Twitter CEO Says Bitcoin Will Be the World's 'Single Currency' In 10 Years (theverge.com) 256
In a recent interview with The Times, Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey said he believes that bitcoin will become the world's single currency within 10 years. "The world ultimately will have a single currency, the internet will have a single currency," said Dorsey. "I personally believe that it will be bitcoin." Dorsey went on to say that the transition would happen "probably over ten years, but it could go faster." The Verge reports: That Dorsey is a fan of bitcoin isn't too surprising, though. In addition to serving as the CEO of Twitter, Dorsey is also the CEO of Square, which recently added the option to buy and sell Bitcoin directly from the Square Cash app. The company also released an illustrated children's story touting the benefits of the digital currency. As for Dorsey himself, he's gone on the record in an interview with The Verge's own Lauren Goode about the benefits of bitcoin as a currency, describing it as the "next big unlock" for the world of finance. (Dorsey owns an unspecified amount of the cryptocurrency.)
From the wheres-my-business-model-apartment (Score:5, Funny)
Well, at least it will be sooner than twitter's working business model.
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Not that bad if you bought it when it was worth pennies but buying it over ten thousands dollars, serious ouch and make no mistake apart from thrashing about for a while bitcoin is dead and unbacked crypto getting banned as a ponzi currency. Every government seems to be closing in on it. It's like a big net, catching people, only the criminals and spies left using it, as far as some governments are concerned.
Re:From the wheres-my-business-model-apartment (Score:5, Funny)
Well, at least it will be sooner than twitter's working business model.
And it could be a self-defeating prophecy. All that electricity going toward mining, none left for tweeting. At least we'll all be warm.
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Re:From the wheres-my-business-model-apartment (Score:5, Interesting)
CEO of bullshit company peddling bullshit Ponzi schemes/pyramid schemes because "HE BEEELIEVEEEZ!!! PRAIZE THE JEBUZ!!! AND THE BUTCOIN!!!"
Does that qualify as a business model? Lots of churches are doing the same...
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BTW, is there a criplecurrency called Butcoin? And I don't mean that fake one. [buttcoinfoundation.org]
My analsis (60 seconds of googling) can't seem to assertain if there is one.
If not... I smell a big future for such a currency.
Everyone in the world is already half way there to assepting it, but they are kinda sitting on the fence about it.
And there's even a ready-made Latin motto for it - "Non Olet".
Re:From the wheres-my-business-model-apartment (Score:5, Insightful)
You've got the wrong end of the stick if you're asking "How will this benefit Twitter?" The question should be "How will the benefit Jack Dorsey?"
The answer is right there in the summary: he's also the CEO of a credit card processing company that's just gotten into BitCoin. So the title of this article should be "Square CEO says bitcoin will be the world's only currency in ten years," and the summary should note that people believing this would be very good for Square.
I wouldn't be surprised if Dorsey picked up a bunch of Bitcoin before making the pronouncement. However if I were a Twitter stockholder I wouldn't be too happy about his using his Twitter notoriety this way.
All that glitters is not bitcoin (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess no one informed him that bitcoin has a limited number of transactions. Good luck with that.
Obvious pump is obvious
Re:All that glitters is not bitcoin (Score:4, Interesting)
He's the CEO of Square. Decentralized transactions destroy his business model. However, Bitcoin still requires third-parties like Square. TL;DR, from his POV, the limited number of transactions is a feature, not a bug.
OK (Score:2, Interesting)
So, in 10 years everyone on this planet will have internet access and able to handle bit coins...
What idiot!
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Re:OK (Score:5, Insightful)
The only way that will happen is if there is massive inflation and no one trusts fiat currency anymore. Somehow we made it through the 70s and 80s without that happening, so it seems unlikely.
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the transaction times are too slow, and the volume is too limited for that.
But Lightning network fixes that by providing Bitcoin the capability to support extremely high volumes of almost instant and nearly-feeless transactions.
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The same thing could be done with Lightning network without any bitcoin anywhere. No matter how hard you and CEO boy try to shill, bitcoin is not only nearly useless, but also wastes significant electricity.
Enjoy the crash.
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It's going to crash big time, it must, an AC on /. said so.
