Bitcoin Could Become 'Worthless,' Bank of England Warns (theguardian.com) 271
The Bank of England has said that bitcoin could be "worthless" and people investing in the digital currency should be prepared to lose everything. The Guardian reports: In a warning over the potential risks for investors, the central bank questioned whether there was any inherent worth in the most prominent digital currency, which has soared in value this year to close to $50,000 a piece. The deputy governor, Sir Jon Cunliffe, said the Bank had to be ready for risks linked to the rise of the crypto asset following rapid growth in its popularity. "Their price can vary quite considerably and [bitcoins] could theoretically or practically drop to zero," he told the BBC.
The Bank's financial policy committee, set up in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis to monitor risks, said on Monday there was little direct threat to the stability of the UK financial system from crypto assets. However, it warned that, at the current rapid pace of growth, such assets could become more interconnected with traditional financial services and were likely to pose a number of risks. Publishing its regular health check on the financial system, the Bank said major institutions should take a cautious approach to adopting crypto assets and that it would pay close attention to developments in the market. "Enhanced regulatory and law enforcement frameworks, both domestically and at a global level, are needed to influence developments in these fast-growing markets in order to manage risks, encourage sustainable innovation and maintain broader trust and integrity in the financial system," it said. In a separate blogpost published on its website on Tuesday, a member of the Bank's staff said bitcoin failed to fulfill many of the features required of a currency and that it risked being inherently volatile.
Thomas Belsham, who works in the Bank's stakeholder and media engagement division, wrote: "The problem is that, unlike traditional forms of money, Bitcoin isn't used to price things other than itself. As Bitcoiners themselves are fond of saying, 'one Bitcoin = one Bitcoin'. But a tautology does not a currency make." He said scarcity of the crypto asset -- which is limited to 21m bitcoin -- is among the key reasons for its attraction for investors, but this feature embedded into its design "may even, ultimately, render Bitcoin worthless." About 19m bitcoin is currently in circulation, with new coins added when "miners" validate changes to the blockchain ledger underpinning the cryptocurrency. While the ultimate number of bitcoin in circulation is not expected to be reached until February 2140, it would become harder to sustain this system over time, Belsham said. "Simple game theory tells us that a process of backward induction should, really, at some point, induce the smart money to get out. And were that to happen, investors really should be prepared to lose everything. Eventually."
The Bank's financial policy committee, set up in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis to monitor risks, said on Monday there was little direct threat to the stability of the UK financial system from crypto assets. However, it warned that, at the current rapid pace of growth, such assets could become more interconnected with traditional financial services and were likely to pose a number of risks. Publishing its regular health check on the financial system, the Bank said major institutions should take a cautious approach to adopting crypto assets and that it would pay close attention to developments in the market. "Enhanced regulatory and law enforcement frameworks, both domestically and at a global level, are needed to influence developments in these fast-growing markets in order to manage risks, encourage sustainable innovation and maintain broader trust and integrity in the financial system," it said. In a separate blogpost published on its website on Tuesday, a member of the Bank's staff said bitcoin failed to fulfill many of the features required of a currency and that it risked being inherently volatile.
Thomas Belsham, who works in the Bank's stakeholder and media engagement division, wrote: "The problem is that, unlike traditional forms of money, Bitcoin isn't used to price things other than itself. As Bitcoiners themselves are fond of saying, 'one Bitcoin = one Bitcoin'. But a tautology does not a currency make." He said scarcity of the crypto asset -- which is limited to 21m bitcoin -- is among the key reasons for its attraction for investors, but this feature embedded into its design "may even, ultimately, render Bitcoin worthless." About 19m bitcoin is currently in circulation, with new coins added when "miners" validate changes to the blockchain ledger underpinning the cryptocurrency. While the ultimate number of bitcoin in circulation is not expected to be reached until February 2140, it would become harder to sustain this system over time, Belsham said. "Simple game theory tells us that a process of backward induction should, really, at some point, induce the smart money to get out. And were that to happen, investors really should be prepared to lose everything. Eventually."
oblig. (Score:2)
bitcoin has alot of speculation & regulatory h (Score:4, Insightful)
bitcoin has alot of speculation & when the regulatory hammer comes down people may be suck with coin that is hard to exchange
As do all things that have no intrinsic value (Score:3, Interesting)
As long as there is a fool buying, or a government backing or people trusting... there is a value of exchange. Crypto, fiat, art... But over night it can become random numbers, toilet paper or firewood.
