Canadian Fiscal Policy

[jigglysquishy]

Bitcoin fails at one of the most basic roles of currency, being used for goods and services.

All the techbros I know use it as a quasi investment, with no actual purchases being made.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by LightingGuy

That's not entirely true, a lot of the energy being used for mining is excess energy that would've been lost otherwise. The mining computers are scaled up and down based on the available excess energy. A lot of other mining computers run completely off of solar. I don't know the exact numbers or percentages on this though.

For someone who claims to have done 200 hrs of research, you have rather remarkable gaps in knowledge on the topic at hand. The emissions issues with crypto are well known.

Just Bitcoin in China....A paper in Nature:

Abstract
The growing energy consumption and associated carbon emission of Bitcoin mining could potentially undermine global sustainable efforts. By investigating carbon emission flows of Bitcoin blockchain operation in China with a simulation-based Bitcoin blockchain carbon emission model, we find that without any policy interventions, the annual energy consumption of the Bitcoin blockchain in China is expected to peak in 2024 at 296.59 Twh and generate 130.50 million metric tons of carbon emission correspondingly. Internationally, this emission output would exceed the total annualized greenhouse gas emission output of the Czech Republic and Qatar. Domestically, it ranks in the top 10 among 182 cities and 42 industrial sectors in China.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-22256-3

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

Still a horrible waste of electricity (and CPUs).

Just think how many EVs could be charged with the electricity wasted on crypto.........

I'd be willing to bet a lot of the crypto-bro supporters are the same ones arguing against EVs because we don't have enough electricity and/or grid infrastructure.

Bitcoin can be our economic savior by sucking up all of that extra pandemic stimulus money and turning it into nothing.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by jigglysquishy

Bitcoin fails at one of the most basic roles of currency, being used for goods and services.

All the techbros I know use it as a quasi investment, with no actual purchases being made.

Exactly. There's places where you can supposedly spend Bitcoin. Dunno a single person who has ever done that.

I wouldn't even call it investment. It's speculation based on the Greater Fool Theory.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by jigglysquishy

Bitcoin fails at one of the most basic roles of currency, being used for goods and services.

All the techbros I know use it as a quasi investment, with no actual purchases being made.

A solution in search of a problem.

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Exactly. There's places where you can supposedly spend Bitcoin. Dunno a single person who has ever done that.

The bitcoin pizza guy

[LightingGuy]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

70% is mild and an improvement? Uhhh, if our real estate and/or stock market crashed to that level we would be a basket case economy for decades.

Compared to 7 years ago, a 70% bitcoin crash is an improvement, it means it's becoming more stable. Keep in mind that the Nasdaq is down 30% during the same period.

Originally Posted by jigglysquishy

Bitcoin fails at one of the most basic roles of currency, being used for goods and services.

All the techbros I know use it as a quasi investment, with no actual purchases being made.

Most people see it as a store of value similar to gold.

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

For someone who claims to have done 200 hrs of research, you have rather remarkable gaps in knowledge on the topic at hand. The emissions issues with crypto are well known.

Just Bitcoin in China....A paper in Nature:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-22256-3

I didn't say you're wrong, I said it's not the entire story.

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

I'd be willing to bet a lot of the crypto-bro supporters are the same ones arguing against EVs because we don't have enough electricity and/or grid infrastructure.

There's plenty of electricity. The bigger concern surrounding EVs is the battery production process and the availability of the minerals. It's an improvement over ICEs but not the savior everyone makes it out to be. We also need to focus on reducing the number of trips that need to be made by cars by actually building useful transit.

[MolsonExport]

Anybody care to take financial advice from someone who so eagerly promoted bitcoin as a financial solution? If so, please send me a PM, because I have a bridge to sell you.



Bitcoins are accepted almost nowhere, and some cryptocurrencies nowhere at all.
Extreme price volatility also makes bitcoin undesirable as a store of value. And the storehouses — the cryptocurrency trading exchanges — are far less reliable and trustworthy than ordinary banks and brokers.
A bitcoin has no intrinsic value. It only has value if people think other people will buy it for a higher price — the Greater Fool theory*
Cryptocurrency is best-suited for one use: Criminal activity. Because transactions can be anonymous — law enforcement cannot easily trace who buys and sells — its use is dominated by illegal endeavors.

*In finance, the greater fool theory suggests that one can sometimes make money through the purchase of overvalued assets — items with a purchase price drastically exceeding the intrinsic value — if those assets can later be resold at an even higher price. This only works as long as there are enough new "greater fools" willing to pay higher and higher prices for the asset.


