Bitcoin giveaway! :)

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Gumby
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by Gumby » Wed Nov 20, 2013 6:30 am

Rien wrote:
Tortoise wrote:
whatchamacallit wrote: is it possible the powers that be prefer people buy bitcoins instead of the traditional fiat alternative?
I'll believe that when I start seeing Bitcoin-related commercials everywhere paid for by big, multinational corporations and governments ;)
That might be closer than you think.
There was some hot shot lately who claimed that all money should be digital so they could force negative interest rates.
What better way to do that than to push bitcoins, and at some time in the future replace these with a govt mandated digital currency (bitdollars).
Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but aren't 90% of dollars already "digital" and we already have negative interest rates?
Nothing I say should be construed as advice or expertise. I am only sharing opinions which may or may not be applicable in any given case.
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by Kshartle » Wed Nov 20, 2013 6:43 am

Gumby wrote:
Rien wrote:
Tortoise wrote: I'll believe that when I start seeing Bitcoin-related commercials everywhere paid for by big, multinational corporations and governments ;)
That might be closer than you think.
There was some hot shot lately who claimed that all money should be digital so they could force negative interest rates.
What better way to do that than to push bitcoins, and at some time in the future replace these with a govt mandated digital currency (bitdollars).
Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but aren't 90% of dollars already "digital" and we already have negative interest rates?
Maybe more like 95%  :o
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by Kshartle » Wed Nov 20, 2013 6:50 am

Rien wrote:
Kshartle wrote:
Rien wrote: The water example illustrates that value is never constant. It changes all the time. When we have had or fill of water, you probably could not even pay me to drink more water. Its value goes negative.
The Apple factory has thousands of iPads.....they would never buy more for themselves.....do the iPads in their inventory have negative value?
You seem to keep insisting that value must be the same for everybody all the time.
But that is where we differ in opinion.
Everybody experiences value differently. Value is subjective, not objective.
I'm insisting that something isn't valuable or worthless just because you think it is. It's not your opinion that assigns value.

You said if you had so much water getting more would have negative value to you. That's not correct. You might not pay for more at that point, but it doesn't strip water of value just because you don't want it. There are plenty of things I don't want and wouldn't even take that are still valuable.
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by Rien » Wed Nov 20, 2013 7:07 am

Gumby wrote:
Rien wrote: There was some hot shot lately who claimed that all money should be digital so they could force negative interest rates.
What better way to do that than to push bitcoins, and at some time in the future replace these with a govt mandated digital currency (bitdollars).
Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but aren't 90% of dollars already "digital" and we already have negative interest rates?
IIRC he said that the USD should become pure virtual, no coins and notes anymore. Every payment fully digitized. Then they can charge you negative interest rates and you would have no possibility to protect your dollars because you cannot hold dollars outside the virtual system.
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by Rien » Wed Nov 20, 2013 7:15 am

Kshartle wrote: I'm insisting that something isn't valuable or worthless just because you think it is. It's not your opinion that assigns value.
Right, but I am saying that value can only be experienced by me.

I might infer or assume that something has value to you, but I can only guess at that value until you trade.
I can of course derive a value to me if I know that you place a value on something. Then I would be speculating.

Btw: If I have no more need for water, you would need to pay me to drink more water. I.e. I am no longer willing to pay somebody to drink water but need to be payed to drink water. That is what I meant with "negative value".
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by Marc De Mesel » Wed Nov 20, 2013 8:27 am

Peace wrote: Hi Marc,

Thank you for all the advice and tips you've provided here on Gyroscopic Investing and on your blogs (NL and EN), which I've been following for years now.

I hope your offer is still available. I've been wanting to post here for days now but couldn't decide on where to create a wallet (Blockchain.info, Coinbase, Multibit, Electrum etc.).

If you still have some BTC to share, feel free to send some to my newly created empty wallet. :)

1JTU8r86xFqRHwGcvoAKtPiGRaRHGmUiRM

Peace
Hey Peace,

I remember you from some years back. :) Thanks for valuing my work and promoting it elsewhere.