And to be fair, bitcoin is a dinosaur among cryptocurrencies. Nowadays its speculative value is all that's left. Where is its more than a decade old promise of being a fast low-cost untraceable secure medium of exchange? But those are just my ramblings.
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over night it can become random numbers, toilet paper or firewood.
I predict toilet paper and firewood will be worth their weight in faberge eggs some time soon.
Re: As do all things that have no intrinsic value (Score:2)
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Bitcoins requires some effort and power. That gives them value. Like food, the question is how much perceived value they have. Investment means we expect the value to increase. A bitcoins like any othe
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Bitcoins requires some effort and power. That gives them value.
Jogging around the block requires effort too, but no one is going to pay you to do it. Bitcoin doesn’t have value because of the horrendously inefficient means of securing its blockchain, it has “value” based on its brand recognition and that’s basically it. Every fork/spin-off of Bitcoin is nearly identical in functionality (and some are arguably better), yet Bitcoin is still the top dog in terms of price per coin.
It’s the same reason a Monster Cable cord for digital signals
Re:As do all things that have no intrinsic value (Score:5, Insightful)
What is the intrinsic nutritional value of Bitcoin? I just made some pasta, and according to the label a 56 gram serving has 210 calories. If Bitcoin had a nutrition label it would be zero calories. If you went on an all Bitcoin diet you would die of starvation.
So in what universe are food and cryptocurrency the same? I haven't been to that universe.
Bitcoin is quite a bit worse (Score:3, Insightful)
On type currency can never lose all value (Score:4, Insightful)
There is one kind of currency that can almost never be worthless, or indeed by worth much less than the creator wants it to be worth.
The price is of course determined by the ratio of supply and demand. If people WANT something, they'll pay a price for it. Imagine this scenario. There is a law that all people must bring 20 pounds of potatoes to the county sheriff every month. If you don't show up with the potatoes, the sheriff will seize your bank account, your car, and perhaps your house, sell it, and use the proceeds to buy the potatoes.
Under such a scenario, would people be motivated to get potatoes? Of course. That would ensure that the price of potatoes stays high (unless the sheriff gives the potatoes right back, so everyone has plenty of potatoes). So long as the law forces each person to get new potatoes each month, the demand for potatoes will be high and the price will be high.
April 15th is the day you're required to hand over dollars to the government. Fail to get dollars for the government and you can end up in jail. That ensures a high demand for dollars.
There are exactly two ways the dollar or similar currencies can lose significant value. If the government, and the IRS, ceased to exist nobody would need to pay taxes in dollars (unless the warlords who took over demanded dollars). That can result in the dollar plummeting. The other way is when politicians took over the fed and print far too many dollars in am attempt to buy votes. When you have far too much of something, nobody is willing to do much for it and it loses value.
So long as we have the IRS and the fed operating, the dollar will be worth whatever the fed wants it to be worth. Because those two control the demand and the supply.
What controls the demand for Bitcoin? People buy Bitcoin because they expect the price to go up. If the price kept dropping, people would be getting rid of it, not buying it. That's it. Don't get me wrong - the price will keep going up. For as long as people keep buying MORE every day and every week.
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There are exactly two ways the dollar or similar currencies can lose significant value.
Ultimately, the dollar value is based on how much confidence/faith people have in the government. People are prepared to accept currency because they believe broadly speaking it will be worth something tomorrow and they can use that.