If you think that since it's worthless/useless and wastes electricity that I'll crash, then you put too much faith in rational behaviour of humans.
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If you think that since it's worthless/useless and wastes electricity that I'll crash, then you put too much faith in rational behaviour of humans.
Bitcoin did languish at roughly 1/4th of its previous (at that time) high for most of 2015. Bitcoin will probably never crash completely down to $0, but the pool of "suckers" will eventually run dry.
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Re:OK (Score:5, Insightful)
But Lightning network fixes that by providing Bitcoin the capability to support extremely high volumes of almost instant and nearly-feeless transactions.
There may be someone who figures out how to make Bitcoin derivatives that enable high volume, low-fee transactions, but it won't be Lighting Networks. They will be in the trashbin of VC funding before the end of next year. Their focus on marketing, combined with their lack of focus on actually getting the thing to work has doomed them: if they ever gain any popularity at all, they will be hacked and lose it all, like many other bitcoin startups before them. Lightning Networks is making all the same security mistakes.
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Speaking as someone who is highly skeptical about Lightning's hype, I have to ask - did it ever occur to you that it might be a good idea to find out what the Lightning Network is before opening your yap?
Re: OK (Score:3)
Re:OK (Score:4, Insightful)
There may be someone who figures out how to make Bitcoin derivatives that enable high volume, low-fee transactions...
And they still wouldn't have fixed the biggest flaw in cryptocurrency: instability. Since around noon today, BTC has gone from a high of $9,174, a low of $8,745, and was at $9,000 when I started writing this, but has since dropped about $8.
The whole concept of a transaction is an exchange of goods or services for an agreed upon sum of currency. Cryptocurrency completely fails at this. Hell, even used iPhones would be a more stable form of currency.
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It is surely reasonable to think that if Bitcoin were used as the main (or only) currency, its value would be stable (as things are priced in Bitcoin).
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It is surely reasonable to think that if Bitcoin were used as the main (or only) currency, its value would be stable (as things are priced in Bitcoin).
And there's your problem. Nations (especially the US) are NOT going to give up their own currencies, because the loss of control over their economies. Yes, the Euro is different, and there are conditions to be able to issue it - "budget deficit of less than 3% of their GDP, a debt ratio of less than 60% of GDP (both of which were ultimately widely flouted after introduction), low inflation, and interest rates close to the EU average"
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Yeah maybe, considering there's also more used iPhones than mined bitcoins.
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3% volatility today is not a big long-term concern; that can be managed with increased use rather than speculation. The 20% dips are what is a concern, as higher use is unlikely to mitigate those forces, and it will scare people off.
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And they still wouldn't have fixed the biggest flaw in cryptocurrency: instability.
Actually they might fix that. Instability is the result of low trading volume to tangible things of external value. Fundamentally one of the causes of bitcoin's low trading volume is the high cost and long transaction delay that make it unsuitable to use for trading. Fix that and one of the hurdles disappears which may lead to higher trading volumes which inherently creates stability.
Mind you some of the other causes are things like chicken and egg scenarios which real currencies around the world overcame b
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Hell, even used iPhones would be a more stable form of currency
According to this dated report I just pulled up, from 2011. Each Iphone contains 0.034 grams of gold, 16 grams of copper, 0.35 grams of silver, and 0.00034 grams of platinum.
http://money.cnn.com/2011/10/13/technology/iphone_trade_in/index.htm/ [cnn.com]
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there's no fucking need for it to be used day to day like that.
maybe you could. but you would still just use your credit card or whatever.
also, one thing you shlops forgot is that DORSEY IS A BIT STUPID. when is twitter gonna make money now again? in 10 years too?
(*being a bit stupid is not something that would make it impossible to gather a lot of money from outside sources and burn it on running a service at 10x the cost it should take to run and paying yourself huge salaries while at it twitter is a fine
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the transaction times are too slow, and the volume is too limited for that.
But Lightning network fixes that by providing Bitcoin the capability to support extremely high volumes of almost instant and nearly-feeless transactions.
No it doesn't. The lightning network is an offchain network. basically it is a bandaid on a gaping wound where they are trading security for speed. It partially addresses one problem while introducing a shit load more and defeating the entire purpose of decentralised currency in the first place.
