Reply to topic  [ 437 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ... 44  Next
Bitcoin -- the Emperor's new clothes 
Author Message
Site Admin
User avatar

Joined: Tue May 03, 2011 6:06 pm
Posts: 11843
Reply with quote
Post Re: Bitcoin -- the Emperor's new clothes
All money is faith-based to some extent, even gold. Confidence in the money is essential, and that too is tied to having faith in the money.

So with respect to money, what are we focused on when it comes to faith? In a word, stability. We want to be confident in the following:

1. The value of the money will be stable.

2. The supply of the money will be stable.

The US dollar fails dramatically here because the supply of dollars is expanding exponentially. As money, the dollar is doomed to failure because of this fact. Its value is directly related to its quantity, in inverse proportions. The more dollars there are, the less each one is worth, given a fixed population. Of course, the population is also growing, which makes things even more difficult to figure out. However, the population is growing slower than the money supply, so the end result is the same. The dollar will collapse, just like all Ponzi schemes.

Bitcoin addresses the problem of an exponentially expanding money supply by limiting the number of Bitcoins to a maximum of 21 million (supposedly). However, it fails dramatically at the front end, where growth of the supply of Bitcoins is excessive and destabilizing. The value of Bitcoins is also highly unstable, judging from its history so far. And like the dollar, it lacks the transparency needed to inspire confidence and faith.

Unlike dollars and Bitcoins, gold and silver have a relatively stable value that has a long history. The supply of gold and silver is relatively limited, since they can't be created out of thin air. They must be mined, an energy intensive process, and both are rare to begin with. So they have the advantage of being naturally quite limited, and they have a long history of confidence and faith in their value. The mistake was leaving the gold standard in 1971, and removing silver from U.S. coins in 1965, and the confiscation of gold by the U.S. government in 1933, and the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913, which is the root cause of all the subsequent mistakes that followed it. And the root of the Federal Reserve is the organized sociopaths that operate unconstrained in human society. Therein lies the real problem.

_________________
It's not that we can't handle the truth. It's that they can't handle us if we know the truth.


Mon Nov 11, 2013 5:39 am
Profile
Site Admin
User avatar

Joined: Tue May 03, 2011 6:06 pm
Posts: 11843
Reply with quote
Post Re: Bitcoin -- the Emperor's new clothes
The Bitcoin argument continues.

Quote:
But, one thing that most people are not taking into account is the fact that it's not that hard to create additional "cryptocurrencies" (as they're called). There isn't just one out there right now (there are dozens already) and they're all as legitimate as Bitcoin. In other words, even with the supposed huge demand that is coming, there will be huge supply. What that means to the price of BTC I don't know. But, some people are saying BTC will go to $1m because everyone will want it and it's in finite supply. Yes it is, but there are (and will be) many other similar (or identical) choices. -- Anonymous commenter

Yes, Bitcoin is a computer creation, a string of electronic zeroes and ones. Any talented computer programmer can create a competitor cryptocurrency, and some have already done so. But we are still talking about something with no intrinsic value, much like the letters in this post. I arrange them into an order that gives them value. The value is in the message they convey, not in the letters themselves, or in their order. It is the communication that has value. It is the same for money -- it is the exchange of real goods and services that has value. The money itself has no real value. The better the money facilitates the exchange of real goods and services, the greater its perceived value.

_________________
It's not that we can't handle the truth. It's that they can't handle us if we know the truth.


Tue Dec 03, 2013 3:49 am
Profile
Site Admin
User avatar

Joined: Tue May 03, 2011 6:06 pm
Posts: 11843
Reply with quote
Post Re: Bitcoin -- the Emperor's new clothes
I just read the Bitcoin whitepaper.

It is insane.

See if you can really understand it. No? I think that's the idea.

Is Satoshi Nakamoto the new John Nash? Will he also be revealed as a mental case? No, because Satoshi Nakamoto is an alias, and no one knows who he really is! There will be no transparency into this madman's condition!