The third way it can lose value is if people lose faith. Once people stop believing it'll be worth about the same tomorrow, they start charging a lot more to hedge, and that gives hyperinflat
Re:On type currency can never lose all value (Score:4, Insightful)
Not necessarily. If it gets widely banned it's value will plummet as people divest. If someone amasses enough mining hardware to dictate what transactions are valid, it'll be dumped overnight. Due to it's lack of intrinsic value, nothing makes it remain above zero.
OTOH, food could flood the market and will still retain some value since people will continue to need to eat.
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Bitcoin never promised to be untraceable, it is a public ledger by design, total transparency. Now if someone knows which address belongs to you, that is YOUR vulnerability not Bitcoin's. As for fast and low cost, Bitcoin is a very fast and low cost way to purchase a house and for your day-to-day transactions there is lightning.
As for 'dinosaur'
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Bitcoin has intrinsic value. It is a central bank proof, counterfeit proof, double spend proof digital store and transfer of value tool which is paralleled by none.
You can make an infinite number of bitcoin clones.
Bitcoin is just a brand. A successful one at the moment, but still just a brand. A better one could come along at any time.
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Art and Crypto? (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't put these in the same classifications of intrinsic value.
Art has been traded internationally for at least 600 years. Let's say you have in front of you 1 bitcoin (etched in all its glory into sheets of otherwise worthless but long-lived metal) and 1 small sculpture from a well-known artist, and you are told you get to choose one of them, but you have to lock it away in a conditioned vault for 40 years before retrieving it.
Any takers on the coin?
El Salvador merchants would be hit the hardest... (Score:2)
No shit? (Score:5, Insightful)
Regular wealth tokens are generally backed by a valuable material or a stable government's promise. Things that aren't perfectly reliable, but far more reliable than necessary for most purposes - if you have trouble with your currency's value, you've likely had a lot of warning signs long before a problem.
Crypto, though, is entirely floated on speculation. That's it. There is nothing behind it to guarantee value. There IS something behind it guaranteeing a cost, and there are plenty of things related to it limiting utility and stability though.
It'll probably stick around like other ponzis that just won't die, but chances are pretty good at some point the fad will pass and when that happens the floor will drop out from under all the coins and the market will shrink down to a tiny fraction of the fools and scammers that currently occupy it.
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Can you tell me who, today (not 100 years ago), is interested in exchanging goods for gold?
Cryptocurrencies are as useful as gold is because they actually meet the same exact requirements of gold to store value in something of limited quantity that is not controlled by some politician and it doesn't change over time, that is, perpetual.
The value of gold is pure speculation as w
Re: No shit? (Score:3)
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Historically it's much more useful to say that fiat money's value, in terms of gold, is speculation.
Gold has been used as a store of wealth (not necessarily a means of exchange) for millenia, in all civilizations in which it was known, including our own.
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Not really, miners spend fortunes to generate them. That gives XBT at least some value.
Would they still bother to spend fortunes to generate them if the price was plummeting? The current value gives the miners incentive to mine. But if that drops, why would they bother mining bitcoins anymore? They would mine anything else they could if the profits were better.
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Lots of people spend fortunes on things that don't return.
You can restore a car, for example, but chances are, the money that went into the restoration (nevermind labor) will never be recouped on selling said car. You can renovate a house - most renovations are a net loss in that the amount spent doesn't equal the increase in value. (The lone exception is generally the kitchen).
Just because they spent X dollars on somethi
What about proof of work? (Score:2)
Are you saying that all that hard work will be for naught? Are you saying that value has been alienated from labor? Will you not accept proof of our endeavours?
Re:What about proof of work? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're kidding, right?
Proof of work is a clever way for multiple independent nodes to decide who gets to write the next block in the chain. It's a consensus mechanism, nothing more. The only value in the work of solving the next hash puzzle is the reward the solving node can issue to itself in that next block which can be easily verified by other nodes. It's ephemeral.
But as we found out, when so many people are trying to make money with cryptocurrency, proof of work is not an environmentally friendly mechanism. Other than the associated pollution making it less attractive to conscientious people, proof of work has nothing to do with the value of a cryptocurrency that uses it.