Great to hear you are interested in bitcoin as well :)

Send you some crypto :D
"We think, the more people on earth, the less we each have. But it's exactly the opposite, the more people, the more resources we all have!" - Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource 2
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by Marc De Mesel » Wed Nov 20, 2013 9:06 am

jfreib wrote: As a long time peruser of this site but someone who just found out about bitcoins, I knew I could count on this forum to provide me with a lively discussion of their merits and drawbacks.

I understood one of the merits of bitcoins to be that there are only 21 million of them, however something that Marc said earlier led me to believe that it might be possible to complete transactions using fractions of a bitcoin? If that is the case it seems to me that bitcoins would still have the inflationary risk that fiat money does. I.E. with a gold you can split it into smaller pieces but eventually the physical size limitations get in the way of subdivision. However it would seem to me that a digital currency could be divided without limits, effectively increasing the currency supply.
Is this just a misunderstanding of how it works due to my still limited knowledge of bitcoins?

Either way, I am very curious to see how this bitcoin story plays out, and, Marc, if your generous offer of free bitcoins still stands I would be interested in giving it a try!
Hey jfreid, what's your bitcoin address?

Subdividing a unit into smaller ones, does not increase the supply of those units. It just splits the same supply into smaller fractions. Hence no value is lost since the supply is not increased.

This is also done with 'digital' stocks, Microsoft shares for example have been 'split' many times. So if you have say 1 share of Microsoft valued at $100, they suddenly split all shares in 10 pieces, and now you suddenly have 10 shares of Mircosoft, but they will be valued only $10 each now. This way they keep the price per share low so that it is more easily tradable.  For example Warren Buffet decided never to split the Berkshire stock so now 1 share is valued in the thousands of dollars.

It is possible that if bitcoins become much more valuable that they will be split into smaller divisions but more likely is that the split never happens and people just start talking about bitcent or satoshi, to refer to a small fraction of a bitcoin. And bitcoin software starts to display bitcents as standard denomination so that you don't always have to deal with very small fractions of a bitcoin like 0.0001 btc. But this will not be an increase in supply, you will just feel richer because instead of just 1 btc, you now say 1 million satoshi, which is the same, but feels more, and will be more easily to deal with for payments.
"We think, the more people on earth, the less we each have. But it's exactly the opposite, the more people, the more resources we all have!" - Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource 2
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by Marc De Mesel » Wed Nov 20, 2013 9:13 am

Supercephalicus wrote: nice, is the giveaway still going?

adress: 1EahSY5dzy5p9a5rc1tVkg7mzxtjGemTMH  , in case it is!:)
I'm not doing new accounts, I'm sorry.  :-\

Thanks for your interest though.

Hope you succeed in getting some via other channels.
"We think, the more people on earth, the less we each have. But it's exactly the opposite, the more people, the more resources we all have!" - Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource 2
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by Kshartle » Wed Nov 20, 2013 11:43 am

Marc wrote:
Supercephalicus wrote: nice, is the giveaway still going?

adress: 1EahSY5dzy5p9a5rc1tVkg7mzxtjGemTMH  , in case it is!:)
I'm not doing new accounts, I'm sorry.  :-\

Thanks for your interest though.

Hope you succeed in getting some via other channels.
The current price has now fallen more than 33% below the all-time high. 6 hours ago it was down 50%. Did anyone buy then, do they plan to buy now, or have any plans to sell?

At what price does anyone think bitcoins are a good buy?
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by Marc De Mesel » Wed Nov 20, 2013 2:05 pm

Kshartle wrote:
Marc wrote:
Supercephalicus wrote: nice, is the giveaway still going?

adress: 1EahSY5dzy5p9a5rc1tVkg7mzxtjGemTMH  , in case it is!:)
I'm not doing new accounts, I'm sorry.  :-\

Thanks for your interest though.

Hope you succeed in getting some via other channels.
The current price has now fallen more than 33% below the all-time high. 6 hours ago it was down 50%. Did anyone buy then, do they plan to buy now, or have any plans to sell?

At what price does anyone think bitcoins are a good buy?
Yes, it's extremely volatile. I think percentage wise the volatility is going down over time, but since the dollar amounts get much bigger it remains staggering. The balls of steel you grow quickly by losing a lot of bitcoins or fiat.

