On Tue, 31 Jul 2018 17:33:03 -0400 grarpamp wrote:

On Tue, Jul 31, 2018 at 7:05 AM, William Allen Simpson wrote:

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Krugman has a column today that's saying some things that have already been posted here. Hopefully will gain traction.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/31/opinion/transaction-costs-and-tethers-why...

Hopefully not.

...

libertarian derp."

Anyone could tear that article apart, but you would censor it, so what's your point of even approving it here for comment?

is metzger himself the little king by divine right of the 'cryptography' mailing list?

makes it easier for perpetrators of ransomware to get paid without getting caught. ;-) expecting an answer that had a positive societal benefit, were you? Because I can't think of one.

Spending infracoin, onboarding outside the box into infosec, accomplishing general education... (of course you were "secure" before those "bad dudes" came along and scuttled those glossy inflated reports...) sounds like a fine positive benefit and byproduct, after all, can't claim those things weren't needed beforehand. Now that vector is closed against more sinister ventures. And hey, it's glossy all over again, kudos bitcoin ;-) What of when ransom and prediction markets enable and force disclosure of some other society things, say cancer cause / cure coverups, corp/gov corruption, mkultra, govt murder, war. Kudos again. Cryptocurrency is cash is agnostic tool, use it at will.

the transaction cost of crypto-currencies is much higher than the transaction cost of credit cards or cash.

The hidden costs and cost layers involved with those two are monumentally higher. That inefficiency and taxing needs to be driven out of the market for good.

unlike gold, if Bitcoin's value dropped to zero, the Bitcoins would disappear.

No. If either were disadopted to zero, it'd be slowly rendered down, one back to dust, one back to bits... neither being cared about.

What happens, exactly, when you want to move those wads of cash or piles of ingots across borders?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWp6hZ-5ndc

the future is in individually issued real bills of exchange

Was done for hundreds of years until the govt's and banks floated everything and banned them for their and friends gain

pegging

Decentralized cryptocurrencies are not pegged or peggable, they are the pegs. This is intentional. 21M to represent the planet's entire voluntarily assignable networth and economy, pretty kinky huh.

crypto currencies are currently too volatile for savings

Take 1 BTC... all the fiats are highly volatile and have been dropping long term in comparison over any 1y or longer period since genesis... "only morons would ever invest, save, or use and transact with"... fiat.

Basically, there is no intrinsic value for a Bitcoin.

Or any fiat, product, shiny metal, rock, dirt, water, air... except that for which people choose to use it for. As long as it's holdable, transferable, nonprintable... any of the common properties... it will be found an eligible choice.

It is purely what people want to pay for it, and if too few people wanted to buy it the value could drop to zero,

People have an innate desire to not accept less value, therefore their entry and last prices are self supporting, and with no real print inflation, demand pressure from growing adoption float creates natural uptrend, and markets once established hardly shrink, so it's steps to the moon until adoption naturally levels off for good decades from now.

because it is not tethered to anything.

Blah blah blah... turtles all the way down. All these things are well explained... https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=bitcoin+documentary And simple Fermi Problem says there's at least another 100x out there that cryptocurrency will absorb before steady state is reached... What's in your wallet?