I don't know if the value of all these cryptocurrencies will eventually drop to zero, because you only need a few people to still be using it for it to have a non-zero value. But it will drop significantly when some of all of these things happen:
Enough people realize that there are better ways to make decentralized and private digital payments and switch to that instead.
When enough criminals realize their supposedly private transactions have been exposed or can be exposed and become an undeniable public record that can be used against them in a court of law.
When governments ban it heavily tax proof of work cryptocurrencies to protect the environment.
When governments regulate or ban cryptocurrencies to protect all the future suckers from pump and dump, wash sales, false advertising, non-insured deposits, criminal negligence of exchange operators, and other issues.
When the hype artists move on to greener pastures.
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You are missing the big picture, If I spent 40k USD to mine a XBT, I'm not selling it for less.
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You are missing the big picture, If I spent 40k USD to mine a XBT, I'm not selling it for less.
And if it was going to be worth less than 40k. Would you bother to mine it? Why?
Re:What about proof of work? (Score:4, Insightful)
You are missing the big picture, If I spent 40k USD to mine a XBT, I'm not selling it for less.
However that does not mean someone will pay 40k+ for it.
I'll buy that dip (Score:2)
Can't wait for cheap bitcoins.
Derivatives (Score:2)
Derivatives will inevitably slow (and reverse) the fall of bitcoin.
If XBT was dropping too much, not only random joes would sell, bears would short it 125x leverage, this will increase supply thus reducing the price.
Once the price falls enough, and everyone is shorting, there will be people with almost no collateral, meaning any movement upwards would liquidate their collateral to close their position. This will create buy pressure in the market (since bitcoin must be bought to close a short) increasing the
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Or the US government makes it illegal to exchange US dollars for it.
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XBT would certainly take a big dump, but since when do private citizens care what the government says you can or can't exchange their toilet paper for?
Also XMR is proof that you don't need government approval.
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All it needs is for mining to be outlawed. And that _will_ happen eventually.
Bit coins wont be protected by governments (Score:2)
And the dislike is mutual, government does not like people moving wealth around without paying taxes. So it has no incentive to actually resolve disputes or enforce contracts. If crypto can not help government track tax dodgers and criminals, even if you strong
BOE Would say that, wouldn't they? (Score:2)
Proof that he is wrong (Score:2)
If the price were to drop to near zero, I will buy all the bitcoin in the world for ONE DOLLAR. Now it is worth at LEAST a dollar. CHECK. AND. MATE.
But in all seriousness, given the importance of bitcoin to the history of crypto currency, I could see it being worth something as a historical artifact. Unless every private key were made public, then I guess that would make it worthless. But that seems even less likely than the price dropping below $100.
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I don't understand his reasoning though. He says that the scarcity (the fact that you can't make anymore bitcoin after a certain point) is what will ultimately cause Bitcoin to be valueless. I don't understand how that could work at all.
Re:Proof that he is wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
You forgot how BC works. Or you never understood it in the first place.
If the value of BC drops to zero, you cannot sell or buy it anymore because nobody will do any mining and that means no transactions.
They mispelled "is" (Score:2)
"could become"
No one is required to accept/use Bitcoin and to people that won't, it's already worthless. For the rest, try using it when the power/internet is out, then try cash -- no blockchain required.
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If your power, internet, and cell service are all out... you got bigger problems than currency...
Sure, "could be" all about probabilities (Score:2)
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No, in principle most currencies cannot become worthless unless all the people died. In which case it would simply have undefined value.
You're just using loose thinking to say that things with very little similarity have some similarity and so are the same.
Weak sauce. Do better, or get off my lawn.
Even the Confederate dollar is worth something,but (Score:2)
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Never thought about this. My dad use to collect currency but mostly old coins. Seems like it would be a cool piece to have. However, I really wonder how they authenticate these kinds of currencies.
Yeah imagine buying a currency that plummets! lol (Score:2)
Like the british pound
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
Issuing paper currencies is a licence to steal. And steal they do.
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Allow me to introduce the concept of inflation.
That graph, just by the axis chosen, HAS to drop down to one. Do it for any other currency, exactly the same.
