Tending to your domestic needs conflicts with issuing the world reserve currency. It's been known from the beginning to be an unstable setup.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triffin_dilemma

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/...408513?lang=en

Trump is separating himself from the dilemma here. China puts an inflation trend into its currency to offset the trade tariffs imposed and Trump blames the FED for not counter responding. But the FED can't respond without great ramification (nor to the tweet really) because devaluing the USD would unwind the reserve currency status.

We could say a nefarious government official might be against such a change. But its also a rational view to understand its a very significant change, yet it would relieve the american economy and policy makers from a role that puts them in this dilemma.


This is my Chinese example for you, I hope its enough.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhou_Xiaochuan
The bancor referred to is a very important proposal that was proposed for bretton woods and rejected in favor of a USD based system (tied to gold) that was understood to also be unsustainable but the US had all the gold from the wars and so they could choose.

Keynes bancor is important because a bitcoin standard (different than saifedeans book) would be an implementation that didn't require political cooperation to come about. A bitcoin standard, that mirrored the classical gold standard, would serve keynes end but with a non-cooperative means.

This is my UK example, and they especially important and relevant because the future of the Euro will be affected by the outcome of the brexit debate (note the reference to bernake as a citation for his argument):

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/me...D4B79F09B6BFBC

This is the bolded and im not convinced you disagree with my sentiment:
We have to remember poker is similar to bitcoin but not the same. Bitcoin helped poker from dying out online (nearly) completely. That's interesting. It also brought a lot of newcomers to bitcoin because it was one of the first usecases (also interesting that there was a poker lobby/software baked into Satoshi's original code and we should talk about the possibilities of why here).

But we talking about how bitcoin won't DIE if the on/off ramps don't exist and you can't legally spend it in shops. Because my argument is even if its not useful legally as a cash it still has a higher order function that is very valued and valuable.

Poker was bottlenecked/fragmented and this stunted some of its exponential growth on its S-curve. But I doubt you will stand before this poker community to argue its dead. There are new (poker) hydra heads arising and yes political pressure is changing state by state.

And technology is removing the friction for people to skirt regulatory control. The complexity of the metaphor and comparison is that bitcoin might help that happen.

I agree with your sentiments. Its frustrating that these freedoms have been choked. But borders and money are not necessarily bad when they function optimally. So I infer (apologies if I am wrong) that you also wish for a world where we didn't NEED borders....because we certainly do today. I know the subject of money well enough also to know that we need it too.

It's true that he doesn't...yet.

But I gotta say, when you have a Magistrate write:

while adding:

(Translation: You have a REALLY dumb client)

after a judge writes:

You're not staring down the barrel of success.

People tend to be more protective about their money than their hobby. There's a huge black market all over the world for all kinds of things banned by governments. A lot of popular things get banned and are still used a lot (think booze in the US for example). Bitcoin is specifically designed to deal with these type of scenario's. If governments allow it, fine. If they don't, then GL killing it.

You think the odds of Bitcoin surviving this are very small, I disagree. The market slightly disagrees with you, but it's certainly possible. Time will tell. I personally do really think people will always demand money with a capped supply over money with an unpredictable supply.

Also if you look at it purely from a betting standpoint. If Bitcoin succeeds there is huge upside in demand and thus price. The success rate only needs to be quite a low percentage for this to be a +EV bet.

This is what we've been spinning our wheels about for pages now.

In the US, every Tom, Dick, and Harry had a weekly poker game and they all had Stars, Tilt, or PP accounts where they'd dump a few bucks a week online to donk it up.

After the UIGEA, almost all of them stopped. I don't have the exact figure, and I'm happy to be corrected, but I'd be shocked if online poker participation in the US (for real money LDO) didn't fall off a cliff after banks started to refuse to process transactions. The die hards and true believers found a way, but the fish just moved on to something else.

That's the point. It can happen, and while poker was just a US thing, "control of money" is an every-government-everywhere thing. It can be litigated, and it will

I agree, it probably will be litigated. Especially in the US, since they have the ultimate fiat monopoly. They are the owner of the king of shitcoins. (I guess Bolivar is king, but in sheer size, USD trumps all.)

I am more optimistic about Bitcoins resilience than you are though.

You two are continually reframing the narrative and debate to be about bitcoin's white market usefulness. This is not bitcoin's utility. It is black market transactions and none of the points speak to this.

We can assume bitcoin can never be used for white market use cases and you immediately die if you even try. This does nothing to the black market use cases.

Roger ver got everyone thinking about bitcoin as a daily average joe coffee money. That's dumb. There is nothing to debate about in that regard. That is not what bitcoin is.

Everyone is aware of btc's black market utility. The issue is that it's current price is based on speculation of widespread adoption. Black market use doesn't support it's current price, or the belief that btc will go to 100k.

If your argument is that btc can't be totally killed, and will always be used for black market activities, I think most people will agree (or at least consider it irrelevant to the overall picture). It's not worth 100k, or even 10k for purely black market activities though.

Most people's bull case includes widespread white market adoption though, and that's why the point is widely debated.

Yes (to your general point)

And we are on point now and seeing together.

But the bolded is an assertion not an observation. It is part of the argument of those that want to say bitcoin needs to be scaled via blocksize increases. These people like Ver and Wright and anyone with a significant amount of bitcoin's that are stolen need blocksize increases in order to move their coins. Thats my speculation but its also effectively technically true.

So those that argue bitcoin will become the everyday coffee money... I don't agree with, not in our lifetime or at least not without dramatic and radical change.....

But now we can see what needs to be debated/argued and we can now move along in dialogue...