I sold some at $650 as I estimated chance for a correction was high. I did not sell to trade it but to diversify profits and buy Cyprus stocks. Then price collapsed and meanwhile I also had a good talk with someone who is invested heavily in gold confirming to my surprise that gold/silver will likely lose a lot of value to bitcoin, so is not a good speculation anymore. So instead I have finally decided to sell my speculative silver and gold and will use that money to buy Cyprus stocks. I bought back the bitcoins I sold.

I think a good price is any price if you don't have them since you risk missing out on possibly hunderdfolding within a few years. That is if you bet long term. Short term I don't know anymore. Been wrong too many times. Just buy and hold is my motto these days. 
"We think, the more people on earth, the less we each have. But it's exactly the opposite, the more people, the more resources we all have!" - Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource 2
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by Kshartle » Wed Nov 20, 2013 2:13 pm

Marc wrote:
Kshartle wrote:
Marc wrote: I'm not doing new accounts, I'm sorry.  :-\

Thanks for your interest though.

Hope you succeed in getting some via other channels.
The current price has now fallen more than 33% below the all-time high. 6 hours ago it was down 50%. Did anyone buy then, do they plan to buy now, or have any plans to sell?

At what price does anyone think bitcoins are a good buy?
Yes, it's extremely volatile. I think percentage wise the volatility is going down over time, but since the dollar amounts get much bigger it remains staggering. The balls of steel you grow quickly by losing a lot of bitcoins or fiat.

I sold some at $650 as I estimated chance for a correction was high. I did not sell to trade it but to diversify profits and buy Cyprus stocks. Then price collapsed and meanwhile I also had a good talk with someone who is invested heavily in gold confirming to my surprise that gold/silver will likely lose a lot of value to bitcoin, so is not a good speculation anymore. So instead I have finally decided to sell my speculative silver and gold and will use that money to buy Cyprus stocks. I bought back the bitcoins I sold.

I think a good price is any price if you don't have them since you risk missing out on possibly hunderdfolding within a few years. That is if you bet long term. Short term I don't know anymore. Been wrong too many times. Just buy and hold is my motto these days.
Hey fair enough Marc. I'm not taking swipes at anyone's investments, just trying to do a critical analysis.

Did you buy individual Cyprus stocks or is there a small index? I imagine these would all be banks and possibly insurance right? Are there any other public industries for sale in Cyprus?

Are the prices extremely depressed?
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by Marc De Mesel » Wed Nov 20, 2013 6:12 pm

Kshartle wrote: Did you buy individual Cyprus stocks or is there a small index? I imagine these would all be banks and possibly insurance right? Are there any other public industries for sale in Cyprus?

Are the prices extremely depressed?
I plan to buy a dozen that seem to offer high value. Happy to share with you, after I bought myself in ;)

No banks/insurance, those went broke or got delisted.

Yes, the market is down by 98% on average. Some companies selling for much less than book value. Extremely depressed.

I like that it is all in euro as well so little risk for currency devaluation (in contrast to Iceland, also very depressed but also small currency, krona).

Cyprus remains a tax heaven within the Eurozone. So good chance long term for recovery.
Last edited by Marc De Mesel on Wed Nov 20, 2013 7:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by jfreib » Wed Nov 20, 2013 10:00 pm

Marc wrote:
jfreib wrote: As a long time peruser of this site but someone who just found out about bitcoins, I knew I could count on this forum to provide me with a lively discussion of their merits and drawbacks.

I understood one of the merits of bitcoins to be that there are only 21 million of them, however something that Marc said earlier led me to believe that it might be possible to complete transactions using fractions of a bitcoin? If that is the case it seems to me that bitcoins would still have the inflationary risk that fiat money does. I.E. with a gold you can split it into smaller pieces but eventually the physical size limitations get in the way of subdivision. However it would seem to me that a digital currency could be divided without limits, effectively increasing the currency supply.
Is this just a misunderstanding of how it works due to my still limited knowledge of bitcoins?

Either way, I am very curious to see how this bitcoin story plays out, and, Marc, if your generous offer of free bitcoins still stands I would be interested in giving it a try!
Hey jfreid, what's your bitcoin address?

Subdividing a unit into smaller ones, does not increase the supply of those units. It just splits the same supply into smaller fractions. Hence no value is lost since the supply is not increased.