As a mathematician who isn't even particularly averse in statistics and economics, I'm pissing myself that you used that as an example.
And it goes back to 1209 for a reason. The pound sterling, apart from decimalisation modifications, has been around in that form since then. The inflation from 1209 to now for ANYTHING is ridiculous and even 2000 times
IT'S NOT FIAT CURRENCY. Its backed by HOPE! (Score:2)
Absolutely nothing backs crypto but hope. It's modern day beanie babies.
Anyone that thinks this is going to have value in 2030 is insane. It's not. It's backed by nothing. Maybe the drug trade?
Here's where it gets fun. How do you short crypto? Even people against it can't fight it like normal stocks. In normal markets you can actually short ownership. This bubble is going to burst and when it does it is going to be EPIC! There is no regulatory agency that can't stop trading when it goes from god kn
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Anyone that thinks this is going to have value in 2030 is insane.
OK that prediction is going to be wrong in 2030.
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Rebellions are built on hope!
Misses the point (Score:2)
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There's another question ignored by these opinions .. is there demand for what bitcoin does (outside speculation)? and the answer is obviously yes, especially for people with untrustworthy or dictatorial governments. In these circumstances, bitcoin provides a real and useful service (ability to transact without the involvement of said untrustworthy government).
Is it possible to provide better options for that demand? When that better option comes along, who will still use bitcoins?
Fuck the king (Score:2)
Yes, and one dollar = one dollar.
Itâ(TM)s only useful for the same reason it was a thousand years ago: the âoekingâ issued it and said âoepay your taxes with this or else Iâ(TM)ll have you killedâ.
Bank of England wants to buy cheap (Score:2)
Of course no bank-controlled currency... (Score:2, Funny)
How to make money with bitcoin (Score:2)
Turkish Lira could become "Worthless" too (Score:2)
But I don't see the current muppets running the BoE (current track record of correctly anticipating the economy: zero) asking their PR department to release a statement about that. And, frankly, the Turkish Lira is in considerably more danger than Bitcoin is at the moment.
Bitcoin's problems are technical, not some sort of abstract notion of what defines "real" money.
Ask them what's real about the money the BoE has used to buy £840Bn worth of bonds in order to keep the zombie banks afloat - sorry, in o
Re:Turkish Lira could become "Worthless" too (Score:4, Insightful)
The point is the whole concept of currency is a 'social' construct. We have to decide what we consider value as correlated with the currency. Currently the most dominant strategy is government regulated currency, which is also tied into the infrastructure and legal system that is required to facilitate commerce. Bitcoin is a bad combination of requiring that infrastructure be working well, but not required by said infrastructure.
Well, it already is (Score:4, Insightful)
It has no practical use. The only ones willing to pay for it are "greater fools". If enough of these wake up or run out of money, BC reverts to its intrinsic value, which is zero.
Will not Could (Score:3)
The BoE is looking at Bitcoin as the pyramid scheme it is. However there will be a time when Bitcoin becomes worthless and the rapidly increasing power of Quantum devices brings it closer every day.
Re: True! But (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, but that would really require that something other than the Union Jack start flying over Buckingham Palace. This is unlikely for a country with its own military and nuclear arsenal.
Bitcoin requires a much smaller and much less violent upheaval to lose its value.
Re: True! But (Score:5, Insightful)
Bitcoin requires a much smaller and much less violent upheaval to lose its value.
Like one tweet from Elon Musk ...
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Yes, but that would really require that something other than the Union Jack start flying over Buckingham Palace. This is unlikely for a country with its own military and nuclear arsenal.
Bitcoin requires a much smaller and much less violent upheaval to lose its value.
or a economic depression leading to a British return to the EU adoption of the Euro and abandonment of the pound.
Re: True! But (Score:4, Insightful)
At which point the pound will get converted to the new currency. Some people may lose a bit in the conversion, but they won't lose everything.
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Yes, but that would really require that something other than the Union Jack start flying over Buckingham Palace. This is unlikely for a country with its own military and nuclear arsenal.