My bullshitarium won't inflate (Score:2, Informative)
Advantages of crypto currency over money: anonyous transaction? Nope, its a ledger. Cannot be infinitely inflated? Nope, there can/are an infinite number of these currencies with different keys and techniques. Cheaper to transact? Nope, they're damn expensive to transact and there's nothing inherently expensive about transacting money.
It has no real utility and therefore no real value. The value is there because people believe it has value.
I could set up a server right now and sell you numbers if you like.
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Insults aside, you didn't counter a single thing I said.
1) There is an infinite supply of crypto currency. You didn't dispute this.
2) It has no utility and hence no value. You didn't dispute this either.
3) Blockchain is garbage in garbage out. Again no dispute.
4) I could sell you numbers from my limited pool of numbers with the same pump used for 'crypto' and it would have equal value of zero. Again no dispute.
5) The claimed 'anonymous' nature of Bitcoin transactions is clearly bogus, since all transactions
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Nonsense argument in the context of inflation. That's like saying that if I sit at home creating new fiat currencies that will inflate existing fiat currencies. Huh? There is an similarly infinite supply of fiat currencies.
Yes you can creat new fiat currencies however typically there are only 1 per country.. However you can create as many alt coins as you want and as with any new software they are built to be better than the last. So what stops users changing from one alt coin to the next? You dont have this option when you are using the local currency. If your in Australia you can only use the australian dollar and that dollar is backed by the government so unless the government goes broke your fiat is perfectly fine.
Many cryptos have utility. Ever heard of smart contracts?
Yes s
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in other words, he wants to cash-out his own bitcoin holdings but is pissed the market is down significantly from its all time high; so he's using his position as square c.e.o. to try to boost it... sounds like the sec should take a really close look at him.
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in other words, he wants to cash-out his own bitcoin holdings but is pissed the market is down significantly from its all time high
He's probably not alone; I'm sure a lot of people who "invested" in BTC want out before all those Mt. Gox coins get dumped on the market. When it comes to cryptocurrency, beware of the pump - it's almost always a sign of an impending dump.
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So, in 10 years everyone on this planet will have internet access
We're actually nearly there already thanks to cheap smartphones [amazonaws.com]
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So, in 10 years everyone on this planet will have internet access . . .
Except in Hamilton, NY and Gettysburg, SD. I can't for the life of me get a good enough signal in either of those places.
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So, in 10 years everyone on this planet will have internet access....
That's more likely than Bitcoin becoming the one currency to rule them all. Starlink has tremendous potential to end most (if not all) ground based Internet, but only if reality and theory mesh this time.
Should investigate early onset dementia (Score:5, Informative)
Because he seems to be suffering from it. Alternatively, he bought a lot and now is trying to pump the exchange rate.
Re:Should investigate early onset dementia (Score:5, Insightful)
Not at all. It all makes far more sense when you look at the money:
Man who somehow made a whole lot of money by starting a company that has been unable to make any money is suggesting that something that isn't money will become worldwide money.
When you frame it like that you realise that he doesn't have dementia, he just has no idea where money comes from or how it works.
Just a hunch, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Am I the only one who's starting to get the impression that the people who are running these immense dot-com behemoths might not be as bright as we've been led to believe?
Could it really be that the so-called leaders of the tech sectors are really just a bunch of shallow jackasses with zero self-awareness?
Re:Just a hunch, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Asking @jack about global finance is like asking Michael Jordan about string theory.
Just because he's "successful" in one endeavour doesn't mean he's any better informed in something completely unrelated.
They're both really good at promotion though.
Re:Just a hunch, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nonsense. Next, you'll say that choosing a crooked New York real estate developer as a political leader might not be the best idea.
Re: Just a hunch, but... (Score:5, Funny)
DO NOT CONGRATULATE
Re: Just a hunch, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
Yet Trump can't actually say anything negative about Putin. If which there are many opportunities.
It's almost like they have dirt on him.
Ot almost like Trump has some understanding of international diplomacy that you, being a mouth-breathing idiot, lack?