This is also done with 'digital' stocks, Microsoft shares for example have been 'split' many times. So if you have say 1 share of Microsoft valued at $100, they suddenly split all shares in 10 pieces, and now you suddenly have 10 shares of Mircosoft, but they will be valued only $10 each now. This way they keep the price per share low so that it is more easily tradable.  For example Warren Buffet decided never to split the Berkshire stock so now 1 share is valued in the thousands of dollars.

It is possible that if bitcoins become much more valuable that they will be split into smaller divisions but more likely is that the split never happens and people just start talking about bitcent or satoshi, to refer to a small fraction of a bitcoin. And bitcoin software starts to display bitcents as standard denomination so that you don't always have to deal with very small fractions of a bitcoin like 0.0001 btc. But this will not be an increase in supply, you will just feel richer because instead of just 1 btc, you now say 1 million satoshi, which is the same, but feels more, and will be more easily to deal with for payments.
Hey Marc, my bitcoin address is 1FDQcs6mJwviZrU4dvDKA8adY6EtEAqWv8

I was thinking of the example of stock splits with my earlier question, but I was wondering how it might be different because stocks aren't traded directly for goods and services the way bitcoins are envisioned to be used in the future.

Say a certain widget costs 1 BTC and the value of a bitcoin suddenly jumps up 1000 fold, I imagine two possible situations. If the price stays 1BTC, you have now increased the cost of that widget relative to the other things that bitcoin can buy. But if the price of the widget falls to 1mBTC, to stay in line with current bitcoin value, a mBTC will become the standard unit as you suggested above. This would mean that there are essentially 1000 fold more bitcoins in circulation.

While I realize it would not erode your wealth (in the same way a stock spilt doesn't hurt the wealth of the person who's stock has now double) wouldn't it inflate the money supply all the same? After all, the widget maker is now getting a smaller fraction of the total money supply when they only sell their widget for 1mBTC.

I am sure I am missing several things in my understanding, but it seems to me that limiting inflation is harder than just saying the number of bitcoins is fixed
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by Peace » Wed Nov 20, 2013 11:43 pm

Marc wrote:
Peace wrote: Hi Marc,

Thank you for all the advice and tips you've provided here on Gyroscopic Investing and on your blogs (NL and EN), which I've been following for years now.

I hope your offer is still available. I've been wanting to post here for days now but couldn't decide on where to create a wallet (Blockchain.info, Coinbase, Multibit, Electrum etc.).

If you still have some BTC to share, feel free to send some to my newly created empty wallet. :)

1JTU8r86xFqRHwGcvoAKtPiGRaRHGmUiRM

Peace
Hey Peace,

I remember you from some years back. :) Thanks for valuing my work and promoting it elsewhere.

Great to hear you are interested in bitcoin as well :)

Send you some crypto :D
Heel erg bedankt, Marc!

It's very generous of you. Really appreciate it. :)

Just bought some BTC from bitcoin.de. Thanks for helping me get started with it. :)

By the way, I also wanted to thank you for suggesting DAX before for my PP (instead of just sticking to Eurostoxx). My PP returns are much better because of it. Thanks a lot again!

Wishing you much happiness and success!
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by Rien » Thu Nov 21, 2013 2:31 am

Kshartle wrote:It's not your opinion that assigns value.
I'll take one more stab at this because I just thought up an analogy that might clarify this:

To me value is like beauty. Value is my experience of utility, just like beauty is my experience of appearance.
As they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Likewise for value.
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by Marc De Mesel » Sun Nov 24, 2013 10:01 am

jfreib wrote:
Marc wrote:
jfreib wrote: As a long time peruser of this site but someone who just found out about bitcoins, I knew I could count on this forum to provide me with a lively discussion of their merits and drawbacks.

I understood one of the merits of bitcoins to be that there are only 21 million of them, however something that Marc said earlier led me to believe that it might be possible to complete transactions using fractions of a bitcoin? If that is the case it seems to me that bitcoins would still have the inflationary risk that fiat money does. I.E. with a gold you can split it into smaller pieces but eventually the physical size limitations get in the way of subdivision. However it would seem to me that a digital currency could be divided without limits, effectively increasing the currency supply.
Is this just a misunderstanding of how it works due to my still limited knowledge of bitcoins?