Quote:
In our (Bitcoin's) case, it is CPU time and electricity that is expended.

Never mind the nebulous Bitcoin convolutions. The CPU usage alone looks like a Ponzi scheme! Will we end up spending all of our Bitcoins on electricity to run the CPUs that permit, verify, record, and encrypt our transactions, feeding right back into explosive growth of CPU usage, and the demand for ever-increasing amounts of electricity to power the CPUs?

At least they thought of the very real problem of saving hard drive space -- we just chop off the oldest part of the transaction chain and discard it. But wait, why are we going to all the trouble to securely save it in the first place, if we're going to discard it? What purpose does it serve anyway when all transactions are supposedly anonymous? Any cheating is untraceable as a result of that anonymity.

Oh, we have the double-spending problem, so that's why we need that long, complicated transaction chain that has to go everywhere that each Bitcoin goes, growing longer all the time, until we can't afford it anymore and we chop it off.

Note that gold and silver coins, the currency mandated by the U.S. Constitution, don't have any of these problems. You can even understand how they work. Somehow, we don't have gold and silver coins as currency today, even though the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. How did that happen? Was a crime committed, and were we all robbed? Isn't that the problem that really needs to be solved?

Yeah, I know what you're saying -- "Don't be insane."

It's insane.

_________________
It's not that we can't handle the truth. It's that they can't handle us if we know the truth.


Tue Dec 03, 2013 5:29 am
Profile

Joined: Wed May 04, 2011 5:40 pm
Posts: 2156
Reply with quote
Post Re: Bitcoin -- the Emperor's new clothes
http://rt.com/shows/keiser-report/episo ... eiser-025/

Image

_________________
Think twice before you speak, especially if you intend to say what you think.

QRK: QifUSqn6ygXK61pEkm2g4iBY9ZcLw4g4su
FCK: FettxKyQVhsSURZt1XQxUTypwxEeBbTgUQ

Please visit http://forum.qrk.cc/ for all things Crypto!


Fri Dec 06, 2013 3:01 am
Profile
Site Admin
User avatar

Joined: Tue May 03, 2011 6:06 pm
Posts: 11843
Reply with quote
Post Re: Bitcoin -- the Emperor's new clothes
I've been thinking about Bitcoins, Quarks, Litecoins, and other emerging crypto-currencies (1 2 3). If I examine them with a clear head, trying hard to ignore the vast reserves of brainwashing I've been raised with, I see scams that are bad for humanity.

Money ruins everything. I find myself saying this more and more often. It is an accurate summary of the human condition, in my opinion.

I've also been listening to a lecture by Peter Joseph, the mind behind the excellent Zeitgeist videos. Both he and Michael Tellinger are converging on a better idea than the one that has distorted humanity for our entire "known" history, meaning for millennia.

The con-game of today's system of money is based on cooperating to compete. This creates inequality, with varying degrees of scarcity for the 99% and abundance for the 1%. That's exactly what we see today.

What we need is a system where we compete to cooperate. That would produce a trend towards maximizing equality and minimizing scarcity, resulting in equal abundance for all.

_______ improves everything. That's what we are looking for. That's what we need. What goes in the blank?

Love? The Golden Rule? Cooperation?

Why have we humans not been able to solve this fundamental problem of our existence? Why can't we solve it now?

One thing is for sure -- we were deceived and manipulated into believing that the blank should contain the word "money". I can see that clearly as I look back over my life at all the brainwashing that I and others around me received.

It's insane, and I'm fed up with the insanity. We need a fundamental change. Can we change, or are we doomed to forever be a genetically engineered slave race, wasting our life energy in the self-destructive pursuit of money?

