Here at the forums, people have been commenting about the decline and fall of this site. One more indication.
Readers of my bitcoin articles know…
Which parts of the article are irrelevant.
Which are dead wrong.
Why they are wrong.
To sharpen the ole intellect, you can do the following. Search for the article Bitcoin All in One Place on my blog. Read it, and what it links to. Then, as an exercise, find the errors in the pitiful Mises Daily article.
One hint to get you started: He says bitcoin satisfies the regression theorem because it is an “investment good.” One of many blunders.
You just can’t accept that bitcoin is the future Dave. You’re just stuck in your primitive ways of thinking that gold and paper money are the only true types of currency.
I think SD did a darn good job of explaining why Bitcoin will eventually find its way to the same destination of the Ithica Hour. After reading the other thread, there really wasn’t any convincing argument made to prove otherwise.
lmfao! I always agreed. I just don’t say anything because your sword-fu is doing fine and I don’t care whether people learn the hard way if they want to play hard to get.
I was on the bitcoin IRC channel earlier today educating myself about bitcoin and the atmosphere was like a cross between a religious gathering and investors talking about a rising stock to invest in. It had a significant euphoria to it, which is fine, just understand that those not in its grasp will require solid arguments before they accept the claims.
I’ve actually never even looked into the bitcoin debate, I’m not even entirely sure what it is. From the little bit that I know I’m surprised it even attained an initial value. This inherent fluke could cause it to maintain some stable sort of value in the future, but due to what I know of its nature it seems inherently unstable. It might be a case of a currency “latching on” to another currency. This is almost worthless speculation, however.
As I recall I decided that none of the rungs fully supported the actual weight of my beliefs, so I guess I’m at the “top” or “bottom”, whichever the Austrian end of your ladder would be.
“Given that, isn’t it a bit harsh to suggest I’m getting senile?”
Is it if you can’t handle the truth that bitcoin is the most brilliant invention since sliced bread?
kindly consult these posts that I made on my blog. I unmask how Smiling Dave is contradicting himself, and how he’s weaseling out of answering questions. I also thoroughly debunk the analogy to complementary currencies such as the Ithaca Hour, using the very references Smiling Dave himself provided (i.e. even assuming all of his references and assumptions are correct, the conclusion that he draws from them still does not follow).
The main problem I see with BitCoins is that they aren’t scarce. Anyone can design their own BitCoin2, BitCoin3, etc. and issue as many coins as they want.
What if someone creates a SuperBitCoin system which accepts BitCoin but also allows more coins beyond the 21 million allowed by BitCoin; say 210 million coins pre-mined by the designer? Per Gresham’s law, won’t the bad money chase away the good? What if it has backing of Amazon where you can use them to buy books or other goods?
Honestly I don’t see how it would play out exactly, but it’s not my job too. The free market will, sooner or later, find a way to set these non-scarce goods to the equllibrium objective exchange value, viz. nothing.
Bitcoins -are- scarce, and creating an alt-currency copy doesn’t suddenly magically produce more bitcoins, it only affects that alt-currency.
Furthermore, having more than 21m coins isn’t automatically a benefit to anyone, so it doesn’t constitute a reason to prefer that over an established cryptocurrency.
no, gresham’s law applies to free market coinage and other money as well. ask yourself, if the merchant will accept either one for the same item, do you spend the shiny, new silver coin or the one that has been scratched and dinged up?
You look at it from the side of the consumer only but the merchants will only take up the worn coin at a discount
“if the merchant will accept either one for the same item” A merchant like this would go out of business fast everyone will bring the worn coins to him. In fact I would assume a merchant will most likely pay more attention to the quality of coins than most consumers
I believe I specified that they would not insist on a discount. when we look at actual transactions oftentimes volume is more important than precision and so they would not necessarily discount the coin and so Gresham’s law applies. however this means that bitcoin+ would trade at a discount to bitcoin unless it somehow represented an improvement.
quit assuming and look at it from the perspective of the merchant. of course no one suggested that he would accept any and every coin. time is money and at a certain volume of business (when you have a line at the register) then it becomes more important to move product than haggle over a tenth of a pence. any business with margins so thin that they would have to discount any coin that wasnt a perfect 70 is going under soon anyway, unless its a coin shop, so I dont see what your point is. minor imperfections arent readily discernable, look up “dusting” where one would shake a bag of bullion in order to spend the coins and sell the dust as scrap precious metal. every merchant isnt going to weight every coin, youre being ridiculous.