Either way, I am very curious to see how this bitcoin story plays out, and, Marc, if your generous offer of free bitcoins still stands I would be interested in giving it a try!
Hey jfreid, what's your bitcoin address?

Subdividing a unit into smaller ones, does not increase the supply of those units. It just splits the same supply into smaller fractions. Hence no value is lost since the supply is not increased.

This is also done with 'digital' stocks, Microsoft shares for example have been 'split' many times. So if you have say 1 share of Microsoft valued at $100, they suddenly split all shares in 10 pieces, and now you suddenly have 10 shares of Mircosoft, but they will be valued only $10 each now. This way they keep the price per share low so that it is more easily tradable.  For example Warren Buffet decided never to split the Berkshire stock so now 1 share is valued in the thousands of dollars.

It is possible that if bitcoins become much more valuable that they will be split into smaller divisions but more likely is that the split never happens and people just start talking about bitcent or satoshi, to refer to a small fraction of a bitcoin. And bitcoin software starts to display bitcents as standard denomination so that you don't always have to deal with very small fractions of a bitcoin like 0.0001 btc. But this will not be an increase in supply, you will just feel richer because instead of just 1 btc, you now say 1 million satoshi, which is the same, but feels more, and will be more easily to deal with for payments.
Hey Marc, my bitcoin address is 1FDQcs6mJwviZrU4dvDKA8adY6EtEAqWv8

I was thinking of the example of stock splits with my earlier question, but I was wondering how it might be different because stocks aren't traded directly for goods and services the way bitcoins are envisioned to be used in the future.

Say a certain widget costs 1 BTC and the value of a bitcoin suddenly jumps up 1000 fold, I imagine two possible situations. If the price stays 1BTC, you have now increased the cost of that widget relative to the other things that bitcoin can buy. But if the price of the widget falls to 1mBTC, to stay in line with current bitcoin value, a mBTC will become the standard unit as you suggested above. This would mean that there are essentially 1000 fold more bitcoins in circulation.

While I realize it would not erode your wealth (in the same way a stock spilt doesn't hurt the wealth of the person who's stock has now double) wouldn't it inflate the money supply all the same? After all, the widget maker is now getting a smaller fraction of the total money supply when they only sell their widget for 1mBTC.

I am sure I am missing several things in my understanding, but it seems to me that limiting inflation is harder than just saying the number of bitcoins is fixed
Hi jfreid,

If you would define 'supply' as 'quantity of tokens', then indeed dividing tokens into smaller ones increases the supply (=amount of tokens). When talking about money however, 'money supply' is a strictly defined. It's an increase of the amount of currency in circulation, not a division into smaller fractions.

Limiting inflation is very simple, stop printing more. The ones printing, central bankers and their beneficiaries, will ofcourse deny this.

That is as long as you define inflation correctly: the increase in the amount of money in circulation.

Ofcourse if you are going to define inflation as 'the average rise in prices of an average basket of good and services', then you can start discuss with no end as prices are influenced by many factors. Which is exactly why central bankers changed the definition of inflation, to hide their crimes.

Bitcoins donated, enjoy the first digital currency that is impossible to inflate by the rulers. ;)
Last edited by Marc De Mesel on Sun Nov 24, 2013 7:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by edsanville » Thu Dec 12, 2013 9:09 pm

Kshartle wrote:
You say I'm wrong when you won't trade me a million bucks for it, just like everyone else on Earth. I can sit around and believe it's worth a million, but everyone else knows I'm wrong and they prove it by only offering me ten bucks for it! :)

That's the real-world expression of my wrongness.
Kshartle, don't you see the irony in your argument here?  You're saying that, because the market refuses to pay you a million bucks for your shirt, it "proves" that your subjective valuation (shirt = million bucks), is "incorrect."

Currently, the market is paying about $900 for 1 bitcoin.  By your own logic, that proves that you're incorrect for not valuing bitcoins.

Either that, or valuation is entirely subjective.

You argue that bitcoins objectively have no value.  Is your hypothesis a disprovable one?  What would have to occur for you to agree that bitcoins have value?  If bitcoins are worth $100,000 in 5 years, would you admit that they actually have value?  What about 10 years?  20 years?

