- Re: In the interest of balance... Archived Message
Posted by Cobbett
on February 9, 2019, 10:04 pm, in reply to "Re: In the interest of balance..."
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Thanks for the snippets. "To me Crypto is like the emperor flogging off the clothes he wasn't actually wearing.." Yes, many people share your opinion. But I'm wondering if you might have already made up your mind without examining the subject in more detail? I've been studying it for the last five years and have probably experienced many of the same concerns and doubts that you have. I'm not actually one of those individuals who believes Bitcoin is a magic bullet cure-all for our present financial ills. But remember, ALL fiat currencies to date have ultimately failed. It can seem like the Dollar and Stirling have been around so long that they are perhaps immune. The Euro may well be the next to disappear as fall-out from the EU over-indebted death spiral - which could easily be precipitated from, for instance, Italy's public debt crisis spreading contagion throughout the eurozone. The Fed, ECB, BoJ and BoE have now indulged in years of QE "money printing", which is likely to devalue the currencies associated with these central banks even further in the years to come, especially those that have long ago abandoned their tethering to gold. In addition to a predicted downturn in global trade, we could end up with widespread "stagflation", which will hit poorer people in these countries particularly hard. Bitcoin is popular in countries such as Venezuela and Zimbabwe that are suffering from hyperinflation, where their governments have lost fiscal control due to a mix of bad planning, punitive sanctions, or greed (just to be clear, I'm completely against any form of military intervention by America / NATO into any country's sovereign affairs). No individual entity controls bitcoin. That is one of its strengths. It is trustless; no intermediary can interfere with the robust protocol, which has many hundreds of thousands of duplicate ledgers on computers (nodes) around the world. No payment can be reversed without reversing every single one of those individual ledgers. That is the power of this kind of decentralisation. Any one of our High Street banks runs a centralised system, each with their own computerised ledgers which are much less robust. So there is the in-built value of bitcoin, even though it appears to be insubstantial. I would agree though that there is also a great deal of hype and exaggeration too surrounding the currency, usually by individuals who fail to understand it. "Deliberately eye-catching, sensational headlines about Bitcoin mining are constantly recycled in the press." https://bitcoinist.com/top-5-bitcoin-skeptics-wrong/ "...Bitcoin network is consuming power at an annual rate of 32TWh—about as much as Denmark..." These concerns were recently refuted in a Forbes article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2018/01/16/bitcoin-mining-uses-as-much-power-as-ireland-and-why-thats-not-a-problem/#6037049f4589 Bitcoin itself will likely not to be the final iteration of crypto-currency; they are constantly evolving, and most will fall by the wayside in the process. And the Proof of Work method (which bitcoin uses) of mining is likely to be superseded before long by much more sensible methods (I'm loosely involved in the development of one of these in a non-technical capacity). Actually, there is the distinct possibility that bitcoin's creator(s) could be using it to gain acceptance for a global digital currency (god forbid!), and was anticipated in a 1988 edition of The Economist. Another possible planned use could be a digital replacement of the present SDR (Special Drawing Rights) basket of currencies, where it could be used as a form of digital gold for very large payments by the IMF and World Bank between countries etc. At that point, the transaction fees would likely run into the tens of thousands of pounds or more, out of the hands of everyday users who would be using other cryptocurrencies, each having their individual utility. I'm guessing that we will end up using either government-backed centralised digital currencies (most of our money is already over 90% digital) and/or various decentralised currencies which we ourselves hold in our own "cold wallets", due to being trapped into deflationary destitution by manipulative government fiscal tactics in a cashless environment. Nothing is for sure. These are just some speculations. I also think it is likely we might end up combining these high tech forms of transactions with much older ones such as barter, localised trading and communalism. Dunno. Just my two-penneth. "By their works etc." Max Keiser continually lauds crypto-currency to the detriment of decent economic analysis..if me dears it is the un-sustainability of our current economic structure that should be our primary concern how can a currency based on massive energy use and also utterly dependent on vulnerable technologies for both its production and its transfer possibly be our saviour? Max determinedly refuses to embrace the emergent model of bio-diverse sustainability instead he would rather we put all our eggs in the basket of this mathematical falsehood...Sorry but I'm convinced that algorithmic profiling (based on the neo-con/neo-liberal agenda), standard deviation particle beam analysis, Wi-Fi tech and Bitcoin are all part of the same deal... a candy-wrapped poison of short term fixes and apparent ameliorations full of sound and fury and signifying nothing! I have a certain ambivalence towards Max Keiser. On one hand, he and Stacy Herbert have had the only financial TV show to devote discussion to the crypto scene for almost ten years, but at the same time sometimes put too much emphasis on the the upside and less on the various issues and risks. As for "...to the detriment of decent economic analysis...", I'd say that is rather unfair. "...Max determinedly refuses to embrace the emergent model of bio-diverse sustainability instead he would rather we put all our eggs in the basket of this mathematical falsehood..." Would you care to back up that assertion it is a mathematical falsehood with some evidence? I would also say that he has frequently commented on "bio-diverse sustainablilty". How often have you watched the programme? Don't get me wrong, I disagree with a fair amount that he spouts, but by and large, his critique of the current financial mess has been far more honest and accurate than mainstram media output. |