Lord, save us from these armchair internet 'experts'. Like Whac-a-mole (rather, like flies on shit), they keep coming back to SSP

[LightingGuy]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Bitcoins are accepted almost nowhere, and some cryptocurrencies nowhere at all.

If you're going to mock someone make sure you read what they said first. I never said that I think Bitcoin should be used as a currency.

"I don't think that Bitcoin itself can be used as a day to day currency for regular transactions, at least not in its current form."

"El Salvador and CAR are doing this as experiments, partially because they've run out of options. Ultimately I don't think they will be successful"

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Extreme price volatility also makes bitcoin undesirable as a store of value. And the storehouses — the cryptocurrency trading exchanges — are far less reliable and trustworthy than ordinary banks and brokers.

It's an extremely liquid asset with a relatively small market cap, so it's natural for it to be volatile. The market cap is now significantly bigger than ti was and the volatility has dropped dramatically as a result. I agree about the exchanges though, I don't trust them one bit, it's best to store your bitcoin offline. And other cryptos won't last, the only one that matters is bitcoin, for various reasons.


https://seekingalpha.com/article/410...tility-lessons

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

A bitcoin has no intrinsic value. It only has value if people think other people will buy it for a higher price — the Greater Fool theory*
Cryptocurrency is best-suited for one use: Criminal activity. Because transactions can be anonymous — law enforcement cannot easily trace who buys and sells — its use is dominated by illegal endeavors.

Less than 1% of crypto is used for illegal activity. Meanwhile over 30% of cash is used for illegal activity.

Crypto also isn't anonymous, that's a common misunderstanding. Every transaction can be traced to an IP address (and to other bitcoin accounts) and criminals get caught this way all the time.

https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/c...gal%20activity.

https://www.science.org/content/arti...behind-bitcoin

https://www.independent.org/publicat...by%20criminals.

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

*In finance, the greater fool theory suggests that one can sometimes make money through the purchase of overvalued assets — items with a purchase price drastically exceeding the intrinsic value — if those assets can later be resold at an even higher price. This only works as long as there are enough new "greater fools" willing to pay higher and higher prices for the asset.

That's what I thought too until I researched what Bitcoin actually is and how it actually does (short version, it's just a public ledger that can't be manipulated and does so without requiring any central authority to maintain it)

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Lord, save us from these armchair internet 'experts'. Like Whac-a-mole (rather, like flies on shit), they keep coming back to SSP

I don't know what to say that...

[WarrenC12]

Why not just go back to gold instead?

[LightingGuy]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

Why not just go back to gold instead?

Gold weighs a ton and takes up a lot of space. It is incredibly difficult to move as a result. You also need a ton of resources to keep it secure, which is why many smaller nations have relied on larger nations to store their gold for them. The US used to store a ton of gold for countries, but then in 1971 they defaulted on their debt and when other countries asked for their gold back, France famously sent a ship. The US said no, kept the gold and then broke their currency's tie to gold going on a fiat standard instead. Also, every time that new gold is mined it inflates the supply - gold is still an inflationary asset.

"If you don't hold it you don't own it"

Bitcoin solves all of these problems because it isn't physical and can't inflate past 21M units. It's much easier to store and you can send it anywhere in a matter of seconds.

[MolsonExport]

until I researched what Bitcoin actually is and how it actually does

you just found this out recently?

Lemme tell ya about that bridge....

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by LightingGuy

Gold weighs a ton and takes up a lot of space. It is incredibly difficult to move as a result. You also need a ton of resources to keep it secure, which is why many smaller nations have relied on larger nations to store their gold for them. The US used to store a ton of gold for countries, but then in 1971 they defaulted on their debt and when other countries asked for their gold back, France famously sent a ship. The US said no, kept the gold and then broke their currency's tie to gold going on a fiat standard instead.

"If you don't hold it you don't own it"

Bitcoin solves all of these problems because it isn't physical.

That's a nice story, but also mostly fiction. Nixon did take the US off the gold standard in 1971. The US has never defaulted on its debt (except for a bureaucratic error in the 1970s). There is no credible source for the France gold story (it appears in places like comment sections, reddit and a random hufpo article).

At least being physical (and relatively rare in the earth's crust) gives gold some intrinsic value. That is not true of bitcoin.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by LightingGuy

Less than 1% of crypto is used for illegal activity.