_________________
It's not that we can't handle the truth. It's that they can't handle us if we know the truth.


Fri Dec 06, 2013 6:20 pm
Profile
Site Admin
User avatar

Joined: Tue May 03, 2011 6:06 pm
Posts: 11843
Reply with quote
Post Re: Bitcoin -- the Emperor's new clothes
andywight wrote:
http://rt.com/shows/keiser-report/episode-526-max-keiser-025/

As pointed out in that Max Keiser report, an important advantage of crypto-currencies is that they facilitate money transfers. They are a superior form of financial communication. They are also a claimed defense against the long-standing policy of invisible theft through inflation, assuming their numbers really do stay fixed. The plan is to limit the number of crypto-coins, but if history is our guide, that will never happen. How many times has the U.S. government debt ceiling been raised, when it was supposed to be capped at a certain value? When the dollar was backed by gold, did the Federal Reserve limit the printing of paper money "not to exceed" the amount of gold on reserve? It should be clear that limits on the supply of crypto-coins will only be temporary. The only reason gold coins were limited throughout history is because gold was hard to find and extract, and counterfeit gold coins were easy to detect. Crypto-coins have neither of those advantages, though they certainly try to claim that they do.

Then Max Keiser loses his mind on the air. "Mining" Bitcoins is discovering precious numbers? Precious numbers?! Get out of here, Max! Do you think we're stupid?

Hmmm.....

OK, maybe Max makes a good point -- we are stupid to fall for another variant of the money scam we all know and love so well.

_________________
It's not that we can't handle the truth. It's that they can't handle us if we know the truth.


Fri Dec 06, 2013 8:09 pm
Profile

Joined: Wed May 04, 2011 5:40 pm
Posts: 2156
Reply with quote
Post Re: Bitcoin -- the Emperor's new clothes
Bitcoin Myths!

It's a giant ponzi scheme

In a Ponzi Scheme, the founders persuade investors that they’ll profit. Bitcoin does not make such a guarantee. There is no central entity, just individuals building an economy.

A ponzi scheme is a zero sum game. In a ponzi scheme, early adopters can only profit at the expense of late adopters, and the late adopters always lose. Bitcoin has an expected win-win outcome. Early and present adopters profit from the rise in value as Bitcoins become better understood and in turn demanded by the public at large. All adopters benefit from the usefulness of a reliable and widely-accepted decentralized peer-to-peer currency.

Read more...

_________________
Think twice before you speak, especially if you intend to say what you think.

QRK: QifUSqn6ygXK61pEkm2g4iBY9ZcLw4g4su
FCK: FettxKyQVhsSURZt1XQxUTypwxEeBbTgUQ

Please visit http://forum.qrk.cc/ for all things Crypto!


Sun Dec 08, 2013 7:17 am
Profile
User avatar

Joined: Wed May 18, 2011 10:33 pm
Posts: 4156
Reply with quote
Post Re: Bitcoin -- the Emperor's new clothes
It's a rebellion within the same system.

But should people not try to break out of the matrix?

_________________
Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.


Sun Dec 08, 2013 12:39 pm
Profile

Joined: Wed May 04, 2011 5:40 pm
Posts: 2156
Reply with quote
Post Re: Bitcoin -- the Emperor's new clothes
magamud wrote:
It's a rebellion within the same system.

Agreed, I'm really starting to "see the light" with cryptocurrency and have made my first purchase of it.

magamud wrote:
But should people not try to break out of the matrix?

And live how, and on what?

_________________
Think twice before you speak, especially if you intend to say what you think.

QRK: QifUSqn6ygXK61pEkm2g4iBY9ZcLw4g4su
FCK: FettxKyQVhsSURZt1XQxUTypwxEeBbTgUQ

Please visit http://forum.qrk.cc/ for all things Crypto!


Mon Dec 09, 2013 1:38 am
Profile

Joined: Thu Apr 19, 2012 2:04 am
Posts: 303
Reply with quote
Post Re: Bitcoin -- the Emperor's new clothes


Mon Dec 09, 2013 1:47 am
Profile
Display posts from previous:  Sort by  
Reply to topic   [ 437 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ... 44  Next

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 6 guests


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot post attachments in this forum

Search for:
Jump to:  
cron
Powered by phpBB © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group.
Designed by STSoftware.