If there is literally nothing that could ever happen to change your mind about this, then your argument is based on faith alone, not rationality (Karl Popper).
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by Kshartle » Fri Dec 13, 2013 9:57 am

edsanville wrote:
Kshartle wrote:
You say I'm wrong when you won't trade me a million bucks for it, just like everyone else on Earth. I can sit around and believe it's worth a million, but everyone else knows I'm wrong and they prove it by only offering me ten bucks for it! :)

That's the real-world expression of my wrongness.
Kshartle, don't you see the irony in your argument here?  You're saying that, because the market refuses to pay you a million bucks for your shirt, it "proves" that your subjective valuation (shirt = million bucks), is "incorrect."

Currently, the market is paying about $900 for 1 bitcoin.  By your own logic, that proves that you're incorrect for not valuing bitcoins.

Either that, or valuation is entirely subjective.

You argue that bitcoins objectively have no value.  Is your hypothesis a disprovable one?  What would have to occur for you to agree that bitcoins have value?  If bitcoins are worth $100,000 in 5 years, would you admit that they actually have value?  What about 10 years?  20 years?

If there is literally nothing that could ever happen to change your mind about this, then your argument is based on faith alone, not rationality (Karl Popper).
If there is nothing that could ever change my mind that 2+2=4, is my argument that 2+2=4 based on faith alone? I'm not familiar with Karl Popper, but if he said this, he's clearly wrong, and I wouldn't use that quote anymore.

I promise you, I avoid faith-based arguments more than I avoid the plauge. It's possible for me to slip up of course, but by God I try really hard to take nothing on faith unless I don't care enough to spend the time learning about it. This is not the case with bitcoin in which I am very interested.


The question of whether or not bitcoins have value require that we agree on the definition of value, otherwise we run the risk of disagreeing about different things.

From Webster's:

1:  a fair return or equivalent in goods, services, or money for something exchanged
2:  the monetary worth of something :  market price
3:  relative worth, utility, or importance
4:  a numerical quantity that is assigned or is determined by calculation or measurement
5:  the relative duration of a musical note
6a :  relative lightness or darkness of a color
  b :  the relation of one part in a picture to another with respect to lightness and darkness
7:  something (as a principle or quality) intrinsically valuable or desirable

1 & 2 are price. I think we can agree on that. Since everything has a price but some are willing to buy, sell and ignore it is clear that price and value are different things. Value is a convinient word to substitute for price but not what I'm refferring to. Clearly bitcoins have a price. The question is do they have any value.

4, 5, 6a, & 6b are completely unrelated.

3 & 7 are the definitions I've been referring to when I say bitcoins have no value. While an individual's assesment of value is subject, the question of whether or not something has value is objective. A bitcoin isn't better or more useful than anything, if you take away it's price. The price is the only justification for value and the price is being justified by characteristics that don't convey value (scarcity, ease of transfer, cost to mine). Additionaly the price is being justified by the belief that more people will want them and pay more for them. The price is sell-justifying. A bitcoin cannot be used to do anything, it can just be traded for something that can be used. Well......ANYTHING can be traded. Bitcoins are easily tradable, but so is any electronic file and a whole host of other things. Bitcoins might be scarce, but scarcity doesn't make something valueable. Harry Browne explained this several times and Iv'e written about it throughout the thread.

With regards to intrinsic value, I think it's pretty clear. Bitcoins have no property that anyone desires for their own sake. Intrinsic value is a tricky topic. We have a thread on here covering it in detail, it's too expansive for me to go into with this post. If you disagree and want to argue that bitcoins have intrinsic value, I'd be happy to hear the argument.

Regarding the shirt example....The argument has been made that belief alone conveys value, as if magically something can become valuable just because I beleive it. I don't recall the exact exchange but I think it involved how do you prove that someone's subjective evaluation is incorrect. Well...I think it's pretty obvious if I pay a million for a T-shirt or just "believe" it's worth that much the fact that I can't find anyone else who agrees is proof positive that my subjective valuation is wrong.