First rule of diplomacy: do not congratulate the leader of a government (for winning a very questionable election where many opposition leaders were arrested or barred from running) who just tried to murder a former spy on the home soil of one of your biggest allies. It emasculates and humiliates your ally and emboldens the offending state.
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"Electing a serial sexual assaulter has helped women come forward"
Brilliant.
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True you need the Harlem Globetrotters for String Theory (per Futurama: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Keeps_On_Slippin%27)
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Or maybe they're just bitcoin investors?
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Am I the only one who's starting to get the impression that [these other people] might not be as bright as we've been led to believe?
Could it really be that [these other people] are really just a bunch of shallow jackasses with zero self-awareness?
Projection is a treatable mental disorder, Jimbo -- it's not too late to get help.
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Could it be that they are attention whores and don't care if they're right or wrong as long as it's publicity?
Re: Just a hunch, but... (Score:2)
The immediate problem with this prediction arises when you remember that COBOL is still number one language in banking world.
In other words, banking is very conservative in terms of operation technology.
I wish it was THAT conservative in terms of what they do with the money.
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Am I the only one who's starting to get the impression that the people who are running these immense dot-com behemoths might not be as bright as we've been led to believe?
Could it really be that the so-called leaders of the tech sectors are really just a bunch of shallow jackasses with zero self-awareness?
They are generally humourless money-and-power-obsessed sociopaths, but I'm not sure they're stupid.
Being bright has nothing to do with being a decent human being.
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Am I the only one who's starting to get the impression that the people who are running these immense dot-com behemoths might not be as bright as we've been led to believe?
You're talking about someone who made lots of money by creating a company that still can't figure out how to make money. Personally I think he's a genius.
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Also love the way they always seem to post as anon, so much for their conviction.
Obligatory: Predictions are like assholes (Score:2)
...everyone has one and most stink.
Oh come on (Score:5, Informative)
This is the same guy whose company is banning cryptocurrency ads.
I guess that means he's holding bitcoin and is worried about it.
Even the bitcoin fans will tell you why that won't work. Crazy overhead to validate transactions, limited number of transactions, overall currency limit.
And the big reason, which is that it's not money. It's just a fantasy. OK, I think dollars are a fantasy too, but cryptocurrency takes all of the problems of fiat currency and amplifies them.
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Re: Oh come on (Score:3)
What if you replace bitcoin in the quotebite with "blockchain based currency"?
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What if you replace bitcoin in the quotebite with "blockchain based currency"?
You don't get the hoped-for spike in value of the bitcoins you have just bought.
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That's just putting lipstick on a pig.
I haven't been contacted by any of my financial institutions about their adoption of new blockchain based technologies to manage any of my accounts or transactions despite all its inherent advantages as a ledger alone -- I'm not even talking about the currency component.
It's a lot of hype and not a lot of anything else yet. It's just a way to hype stocks or products, not anything providing real utility yet.
This would be a terrible outcome. (Score:4, Insightful)
Bitcoin is an inherently deflationary currency thats been in almost permanent recession since it first got hype. The thing is , what makes a currency good to invest in is somewhat the opposite of what makes a currency good for an economy. When an economy is working, the dollar will buy less and less over time, commensurate with the increase in money flowing in the economy. But bitcoin is hard wired to a very slow increase in money supply and has no financial instruments capable of stimulating that supply of money. This is counter intuitive to a lot of people, but if you look at how real money actually works, you can see its true. In the good times, theres lots of inflation,. both in the price of things, but also in peoples wages. When that trend reverses, we have a depression on our hands(assuming that trend lasts a few quarters, I believe).
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but if you look at how real money actually works, you can see its true. In the good times, theres lots of inflation,. both in the price of things, but also in peoples wages. When that trend reverses, we have a depression on our hands(assuming that trend lasts a few quarters, I believe).
This is not true, look at the data.
In the first place, recessions happen even during periods of inflation. In fact, almost every recession has had quite a bit of inflation. So inflation can happen during good times and bad.
Point 2: periods of deflation can also occur during economic growth. Examine the 1870s in the US for a period where this happened. Deflation can also happen during recessions.
--
Summary: the main thing a currency needs is stability. You can deal with high inflation, or deflation,
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Of course, that works only if the bank will give you a loan. That's the worst thing about inflation--the rich and savvy can cope with it, but the poor stooge scraping by is left stuck with cash that becomes worthless.