Those that want to say bitcoin will be regulated out of being a coffee money need to argue that bitcoin can't be a high value settlement medium if it can't also be used as a coffee money. Because remember when Iran wants to make a settled exchange with another sanctioned country that is against american sanctions....using bitcoin is a black market transaction from the eyes of the US that the US CANNOT censor.

Why would they need that?

People really underestimate custodial service potential with bitcoin.
Moving 500$ worth of bitcoin on a service like cash app and spend it is already a reality and soon(I d be surprised if it's more than 2 years) they are very likely to allow you to pay directly with bitcoin through lightning network.

Do lot of ppl here trade crypto short term? I'm curious but if you do short term trading, are you basically paying around 35% in taxes?



I read that long term is 15%.


So if someone were to trade full time and say make $50,000 a year trading btc and altcoins but doing so short term, they are looking to pay 35%? That seems like a lot as that is more than than most ppl pay at their regular jobs. Can someone who trades for a living in crypto tell me how much percentage of their income in crypto trading they pay in terms of their income? Such as its around 25% or 32% or 35%?



Also when you do taxes, do most of you use lifo method? I use that but its a huge hassle since well you are not buying/selling exact amount each time especially when you have to go back to when you buy crypto a while back.



But do some of you use fifo? What is the advantage of that? If you daytrade for short term gains, which should you be using for the best tax savings or its all the same? Also you could use weighted average right? Also you could use lifo for btc buty use different methods such as fifo for other coins? Im pretty certain i heard once you start with one method for one coin, you cannot change it. But other coins, you can choose whichever.



And does anyone recommend any crypto software? And does that software mean you input all your transactions and it basically computes your transactions that you have to record such as bought sold btc at what price and dates so you don't have to keep going through decimals etc? I do it my paper and when you are going through like 0.05 btc and then 0.02 btc, well its a huge pain to record it. Like the 0.05 btc you bought on a certain date, you could have say 25 transactions that total that before you go to the previous time you acquired btc. Does anyone have tips on this? I can't imagine a software would put everything out there like that... but if so, can someone recommend me software? Are there any excel software or free software or most cost money for it? I would like to use one that is good so don't mind paying for it. Also don't mind trying any free ones to test it out.

pauly the world isn't USA.

Its my speculation but I know a lot of what has went on and it doesn't make sense. The stories of certain personalities don't make sense. Their arguments aren't based on economic theory. The only plausible story I can come up with is they need to wash their coins and they have so many stolen coins that they can't do it in an untraceable way. Those that are far more technically knowledgeable than me, although to some degree they respect my insight, they don't really agree with me...

But they also want privacy changes themselves even though they are morally good (or didn't steal their coins)...

So those like para that is fighting for total anonymity for bitcoin don't want to talk about how criminals need this.

At the moment, mixing your coins to hide their origin is not a problem. With higher fees, today's solutions become very expensive, but we're not there yet. But the main problem of washing illegitimately acquired coins is the usual one, giving authorities a believable explanation for how you acquired them legally. It has little to do with the throughput or privacy level of the system.

Bitcoin without privacy is pointless imo. It would not be used, and if it was it would open the door for censorship and oppression.

Short term gains are taxed as normal income, long term varies but for most its 15%.

Yup and again I might just not understand the technology but my understanding is if you have 500,000 coins to wash you can't do it. And people can see the coins "move".

You would do anything for a blocksize increase



The libertarians also call for privacy and so you have two large groups one of theives and one of libertarians both talking about how bitcoin should be made private.

And then someone came along and noted if you can't see the transactions then you can't verify there is no inflation bug.

Now thinking of bitcoin not as an everyday average joe coffee money but rather a settlement medium between nations and large institutions/banks do you still want baked in base layer privacy?

We've been mislead.

It's not that hard jbouton. You want money to be fungible, every unit of a money should be equal to another unit. You seem to think privacy is mostly for criminals. It's not, it's for everybody.

Let's say you just got your salary in Bitcoin and decide to pay your rent with this. It would be super easy for your landlord to figure out how much you exactly earn. If he's smart (but a bit evil maybe) he could even raise your rent based on your salary.

It's the same for businesses. If I buy my coffee with Bitcoin at the local coffeeshop, I could easily find out how much sales he made in a certain period. This is bad privacy, and it's definitely something people would want to keep private.

Good privacy is part of good money. Why do you think this isn't important, I'm genuinely curious. What are you going to do with all the information you gain from Bitcoin being entirely transparent? Take this one step further, what are nation states going to do with this information? What would North Korea do with this information? This is a very slippery slope, and it will be abused and has been abused over and over.

Sidenote: I do think Bitcoins privacy is pretty good, but can and will be improved a lot. I don't think this will be done with confidential transactions, because being able to audit the supply is extremely important for a lot of people.

A quarter of lightning nodes have shut down this year


Thoughts?

I think it's good to see someone else agrees that lightning has no future. BSV all the way.

you can't blindly call for privacy protocols that way. You have to have considerations. From an inverse perspective bitcoin is an amazing honey trap. Many libertarians will say that criminal/bad use cases are worth it as a tradeoff for the freedom. But I would like to see the violent people that used bitcoin...."go to jail".

Remember I am giving a narrative where bitcoin isn't really used by average joe and yes I want to see when my central bank sends bitcoin to iran.

+1

^ Pick your narrative

Bear: Lightning has less BTC capacity than a few months ago, it is failing

Bull: Lightning has more $ capacity and more nodes, it is growing

Forbes - Bitcoin Warning As Serious Security Vulnerabilities Uncovered

From Forbes, so take it for what its worth.

Looks like the Eclair wallet has security vulnerabilities. Naturally, Forbes wrote an entire article warning that the lightning network was at risk.