This is not the case with bitcoin which i claim has no value and yet has a price. The two examples do not contradict each other. In the case of bitcoin there are BILLIONS who agree with me and will not and have not traded a single dollar for them. There are very, very few who hold them or who have paid the market price for them. People are not holding them for a useful purpose. They are hoping the price will go up. That a portion or really a fraction of the population thinks they are worth the current market price doesn't make it so anymore than if I pay $1,000,000 for a T-shirt now makes it worth that much.

Does the difference between the two make sense? Have I been clear enough or would you like me to elaborate? - Sincere question

Bonus question - If clean freshwater was suddenly so abundant that it's price was zero (meaning no one would would trade anything else for it) would it still have value? Same question with gold. Now how about bitcoin?

What do you think?
Last edited by Kshartle on Fri Dec 13, 2013 10:10 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by Kshartle » Fri Dec 13, 2013 10:00 am

edsanville wrote: What would have to occur for you to agree that bitcoins have value? 
You'd have to explain to me what the basis for the value is. The price is not the explanation. Believing it has value because someone is willing to trade for it without explaining why they would want the bitcoin is basing your belief on faith, not rationality.
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by Reub » Fri Dec 13, 2013 10:34 am

I really do believe that bitcoins as a currency will be crushed by big governments as soon as they are ready to do it.
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by Xan » Fri Dec 13, 2013 11:13 am

Kshartle wrote:If there is nothing that could ever change my mind that 2+2=4, is my argument that 2+2=4 based on faith alone? I'm not familiar with Karl Popper, but if he said this, he's clearly wrong, and I wouldn't use that quote anymore.
Within the framework of mathematics that we have invented, 2+2=4 does not require faith.  But you do have unprovable faith in that framework.
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by stuper1 » Fri Dec 13, 2013 11:31 am

In a base 3 system (rather than a base 10 system), 2 plus 2 would equal 11 (I think).  I'm not sure what that adds to this discussion, other than to point out the obvious that you get different answers depending on what system you're working in.

Green papers with dead president on them seem to have some exchange value (plus value to pay taxes, etc.).  Couldn't bitcoins also have some value for facilitating exchanges?  How do we quantify that exchange value?  I'd say the same way we quantify everything else.  How much will people pay for it?  Right now people are paying $900 for a bitcoin.  That will probably go up or down with time.  I'm not sure which.  I agree with others that if it goes up very much, governments will probably step in and squash it at the bankers bidding.  Nevertheless, I've bet a little money on the opposite side.
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by Kshartle » Fri Dec 13, 2013 11:43 am

Xan wrote:
Kshartle wrote:If there is nothing that could ever change my mind that 2+2=4, is my argument that 2+2=4 based on faith alone? I'm not familiar with Karl Popper, but if he said this, he's clearly wrong, and I wouldn't use that quote anymore.
Within the framework of mathematics that we have invented, 2+2=4 does not require faith.  But you do have unprovable faith in that framework.
It doesn't require faith in anything. It just requires we agree on the definition of a concept. The concept of a single unit of anything and calling that one. combining that unit with another unit is defined as two....blady blah.

It's not unprovable faith in anything that's required here. If there is really one apple in front of us, and you and I agree that there is one apple in front of us, does it require unprovable faith that there is one apple for us to agree or just to understand what it means to have one of something?
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by Kshartle » Fri Dec 13, 2013 11:47 am

Xan wrote:
Kshartle wrote:If there is nothing that could ever change my mind that 2+2=4, is my argument that 2+2=4 based on faith alone? I'm not familiar with Karl Popper, but if he said this, he's clearly wrong, and I wouldn't use that quote anymore.
Within the framework of mathematics that we have invented, 2+2=4 does not require faith.  But you do have unprovable faith in that framework.

Ok. Nothing you say could ever convince me that I don't exist. Is my argument that I exist based on faith alone?

Please........perhaps this is not a verbatim quote of this guy. Perhaps it is and I've never heard the quote before because it sounds silly to people. 

Anyway the quote aside.....any comments on my bitcoin response or value/non-value argument?
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by Xan » Fri Dec 13, 2013 12:00 pm

Kshartle wrote:Ok. Nothing you say could ever convince me that I don't exist. Is my argument that I exist based on faith alone?
Actually, yes.  In what way isn't it?
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