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Actually, it's true. Slight inflation encourages people to invest their money or spend it now rather than sitting on it while it accumulates value.
Both of these boost the economy.
The problem is that many people confuse inflation with hyperinflation.
Re:This would be a terrible outcome. (Score:4, Insightful)
Nothing quite like a bitcoin story to bring the middle school economists out of the woodwork.
Consumption loans would be rare, nearly impossible to get on an unsecured signature in a deflationary scheme. Are you sure this is a bad thing? And if a 20% interest loan is barely breaking even in real terms in today's inflationary scheme, who would borrow at a similar nominal interest rate under deflation knowing that it was an effective 50% real rate?
I'll give you a tip for thinking about future possibilities. If you change something in your hypothetical universe, it is wise to figure out the consequences of that change by not changing anything else - except for things that are already consequences of the thing you are changing.
Interest rates are neither the word of God, nor physical law. They are the consequence of a richly dynamic interaction of many forces operating over many years. It is highly implausible to imagine that they would be exactly the same in an environment that is even slightly different, much less one where the very heart of the system has been inverted.
Inflation always ends badly. And by "always", I mean from literally the dawn of history. The only potential counterexamples are still current, just like the only potential counterexamples of human mortality are still current. I'm pretty confident that every human alive today will die eventually, just as all that came before have, and I'm equally confident that every inflationary currency will die the way inflationary currencies always die.
Oh, you were serious.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, right. (Score:5, Funny)
Given that Twitter can't seem to make any money, what makes their CEO's views on economics noteworthy?
Listening to this guy's opinion on bitcoin is like buying stock based on tips from a homeless guy.
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Or maybe he is just BSing and trying to ride a wave of exuberance but doesn't actually believe what he is saying. That's not really much better.
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what makes their CEO's views on economics noteworthy
The fact that he made a shitload of money by not making any money. This guy is an economic genius.
Not with the kiddie porn on the blockchain. (Score:4, Interesting)
Yesterday we saw an article saying the bitcoin blockchain contains kiddie porn inserted by the users [slashdot.org].
Today we saw an article saying the senate has taken another step to amend the Communications Decency Act to cut into the broad protections [online services] have from legal liability for content posted by their users [slashdot.org].
Maybe Bitcoin won't be around much longer because the miners will all be in jail as pornographers.
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Oh Slashdot, with your low UID graybeards who know everything from decades ago but are just clueless reactionaries on anything current and unfamiliar. You do realize mining in a pool doesn't require maintaining a full local copy of the blockchain, right? And being the sage you are, I'm sure you also realize that virtually no one mines solo.
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Maybe Bitcoin won't be around much longer because the miners will all be in jail as pornographers.
Or more likely the application of laws where technically everyone is already a criminal aren't actually enforced the way you think they'll be.
This just in (Score:3)
If you told me folks would be paying $20k (Score:2)
ROFL drunk, drugged or just plain stupid? (Score:3, Informative)
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no he's just a shill trying to pump likely because the recent drop caught him with his pants down, so he's looking for some bag holders.
Bitcoin does not scale (Score:3)
It is surprising Jack Dorsey did not realize that bitcoin cannot scale.
There are already too many transactions, which cause delays and/or rising fees [arstechnica.com]. This is such a serious problem that even ransomware business turns away from it.
And the worst is to come. Since bitcoin volume is limited by design, mining new bitcoin will become harder and harder over time, leading to the situation where the incentive for miners to maintain the blockchain will vanish.
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Good example; it doesn't scale so we found an alternative. For instance only about 1/3rd of New Yorkers commute by car.
So the trick is finding the alternative bandwagon and hop on that because bitcoin isn't it.
World's Top 15 Disasters... (Score:2)
Was reading one of those Facebook "lists", this one about the world's worst 15 disasters. Those things are fun to read, but one is pertinent to this. One notch on the list was some poor Brit that bought bitcoin early and amassed a fortune of 7.5 million (dollars? pounds?) and lost it all when he lost the hard drive (discarded it, I think) in his computer.
