as it is without stressing over you future economic security.

Yes, it should be nobody's main investment at today's prices. I couldn't take all the ups and downs. It's perfectly okay to invest money that you can afford to lose, though, if you enjoy that kind of thing. It's like gambling, essentially.

[evilgenius]

Bitcoin is, as far as we are considering it for this conversation, mutually exclusive with current fractional reserve money.

Why? I don't follow you.

Don't worry, it's a given. I said that for the purposes of the argument, to eliminate all of those competing distractions. You can see they are different, though, I hope?