Bitcoin requires a much smaller and much less violent upheaval to lose its value.
or a economic depression leading to a British return to the EU adoption of the Euro and abandonment of the pound.
Joining the Euro will not help the UK economy. Rejoining the EU and Schengen zone certainly would.
Re:True! But (Score:5, Informative)
For the British Pound to drop to zero, you would need a situation where all goods and services provided by the UK to have zero demand from overseas clients. it's these clients that determine the value of a fiat currency, because they have to pay for these goods and services with that fiat currency. So it's possible for the Pound to drop to zero, but it's extremely unlikely. The lower the Pound drops, the more demand there will be for the UK's goods and services, pushing the fiat currency value back up again.
With cryptocurrency, the value is determined by demand again. Currently, it seems that most demand is generated by the idea that the currency will increase in value. Value increases, generating more demand because of perceived investment opportunity, which in turn increases value. This can also work the opposite way. Withdrawal of investment from cryptocurrency will plunge the value, which may lead to further withdrawals, as people panic sell due to fearing losing all their money.
You see a similar effect with the stock market. Though stock prices are supported by the inherent value of the companies themselves. With cryptocurrency, there is no inherent value in it. It could quite easily plunge to zero with no demand. Only then will we see a whole bunch of articles appear, talking about why cryptocurrency was such a bad investment idea. People love analysing things in retrospect.
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I'm not sure where crap this comes from. When currencies drop through the floor, it's not because their countries output drops to zero. That wasn't true for Zimbabwe, it wasn't true for post Nazi Germany, or anywhere else. It was because everyone, including the local citizens lost all confidence in the currency. That's almost always happens because
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Not really (Score:2, Insightful)
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Fiat currencies have the one killer feature that the money supply can grow with the economy. This can be done with a well designed crypto currency, but not bitcoin. For a deflationary currency, bitcoin is perfectly designed.
Re:True! But (Score:4, Funny)
Re:True! But (Score:5, Insightful)
Bitcoin isn't used like a currency unless you count money laundering. People horde it as an "investment" to cash out with profit measured in pounds, dollars etc. The price bounces around by double digits because Elon tweets some dank meme (and doubtless cashes in on the reaction). You couldn't even buy a chocolate bar without incurring a transaction fee that dwarfs the price of the bar. You couldn't even transfer bitcoin from one wallet (or app) to another without getting fucked over. It is a ponzi constantly hyped up by those inside the bubble hoping they can raise the price and cash out before the next collapse.
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Yes. Or any other "traditional" currency.
But if/when Bitcoin starts to tank, no government, no national bank will even move a finger to do something against it. They will sit and watch with a bag of popcorn. That's the difference.
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Now, besides for a few stupid ``investors'' (and ransomware folks), nobody would be really hurt if bitcoin dropped to zero.
The ransomware folks can just switch to whatever replaces bitcoin. They mostly convert to dollars as soon as they can after getting their ransom anyway, so abandoning bitcoin will not be a problem. It is literally just the last bitcoin investors that will get tanked. It's exactly a game of musical chairs where you know that the long term design can't hold, but you never known when the chair behind you is going to be the one that disappears.
Re:LMAO (Score:5, Insightful)
Central banker warning that Bitcoin could become worthless? Maybe that banker ought to worry more about his/her fiat going worthless. Hyper-inflation is fuh realz, yo. FJB.
And just like most Crypto Fanbois do not understand economics. First it would be impossible for the pound to drop to zero. That would imply that all British corporations are worthless.
Second, crypto has even less of a tie to real-world purchasing power than any Nation backed fiat currency.
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Re:LMAO (Score:5, Interesting)
My gosh. A pyramid scam could go worthless overnight? You don't say... next they'll be telling us water is wet!
I was thinking more along the line of some mathematician finding way to quick and reliably create a hash collision for sha256 breaking the hashing function used by bitcoin.
Re: LMAO (Score:2)
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The bigger risk, although from what I've read it's still largely theoretical at this point, is that someone finds a way to efficiently generate private keys for wallets (hack people's accounts) so they can steal the crypto linked to them.