I'm not sure we want to be using a currency that is quite so fragile. You have $7.5M, you're looking for a fork lift to move it around (just weighe
I call BS (Score:2)
Pretty transparent, actually (Score:2)
tech firm not in the headlines (Score:2)
1) Tech firm isn't being talked about enough.
2) CEO spouts shite
3) ????
4) Profit!
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3 would be "finding a way to make the business profitable".
Twitter is still one of those "could one of the big players FINALLY buy me?????" companies.
Slashdot Reader Says... (Score:2)
Twitter will still be a money-sink in ten years.
Currency exchange rates and trade relations (Score:3, Informative)
To have a single world currency, you'd have to find a replacement for the role that exchange rates play in international trade relations. Currency is portable. Economies are not. They are tied to regions. Inequities are created when vastly different economies use the same currency.
You can see some of the issues within the US. You can buy a home on loan for say $800K in California, hold it for a few years, sell it for a $1M, take the $200K to Tennessee, and buy a nearly identical home for $200K.
I once used that equation as a recruiting method to recruit experienced engineers from California. They went from struggling to make it to living on easy street despite a 30% cut in salary because their house payment completely disappeared and all other expenses went down at the same time.
That is only possible because California and Tennessee use the same currency. If they didn't, the exchange rate would likely counter the difference so that $1M California dollars = $200K Tennessee dollars since money should have the same purchasing power everywhere. Granted, using houses as the comparison stretches this a bit over reality. But, even when you look at mundane things like gasoline, groceries, or getting your grass mowed, the dollar is worth less in California than Tennessee.
Imagine the abuses that could occur if this was extended to California vs. a poor third world country. It doesn't seem dangerous when you just look at people taking their money to a place where it is worth 10 times more and living there, but if they purchase resources there and bring them here to where they are worth ten times more and then sell them, you could dangerously reduce the resources in the third world country.
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> you'd have to find a replacement for the role that exchange rates play in international trade relations. C
You'd ideally also prevent large scale arbitrage from sucking all the profit out of those exchange rates, which is modern high-speed trading does to the stock market. I'm afraid that the thigh speed trading firms would balance the local currencies _very_ swiftly, before the ordinary worker had any possibility of personal benefit through switching markets.
Smart CEO (Score:2)
With someone like this at the helm, divesting from Twitter may be the thing to do.
It won't be bitcoin - f*#k the banks (Score:3)
Pump it Up! (Score:2)
Bill Gates said in 1996 (Score:2)
Appr. quote:
We tend overestimate things that will happen in 2 years, and underestimate things that will happen in 10 years.
Despite bumper sticker nature of that quote, it's a food for thought.
Truth in advertising (Score:4, Funny)
Translation: Twitter CEO has bought bitcoin and want to dump it
Found the guy (Score:2)
that just sunk a few millions into bitcoins.
Nope. (Score:2)
Governments depend too much on their power to issue currency. Bitcoin will be made illegal before that happens. It's already happening in some places.
Where was Dorsey in B-school? (Score:3)
Obviously not in many econ classes. Bitcoin is failing as a currency precisely because now that most of the ultimate available supply has been mined, that's all there will ever be. Because of this, Bitcoin has transitioned from being a digital currency to a sort of imaginary investment which will be hoarded so long as each buyer thinks he can sell it for a higher price to some other buyer. Either Dorsey already holds a lot of it or he just doesn't know any better.
Even gold makes a better currency than BTC, because the gold supply has increased by an annual couple of percent or so over all historic time as new gold comes out of the ground. That's why it made a perfectly good currency across the pre-technology centuries when the amount of wealth in the world barely changed and every transaction was a zero-sum exchange. When the Industrial Revolution made it possible for net economic wealth to increase every year, the need arose for managed currencies that grew at the same rate as everything for which it can be traded.
10 years from now... (Score:3)
15-year old script kiddies control the world's economy through their successful hacking of the sole world currency.
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Or, for anyone who has a brain and hence has none, "Short, Short, Short!!!!!!"
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How does bitcoin deal with inflation and the finite number of coins?
As I understand it, extreme right wing economic theory says that with bitcoin (or the Gold Standard), there would be no inflation, as this was something invented by left wingers along with votes for women and other evil progressive ideas like Government some time after WW1.