Your source says less than 1% of TRANSACTIONS. Not 1% of crypto. The great thing about crypto for crooks is that they can move large amounts with few transactions. Also, that 1% figure itself is subject to substantial debate. Cryptobros love to low ball because being the preferred transaction medium of trans national criminals and terrorists is a bad look to potential greater fools.

Foley’s own paper, evocatively titled “Sex, Drugs, and Bitcoin,” was peer-reviewed and published in the Review of Financial Studies in 2019. It concluded that one-quarter of bitcoin users are involved in illegal activity, and that the $76 billion in illicit payments involving bitcoin represented 46% of the currency’s total transactions.

Source: https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022...-crime-really/

Originally Posted by LightingGuy

Meanwhile over 30% of cash is used for illegal activity.

Credible source please.

[LightingGuy]

Originally Posted by acottawa

That's a nice story, but also mostly fiction. Nixon did take the US off the gold standard in 1971. The US has never defaulted on its debt (except for a bureaucratic era in the 1970s). There is no credible source for the France gold story (it appears in places like comment sections, reddit and a random hufpo article).

I was paraphrasing what I heard elsewhere but never actually fact-checked it. Assuming you're right, it still doesn't disqualify the fact that gold is incredibly hard to move and keep secure.

Originally Posted by acottawa

At least being physical (and relatively rare in the earth's crust) gives gold some intrinsic value. That is not true of bitcoin.

We used to say the same thing about paper documents, and physical signatures. Now everyone trusts PDFs, clouds and digital signatures for legal documents - because it has proven itself. As Bitcoin keeps proving itself to be incredibly secure and robust, more and more people will eventually trust it. That said, it's still a good idea to store your passkeys offline and even store the passkeys physically (I've heard of people etching it into gold for example).

[LightingGuy]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Your source says less than 1% of TRANSACTIONS. Not 1% of crypto. The great thing about crypto for crooks is that they can move large amounts with few transactions. Also, that 1% figure itself is subject to substantial debate. Cryptobros love to low ball because being the preferred transaction medium of trans national criminals and terrorists is a bad look to potential greater fools.



Source: https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022...-crime-really/



Credible source please.

https://www.independent.org/publicat...by%20criminals.

[thebasketballgeek]

This is the 5th time that Bitcoin has crashed. However, we can’t ignore that after every crash so far that Bitcoin (and the rest of crypto for that matter) have rebounded and reached all-time highs after every crash. Of course past performance has no indicator of future success, but it is something that should be considered regarding the extreme volatility of cryptos both positively and at the moment negatively.

Also, I do believe that Canada will start implementing some sort of digital currency because that’s where the technology is headed, but it won’t be backed by Bitcoin rather it’ll be backed by the state like all currencies are.

In terms of crypto specifically I’m much more intrigued by Ethereum then Bitcoin.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by LightingGuy

I was paraphrasing what I heard elsewhere but never actually fact-checked it. Assuming you're right, it still doesn't disqualify the fact that gold is incredibly hard to move and keep secure.



We used to say the same thing about paper documents, and physical signatures. Now everyone trusts PDFs, clouds and digital signatures for legal documents - because it has proven itself. As Bitcoin keeps proving itself to be incredibly secure and robust, more and more people will eventually trust it. That said, it's still a good idea to store your passkeys offline and even store the passkeys physically (I've heard of people etching it into gold for example).

A retail saver who is paranoid of the monetary system would be way better off putting a few gold coins in their basement then trying to hold bitcoin.

It isn't really a matter of trust (although at some point somebody will figure out how to hack it) it is a lack of intrinsic value and no reason for people to continue to use it (or want it) in the future. The fact that it has lost 60% of its value over the last six month in a high-inflation and high-volatility era (when it should be going up if the statements you believe are true) should be a big clue.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by LightingGuy

I was paraphrasing what I heard elsewhere but never actually fact-checked it.

The story of your life.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by LightingGuy

https://www.independent.org/publicat...by%20criminals.

Random libertarian think tank is not a credible source. And the technique described in that report is even less credible. This is why stats should be mandatory in high school.....

[SteelTown]

Originally Posted by jigglysquishy

Bitcoin fails at one of the most basic roles of currency, being used for goods and services.

All the techbros I know use it as a quasi investment, with no actual purchases being made.

Wallets such as Crypto.com, you can get a VISA/VISA debit card that lets you spend on goods and services from your crypto assets.