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Beyond just mining, it would also enable someone to spend any bitcoins already in existence, by calculating the key.
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That probably wouldn't make it worthless, and it's highly unlikely. Breaking the signatures is more likely, and would cause much more irreparable havoc.
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The Koblitz curve and the hash are the two top contenders for which falls first.
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My gosh. A pyramid scam could go worthless overnight? You don't say... next they'll be telling us water is wet!
I was thinking more along the line of some mathematician finding way to quick and reliably create a hash collision for sha256 breaking the hashing function used by bitcoin.
We have an existence proof that an attack exists on the SHAs (not including SHA-3 which is different). So it's a matter of time. That comes courtesy of Wang, the one who broke SHA-1.
Insane but not Pyramid (Score:5, Insightful)
A pyramid scam could go worthless overnight?
It's not a pyramid scheme. There is nobody collecting money from people and using it to pay fake returns to investors. It is just rampant speculation that is all going to end in tears when people finally wake up to the fact that Bitcoin has no intrinsic value and the fact that it was first does not give it any advantage - in fact, largely the opposite since more recent currencies are far more scalable.
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Re: LMAO (Score:2)
et's see, has there ever been a European country whose currency became worthless overnight? I seem to recall this fella with a tiny moustache...
Well yes, that's what happens when your currency is backed by physical assets and future productivity and someone with a military comes and takes all your shit and control of your production.
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I've looked over historical cases of hyperinflation, and I'm no expert, but to me it seems it only happens when the government/ is trying to extract as much real value from the economy as quickly as possible to ship it elsewhere and don't care if it happens destructively.
Basically it's always willed policy, not something that happens as a by-product of, say, naive efforts to offer nice things to their population.
The Weimar hyperinflation was to pay war debts denominated in gold. The Venezuelan hyperinflatio
Re:LMAO (Score:5, Informative)
Weimar Germany didn't "go off the gold standard." The Treaty of Versailles, being written largely by France, was intended to stick it to the Germans as much as possible, requiring large WW I reparations to be paid in gold. These payments stripped the gold backing from the mark, making it worthless.
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Weimar Germany repaid WW 1 reparations by letting the printing press go "BRR" and going off of the gold standard. Fiat currency is fundamentally equal in value to Monopoly money.
Try paying your taxes in Monopoly money and tell us what happens...
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$75 Luxury Tax or $200/10% Income Tax?
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You're thinking of Fractional Reserve Banking - https://www.investopedia.com/t... [investopedia.com]
Zillow is losing their ass and Blackrock isn't swooping in to save them - https://www.inman.com/2021/11/... [inman.com]
You're right about federal money being farted out in the form of IOUs though - https://www.treasurydirect.gov... [treasurydirect.gov]
Also, don't forget that low interest rates encourage increased borrowing, which also generates new cash on the open market as a byproduct, though there are some catches - https://www.forbes.com/sites/f... [forbes.com]
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Fiat currency never has any intrinsic value.Look at the dollar. What can you trade a dollar bill for from the US government? Another dollar bill, that's all. There's no gold backing it, nor any other intrinsically-valuable item.
You can give the US government some US dollars, and they won't lock you up for not paying your taxes.
Freedom dollars.
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I would love to understand better the purpose of China's digital Yuan. It clearly is to facilitate something rather different than every day currency transactions. I live in China and I regularly use cashless payments systems but it's all tied back to the bank. Now we all know banks don't hold all the cash necessary for everyone to withdrawal at the same time, so the ledger they keep already has a certain amount of understanding digital value.
Therefore the role cryptocurrency tries to facilitate in the west
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Arguably, metaverse "real estate" has actual value in that it's backed by an actual company which will do actual things like spy on your users for you. It's clearly speculative, but it's more than just a bunch of random integers given value because they have been given value. Metaverse is also more likely to become cost efficient and carbon neutral and so less likely to be a major target for regulatory attack. Still extremely speculative garbage, but at least more meaningful than bitcoin.
Some smart contr